One of the shelters in my area is now charging $450 “adoption fee” for a dog. I don’t know about cats. This is the same place that automatically euthanizes Pit Bulls or Pit Bull mixes, or anything that looks like it might possibly have an ounce of Pit mixed in 4 generations back…:dead:
This is the same shelter that denied my adoption application because I was buying my own vaccinations and administering them myself to save money (except for Rabies - vet does that one.) I had an Excel spreadsheet listing every vaccination, the date, and the freakin serial number off the package for every year of the dog’s life, and they would not accept it. I had vet records showing heart worm and Lyme disease testing, rabies every 1-3 years, teeth cleanings every year, routine check ups, anal gland cleaning every 6 months…you name it. I had spent thousands on my dog to fix his bad leg. I had his ears cultured every 3 months for yeast since he was so prone to it…Still said I didn’t have a good enough vet record because of “no vaccinations.”
Also they said that since I don’t routinely vaccinate for Kennel Cough, that would cause a problem. Um, at the time I had ONE dog, and he was always at home, never exposed to other dogs - no dog parks or boarding kennels for him, ever. So why would I do Kennel Cough? 
I ended up getting a dog directly from a private rescue group with no problems, and then our 3rd dog was a stray that showed up.
You can find dogs and cats all over Craigslist for free to cheap so at this point I don’t even see a need to go to a shelter.
On another note though - I should mention that I have a chicken I adopted from a different shelter and they gave me NO problems whatsoever. Very nice people. They did a phone interview with me, took a couple of references (and they DID check them out), and they told me I could pick up my hen that night. I wouldn’t have known about this shelter and this hen except that my friend volunteered there and told me about her.
