I don’t have all the answers …I agree with much of your post excepy the last, rescues are not keeping byb in business, laws (or lack of them) and buyers keep them in business.
I am not against byb who treat their animals well , but on the other hand too much byb contributes to over pet population which feeds the shelter ( and then the rescue ) problem so it’s a complex subject.
[QUOTE=Countrywood;8217597]
Your friend did not bother calling the rescue to find out their policy. The pet shop obviously did not want the parakeets since it let them go and perhaps would have disposed of them had the rescue not stepped in.
It’s not like a rescue “Swooped in” and picked up parakeets without permission. If the pet shop wanted to keep and sell them, they would have.[/QUOTE]
Umm… What pet shop? There was no pet shop involved. This was a county publicly funded shelter that had the parakeets on their weekly cable show that features animals up for adoption. The parakeets were on the show this weekend. She showed up to adopt one shortly after the shelter opened and the rescue had already picked them up.
I do think overly stringent rescues, in part, not entirely, but certainly in part, keep puppy mills and backyard breeders in business.
As an aside, reading this thread has made me really want a puppy and I have been perusing CL. I won’t act on my impulses certainly though. I can’t wait until I can fund my Ibizan Hound from a breeder.
[QUOTE=supaflyskye;8217873]
I do think overly stringent rescues, in part, not entirely, but certainly in part, keep puppy mills and backyard breeders in business.
As an aside, reading this thread has made me really want a puppy and I have been perusing CL. I won’t act on my impulses certainly though. I can’t wait until I can fund my Ibizan Hound from a breeder.[/QUOTE]
A BREEDER!!!
I can hook you up with one from spain…maybe not completely purebred, and disregard the insane air fright and importation but IT’S A RESCUE!!!
(seriously, my mom got stuck with a couple…potential Podenco blood…and nope, they ain’t gonna leave her farm. Ever.)
The difference between the OP and the rescues she so disparages, in a nutshell:
OP: “It’s all about ME ME ME instant gratification I want MY FAVORITE EXACT CROSS EXACT AGE EXACT GENDER right now and I don’t care if dogs have to suffer for it TANTRUM WHINE CRY!”
Rescue: “Sometimes our bedside manner with people isn’t great, but we’re in it for the dogs.”
[QUOTE=Alagirl;8217880]
A BREEDER!!!
I can hook you up with one from spain…maybe not completely purebred, and disregard the insane air fright and importation but IT’S A RESCUE!!!
(seriously, my mom got stuck with a couple…potential Podenco blood…and nope, they ain’t gonna leave her farm. Ever.)[/QUOTE]
Really?? I might have to take you up on that. I will have to look into importation/shipping costs from Spain. I will not have the funds for at least another 6-12 months, so have some time to look into it. I will keep it in mind though. As long as it has the Ibizan “look” and personality I would not care if it is purebred.
[QUOTE=supaflyskye;8217888]
Really?? I might have to take you up on that. I will have to look into importation/shipping costs from Spain. I will not have the funds for at least another 6-12 months, so have some time to look into it. I will keep it in mind though. As long as it has the Ibizan “look” and personality I would not care if it is purebred.[/QUOTE]
LOL!!!
I think I can hook you up with a rescue! :lol:
[QUOTE=french fry;8217886]
The difference between the OP and the rescues she so disparages, in a nutshell:
OP: “It’s all about ME ME ME instant gratification I want MY FAVORITE EXACT CROSS EXACT AGE EXACT GENDER right now and I don’t care if dogs have to suffer for it TANTRUM WHINE CRY!”
Rescue: “Sometimes our bedside manner with people isn’t great, but we’re in it for the dogs.”[/QUOTE]
eh, sure.
but without the people, who’s gonna feed the dogs!
In other words, you are not helping your cause at all.
Take a page from Cowgirljen’s playbook:
Only the pillows hear her frustration!
[QUOTE=Alagirl;8217910]
LOL!!!
I think I can hook you up with a rescue! :lol:[/QUOTE]
Great! Wonderful, I will contact you when I have some money to my name. :lol:
[QUOTE=Alagirl;8217911]
eh, sure.
but without the people, who’s gonna feed the dogs!
In other words, you are not helping your cause at all.
Take a page from Cowgirljen’s playbook:
Only the pillows hear her frustration![/QUOTE]
If you look at my post history on this thread, you will see that I a. empathized with the OP b. specifically stated that I volunteer my time to a rescue that does NOT have ridiculously rigid adoption criteria c. provided well-meaning advice on navigating the rescue process.
She is determined to continue her anti rescue/pro puppy mill screed. She will not be won to “the cause” because she was offended that a rescue put their puppy’s welfare before her instant gratification. At this point I’m going to call a spade a spade and come out as #teamdog and not #teaminstantgratification.
I mean, come on. A poster who is fully educated about the horrors of puppy mills first blaming rescues for their existence and then PURCHASING A PUPPY FROM ONE.
Inexcusable.
[QUOTE=french fry;8217941]
If you look at my post history on this thread, you will see that I a. empathized with the OP b. specifically stated that I volunteer my time to a rescue that does NOT have ridiculously rigid adoption criteria c. provided well-meaning advice on navigating the rescue process.
She is determined to continue her anti rescue/pro puppy mill screed. She will not be won to “the cause” because she was offended that a rescue put their puppy’s welfare before her instant gratification. At this point I’m going to call a spade a spade and come out as #teamdog and not #teaminstantgratification.
I mean, come on. A poster who is fully educated about the horrors of puppy mills first blaming rescues for their existence and then PURCHASING A PUPPY FROM ONE.
Inexcusable.[/QUOTE]
Let me repeat this:
You may strongly dislike her attitude.
But yours is not helping the cause. At all!
Because your attitude is part of why she has hers.
Meditate on that!
[QUOTE=Alagirl;8217997]
Let me repeat this:
You may strongly dislike her attitude.
But yours is not helping the cause. At all!
Because your attitude is part of why she has hers.
Meditate on that![/QUOTE]
If the OP had come to the rescue I volunteer with, we would have done our best to work with her even with her extremely narrow age/breed/sex/living situation requirements.
I offered advice and commiseration on this very thread.
The OP has ignored all well meaning advice, insight, and personal anecdotes and descends further and further into defensive mania, blaming everyone on the thread who spoke in favor of rescues for forcing her to go to a puppy mill.
I feel pretty great about my “attitude.” My “attitude” helps place hundreds of dogs with ecstatic adopters. Even adopters without perfect applications/homes/lives.
The OP, on the other hand, DIRECTLY supported a puppy mill in the acquisition of her dog.
But, yeah, my attitude is definitely the problem.
At what point is it acceptable for those advocating on behalf of rescues to stop rolling over when people lob accusations of their organizations keeping puppy mills in business? Because I have seem some extremely gentle, moderate and supportive responses on this thread - only to be met with derision and vitriol.
I don’t think volunteering my free time to help homeless pets mandates that I’m not allowed to have an opinion when someone who knows better buys from a puppy mill.
[QUOTE=rugbygirl;8217779]
Like the “do they health test” question. What kind of tests are required? Depends on the breed, as far as I can tell. Basic veterinary check-up and vaccines certainly seems to be adequate to me, especially on most cross-breeds. Even volume isn’t an absolute scale, take the “Puppy Mill” I described getting my dog from. Truly, it was not a horrifying place. Lots of little dogs running around a tidy acreage in reasonably sized enclosures, and the momma dogs in big crates in the house while the puppies were tiny. That breeder easily produced 100 puppies a year though. If these had been Mastiffs or something, yes, the conditions would have been apalling. With these small dogs? I don’t know, they really all seemed pretty content.[/QUOTE]
It’s not really that complicated, though.
Even in cross-bred dogs, many of the same congenital defects are present. At the very least, the dogs being bred should be free of defects - hip dysplasia, luxating patellas, eye disorders, heart murmurs. You could probably get all of these tests done for less than the cost of ONE puppy. It may not guarantee a perfectly healthy puppy (nor would it if they were purebred), but it shows that the breeder cares - they care that the puppies will be more likely than not to be free of serious defects.
Isn’t that the least a breeder should be willing to do?
Also, there should be some reason to think that the breeding animals have stable (correct) temperaments - but it requires someone to actually take the dog out of the cage and interact with it during its life to determine its temperament.
Isn’t that pretty darn minimal? That an animal being bred as a companion to humans (not for food) has experienced enough human contact to determine that it is friendly, not too shy, and not aggressive? (Or whatever is the correct temperament for its breed?)
If a breeder can’t do these very basic things, then they are BAD. Call them a puppy mill, or a BYB, or a back yard puppy mill…or whatever. But don’t support them by buying from them.
[QUOTE=rugbygirl;8217614]
I also don’t know that the “majority” of puppy-mill buyers end up being crappy owners. About 25 years ago, my family wanted a dog. We were not “dog people” and had no friends or connections in the purebred/show dog world. We carefully researched the type of dog we wanted, and found that some breeders seemed to have really high prices and infrequent litters, with long waiting lists (probably the better ones) meanwhile, there were similar (to us) puppies advertised in the paper at a fraction of the price, with much better availability. We bought our little bichon shih-tzu from what was probably a puppy mill, and knew two or three others who bought from the same woman. The dogs at her place seemed happy, and clean, and they had their basic vet checks/shots when we purchased. There were just a lot of them. Our dog lived to a happy 18, and was by all accounts a very happy, energetic dog. She was awesome and much-loved. The others who had bought from the same breeder also kept the dogs their whole lives, although ours seemed to be longer-lived than most of the others. If “most” of the people who bought dogs from that place ended up selling/returning them…the local shelters would have never kept on top of them. I guess I don’t know for sure…I didn’t work in the kill room at the shelter. It just never seemed like there was an avalanche of returned Bichon-Shih Tzus at the shelter.[/QUOTE]
Puppy mill dog owners are probably no worse or better than any other dog owner. It’s the puppy mills themselves that are problematic and the pain and suffering they cause.
Also, I will point out that the OP’s whole mentality of, “I want XYZ specific criteria in the puppy I plan to acquire in the next two days” would not even exist if not for puppy mills and the constant litters they churn out.
It’s not like the rescues are all full of male cattle jack pups under 10 weeks old that they were denying the OP access to.
This whole thread was a strawman to justify the OP acquiring the exact dog she wanted on an unrealistic timeline.
[QUOTE=rugbygirl;8217779]
This is kind of another problem for people like me, who like dogs, but are uninterested in becoming part of “the dog world”…there’s this mystery hierarchy of breeders and rescues, most of whom fight with each other and can’t seem to agree on who is “good” or “bad” with the exception of themselves.
Many reputable breeders are active in rescue, I’m only one of many in Mayflower who help with rescue efforts. I’ve begun to lose track of the number I’ve helped on their journey to their second home. The same is true of my friends in other breeds
Like the “do they health test” question. What kind of tests are required? Depends on the breed, as far as I can tell. Basic veterinary check-up and vaccines certainly seems to be adequate to me, especially on most cross-breeds.
Actually, not even close. Both parents need to have the full testing that they would be expected to have if they were being bred to a dog of their same breed. If parent of breed A is subject to hip dysplasia, breeding to breed B does not eliminate the risk. If you want to make your head spin look at the testing done by the folks trying to establish the Australian Labradoodle as a full fledged breed
I don’t really know what I’m getting at, I guess. I suppose I just feel very excluded and unfairly judged by “dog people” for wanting to own a pet and take care of it reasonably well. The “standards” seem inconsistent and often unreasonable by the organizations that claim to be all about the animals. When the rescues and “good breeders” seem to go out of their way to make me feel that way, but a BY Breeder can supply me with a dog that appears (to me) to be VERY similar and suit my needs…but not make me feel like garbage, or subject me to long rants about how awful people are…um, yes. Those rescues ARE keeping the BYBs in business. Remember, I went there first.[/QUOTE]
There’s no good excuse for not doing the standard health testing for your breed even if you’re not in to showing. The two dogs I’ve seen with clinical hip dysplasia this year are purebreds from untested parents. I place my puppies in both performance homes and with families who want a pet/companion with the odds stacked in their favor health wise and temperament wise.
Update on my friend, she did track the parakeets down. The rescue who has them will let her adopt one. No background check needed. Adoption consists of she pays for it’s support and they send her a toy stuffed bird as a thank you. Bird stays there so it doesn’t get stressed. She passed on that offer and has found a breeder via ebay classifieds who she will check out instead.
[QUOTE=Paks;8218283]
Update on my friend, she did track the parakeets down. The rescue who has them will let her adopt one. No background check needed. Adoption consists of she pays for it’s support and they send her a toy stuffed bird as a thank you. Bird stays there so it doesn’t get stressed. She passed on that offer and has found a breeder via ebay classifieds who she will check out instead.[/QUOTE]
that’s ridiculous. I guess that’s the way some rescues do it though.
Alagirl seems to be on this thread to taunt and belittle other posters and dump on rescues.
The parakeet story is unusual to say the least …perhaps the birds were stressed/not used to people and the rescue felt it was kinder to keep them together and that if an individual was separated at that stage in its life it would not thrive/ die in a new home. Or the rescue is nuts. Can’t tell without knowing the whole backstory…
Parakeets are cheap to buy and in nearly every pet store so it’s hard to relate their purchase to that of a dog/puppy, nor do we have any information about why the birds were rescued, what age they are, what condition they are in, if any of them would be appropriate to re home individually.
I love how these rescue people make up their own facts and then get outraged about them.
It’s very obvious that all of them would have preferred that my puppy be purchased by a jerk who neglected, abused, and then abandoned him at their doorstep just so they could swoop in, save the day, and be proclaimed “rescuer of the year” or some other such nonsense. These people are insane.
If anyone thinks there is a puppy mill out there churning out 3/4 Jack 1/4 heeler puppies by the dozens/hundreds/whatever number so they’re available any random week of any random year, I challenge you to find it.
