“Adopt Don’t Shop” Hurts Dogs And Owners

Everyone’s heard it. “Adopt don’t shop! Choose to save a life! No dog is bad!”

It’s, frankly, a scam.

To put it simply, shelter dogs come with baggage. Sure, they’re cute, lonely, sad, and needy, right? Well, cute is for sure. I mean, they’re dogs. All dogs are pretty cute. You’d be hard pressed to find a photo that doesn’t make me say “that’s a cute dog”. But are shelter dogs lonely? Some, maybe. But they get about as much (if not more, to be blunt) attention from shelter staff during the day through the care schedule as they will in the average pet home where the dog is condemned to the back yard for 10 hours minimum while the owner is at work/school, some food is plopped carelessly into a bowl to be devoured in the evening while the owner decompresses from work by playing phone games on the couch, and then the owner sleeps and the cycle repeats itself. So loneliness isn’t an excuse. Sad? Probably not, since dogs don’t experience all of the same emotions humans do. Try not to anthropomorphize dogs, guys! Needy? Yes. All dogs are. Owning a dog is nearly as labor-intensive as having a five year old child (or an infant if the dog is a puppy or a senior/special needs dog). You must feed them at least twice, exercise them for at least one hour (the minimum does raise depending on breed too), walk them at least once (yes, walking is separate from exercise), take them outside to potty regularly at least every three hours or more frequently depending on age and bladder health, brush their WHOLE coat at least once, brush their teeth if you want to avoid dental disease, check that their nails are a healthy length and trim/grind them when necessary, check their ears for dirt and clean accordingly, do training for at least fifteen minutes twice unless you WANT your dog to be a poorly behaved demon, and ALL of that is just the basic care needed every single day. EVERY DAY. Then there’s the intermittent stuff like bathing, haircuts, vet visits, flea and parasite preventatives, changing their collar out when it gets too old and worn or too small, toys that you need to replace frequently whenever the dog shreds it to an unsafe level, and many more if you want to go beyond just being halfway responsible.

And not to mention, those are just the basics required for every dog. This is a shelter dog we’re talking about. They’ll need rehabilitation from behavioral issues they either came with or picked up in the shelter, you’ll have to spend time daily building their trust, you’ll probably want to handfeed them to build a bond and help with curbing resource guarding, they’ll most likely have some health issues that need addressing, and after the honeymoon phase is over you’ll also have to decide whether the dog you have now is the dog you truly need in your life and can fully provide for. Because they will not be the same dog from that little cage in the shelter facility. They won’t be the same dog as after the first week of living with you. They will continue to show more parts of their true self until suddenly you can’t remember how you thought they were cute when they stared up at you through the wire gate of their kennel.

Especially if you buy into the whole “he’s a RESCUE!” mindset and let him get away with everything because you feel like he would be so traumatized by being trained. When in reality, he’s a dog. All dogs need to be taught how to properly behave in their environment. Proper to a dog is rarely proper to a human. And trust me when I say, they will not be traumatized by having you show them the right way to behave in your human world. They’ll actually be much happier that way.

Another pitfall of adoption is health. Most shelter dogs are quite unhealthy and will need vet care for this. Even if all they have is kennel cough, they will need a full round of antibiotics to help them get better from that. But the reality is, with all shelter dogs being neutered/spayed, some at very early ages such as merely 16 weeks, the likelihood of lifelong health complications is much higher than you’d think. Additionally, these dogs are roaming the streets, mating with whatever bitch in heat they come across, creating a brood of puppies with entirely unknown histories, and therefore innumerable chances for health conditions like joint diseases, cancers, and other genetic disorders, because there is no careful selection to minimize the risk of these illnesses.

Another major issue with adoption is that many shelters breed-label the dogs they take in. They’ll throw the ambiguous “shepherd” label on any dog with a black-and-tan saddle pattern to their coat despite there being many different breeds which can have such a pattern, or the “pit bull” label on any dog with the slightest boxy shape to their head even though many different breeds have similar face shapes, and so on. This type of mislabeling comes with a host of problematic consequences. One we all know is BSL - Breed-Specific Legislation. This happens in the form of breed bans, mandatory euthanasia of specific breeds or phenotypes, etc. But it can also cause problems for adopters by setting inaccurate expectations. If someone adopts a dog thinking it’s a golden retriever and it actually turns out to be a great pyrenees, they won’t have a cuddly water-loving goofball like they expected and instead they’ll have a great, big, protective, stranger-aggressive 100-lbs monster that they have no clue how to handle. If they go in expecting to get a “lab” but they come home with a bully breed they may be confused when their dog refuses to chase balls and instead chases other dogs and not in a fun way. And what happens when expectations do not meet reality? Returns. The dog is brought back to the shekter. And the more times they’re brought back, the more pitiful their story becomes, which further sets them up to be taken in by a furmommy with a hero complex who lets the dog eat her house and makes him obese by overfeedin- sorry, I meant “loving him too much”.

If families looking for a specific breed weren’t shoved toward the county shelter by PETA-supporters they would get a proper golden retriever instead of a mislabeled mutt. If someone looking for a TV buddy wasn’t pressured into adoption they wouldn’t end up with a dog who’s a lot higher energy and maintenance than they anticipated. If someone on a budget wasn’t told “shelters are the cheapest way to go” they wouldn’t then end up with a dog who costs them their entire savings account in vet bills and trainer fees.

If people who aren’t up for the real challenge of adopting a shelter dog and all the trials and money that come with it weren’t told to “adopt don’t shop”, shelter dogs would find much more secure homes, and pets and people would be much happier for it.