New Adoption Trend?

Image Source: petsinc

Have you ever adopted a dog from an animal shelter? Or did you buy one at a pet store? I’m a shelter shopper myself, for lack of a better term. Two of the three dogs I’ve had come from a shelter, the other I got from a local person in the area.

Missy of course, is one of the two I adopted from a shelter, and I do not regret it. As I type this she keeps putting her nose under my mouse hand, trying to flip my hand in the air. Perhaps it’s her way of advocating for shelter dogs too.

Sure, Missy was in the shelter for a couple years, but she had a group of workers there who would not give up on her. When shelter life wasn’t quite working for her, a volunteer fostered her so she could relax in a quieter atmosphere.

Come adoption day, Missy’s foster mom gave a write-up of sorts about Missy and her quirks. The write-up really demonstrated to me how much Missy’s foster mom cared about her.

When I had some concerns about Missy’s behavior the first week I had her I called her foster mom a couple times with questions and we spent about 30 minutes talking about Missy.

Anyway, I read an article from the Humane Society that tickled my brain about shelters and pet stores. Compared to most of the negative reviews I’ve read concerning pet stores this one really intrigued me, and I’m not sure if it’s in a good way.

In the article, rescue puppies were sent to a Pet Plus Natural, a pet store. Yep, a pet store would then adopt out shelter dogs. The purported objective of this mission is to convert “puppy mill” pet stores to stores that would sell shelter puppies instead.

The amazing fact about this experiment? All of the puppies sent to the store were adopted within two weeks. Some dogs, like Missy, spend years in a shelter before anyone adopts them. Even if all of the dogs in the article were puppies I wonder what inspired people to flock to this store or others like this one to adopt instead of going to their local shelter?

Grant it, as long as each one goes to a safe forever home I should be happy but I always feel there are strings attached to every seemingly “good” story. Such as:

-will people still want to adopt dogs from actual shelters?

-who is in the better environment: pups in pet stores or pups/dogs in shelters?

Admittedly I am a chronic skeptic, so I usually end up with lots of questions after I read something like this. I am just focusing too much on the negative here?

Personally, from my experience adopting Missy, I would totally adopt or recommend adoption from that shelter because of how helpful and caring the staff during and even after her adoption process.

In order to answer these questions I’ll need to do a lot more research on the subject. I try to report back on my findings if anyone wants to know more.

Also, I set up a poll in relation to adoption, so feel free to participate.