We lost our 17 year old Westie mix this past summer, we adopted him as a 10 year old senior from a local rescue in 2019 and we gave him the best home possible for the last 7 years of his life. Losing him has been devastating.

When the time was right, we decided we wanted to rescue another dog from the same organization we got him from. Given that we had previously adopted a senior (who went unadopted for 1-2 months) and had been donating to them annually, I figured it wouldn't be too bad - even though my wife has allergies, and we cannot adopt dogs that don't have wirehair or at least mostly hypoallergenic coats.

I saw two dogs that we were interested in, within an hour or so of being posted on their socials, and applied for both. The first one, they decided to adopt out on a first come first serve basis on a weekday afternoon, rather than go by applications. We took off work early and drove almost an hour to get there, only to get beat by someone who got there minutes before us. No big deal, I figured that even if we didn't get that dog - we'd be able to talk to the rescue about the other dog we applied for, how we just lost our senior we adopted from them 7 years ago, etc. and they'd work with us a little. But instead, we were told that we were 5th in line and they left it at that. So sometimes they go by application order, but other times they don't. And sometimes they give priority to certain applicants on dogs that are first come first serve, but not on the one we were interested in.

We've also tried other organizations. We submitted an application for a pair of two 8 year old terriers that seemed like great fits, and couldn't even get a call or email back even though they've been re-posted multiple times since then (they explicitly say not to contact them if we don't hear back, since they only reach out if it's a "good fit"). I also saw that a shelter multiple hours away rescued 40+ Westies, but that they were asking people to be patient and not contact them yet. So I was patient, didn't reach out, and just waited for them to be posted for adoption. Come to find out, most of them have already been adopted (without actually being posted as available) as of today, and the remaining ones have hundreds of applications so they're not accepting anymore.

Tldr; the adoption process currently feels impossible, even though we've been supporting a local rescue for a while and are a great fit for another dog.

We are trying to adopt a dog while renting. Now we have rented from 5 landlords at 3 properties and had a rescue dog who we got at the first one that weighed 45 pounds and came to each subsequent property with us the past 6 years.

Our current property allows dogs, it is not an apartment, we are renting a house. They say 25 pounds but we’ve had a 50 pound dog living here for 3 years who recently passed away. We are looking for another dog and not interested in a small breed, just another mid-sized. I qualified for an ESA so we provided that letter since they wouldn’t make a weight limit exception.

Now the fun begins because even with that letter the landlord will not approve of a dog until we provide the details of the dog, and the rescues in the area will not let us adopt a dog without the landlord saying yes. We have put deposits down on multiple dogs and lost that money because the rescues won’t hold the dog while the landlord takes 3-5 days to review the pet…. This is the most frustrating process and makes it seem so much easier to just go to a breeder.

I was trying to look up human world for animals latest rescue of dog farm. And on the YouTube shorts was a video of two guys preparing to slaughter a puppy smiling. Ive reported the channel plus, tried to do so for the short but, to get their platform taken down faster I need help! They shouldn't be able to happily post this! Please help me report this❣️

@Cook With Rider

I’ve been keeping in the loop with NJ rescues and Pixie and Paws I’ve always found odd because they have so many designer breed puppies but this really concerned me. Their comments are turned off and there are 2 pinned posts claiming false allegations. But this post is 100% an ai generated dog. The breed is “Teddy Bear” And even instagram flagged it as AI content?

Okay, I don’t know if this is the right page or flair to use, but I really needed to talk about this - warning, this is going to be extremely long, so I apologize in advance. I don’t want to use names since I don’t want any trouble and I’m still a minor. (Also, this is NOT hate to rescues as a whole, most of my pets are rescues. This is specifically talking about my experience since it actually just came up in the news where I live)

I live in WA and am currently in high school. About a year ago, two of the staff at my school sent out emails to students about volunteer opportunities at a dog rescue. I was interested, followed up on the email, and ended up getting in contact with the owner of the rescue. I helped out with them for about a year until about a month ago they completely stopped reaching out with volunteer opportunities. In that time, I helped out with adoption events (the ones you see at Petsmart) and helped when they would get in transports of dogs; I even fostered some of the dogs. I should’ve noticed the red flags from the start (even when I did, I thought some of the issues might just be cause they’re a small rescue, so that was my fault), so here’s my list of examples;

1) I took in a foster the owner of the rescue told me had no reactivity to anything, low and behold, she was reactive to cats and men (to no fault of the dog), and would bare teeth and growl at my dad. When I reached out and said I couldn’t foster her, it took multiple days to get someone to take her despite me explaining how she was trying to attack cats and was becoming too much of a risk. It happened to be INCREDIBLY common for the rescue to drop off dogs, and when trying to return the dog, they would literally ghost you for days - one time, I agreed to foster for a week, and when the week ended, it took ANOTHER WEEK for someone to get this dog.

2) They required no paperwork for me to foster. Maybe because I had volunteered for so long that they knew me and how to reach me, but I was surprised when I asked if I (a minor) would be able to foster and what the process would look like, and was met with “that’s fine, just let me know what dog you want to take”. Not to mention, there were multiple times I was asked if I could foster, even though they knew my family said no, and they would continue to press.

3) They were very elusive with information about the dogs. When I volunteered at adoption events, I would often communicate with customers about the info of the dogs. Most of the time people would ask about breeds, specifically two cases I can remember are when we had a litter of puppies that were possibly malinois/shepherd mixes and another time we had pit mix puppies. With the malinois puppies, there were a bunch of people interested, and I tried to be as honest as I could that these were going to be high energy and need lots of training and exercise (literally a family came in with their toddler and asked if it would be like their golden retriever). I understand that I probably drove a lot of people away from adopting them cause of this, but I didn’t want someone to take them only for them to either return, dump, or just kennel the dog all day; this was met with one of the staff telling me not to tell people that they’re malinois, because “people have negative feelings” to the breed, and just told me to tell people they’re shepherds. Same thing happened with the pit puppies, and I was told to just say they’re terrier mixes.
Furthermore, they would get a consistent transport of dogs every month from Mexico (I actually had no idea what the problem with this was when I started, so that was my fault for not seeing it as a red flag). I would help out with these transports when they got them in, which consisted of me going to this persons house, a van coming filled to the brim with dogs, and having to unload them into this persons yard (a lot had fresh stitches from surgery, so putting all of them together in a yard was asking for problems). Literally no info given to me in advance on any of these dogs, and almost got bit a few times cause many of the older ones were reactive.

4) They had no set location. I was informed they’re entirely foster based, which I thought was amazing at first (and a lot of the people who fostered actually were great people who had no involvement in what I’ll mention later), but turns out with having literal shipments of dogs every month, you end up running out of fosters. So, the owner would “foster” them in their house; leading to them having over ten dogs in their one story house at once.

That last point leads into what made me post about this now; I found a video on instagram where animal control seized 17 animals from them, all of which being in kennels inside the garage. I looked it up, turns out multiple news outlets have posted about this; they are now facing an animal cruelty lawsuit. I genuinely am at a loss for words, and I feel like a complete asshole for even helping them out. A lot of the reason for why I was doing this was to help out animals in need, but also because my school has connections to my local zoo for internships, and having experience in animal welfare can help get you in. I feel like I am fucked. Like, what the hell? Do I take this off my resume? Am I a jackass for volunteering with them that long? Obviously the most important thing is the welfare of the animals, and I don’t know how to react. I don’t know where to go from here, I’ve always wanted to work in animal welfare, and was hoping this “experience” could help me land that internship and future jobs. I want to back out of the interview I had set up for that internship position, because what do I even say? For fucks sake, two of the dogs they seized were injured when they took them. It’s genuinely disgusting to me that I was helping out people who could do something like that; especially to see one of them, a person I have met and talked to numerous times in person, in this video where they removed animals from a deplorable situation.

I am sure from this post alone you can find the “rescue”, but I want to say that I am not trying to start drama or say anyone is guilty in anything. I just needed to rant. I know this post was long and not well put together, so I apologize. If this post goes against any of the rules, I am also sincerely sorry and will promptly delete. I did not know where else to go.

I saw that this sub has no rules against naming agencies, so I wanted to repost. Has anyone ever heard of Diamonds in the Ruff Pet Rescue LLC? They’re based out of Texas and have been unresponsive for over a week now.

UPDATE in the original post.

A couple of weeks ago I was walking my dog when we crossed paths with a man walking his dog. We were finishing our walk and on my road nearly home. He asked if my dog is ok with dogs, I said she should be fine, he let his dog off lead, they had a little play. He then made a comment "you should just let her off lead to play with other dogs".

I thought ok stranger 1) how do you know I don't and 2) not your place to tell me what to do with my dog. Anyway, I brushed it off and went home and thought maybe I'd been oversensitive.

Anyway, fast forward to yesterday. We crossed paths with this guy again. This time in a more open, safe area and our dogs were excited to see each other. As I was dropping my dogs lead, he said "just let her off". Sorry!? Who are you to tell a stranger when/whether to let their dog off lead!?

Anyway, dogs played a little, it was cute. As they were playing, he was kind of nodding saying things like "yep. See. Just dogs being dogs. That's what they do." I was like ?? Yes my guy, I'm aware??

Then as usual, my dog got fed up after about a minute. She does this, she likes a short burst of play, then she's done. I got her lead and we started to walk off when he pipes up again. "What's that say? *Reads her lead tag* Nervous needs space?" I reply: "yes, mainly of humans and multiple dogs, she's generally good with one dog at a time"

He asks her name, then proceeds to try and call her over to him. She doesn't budge. Then, this idiot guy, with his full chest, has the audacity to say "I don't think she's nervous at all"

I reply "yes she is. I know her." And walk off.

Anyone else ever experienced interactions like this? I'm shook a stranger of could make such ignorant assumptions. He literally proved why I put the nervous tag on her, because presumptive idiots will try and interact with her uninvited. I know her full history, I know what she's been like and how long it's taken her to trust me, let alone strangers. Wild. I can't help but wonder if he would have said the same things to a man?? It was giving mansplaining honestly.

*For context, my dog is a very nervous rescue with an abusive past. She is great with some solo dogs, but scared of most humans and scared of multiple dogs at once (perfectly reasonable). We've only had her 3months (known her longer) and are still working on her confidence. She is always on an extra long lead with slack and is at the point I'll drop the lead to let her play in open areas where appropriate. But we aren't at off-lead stage yet, especially near roads (which we were during the first interaction)*

I’m sorry this is a long rant but I feel like the backstory is important, feel free to just move on lol

My last pup was a Saint Bernard, he was pulled from a “hoarder breeder” with 90 other dogs at 4 (despite some health issues that came up and major weight loss. I was able to get him back into better shape and keep him going till 10 1/2.) when I got him was unhealthy, he had obviously been neglected. He was not socialized.

After being pulled he unfortunately went to the wrong Foster. They had another male dog that was more dominant than him, even though he was significantly bigger (it seems like there may have been signs it was a bad combo before it got to that but that’s a different issue) the smaller male saw an opportunity when my poor pup was scared by a noise and attacked him. He was torn up pretty bad even though he was so much bigger.

I worked so hard to build his confidence make him feel safe and just love that big old teddy bear. He was the sweetest boy. He made massive improvements on everything except for the car. There unfortunately was a wedding where he would need overnight care and none of the people he was familiar with were going to be available for that. I decided to go with boarding for two nights at the vet because they were familiar with him. After that, all progress we had made with the car was gone. He did make it for a couple visits after that, but between that fear in increasing and getting older, I was no longer able to get him in the car. So much effort was put in, I got different stairs and a ramp we practiced them outside of the car and just walking on them with treats.

He was up-to-date on vaccines. He had no urgent health issues that needed to be addressed. He had G.I. issues, but I was able to manage those at home. I looked into vets could come to your home but did not schedule since I didn’t have health concerns, other people suggested not doing that and thought it was unnecessary. I also thought that would be hard for him. He was up-to-date on all of his vaccines, but I realized he may have been behind on his heartworm exam.

The rescues I’ve applied to have all asked for the information for your Vet (reasonable) and for you to give the OK for them to speak to the office. Again, I get that.

After realizing he may have been behind on his heartworm exam, I’m so bummed and scared. This is gonna be an issue with rescues and they won’t take time to ask why that could’ve been an issue.

Please help us get Rachel our Shih Tzu puppy back. Please look at the GoFundMe page. These people are not a rescue. They’re horrible.

Hi everyone. I mostly need to vent.
I have two dogs. My firstborn, Dexter, is a 2-year-old male poodle. I’m a social worker, and I’ve always wanted to do canisterapy, so I put a lot of effort into socializing him. He’s great with crowds and new environments, but he simply doesn’t like being touched or handled by strangers. He’s a sweet, smart boy, but I’ve accepted that therapy work probably isn’t for him. We do a bit of agility and other dog sports instead.
About four months ago, I adopted Trixie, a 3-year-old female. At the shelter, she immediately licked my face, wagged her tail and was incredibly affectionate. Dexter was also completely fine with her.
I was also told they didn’t want to prolong her stay, and I got caught up in the idea that maybe this was the dog I could do canisterapy with. So I took her home.
And then I realized how deeply traumatized she actually is.
At home, Trixie is the sweetest, cuddliest dog. But outside, she is absolutely terrified. Everything overwhelms her, and walking her normally is currently almost impossible. I’m working with a trainer, and because her trauma seems very deep, I’m also trying some traditional Chinese medicine that was recommended for her. Progress is incredibly slow.
And honestly, I’m really angry with myself.
I now have two dogs who probably aren’t suitable for canisterapy, which was something I really wanted to do in my life. I know I should have spent more time with Trixie at the shelter and gotten to know her better before adopting her. I was in a hurry and too optimistic.
Sometimes I even think about returning her. I know I can’t have three dogs, so getting another dog specifically for canisterapy isn’t an option.
But then Trixie cuddles up to me, or sees me and starts wagging her entire body, and I just can’t imagine giving her back.
Maybe someday she’ll become confident enough to work with people. Maybe she won’t. Maybe she simply came into my life for a different reason.
I love her. I’m just grieving something I had imagined for myself for a long time, and I’m angry that my own choices may have made that dream impossible.
I guess I just needed to vent.

I guess this is just a rant at this point because I love my new girl and I am so thankful I was able to cross paths with her...

But there has been so many obstacles throughout this process, I find it ridiculous that the shelter made so many mistakes.

Firstly, when I adopted my girl, I was told that she was spayed. The vet papers even said that she was... turns out she wasn't, and a week after she came home, she went into heat. I have an intact male and it has been a nightmare to keep them apart.

He will be getting neutered as soon as possible, but we wanted to wait until after he is 1 year old .

Then, I took her to our vet for a general check up and they informed us that her micro chip number does not match with the number that they have on her veterinary paper and it's very likely that the paperwork is for a different dog. So they couldn't verify that all the vaccines and medications were given to my dog...

I'm just baffled at the amount of mishaps the rescue has made. I understand that the turnover of rescues might be overwhelming. But it's getting ridiculous at this point!

Despite all this, I am so happy I crossed paths with my girl. She came from a hoarder situation in very bad shape. And I just love how much she has blossomed in the month I've had her.

Anyways. Rant over! Thanks for listening.

What the hell is going over there? Why is it that every dog I see needing a home has somehow been abandoned and/or abused in Texas? Can someone help me get some of my empathy back?

Is there anything that can be done?