# Opinions Please



## TripleD (Jan 10, 2008)

I was wondering how most rescue places get their animals?

There is a local rescue here that I do not think are exactly "ethical". If any of their members see a dog that's not fenced in they take it. This is a rural community where most people live outside city limits and very few have fenced yards, myself included. A friend of mine works at a vet clinic that the rescue uses and has had people call asking if they have seen their dogs. One owner actually watched a lady come into her driveway and take their dog off their property. Luckly the clinic know who's dog it was and was able to return it.

The rescue has now expanded and is also dealing with horses. My mother in-law was buying a horse from someone that had just received a horse that had been starved. One of these women from the rescue drove by, saw the horse, called the sheriff and tried to confiscate the horse. It had only been in this ladies care for a couple of hours.

I just wanted to know if these practices seemed exptreme to anyone else?


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## LittleMoonRabbit (Jan 7, 2008)

I would say that driving up someone's driveway to take a dog is quite extreme. I would hope they would at least look for a collar and tags first?? However, even in a rural community, I would assume there are leash laws, and that people are expected to keep their dogs fenced in on their own property or on a leash off-property. But yeah... they sound pretty over-zealous.


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## Willowy (Dec 10, 2007)

That's sort of weird....most rescues I know of have too many dogs and not enough foster homes, so they don't exactly go around "finding" more dogs to rescue. If they were "borrowing" the dogs, having them altered and vetted, and then returning them, that at least would make sense. It would be the most cost-effective, too, because they wouldn't have to rescue that dog's puppies later on. 

But to take a dog that's being reasonably well-cared-for is dumb. There are some unethical rescues; you need to be careful. One "rescue" around here constantly has entire litters of pure-bred puppies. For whom they charge an "adoption fee" of $300-$400. I have no idea how they get them, but I don't think they're truly rescued. I mean really, how often do pure-bred pups need rescuing? I'm suspicious.


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## 007Dogs (Aug 22, 2007)

A rescue that is selling purebred pups for $300-$400 sounds more like a front for a puppybreeding operation to me. 

I think it is terriable for a rescue to go onto someone property to take a dog that appears to belong to someone. As far as the horse, any responsible person would have made that call. Just as a welfare check. How were they to know it was only in her possession for a matter of hours. Better to report it and be wrong, then to just ignore an animal that could be in serious need.


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## TripleD (Jan 10, 2008)

In our area there are not leash laws outside city limits. And I know this rescue does have a hard time with too many dogs and too few foster homes. They have picked up dogs and had the vet do shots/exams and when the owner gets their dog back the rescue tries to get them to pay for the work. And as for the "borrowing" dogs to have them altered. We had an intact male Lab in hopes of breeding him. It took us 10 yrs to find a female, which worked out great because now we have Duece (his dad was Ace). I feel as long as you are responsible and take precautions, having an intact male is fine. I also understand all the problems with this. I have 3 pure breed dogs and only one came from an actual breeder and out of all the dogs we have owned, all but one were pure breeds and only 2 out of 7 came from breeders. So there are some very responsible pet owners out there that raise the occasional litter that provide great dogs.


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## Willowy (Dec 10, 2007)

I didn't say I would recommend "borrowing" the dog to have it altered, unless you truly knew that the owner was drowning the pups or something like that, I just said that I would understand if the rescue did that. Most people aren't responsible enough to have an unaltered dog. And, in most states, if a dog is off of the owner's property, you can do anything to it....I know a lot of people whose dogs were shot or poisoned by the neighbors. And no unaltered dog should be running loose unsupervised. So it would at least be understandable.


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