A dog is a warm loving member of a family and does not get to be treated as trash to be thrown out just because he/she doesn’t fit in with some misguided family’s plans. I am the owner of a rescued dog, and a Golden at that! The family gave him away because he was not fitting in with their lifestyle, and they wanted to be able to visit us and stay in contact to see how he was doing. If they were so interested in his welfare they should have kept him and loved him.

I feel nothing but contempt for these people for what they put the HS through, what they are trying to put the new owners through, and especially for what they put Bailey through. Hang your head in shame and get on with your life and leave Bailey and the new owners alone. You don’t deserve to be pet owners.

Thank God they didn’t decide to have poor Bailey put down. Kinda hard to get him back then, isn’t it?

IMO, the shelter behaved nobly, the Pascentes were wrong to give up on the dog in the first place, and I think it’s EXTREMELY inappropriate that they would use the local media to try to pressure the dog’s current *legal owners* to give him up. Ick.

i had lived with the 2 cats for years and the roommate took them of course when she moved out. a few months later a mutual friend called and said this person was now going to get rid of the cats because she couldn’t afford them anymore( pure BS. she was the trust fund brat of a psychiatrist and a lawyer). i offered to take the cats because i loved them or to pay for their keep if she wanted. she refused. i eventualy begged her to give me the cats- i even offered to pay her for them. nope. she was going to dump them at a shelter and wouldn’t say which one. cruel manipulative B.

when she was known to have dropped them , i got a group of friends armed with photos to fan out to all the shelters. they were found and the shelter believed my story- that i had been desperately trying to save the cats for months and was not the person who so casually dropped them outside. they took me at my word-which i never expected. these 2 cats, one of whom is still with me, have been the loves of my life. everyday i feel so lucky to have saved them. one persons act of senseless, selfish cruelty lead to over 17 years of living with the greatest cats in the world.

i adopted my torties from a private cat rescue that does not kill. i cast a leary eye on the big name shelters NOT THEIR WORKERS. in giving me the cats they violated some of their adoption rules( like landlord ok) because they believed it was in the cats’ best interests to be with someone who went all out to save them, someone with whom they lived, someone who loved them.( they were also adult cats not kittens-not as adoptable.) they made it so this person who abandoned them could never adopt a pet in this state which i feel is only fitting. i feel their actions were in the cats not my best interests . i broke down and cried when the person who found them brought them home the same day.

sin in haste, as they say, repent a leisure. i have personally taken in pets from people whose living situations demanded the most heart wrenching sacrafices. i do not blame them. however in other situations it seems people view animals as disposable at their whim and likewise at their whim to recollect. my understanding is you sign over all rights to the animal, who is legally your possession, when a shelter takes them. what part of that do they not understand?

ME:
So? He was your pet and your responsibility. Why SHOULDN’T you have put in the time and effort instead of expecting a shelter to use its limited resources to solve your problem?

The shelter should be the last resort, not the first. An animal found in the street has no one else, so, yeah, the shelter should make that animal a priority. Your pet had someone–you–and you did find a home for him. That’s a happy ending, so why the great animosity toward shelters?

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Sonya says:
The rescue that I ended up adopting from really DOES care about animals, and they will take any animal, even one surrendered by an owner, because they know that something things happen that make it necessary and they would rather take an animal from an owner that doesn’t want it or can’t care for it than have it abandoned on the street. THAT is what people do who care about animals. They care more about helping the animal than punishing the owner.

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ME:
And sometimes shelters get sob stories and empty justifications and outright lies from people who simply find their pet suddenly inconvenient and cry crocodile tears as they surrender their “precious” pet. And sometimes maybe they just get tired of irresponsible, careless owners and start to be skeptical and angry. And sure, sometimes there maybe there are real, valid reasons for a surrender, but most of the time, the owners are being selfish and irresponsible, and the pets are paying the price.

glad you work for a rescue and know all about the situation from their point of view. must not have many owner surrenders there because the amount of wanna be OS’s I see in the city and on the National lists is not something shelters or rescues could keep up with. ya know, that little overpopulation problem we have . . . if all rescues had the space and money, that still wouldn’t stop all the killing. how dare you blame shelter deaths on the shelter workers. does your rescue pull off the euth list daily/weekly? got a link? I would love to see who they are and how they can operate that they can be taking in OS’s all the time . . . . Do all OS’s cough up a grand? or any $$$?

Animal adoptions from shelters have an application process for a reason. So now you’re saying that owners who are not trained or qualified to identify good adoptive prospects should take responsibility for find a new home for their pet?

Yeah, that’s really protecting the animal.

And the rescue I work with now takes in owner surrenders all the time, so some groups do take owner surrenders. We would rather take the animal no questions asked than have it stay in a home where it’s not wanted or cared for. Unlike shelters, we don’t care about punishing the owner, we just want to protect the animal.

But shelter people and crazy judgmental self righteous people like you make animal rights a joke, and are responsible for more animal abandonment and deaths because of your attitudes. I feel sorry for the pets who will die or end up abandoned because of some people get off on punishing pet owners rather than helping pets.

ummm, pot, meet kettle?

“but the shelters wouldn’t do anything to help at all”

what did you expect them to do? they couldn’t/wouldn’t take in your pet. I don’t know the situation with the shelters there, but no shelter is obligated to take in every animal that an owner wants to bring in. the space is not there. municiple shelters will and have policies to take in all animals. they are generally high kill though. if you had that option, you didn’t go that route (lucky for your kitty!). so that leaves the other option, YOU, the pet owner needs to re-home the pet themselves. that’s how things work. period. yes, some rescues will help an owner place the pet, but many times the owner must keep the pet until a home is found. most rescues do NOT have spare foster space for all the owners that want rescues to “save their babies!”. in fact it’s not common for rescues to take *IN* owner surrenders for that reason. and for every owner surrender they take in, a death row pet loses foster space. so before you go condeming all other rescues and shelters and saying they don’t care about animals, you might want to get a grip on the real world of homeless pets.

Personally I would never abandon my animals but I can understand how someone in desperate circumstance that tries to get help and is refused help by an arrogant self righteous person who supposedly wants to help animals would end up abandoning the animal, because if it’s abandoned then it can get help that it can’t get if an owner tries to surrender it. It’s a very screwed up system.

The rescue that I ended up adopting from really DOES care about animals, and they will take any animal, even one surrendered by an owner, because they know that something things happen that make it necessary and they would rather take an animal from an owner that doesn’t want it or can’t care for it than have it abandoned on the street. THAT is what people do who care about animals. They care more about helping the animal than punishing the owner.

I’m sorry you were judged when you rehomed your cat, but part of that would be how many adult cats do NOT make it out of shelters. You should be thankful they did judge you and you found a home for your cat. But also keep in mind, people are judging the family in this story, not you. And obviously not everyone judges everyone who gives up a pet with the same brush. You were given the opportinity to adpot from a rescue, which are many times stricter than shelters because they can be. Maybe the judgement (guilt) is on you, not everyone else.

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ME:
When someone gives up a baby, they sure shouldn’t be able to get that same baby back when it’s more convenient for them!

If I were making the decision, I would think long and hard about letting people who surrendered an animal adopt another one. The burden of proof would be on them to show me why they should be trusted to care for another animal. But that’s not the issue here–I didn’t see anything indicating that the people who surrendered Bailey are barred from ever adopting another pet. They want their same pet back–one they’ve already given up, who is now in another home.
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Sonya says:
I’m surprised it never occurred to anyone that Bailey might be happiest back with his family, where he had lived for so many years. But don’t let the dog’s happiness get in the way of being judgmental or anything…..

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ME:
It did occur to me, which is why I’d like to know if Bailey was surrendered the second time because he was miserable and unable to adjust. The poor dog is in his third home now, and if the people who have him now can make the adoption work, they shouldn’t be guilted into returning him. They deserve a chance with this dog that they’ve opened their home and hearts to.

I’m surprised it never occurred to anyone that Bailey might be happiest back with his family, where he had lived for so many years. But don’t let the dog’s happiness get in the way of being judgmental or anything…..