Puppy mills

GaryC83 said:

 The adoption fees more often than not dont even begin to cover the money that gets laid out for each animal. 

The local shelter charges $123 for dogs and it's a deal. My recent puppy came up to the house as a stray and wasn't claimed. I'm up to around $800 in vet bills to get her vaccines/chipped/spayed etc. 

I am sympathetic to people who aren't affluent. But if you can't afford $200-$300 adoption fee for a rescue dog, you are probably without the funds to properly care for it. Dogs are living creatures and need regular medical care. There is no public welfare to assist needy families with vet bills.

We still joke about the lab/hound thing we adopted. Senior dog special = $29.99. He was the senior, not me.

But, some of these rescues are charging $650+ for mixed breed, adult dogs. I get that it is expensive to be in animal rescue, but when you start pricing these homeless waifs at the same price as breeder puppies something is wrong with your thinking. $350-$450 I think is reasonable right now. 

Owning pets is expensive, both in terms of cost and time. It's amazing how few people realize that. I don't even have a dog, and I can get a wellness plan through my job as a taxable benefit.

I've been berated multiple times by people that expected me to work on their pet for free, "because you love animals." 
 

When I say that I can't support their pet for them it turns into "you don't love animals, you're just in it for the money." 

Quick update. 

She's starting to come out of her shell. We've had some tail wags and licks. She even gave a half hearted play pounce attempt at our orange Heinz 57 mutt. She needs to be carried up and down stairs since she hasn't got the hang of that yet. It's going to be a slow journey and we expect some days will be better than others but hopefully we can get her to the point where she can go to her forever home.

Beer Baron said:

We adopted this fur goblin from an outfit called "Purebreeds Plus Rescue". Clearly, he is the "plus".

That guy's got style.

I recently adopted a husky from the local humane society. She was a rescue from a puppy mill that was busted up and that's really messed her up. She so afraid of new people to the point where she actively tried jumping off a bridge to get away from someone on the other side of the street while we were on a walk. 

My neighbors breed every summer and just keep the dogs under a pitched tarp in their yard and it hurts my heart to see them.

In reply to ddavidv :

The adoption fee when we adopted the Bat was $275 because she was still considered a puppy, it's less for older dogs (and they occasionally have the funds to waive that for the more senior dogs). We didn't think that was remotely out of line given we know just what vet visits can cost (we laughed very wryly at the question in the application about how we'd handle things if down the line the dog ended up with something like cancer after all we went through since the vet bill for Marley's incident last summer topped out more than what we paid for the BMW & Infiniti combined).

This is Mist. I found her on free adoption day at the Dallas Animal Shelter. A purebred Border Collie from a backyard breeder. I donated ten dollars I had in my wallet at the time. They were overwhelmed with dogs when I adopted her.

This is Finley. A purebred Siberian Husky. She was $350 from my own rescue group after I fostered her for six months. I didn't have to pay, but I did. They needed the money. That is the going rate in Dallas for rescue group dogs.

Texas is a known problem state for homeless dogs. Lots of them get shipped to other parts of the country. I'd have taken that BC in a hot second here.

They aren't all bad, but a lot of them sure are. There was one in the central valley of CA that raised Mastiffs. They stopped paying their lease on the property and then abandoned the dogs. A friend was involved in the rescue, and they had to put a few down. Almost all had physical and/or  emotional issues.

About 8 years ago I rescued a couple pit mix puppies that had been abandoned on the streets. Raised one myself and my parents took the other. There are so many in the shelters that they have no choice but to put some down. 

I would not even consider a dog from a breeder. 

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

About 8 years ago I rescued a couple pit mix puppies that had been abandoned on the streets.

I would not even consider a dog from a breeder. 

That to a certain extent (since she was apparently abandoned and then picked up and went to a rescue) how we got ours...

A minor irony being that as she gets older it's looking more her coloring is changing and if we're right and she's a 'tri-color' pit, then she would have cost a -lot- from a breeder (which we don't care about- we just love that she's getting more brindle coloring since Marley was a fancy brindle boxer/pit mix). We can't see how anyone could ever abandon such a sweet, beautiful puppy- but unfortunately humans are often horrible, and there's always the chance that she wasn't abandoned and got loose- which gave my wife a lot of worry when we first got her that someone would show up claiming she was their dog. But since she didn't have a collar and wasn't chipped and was picked up by animal control and not claimed, it would be pretty difficult for someone to try and take her away. 

Honestly, I would not complain much if it were illegal to breed dogs without a) certifying that you will be keeping and caring for all the puppies yourself or b) having people lined up and legally committed to adopt the puppies (likely for purebreds). The problem being that I'd worry that would just mean unwanted puppies being killed (even more than likely already happens, sadly). 

It's actually rather expensive to do it right. Vet care for the mother and the puppies. Socializing the puppies takes a lot of time. Ask any show breeder. It's more of a hobby than a way to make money. People here in Texas who breed for stock dogs for other ranchers spend a lot of time and money with their pups and make sure all of them go to good homes. They usually have a waiting list for their puppies. There are also a lot of backyard breeders who figure if they can grab a couple of pure bred dogs cheap and advertise the pups on Craigslist or sell them out of the back of a truck, they can make money. You don't want to know what happens to the ones they don't sell. Then there are the big corporate breeders. Large tin buildings filled with crates, dogs who never leave their crates eating cheap dog food. Puppy stores with high interest financing, and so on.

ddavidv said:

We still joke about the lab/hound thing we adopted. Senior dog special = $29.99. He was the senior, not me.

But, some of these rescues are charging $650+ for mixed breed, adult dogs. I get that it is expensive to be in animal rescue, but when you start pricing these homeless waifs at the same price as breeder puppies something is wrong with your thinking. $350-$450 I think is reasonable right now. 

Somebody in my office just paid $2,000 for a Labradoodle puppy. I have spent that much fixing a broken leg on a dog we adopted out for $250.

Being a Mutt is a feature, not a bug IMO.

I think if I search through my old phone's SD card I can find pictures of my last rescue dogs. Emma comes to mind the most- Jack Russel Terrier, she was the loudest and spunkiest animal I've ever owned and was attached to the hip to myself and my sister. She also was a puppy mill mom, who had amputated her right font leg and half her teeth at some point- didn't matter tho, she was incapable of fear sometimes. We got her when she was 7 and had her for another 7 years or so. When we put her down I held her in my arms the whole time, she was probably the hardest to let go of.

I'll be rescuing and finding mutts for the rest of my life too.

I put puppy mills and their owners tantamount to child abuse on a mechanical, organized scale- these animals can have unconditional love for us, and to preform these evils against them is extremely vile.

GameboyRMH said:

My sister rescued a dog who spent his life chained up in a dog house, at first glance you can tell he isn't a normal dog, he's more like a very nervous human trapped in a dog's body who unconvincingly tries to act like a dog at times.

That says a lot about humans, too.

EvanB said:

GaryC83 said:

 The adoption fees more often than not dont even begin to cover the money that gets laid out for each animal. 

The local shelter charges $123 for dogs and it's a deal. My recent puppy came up to the house as a stray and wasn't claimed. I'm up to around $800 in vet bills to get her vaccines/chipped/spayed etc. 

So you got her?  Awesome!!

Labradoodle :: Mutt  as  Pickup :: Minivan

Berkeley County SPCA adoption fees are $125 for big dogs and $175 for small dogs. The vets in the area donate their time to spay and nuter them so that cost is minimal. They will not let you adopt one that isn't fixed. They also do all their shots and chip them before they leave the building. 

All 4 of our current dogs came from there. The 75 pound Shepard and the 6 pound Chihuahua came as a bonded pair they couldn't get rid. Big dog people didn't want a small dog and small dog people didn't want a big one. They were pretty happy I actually wanted both and only charged me for one. 

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

ddavidv said:

We still joke about the lab/hound thing we adopted. Senior dog special = $29.99. He was the senior, not me.

But, some of these rescues are charging $650+ for mixed breed, adult dogs. I get that it is expensive to be in animal rescue, but when you start pricing these homeless waifs at the same price as breeder puppies something is wrong with your thinking. $350-$450 I think is reasonable right now. 

Somebody in my office just paid $2,000 for a Labradoodle puppy. I have spent that much fixing a broken leg on a dog we adopted out for $250.

One of the dogs the rescue group we got The Bat from has now came to them after having been shot twice at close range with buckshot- once in the foot and another in the face. The rescue paid the bills for the surgery to remove the buckshot and repair the damage as best as possible- and they'll likely adopt the dog out for less than $200 (since it's an adult dog).

Yesterday there was a fundraiser event by the rescue The Bat came from (Lexington Pit Crew) at a local tattoo shop, and was the first chance we'd had to go to one of the events since we'd adopted her. It was amusing- The Dancer noted that there seems to be a pretty universal stereotype of what people who adopt and care for pit bulls look like (see: Pitbulls and Parolees for reference)- I kind of stand out, like Forrest Gump at a biker bar (The Dancer doesn't as much, owing to her blue-highlighted hair). The Bat was very excited to see everybody and wanted to jump up on every person that she encountered (something which we need to start taking her to training to work on), and for the most part did well with the dogs she encountered (she did best with the puppies, whom she was pretty tolerant of their trying to jump up on her for a while before getting tired of it and starting to bat back at them). 

The most interesting thing was that the animal control officer who initially picked up The Bat was there (she's a friend of the woman who runs the rescue), and she was really happy to see how far The Bat had come since she had initially met her. We also learned that what we'd initially heard/thought we heard about the situation she'd been in when picked up was not correct- we had understood she'd been picked up at the side of the road, but in fact she and another dog had been abandoned in an apartment locked in crates without food or water until animal control was called in (the exact details weren't something they could reveal) to remove The Bat and the other dog (the other dog didn't go to the rescue- my assumption is that he wasn't in as bad of a shape as The Bat was and/or wasn't a pit mix). We haven't decided whether we think that is better or worse than what we'd thought was the case- since we don't know the details of how animal control came to be involved, we don't know whether what happened to them was unintentional (i.e., their owner died, for example...) or willful. If it was the latter... I'm generally fairly strongly opposed to capital punishment, but in cases of cruelty to helpless animals on that level I'm far more open to it. 

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

One of the dogs the rescue group we got The Bat from has now came to them after having been shot twice at close range with buckshot- once in the foot and another in the face. 

WTF is wrong with people?

Beer Baron said:

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

One of the dogs the rescue group we got The Bat from has now came to them after having been shot twice at close range with buckshot- once in the foot and another in the face. 

WTF is wrong with people?

That is a good damn question.

Meet "Teddy"

That front leg that's up in the air?  it doesn't work, and he's got a permanent twitch.  We pulled him out of a dumpster as a puppy.  He contracted distemper and the breeder threw him away (alive) like trash.  Someone posted a picture on social media of him in the bin and I just happened to recognize the parking lot.  Needless to say he survived, but not without the aforementioned nerve damage.  He's the nicest, snuggliest, happiest guy you'll ever meet.

We have another Husky named "Nala".  She was obviously abused at some point and brought back to the shelter three times.  The last family that brought her back complained "well, she just doesn't do anything".  (I'd like to meet that family).  She'll have full on conversations with you.  Her and Teddy are very much a couple now (she's older by about 3 years, we think).

We have two other mutt dogs as well, and they're wonderful.  One acts like our babysitter and absolutely will not leave our eldest's side.  She was thrown over a fence as a puppy and found in a flower pot.  The other is a German Shepard mix that was left behind when a family moved to a bigger city.

People suck.

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

People suck.

Yup. Quite frequently I think that humans really don't deserve how loving and loyal dogs are to us...