Pet rescues have used interviews, strict adoption criteria and adoption take-backs to protect animals. The methods have plenty of critics.
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Shannon Novey and her family were ready to bring another pet into their home after the loss of their beloved poodle, Coco. They’d gotten their previous dogs from breeders, but at the urging of her sister, Novey said she was willing to give adopting a try.
She won’t do that again, she said.
“I came away thinking that the rescue people are a little too militant for my taste,” she told USA TODAY.
The intensive application process culminated in Callie the poodle coming home to Novey’s family for over two weeks late last year – only for the rescue organization to take the dog back after a disagreement about the adoption contract. By then, her family had grown to love Callie.
The contract allowed the rescue organization, Carolina Poodle Rescue, to direct certain parts of the dog’s care even after the adoption was complete ‒ and to conduct lifelong in-person checks.
The rescue told USA TODAY that Novey tried to renegotiate the contract and ultimately signed it “under duress.” The rescue took the dog back, saying an administrative error led to Novey’s family bringing the dog home before the contract was settled.
“We care deeply about these dogs and want to see them protected for life. Our adoption contract reflects this high level of care,” Donna Ezzell, CEO of Carolina Poodle Rescue, said in an emailed statement.
Novey’s experience is part of a larger trend across the nation: Adopting a pet can be an arduous, invasive and at times heartbreaking process.
Adoption procedures reviewed by USA TODAY via rescue websites often include applications, interviews, fees, in-home visits, reference checks and pet meet-ups. Questionnaires often ask for lengthy pet ownership histories and detailed family information.
In an extreme example, Peke A Tzu Rescue in Michigan has a long bulleted list of people it won’t adopt out to, including: homes with children under the age of 10, people planning on having children soon, a home with existing pets that weigh over 30 pounds, anyone who hasn’t owned a pet or had a relationship with a vet before, anyone who doesn’t own their home or have a fence, anyone under 25 ‒ or over 70 if looking to adopt a dog under 8 ‒ and more. (Peke A Tzu did not respond to a voicemail or email from USA TODAY.)
At their best, strict rules prevent pets from repeat rehoming. At their worst, the rules could prevent good pet owners from adopting and discourage want-to-be pet people from adopting at all, experts said.
“What we want is animal sheltering organizations to maximize their life-saving potential, and also to help the community help them with their mission,” said Dr. Sandra Newbury, director of the University of Wisconsin Shelter Medicine Program.
‘More complicated and more expensive than I expected’
When Rachel Dreyer decided she was ready to get a dog in 2023, she knew she wanted to rescue one. She did lots of research on different organizations in New York City until she found Waldo’s Rescue Pen on Instagram. Despite being surprised by what turned out to be a long application, a virtual home visit and a pricy adoption fee, Dreyer, who works in e-commerce, adopted Georgia, who she guesses is about 3 now.
The application asked for a full history of every pet Dreyer had through childhood and her opinion on tying a dog up outside a shop while running inside.
The application was like “when you apply for a job and you submit your resume, and then they want you to fill in all of your job history, and you’re like, ‘I just did that,’” Dreyer said.
“It was more complicated and more expensive than I expected,” Dreyer said. “I don’t regret it – I mean, she’s amazing.”
But Emily Dyson, the founder of Waldo’s, said her application process is relatively simple in the rescue world. It’s designed to get to know potential adopters and start a conversation, not to screen them out based on hard-and-fast criteria, she said. She wants to make sure a family is paired with the right dog for their lifestyle, and the dog’s.
“I felt like I was applying to college or something,” said Andra Turner, of Denver, about adopting her cat, Betty, a few years ago at a different New York rescue.
On that application, Turner responded with short paragraphs to questions that asked about hypothetical scenarios, such as “You come home one day to find that your cat has urinated on the carpet/rug. How would you deal with this issue?”
It also asked questions about how often she thought vet care was appropriate, and what she would do with the cat if she went on vacation or moved out of the country.
Why rescues have high standards
Some rescue organizations say their rules are in place to prevent harm to the animals and time-consuming returns to the rescue, or worse, to an overcrowded shelter that euthanizes the animals. Peke A Tzu Rescue, with the long list of restrictions, says on its site that having no rules “could cost the dog his/her life.”
While public shelters and some rescues are known for their high occupancy rates, some smaller rescues don’t feel the time pressure to adopt out their animals as quickly as possible.
In 2023, more than 6.3 million dogs and cats entered shelters and rescues in the U.S., according to data from Shelter Animals Count, which said shelters are full, and hundreds-of-thousands of animals are euthanized each year.
Katy White, president of the Shetland Sheepdog Placement Services of New Jersey, said her organization takes time to get to know each dog before it is adopted out. That way, the volunteers and fosters can make sure they are placed in the best possible situation for their needs.
That can sometimes lead to unhappy customers. White recalled a recent decision to not place a dog with a qualified family over concerns about one family member’s demeanor and a disagreement about the best way to transport the dog in a car.
“The dog’s needs always come first,” White said in an email.
Some applications reviewed by USA TODAY ask what food an animal will be fed, which specific rooms in the house the dog won’t be allowed in and how it will be disciplined. Some ask for a promise to do obedience training and to give the rescue the right to make follow-up visits. Peke A Tzu’s application asks if the applicant has provisions in their will for current pets if they die.
Then, there are the wait times and nonresponses. Turner said she was plagued by that problem, when many rescues she applied with never responded.
Strict requirements come from good intentions and the hope of minimizing returns and protecting both the animals and the people, Newbury said. However, the more restrictive letting animals go home with people, the fewer animals will be able to be adopted out, she said.
How strict policies can backfire
Newbury advocates for an “open” adoption policy: the idea that most people have good intentions, and nobody is perfect, so rather than looking for a perfect home for an animal, look for a good enough home.
A rejection from a pet rescue can profoundly impact an animal lover, said Jennifer Sinski, a sociology professor at Bellarmine University and the owner of Competitive Edge Agility and Dog Sports in Kentucky. Sinski said she was once rejected from adopting because she had a history of not neutering an animal – she had a chihuahua who was too elderly to be fixed by the time she got him.
Sinski has done research on the impacts of pet adoption policies, which showed that people can be turned away from adopting when they feel the process is overly invasive. They then turn to other sources, such as breeders or shops that source their animals from mills.
“We’ve incorporated animals as kin; they’re our family. So we identify very strongly as dog or cat people, it’s part of our identity,” Sinski said. “So when you apply to an organization and you can’t pass whatever bar they have set for you, that is a statement about your identity, and when it’s such a large part of your identity, it is a very hurtful process.”
A rescue having a bad experience with an adoption can cause them to make policies to try and prevent that from happening in the future, Newbury said. But categorically excluding certain types of people from adopting can also border on the discriminatory.
For example, by refusing adoption to someone who doesn’t own their own home or who doesn’t have a fenced yard, a rescue is automatically saying no to someone who may be a wonderful pet owner but can’t afford to buy a house, Sinski said. Many dogs do perfectly well in apartments when taken on walks during the day, she said.
James Evans of Baltimore, who is Black, told the Minnesota Star Tribune he and his wife Jen kept getting turned away from rescues. He and his wife run the advocacy group Companions and Animals for Reform and Equity (CARE). The 13th time this happened, the person vetting him asked to see his criminal record.
“There’s bias at the core,” Evans told the outlet. “If Jen and I lived in Beverly Hills, would we have a better shot?”
One dog rescue in Canada was ordered by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to pay a family $20,000 last year for discriminating against their 11-year-old autistic son, according to CBC News. Kim Thomas, the owner of the Kismutt Small Dog Rescue, said in a long post on Facebook that she would never adopt a dog to a family with an autistic child because twice before, an autistic child had injured a dog that was later returned to the rescue. (Many autistic people do well with dogs, even benefiting from service dogs.)
“These kind of policies come from an intention to protect the animals,” Newbury said. “What we hope is to support organizations in making change and finding ways to trust people in their community more, because it’s better for everyone.”
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