This is something I’ve come across several times from one of the dog rescues I follow. It’s a tricky question to ask. Here’s the situation I’ve seen several times recently.
Owner has mange infested, sick, skinny (insert horrible thing for a dog to experience here) dog and the owner is unwilling to relinquish the dogs to a rescue. The owner does not have the means to take care of the dogs or simply does not want to. In order to save the dogs, the rescue offers to purchase them. They then get them back to wellness and find them a furever home.
A similar situation seems to occur with puppies. A backyard breeder has puppies in terrible shape and the rescue finds out about them. The breeder won’t relinquish them so the rescue purchases the puppies with the hope to adopt them out.
Is it really the right thing to do?
In my opinion, no.
Now, before you think I’m heartless, hear me out. I love all animals, especially dogs. I even helped save a bat once and they creep me out. I am a firm believer that the only way to end backyard breeding and irresponsibility is to stop enabling it. People see that tiny, adorable puppy in the pet shop window. They know where it came from; that it is probably riddled with health issues, but how could you leave without that puppy? I think we have to.
When we purchase one of these dogs, we are giving the backyard breeders the opportunity to breed more dogs. If no one buys the dogs, they will have no reason to breed. They’re not just going to keep producing puppies if they won’t receive any benefits. I believe it works the same way for these maltreated dogs. The rescue now has given the person money to purchase more dogs to treat as they please. Not the best scenario.
I know rescues have the dogs best interest in mind and I know how heart breaking it can be to see an animal suffer. Right now we are just putting a band-aid over the issue. We are saving dogs rather than stopping the irresponsible people. I would love for there to be a way to regulate breeding. If I hear one more, “My dog has a great personality so I wanted to breed her”, I might explode.
I will add that I am NOT against all breeding. If all breeders were responsible, none of their dogs would end up in shelters and irresponsible owners wouldn’t get to purchase any dog they wanted.
What do you think? Should rescues purchase dogs? Do you think there is a way to regulate breeding to prevent more unnecessary deaths? I’m only one person, but I know that as a community we can start to make a change. Even slow change is progress.
I think it is situational. In your example of a back yard breeder if you can’t find a way to shut down the operation, you are just giving them more operational cash to continue the process. It doesn’t make sense. However, I can envision situations with individuals where I’d consider on a personal basis using cash as a means to separate dog from owner even if I couldn’t be sure owner wouldn’t end up with a dog at a later date. Sometimes people just need an incentive to let go. If I knew I could find the dog a situation and I could afford the cost, I’d consider it.
I don’t think rescues should purchase dogs from a byb. I ran across a situation that I never thought I’d run across last week and now I’m fostering two Dane puppies that I PAID for.
One of the smaller county shelters had two Dane puppies that came in but they wouldn’t let a rescue pull them. So a fellow volunteer and myself paid the adoption fee on these two babies and turned them over to the rescue.
That’s exactly what happened to me with Balto. The shelter wouldn’t relinquish him to a rescue so I had to pay to pull him. In my mind, that’s a different situation. But maybe in the end it’s not?
OMD! Purchasing such dogs for any reason is an AWFUL idea! If you pay $$ for that backyard breeder’s neglected dogs it’s an incentive. They can just breed more dogs, keep them in awful unhealthy condition & know they’ll still get money from a rescue if they don’t sell them to an owner. If the pups are in such poor condition, that constitutes neglect and animal cruelty. Rather than give them a monetary incentive, call animal control. They will cite them for cruelty and if they aren’t able to treat the pups themselves they can hand them off to a recue that will.
Love & Biscuits,
Cathy, Isis & Phoebe
http://www.dogsluvusandweluvthem.blogspot.com
I don’t think rescues should purchase a dog but I’ve never found myself in a situation where it would be needed. I think it would depend on the situation.
The buying puppies from backyard breeders is the one that really gets me. I have a hard time knowing more puppies will be put through the same thing.
That one gets me too. I can’t understand getting a dog out of animal control or a humane society and into a rescue but backyard breeders bother me.
This is such a hard topic. I struggle with what is right and wrong in these types of scenarios often.
There are good points and bad points. Save the puppies from these horrid places is great……at the same time, we keep doing this, then they keep breeding. It’s just so hard.
ღ husky hugz ღ frum our pack at Love is being owned by a husky!
It really is such a difficult topic. I know in my head what I believe is the right thing to do, but it’s still so hard.
I think the answer really depends. It’s a different thing to buy an adult dog that a person neglects and they can’t afford any longer than buying a little of puppies to get them away from a backyard breeder. The later isn’t right and does encourage and support the breeder, but the former I think is okay and likely saves the life of the animal.
I just wonder why rescues have to purchase these neglected dogs and can’t get them on animal cruelty.
I…don’t really know. I think it would vary from situation to situation. We recently pulled a Bully breed from a New York shelter, and, like with your Balto, they wouldn’t just give him over to a shelter. So we had to pay the adoption fee. However, paying for puppies from an irresponsible backyard breeder is clearly just making room for more puppies.
I’m curious: What do you think about the “Free to a Good Home” posts we see all the time on Craigslist and Facebook? They always break my heart, especially when they are bully breeds – people don’t understand that there are awful dog owners out there capable of horrible things. I always feel like I should be able to do something…
Free to a good home posts make me sick. Anyone can take that dog and do whatever they please. That’s a huge problem where I live. People give away animals for free and they are abused or used to target practice. It’s sickening.
Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but in my mind paying to pull a dog from a shelter and paying an individual for a dog are very different. The shelter has the animals best interest in mind (usually), they just can’t afford to lose an adoption fee. I just feel that we could cite people on animal cruelty rather than paying them.
I think it would depend on the situation. In a case not long ago, a rescue took the puppies from an overbred mama dog. One of the conditions of the rescue paying a fee for each puppy was that the owner would get the mother dog spayed and not use her to produce any more puppies.
Another case where rescues buy dogs are from dog auctions – puppy millers decide to get rid of certain of their dogs and take them to the dog auctions. The majority of people bidding on those dogs are OTHER puppy millers or mass breeders. By buying some of those dogs, it allows them to be vetted and adopted into a loving home, but also stops the breeding cycle for that one dog. Will the taking of those few dogs from the puppy mills make any real difference? Yes, but not a major difference – at least not immediately. Will it make a major difference to those dogs? Definitely yes.
When I think about the alternatives for those backyard breeder puppies, I find myself saying that paying for them is a must-do. Puppies that aren’t adopted from these breeders are often later just given away to whoever, sold on Craigslist for a low fee that attracts the wrong type of “buyer”, or dumped at a shelter. Keeping those puppies out of the shelter environment is important. Once they get to the shelter, but rescue may still be able to pull them, but they have then been exposed to various issues, including the possibility of parvo or dystemper, kennel cough, etc. Taking them directly into the rescue is the best thing for those puppies.
Of course, closing down all puppy mills and placing strict requirements on all other breeders is a major step needed to cut down the number of dogs dying in shelters.
Okay, I could type all day so I’ll close, but again, while I agree to some extent with your opinion, I also feel we are obligated to help those puppies.
I completely agree with you. It is so hard to walk away from those individual animals, but to give them money only enables them to do it again to others.. I wish animal control would help out more in these situations..
It really is a slippery slope. I know of a rescue that purchased a pregnant puppy mill dog at an auction, to keep her from being purchased by another miller or BYB. I know their intentions are good, but all of the scenarios you described only support poor owners or BYB’s.
I don’t think rescues should purchase dogs considering how many animals are in need in shelters, especially in rural areas.. BUT not being a rescue person myself I still admire all those who do what they can to help animals in need.
I agree wholeheartedly that there needs to be stricter breeding regulations, pet overpopulation is ridiculous, so many dogs that were once quite little puppies are being euthanized because there’s simply nowhere for them to go. We can’t save them all when they continue to breed in such great numbers.
I still don’t understand how animal cruelty/neglect cases seem to take so long and be such a pain to prosecute. It seems like most of the ones that actually get charged are the really horrible ones.
It’s a sad problem without an easy answer. Hopefully in the near future pet stores and back yard breeders will be something from the past.
Hello, I was not going to comment on this and keep my mouth shut, but just had to add, as I actually run a non profit rescue and I have scrambled to pull funds together in desperate situations. It is very easy to judge and states ways should be done when you are not actually involved on the front lines and can be behind a laptop typing away. I do understand what everyone is saying, and I agreed awhile ago, until I was invited to attend an auction of millers by a person who got dogs out of mill auctions. My eyes will never erase the horrors I saw that day and has forever changed my mind. I do agree that it really sucks to give these poor excuses for humans money, but I also know how nearly impossible it is to get someone in authority out to these places let alone shut down. That is where the change needs to happen, that animals are actually bumped up on the priority list in the government, and sadly that is not something I know anything about. I just can’t see the answer being that over 300 dogs can be at an auction every Saturday (in just one location), most of them 8 and 9 year old mom’s who have been bred over 15 times, and have eyes that are blind or crusted over, missing limbs, open wounds, skin hanging off and they are left to go to another miller until they die, and no one even knows they exist. Being there, seeing them, that is not something that I can live with. I would definatly like my hard earned fundraising to go towards my monthly $10,000 + vet bill, but this was my choice, and I stand behind it and understand that a lot of people won’t agree, but thought I would through another perspective in.
I respect every opinion, but please remember that there are many people who read this blog that are also involved in rescue, myself included. We are all entitled to believing in different ways to solve the horrible ways animals are treated. Everyone here wants for animals to be respected and treated with dignity. I hope we will get to enjoy that world.