Dog Training - Beware Before Adopting a Dog
I have always recommended adopting dogs vs buying one, but frankly both methods have their pros and cons. Four years ago I adopted a little Dotson mixed dog from a local pet store.
I felt in love with the little girl, and I named her Bailey. Bailey was only four months old, and she was very cute and looked very healthy, well not for long…
I had a lot of problems with Bailey, she could not handle being by herself, she suffered from severe separation anxiety, she ripped furniture, rugs and everything else she could get her little mouth on.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of it. Bailey came home with whopping cough, and my other three of my dogs got sick too. I had to treat each one of them with antibiotics, which turned out to be not only very expensive, but also stressful.
Adopting a dog could be the right thing to do, if you want to give him or her the chance of having the loving home that they deserve, but you have to be careful when adopting one from a pet shop or even a shelter.
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Title: Beware Before Adopting a Dog…
Author: Dr. Mayra Alfonso
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There are lots of ways that people choose a new family dog.
Some may search the newspaper for advertisements from breeders who are selling new puppies others find breeders via listings on the internet, while still more may simply purchase a puppy from a local pet store.
Perhaps the best method, however, in terms of being helpful to society in general is to adopt a dog from a local animal shelter.
Adopting a dog brings a new friend into your life. It also helps to reduce the number of unwanted and homeless dogs in your area. Unless the shelter is a "no kill" facility (and these are sadly few and far between), it will also save a dog’s life.
Animal lovers everywhere champion the adoption of dogs from shelters as opposed to any other method of bringing home a new pet for this reason alone, but there are other reasons to choose this adoption option.
- Adopted pets have had their shots
- Shelters often have information about a dog’s temperament
- Adopting a pet frees space in the shelter for more dogs
When you adopt a dog you can be sure that the staff at the shelter has had the dog examined by a vet for diseases and parasites and that the dog has had its shots.
This is not always true of dogs acquired by other means such as kids giving away "free puppies" from a box in front of the local grocery store or local pet store.
The dogs at a shelter are not just strays and often are turned in to the shelter by former owners for various reasons. When this happens, the shelter collects as much information about the dog as possible, including whether its good with children, how much it barks. etc.
The shelter could also know how playful or obedient the dog is, whether its housebroken, if it is aggressive and other important details. While it’s true that this information is only as good as the honesty of the former owner, most of the time it is fairly accurate.
Animal shelters provide a valuable service to the community that they serve by keeping the streets as free of stray animals as possible. Because many of them do this with little or no public funding or governmental support, they are very limited in the number of dogs they can have in the shelter at any given time.
The only way that they can bring in more stray animals is if they remove the ones they currently have. This is done through adoption or euthanasia.
Obviously they would prefer to have the dogs adopted rather than killed. Adopting a dog could very well save its life and allows the shelter to bring in another dog in its place. But, please do not adopt a dog just out of a feeling of guilt.
Consider adopting a dog if you just want a family pet vs. a pure breed dog, although you can also find pure breed dogs in the kennels.
I hope you got some insightful information out of this article, and that you came out more informed abut the issue of adopting a dog, and how to do it properly to avoid many troubles.
Wishing you a great dog training day!
Dr. Alfonso
