why Ellen's rescued dog should NOT go back to her hairdresser

I'm sorry, but Ellen has no right to ask the rescue organization to do this. Rescues have reasons for not adopting pets into home with children under 14 because there's no guarantee that young children are capable of behaving responsibly with a pet. This rescue did not adopt the dog out to that family! They adopted the dog out to a supposedly mature, responsible older couple with two cats, not to a family with an 11- and 13-year-old.

I say "supposedly responsible" because no rescue makes light of or makes a secret of the fact that if you're NOT able to care for the pet you've adopted, that the animal goes back to the rescue.

From the Animal Friends Rescue Project: "The adopter will not abandon, give away or surrender the animal to anyone else."
From Great Dane Rescue: "If you cannot keep the dog for some reason, every reputable rescue group (including all of the groups listed on these pages) will agree to take the dog back or help in the placement of the dog into an approved home."
From Equine Rescue: "If for any reason the adoptive family can no longer keep the animal, it is to come back to the Rescue. These animals may not be sold, leased, rented, loaned or given to anyone."
From Raleigh Rodent Rescue: "... we always take our animals back should you become unable to care for the animal."
From Given A Chance Hamster Rescue: "If for whatever reason you find you can not keep your hamster and would like to place them up for adoption, contact us as soon as possible via e-mail. We can usually find a place for the hamster and the hamster will remain with us until he/she finds their forever home."

Rescues often struggle against ridiculous odds to literally save high risk adoptable animals from being put down, pay out of pocket for their costs (food, shelter, vaccinations, medical care, socialization, etc) to rehabilitate them to family life, and the emotional and legal costs involved in running a rescue. It costs maybe something like $80 to adopt a dog from a shelter, with no knowledge of its medical condition, emotional wellbeing, preferences to cats or children, or housebreaking needs. For something like $130, you can get a dog from a rescue that's invested the time and effort into finding out all those details for you.

Now imagine that for all that invested into the animal (often hundreds of dollars), as well as in you for checking out your background and home and lifestyle, you walk down the street one day and give the dog away to a random stranger. They seem nice enough, and say they have experience with dogs, but it turns out they sell breeder dogs to puppy mills, or bully-breed mixes to dog-fighting rings. Forget that, let's take something more innocent... the nice family you give the dog to can't keep it after six months and rather than telling you, they give it away to someone else that ends up turning it back in to a high-risk shelter, when it's put down. Great.

I'm sure Ellen's a nice person at the end of the day, but I scoff at her claim of having worked with so many rescue and animal awareness groups if she was so oblivious to this hard rule. More than likely, she just considered herself exempt. Sad.

Tags: dogs, cats, pets, animals, adoption, rescues, violation