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| - I want to give this place five stars, really. I am a great lover of animals, and any organization dedicated to helping them gets my vote. And to be fair, allow me to preface my review with the fact that this experience WAS a few years ago. Maybe they've changed things?
That being said...One of my dogs escaped the yard when my uncle came over for a visit and left the gate open (we didn't know he had left it open and didn't know the dogs had escaped until my neighbor, a very long-time friend, came up with Cassie in tow, saying she'd been sitting on their driveway whining.) Sadly, despite visiting the various animal shelters in the area, we never got Jen back, and Cassie was suffering from severe separation anxiety, going so far as to rip up the entire carpet in one of the bedrooms. We continued to look for Jen, but decided we had to get another dog for Cassie in case we couldn't find her friend.
I went to the shelter, telling the volunteer about my situation, and made it VERY clear that I had a dog and four cats, so I absolutely had to have a dog that was good with both. I was willing to adopt an adult dog, knowing that they're less likely to be adopted than a "sweet and cuddly" puppy, and was introduced to Minnie, an adult flat-coated retriever.
We did a meet-and-greet with Cassie and Minnie could not have been less interested in her, and Cassie was relaxed. Good stuff. I took Minnie home, but had to get to work, so I left her in my (VERY capable) mother's hands. Not twenty minutes later, I get a call from my mother. After stroking her and ensuring the dog seemed calm and relaxed, she took Minnie into the house on a leash, in case "she adores cats, loves cats, is great with cats," turned out to be a load of bull-poo. Thank goodness she did.
Minnie lunged forward and tore the leash out of my mother's hands. One cat escaped up the curtains (destroying the fabric and the rod on her way up, but she was safe, so it was worth it,) but Minnie got her jaws around our little Ryo. The ONLY thing that saved her life is that Ryo was quite the porker and was too large for Minnie to pick up. As it was, she suffered a grade four dislocation in BOTH of her hips. The third cat escaped with a bald patch of hair snatched from her tail, and the fourth was smart enough to hide under the bed when all this started.
Minnie then turned on Cassie, shoving her into a corner and refusing to allow her to leave. When I got there, the curtains were akimbo, Cassie was shivering in the corner by the door, my mother had a bite on her hand, and Minnie and I had a bit of a tug-of-war over Cassie's chewbone as she was, shall we say, very eager to assert her dominance over me and everyone else in the household.
I was enraged and took Minnie back the next morning (it was after closing time at AHS), and found the same volunteer. Guess what he said when I said I was, without question, bringing Minnie back and was furious about how "she loves cats" apparently means "with tartar sauce." "Are you sure? This is her third strike." I was dumbfounded by his statement. It's not MY fault he was so desperate to home the dog that he sent her to what was obviously a poor match.
I'm assuming by that statement that if an animal is brought back a third time, they are euthanized. You know what? I refuse to feel bad for that. I specifically said I needed a calm dog that was good with other dogs and cats, and instead I got four terrorized cats - one with a sizeable vet bill - and a dog who was usually so confident now afraid of her own shadow. So, instead of waiting to find her a well-fitting home, he holds her death in HIS hands, thanks to his setting her up for a third strike.
After all this, I still was hoping to find another dog, but this time, I got a puppy, one that was at the time smaller than the cats, let alone 60-lb Cassie. And you know what? She was unspayed, had no shots, had worms, fleas, ticks and mange. And the Humane Society just let her go out that way. What was this about stopping the overpopulation? Nope. If I was someone else, she could have been yet another dog who had litter after litter of puppies to look forward to.
So I still give them three stars for the good that they DO accomplish, but was VERY unsatisfied with the experience I had the one and only time an animal I adopted was from a PLACE, rather than the street.
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