The adoption process

I'm currently engaged in finding homes for Duke and Dakota. They both have a lot of interested suitors. I want them both to go to good homes, which probably all of them are. The trick is finding the home where the adoption has the best chance of success. That means finding people who don't display too many of the red flags that often signal adoption problems: young children, cats, no fence, too young, too old, too busy, the list goes on. I can get some of this information from the application process and home visit reports. However, the longer I've been doing this, the more convinced I am that the real key to a successful adoption isn't one of these objective variables. It's simply a matter of expectations and committment.

Anyone who expects the perfect dog is a bad adopter. If they rattle off a laundry list of "must haves" I look elsewhere. Perfect dogs are made from years of work, learning, and compromise, by both the person and the dog. I never represent my dogs as being housetrained. For one reason, I really can't because they are larely outside or crated indoors. In most cases, people find that they are, because adult dogs develope toilet habits and it is usually just a matter of adapting their already established habits to a new environment. But if the adopter has to have an already perfectly housetrained dog with guarantees, that tells me they have unrealistic expectations and that they lack the committment necessary for a successful adoption. Some people simply can't take on a dog who may need housetraining. That's fine. It doesn't make them bad people, it just makes them ineligible to adopt one of my dogs, even one that is housetrained, because if it's not housetraining, it will be something else. Then I'll get the call: "I'm sorry, but this dog isn't living up to my expectations, I'd like to return it. Do you have another?" Like I was a freakin Wal-Mart.

I'm not sure how our application process could do a better job of weeding out people. Some of it is trial and error, and there is a large element of pure chance and dumb luck. Being "approved" by the process doesn't mean eligible to adopt in my book and for many dogs I look for adopters who probably would not be approved by the regular process. The application itself doesn't do much beyond eliminate the homeless and those with a proven track record of poor animal care. There is just no substitute for a face-to-face meeting and conversation. I haven't been able to meet anyone with either of these dogs since I got them. The weather and factors in my own life have conspired against that. Hopefully this weekend.

The pictures here are of a dog named Daisy. She lives with two of my favorite repeat adopters. Daisy is a high energy dog, driven to work. I don't suffer from that malady myself, but many dogs do and it makes for a difficult placement. Fortunately, Daisy's home provides an outlet for her needs and is the perfect home for her, even though they would probably not have made it through the VGSR application process.