Adopting A Dog by Kirsten Hawkins
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.
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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 the 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 PetsMart.
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, how playful or obedient it is,
whether its housebroken, 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.
About the Author
Kirsten Hawkins is a dog lover and animal expert from Nashville,
TN. Visit http://www.doghealth411.com/ for
more information on dog health, the care of dogs, and dog
travel.
Thank you for using 4Dog Info for
information on Adopting A Dog.
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