So You Think You Can Just Adopt a Dog?

By ANNA BAHNEY – New York Times – Almost as soon as Michele Pusateri and her two daughters chose a black-and-white terrier at a humane society shelter near their home in South Pasadena, Calif., they were told they did not qualify to own the dog.

Mrs. Pusateri took her daughters, Mira and Zoe, back twice more and met with different adoption counselors. Each time she got a no. “It was insane,” Mrs. Pusateri said. “Their concern was that I had never had a dog in my life and that I had a 6-year-old daughter.”  

Her chances of pet ownership didn’t improve when she turned to groups whose mission is to rescue abused and unwanted pets. She found herself explaining to her crying children that they couldn’t adopt because the organizations suspected the family had a hole in the backyard fence or the yard was too small.

Ultimately Mrs. Pusateri went to the county animal shelter last May and found Piper, a mutt. She paid $80 for the dog to be spayed and picked her up two days later, to the girls’ delight.

The process left Mrs. Pusateri thinking that animal adoption gatekeepers can be so concerned about their charges that they forget about the people in the equation. “They make you jump though all these emotional hoops,” she said. “You feel so judged. You start wondering, Am I dog worthy?”

Even as adopting a stray dog or cat — rather than buying one from a store or breeder — has become politically fashionable, a badge of pride for some because of the millions of animals that are euthanized each year, the hurdles that some humane societies and rescue groups make potential owners leap — including multipage applications, references, background checks, interviews and home visits — can make the process feel nearly as daunting as adopting a child.

Animal adoption groups say they want to avoid giving pets to owners who will abuse them and, perhaps more important, to make sure an animal that has been given up once will find a permanent home. Yet would-be adopters who expect exacting standards from top breeders are surprised when shelters and rescue groups ask more from them than a pulse. Many families feel stung when they are denied and are left to ask: Is it better for the animal never to find a home than to live with us?

While some 8 million to 12 million dogs and cats end up in shelters in the United States each year, and 4 to 6 million are euthanized, those who place pets say that the high standards they demand of owners rarely leave animals without homes. Eventually almost everyone who wants an animal will get one, somewhere. So why put would-be adopters through a process that makes them feel inadequate, their privacy invaded?

“The home visit weirds out a lot of people,” said Jill Blasdel-Cortus, the president of Dachshund Rescue of North America, a network of about 100 volunteers, who give temporary homes to daschshunds claimed from overcrowded shelters or families who surrender them because of a behavior problem or lifestyle change. The group places the dogs in permanent homes. “We’re not going to judge if you’ve dusted or if it’s clean,” Ms. Blasdel-Cortus said.

Nonetheless she defends the practice of requiring would-be adopters to fill out three-page applications that ask if the home is owned or rented, as well as open-ended questions like, “If your dog bit a child at a backyard barbecue, what would you do?”

References are checked. The home is visited. Adopters must sign a contract specifying the care of the dog. In the last nine years the dachshund group has placed some 4,300 dogs, Ms. Blasdel-Cortus said, and she could recall only one family turned down after a home visit, because it lived in an upstairs apartment with rickety stairs and refused to carry the dog up and down.

“I am a dog advocate,” Ms. Blasdel-Cortus said. “I’m not a people advocate. If you don’t want to fill out the form, go to your local shelter. Some people may find that uncooperative, but a rescued dog is not for everyone.”

Animal rescue groups, which seem demanding in approving new homes for their charges, are part of a “very intense, very big and rapidly expanding movement,” said Jon Katz, who has written about them in “The New Work of Dogs” (Villard, 2003).

He estimates the number of people involved in rescue (the overwhelming majority of them women) in the tens of thousands. An animal rescuer can be an established urban nonprofit shelter or a woman in Idaho with a Web site. Sometimes a rescuer travels hundreds of miles to meet another, who has traveled hundreds of miles with a pet, in a sort of underground railroad handoff.

Cocker Spaniel Rescue of New England will not place a dog with a family with children under 7, said Gerry Foss, its president. German Shepherd Rescue, in Burbank, Calif., receives six dogs a day from people who don’t want them, said Grace Konosky, the founder, and she denies about 70 percent of the people who want to adopt them.

Janie Regnier filled out an application to adopt a dachshund through Dachshund Rescue. “It was a surprisingly long application, but as an animal lover, I thought it was a good application,” she said.

Ina Eaves, of the rescue group, visited Ms. Regnier’s home in Fairfax, Va., this week. The prospect made Ms. Regnier nervous because she is a renter, not an owner. Ms. Eaves wanted a fence repaired, but by the time she left, Ms. Regnier felt they were friends, she said. She was approved.

For those denied a pet, the experience can be bewildering. Tamara Burke, who lives near Stowe, Vt., where she owns a consulting company and writes a column for The Stowe Reporter, has owned animals all her life. But when she and her husband decided to get a second golden retriever as a companion for their older retriever, Mercedes, a rescue group still wanted to visit her home.

“There is nothing about my house that says upper middle class,” Mrs. Burke said of the century-old cottage that has been in her family for generations and where she raises sheep and chickens. “It is a funky, cobbled-together little thing, but it has nothing to do with how much money I spend on my dogs or how much attention I give them.”

The rescue-group representative said, Mrs. Burke remembered, that while she and her husband were nice people, theirs was not a suitable home for the dog because they did not have a fenced-in yard. “I own 150 acres,” Mrs. Burke said. “I’m looking at her saying: ‘What am I going to do, fence in all 150 acres so I can have a dog? This is absurd.’ “

In response Mrs. Burke became involved with rescue organizations herself. And she found that lots of other people didn’t “qualify” for a dog. In her experience home visits don’t mean a lick.

“I cannot make a determination based on how a person lives,” she said. “I have friends who have trust funds, and they live without running water. They also happen to have dogs, and the dogs don’t seem to mind.”

Mrs. Burke said that potential owners can feel bullied by the process, and the gatekeepers justify it because they are advocates for homeless animals. “These are people who would bully in other aspects of their lives if they could, but this is a socially acceptable way to get away with it,” she said. “You’re talking about individuals who develop this attitude because they know they have something that you desperately want. They are demanding an emotional response.”

Most rescue volunteers strive to balance what is best for the animal with what is best for a would-be adopter. But everyone defines a successful home differently, and there are no uniform requirements for owning a pet. Some publicly owned shelters also require home visits.

The Animal Care and Control Department in Palm Beach County, Fla., requires a home visit in the case of breeds that are top biters —like pit bulls, Rottweilers, German shepherds and Akitas — to ensure the yard is fenced. Adoption can be denied if a family lives in an area where the department is regularly called to seize dogs, said Kelly Diegert, a department official.

In the view of some adoption specialists, elaborate vetting of clients and home visits are overkill. They are trying to lower the hurdles, though they don’t envision letting people drop in and simply take home a dog with no questions asked. That would make them pet shops. “We are interested in making adopting an animal less like applying to college,” said Gail Buchwald, the vice president of shelter and adoption programs at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Manhattan, which places more than 2,000 dogs and cats each year. “Most people who have been asked to go through a process like that tend to feel intruded upon.”

She said that her organization asks for an application form and makes contact with each member of the household to be sure they want to have a pet. They ask about landlords, but they do not make home visits. “When pets are easy to come by,” Ms. Buchwald said, “it doesn’t make sense to push adopters away to the point that they’ll say: I don’t need your college-application process. I’ll go to the deli down the street and take that stray from the box.”

When Chris Coates, 23, and his partner Zach Denison, 24, adopted Buddy, a Labrador-pit bull mix, at the A.S.P.C.A. this week, Mr. Coates said the process was thorough but not invasive. He first visited last Friday, then took Mr. Denison on Sunday. They went back on Monday and played with six dogs before selecting Buddy, who had been at the center for two years and received a full-staff sendoff.

“As an animal rescuer, you want to have control,” Ms. Buchwald said. “You may have nursed the animal back from the streets or illness or injury. You want to know beyond any doubt what the home looks like. But this work involves trust and restraint. The best thing you can do is say, ‘Go with my blessing,’ and you clap when they find a home.”

 Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

Chris Coates bonding with the Labrador-pit bull mix, one of six dogs he played with at the shelter in Manhattan.

Linda Spillers for The New York TimesIna Eaves, left, of Dachshund Rescue of North America, giving Janie Regnier a hands-on lesson in dog care.