I'm sorry that I have to give an animal shelter one star, but I had a very unethical interaction with this organization yesterday and will be actively encouraging people to stay away from them. My husband and I were at a local county shelter and had been playing with four older puppies for a while. We had decided we wanted to adopt two of them. This was a shelter with a high kill rate that said it was in urgent need of adoptions. While we were playing with these dogs, someone from Second Chances came in with shelter workers and told us they were taking the dogs right now. I was surprised and asked if we could adopt two of the dogs. Second Chances said no, but we could apply to adopt from their organization in 10 days.
I was astounded for a few reasons. (1) if Second chance wants to save dogs' lives, then they should have been happy to see us take two dogs. (2) if we adopted two of those dogs, then second chance could have taken two additional dogs and saved them (then FOUR dogs would have been saved!) (3) my husband and I did not adopt any dogs that day because the two we bonded with were taken. now, because of second chance, two dogs in that high kill shelter probably were euthanized due to lack of room. (4) second chance actually hurt the adoption chances of the puppies we wanted to adopt. The fact is that many people want young puppies, puppies go fast and are not at risk of being euthanized even at high kill shelters. However, the older a dog gets the less likely it is to be adopted. These particular puppies were already fairly large and a bit older, and my guess is that in two weeks when they are available at second chance they will be even less likely to be adopted (not to mention that second chance does not appear to do a good job keeping up its website, so who knows if they will ever even post these dogs' pictures). (5) finally, the less you can change a dog's environment, the better. Like humans, dogs can have psychological damage, PTSD, etc. it would have been better for the dogs' mental health to go straight to their forever home, rather than go to another shelter/ foster parents and then, maybe, get adopted.
For all of the above reasons, I feel ethically impelled to speak out about this organization, because those little dogs lost a chance at a great home. My husband and I are responsible pet owners, and we love dogs. We have a huge .7 acre fenced yard, no kids, we both work from home and have lots of time for a dog, we collectively make $230,000 so we have disposable income to spend on a dog. We are in the market for a dog because our beloved dog, Lily, passed away a few months ago (at 12 years old) after a battle with lymphatic cancer, on which we spared no medical expense. We adopted Lily at 5 months old from a shelter, 11.5 years ago. We were totally obsessed with Lily, and would be for future dogs. Had we adopted those dogs, we would have immediately made sure they had a clean bill of health ( and spared no expense, whatever the health outcome), Socialized them at the dog park and dog events around town, taken then to obedience and agility training classes, set them up with play dates with our two neighbors' dogs, and just generally have been obsessed with these two new dogs as well. Our hobby was spending time with Lily, and would be for the new dogs. I believe my husband and I are the ideal dog owners. read more