The Benefits of Shelter Dogs — An Untold Story
Many people describe shelter dogs to be “savages” or “consistently angry,” nut that often isn’t the case. The negative stigma surrounding shelter dogs leads to a large population of dogs who never get adopted to pile up in shelters.
With restricted local government budgets, animal shelters are often faced at the end of their ropes throughout the year with a lack of funding and thus heavily rely on donations to help their animals.
Rutgers University described the average cost to take care of a shelter dog to be from $374 to $658, and many shelters don’t have to facilities to take care of these many dogs thus leaving some turned away to other facilities that may not have adequate resources either.
The university reported an increase in money to be a direct cause of a decrease in euthanization rates and an increase in adoptions. The sad reality of euthanization along with an improper living area can be improved with adoptions.
Adoptions are a direct way to raise money and with more money comes better resources to help the animals thrive while they are waiting for their forever homes.
If you are in the position to bring a dog into your home, please consider adopting from the animal shelter. Shelter dogs provide many positive benefits to households that are often unknown in society.
By adopting from a shelter, you won’t be supporting the presence of puppy mills. Roughly 2 million dogs from puppy mills are placed in stores every year, and the rest are trafficked online.
Puppy mills have incredibly horrible conditions with dogs living together in closed spaces without food, water, or a clean environment. By adopting from shelters, you are supporting the closure of puppy mills as the mills rely on funds from breeders and private buyers around the world.
Shelter dogs are much more eager to follow your lead. The 2016 study in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research focused on comparing dogs in homes (they referred to these dogs as “pet dogs”) to shelter dogs in terms of their ability to respond to social cues and problem-solving.
The pet dogs were more easily available to follow human pointing, but the shelter dogs “seem to be more socially driven to gaze and interact with humans” compared to the pet dogs. With time, shelter dogs can easily become more trainable, but they are already eager to comply with a human’s demands.
Adoption stories are bound to make anyone have feelings of joy. By taking an animal home, you are dramatically changing their personality for the better through nurtured love and support. Nook Nook, a 100% deaf dog from Colorado, was given two days to live in the shelter, but he was later saved by the Peanuts Pit Bull rescue.
His owner, Ariel Nicole Dehart, describes Nook Nook to now know a full set of sign commands and is now their big lap dog. Nook Nook was able to open up and survive simply due to the Peanuts Pit Bull Rescue and Ariel, who was able to give him a loving home with the help he needed.
Furthermore, shelter dogs are usually spayed/neutered and have the appropriate vaccinations needed. In the United States, more than 25 states have laws in place that require shelters to spay or neuter dogs they adopt out. Examples of these states are Michigan and Louisiana. Along with that, shelters are required to vaccinate their animals if needed.
Vaccination protocols can vary between shelters, but there are a couple of vaccines necessary due to high possible transmission rates between dogs inside the shelter.
With these protocols in place, you can spend more time with your beloved animal than going to vet appointments. Lastly, the most important reason to adopt a shelter dog is that shelter animals need a proper, loving home.
You would be saving a life as well as saving the quality of life for the animal.
The shelters are crowded, so each animal doesn’t have the ability to receive individualized attention. They need a place to call home. Although society portrays shelter dogs as aggressive and anti-social, the majority of dogs are sweet, broken souls just looking for someone to give them love.
Adoption opens up room for new dogs to reside in the shelter, so you would be saving more than one life. Please consider the benefits of adopting shelter dogs. Even if you want to go ahead with a breeder, check your local animal shelter to see if any dogs are a potential match.
At Linens N Love, we emphasize the importance of adopting pets and we take our student leaders on tours of the facilities that we donate to, with one of the most recent deliveries of linens being at an animal shelter in Orange County, California.
Linens N Love student leaders interact with the tour guide at the shelter as they learn about the importance of adopting a furry friend and providing the animal with a forever home.
Shelter dogs are simply angels who need guidance to find their forever homes, and it is up to humans to adopt and advocate for their well-being.
Sources
“25 Benefits of Adopting a Rescue Dog.” Mental Floss, 17 Aug. 2019, www.mentalfloss.com/article/506531/25-benefits-adopting-rescue-dog.
Duranton, Charlotte, and Florence Gaunet. “Effects of Shelter Housing on Dogs’ Sensitivity to Human Social Cues.” Journal of Veterinary Behavior, Elsevier, 29 June 2016, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1558787816300594.
Goslin, Casey, et al. Animal Shelter Funding.
“Resources.” Koret Shelter Medicine Program, www.sheltermedicine.com/library/resources/?r=vaccination-in-animal-shelters.
Solotaroff, Paul. “The Dog Factory: Inside the Sickening World of Puppy Mills.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 29 Nov. 2018, www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/the-dog-factory-inside-the-sickening-world-of-puppy-mills-112161/.
Uppin, Tasmai. “13 Before And After Adoption Stories of Dogs Will Make Your Heart Kablooey With Happy.” BarkPost, 7 Feb. 2015, barkpost.com/good/before-after-pics-again/.
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