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Doesn't Make "Cents"

© Lesli Richardson

Would you go out and buy an expensive car and then never have the oil changed? Would you use the cheapest gas you could find regardless of how it hampered performance? Would you just give it up after a year and walk away from it regardless of the fact that you'll never get that money back?

I just picked up a dog at our local shelter tonight. We're fostering her because she's being treated for heartworms. She was purchased at a pet store in our town and the people paid $1,600 for her. She's supposedly a purebred Olde English Bulldog, but the papers are from an organization (not UKC or AKC) I've never heard of and the breed listed is a "Livingstone Olde Englishe." Whatever THAT is.

Can you say "puppy mill?"

She's a year old, not spayed, and heartworm positive. She has a sweet bulldog face, but she's awfully tall for a bully, and very hyper. I suspect poor or crossbreeding despite what the papers claim.

And she's a jumper/climber. Her former family wrote on the papers that she might be too much for smaller children. Yeah, no duh. She's never had any training except she can sit.

She's now in "boot camp."

Will she become a member of our family? Who knows. We're fostering her for now and we'll see. We're still too emotionally raw after losing our sweet Harley to think about that, but who knows. As it stands right now, even if she wasn't heartworm positive she wouldn't be a good candidate for a successful adoption unless the family taking her is very experienced in dealing with active dogs (I have two Labbies) and is dedicated to training her.

It amazed me when I worked at the shelter and amazes me still today that people think they can just blithely drop off "problem" dogs at the shelter and expect they will get good, happy forever homes with no problem. If this little girl went back out tomorrow, chances are she'd be returned in a few weeks as "uncontrollable" or "too much to handle." The problem isn't the dog - it's the owner who failed to properly care for and train her. She has a great personality, and in the few minutes I spent with her at the shelter, my former boss was amazed at how well behaved she was being for me considering her normal behavior. So she is trainable. Too bad her former owners didn't see her sweet personality like I did and take a little more time to work with her.

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