But it does seem like a power gone to head scenario and they've gone way beyond the basic sensible stuff in some cases to just appoint themselves as some sort of sorting hat for dogs, like they've been blessed with some special insight and know what's best for the potential owners... when in reality so long as the owners fulfill the right criteria the choice should be up to them - just check they've got big garden or no kids etc.. where those things are basic requirements for some dogs.
Have you not had enough of dog owners who think
they know best??!!
A dog rescue centre sees, on average, a couple hundred people every day, all with the same stories about how they'd love a dog and how they're so suitable, yadda yadda.
When you see that many people, and get to know them fairly intimately during the checks, inspections, etc, you do get a pretty good grasp of who is suitable for which dog, who are kidding themselves, who are the deadbeat timewasters, and who shouldn't ever be allowed near animals (or children, for that matter).
They'll also know far more about any of the dogs in their charge than you would from staring at them in a cage for five minutes.
Just before the pandemic, 1 in 5 rescued dogs would be returned within 2 months. Owners changed their minds, didn't realise that big dogs were big or that working dogs could be energetic, didn't think their landlord would notice or had lied in some other way about their circumstances, didn't think them working 12-hour shifts would upset the dog they left at home, didn't think they'd have to house train the dog, didn't think the dog would be unsettled going to a new home, etc... All of them will have 'checked every box' and 'fulfilled all the right criteria', yet still 20% of them were returning dogs they themselves have chosen, and the rescue centre too often got blamed for all these things.
Post-Covid, with the massive Pandemic Puppy fallout, the return rates have soared way above the 20%, especially in breed-specific centres. There was also a large increase in those dogs being returned with evidence of abuse post-adoption.
Owners of peace, wouldn't hurt a fly, fulfilled all the right criteria, etc.
About 3/4 of the way into Covid is when most centres started closing their gates to casual and prospective visitation, switching to vetting people before even allowing them to see the one dog for which they applied.
I imagine the centres also got pretty ******* tired of so many timewasters and the pandemic restrictions helped them eliminate the problems those types of people presented.
To be fair, dogs that get used to a dozen random strangers taking them out of their shelter kennels for mini-walks every day are less likely to bond with 'The One' special owner anyway, so they have a valid point there, too.
In a good number of cases it will be the staff knowing the dog better than you think you do. In others it will be other applicants being more suitable than you, even if you're pretty good to start with. In other cases, you'll have done something that sets off their alarm bells, and since the public perception of their liability has also increased, they're taking some serious steps to safeguard themselves as well as the dogs.
There are invariably multiple applicants for almost every dog, so there's not usually a shortage of people. Just perhaps a shortage of good people.
The new way of doing things does preclude one of the best bits of adoption, though.
Each time we adopted, we spent weeks and even months, visiting centres every time they had a new intake... and yet every time we found a dog that suited us, it was never the one we'd initially gone to see in the first place.
Just not the way it's done any more, and likely won't ever be until the rates of timewasters and idiots returning their dogs goes down.
