meghanbe
Posted : 7/10/2007 5:51:16 PM
I adopted my dog Jack from the shelter back at the end of February, and I couldn't be happier. I spent months before I got him researching different breeds and all my different options (shelters, rescues, even breeders), even though I knew I was leaning toward a mutt from the shelter. It was good to learn about general breed characteristics because it gave me an idea of what I could expect, even when looking at different mixes. I knew I didn't want a baby puppy because I wasn't in the position to deal with that kind of training, so I had planned to adopt an older dog, possibly between 1 - 5 years old.
Well, I saw Jack on a website for a shelter about an hour north of my house and decided we had to go meet him. The shelter told me they thought he was 9 months old, which was younger than I had planned on adopting, but we fell in love with him, so it didn't really matter. As it turned out, our vet later estimated his age to be closer to 6-7 months old.
If you do go the shelter route, keep in mind that what you see at the shelter may not be exactly what you get at home. It's incorrect to say that a dog who is active/hyper at the shelter will be that way at home, or the dog who is quiet at the shelter will be quiet at home. When we met Jack, he was pretty nuts... jumping around, wiggling all over the place, just generally feeling ecstatic about being out of his kennel. We took him outside and watched how he calmed down quite a lot as we walked him. He also seemed to settle down fairly well when we went back in the shelter and he had a chance to run around and explore a bit. At home, he's generally very mellow indoors (though he has his occasional puppy moments, he can be pretty lazy in the house) and very playful outside. I wouldn't say that he's extremely different than the dog we first met in the shelter, but if you had based your idea of his personality just on that first meeting alone, you'd have expected a much more active/hyper dog than he is in reality. He also seemed fairly disinterested in toys at the shelter, and mostly ignored a stuffed animal they had on the floor... at home he LOVES stuffed animals and runs around two or more in his mouth all the time.
Even though Jack was younger than I'd wanted, he still came to me already housebroken and with a decent "sit" command under his belt. He was also well-socialized with other dogs (something I'm continuing to reinforce). I'm not entirely sure what his mix is (we think he has Great Dane in there somewhere, and possibly some kind of hound), but he very rarely barks. I think mutts are awesome, personally. He really has no extremes in his personality and is just a nice, mellow dog who is eager to please and loves having fun.
As for the health issue, it's important to realize that no matter where you get a dog, whether that dog is a puppy or an adult, it may have health issues when you adopt it, or it may develop health issues after you adopt it. There are no guarantees. A few weeks after we adopted Jack, we noticed some scabs and bald patches on his body, took him to the vet, and he was diagnosed with demodetic mange (very common in puppies). We treated that and he's fine now. He was also diagnosed with general "allergies", which we're trying to manage with semi-regular baths and an appropriate diet. These issues did not crop up because he came from the shelter... it's just genetics. A $1500 purebred puppy from a breeder could have just as easily had mange and allergies. During his first visit to the vet (literally the day after we got him from the shelter), they did a fecal and found some parasites. We just had to give him some antibiotics, not a huge deal. I guess my point is that all animals get sick, but that's part of being a pet owner... you deal with it. I agree that it's important to use common sense when deciding which dog to adopt (if a dog is acting lethargic, chances are it doesn't feel good!), but be prepared for the idea that any dog you adopt or purchase can have health issues that will need to be treated. It just comes with the territory. If your parents are going to freak out if your dog ends up needing to get treated for something and want to return it, I'd probably hold off on the whole dog idea. It'd be really sad for you to get attached and then have to deal with that lack of understanding.