This is actually about cats, but everything in this scenario applies to dogs, or ferrets, or rabbits, or rats, or whatever your pet of choice is. And it explains once again why shelters and rescues have the rules that they have, especially concerning the return of animals to the original shelter or rescue if they can't be kept.
About five years ago, my parents discovered a very pregnant stray cat nesting in their garage. They'd just lost my childhood cat at the age of 21 and hadn't planned on getting any more pets for a while, but my parents are both serious animal-lovers (it's no mystery where I get it). They let the mother cat give birth in the garage and began to provide food and water. Once the kittens were old enough, they moved the entire family inside and did the whole vet/vax/speuter thing with all of them at the appropriate times. They decided to keep the mother and two kittens. They rehomed the other three kittens.
Two of the kittens they adopted to a grad student of my dad's. This is where the cautionary tale begins. As I say, my parents are major animal-lovers but at the same time are kind of naive about others' love of animals and standards of care. They've never been involved in rescue or sheltering, and I think they purposefully avoid reading or hearing about what can happen to pets, because it upsets them so much. They often assume that everyone is like them, loves animals and takes exceptional care of them and goes the extra mile for them because they are part of the family.
Anyway, my parents rehomed to people they knew as good people and assumed that good people are like them when it comes to their feelings about pets. The kittens did live happily in their new home for a couple of years but then I heard that their owner had gotten a job in Vancouver and needed to find a new home for them. I mentioned to my mom that there's no quarantine period for Canada and pets can go across the border freely as long as they had their health records, because she was talking like that was the thing keeping the owner of the kittens from taking them with him. I didn't hear any more about it for a while and just assumed that the owner researched taking pets to Canada and found it could be done easily and took them with him.
But then two weeks ago I get a distraught email from my dad that fills me in on the rest of the story. This guy did not take the kittens with him to Canada and instead gave them to his room mate. Then, the room mate got a job in Utah and again did not take the kittens (well, they're cats now) with him either, and passed them off to yet another friend. This friend began then sending emails to my dad saying that the cats were not a good match for her (and I saw the emails and she did not at all seem like a person who has ever had pets or knew anything about having pets) and they needed yet another new home. Which of course my dad felt was his responsibility to deal with, because he's just like that. He and mom raised these kittens from little squirming bundles of fluff and they feel responsible for them.
I was highly annoyed at this entire series of events and did my best to start to help find these guys a new home. Meanwhile, the daily emails from the cats' current caretaker started going from "maybe these cats need a better home" to "I'M TAKING THEM TO THE SHELTER I CAN'T HAVE THEM ANY MORE!!!" My dad was just beside himself but felt that he couldn't bring these cats in to his home because his cats wouldn't recognize them as family and their cats are kind of standoffish and scrappy. I suggested boarding them if they're really in danger of being taken to a shelter by this woman (whom I hope I never meet, because I have some choice words reserved for her).
And then, all of a sudden, the original owner is contacted in Vancouver, and yes, he'll take the cats back. So now my parents are paying to ship these guys to Vancouver so they can go back to the guy who originally made a promise to care for them for their entire lives.
Though this story also has a little "dangers of cats going outside" cherry on the top. My parents are indoor/outdoor cat people. I don't agree with them, but they've always done the indoor/outdoor thing in the most responsible way that can be done: the cats always come in at night or if no one is home (my dad works from home a lot, so they are often out during the day when he's home), always have breakaway ID collars on with bird bells, are microchipped and fulled vaxed. They feel that cats being kept indoors is cruel (with the exception of my cats because my cats have an illness that requires them to be kept inside). Anyway, I talked to my dad on Sunday to get the update. They've made arrangements to ship them this week except that now....one of them has gone missing. He's been missing for a week. I talked to my dad about getting a live trap and the habits of cats to go in to hiding near their home. My parents are absolutely devastated by this new turn of events and I don't want to tell them that I told them so, but, well, I've told them so on numerous occasions. And again, they were assuming that other people take the same care with their pets as they do with regard to their current caretaker letting them go outside.
So, ladies and gentlemen, this is why shelters and rescues ask adopters to return pets to them if they can't be kept, and this is why they screen so heavily. These two cats have now had three different homes in five years, are about to go to their fourth home, and one of them is now missing and the prognosis is not good on that front (a week is a long time, though back when I let my cats go outside, Kay was gone for over a month before she came back--with FIV). My parents did not have the expertise at screening homes when they originally adopted out the kittens, they were naive and made assumptions about people based on personal friendships and did not put any kind of contract in to place because it was just a rehome among friends. I hope my parents at least have learned something from the experience. It's not a happy truth that so many people find pets expendable, but it's one that needs to be looked at with wide open eyes if you ever find yourself in a position to adopt out or rehome an animal.