There’s probably nothing more loving you could do for a dog than to adopt it from a shelter. Despite the reasons for being there, sheltered dogs are just as wanting for affection as professionally bred dogs are. Here’s how and why you may want to adopt canines from dog shelters or dog rescue shelters.

The Pros

When you adopt a dog from a shelter, you save a life. Dogs that don’t leave a shelter within a set amount of time are euthanized as a way to control the pet population. Your adoption stops the unnecessary death of a potential best friend, seeing-eye dog, performance dog, or any other type of canine even if its sole purpose is to sit around looking cute.

One of the main reasons that people avoid adopting pets from dog shelters is that they don’t believe they’ll find a purebred inside. But they’re wrong. Recent statistics demonstrate that a fourth of the dogs in today’s dog rescue shelters are purebreds. Some of the purebreds come from abusive puppy mills while others come from families who aren’t capable or willing to properly care for them. Either way, there are a lot of non-mixed breeds in shelters available for anyone who’s looking for specific kind of canine.

Another reason why people avoid shelters is that they think shelters only house non-trainable or handicapped dogs when that idea too, isn’t true. Of course, shelters house injured or abused animals, but that’s what shelters are supposed to do. That doesn’t mean that they don’t house healthy and happy dogs. A shelter that would turn away healthy and happy dogs just to shelter the injured or abused is silly. Shelters house all sorts of dogs -- dogs that deserve a good, loving, safe home.

You should note that no shelter will release an unclean, severely diseased, and/or overly aggressive dog to anyone.

The Cons

We already mentioned that a dog in a shelter could be injured, abused, or sickly, but sometimes, their shelter caretakers don’t really know what’s up with a dog until after they’ve made a full evaluation. Unlike the breeder who keeps extensive records on a dog’s lineage, health, and abilities, a shelter rarely has any information about the animals that they house. They may only have a dog tag or leash as information although most of the time, they simply have nothing.

This means that you may end up with a puppy that grows beyond what you expected, or you may adopt a dog that requires more training than anticipated. You may find yourself choosing between a constant barker, or dog that’s seemingly afraid of its own shadow. This is why some shelters are just as picky about who adopts their animals as professional breeders are. They want to know that their adopters will be especially caring with their adoptees (and prevent the animals from returning).

Types of Shelters

If you look up shelters in your local yellow pages or newspaper, you might find different kinds that essentially do the same thing: the private shelter, the nonprofit shelter, the progressive shelter, and the municipal shelter.

Municipal shelters are the largest because they serve several animal control services and smaller local animal shelters. They’re the shelters that we typically think of when we hear about euthanasia, overcrowding, underfunding, and understaffing.

The smaller private and progressive shelters house a much smaller number of animals than municipal shelters do and they have better resources. The facilities of these shelters are generally better equipped and better staffed with people who often provide dog training and socialization skills.