How I Failed as a Rescuer, a must read.

[Danefied]

Originally Posted by crazedACD

Great read.

One of my issues lie in rescues that take on dogs that need an incredible amount of medical or emotional care. I've seen very senior dogs with a host of medical problems get pulled really fast, while 1yr old healthy mixes sit there. Granted they have the least chance of being privately adopted, but my opinion is that they should probably be put to sleep. I don't think it's fair to put them through 6 months of medical procedures, living in foster care, to pass on anyway another 6 months later from an age related condition. I don't think it's 'helping' them. I think probably if it was owner surrendered or dumped there, they couldn't afford to humanely euthanize, and expected that to be the outcome. I don't know...if a 6 year old and an 80 year old were drowning, and you could only save one, isn't the obvious choice the 6 year old?

I wouldn’t say its the obvious choice. It depends on who the 6 year old is to you and who the 80 year old is.

I too have a hard time with what I call heroics when it comes to rescue. It does sometimes seem the more extreme cases get scooped up while the “normal” ones get passed over.

But then, rescue is also a very personal thing. We chose to pull a senior HW+ dane with behavior issues and leave all the other perfectly sound dogs there. Why? I don’t know, it was as much an emotional decision as a logical one. I could rationalize it all day long, but the true, honest reason is that we wanted to help the dane just that little bit more than we wanted to help the other dogs. Harsh, but honest.
The other truth is that we were fully prepared to PTS if he didn’t work out or if that funky leg he had turned out to be cancer. Honestly, I never expected him to still be here. I figured we had a few months, who knew three years later he’d still be here - thriving.

I think if we all do what we can do, and what we’re good at, it gets done. I’m good at big dogs, I’m good at certain types of behavior issues, but I suck at medical ones, so that’s where I put my efforts. Others are great at fostering or transport or fundraising or whatever. I’m not going to judge anyone for ANY effort they make. If we all did the same thing a whole lot more dogs would fall through the cracks.

[sillysally]

It was a hard post to read (emotionally), but very thought provoking and very true. I get so sad when I go to auctions and see all these old horses go through--most headed for slaughter. Many are sold by otherwise well meaning people who seem to believe that everyone bidding is there to buy old horses and let them live out there lives on a farm when the reality is often a stressful, horrible end in a foreign slaughter house. It's so much kinder to go an old horse that can no longer kept a quick, humane end in familiar surroundings.