I have a friend who fosters for Anderson Valley Rescue and he basically markets the cats, if someone decides to adopt the fill out and send AVR a n application but the cats go from his home to the new owner.

He takes on the cats who would never show well at a shelter or even an offsite event or who were developing related issues.

I have been thinking that maybe a 4H shelter pet project might be a win win. Dogs or cats could be fostered with qualified 4H families. Kids in that chapter project could work on manners, training etc and part of the project could be the marketing and placement of the dog or cat. Kids could take classes through the local shelter and I am sure local animal related businesses could be persuaded to pitch in with food or supplies and services.

As this is 2009 I am sure there would be all sorts of liability issues.

OK, so now if SB250 and it’s ilk would just go die I might even have time to research what these kind of programs would involve!

It passed the Senate due to severe arm twisting by the leadership, we get to keep grinding away on it in the Assembly now.

Has anyone else noted that SCiL and Florez and everyone else has stopped denying this is MSN? At least that fact has been made clear.

You could totally see that in the DKos comments on Christie’s diary. It didn’t even OCCUR to anyone there that a person might want to own an intact animal and do so without the dogs creating unwanted litters.

So where will Florez (who’s padding his way to the Lt. Gov.ship) and Judie Mancuso be when those poor folks’ animals are confiscated in the scenario you describe above and the true huge costs of this bill come into play. Same place they are when L.A.s MSN s**t hits the fan, on to their next legislative attack on pet ownership.

Disclaimer: I’m helping Maddie’s Fund, one of the sponsors of the SPP, with this project. But I’m there because I’m a true believer, not the other way around. :)

People who come to shelters tend to have unrealistic expectations about what they are getting, and shelters are often entirely too optimistic about what they have.

Add that to the fact that people who are getting rid of their pets are not always honest about the animals’ personality and training, because they’re hoping to give it a better chance at being adopted. They tend to overlook the minuses and exaggerate the pluses.

And you’re right, it’s just about impossible to tell what an animal is really like when you’re seeing it in the kennel. Another good reason for reality checks for potential adopters — they really need to know before they get there that they shouldn’t expect perfection. Some people will be pleasantly surprised by what they end up with — we do get some nice dogs with perfectly adequate house manners — but for the most part, they need to think of a shelter as somewhere they will be able to save a life and give an animal a chance it might not have otherwise, not as a pet store or a kennel.

Granted, there are shelters with more resources than others that are able to put necessary basic training and grooming and socialization into their animals to help them be more adoptable, but it’s just not that way everywhere. Sometimes they just have to go with what they have and do the best they can.