• You’re Saving A Life

Adopting a dog from a shelter not only means that you’re giving him a happy life, but you also free up a spot at the rescue or shelter to save another dog’s life.

• Helps Fight Puppy Mills

Approximately 90% of puppies you can buy in pet stores or online are from puppy mills. Adopting a dog from a shelter takes business away from mills. The more people who adopt, the more puppy mills have a hard time staying in business.

More reasons: https://www.caninejournal.com/adopt-dont-shop/

What you are saying doesn't apply everywhere, and I doubt it applies in most places around the world, since shelters usually have way too many dogs and would love to be able to find anyone to care for them before they have to effectively execute them.

There is a perspective I see sometimes where some people have elevated environmentalism so high in their value system relative to all else that they end up in a moral position where consuming any resources at all which all living things do is somehow morally unconscionable.

My comment sounds like a joke, but it's not far off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Mov...

Reasonable environmentalists think humans have as much right to exist and seek joy as any other living being as long as it's done in a sustainable way. We just want people to, you know, maybe walk to work instead of driving sometimes. Don't litter. Push your government to pass laws against pollution.

There are lobbyists and well-funded organizations pushing against any progress on the environment and the existence of extreme views like "you're a horrible person if you —checks notes—have a fucking dog" makes it too easy for those groups to paint all environmentalists as out of touch kooks. That's the last thing we need.

The parent comment described pet ownership as "is among the biggest environmental stupidity I can think of". Call me crazy, but a couple of meaty snacks for Fido is pretty far down the list after, I don't know, carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, coral bleaching, acid rain, deforestation, fuel oil, fracking, chemical dumping, nuclear weapons, water table draining, etc.

There is a right to exist, but not a right to be created. Saying someone should kill themselves and kill some other along the way, is just not acceptable in a normal discussion.

> Call me crazy, but a couple of meaty snacks for Fido is pretty far down the list after

Those meaty snacks make 20% of worldwide meat-consumption. As a country, pets would be the 60th biggest CO2-emitter in the world. Just because there are bigger culprits, doesn't mean that the smaller ones are excused. Moving pets to more friendly foods would have a huge impact on the world.

But the top-level post is advocating adopting shelter animals and the reply was that keeping pets is bad for the environment. Those shelter animals already exist and if they aren't adopted, they will likely be killed. It's the same thing modulo different species.

But making everything hyper-efficient and reducing on EVERYTHING we almost possibly do just takes away our basic freedoms. I'm not saying you're wrong about not having dogs. I have one myself but yeah, you're right. It's like having a child. But I like being able to choose having it or not.

The meats that dogs and cats eat are essentially the waste products from meat production aimed at human consumption. You can certainly find some exceptions (especially on Instragram), but the vast, vast majority of people, even those feeding raw diets to their pets, use either meat not meant for human consumption or offal that most Americans don't consume.

Nah. Have you ever bonded with a dog? Nah. I'll take dogs over people any day.

I'm all for closing puppy mills/farms, neutering etc but I draw the line at "don't rescue a dog that already exists"

Even premium dog kibble is made out of the lowest quality junk meat left over from what people eat. I too am a vegetarian (and I don't have kids, and have never owned a car and gave up flying years ago). But I do not begrudge my two hounds their bag of kibble. I'm fact I'd be willing to bet that my household CO² footprint is lower than yours, even with my two greyhounds.

That is the wildest exaggeration I can think of.

I’m also vegetarian, though I am because I’d rather not kill things when I don’t need to. The environmental benefit is an appreciable side effect, and confirms to me I’ve made the right choice for myself. I like to try to share my views with as many people as I can, but I think expecting everyone to ‘just get it’ is setting yourself up for failure, and ultimately unhelpful in the long run.

If people giving their cats cat food is enough to make you question your commitment to vegetarianism, maybe you're not really that committed? You should do things for yourself, and base their value on the decisions of others

Makes people feel uneasy.

- You are potentially saving a dog's life that would otherwise be put down.

- They are often initially cheaper than buying a dog from a breeder.

People rightly focus on the strong moral argument of the first point and they even emphasize the second to imply that it's a good self-interested choice too. But they advocate so strongly that they often omit the real downsides:

- The long-term cost may be higher. There are breeds that are known for significant health problems, but many breeds don't have them and if you buy a puppy of those breeds, their health is closer to being a known quantity. With a shelter dog, you are rolling the dice. There is maybe an argument that hybrid vigor makes shelter mutts statistically more healthy, but that has to be balanced against the facts that (1) the dog may have ended up in the shelter because of health problems or (2) the dog's life pre-shelter may have caused health problems.

- There may be long-term behavioral problems. Dogs in shelters may have been feral, living on the streets, abused, or relinquished because of behavioral problems. If they were feral and weren't potty trained well as a puppy, you may never train them out of marking. Even if the dog was homed, the kind of people who don't spay and neuter their animals (thus leading to puppies that end up in the shelter) are often the kind of people who don't train them well either. There also seems to be a correlation with shelter dogs coming from dog fighting communities. You see a ton of pitbulls, which are wonderful sweethearts when raised right but are not when they aren't. Even non-pit breeds may have been abused as bait dogs.

I love the dog I got from a breeder, and I love my shelter dog (who is snoring next to me as I write this), but the latter was not the pure win that shelter advocates often make it out to be.

The right way to think of it is sort of like getting a used car: it can save you money and be a morally good choice (in the case of a car, less waste and better for the environment), but it's also an unknown quantity where you need to do more due diligence to know what you're getting into, or accept that you are taking a risk with higher variance.

But, unlike with a car, you're signing up for the dog for life.

So, yes, please consider a shelter first. Any future dogs I get will likely be shelter dogs. But consider it cautiously and take your time finding the dog that is right for you.

I know this is right - but I feel obliged to point out that this is true with a new puppy too.

Training dogs properly is work, and inconsistent or incomplete training only gets harder and harder to fix. Plenty of dogs in shelters are there because owners could not rectify their own mistakes. Not from malice, or lack of caring. Simple unknowing incompetence.

Don't be too quick to judge those who give dogs up

* Always have treats in your pocket

* Avoid triggers (dogs) but whenever Lily sees one at a distance, give her a treat

* If she acts aggressively, don't yank the leash or shout, put a treat at her nose and call her name

That's it, in a nutshell. It works for basically any behavioural problem in any dog. (Of course, the breed will have its own personality type - they all do). 6 months later Lily would go nose-to-nose with a rabid chihuahua and remain calm. She was one of the best dogs I've ever had. Still miss the old thing.

She died last year, and we rescued 2 greyhounds (brother/sister). Dorrie is fine but Merlin was, for reasons unknown, afraid of certain types of street light. Which is a massive pain in the ass of you live in a city. We followed the exact same rules, and within a few weeks he was ignoring them. (Still gets spooked at random stuff, like the moon, or light reflected from a kitchen knife onto the ceiling)

Similarly he has problems with other dogs (not with our other podenco, who he loves). He is insecure, stares, starts to go full aggro if they stare back etc. We try to be as careful and consequent as we can. The good thing is he is a very fast learner, not as stubborn.

We give him praise and treats typically after he did well on an encounter (which we keep at fair distance as well). It wouldn't occur to me to give it to him beforehand.

Your method seems simple and I get why it would work, but it's counterintuitive. Can you elaborate? It is something that worked specifically for her for some reason? Or do you think the simple conditioning thing just works. My intuition would be that he has to show the desired behavior and then gets praise/treats. What do you think?

To begin with, practice randomly when there is no trigger. Have a sneaky treat ready and say the dog's name. If it's difficult to begin with (because they don't know their name), try putting the treats into a small plastic container and shaking it, or taking the plastic packaging of their treats. They learn to respond to that noise very quickly. Words are more complex, but if you say their name when you make the noise they'll start responding to that too. Always carry accessible treats.

5 months since we adopted untrained (pretty wild) greyhounds, I can get either of them to sprint to me by calling their name, sit, high-five, lie down... no matter what's going on around them. That response makes it easier to discourage cat-chasing and to reduce their prey drive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)#R...

The idea is that you can't feel opposing emotions simultaneously. So if you can make the dog feel relaxed (by giving a treat beforehand), it interferes with their ability to feel anxiety.

They aren't earning the treat for choosing not the be anxious. The positive emotional feeling from the treat prevents the anxiety from occurring.

The important point is that dogs go through developmental milestones just like people and when you get a dog that has already finished its puppyhood, you have lost the opportunity to be present during those milestones and train the dog. Dogs can learn as adults, of course, but correcting bad behaviors is a lot harder. When you get a younger dog (shelter or not), they are more plastic and easier to train.

Yes, of course, it's on you to actually do that training well, but at least you have the chance. When you buy an adult dog, which is what most shelter dogs are, you're kind of stuck with what you get.

If I had to do it again, I'd get an easier breed.

It felt like i was applying for a job.

At the next place I tried they basically threw the dog at me.