I thought they were there to find homes for pets

[L Austin France]

We adopted Rafal at 2½ years via a kiné who works for our vet cabinet. It can be worth asking local vets if they know of a dog and it's a heck of a lot less complicated.

Nice one if you can find a dog that way but the odds must be remote.
We asked around & looked at all of the SPAs & other adoption agencies within a few 100 km of us & pretty much drew a blank due to either none available to meet our criteria or useless agency staff who didn't want to talk & asked us to fill in their standard request form which I doubt they even glanced at. On the whole it was a total shambles. Shame on them for putting off genuine adopters with their lack of interest in doing their job. None of them were interested in hearing our history of succesful dog adoptions or suggestion to speak to our vet. I get it that they must see a lot of 'chancers' but how the hell do they sort out decent adopters if the refuse to talk to them.
In the end we found a dog who seemed to fit the bill a 2 hour drive away & getting to see her let alone adopting her was difficult to say the least.
My wife's patience & my bad temper not taking no for an answer won out in the end & it was a well worth battle.
I'm seriously considering taking up this sorry saga with the SPA head office but doubt they'll be interested.

[Blaze]

I'm seriously considering taking up this sorry saga with the SPA head office but doubt they'll be interested.

I think you should. It may well be that other people have had a problem with the same place. Head office should know so that maybe the problems could be rectified.

[L Austin France]

I'm seriously considering taking up this sorry saga with the SPA head office but doubt they'll be interested.

I think you should. It may well be that other people have had a problem with the same place. Head office should know so that maybe the problems could be rectified.

Thing is that it was all of the many SPAs we contacted who showed little interest in helping us (& them) in our endeavors to adopt a dog.

[Blaze]

I wonder if it's an attitude that's grown because of time wasters and people who return a dog after 3 months saying they can't cope, the dog's too big, it farts .....

[L Austin France]

I wonder if it's an attitude that's grown because of time wasters and people who return a dog after 3 months saying they can't cope, the dog's too big, it farts .....

Could well be but my point is that's a self defeating attitude.
On the few occasions we actually got access to an SPA official, after their PM only openings, I tried to engage them in conversation by showing photos of the home life of our previous rescues to show we were good adopters but none were interested & insisted we fill out forms & leave them with them.
Dunno what the answer is but at the moment this sure ain't helping genuine folk give much needed homes to animals.
Actually opening all day & have someone spend time listening to folk might be a good place to start.

[Lori]

My only interaction with a French SPA was way back when I lived in Bédoin (many years ago). I got the same impressions. They were not interested in communication, be it my request to volunteer (in whatever way was needed) or my inquiries about certain dogs they had. They just didn't seem interested in communicating with me.

[Polarengineer]

Underlying this attitude may be some odd reasons such as
Do they need to hold a certain number of strays in order to get subsidies?
Are they concerned that if too many are adopted and less strays to attend to, someone there loses their job?
Do they get big discounts on feed providing they order large amounts and need the stray numbers to justify the feed orders?
More residents gets more donations?
Could be any of this and more.

[Blaze]

I volunteered for 3 weeks at an RSPCA place near Southampton many years ago. I worked long hours, cleaning out kennels and cat houses but towards the end of the second week I felt a feeling of resentment by one or two of the permanent staff. Did they feel threatened because someone was prepared to work as hard as they did for no pay ? I walked away at the end of the second week - we were due to move to Scotland a couple of weeks after that. It left me with a bad taste in the mouth for doing voluntary work but i did learn that volunteers are not always appreciated.

The SPA here in Saint Malo is excellent. An old dear donated something like 1m euros so the kennels and cat houses are anything but the dreary places you see so often due to lack of funds. They have a policy not to put dogs down, so obviously there's a limit to the numbers of animals they can take. They've got some residents that are unlikely ever to find a home .... maoinly big, male dogs

I don't know if it's possible to go to the local Fourrière (dog pound) - those dogs really do need homes because they're put down after a certain time. It's surprising how many lost dogs turn up there.

[RobertArthur]

@ PE, and more: more procedures, protocols to be observed, an increasing load of paperwork, less time available for real work or a personal intake, please, don't disturb me, don't you see I'm working?, check and double check by those higher up in the hierarchy behind neat, clean desks, and more...

[Loup-garou]

A bit of thread drift - but it is about Rescued Dogs.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... elle-zevin

The discussion here reminded me of this article; if the link doesn't work please try it in Google - it is well worth a read for dog lovers.

Much of what is said chimes with us about our eldest Boy, Ranulf. He is coming up to 17 although (always difficult to pinpoint age with dogs found as strays) and we have had him for 15 plus years, a vet friend of mine suggesting he was about 15 - 18 months when he arrived.

He was discovered in a pound in Rochdale and was due to be put down the next day. The retired woman who found him spent her life visiting local authority pounds in her campervan and contacting bespoke UK Rescues to see if they had vacancies for dogs threatened with imminent death. Ranulf was lucky and she found him a spot in a Border Collie Rescue in Northamptonshire, a significant (although not unusual) round trip for her. We found him there and took him as he was a Border Collie crossed with a Catherine wheel! That is, he was full of energy, hyperactive and completely mad. We had three other full border collies then who, we felt sure, would calm him and show him the ropes. Eventually, that came to pass.

Nowadays, he is slow, hard of hearing, has recurring seizures, and is unstable with back legs that cross and trip him up frequently. He scrapes his back knuckles on the floor so
hard tracks and roads are no longer suitable for him. Nonetheless, he looks forward to and comes out for a one 1 k walk most morning with his four younger brothers: these walks always start with me helping him into the van but he jumps out when we arrive at soft grassy fields. He walks with me because he knows I had a replacement knee this year and need watching out for. He doesn't go on the afternoon walks with my wife now. Because of his raft of medication, he is always hungry so watches every move you make although this gets less and less as he sleeps soundly more and more. He loves the log burner, he beats his tail when you put another log on and wants to kiss you. Our aim/hope now is to get him into his 17th year as good as he is and cherish every day on that journey.

As a footnote, we took another dog - this time a full border collie - from the same Rescue and, when we arrived, Ranulf's guardian angle (ie the woman who first rescued him) was there with another delivery. She recognised Ranulf and asked us to all have our photos take together and then cried her eyes out.

Sorry for this long, difficult to write, post.