Posted by QuickReadAbout.com Staff in The best dog you’ll ever own will probably come from an animal shelter. Oh, you can spend as many dollars as you want to spend to buy purebred dogs, but you don’t have to do that. Every county in every state across America has an animal shelter. These are county-funded operations for the purpose of keeping stray animals off the streets and highways.
The animals that end up in animal shelters are sometimes simply lost and they’re reclaimed by their owners quickly, but some of the animals that are in animal shelters are what I call “throwaways.” People thought they wanted a dog, but it turns out that they really don’t want a dog. So, in order to solve the problem, they simply drop the poor dog off at the local animal shelter and go their merry way without a backward glance or any thought about what will happen to the dog they are abandoning.
What will happen to the dog, unless some kind soul adopts him, is death. He’ll be euthanized…put to sleep…KILLED. Hundreds of thousands of perfectly healthy dogs that would make wonderful and devoted companions are killed every day. There are, of course, “no kill” shelters; but these shelters are privately funded, and there’s not nearly enough of them.
I believe that a dog that is adopted from an animal shelter realizes that they’ve been saved from certain death. Their devotion to their savior is unbounded.
If you’re considering adopting a dog, before you go out and buy a dog, go to your local animal shelter and take a look at the dogs that you can adopt for almost nothing. Of course, many of the dogs are mixed breeds, but you’ll also find dogs that are obviously pure breeds. Unless you’re planning to groom a dog for the show ring, it doesn’t matter what his pedigree is.