I absolutely had my heart on going through a rescue, but i have now been turned down by 6 different places because i have no fence. I even got approved today, we were scheduling a pick up time & place & i mentioned how much of a spoiled inside dog she was gonna be & she said " She's not housetrained, she's an outside dog." I said housetraining her would not be a problem that my dogs stayed inside like the rest of the family. She pops the question about having a fence & she said we couldn't have the dog. It just broke my heart & my husband said he couldn't watch me go through that anymore & we would find a good breeder. This should be fun, lol.

Ugh I know how frustrating that is! We went through 2 other potential adoptions and each one broke our hearts... I'm so sorry you went through that. When we had those issues I was so livid! At the time, Koda was a teenager and we were like, "We have a teenage male husky and we STILL want another!! HOW is there any question as to whether or not we'd be a good home?!" I totally feel your pain

Check out the How to Find a Reputable Breeder Thread to get you started. Good luck! And again, I'm sorry!

We tried to adopt a Malamute just before we got Shelby. My husband and I own a small deli about 8 blocks from our home. We usually come home twice a day during our 8 hour shift to let the dogs out, and we do not work at all on the weekends. We were all set to get Parker. The rescue was very happy with us and she knew we both worked. When we started talking about working together, she asked how long our current dog is home alone for. We explained how close we are to home, and so on, and she told us we were unfit dog owners. . UNFIT?? Seriously?

I was so upset by it, I did the same thing. I "rescued" a backyard breeder puppy. We bought our Shelby from a Backyard breeder. The woman had 22 dogs of her own, 9 of which were huskies. She had an "accidental" litter. Now we weren't purposly looking for "bad" breeder, but after we saw the puppies, we had to do something. The mother had quit feeding them at about 4 weeks old. They were living under her dog house in the mud. We came back to the woman when the pups were 5 weeks old and tried to get her to let us take Shelby that day. She refused and said she had to be 6 weeks. Well. . we went back and got her 7 days later, and her mom had bit her in the head! She had a puntcure wound above her eye and below her ear! We paid for her and took her straight to the vet!

Dog Rescues do a wonderful thing, but don't think for two seconds that I don't feel like what I did for Shelby was nothing more then rescuing her from a horrid situation. And Yes, we reported the breeder. Sometimes things just happen for the right reason.

It's most definitely a difficult subject and there is no right answer. What do you do when the pups are already born and in a bad situation? I don't blame you, nor do I judge you or anyone that does as you did. Sometimes you just stumble across a situation and need to act.

Fact of the matter is though, as much as I recognize that those things happen and am glad for the people that are there to rescue dogs from bad situations, it also doesn't mean that I would recommend or suggest looking for those situations. If someone wants to start looking for a puppy, I point them to the resources to find the reputable sources.

That being said, I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.

I 100% agree! We will try to get our next husky from a Rescue. No doubt about it. We will deffinately try that first!

I am the Board VP for our local Animal Shelter. I support anyone who helps out animals in need!

I'm working on getting ours and their training up to snuff, then I intend on registering with our local husky rescues as a foster home I work from home, so it's a pretty good situation I think. We do what we can to support rescue, so yeah, I think we're 100% on the same page

That's too bad. I don't get why a rescue would turn down a good owner who already has husky experience just because they don't have a fenced in yard. It seems a little lazy to me. My mom does all breed rescue and she tries hard to find good homes for the dogs, but she's not that strict to write off someone just because one thing makes them a little iffy.

And as for being unfit when you come home twice during an 8 hour shift, what the heck?! If that was the case, a lot of really good dog owners would be "unfit." That's just a bad reason to not adopt out a dog when there are so many homeless ones.

I think there's a huge lack of professionalism in the two I've dealt with, and I read stuff like this all over the internet. I understand they are volunteers, but you have to have some sliver of people skills when dealing with PEOPLE. Maybe it's the raw emotions that make some of them crazy, but that doesn't fly with me. I'm the kind of person that holds a grudge (ZERO Emerson products in this house BTW), and when an entity does something I don't like I move along to the next one never to return. Makes it slightly tougher with sled dogs because there's only one breed rescue in this state. But if you hold on long enough, some unprepared Husky owner will post his "free to good home" sled head on craigslist and it will all work out. Sioux was free, Coco was $40 and Ridik's owners practically paid me to take him. There are plenty of ways to find Huskies/Malamutes for adoption in Colorado without going through an organization.



I know of a breeder in North Carolina...

I am so not a fan of the one rescue that I've dealt with so far. Again, the guy has no people skills. What's more is that the same dogs that were up for adoption two years ago are still listed, with more added on to the pile. Just seems like people are too willing to overlook a good home because they assume ALL people are dumb. Ask your questions, do your research on the family, sure.... but denying dogs from people for a small set of sometimes arbitrary criteria is just silly IMO. When I was in Potsdam, I was turned down from FOUR rescues when I already had Koda!

Koda was a rescue referral, so we barely went through the rescue on that one and he was free. We found one off of petfinder, but she spent 4 days with us before the previous owners begged for her back. Another we found at a shelter, but the owners came back from vacation after a month to claim her right before we adopted her. Then Hailey was a referral from that same shelter and she was free too.

To me it's about patience and research to find the right rescue.

After spending all night checking out breeders in this state & the surrounding states i found 1 breeder that seemed perfect & although they said they had never had to replace a puppy due to genetic defect & they did everything possible to prevent hip dysplasia i did not see CERF or OFA. I still feel pretty strongly about trying to do rescue despite the repeated upsets. I think for now i'll just keep checking Petfinder & Craigslist & the local classifieds. Somebodys gotta give in sometime, lol.

if i got turned down that many times i would just go behind their backs ask a friend or family member with a fenced yard to do the adoption and then have them hand the dog over to you after wards, are the rescues really gonna come check later?

We got Sierra for free on CL and Jack we adopted from Polaris husky rescue with a $150 donation.

sdunford wrote:

i did not see CERF or OFA.

I would still ask them for them. It's sketchy if they can't provide that... really strange.

But yeah- it took us 6 months to find Koda and about 3 to find Hailey. It's not a quick and painless process by any means, but it was worth it for us

I do independent Siberian rescue (not a 501c3) and I can say it's not easy from any aspect. Don't get me wrong, very rewarding work but it's difficult to walk the line on what is an acceptable home and what isn't. The best way I can describe it is like a job interview and a lot of information is presented but most of the time it comes down to a gut feeling. The thing that impresses me the most is perspective adopters that know the breed, people that are okay with me doing a home visit (whether I actually do or not), willing to provide a vet reference if they are a current dog owner and those that their lifestyle matches the energy level of the dog. Huskies especially attract adopters that just want the pretty puppy and have no clue as to what the breed is about.

Lots of huskies end up in shelters do to the fact they are escape artists, most of the remaining ones are surrendered by people because the cute puppy grew up and they had no idea about the breed.

I do feel strongly however if we as a society are ever going to see the day when thousands of dogs aren't killed in shelters we need to support rescue and not those who make money off of treating animals as property. Just my 2 cents.

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I have stopped filling out adoption papers & just started e-mailing local rescues & telling them upfront that i have no fence but i have a happy healthy husky with plenty of room for more. If i don't hear back from any of them i'll just keep hoping something pops up on craigslist or classifieds.

You should make a trip down here to FL. There are a lot of huskies on CL and they are often in shelters around here.