I realise we're always saying that we are busy at Lab Rescue, but it's honestly the truth! There's always something to be done and there's never enough time to do it all.
The last couple of days have been incredibly busy with people contacting us about rehoming their dogs. Each have their own reasons and unfortunately we can't always help them all.
Many rescue groups refuse to take in privately surrendered dogs. When I first joined Lab Rescue Linda and Katherine were tearing their hair out over it! Unfortunately many people who surrender their dog to us don't realise how much work goes into rehoming them. They think it's quick money for us and that they are doing us a favour by giving us a dog for free. It's not always the case, but it only takes a couple to be burnt by this attitude.
We once had a dog who was only a couple of months old surrendered to us. He was still so young he wasn't fully grown. He was showing typically lab puppy behaviour which was too much for their young family. Knowing we had the space and the time, we decided to transport the dog from Sydney to Canberra to rehome him.
The day we were going to pick up the dog we were contacted by the owner who explained that the family was distraught over giving the dog up and wanted to give it another go. We were sympathetic but a little frustrated at the amount of work we went through to organise transport. It's hard to ask for favours all the time and we had just facilitated a pick up and drop off just for this dog.
We gave the family a few tips and hoped for the best. We weren't sure how successful they would be since they didn't sound so receptive. There was nothing more to do, so we just moved on.
A couple of days later we got news that the dog was being sold on gumtree for $500.
We happened to know the person who ended up buying the dog and they said that the family had bought another puppy a few days after selling their labrador.
So please understand that although we save dogs from the pound frequently and rather successfully, we are a little suspicious of people surrendering their dogs. Above everything else we wish that Labs didn't need to be rehomed, either via the pound or through a private rehoming. We wish that organisations like us had absolutely nothing to do.
The worst decision we have to make is to decide whether we take in a surrendered lab into foster care. How do we prioritise that dog's life over a dog in a pound? And if we have a foster carer free, what happens if we get an influx of labs in the pounds? Where do we put the new dogs then?
This is why many rescue has a blanket rule to all private surrenders, asking them to rehome their dogs themselves. They encourage people to put up posters, facilitate meet and greets and assess new homes themselves. They do this with a massive amount of guilt, since they know that it's very likely that intact dogs go to backyard breeders. Or the dogs get dumped in pounds, or even bounce between homes.
We try to have a balanced approach. We are passionate about people committing to dogs forever, and we're unashamedly unforgiving with this point of view. If you are giving up your dog (in our opinion) it's a heartbreaking, horrible outcome for both you and your dog. There's no 'good' reason for such a break up, it's just a bad situation.
We're lucky with our website at Lab Rescue, we have a great web system and a very goodlooking web administrator to go with it (me!). We've created a system that allows us to advertise approved dogs online for a donation to our work. The actual rehoming process, the meet and greet, the paperwork and any transport is all held responsible by the original owner of the dog. This means that we only have to approve of the dog and communicate with original owners. This cuts out a lot of headache for us!
We don't let just any dog on our website. They obviously have to be a labrador, preferably pure and can't have any aggression issues. (although we can't prove this, it's up the the people applying for the dog to check this out). It's part of our licence that all dogs who are associated with Lab Rescue are desexed, and it's something we take seriously.
So if you are considering rehoming your lab, please understand if we are a bit gruff with you. Please understand that we put a lot of work into making sure that our labs go to good homes, it's really sad (and personal) for us to see that a lab hasn't had the privilege of having the best home life so far.
Finally, thank you to everyone out there who are considering adopting a rescue dog. By adopting a rescue dog your stopping the cycle of unnecessary breeding, and hopefully providing FOREVER homes for these lucky little dogs!
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