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Adopting is the most effective way to break the cruel puppy factory supply chain — and by offering your heart and home to an rescued animal, you’ll not only be enriching your life — but saving theirs!
If you’re thinking about extending your family with a four-legged friend, here are seven great reasons to adopt from a rescue group or shelter:
1. They’ll Help You Find Your Soul Mate
All good rescue groups have an application process to ensure that you’ll be perfectly matched with your new friend — think of them as matchmakers! By finding out more about you, your living arrangements, and your lifestyle, they can match you up with the paw-fect candidate. The ultimate aim for pet rescue and adoption organizations is to find loving – and permanent – homes for the animals in their care. This means that both the animal and their new human companion need to be suited to each other. So the more information you can provide, the better you can assist in helping them help you find your four-legged soul mate!
2. You’re Helping to Break the Cruel Puppy Factory Cycle
As long as animals are purchased from pet shops and online, cruel puppy factories will continue to exist. Don’t let them take advantage of unwitting people — or subject dogs to lives of misery — in order to make a quick buck! Adopting from a rescue group or shelter is the simplest way to take a stand against puppy factory cruelty!
3. You’re Saving Someone Who Really Needs It
Rescue groups, foster networks, and animal shelters help animals who have been forgotten, abandoned, or given up on through no fault of their own. These animals ask for little more than the chance to share their lives with someone who loves them — especially those who have never been given the chance before. By adopting from a rescue group, you’ll not only be making a friend for life — you’ll be saving one.
4. They Help Every Breed in Need
From Border Collies to Bull Dogs, Burmese to British Shorthair – not to mention rabbits, guinea pigs, ferrets, and just about every companion animal you can think of … you can expect to see more than just mix-breed dogs and cats behind the wire of your local pound or shelter. Tragically, all types of companion animals are victims of cruelty and abandonment. All dog and cat breeds (indeed, all companion animals!) desire – and deserve – a loving home. So make adoption your first option whenever you’re in search of a new four-legged or feathered friend for life.
Due to the sheer volume of purebred and ‘designer’ dogs in need – many of whom would likely have come from puppy factories – volunteers have established groups with the aim of assisting these dogs with finding their forever homes. For a list of rescue groups facilitating rescue and adoption in Australia, check out PetRescue’s rehoming directory.
5. Your Adoption Fee Goes Back Into Helping More Animals
Good rescue groups will ensure that any dogs, puppies, cats, and kittens adopted out will come vaccinated, desexed, wormed, and microchipped — all of which is included in the adoption fee. Often, animals are cared for by dedicated, volunteer foster carers until their forever home can be found. This allows for them to be properly assessed in a home environment — which can be really helpful if you already live with animals or children, as foster carers can provide helpful insight on the behavior of animals in their care. So your money is not only going towards making sure your new friend is happy and healthy, but you’ll be giving it back to an organization so that they can save more lives. You can’t get a better deal than that!
6. They Give Oldies Another Chance
Older animals are tragically often the last to be chosen — and the first to be euthanized. Senior dogs and cats can find it particularly difficult to cope in strange environments like shelters and pounds, but thankfully there are rescue groups assisting in the transport and foster care of these special animals, with the aim of getting them into more suitable environments — and matching them with someone who can provide the love and friendship they are only too happy to return. We like to think of older dogs and cats as ‘friendship experts’ — after all, they’ve got years of experience behind them!
7. You’ll be Saving More Than One Life
Every time an animal is adopted to a forever home, a place is opened up in the rescue and foster care network for another animal in need. So when you take your bestie home from a rescue group, they’ll be able to start the rescue cycle over again with another lucky animal. One kind act = two saved lives!
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I wish the shelters would emphasize #5 more often. I know people might complain about adoption fees, but unlike the pet stores, SHELTERS AREN\’T IN IT FOR THE MONEY. You\’re not paying upwards of $150 to $200 for your dog. Consider it this way, you\’re not buying a dog for the money. You\’re donating to the shelter, and their way of thanking you is by letting you bring home one of their animals.