ALMOST as soon as Michele Pusateri and her two daughters chose a black-and-white terrier at a humane society shelter near their home in South Pasadena, Calif., they were told they did not qualify to own the dog.
Mrs. Pusateri took her daughters, Mira and Zoe, back twice more and met with different adoption counselors. Each time she got a no. "It was insane," Mrs. Pusateri said. "Their concern was that I had never had a dog in my life and that I had a 6-year-old daughter."
Her chances of pet ownership didn't improve when she turned to groups whose mission is to rescue abused and unwanted pets. She found herself explaining to her crying children that they couldn't adopt because the organizations suspected the family had a hole in the backyard fence or the yard was too small.
Ultimately Mrs. Pusateri went to the county animal shelter last May and found Piper, a mutt. She paid $80 for the dog to be spayed and picked her up two days later, to the girls' delight.
The process left Mrs. Pusateri thinking that animal adoption gatekeepers can be so concerned about their charges that they forget about the people in the equation. "They make you jump though all these emotional hoops," she said. "You feel so judged. You start wondering, Am I dog worthy?"
Even as adopting a stray dog or cat — rather than buying one from a store or breeder — has become politically fashionable, a badge of pride for some because of the millions of animals that are euthanized each year, the hurdles that some humane societies and rescue groups make potential owners leap — including multipage applications, references, background checks, interviews and home visits — can make the process feel nearly as daunting as adopting a child.
Animal adoption groups say they want to avoid giving pets to owners who will abuse them and, perhaps more important, to make sure an animal that has been given up once will find a permanent home. Yet would-be adopters who expect exacting standards from top breeders are surprised when shelters and rescue groups ask more from them than a pulse. Many families feel stung when they are denied and are left to ask: Is it better for the animal never to find a home than to live with us?
While some 8 million to 12 million dogs and cats end up in shelters in the United States each year, and 4 to 6 million are euthanized, those who place pets say that the high standards they demand of owners rarely leave animals without homes. Eventually almost everyone who wants an animal will get one, somewhere. So why put would-be adopters through a process that makes them feel inadequate, their privacy invaded?
"The home visit weirds out a lot of people," said Jill Blasdel-Cortus, the president of Dachshund Rescue of North America, a network of about 100 volunteers, who give temporary homes to daschshunds claimed from overcrowded shelters or families who surrender them because of a behavior problem or lifestyle change. The group places the dogs in permanent homes. "We're not going to judge if you've dusted or if it's clean," Ms. Blasdel-Cortus said.
Nonetheless she defends the practice of requiring would-be adopters to fill out three-page applications that ask if the home is owned or rented, as well as open-ended questions like, "If your dog bit a child at a backyard barbecue, what would you do?"
References are checked. The home is visited. Adopters must sign a contract specifying the care of the dog. In the last nine years the dachshund group has placed some 4,300 dogs, Ms. Blasdel-Cortus said, and she could recall only one family turned down after a home visit, because it lived in an upstairs apartment with rickety stairs and refused to carry the dog up and down.
"I am a dog advocate," Ms. Blasdel-Cortus said. "I'm not a people advocate. If you don't want to fill out the form, go to your local shelter. Some people may find that uncooperative, but a rescued dog is not for everyone."
Animal rescue groups, which seem demanding in approving new homes for their charges, are part of a "very intense, very big and rapidly expanding movement," said Jon Katz, who has written about them in "The New Work of Dogs" (Villard, 2003).
He estimates the number of people involved in rescue (the overwhelming majority of them women) in the tens of thousands. An animal rescuer can be an established urban nonprofit shelter or a woman in Idaho with a Web site. Sometimes a rescuer travels hundreds of miles to meet another, who has traveled hundreds of miles with a pet, in a sort of underground railroad handoff.
Cocker Spaniel Rescue of New England will not place a dog with a family with children under 7, said Gerry Foss, its president. German Shepherd Rescue, in Burbank, Calif., receives six dogs a day from people who don't want them, said Grace Konosky, the founder, and she denies about 70 percent of the people who want to adopt them.
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