devdev511

So I’d say “lately” as more of the last 6 months to a year? Which i know is more of a wider range of time but it’s honestly been ever since covid 19 sent us into lockdown. When people realized they had to stay at home 24/7 a lot of people were bored and decided to adopt puppies they weren’t prepared for. So about 3-6 months after people started going back to work we started having plenty of returns/owner surrenders from other shelters. Basically all these people were returning dogs they felt they didn’t have the time or commitment for but a good 80% of these dogs were covid puppies. Unfortunately for covid puppies they missed out on a lot of normal puppy activities. One of the most important ages for dogs is the 2-5 month range and that’s because they socialize with other dogs and people very well at that age and they absorb more information and training, but with most of these dogs passing by that age in isolation without meeting any strangers or other dogs they’ve built up these fears of them instead. So we’ve had a lot of challenging cases of stranger danger and dog reactivity. Basically if you were to walk through the backside of the shelter you’d think dogs were fighting because of how reactive some of these dogs are.

When Our rescue huskies Rex and Fiona went home, they were with us for over a year and went from being scared of everything to a happy bonded pair. they were rescued from a puppy mill that we helped rescue after getting shut down. They were a miracle case with like 20 restrictions and we had people literally build a 7 foot fence at a new property because they wanted them that bad.

Honestly? A lot of crying. this week alone I had to say goodbye to atleast 8 of some of our longest term dogs who had been returned and either had an bite in the home due to an unseen factor, gotten out and interacted with dogs poorly, and or had been returned and had been on their last strike kinda deal. I understand that people can’t always keep the dog ESPECIALLY when it’s unsafe for your family or current dog. It’s just hard seeing the dog you know CAN be perfect acting poorly with someone new and unfortunately being euthanized. Unfortunately I love hard and when i do it’s typically the ones who don’t make it, as my fiancé would say you see the good in the job and the work you do instead of the bad but you always keep your heart open. and we have a full service vet clinic with two vets so we do our best to try everything before euthanasia.

So personally our shelter doesn’t normally label the breeds, we are legally obligated to follow what’s on their rabies tags. i’ve seen labs labeled as pits stay in shelters for months because of a damn rabies tag. They absolutely sugar coat things as well because atleast at our shelter they are written by volunteers. but we our required here to read you all of their behavior notes not sugar coated!

as for extra reading i’ll try to look into that for more concrete information for you all but basically dogs who missed out on their socialization window deal with more aggression and fear based reactivity.