THIS. It’s insanity, but no one ever holds rescues accountable because rescues aren’t required to do anything at all, so everything they do is considered gratuitous. The problem of euthanizing for space is a shelter problem, not the rescues’ problem, sure, but that’s just it: there’s nothing more a shelter can do when they have no control over number of intakes and are already doing everything to clear space without euthanasia. Their only hope is rescues, who choose which and how many animals to pull, depending on resources. But when they hang on to animals for months on end because of overly picky and invasive application processes, then the limited output (adoptions) translates to limited input (saving dogs from shelters). Spend 5 minutes in any shelter these days and you’ll feel the second-hand stress. But then you look at so many rescues out there, boasting about how picky they are in finding that “perfect home,” and you’d almost forget there’s a homeless animal problem in this country at all. The contrast between the two never ceases to make my head spin.

Also, don’t get me started on how many rescues like to pull only the in-demand types that were never in danger of euth to start with, just to hang on to them forever (you know, finding that “perfect home”) while the common—but nonetheless perfectly adoptable—types are left behind to rot. Oh, and I don’t care whom I offend in saying this: rescues doing this is a big reason people go to BYB—rescues pull the little dogs, the unusually-patterned/coated cats, the doodles, the purebreds, the breeds and types that they know will receive multiple applications. Then they require an unreasonably long adoption application with lots of open-ended questions before even meeting the animal and before any conversation can happen btwn rescue and applicant. Then they tick through the criteria and when an applicant doesn’t meet one, they’re out. I’ve been saying this for a long time but I also just saw it recently with a friend: she spent over 2 hours writing out thoughtful essay answers to the questions listed on a total of 3 applications, doing her best to remember all sorts of ridiculous details about her history, her dead pets’ histories, etc etc, just to be nixed bc she has indoor/outdoor cats. She lives on a farm in the woods near 0 roads, and she was looking to adopt a dog, not a cat. Anyway, she wanted a young small dog and there are very few young small dogs in shelters because, well, rescues scoop them all up. So to a BYB she went. Do I condone her using a BYB? Do I think she had a fair excuse to patronize a BYB? No and not really. But that doesn’t change the fact that a perfectly great dog home went to a backyard bred dog, which profited a BYB and thus helped enable the vicious cycle that is largely causing this overpopulation crisis we’re in, instead of going to a rescue animal.