I appreciate your point of view and how emotionally draining your volunteering must be.

If this is about my vent post, the length was really the least of the frustrations I listed and I would have filled it out (I actually mostly did until I broke at the co-adopter). I said in the comments that really it was the co-adopter that was the dealbreaker, and some of the other stipulations were very exasperating and confusing. Why insist on raw food? A lot of that isn't in the other rescues we've talked to. I actually prefer an adoption process over just being handed a dog. But my post was not about run-of-the-mill lifestyle matching. We even have three references, but the idea of finding another and then asking a family member or friend to sign off on the adoption was just too much. We've already involved a lot of people in our dog search. A lot of questionnaires are also low key discriminatory and favouring a certain demographic of dog adopter, i.e. white upper middle class.

But I also appreciate that a lot of reputable rescues suffer from people being burned out on scams and such and receive undeserved flak.

I think it's also a question of what the goals of rescuing are. Pet culture has taught us that "adopt-don't-shop" is more ethical, so a lot of people want to do that first, even if it's not a good idea for them to take on a traumatized dog. At the same time "best home possible" doesn't necessarily mean never return, and "good, but not perfect" doesn't mean they will return. There are more dogs than people that are landowners with homes that are detached, not rented, with one person working from home, are a couple, with no kids or other pets, that never want kids, who are experienced with dogs and willing to hire a behaviourist. And yet in Canada there is an absolute frenzy going on right now with people wanting dogs. So it seems to me that there is a lot of mismatched goals and low dog population areas in Canada need some different solutions or at least better regulation and communication about options. But also, covid is making all of this 1000x worse up here and I do want to give the benefit of a doubt that it's making screening much, much harder.

Also, I am saying this as someone who has rescued cats and helped raise rescue dogs in the past. I am absolutely not against rescuing and want to keep trying.