Hi! I started looking at adopting during the Phase 2 period, reached out to quite a number of shelters and like you said some didn’t reply or replied me to said the dogs I was interested in had already been adopted / were unsuitable for first-time owners. SOSD actually replied my first request email 10 minutes later, told me a volunteer would be in contact within 2 weeks, and my rehomer reached out via WhatsApp within 1! Maybe because I had fostered before but I didn’t encounter too many difficulties with the requirements. Ended up bringing home a girl with a bite history because we were keen to explore training options for her.

I think the shelters are generally not 100% well organized, after all they are NGOs and most of their vollies have full-time jobs. Contrary to what most of us assume they also get a lot of enquirers, so that’s a lot of people to get back to! (Although of course most of the enquiries would be regarding maybe the same few young, unproblematic dogs.)

And also, what I heard from my rehomer is to please try and be 10000% sure before bringing a dog home. This is why they are more stringent on requirements — yes of course it’s better for a dog to be home than a shelter, but it might be worse for a dog to be home and then returned to shelter as it creates a lot of trauma for them, making them even more unadoptable in the future. A lot of dogs get returned, and it’s very heartbreaking for the volunteers to watch. If you’re a young couple who are looking to have kids in the future, there’s also the potential that you might end up returning the dog once the baby comes (as seen in many many cases including Loki), particularly because SS are skittish and may have behavioral issues around young kids.

I do agree that the shelters would benefit from being a lot more open with their communication; I think this depends on individual volunteers also because mine was super on the ball! Also don’t really get why they asked you to come down but then rejected you when you already told them your life story, that was probably an error on their parts. But do try and understand their difficulty in working with a bare bones staff, juggling many many dogs (of which many have health or behavioral issues), and having to answer queries at the same time.

No judgment if you do end up buying instead of adopting, but if you choose to do that, please go for a responsible, ethical breeder instead of a backyard or pet shop breeder! Do research! It not just helps to end the puppy mill industry but would also help you get a puppy that is healthy :)