Adopt an Older Animal and Get More Love with Less Work

Everyone seems to want a kitten or a puppy. I'm always surprised at the reasoning and lack of the "total picture". A puppy will need housebreaking, a puppy will be teething so all your shoes, toys, misc. are going to be prime target for that mouthful of new teeth, a puppy is newly separated from it's mom and will need an awful lot of extra special attention. You will probably have to sleep with the little thing for a couple of nights or resign yourself to a sad, crying pup. A puppy is untrained. You will be looking at months of training, sit, heel, stay, come, heel and more. It will most likely need to attend obedience school if you want a rally well trained animal. You will have to get it socialized, get it used to driving in a car, get it used to a leash and harness and more. There will be numerous accidents. In other words a puppy is a lot of work.

A kitten is usually litter trained but still needs a lot of socialization those first few weeks and guess what within a few weeks that tiny little ball of fluff wil be a , yes, you guessed it! A cat!

Your puppy and kitten doesn't remain at that cutesy stage for long. Within weeks you have a more grown up looking pet anyway.

When you go to the Shelters you are bound to see endless cages of older dogs and cats that need homes. No one seems to want them and they are the neediest. If you are older an older animal is much better as a match. They will be more sedentary and they will be house broken. The chewing, gawky, get into trouble stage will have been long gone. They will be leash trained , housebroken, calmer and less likely to be tearing up your home.Many come beautifully trained. They will already be socialized, they will know how to get along with a family. The Doberman Pinchers I adopted came trained like litle soldiers. It was fascinating to find out all the things they already knew. It was a pelasure to have all that done for me already.

Older adopted animals will still be affectionate and loyal, some seem even more so. They seem to recognize that you've saved them from being euthenized. They seem to appreciate being given a good home. It's as though they know they've escaped death's doors.

I not only adopt the older animals I adopt the ones with problems. I didn't intend to d this originally but that seems to be my path. I have an 8 year old Chihuahua that was hours away from death row. He had been labelled fear aggressive and was on the schedule to be put to sleep when I came across him. I've worked with him , taken him to school and have managed to make quite a bit of progress. It's been a long eight years but it makes me proud to see the changes in him. Not everyone wants to sign up for this kind of work but its rewarding. There are online sites where you can adopt dogs with only hours to live.

Think about the older animals when you think about getting a new pet. The Shelter prices are very reasonable and your pet will be neutered and have all it's shots usually fo runder $100. Some Shelters even chip the animals before adopting them out. Shelters often have pure breed dogs or a wait list for a pure breed dog or cat. There are also pure breed Rescue organizations for every breed. Look up any breed name with .com after the word i.e. ChihuahuaRescue.com or Beaglerescue.com . You will be saving a life and you will have done something very rewarding.