Columbus, Ohio's Pets Without Parents: Avoid at All Costs!

Last fall, my husband and I decided that we wanted to adopt a dog. We began our search on Petfinder.com. Petfinder.com allows you to search through all the adoptable cats, dogs, rabbits, horses, and other pets in your area.

We stumbled upon a Columbus, Ohio, organization called Pets Without Parents. PWP is a non-profit, no-kill, all-breed dog and cat shelter. We fell in love with pictures of an adorable German Shepherd named Gage. So we visited the PWP shelter.

My first impression of the Pets Without Parents shelter was that it was very small and cramped. There is one room at the front for the cats, who are in crates, and then towards the back are the dogs. I was appalled to see that the dog crates are stacked on top of each other. Not a lot of room for the animals to stretch or play. We took Gage on a short walk, but there is no fenced-in area for the animals to play outside. The facility is tiny and located next-door to abandoned, graffiti-laced buildings.

But we were not deterred by the living conditions. It is a non-profit, no-kill shelter that is only a temporary place for the animals to live until they are adopted into loving homes. That is, if Pets Without Parents actually lets anyone adopt their animals... See, we filled out an application to adopt Gage. Both my husband and I have stable incomes and we are homeowners. We eagerly provided several character references, and there should have been no red flags raised. We applied for adoption on a Saturday and were told we would hear back from the organization on Monday. So we waited... and waited.

We called in to Pets Without Parents to check up on our status, and were first told that the supervisor was gone until Wednesday. So in the meantime, we called our references to see if they had been contacted. They had, but one was more or less rudely interrogated by the PWP folks. This was our first sign that this organization wasn't as good as it appeared. My husband & I kept waiting and waiting to hear back. We called in to check up multiple times but were met with the same excuses, "we will get back to you soon," "the supervisor left for the day," etc. We checked in on their website to see if Gage's profile was still there. To our surprise it said that he was already adopted! But not by us! We never bothered to contact PWP again, and they never contacted us back to tell us why we had not been approved for adoption..

This was several months ago, and we are pleased to have added a wonderful boxer/beagle to our home. Daisy was adopted from the wonderful Delaware County Humane Society, who approved us within 30 minutes. Our experience with Pets Without Parents still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.. I don't understand why our calls were ignored, why our references were treated rudely, and why Gage was apparently not even available for adoption when we put in our application. If it was a clerical error, perhaps a mistake made by a volunteer, showing us Gage when another family had already put in to adopt him, then why didn't anyone have the professionalism to just come out and tell us? Ignoring us and never calling us back is not the way to get business. If these animals so desperately need permanent homes, then why make it impossible for a loving family to adopt them?

I firmly believe that adoption is the way to go, but please consider the many other adoption agencies in Central Ohio before you visit Pets Without Parents.