DeeDee, a foster mother I dealt with was incredibly rude and frankly, insulting. Two hours after I sent in my application I received an email saying:
"Thank you for your application. As I said in her bio, she is a very active dog and needs to go to a home with another dog or an active family. She needs a lot of exercise and plays for hours with the other dogs. I'm afraid she wouldn't do well in an apartment. Good luck with your search for a rescue companion."
Yes, I was aware that in the dog's bio she is very active and that's what we want. We have an active nine year old, and we are in fact an active family. I think she stopped reading the application when she read "apartment" because I don't think she got the memo that I'm a homemaker and have all day to play and exercise with this dog. We live near the Minneapolis chain of lakes and also have a dog park nearby, etc. I had taken all of that into consideration prior to applying. And yes, we live in an apartment, but according to the website it said, "Upon receiving a completed application, we conduct a phone interview, reference review, and a home visit." So during the phone interview, which never happened, I planned to share with them that our apartment is indeed our home in the city, but we own an 800 acre farm just outside of the city, which is where we spend our summers and many of our wknds. And so in her "bio" it said she loves car rides- perfect! We also spend a lot of time with my parents at their 200 acre farm and they have a lab that we'd need "our dog" to get along with, so we liked that the dog we were applying for is very dog friendly. And then, well, the home visit, they'd see we actually have a nice sized apartment. Anyway, I'm insulted that they judged us from the application alone. I wanted to snap back and say you don't even know us, how dare you make those false assumptions. But I kept my composure, and sent a nice email back asking if they by chance had any other dogs I was interested in and I got a short, rude reply saying "No we don't have any." That was it. Perhaps she could have been a little nicer and said, "No, I'm sorry, we don't have any other dogs you are interested in at the moment." OR, at the very least, perhaps try and find us a different dog that needs a loving home within their organization, maybe? But that response topped it off for me- she was just flat out rude and of no help whatsoever. I told all my family and friends about our experience and they've all agreed she was out of line- she has no idea how big our apartment is or anything about us for that matter. And hex, the dog we were interested in is small....we have people in our building with labs/retrievers, which are big dogs. The dog we wanted was 1/3 the size of a lab or retriever! Overall, I had a very unpleasant experience trying to adopt a dog through their organization and have made every effort to spread the word. I don't want anyone else to have to go through the time doing research, searching and filling out an application, only to be turned down without them getting to know you. Let alone, having to explain to my child why he can't have this particular dog he wants, was heartbreaking. read more
