Christmas Adoptions And Other Bad Ideas...

Oreo has an opinion a minute on the "Shelter Home 4 The Holidays nightmare"  That, she feels is a more appropriate name for the lunacy being pushed at the moment. The comparison of the shelter dog to the "puppymill pet" is a nice try but no cigar, in Oreo's manual. 
We don't promote pet store purchases, but we don't deny anybodys right to choice either.  Nobody should be made to feel guilty because they don't want a maladjusted 65 pound pitbull for Christmas.  We don't think pets are appropriate Christmas gifts unless.......well we just don't !
It's a frantic time of year, the house is filled with people and things that are only going to interfere with the dogs ability to adapt.  Most definately a shelter dog should not be introduced during the melee.  Anyone who has ever worked with dogs knows that a frightened dog is a danger to those nearby, and Christmas with all it's drop-ins and noisy glitter is not the time to be bringing in a dog who probably spent their entire life in the backyard.  Not to say there are not some dogs that come into the shelter from loving homes who just lost everything; but the shelter envirionment is condusive to rapid decline in mental stability. Nothing rattles Ol' Oreo, and Burley has the same viewpoint, but the little new girl had a different  life experience.  She is a rehomed dog who had been treated well but not socialized ; and we believe, may have worked her way into the backyard with her rowdiness. She did fearful barking at everything.
At 5 month's old, when we got her, she had not done Halloween or Christmas, and those holidays are only learned through experience.  We brought her home in June,  thus we had a few months of working with her before trees started sprouting from her living room floor. Even with tons of exposure she had a few issues with those blow up things in people front yard.  She didn't like them and she let the world know.
 We prefer the imersion method of training, Oreo has always felt a dog trained in the basement would perform well, in the basement, and that is not what most of us want.  The problem with the Christmas surprise" feel good, look at me" adoption is; there is no way in hell to get the dog balanced enough to do that.  On her first Halloween, I walked Priss for hours past hissing twirling witches and goblins, until they became part of her background, like the web, just another troll...By her first Christmas she was leveling out from what she learned at Halloween, and the singing Santa's didn't put her on the ceiling.  It is unfair to take a dog from one frightening situation into another, unless you have the time to devote to helping it heal and balance out. Most people do not have that at Christmas.
As far as all the emotional appeals from the agencies pushing the dogs, guess what ?  Dogs don't recognize Christmas....nope even if Bitsy gets a Christmas Stocking, she won't thank Santa. 
Pictured is Oreo, trying to regain lost dignity....