Today some pictures of the cutest, fluffiest little dog needing a home strayed across my Facebook timeline. So many comments from people on how beautiful she was and how they’d so like to give her a home. She WAS beautiful too. But people were wanting to offer her a home purely on what she looked like? How crazy is that? OK, aesthetic appeal matters and I’d be lying if I didn’t say some dogs attract me visually more than others. But when offering a dog a home what it looks like surely is the least important thing to consider?

Meet Poppy a collie I owned. Poppy was very pretty. I had people say ‘She bites? But she’s so pretty!’ as though prettiness excluded any desire to bite people! I knew her history – she was born and reared (presumably with minimal human input) on a Welsh puppy farm and ended up in a pet shop in South London/Surrey before she was 8 weeks old. That she was unsuited to a pet home in an urban area with first time dog owners who had no car to take her to parks or dog training classes, no experience or knowledge to make good decisions about her, let alone deal with the issues such a poorly bred and reared dog would inevitably bring, seemed not to bother the pet shop owner. He sold her to them anyway. It did not work out well.

By 9 months old she was probably going to be euthanised because she was scary, scared, stressed and aggressive. It was sheer chance she ended up with me and I was able to give her a home which I hope was more suited to her needs and give her less cause to want to bite people.

We see so many dogs these days ending up in homes where those dogs and puppies that have NO experience of a life in a home, with people in their lives, wanting to fuss and cuddle them, or take them on leads for walks and expect them to meet other dogs and people – experience a toally alien life – under circumstances they’d never choose for themselves. Up close and personal when that may be the very last thing they want or need. They may have been shut in sheds and barns or shelters with no experience of the lives they are now forced to lead.

That their rearing and experiences are so wrong on so many levels is indisputable. That many learn to cope over time – because they have to – does that mean we should put them through it without a lot of hard thinking first?

So what are the alternatives? That raises other questions and dilemmas for another blog. I guess if we had all the answers we’d not see these dogs struggling and we wouldn’t feel we had to make appeals for good homes based on how ‘pretty’ or superficially attractive a dog is.