Bark N Wag 15 Minute Vet Talk

You are listening to Bark & Wag’s 15 Minute Vet Talk and I am your host Polly ReQua. Today we are talking with Dr. Susan McMillan, owner of Vet to Pet Mobile Veterinary Service in Burlington, Vermont to shed light on shelter dogs.  With somewhere between 5 and 7 million homeless animals entering U.S. animal shelters, it’s unconscionable to suggest, as one writer did in the Washington Post, that adopting a pet from an animal shelter is a bad idea. (See a comprehensive refutation from Washington Humane Society’s Lisa Lafontaine.) But as ridiculous as anti-shelter arguments are, they reveal destructive myths about shelter animals that need to be called out every time they arise. I’m sharing some of the most persistent ones below, and have enlisted help from ASPCA shelter science experts to help dispel them. Myth: The major reasons dogs end up in shelters is because they were seized in criminal cases, or were too aggressive to own safely. More than half of all dogs and cats in shelters were received as strays