Comments on: Why Ellen DeGeneres is wrong

By: Sandra

Sandra — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 00:41:19 +0000

I’m on Ellen’s side. As one who has adopted numerous dogs, I feel that many of the rescue groups have gone from offering a good service to being absolute control freaks. My most recent adoption was a good example. The group had a “home visit report” that was 5 pages long and nothing short of an interrogation. The adoption contract contained all sorts of “musts,” such as how I “must” notify them of any move, “must” notify them before euthanizing the dog, etc. They even wanted the microchip contact information to stay in their name. What’s the point of owning a pet if the adoption agency retains control? Also, how is it that an adopter is entrusted with all of the life decisions and costs for the pet (medical care, food, etc.) and not the decision to place the pet in a better home if things are not going as planned? Some rescues seem to have have taken the stance that an adopter is guilty until proven innocent. The logic escapes me. A person who would be low enough to do a pet harm isn’t going to give a rats-you-know-what about contracts … and potential good owners are scared away. I know that I will never again adopt from a private rescue group. I will be going to the county shelters from now on.

By: Sarah Netter

Sarah Netter — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:36:44 +0000

Leela I must respectfully disagree with you. First, one does not “adopt” an animal from a pet store. They buy them, unless the store is holding some kind of adoption drive (such as Petsmart’s drives for example.) Adoption fees are tyically between $50 and $300. A $,1750 price tag is not an adoption fee. Those pet stores are out there to make a profit.

I have volunteered with rescue for several years and have yet to hear about a pet store that spays or neuters its animals prior to those animals being sold. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but I’ve never heard of it. As for veterinary care, the stores are required to give their animals care. My own dog came with papers that she had been vaccinated by a veterinarian who cares for the pet store’s animals.

And buying a dog from a pet store absolutely still carries a stigma. There are thousands of activists working to expose puppy mills for how they treat their dogs. For every puppy that is bought from a pet store there is another one put in its place.

By: Leela

Leela — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:29:33 +0000

Sarah, as a journalist you should be trained to get all the facts before making a blanket statement. Adopting an animal from a petstore doesn’t carry the stigma it once did. Today a lot of pet stores require that the animals are spayed/neutured, dewormed, vaccinated and flea treated before the animal leaves the store. It is important to only buy from a pet store that follows these procedures and to remember that, while expensive, it will add up that quickly if you are a responsible pet owner and have these things done by your own vet. That said, it is still a wonderful thing to give a rescue pet a home, however not all rescue agencies are painted with the same brush either. This incident is an example of an antisocial militant control freak determined to prove a point regardless of the damage she is doing to a family, the cause of rescue agencies and a kindhearted celebrity’s reputation. As to labelling Ellen’s heartbroken explanation, well maybe you wouldn’t cry on national television but that doesn’t make it a “sobfest”. Her pain comes from knowing she messed up and she just wants to make it right. That rescue organization broke the law when it adopted out a pet that was unneutured and it defied a police officer who told that woman to hand the dog back to the family, this has been shown on video. Get your facts straight.

By: doggielover

doggielover — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:56:40 +0000

I am just so sick and tired of “stars” being able to get out of EVERYTHING that most of us ‘typical’ humans get strung up for. It’s gotten disgusting and I’m sick of it. All these so called ‘famous people’ can do anything they want; drive without valid state licenses, disregard signed contracts, even dog rescue contracts, hang their kids over railings (remember M. Jackson), and so much more. When is the public going to stand up and say “hey, if I have to obey laws and contacts, and the like, etc., so do you.! Enough is enough already. So Ellen cried on t.v., so what, she’s a performer; anyway, if she had so many tears, why the heck didn’t she give Iggy more than just 2 weeks to break into her househould. More important, why didn’t she tell Moms & Mutts that she already had a ‘dominant’ dog at home? They wouldn’t have given her the dog to begin with and none of us would have to be listening to this garbage—just more garbage from people who think all laws don’t apply to them because they are famous/rich and/or have expensive press people and/or lawyers to get them off and make them look good while doing it. Baloney!!! Iggy, you’re better off without all of them and I hope you are finally placed in a ‘normal, typical, loving home’ (if there are any more of them left, that is).

By: Christine

Christine — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 01:17:08 +0000

It’s so simple. Ellen made a mistake. She failed to read the contract carefully. It seems clear that she had been unaware that she could not give the dog away. After all, she told Mutts & Moms straight out what she had done when they called.

So what would a reasonable person do? They would investigate the new home (perhaps asking for a donation to cover the second investigation) and if all was proper they would approve the placement. If they had to make a slight compromise about the under 14 thing, it would seem to be in the best interest of the dog if the home was a good one and the dog was happy there.

The way they handled it instead gives a black eye to animal adoption groups. Iggy gets uprooted from another home and family and in addition gets a new home that could have gone to another homeless dog.

If, of course the group found the home to be seriously deficient, then they had an obligation to retrieve the dog. But there doesn’t seem to be any claim of that.

The most glaring thing here is that the group doesn’t seem to have made an effort to find a compromise that would be in the best interest of the dog. It kind of seems like a “my way or the highway” thing. But keeping in mind the way media covers these things we should be aware that we probably do not know the whole story here and should be careful about passing judgment.

But on the people who make death threats I will pass judgment. That is disgraceful. Shame on them.

By: Toni

Toni — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 01:01:21 +0000

Scot,

If you adopted a baby and decided it was not your cup of tea would you feel it was ok to just give it to a friend that you thought would take good care of it? Same difference.

By: Scot

Scot — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:43:01 +0000

Ellen should not have cried on her show. That was way too over-the-top and only made a bad situation worse. However, I think she was sincerely upset, and has right to feel that way. The agency over-stepped their bounds in snatching back the little pooch. I don’t see the pet as a commodity that can just be taken back to the seller. It’s not Target. They didn’t rent the dog. As a pet owner, I should have every right to to oversee the well-being of the animal. In this case, Ellen decided it needed a better home than she could provide, so she sought one out. In no news report does it state that the agency found that Ellen’s hairdresser was ill-suited to house a pet, other than citing the ages of the young kids, which is a bogus write-off.

By: Toni

Toni — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:30:00 +0000

Ellen lives and breaths contracts so there was no excuse for her breach of contract and come’on it’s not in small print. I adopted 2 little puppy mill Doxies from a rescue place last year and my contracts clearly state in BOLD print and in more than one place that if for whatever reason I am unable to keep them or don’t want them or whatever that I agree to return them to the rescue agency. When I picked my girls up they also verbally made that very clear and asked if I understood. I heard this afternoon that Mom and Mutts attorney was interviewed and said they made the offer to the hairdressers family to fill out an adoption application and they refused. I think there is alot more to this than we know. Ellen didn’t even have the dog for two weeks. Did she know these people would not pass to adopt a dog so she purposely did this to get them one? So thanks to Ellen now people will be supporting puppy mills even more because they will go buy them from stores and we know where those come from. When my girls came out of the mills after spending the first 6 years of their lives there making babies for puppy stores they both had mouths of rotten infected teeth, sores between their toes from wire cages and they were terrifed of people. It was awful. Someone has to watch out for the furbabies well being.

On one of the sites I belong to a lady posted this today.

Rescues have rules to prevent things like THIS from happening:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Frist_medical_school_experiments_controversy

By: Annie

Annie — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:22:12 +0000

Sure Ellen made a mistake (as she admitted), but so did Mutts & Moms, in their pigheaded stance to stick by their “rules.” I work with a rescue group, and we have similar rules—if it doesn’t work out the dog must come back to us, and we do not adopt to families with very young children (4 and under), because puppies bite everything, and we had a puppy returned because “the puppy is biting my 2-year-old.” But not adopting to families with kids under 14 is simply ridiculous. I agree with the statement that this fiasco is setting back the work of other rescue groups that truly care about the best interest of the dogs.

By: weiner

weiner — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:41:26 +0000

Has anyone considered that the agency might have valid and good reasons why this home would not be best for the dog, beyond the fact that the girls are under 14. Think about it, there may have been good reasons but the agency has chosen not to disclose this information so as not to let the whole world know that perhaps this family isn’t a good fit for the dog. The agency did go to the home and had opportunity to meet the hairdresser and her family and chose to remove the dog. Could it be that there were legitmate concerns about the family. By saying the concerns publically about this family is like doing the same damage to this family as what Ellen did in damaging the dog agency.