Well according to TMZ, the agency did NOT make Ellen sign any contract and she did not have to undergo a home inspection, like the agency's policy now states. They also HAVE chosen families with children in the past. To make things worse, the chip inside the dog was supposed to be changed to Ellen's name but the agency never did so. That's why the cops allowed them to get the dog back, its chip was still registered to the agency.

IMO the agency is just on a huge power trip.

http://www.tmz.com/2007/10/17/dont-screw-the-pooch/

Nice. Real charitable, there, adamblast!

I don't think Ellen is upset because her own "sense of privilege" is being disputed -- I mean, unless this is the very first time Ellen has shown this side of herself in public. This isn't Paris Hilton we're talking about here -- it's not like she was driving without a license or caught stealing clothes from The Gap.

The shelter started the process incorrectly by not following their own rules to visit Ellen's home or to make her file an application to adopt. So, if they trusted Ellen enough without doing all of their "proper procedures", why should they assume (as they did) that Ellen placed their dog into a bad home? They did no checking or calling or visiting. According to reports, they just went to the hairdresser's home with the police, for God's sake! and hauled off the dog.

The shelter can't have it both ways: they can't on one hand say that all they care about is the dog's welfare and then go and rip the dog out of this home to be put back in a cage at a shelter -- I'm sure the shelter is probably VERY nice, but still....

The shelter's owner is getting her 15 minutes at the expense of these little girls and the dog. Give me a break!

I think it is funny the group is called "Mutts and Moms" but they don't adopt out dogs to families with children.

I guess "Dykes and Dogs" did not have the same ring to it. ;)

Sure they can, and they should. They're taking it out of unauthorized and unaccountable hands and putting it back into the system to be safely placed according to their guidelines.

Other reports say it was the family who called the police, who then sided with the shelter. I'd also point out that all the info we've gotten from both sides has been highly subjective and emotional, with the basic facts still in dispute.

Neither do I, and a careful reading will show that's not what I said. I think Ellen's sense of entitlement is largely unconscious, but like all celebs, it's still very palpable. They believe they're always a special case.

I love it when people who are very pro "animal rights" because they have never run into the pet nazis, get to run into the pet nazis. :lol:

I love Ellen. I also love pet shelters that guard their pets like they shit gold. It is important for every group to have people so extreme that everyone else thinks they are nuts, and this is exactly the kind of attention the pet nazis need.

As I said in another discussion, I would threaten to have the voice box removed from a puppy every day until they gave the puppy back to the kids. You gotta fight these pet nazis on their own level. :D

I just don't see that idea gaining much traction. Removing voice boxes from puppies sounds very labor intensive, and Ellen is already a very busy woman.

Maybe threaten to declaw kittens. Have you ever heard of such cruelty?

:lol: She doesn't have to do it herself with a rusty spoon. I just happen to set the bar pretty high. -wink-

Ellen sympathetic to animals? I always heard she ate pussy :confused:

-ohbfrank- They said they don't adopt out small/toy dogs to families with kids under 14. If that family wants a dog, I'm sure there are tons of other dogs they could have, and having seen how kids play with dogs, I don't have a problem with them setting that line.

I can see avoiding families with very young children, but 14 seems like a rather old cut-off point.

I am sure kids that are 8, 10, 12 years old can be trusted not to hurt a small dog.

I am perplexed how small dogs have survived for thousands of years when we have put them in the same habitat as their natural predator, the under 14 year old child. We are just lucky we have realized this error and can now keep them from the brink of extinction, but it was close.



rotfl

Sorry. I think that is just the height of stupidity, but doesn't surprise me at all coming from a pet nazi organization.

I just want to point out that the word NAZI is being thrown around here to describe people who are seeking to see the terms of a legal contract enforced.

That is not why they are nazis. I don't dispute their right to have their contract enforced.

Declawing is not a "technicality". It's a cruel practice that many liken to cutting off the finger beyond the last knuckle. I'd characterize that as a much more acceptable reason for denying adoption than having a sub-14 year old child.

It sounds like there is a serious dispute over whether or not there was in fact any legal contract from what someone wrote above about there being no signed document and the agency violating their own policies by not doing a home visit prior to placing the dog with Ellen in the first place. If that's the case, I'm not so sure the hairdresser shouldn't be trying very hard to file criminal charges against the persons now in possession of her dog.

How about Spay or Neutering? Isn't that just as cruel since we are only doing it for our benefit.

From all the commentary and literature I have ever read, no. I don't think you can say it's a matter of doing it for our benefit making either one wrong or right, either. You can take a dog to be groomed for your benefit, and that doesn't make it cruel. I'm not sure population control can really be said to be for the benefit of humans, either. It's more an issue of using some means of controlling the number of animals out there so they aren't starving.

There wouldn't be a population problem if we didn't want them as pets. It's basically the same thing. We want to make it easier for us to keep them as pets. I personally don't think its cruel to declaw figuring they can walk within a day of it happening and they never seem in pain.

How do you figure there wouldn't be a population problem if they weren't wanted as pets? It seems to me that wanting them as pets actually keeps the population down. The alternative would be them living in the wild, where cats and dogs certainly can go feral and survive.

There wouldn't be a population problem if people fixed their cats and kept them indoors. My cat is spayed and indoors. How is she contributing to a population problem?

You could still function relatively well if I chopped your fingers off, but I bet you wouldn't let me do it. People who declaw cats aren't just cruel, they're ignorant. Cats can develop behavioral problems after a declaw; aggression, biting, urinating and defecating outside of the litter box, etc. A lot of declaws are hard to adopt because of these problems. Why not use Soft Claws? The results are essentially the same, it's an incredibly minor inconvenience, and it would take years for the cost of the caps to approach the cost of declawing.

I can give you one reason (and remember, I'm against declawing so I'm not saying this is justified) -- landlords who require any cats be declawed. I have an acquaintance who got a cat about 2 years ago. His landlord approved the cat, conditioned on declawing. I urged the friend to educate the landlord about soft claws, and I think he tried to do so. His landlord just wouldn't see it that way, so he had the cat declawed. I wasn't too happy with him, but it wasn't worth causing trouble about once he was well aware that I disapproved but was set on adopting and declawing. I urged him to at least try to adopt a cat that had already been declawed, but that didn't work out, either.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't let you cut my balls off either. :lol: