Christine Touw
For 6 years I was a shelter board member, volunteer and employee. I left shelter work partly because I learned the natural path from Dr F and started my own puppy rescue. For 3 years we took in orphan newborn pups and using natural rearing prepared them for adoption at 8 weeks of age. The pups were given 1 vac of parvo/distemper and a voucher to have s/n at 6 mths of age as stipulated in my contract. Before adopting I would spend a great deal of time educating the potential adopter but 95% were polite but continued to follow their own Vets traditional advice. I felt it was a successful adoption if I could persuade the adopter to go with a high quality kibble and limit vacs or at least educate themselves first! While my contract did say s/n by 6 mths I would work with the adopter and actually push it out to 1 year if I could trust the person.
In the San Antonio area any rescuer who did not support s/n would be ostracized. We have a tremendous overpopulation problem and pack of intact dogs run & breed on the south side. Hundreds are then picked up and killed by animal control, so I do not see s/n requirements changing but I would highly encourage any potential adopter to develop a relationship with the rescuer BEFORE committing to the adoption. There are rescuers open to new ways of thinking if they can trust you to stay in touch and keep them posted on your decisions. I know of one case where an adopter wanted to discontinue heartworm preventative and the rescuer sought advice on our rescue blog. This was quite a controversial subject because most rescuers thought this potential adopter was nuts and should be rejected~ in the end the adoption went through because the adopter brought her Vet into the discussion and the hw preventative would not be required.
So if you are looking at adopting a rescue first develop your own plan and rationale that you can articulate to the rescuer. If the rescuer won't work with you then move on, there are more pups/dogs in need and you will find a good fit. I do not encourage anyone to violate a contract. Rescuers hold these as binding and some will move to take a dog/pup back if violated. Many rescuers consider the dog to always be "their dog" and some require that the microchip be in their name. While I don't agreed I understand.
In our case we had to stop taking in the newborns ~ not enough folks to support the natural way and it was very stressful. Now we do hospice and seniors .