Healthy, normal puppy flunks shelter ‘behavior evaluation’

December 15, 2010

Skeeter was tested at San Francisco Animal Care and Control and flunked his behavior evaluation a couple of weeks ago. Evaluators said he was “too mouthy,” and also put his age at 6 months.

Good thing a dedicated rescue group was there to say, ummm, no. Here he is with his new mom in the parking lot of the San Francisco Raw Feeders group, demonstrating both his sweet nature and good behavior — not to mention the fact that anyone with half an eye can see he’s still not six months old.

I adopted a 12-week-old mostly stray puppy who was a brutally hard mouther — she was a cattle dog mix, so you know what I’m saying here — and while it took me a little longer to get her to lighten up than it did my Deerhounds, it wasn’t beyond the ability of even a mediocre trainer like me.

It’s inexcusable to “flunk” a puppy for exhibiting completely normal, fixable puppy behavior, all the more so when this kind of decision can mean death, which is entirely unfixable.

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