Oprah Gets Two New Dogs for Her Birthday!

Good for her for rescuing those darling puppies. To me ,their head type and expression looks more like parti-colored American Cocker Spaniels than English Springer Spaniels. Regardless of whether these dogs would have been much sought after for adoption, Oprah continues to bring attention to the plight of shelters and pet overpopulation. Her actions will do more for the benefit of shelter animals than the whining of bleeding martyrs like RobbiesMom. Everyone has a right to their individual preference and everyone has the right of choice. If someone prefers a purebred, because they like having some sort of idea on the dog's size, energy level, trainability, potential health concerns, and temperament then I APPLAUD them for being responsible enough to admit what they want and what they can handle. Other people prefer mixed-breeds and that's great too. The point is that two dogs were lucky enough to find a forever home and we should all be celebrating that fact.

It'sgood when any animal gets adopted from any shelter. What's not good is that Oprahregularly promotes her view of perfection to the extreme.
It would be veryhelpful if celebrities wouldpromote the idea -- no, reality -- that allanimals are lovable. It would be very helpful if celebrities wouldset theexample ofadoptingolder (even slightly older),non-breed,otherwise-not-"perfect"animals-- i.e., the animalsthat regularly arekilled rather than adopted.

Thank you to all of you who know about shelters and responded. It's very difficult to educate the unknowing public about shelters. I volunteer with a "no-kill" shelter and we routinely take pets about 90% from the city shelter and quite often they are purebred dogs. But I won't say more on that subject because so many of you already have. However the other point about Oprah adopting these petsis that she's helping to raise awareness that pets from shelters can be purebred andwonderful mutts. People often have the opinion that a pet from a shelter has something wrong with it, it's not healthy or has been abused. That is not the case and I'd like to thank Oprah for helping to highlight shelter dogs. Yeah Purebred or Mutt, Adopt don't Shop.

The odds of her finding 2 pure-bred puppies from the same litter are actually pretty high - the rescues are usually happy to help find a specific breed from another rescue if it means a homeless pet finds a new home. Yes this happens every day - people want to make money by breeding dogs - and then when they can't sell them, they get dumped - at shelters, rescues, vet offices etc. As the owner of a pet suppliess store - and someone who works with rescues and has a lot of connections in the industry- this isn't uncommon. These dogs are often taken inby the rescues and shelters even when they don't have teh resouces to care for them because the alternative would be "a trip to the freezer or the local "pond". Yes - that is the reality of this ugly world. Do these poor dogs a favor do NOT buy a dog. You can find any breed you want through a shelter or rescue. Don't get sucked into "saving" a dog from the local pet store - these dogs come from "responsible" breeders via a semi late at night...most are sick (and 99% of the time we hear about the vet bills).They are they are not coming from a beautiful farm somewhere...its much more likely that they came from a cage that was stacked on top of 2 or 3 other cages. When mom can't produce anymore - she gets a trip to the shelter. It never ceases to amaze me that in spite of all the press about the homeless pet populations and back-yard breeding, etc. that people still don't understand how big an issue it is. I guess it's easier to ignore it than face the reality - which is horrifying. We see it every day when the cute little poodles and bichons come in with 3 legs....the 4th was lost after it sat broken and uncared for in apuppymill cage its whole life. That is the sad reality!

Good for you, Oprah!
For those of you who doubt finding two purebred siblings at 14 weeks, I've got a scenario for you: 1) family with no pet experience thinks "Great! We'll get our kids puppies for Christmas" 2) Two cute, 8 week puppies under the tree Christmas morning 3) Christmas morning plus one, cute puppies have chewed up other Christmas gifts, 4) New Year's morning, puppies are not yet potty-trained (surprise!) 5)Christmas plus two weeks,children are back in school, everyone's back at work, no time to train puppies---fast forward to another week or so, no one's happy, so off go the puppies to the nearest "shelter."
I adopt cats...most of mine are the result of someone choosing to breed two purebreds of different breeds, but not getting the desired features from each breed. So off to the shelter. Mine were initially dropped off at SPRAC (a kill shelter in Spokane), and rescued from there by a no-kill shelter in the same area, where I adopted them.

For anyone who thinks finding two pure breed puppies, especially of the same litter at the shelter is not possibly, you are sadly mistaken. Check out your local shelter, or even now Craiglist, and see how many people just hand over their pets.
We have owned Cocker Spaniels for years, and recently have started working with a Cocker Spaniel Rescue out of North Carolina. Not only in our city, but in Georgia and down further south werescue both mixed breed but PURE breeds from the same litter weekly. It just saddens me that to many people turn to dropping their dogs off without a second thought instead of just spending less than $100 to have them fixed.
So I highly praise Oprah for not running to a local breeder or pet store but giving a pet who was "unwanted" a very loving home.

Yeah right.

Actually, I work with a local PAWS. You would be surprised at the number of breeders who continue breeding in this bad economy and find themselves with puppies they can't sell. They then become nothing more to them than an added expense they don't need. That is why so many purebred dogs end up at places like PAWS. And while PAWS is a NO-KILL shelter, other shelters do not subscribe to the same policy. If you read the article carefully, it states that Oprah asked PAWS for help in locating the puppies. Chances are that the puppies were in another shelter waiting for their day to meet the incinerator. PAWS often goes to other KILL shelters to rescue dogs that they think can be adopted. Shelters transfer animals between them all of the time. Not an uncommon practice.