It’s not an either or choice. There are responsible breeders and bad breeders, just as there are responsible rescues and bad rescues.

AKC is a registry. Whether or not a breeder is responsible goes way past just AKC registry.
People don’t do their research, want puppies immediately and are often ill prepared to deal with dogs with problems.
All of my dogs have been AKC registered purebreds. They have all come from reputable breeders who made little or no money on the breeding.
Texas doesn’t care about people, much less pets, and the rescue transports dumping sick dogs all over the country need to stop. They killed other people’s pets and caused huge financial hardship for families.
Let’s stop acting like rescues are automatically better than other sources for puppies.

SPCA of BC did the transport do. I don’t know if they are licensed with the USDA.

Yes. So so true!

Thank you Lee selman for this!

Exactly what I was going to say!

Who was the transporter? Our rescue sends to WA, so I definitely want this information.

Thanks for such a complete response. Of course I have some thoughts:

Real quick, “rescue” and “shelter” shouldn’t be interchanged in writing. Shelters generally have government funding and paid positions as where “rescues” are privately operated. SPCA of Brazorio County is a shelter, not a rescue.

I get that, but I didn’t realize that the shelter gets government money. Does that mean the shelter is obligated to fulfill open records requests?

I don’t know of any rescue not doing isolated boarding as a precautionary. When you refer to the ones you personally know of, how many are you talking about? 1? 3? 5? I don’t know of any Washington rescues we work with that aren’t following the same protocols in place as the others. If a rescue does a shelter-to-state transport and they bring sickness through those dogs to others, we stop working with them. It’s negligent to do it. I can’t say it enough. Hundreds of rescues we partner with don’t do what this rescue group did because it’s just way too risky to do so.

I’d say dozens of WA rescues don’t follow the protocol you laid out, particularly the smaller rescues. When they pull dogs they depend on the shelter to provide the proper vaccinations and health certificates. They do not pull them from shelters and put them in boarding for 2 weeks and have a vet examine them twice. I’d like to know some of the shelters that you do work with so I could get an idea of how many do follow those protocols. My guess is most don’t, and I say this because I rarely see any rescues holding fundraisers to board and vet individual dogs they pull from shelters, and the vast majority couldn’t afford to do it without fundraising. Most of the fundraisers I see are from rescues that want to take in a dog that needs extensive medical care.

Rescues are more likely to take dogs who come with pledges as we know they need that money and without it, can’t always pull the dog and provide the proper care needed. This pledging system has been in place for a long time and has single handedly saved thousands and thousands of dogs from an inevitable fate of having a needle put into their heart.

In my own opinion, you do not go into rescue if you aren’t willing to offer all life-saving measures available to treat a dog who needs emergency care. Though we do understand unforeseen emergencies happen from time-to-time, many dogs in the most deplorable conditions are able to be rehabilitated. It’s expensive but if you can’t fundraise appropriately so you can carry out this mission, than why do rescue at all? You can’t pull a dog from a kill shelter, only to kill it when the going gets rough if you see what I am saying.

As I said earlier, I don’t see many pledges from rescues in the NW to board and vet specific dogs. In fact, a rescue that constantly asks for pledges is often viewed with suspicion because there are scam rescues who raise money through pledges to pull a specific dog but end up keeping the money and not pulling the dog or pulling the dog and adopting it out right away without spending any of the money. And many sites that give advice to people about adopting a rescue dog tell them to steer clear of the ones that are always asking for money.

I have seen rescues here successfully raise money from their followers on Facebook, and I have seen rescues raise money for a litter of puppies that have with Parvo, but again, I hardly ever see rescues ask for pledges to board and vet dogs.

The dogs most likely got distemper in the shelter but there is an incubation period where dogs who have it are asymptotic. So the test would show “negative” and a few weeks go by and they are all of a sudden developing symptoms. Again, it’s avoidable with medical isolation prior to transport as well as complete immunization.

I’m aware that vets may not know a dog with distemper may not show symptoms for weeks, but these dogs were full of worms and some just looked unhealthy – skinny, listless, etc. How could a vet sign a health cert that says a dog is healthy when it clearly isn’t. As I said, a vet signed a health cert for one of the dogs who had a positive float test. How could that vet say the dog is healthy and ok to transport?

Did the rescue not see the health and immunization history for each dog they tagged? That’s the first thing the rescue should request. I’d never put a dog on a transport bus without first seeing and checking if they had all of their vaccinations. If a dog isn’t fully vaccinated, they should stay in Texas until they are unless they can be transported by themselves and have no contact with other dogs until the hold period is over with.

I don’t know if they did or not. I know it has that information but I don’t know if they requested it before the dogs left or after they arrived. But shouldn’t SPCA BC be held accountable for telling rescues they have dogs available for transport when in fact those dogs haven’t been fully vaccinated? You imply the rescue is fully responsible for deciding if a dog that isn’t fully vaccinated can be on the transport. Why isn’t it SPCA BC’s responsibility to only allow shelters to pull dogs/puppies that have been fully vaccinated? It makes no sense to me to say, “well the rescue shouldn’t have transported dogs that weren’t fully vaccinated” instead of “why is the SPCA BC allowing rescues to pull dogs that aren’t fully vaccinated” or “why is this shelter putting dogs not fully vaccinated on transports?”

Same with puppies. Transporting young puppies who can’t get their third and fourth set of shots until an older age means they shouldn’t be transported unless they can be transported alone (again, no contact with other dogs accept for mamma). If the shelter lied about the vaccination history, then definitely report that. But if they were honest about the vaccination history and the dog rescue made the executive decision to go ahead and transport them that early regardless, than that is also the responsibility of the dog rescue for taking that risk. You don’t knowingly transport a dog who doesn’t have full immunity without running the risk that something like this could happen.

I’ve seen this article being shared in some of the groups I’m in and the first thing the rescue volunteers ask is, “why did they transport dogs and puppies who weren’t fully vaccinated?” You said so in your article that only one puppy had a full set of shots and he was the only to survive. Anyone that transports partially vaccinated dogs is running a huge risk doing so. The takeaway here is to not transport dogs until they are fully vaccinated/immune unless you can do an isolated transport (the dogs won’t come into contact with others).

I understand why people are asking why the rescue allowed puppies that weren’t fully on a transport, but again, why is the shelter making them available to be pulled by a rescue. Why doesn’t isn’t it a policy to never put puppies that aren’t fully vaccinated on a transport?

I don’t want to sound heartless because I wouldn’t wish this event on anyone but why did the adopter’s resident dogs not have current vaccinations?

I don’t know if their dog was vaccinated or not but you know even vaccinated dogs can get distemper. I know it doesn’t happen much but it does happen.

Yes but you quoted them saying that they did so for concerns of public safety? So which is it? Was it about the money or was it about the public safety? I’d be very suspicion of any vet saying this was necessary when the vets we work with treat distemper on a regular basis. Can you provide anything in writing from the director better explaining their recommendation to euthanize?

They never mentioned money being a factor that influenced their decision so I shouldn’t have implied that. I don’t have anything in writing from the vet.

“All I can say to that is when you see entire families (moms and puppies) on a euthanasia list, there is just no reason to justify bringing more dogs into the world if we can’t first help the ones we already have. The stray problem is a human caused problem. Our obsession with genetic selection to craft certain dogs is what got us into this mess. We don’t need to agree fully on this but imagine walking in my shoes for 1 day. I’m working 30 dogs who are scheduled to be killed tomorrow. These are young, breed desirable dogs. Want a husky? No problem. Want a hound? No problem. Adopt one. They are out there. You don’t have to take one from Texas. You can take one from your own state. You don’t need to go very far to find available dogs to adopt. Even your local shelters in Seattle have dogs that need adoptions. To jump from “this shelter sent sick dogs” to “this is why some people might just get their dogs from breeders” is a really big jump. That’s like saying you got a bad bowl of soup at one restaurant so you’ll never go to a restaurant again. Look on pet finder if you don’t believe me. There are unwanted dogs everywhere and that’s not an issue specific to Texas.”

You’re preaching to the choir regarding breeders and adopting from shelters.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people who had bad experiences with adoption from dog rescues that they were going to get dogs from a breeder from now one. You can’t compare a bad bowl of soup to a sick rescue dog that dies in front of your kids or someone spending thousands of dollars treating a sick rescue dog. We say “adopt don’t shop” but when you spend thousands more in medical bills on a rescue dog than you would on a purebred puppy, then buying a puppy from a breeder looks much more enticing to the average person. I’m not talking about experienced dog rescuers, I mean the average person who got the message about adoption but has an experience so horrible it turns them to a breeder. That’s why breeders/breeder supporters have created Facebook pages highlighting horror stories people have had with bad rescues as a reason to buy puppies from breeders.

I do have a question about getting pledges to board and vet dogs before pulling them. Are the rescues you know doing this one dog at a time or do they do it with multiple dogs simultaneously? And do they have adopters for each dog before pulling them or do they have facilities or fosters to hold the dogs until they’re adopted?

Also, I’ve learned that the dogs were taken by 2 SPCA BC employees in a van, not an officially licensed transport company. Without going into whether or not the rescue shouldn’t have insisted the dogs had to be on a fully licensed, professional transport, is it legal for SPCA BC to do this? Don’t people who transport dog have to register with the USDA?

Thank you for keeping an open mind and creating some much needed dialogue. I’ll ask a handful of the rescues we work with if they have time to reach out and talk with you on their rescue practices and you can ask them anything you’d like and have some much needed dialogue from a rescue outside of the one that was interviewed for this piece. Do you have an email or phone # they can do so by?

Let me work through your questions/comments:

If your local Seattle rescues or these Oregon ones you referred to are not already implementing these practices, than if anything that can come out of this, it’s a learning opportunity for all.

Real quick, “rescue” and “shelter” shouldn’t be interchanged in writing. Shelters generally have government funding and paid positions as where “rescues” are privately operated. SPCA of Brazorio County is a shelter, not a rescue.

“I’m not an expert on what rescues should or shouldn’t do when taking dogs from other states but in my opinion, it’s the responsibility of the rescue that is sending the dogs that the dogs they send are healthy. I don’t know of any rescues in WA that quarantine out of state dogs for 2 weeks and have them examined by independent vets twice before putting them on a transport. I’m not saying the procedures you described are wrong. I understand how following them would do a better job of ensuring the dogs are healthy, but most rescues don’t have the resources to board dogs for 2 weeks in a far away location and pay for them to be examined by vets twice. I imagine your response would be that if they dan’t afford to do it then they shouldn’t be rescuing dogs from areas with high incidences of viruses and parasites like TX. But there are rescues here that take dogs from reputable shelters in TX that ensure dogs are healthy before they put them on a transport, and I haven’t heard of any major problems they’ve had.”

Answer: Yes they do! I’ll have a rescue fill you in on more of this but hundreds of rescues have a book filled with contacts- boarding, vets, etc. of places here in Texas. Whatever state you pull dogs from, you HAVE to have those contacts. It’s the only way to do things the right way- in a way that keeps the dogs best interest and health in mind. You need boots on the ground that aren’t part of the shelter entity. I don’t know of any rescue not doing isolated boarding as a precautionary. When you refer to the ones you personally know of, how many are you talking about? 1? 3? 5? I don’t know of any Washington rescues we work with that aren’t following the same protocols in place as the others. If a rescue does a shelter-to-state transport and they bring sickness through those dogs to others, we stop working with them. It’s negligent to do it. I can’t say it enough. Hundreds of rescues we partner with don’t do what this rescue group did because it’s just way too risky to do so.

“Can you explain to me how rescues can afford to spend potentially hundreds of dollars (or more) to board several dogs for 2 weeks and pay for 2 weeks. I’m not trying to be cynical – I’d really like to know because very few rescues here that I know could afford to do that.”

Answer: pledges. That’s what my groups do. We facilitate rescue pledges to raise money for each dog on the euthanasia list to help cover initial costs for boarding, medical, and transport. These are dogs who usually have medical or behavior expenses or dogs who are simply running out of time and will be killed for space. We do this for all major cities in Texas. For example, look up the “Neuces County, TX: Dogs in Need of Rescue.” This is just one of many, many, many networking pages for the Texas shelters! Keep in mind we are volunteers only! We do not work at the shelter nor do we reflect the shelter. We do this independently so we can save these dogs from being euthanized in large numbers since Texas is not a no-kill state. Dig into the comments (look at the old posts that already had a successful rescue tag so you can see the pledges that were added up by random people offering to help). Keep in mind, Facebook is only one source of pledges. My groups also network pledges from Instagram, LinkedIn, and even TickTock if you can believe that!

Rescues are more likely to take dogs who come with pledges as we know they need that money and without it, can’t always pull the dog and provide the proper care needed. This pledging system has been in place for a long time and has single handedly saved thousands and thousands of dogs from an inevitable fate of having a needle put into their heart.

In addition to pledging systems, I can tell you that the most successful rescues who take on single dogs with $2,000+ of required medical expenses, do so because they also have a volunteer within their group who is fundraising and doing community outreach. Most rescues just need to ask and if they have a following, their followers will be more than grateful to help assist with the financials. I’ve seen rescues without this and those ones can hit bumps in the road easily so it’s always responsible to plan ahead. Donations will always ebb and flow but most rescues, at least the ones that have kept their engine running for many, many years, can always raise the money they need for the dogs in their care, even with emergencies like distemper and parvo. We have a group who just recently took some puppies from a shelter and they all had parvo. They are receiving treatment and will be fine but the rescue is running a fundraiser to help with those expenses. Just to give you one of many examples as this is what we see and deal with day in and day out.

In my own opinion, you do not go into rescue if you aren’t willing to offer all life-saving measures available to treat a dog who needs emergency care. Though we do understand unforeseen emergencies happen from time-to-time, many dogs in the most deplorable conditions are able to be rehabilitated. It’s expensive but if you can’t fundraise appropriately so you can carry out this mission, than why do rescue at all? You can’t pull a dog from a kill shelter, only to kill it when the going gets rough if you see what I am saying.

“And I know you didn’t bring this up but how could the vet who examine these dogs sign a health certificate when she knew these dogs had health problems. In one case I know she signed a health certificate for a dog that had a positive fecal float test for hookworm. There is no way all the dogs developed distemper or parasites on the 2 day ride from TX. Who holds these vets responsible for saying sick dogs are healthy enough for transport?”

Answer: The dogs most likely got distemper in the shelter but there is an incubation period where dogs who have it are asymptotic. So the test would show “negative” and a few weeks go by and they are all of a sudden developing symptoms. Again, it’s avoidable with medical isolation prior to transport as well as complete immunization.

Did the rescue not see the health and immunization history for each dog they tagged? That’s the first thing the rescue should request. I’d never put a dog on a transport bus without first seeing and checking if they had all of their vaccinations. If a dog isn’t fully vaccinated, they should stay in Texas until they are unless they can be transported by themselves and have no contact with other dogs until the hold period is over with.

Same with puppies. Transporting young puppies who can’t get their third and fourth set of shots until an older age means they shouldn’t be transported unless they can be transported alone (again, no contact with other dogs accept for mamma). If the shelter lied about the vaccination history, then definitely report that. But if they were honest about the vaccination history and the dog rescue made the executive decision to go ahead and transport them that early regardless, than that is also the responsibility of the dog rescue for taking that risk. You don’t knowingly transport a dog who doesn’t have full immunity without running the risk that something like this could happen.

I’ve seen this article being shared in some of the groups I’m in and the first thing the rescue volunteers ask is, “why did they transport dogs and puppies who weren’t fully vaccinated?” You said so in your article that only one puppy had a full set of shots and he was the only to survive. Anyone that transports partially vaccinated dogs is running a huge risk doing so. The takeaway here is to not transport dogs until they are fully vaccinated/immune unless you can do an isolated transport (the dogs won’t come into contact with others).

Unfortunately there are not many universal standard regulations and each state has their own rules as far as the import/export of animals. The one regulation that is taken seriously is rabies and that’s only because it is highly transmissible to humans. I think that’s why it’s so hard to say who is truly at fault here because there was no federal law broken. That’s why both parties need to own up to their own mistakes they made!

I love my state of Texas very much but our shelters need reform. They aren’t transparent, honest, and have terrible histories of doing all kinds of bad things to dogs and cats. There needs to be changes, absolutely. But you’d have to talk with an advocacy group (there are many!) who are working to change these shelter’s practices. Coordinating takes up all my time so I can’t speak to the advocacy part of things but for many years now, they have tried to pass betters regulations and laws that would change the way shelters treat the animals.

Texas politicians have been very resistant to animal welfare change. I wish that weren’t the case but it is. That is why a Texas dog has to go as far as Seattle to find a better life. I wish it weren’t so but it is the reality of what we are up against. Trust me, if the government stepped up the way they should it would make my life so much easier. My kids might see more of me as I wouldn’t have to do all this volunteering 12 hours a day. But if we all just minded our own business and didn’t try to help, dogs would die every day. I have to help them and hope that the animal advocates can do their stuff and in the end, it will all make a difference in more than one capacity.

“Also, some of your points about D&G rescue aren’t correct. All the dogs that D&G gets go to a vet for an exam and a fecal float tests. They don’t automatically send them out to adopters. The dogs then go to foster homes for a couple of weeks before they can be adopted. One of the dogs that developed distemper was actually in a foster home. The woman in Oregon who adopted the dog that eventually died from distemper adopted it directly from SPCA BC and took it right off the transport. It was not a D&G dog. None of the dogs from the first transport looked sick. The dogs that developed distemper didn’t show symptoms for a week or two.”

Answer: I sure hope they don’t and I especially hope the fosters don’t have freshly transported dogs mingling with the resident dogs, especially knowing that they aren’t fully vaccinated.

Distemper vaccines are part of ongoing pet wellness. I don’t want to sound heartless because I wouldn’t wish this event on anyone but why did the adopter’s resident dogs not have current vaccinations? I’m assuming they didn’t because if they did, their dog would have had immunity. Did I miss this part in your article? I only bring it up because this is another example of what responsible pet ownership needs to look like. If your dog catches something that was avoidable because you failed to vaccinate them, then a slice of that responsibility is also on your plate.

“None of the dogs on the second transport went to adopters either. They were examined by a vet and went straight to foster. However because the dogs looked in rough shape and the rescue suspected they were sick they weren’t sent to individual foster homes as the rescue didn’t want to spread anything to m multiple foster homes. One person kept the dogs.”

Answer: That’s good they recognized that and got them to the vet right away.

“I don’t know if the issue of isolated medical boarding was discussed, but again, very few rescues could afford to medically board and treat a couple of dozen dogs for weeks or months. The dogs’ treatment had already cost $7000. And the head veterinarian for the state was one of the vets that recommended euthanization.”

Answer: Yes but you quoted them saying that they did so for concerns of public safety? So which is it? Was it about the money or was it about the public safety? I’d be very suspicion of any vet saying this was necessary when the vets we work with treat distemper on a regular basis. Can you provide anything in writing from the director better explaining their recommendation to euthanize?

“You said at the beginning of your comments that, “Let me preface this by saying that SPCA of Brazoria County is not absolved of responsibility in what happened,” and then everything you wrote afterwards did just that. You even said that the dogs would have been better off if they had stayed in TX. I completely agree! SPCA should have never put these dogs on a transport. They should use use its $1.8 million in assets to keep dogs isolation and ensure they are completely healthy before putting them on the transport. You also didn’t address the fact that SPCA BC NEVER contacted some, and maybe all of the rescues that took dogs from those transports and told them a dog on one of their transports tested positive for distemper, and they waited 4 days to post an announcement on FB that they had to shut down adoptions due to distemper. That is the height of irresponsibility.”

Answer: I didn’t feel compelled to do so since that’s what you were hoping to achieve in your writing, is it not? I think you did a great job doing this already. I agree with you that the shelter made mistakes and I hope they get in trouble for it. I hope they change their shelter practices. I hope all shelters do! Again, reach out to the advocacy groups on this if your goal is to change the broken system. They can help you get more involved.

The delay in the public announcement should definitely be looked into more! Highly negligent on behalf of the shelter!

“While D&G could have done some things differently, I believe the vast majority of the blame for this tragic incident should be on SPCA BC.”

Yes, they should have. But the rescue has to be held accountable too. No entity is absolved of responsibility. I understand you can’t help it if the shelter lies to you or is misleading but again, it all goes back to making sure you have your own protocols in place to avoid these things from happening.

If rescues weren’t doing what I mentioned above, don’t you think we’d be hearing about more and more if this happening? It happened to a dog rescue that wasn’t following proper protocol. They should have known better being that they were working in Texas. I understand it was very hard for them to go through this and I know this might be hard for them to hear but this was avoidable. Unfortunately, there isn’t a rescue 101 course that goes over all of this but it is there responsibility to do their own homework and be well educated about Texas dog rescue before they show up in our state and try to help. I know that might sound ungrateful but they made mistakes too and the dogs paid the price.

The isolated boarding buys time for symptoms to show up, symptoms that won’t be present at the time of the initial examination. You said yourself many of the dogs didn’t present symptoms until later on. If you take a dog from a region well known for distemper, you have to do your due diligence to ensure they aren’t taking it back with them to Oregon or wherever they go. The only way to do this is full immunization and isolated boarding.

“And although I agree with you regarding your point about breeders, these people just want a healthy puppy. Most don’t realize some of the things that happen behind the scenes with dogs that aren’t “perfect” although I will say reputable breeders will find homes for dogs that don’t meet their breed standard if it doesn’t have some debilitating defect.”

All I can say to that is when you see entire families (moms and puppies) on a euthanasia list, there is just no reason to justify bringing more dogs into the world if we can’t first help the ones we already have. The stray problem is a human caused problem. Our obsession with genetic selection to craft certain dogs is what got us into this mess. We don’t need to agree fully on this but imagine walking in my shoes for 1 day. I’m working 30 dogs who are scheduled to be killed tomorrow. These are young, breed desirable dogs. Want a husky? No problem. Want a hound? No problem. Adopt one. They are out there. You don’t have to take one from Texas. You can take one from your own state. You don’t need to go very far to find available dogs to adopt. Even your local shelters in Seattle have dogs that need adoptions. To jump from “this shelter sent sick dogs” to “this is why some people might just get their dogs from breeders” is a really big jump. That’s like saying you got a bad bowl of soup at one restaurant so you’ll never go to a restaurant again. Look on pet finder if you don’t believe me. There are unwanted dogs everywhere and that’s not an issue specific to Texas.

“Thank you again for your comments. If any of the rescues you know of that do quarantine dogs in TX for 2 weeks and arrange 2 vet exams before they are put on a transport I’d love to take to them to learn more about their procedures.”

I’ll see if someone I know has time to do so. You can always reach out to the networking groups too on Facebook and see if someone can take the time to answer your questions and walk you through what it is these rescues are doing to mitigate distemper and parvo outbreaks among the dogs they take. You can send them private messages on their Facebook pages and they should get back to you but let me know if they don’t.