[Riot]

The dog was not wanted. It ends up at the agency. The agency tries to place it in a permanent home. Ellen (and I like her) decides the dog is too inconvenient (due to not getting along with her cats) and gives the dog away, clearly breaking her adoption contract, which says the dog has to be returned to the adoption agency.

Too bad Ellen would be embarassed to return the dog. That's what she agreed to. People adopt dogs on whims all the time. Ellen is just another one. Good for the agency for taking the dog back. That's called permanent reponsibility for the lifetime of the animal (who has now been in two homes - it's original, and Ellen's, that gave it up).

You think breeders are "better"? Not real ones. I just got a 4-year-old dog I bred back from Ontario. The people (who swore they loved him and would give him a lifetime home and paid a good amount for him as a rare and valuable pedigree-show-coursing dog with excellent conformation, who did win in the ring and in the field) didn't want him any more. It's in my contract they can't give this dog away to anyone, it must come back to me. The dog is microchipped in my name. I would gladly walk in anywhere with the police and take this dog back if they had given it away - no matter how many crying children would miss him. I refunded the full purchase price and drove to Detroit to pick him up at the former owners convenience. Oh, by the way, they neutered the dog without telling me. Glad they wanted those valuable, rare bloodlines. And these people jumped through hoops when I interviewed them multiple times before placing the dog with them.

Sometimes it just doesn't work out, and people that truely care about the dog for it's whole life take responsibility for that. I see no fault at all with the adoption agency. Ellen should pay attention to her contractual agreements. If she wanted a dog with no strings, she should have gotten a dog out of the newspaper, not from a private adoption agency.