Catherine Caruso

Review of Washington Humane Society

From the client side: Very clean, compassionate st...

From the client side: Very clean, compassionate staff/volunteers, and well organized. We adopted a sister for our husky pup and they were very accommodating re: our need for a meet and greet with the dogs. We weren't pressured to make a snap decision, or held to an arbitrary standard, but allowed space to make the choice that was right for our family. Our journey involved a couple meetings before we found the right pup to bring home, and the only negative thing I have to say is I felt the volunteers were a little quick to call off a meet and greet if they sensed even a bit of hesitation in one of the animals... maybe because they were busy and wanted to move on if it wasn't an match, or maybe it's a liability issue. Either way, there were a few times I'd have preferred to have given the dogs more of a chance to work things out, rather than relying solely on one dogs' very first impression of the other. Meet and greets are so artificial and awkward, a little hesitation on the part of a dog who has already been through an awful lot even before landing at the shelter and is probably quite outside their comfort zone, seems normal to me. I didn't argue because i didn't want to antagonize the staff, but, I felt some potentially good matches were not made because of it at each of the shelters we visited. That said, we are thrilled with the pup we did bring home, and love her to peices. She was worth waiting for :-)