Adoption based on how they feel, not based on what's best for the animal

We app**** to adopt a puppy through HART and had our home inspection today. It was one of the more disappointing experiences we've had, and I think it's worth saying publicly.

The inspector took one step through our gate and said "this isn't going to work." That was the beginning and effectively the end of the assessment. What followed was a lecture: that the breed would cause us problems, and that young couples break up and the dog gets left unwanted.

We were never asked a single question about ourselves. Not about our home, our routine, our experience with dogs, nothing. We were assessed entirely on how we looked on the doorstep.

Had we been given the chance, we would have explained that I have experience raising and training pitbulls; that we've raised and trained our family dogs together over 5 years; that my partner works from home three days a week; that dogs are welcome at my office park and puppy school covers the rest; that we walk daily with a park on our own street and planned two walks a day; that we're completely redoing our garden with new grass and c*****; and that we have no children and aren't planning any, because we were ready to build our lives around this dog.

We were also told the puppy school HART recommends won't take pitbulls. If that's the case, recommending it to us was pointless.

Our walls are high, the property has controlled access, and the home is safe. None of that was properly looked at. We were judged as a "young couple" we're 30 and 28, 6 years together and settled and that judgement was made before a word of conversation.

Rescues should screen carefully. But a screening process that reaches its conclusion at the gate, without a single question asked, isn't screening. It's profiling, and it costs dogs good homes.