Does This Make Anyone Want to go Back to College?

[Leslie and Halas]

I just saw this article.  I think it's pretty cool.  College would have been even better with Halas around.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/education/06pets.html?pagewanted=...

[Leigh & Allie]

I did have a dog in college but it was after I had moved off campus. Being on campus would have been even better.

[Leslie and Halas]

I had my husky with me at grad school, but that was also off campus.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

As usual, I have to be the wet blanket here.
Every spring, rescue groups and shelters located near colleges get an influx of relinquished pets. The kids are going home for the summer and their parents don't want their pets in their homes.
Unfortunately, most of the dogs that are living with college students are not the family pet; often, they are dogs purchased from pet stores or BYBs who bring baskets of puppies to the campus to give away. When summer break comes, these dogs end up abandoned. Letting students in dorms keep animals will only increase the numbers of pet store puppies sold and then abandoned.
Honestly, I could not have properly cared for a pet when I was at college. I also felt very sorry for the dog at my boyfriend's fraternity house, who did not receive very good care and was left to fend for himself during breaks. I don't think the average college student, especially an undergrad, makes the most responsible pet owner.
(Present company excepted, of course.)

[Leslie and Halas]

Yeah, I can agree with that. In the couple of examples in the article, it sounds like the dogs are the family pet, so they would be welcome back in the home. Those are the examples I'm thinking of - the examples through my rose-colored glasses - where someone already has a dog, and they want to be able to bring it to school with them. I do know what you mean about college kids. When I shared a college apartment (undergrad) with 3 of my friends, one of them came home one day with a kitten. None of the 4 of us liked cats, not even the one who brought the kitten home! I asked why we would get a kitten when no one liked cats, but they said "it's cute!" or "It was free!" or "We're allowed to have cats here" or something stupid like that. It ended up going to live with someone's parents. It was just some stupid, impulse thing. Not for me - I saved my stupid, impulsive actions for non-pet related activities. I can definitely see that happening - kids saying, "Hey! We're allowed to have dogs, so let's get a dog." Unfortunately, there are probably a lot more college kids in that group, than in the responsible pet owner group. My personal experience was that I had more time for the dog during school than I did after I graduated and had to get a job. Grad school was a ton of reading and studying, but I could do most of my studying at home with the dog (my husky loved reading, but ended up tearing the books up when he tried to turn the pages), instead of in the library or in some cubicle. For the responsible pet owner, who already has a family pet that bonds most with them (as opposed to others in the family), I like the idea. It would be better if you somehow had to prove that you were a responsible pet owner, or that you had already had the pet for awhile, but that would make it too difficult to deal with. Let's hope it's decent schools with somewhat responsible kids that are allowing it. MIT is one of the schools allowing pets. You know all of those kids are slackers. Back in my college days, MIT was in about the top 3 schools. Now it's only in the top 5. MIT has really let itself go. (If there are any MIT grads reading this, I'm obviously kidding.)

[Melissa & Porter]

You're so right about the MIT slackers...wink wink.
I went to Harvard and long hours studying and partying would have made pet-ownership a bad idea for me and most people I knew. Plus on-campus housing was cramped, and off-campus was too expensive and hard to funnel financial aid into.

[Leslie and Halas]

You know what? I think my problem when I read articles like this is that I look at them only from my own point of view as a pet owner. I don't think about it from other pet owner points of view, or from a rescue point of view. I need to stop doing that. I think of how cool it would be for me to have a dog if I were in college. By doing that, I end up assuming that anyone else who had a dog would treat the dog like I treat Halas; that anyone else who had a dog would be a responsible pet owner like me. I don't think of the huge number of people that get a pet without really thinking about what it means to have a pet. With all you've done with rescue, that's probably the first point of view that you take. I'm getting better about doing that in some respects, but obviously not with everything, because it didn't even occur to me when I read this article.

[Amanda and Quinn]

But really it's like anything else - a lot of terrible owners have nice houses with big back yards! I'm sure there are plenty of college kids who do it well. Maybe even some frat guys. :)

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

The things that people do with dogs are difficult for someone like you or I to comprehend. Even now, I am still amazed by what I hear every day.
On the plus side, allowing dogs in dorms would have helped one GSD I once knew. The dog was purchased "for the kids", as so many family dogs are. When she was 8 years old, the youngest child went away to college, and the parents brought the dog to the vet to be euthanized. Now that they were free to travel, redecorate the house, etc., they didn't want the burden or expense of caring for this big messy "old" dog any longer. Of course the vet called our rescue and the dog was saved, but it would have been very nice for her if she could have stayed with someone she knew and gotten a college education in the bargain.

[Leigh & Allie]

I did the same thing. I can say when I was in college at Millsaps in Jackson Mississippi, I rescued a shih tzu from a family. They did not want her anymore. She was 9 months old and I took her and loved her. She was very skiddish because they had her tied up outside. She was terrified of thunder. I guess because she was outside all of the time. I was able to give her a lot of time and attention because I was home studying all of the time. (really I was). So I guess I can say I was the exception to the rule.

[Becky and Bella]

Yeah we live in a college town. One wintery day a gray cat showed up at our doorstep. School had just let out for winter break and we believe his owner just threw him outside and left. He was starving so us kids (I was about 5) kept sneaking bowls of food out to him. This got him stuck on us and when a blizzard began my brother cried his eyes out until my parents let him into the house. It was theworst storm in years and Simba would have certainly faced death. He was ill, thin, and half frozen but he sure picked the right house. He spent the following 12 years being treated as a king. He was one of the best cats you could ever meet, actually he was more like a dog, and it's painful to think what his fate would have been if he'd been left outside just a little longer.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

About 10% of the owner relinquished German Shepherds taken into my GSD Rescue group are dogs that were acquired by young college age men whose parents would not let them bring the dog home with them.
None of these dogs are ever neutered.
College students who purchase puppies from poor sources (and let's face it, reponsible breeders are not selling puppies to 19 year olds) almost never neuter or spay their dogs. These dogs are often just abandoned in May when the kids leave the campus, leaving them free to breed.

[Leslie and Halas]

You'd think that if you were planning to move back home during the summer, you'd check with your parents first to make sure you can bring the dog. I guess some college kids don't think beyond the next 10 minutes. Not all of them, just some of them. I did plenty of stupid things without thinking when I was in college, but most of them involved automobiles, not pets.