Trying to adopt a dog shouldn’t feel like applying for a mortgage. But for many families, it does. As “adopt don’t shop” became a cultural mantra, something else quietly happened: the process meant to protect animals began pushing away the very people willing to give them a home.
We adopted our dog Annie from Russia. Not because we were trying to be more worldly, but because we had tried to adopt locally (multiple times) and kept getting turned away.
Too many missed optional vaccines. A vet visit slightly overdue. The calls would come, and the rescue coordinator on the other end of the line would deliver the verdict: you are not what we are looking for.
We weren't alone.
A woman in Indiana was rejected because she wasn't a stay-at-home puppy parent. Even a senior leader at a major animal welfare organization was reportedly denied because she lived in a rental home. One rescue admitted it was rejecting 90 percent of applicants before they finally changed their process. And as recently as 2023, the overwhelming majority of rescue organizations were still not following open adoption best practices — a model that prioritizes finding animals good homes over filtering out imperfect applicants.
This is the part of the "adopt don't shop" conversation that rarely gets discussed: the system designed to place animals in loving homes has, in many cases, made it genuinely difficult to give one.
To be fair, this didn't start this way. Back in the 1970s, shelters across the U.S. were euthanizing somewhere around 13 million animals every year. Today that number is closer to 600,000, which represents decades of real, hard-won progress. The people running these organizations care deeply, and the screening processes were built with that same care: to protect vulnerable animals from being returned, neglected, or placed somewhere worse.
But that's not quite where things ended up.
Application processes grew so detailed and so rigid that they began asking questions with little connection to whether someone could actually provide a safe, loving home. Even insiders eventually acknowledged the system had gotten out of hand.
There is a pattern here that goes well beyond pet adoption. In Matthew 23, Jesus confronts a group of people who were doing all the right things on paper: meticulous, disciplined, serious about their faith. But in their devotion to the process, they had lost sight of what the process was supposed to produce. "You give a tenth of your spices," he says, "but you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy, and faithfulness." They weren't necessarily starting from bad intentions. They just became more loyal to the system than to the people the system was meant to serve.
The rescues would say the screening is the mercy and justice. And in its original form, it appears that it was. But when a willing, capable family gets turned away over a non-required vaccine or the absence of a fenced yard and ends up buying from a breeder instead, no animal was protected. One just stayed in a shelter longer. The rule remained. The reason walked out the door.
Most of us have a version of this somewhere. Think about the family that started requiring Sunday dinner together every week, a good idea, a genuinely loving one. And then over time it quietly became something else, a source of guilt and obligation, until the kids started dreading the thing that was supposed to bring them together. Nobody planned that. The original instinct was right. But the rule outlived the reason, and nobody stopped to ask whether it was still doing what it was meant to do. Our own fallen nature allows us to get caught up in the wrong thing, forgetting the good thing
It happens everywhere: in organizations, in churches, in families. We inherit a process, protect it, and eventually forget why we built it.
When it comes to pet adoption, the answer seems pretty clear. A good home is not a perfect home. But it has always been better than no home at all.
For Further Reflection
Think of a rule or standard you hold—in your home, your workplace, or your faith community—that may have started as wisdom but has since become a barrier. What would it look like to revisit the reason behind it?
The rescues had good intentions and still caused real harm through overcorrection. Where in your own life have good intentions produced outcomes you didn’t intend?
Jesus reserved some of His sharpest words for people who had mistaken rule-keeping for faithfulness. How do you personally guard against that?
Who in your life would be willing to tell you when a standard you hold has stopped serving its purpose? Have you given them room to say so?
Put It Into Practice
In your private life:Identify one area where you may have made the process harder than it needs to be: for your family, your team, or the people you’re trying to serve. Ask what the original purpose was, and whether the current approach still serves it.
If you’ve considered adopting a pet, look into rescues that practice open adoption. Some organizations have already made the shift, and they need good families to show up.
In your public life:If you’re in a leadership role, take one policy or screening process you oversee and ask: who does this actually keep out and is that who we intended to screen?
Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is ask the question nobody has thought to ask in years.
