Don't get me started on "rescues" from far away. What a bleeping crazy business that is. There are tons of available dogs in Ontario that get the needle as they don't have enough homes for them. Relocating dogs thousands of miles is idiotic and akin to youtubers filming giving a homeless guy a sandwich. It is all about bragging to your friends/followers how awesome you are.
Pretty broad brush you're painting with there...
When we were looking for another rescue last summer, none of the Ontario dogs available fit our needs. Lots of Pit Bull/Rottweiler/GSD crosses, and lots of yappy toy dogs like Chihuahuas, Yorkies, Shih Tzu's, etc. And after spending large on two elderly dogs over the previous few years, we wanted a younger dog to hopefully delay those bills as long as possible, but not so young as to have to deal with the huge effort required with true puppies.
What few local dogs did fit our needs (e.g. something approx. 1 yr old and between 15-30 lbs that wasn't a barking hound or high-energy Border Collie) were either adopted before we could get there, or the shelters were terrible at responding to inquiries. After over a month of looking, we ended up bringing in a dog from South Korea, as she fit all our criteria and the rescue was extremely professional. No bragging involved, just a dog that my mother-in-law can walk, won't tear the house apart just because we're not giving 6+ hours a day of structured activity, and won't drive us insane with barking. She's a little gem, and we couldn't be happier.
Granted, there are lots of 'rescues' that are really shady businesses, scooping up mostly Mexican and Central American dogs by the dozen, selling them locally for a profit, and then disappearing. Some are great dogs, many are not ideal family pets. There's been some restriction on this in the past few years, but it's still happening.
Petfinder.com is probably the most comprehensive dog listing site out there, but lots of the above still operate on there. It's critical to do research into the rescue before considering any of their dogs, even if the dogs are local.
We learned that finding the right pet insurance was a good way to maintain costs versus high priced and unexpected vet bills.
Doesn't work for everyone, but worked well for us and our dogs.
We had coverage with Pets+Us on our last dogs, and when I did the math on what we spent vs what we got back, it was a mixed bag. One dog that had expensive surgery covered was more or less break-even after end-of-life costs were paid out. The other never needed any major procedures, but had expensive meds that weren't covered and so we would have been better off putting the equivalent of the monthly premiums into some sort of savings.
We're with Trupanion now because they will direct pay, but we're considering cancelling. The major advantage of insurance is it's a fixed cost that minimises the 'how much is my dog's life worth?' debate if something serious comes up, but from a purely pragmatic perspective, the odds of it being cheaper than simply investing the equivalent (and rolling the dice that nothing major comes up too early) are better. But it's not nothing to have the peace of mind knowing any surprises will be less expensive, that's for sure...
