Pre-Owned Pooches

When Nancy Geary of Moorpark began considering a dog for her sons Christopher, 6, and Andrew, 4, she didn’t start by thinking about a puppy.

“My first dog was 4 years old when I got it and it lived to be 18,” she recalls, adding, “Older dogs are really good with kids.”

She speaks from experience, not only as a mother but as a volunteer at an animal-rescue facility operated by the Fillmore-based Humane Animal Rescue Team.

HART, according to its president, Suzanne Kane, “rescues, rehabilitates and places in adoptive homes older and disabled dogs that people once considered un-adoptable.” Kane also edits the group’s monthly newspaper, the Muttmatchers Messenger, which contains photos of older pets throughout Southern California available for adoption.

It was via HART that Lucky, a shepherd mix of undetermined age but with a definite kid-friendly charm, came into the Geary boys’ life.

“Lucky is a calm dog. She’s like their older sister, happy to be at home with them,” Nancy Geary says. She has become a big supporter of getting an older dog as a pet for young children. “It teaches children that you save a life when you adopt on older dog,” she says. “These dogs are so loyal. They look at you and the kids as having saved them; you are the person that loves them.”

There are also plenty of practical reasons for adopting an older dog--especially if you have kids, according to Ventura County’s animal-shelter director, Kathy Jenks.

“Puppies are going to get into trouble; older dogs have the sense not to. For one thing, they’re housebroken already, and their personalities are already set,” she says. “You don’t know with a puppy.”

At her shelter in Camarillo, the HART facility in Fillmore and the Humane Society’s Ojai facility, Jenks says, “We’ve had a chance to observe (older dogs’) idiosyncrasies. We know if a dog is a barker, or doesn’t like kids, or is mean.”

The usual tendency, shelter operators report, is for families to ask for a puppy to adopt. “The (pet) market pushes puppies. That’s where the money is in sales--purebred puppies,” Jenks says.

But, according to a recent survey of animal-shelter operators which Jenks cites, many families aren’t ready for the big job of caring for a puppy: housebreaking, continual feeding, protecting them from harm by children who don’t know how delicate puppies are.

“These problems taper off by the time a dog is 2 years old. But many shelters report puppies being returned because they’re too much trouble,” Jenks says.

This locally run HART project has attracted national attention. Your Dog, the journal of Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, recently editorialized: “Among these compassionate (animal shelter) endeavors, the work of HART of Fillmore, Calif., stands out.” The facility is also central to a study on older canine behavior being conducted by UC Davis.

But, in the end, adopting an older dog as a companion for a child only makes sense if the youth is happy with the deal. So what does Christopher Geary, Lucky’s 6-year-old “younger brother” have to say about older dogs?

“They don’t chew up my toys,” he says.

BE THERE

Adoptions--For an appointment to visit the Humane Animal Rescue Team shelter near Fillmore, or for a complimentary copy of Muttmatchers Messenger, call (805) 524-4542. Older dogs are also available for adoption at the county’s Animal Regulation Department Shelter in Camarillo, (805) 388-4341; and the Humane Society shelter in Ojai, (805) 646-6505.