Bias shouldn't play a role in shelter transport

We know lots of people have opinions on transporting dogs from southern states up north, well, Nikki has a lot of opinions too and she shares them on this episode of the Individual Animal. Chris Bender, the former Adoption and Shelter Manager from the Dutchess County SPCA, chimes in with his experiences, as does AFF's Executive Director, Stacey Coleman. There are some organizations that will not transport dogs labeled "pit bull." As you can imagine, this does not sit well with us. Arbitrarily labeling dogs plays a huge role in preventing good dogs from going home. We saw this in South Carolina a few weeks ago. This arbitrary labeling is what leads to the fallacy that shelters have a "pit bull" problem.  Many shelters in the south have bigger hurdles to overcome when it comes to the number of dogs in their shelters than in northern shelters. The more shelters work together through transport, the more dogs that get to go home. Transport saves lives and we need to have real conversations about why some shelters refuse to transport some dogs, regardless of their personality and whether or not they are good dogs.