> I don't think they are better qualified to determine that
These people are (hopefully) trained specifically to determine that. It's possible you might happen to have even more training or experience in that regard, but most people don't.

Trained by whom, and to what standards. In most cases there’s woefully inadequate oversight and little credentialing required to conduct adoption interviews.

>If attachment was the primary factor behind them rejecting your applications, they'd adopt outright (which does happen) instead of wasting your time.

That happens frequently. It’s one of the reasons many rescue organizations have a bad reputation. Stories of foster “parents” adopting dogs after applicants have already wasted time on the application process are common.

But that’s not what I mean by attachment. I meant that their standards are too high because they are emotionally attached and aren’t looking at the situation objectively.

>but buying healthy salable pups is unlikely (and in fact would now be illegal in California, per the article that catalyzed this whole discussion).

No, California law did nothing to outlaw breeders or make it illegal to buy from breeders. It only affects retail locations. Buying from a breeders is perfectly fine.

>I mean, I'm sure it's theoretically possible, but that seems like the sort of extraordinary assertion that would require extraordinary evidence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/investigations/...

>I can't speak to all shelters, but at least from what I've seen there tends to be some kind of rubric for evaluating whether or not someone is suitable to adopt a particular dog, probably baked into the actual application (and/or the application gets fed directly into that rubric).
There's probably room for bias, but it ain't like it's the wild wild west, either.

Rescues are completely non-transparent and based on the rescues I’m familiar with are basically ran like the wild west.

Your experience may be different, and of course it would be. There is little regulation or oversight. The quality is so varied from rescue to rescue--that’s a huge part of the problem.

>They also get a fair amount of time not alone. At the very least you have volunteers walking the dogs daily (or more!).

The average person is going to spend more than the amount of time a dog gets during a daily walk. And just like homes, the contact time a dog may get in a kennel is is variable. If you are going to compare the average case, a dog in a private home is going to get more contact time than one in the average kennel.

> they don't know what the average case is.
I'd imagine there are relatively few animal shelter personnel (paid or otherwise) who haven't themselves already raised animals in any capacity.

They don’t see that as the average case, they see that as the best case, which is balanced out by all of the worst case scenarios they see.

>their primary job is to prevent those worst case scenarios from happening again.

That’s not their primary job. If that were their primary job, they would euthanize every dog they got and not risk letting anyone adopt any of them.

>If the people who always see worst-case scenarios (and who are either trained or in close contact with those who are trained to identify worst-case scenarios) think that you raise enough red flags to look like a worst-case scenario, then is it possible that maybe - just maybe - they ain't wrong to be hesitant in letting you take home a dog?

Or seeing only worst case scenarios makes them paranoid.

>That's not to say you're a bad person or anything, or that you're incapable of properly raising an animal (it doesn't sound like either of those things are true); rather, there seems to be something beyond "being a normal human being" that is raising a red flag. I don't know enough about your specific situation to know what that is.

This is a huge problem, and it has nothing to do with me. The ASPCA and multiple animal welfare groups are encouraging rescue organizations to lower their standards.
Here’s a few quotes and links from experts:

“Because people in animal welfare often see terrible things befall pets, and because of genuine concern for the animals, we’ve sometimes gone overboard in terms of regulating, requiring, constraining, screening and even getting in the way of successful adoptions.
After all, even a home that’s good instead of perfect will be better for pets than an animal shelter. A growing body of research is suggesting adoptions done with less intrusive methods of pet-adopter matchmaking are just as effective as, and even more successful than, those with lots of hoops to jump through”

https://www.maddiesfund.org/removing-barriers-to-adoption.ht...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/02/02/m...

https://www.aspcapro.org/blog/2014/05/27/go-ahead-try-it-ope...

And here's a good explanation of open adoptions

https://outthefrontdoor.com/2016/06/18/open-adoption/