Man Returns Dog to Animal Services for Being 'Too Nice'
When you consider adding a new animal to your family, where do you go to get it?
If you’re looking for something incredibly specific, an animal shelter may not be at the top of your list — but shelters boast a surprising variety of breeds, ages, and temperaments.
While adopting a dog from the pound is one of the best ways to add to your family while helping give homeless dogs a family, the process has a lot of potential pitfalls.
Shelters are stressful places for dogs, and they can pick up all sorts of bad habits or illnesses. It can be difficult to tell what the dog will be like on its own in a calmer environment.
Often times hopeful owners will trot back with a recently adopted pet because it’s “just not working out.” Maybe the dog’s an escape artist, or an incessant barker, or is food aggressive.
Most of the time, everyday dog owners don’t have the training or the time to work on these and other behavioral issues, so they take the easy way out.
This is a new one, though. Helena is a pit bull, or pit bull mix of some sort, and looks a little rough and tough.
In reality, though, she’s a snuggle bug. She’d love nothing more than to curl up with her humans and get attention.
With such an excellent disposition, she’d be adopted in no time. When she was found she’d just been skin and bones, but after getting healthy again she was offered up for adoption.
Helena was adopted on October 27, 2017. Months passed. The quiet seemed to indicate that the process was going well and that she was settling in.
But then, on March 5, 2018, Helena’s owners surrendered her back to the shelter. Why?
Because she was “too nice.”
Even while her owner was surrendering her, she was sitting on a rescue worker’s feet, happy and wagging away, just thrilled to be around nice people.
The shelter said that it was clear her former owner had chosen her because of her looks, and was hoping she’d be a guard dog of some sort.
The joke was on him, though, because she loves people and wasn’t much of a bully at all. Her former owner also suggested that a woman adopt her, since “‘they are more into that petting stuff.”
Fortunately, she was snapped up only two days later by a couple who clearly were enamored with her manners and niceness. The shelter posted a happy update on their Facebook page.
“Nice guys (dogs) don’t always finish last 
?
Helena, the snuggliest pup in the ATL, who was returned to us after she was ‘too nice’ has found a home who’s just as nice as she is.”
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