Such a wonderful organization run by dedicated staff. Everyone at Greater Charlotte SPCA works so hard to find every animal their loving home.
I will never adopt through this group again. I adopted an older rescued dog who I was told had a "mild" case of heartworms. I was grilled with questions about my current pets from one volunteer here, as well as them requesting all of their records to even adopt which took days. It was absurd!! I was at a point to where I was going to say "just come and get the dog!" I was told to take the dog to Pressly Animal Hospital in Matthews for her appointment to be spayed and given heartworm treatment. The dog had shown signs of seizures and breathing issues. When I took her to Pressly, I explained her issues I had noticed. I had only had her a week. Pressly did an xray and found the dog had an "enlarged heart" along with 2 bullets around it from the previous owner. They moved forward and spayed her and did the 1st heartworm injection. They gave her a bottle of heart medicine and told me she'll need to stay on these meds. I decided to take her to my own personal vet to have her checked out for another opinion. My vet said this dog's chart stated "high positive" for heartworms, she is not a "mild" case. She advised the dog's heart issues be addressed because she did have an enlarged heart. 3 weeks later the dog had breathing issues and she went into heart failure. I had her for one month and had to put her down. Another vet told me this dog was a candidate for "slow kill heartworm treatment" that takes place over a year's time using medication because she had other health issues going on, that actually this heartworm treatment killed her. This vet told me she had done this process with many rescue dogs and was very successful. After this experience I will NEVER adopt from SPCA. They want to scrutinize an adopter over letting someone adopt a dog, yet they dont mind running each dog through a mill of standard heartworm treatment without first making sure the vet clinic they are choosing are examining that individual dog's health. To me, they want to rescue dogs but when it comes to helping the dogs past that initial "rescue" they are falling way short and actually doing the dogs harm. You are best to go just adopt a puppy, or check out many other rescue groups out there versus dealing with these people.
I was completely unimpressed with this organization. They seem to be over crowded and over whelmed with a large amount of dogs that have been returned by their owners. We were told that a record number of dogs had been returned to the GCSPCA in the last few weeks. They're in such a hurry to adopt all of these dogs out that they gloss over behavior issues and don't really consider what makes a dog a good fit for a family. For example, a dog with aggression issues should not be adopted out to a family of first time dog owners. They claim to be supportive and that they want to help you even after the adoption, but they're so overwhelmed with what they have going on that they aren't really available to do that. We were willing to pay a good amount of money to the trainer recommended by the GCSPCA but she was unable to meet with us in a timely manner. Once our dog showed aggressive behaviors and no one was available to help us, we felt we had no option other than to return our dog. Our concerns over the aggression our dog showed was basically laughed at as "no big deal," yet we were told that we would have to keep the dog 4 days longer than we wanted to because "no other foster families want her due to her showing aggression." I can't claim this is true for every person fostering for the GCSPCA, but the woman who fostered our dog had 10 dogs in her house at one time, with most of them spending a large amount of time in a crate. No wonder our dog who was supposedly crate trained hated going in to her crate! Perhaps the GCSPCA wouldn't have such a high number of animal returns if they did a better job of matching dogs to potential owners.
I have volunteered with this group for over a year now and can't recommend them enough to both volunteers and to those looking for a new family member. All of the dogs are fostered in private homes so we can get to know the dogs as well as work on any training needed.
Although I didn't plan on adopting one of my fosters picked me and I couldn't say no. So consider me a happy adoptive parent as well.
The Greater Charlotte SPCA is a high quality, dedicated rescue. We adopted our first fur baby two years ago. She was an excellent fit for our family. Six months later, we decided to adopt a second. The rescue foster was able to recommend a terrific fit for our current adopted pup.
Review from Guidestar