If you want to change the criteria of how long a dog should stay in kennels then you need to consider a number of things.

What are the terms of reference of the rescue society?
What are the aims of the society?
If it is a charity it has, like a business, a duty to be cost effective; keeping dogs longer in kennels means higher costs.

It also means less space for another dog.

Irrespective of the above, how skilled are the staff and identifying issues and putting together an action plan?

Personally I think any dog that has come out of rescue that COULD be wrongly attributed to say a PB should be chipped/tattood by rescue society (they could have their own unique ref no) to prevent wrongful seizure and also save us tax payers some money THAT wy!

but her tests were way too extreme and some were designed in a way that would provoke and aggressive response,

battersea favour tests, but even they thought she went too far,

her tests were designed for the culture of her area, urban new york, she takes on lots of rotties pits etc that are used by drug dealers etc.

she didnt take into consideration that different culture in the UK when she first came up with her tests and bought them over.

but maybe she has adapted in the last few years?

im not anti tests or anti euthanasia myself

to homes which have themselves only been cursorily checked...

that just isnt correct,

battersea has a full and active and thorough assessment process.
with their own quiet rooms.

they have a whole department of staff members dedicated to this, and a full behaviourist team and a very large separate behaviour and training area and kennels in its grounds?
they also have 'real rooms'

i know these and worked in these sections

where did you get your impressions from?

what like their cat test

The other thing I like about Battersea is how they identify dogs that would suit working homes ie police, WorkingTrials etc etc

I went to the first talk she did. She stressed EVERY time she did a test that it may not suit the circumstances here and that she was simply explaining what she did in her particular circumstances.

At the time Battersea took all her tests on board and thought she was the bees knees.

That was not her fault, neither was it her fault that people only heard what they wanted to hear rather than what she actually said.

rune

I think it should be flexible, the rescue i worked closely with now keeps dogs for an amount of time to assess them----all very good but how stupid with a 12 + year old dog that has had a week in holding kennels and is traumatised anyway.

There are other dogs that are really so unlikely to be any kind of problem that it is silly to keep them in.

rune

The dogs we take in to SHWA(UK) are double-assessed. Firstly, we visit their existing home (where possible) taking a dog with us so that we can assess how they appear to be in a known situation. If they show no signs of aggression towards dog or human, and their temperament seems OK in all other respects, they are put on our list for fostering once a foster place becomes available.
Dogs which come in as strays, or which have been dumped in a general rescue, are assessed as far as possible in the kennels, and are then fostered by our more experienced volunteers.
Once in the foster home, they are placed for a minimum of two weeks and they are assessed throughout that period. (Some dogs behave perfectly for the first couple of days - then when they are feeling more confident, their behaviour can change).
When the fosterer decides the dog is ready for rehoming, we try to find the most suitable home for it.
It is an art rather than a science, and mistakes sometimes get made, but in the vast majority of cases this process seems to work very successfully.

Mick

I think it`s almost impossible to assess a dog for a home while he is in a kennel. JMO. Dogs behave very differently in different environments.
Re the attack - when introducing a new dog I err on the side of caution. Perhaps this should be stressed to new adopters?
As I understand it, they took the dogs out together and the new dog`s lead `broke`.
I think it is always better to start from the ground up with a new dog, and would walk one on his own first - and probably not for a few days either. Stress levels must be pretty high in a new home. The dog doesn`t know it`s a new home, after all.

My dog may have seemed 'unlikely' to be any type of problem, as he's a bouncy friendly yellow Lab. The rescue contact was amazed when I later let her know that he was repeatedly growling and going to bite us.

But I take your point and I agree that it should be flexible.