Chloe is a sweet, gentle giant known for wiggling her bottom when she's happy – and still, the friendly pooch has spent a heartbreaking 650 days in a shelter.
The Neapolitan mastiff is one of many dogs to be overlooked by people considering pets for adoption because of a common misconception.
Sadly, larger dogs wait twice as long as smaller dogs for a home with 1000 large dogs at animal welfare charity PetRescue alone currently in limbo.
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It's prompted PetRescue and Pet Circle to team up for a national adoption campaign called ‘Looking for Love' to raise awareness about large dogs in shelters.
While the campaign has reached its goal to have 100 large dogs rehomed by the end of June, there are still 9900 more on PetRescue needing adoption.
PetRescue CEO and managing director, Patima Tantiprasut, tells 9honey Pets that large dogs are often dismissed because of stereotypes about their size.
“If we assume something like all big dogs have high energy and are boisterous, and all big dogs aren't suitable for apartment living or small yards or households with other pets and cats and dogs, then we've already excluded them just based on looks alone. It's really quite unfair,” she says.
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However, many large dogs are suitable for those things if potential owners would take the time to assess them individually.
“When we look at the numbers coming through on PetRescue right now, about 81 per cent of the big dogs listed are kid-friendly, 88 per cent would love to be in a household with another dog and just over half of them are fine with a cat as a housemate too,” Tantiprasut says.
“So they're actually really versatile and they're all very unique and individual in themselves.”
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While many large dogs don't fit the stereotypes, Tantiprasut does admit that they can be pricier to care for than smaller dogs as they eat more and require more health care because of their larger bodies.
“It's all of those things, but it's also big love and it's that part of the return you get definitely outweighs the downside,” she says.
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While money is an issue for many Australians right now, Tantiprasut says pets shouldn't be excluded from discussions about the cost of living, especially when having a pet impacts the search for affordable rentals.
Changing the perception of large dogs so that all pets can be considered for rentals instead of just small dogs would also help these gentle giants find homes faster.
“When you go through the terms and conditions [of a rental property], it's small pets that are specified, yet really the language we want to be using is well-behaved pets, because the size of [a pet] actually dictates their apartment suitability or strata living suitability.”
“So these policies already exclude and play such a big role in [the misconceptions about large dogs].”
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Now that the ‘Looking for Love' campaign has reached its initial adoption goal of 100 dogs, Tantiprasut hopes that family-friendly big dog Chloe will finally get adopted.
“We'd really like Chloe to find her household. She's been waiting so long, and if we can keep continuing to spotlight Chloe and share her [story] far and wide and show her videos and her wiggly butt and just how sweet she is and suitable she is to so many types of households that would be just great for us.”
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