The Spitz is one of the less common dog breeds, not always found in shelters, and consequently likely to be sold for inflated "adoption fees." So this web site has not featured Spitz dogs in the past. However, someone gave us a delightful Spitz adoption story
This dog came to his permanent home from the Hawkins County animal shelter in Tennessee. They do not currently have a Spitz, but local readers may want to click over and see what kinds of dogs they do have:
"Spitz" is German for "pointed," and is a general name for dogs with pointed noses. Several different breeds have been called Spitz. The name often refers to a big working-type dog with a pointed nose and fluffy coat, but has also been used to refer to a breed of little lap dogs better known as Pomeranians. Akitas, the Russian breed now called Laikas, and even Siberian Huskies fit into the general category of Spitzen, or Spitzes. These dogs have wolfish faces with relatively small pointed ears, and can have wolfish personalities, too--independent, suspicious, bossy and aggressive.
Well, it seems that the Hawkins County shelter had a male dog of the large Spitz type, and this Kingsport couple reckoned they had room for one more large dog. They had two female Spitzen already.
"His owners gave him up," the shelter staff warned, "because he was aggressive."
"Sometimes they can be aggressive," the lady of the house sympathized. "We've had some of that kind in the past. We've learned how to handle them."
Shelter staff were delighted. "Come out and see him."
While the gentleman of the house was at work, the lady drove out to meet the male Spitz. They locked the door and let the dog out of his cage. As if he could smell on her cltohes that she was living with his long-lost sisters, and for all we know she may have been, the dog went to the woman and laid his head on her knee.
:Sometimes they behave well with a woman but then attack a man," someone warily said.
The lady didn't think this dog would attack her husband, but they planned a proper introduction. The gentleman bent forward a little way so as not to tower over the dog. He let the dog come to him and sniff. He gave the dog a treat. The dog behaved politely toward both humans and the rest of their family. He got on well with their dogs.
But he did like to hunt, the lady recalled. He liked to show his humans what he had caught. Once he dragged in a possum, who was playing dead, as possums do. Once it was a big black rat snake, which looked about six feet long to the humans, and probably was--black rat snakes grow slowly, live a long time, and can be longer than six feet. (They're not venomous, but a snake of that size can chomp hard enough to break a dog's or human's bones.) Once the Spitz even managed to catch a crow.
"He never was aggressive," the lady recalled, years after the dog's lifetime.
Well, only to smaller animals...
Shelters have to worry about lawsuits. They can be overcautious about recommending gentle, friendly pets. Some shelters have policies of torture-testing animals for goodnaturedness, doing nasty tricks like setting a bowl of food before a hungry animal and then jerking the bowl away when the animal starts to eat. There is always a need to remember that domestic animals often stray because they've quarrelled with their original human family, that anybody can hurt anybody...so if an animal yips and dashes about when exposed to loud music or battle scenes from movies, it may be tagged as "unsuitable for noisy environments--no adoption to families with small children." And the animal might, in fact, do well with a small child once it gets to know what the child's noise means. Battle scenes sound much more stressful, to me, than a friend's baby growing a new tooth. Probably they sound that way to some other animals, too.
Most domestic animals are friendlier to humans than we, as a species, deserve. Many of them have good reasons to want to attack people. Mostly they don't. Mostly they just want to find nicer humans who will keep the mean ones away from them. Sometimes an animal who could attack a human, and might have some reason for attacking, will try to be disarmingly vulnerable and cute instead.
Shelter pets often are "other people's problems" but, for people who have some experience with the type of animal they adopt, those problems may not be serious ones. Not everyone worries about an animal's natural tendency to hunt--or, if unaltered, to reproduce. Responsible humans may allow kittens or puppies to come into this world with the intention that other people will want to adopt their pets' kittens or puppies, but the minute they think "We really can't keep another animal," they make sure those other animals won't be born.
Here are some dogs with pointed noses and ears who seem unlikely to create serious problems in a good home.
Zipcode 10101: Ghost from Louisiana or New Jersey
His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/ghost-great-boy-72959833/nj/oakhurst/wag-on-inn-rescue-nj259/
This medium-sized, fluffy white dog is not the ghost but the survivor. That's his problem. He outlived his human. In rural areas that's about the only way animals get into shelters, other than being stolen, and it becomes a terrible problem because people don't go to shelters to look for pets. So Petfinder allows these animals to be listed with a big city shelter, on the understanding that the animal can be delivered to the city if a city family want to adopt it. How a farmer's friend will adjust to life in New York, or even in New Orleans, is always something to think about.
Though not young, Ghost is described as "a great boy" who is calm and friendly, though a bit hard of hearing, and does well with other dogs. If you're not sure, the shelter suggests you foster him (food supplied as long as you can stand to try to pass him on to some other family--before paying the fee to adopt him.
Zipcode 20202: Hachi from York
His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/hachi-72604201/pa/york/homeless-to-home-husky-rescue-inc-pa1113/
Somewhere near York, Pennsylvania, a stray puppy was found. Baby Spitzen can look as if they were going to be beagles, with rounded faces and floppy ears, and foolish people can panic when a cuddly little pup starts to become a large wolfish-looking dog. The puppy called Hachi was rescued when he was about four months old; his web site was set up when he was about nine months old. He is large, known to be part Husky and thought to be part Akita, and he'll probably be even larger in another year. He is still a pet who likes to snuggle up to humans when he's not playing with other dogs. He can climb over a four-foot fence easily. The shelter says you need a six-foot fence. They want you to have another dog, or dogs, with whom he can play, too. (His foster home's other dogs are visible in all his photos.) Note the pair of pointed ears between Hachi and the camera, above.
Zipcode 30303; Pandy from Tyrone
Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/pandy-07-2341-72504150/ga/tyrone/royal-animal-refuge-ga926/
After all the wisecracks this web site has displayed about the quality of photographs at Petfinder's Atlanta page, it is a pleasant duty to inform you that there's a frameworthy photo of a large black and white Akita mix, too. However, having picked one medium and one large Spitz, we thought we ought to pick a small one. Pandy is thought to be a Spitz-Chihuahua crossbreed. That's about all they have to say about her. Poor little dog is in a city shelter. Somebody needs to go and bail her out.
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