"In my observation, most rescuers are motivated by an anthropomorphic need to feel morally superior to the 'heartless' people who do not try to fix the unfixable..."

"... and by their own inability to make the difficult but necessary decision to euthanize dangerous animals. The results are uncounted animals like the dog in this story, medical and veterinary bills, and untold frustration, disappointment, and sorrow on the part of the final owners. Dogs, cats, and horses are domestic animals, shaped by millennia of selective breeding for temperament to overcome the aggression of their wild fore-bearers. Until the rise of the rescue movement, it was generally understood that the best way to acquire a pet was to take the time to go to a breeder whose first concern was temperament, and to acquire the pet at an age when it could be well-socialized top the family in which it would live out its life. Badly bred animals who were innately aggressive, or those which had been badly socialized were destroyed before they could hurt someone, and wisely so. People and other animals were safer and happier with one another, and aggressive animals did not reproduce, and did not live out what otherwise would have been their angry, fearful lives. That approach took a kind a maturity, discipline, and emotional strength that appears to be missing from the current rescue movement."

Comment at a NYT opinion piece called "The Wrong Dog."