[QuickSilver]

You know, I can see a difference in degree between buying a puppy from a pet store and buying a breed dog at an auction. Puppies presumably have a better chance of getting a good home, and even dogs in shelters probably had a nice life at one point. Buying a dog like Sasha (the little dog on PetFinder with the awful skin condition) and giving her some kind of life outside a cage is understandable.

There clearly some danger in thinking this way, though. Paying hundreds of dollars for a dog at an auction seems like all kinds of wrong. I can see how this could be a slippery slope. The emotion of an auction, helpless dogs, the need to get some young, cute dogs to pay for expensive vet bills....

I wonder if there is trouble even with just taking a miller's breed stock for free. I can't imagine that a miller would work with a rescue that turns around and reports them. Can you really stay completely clean? Does anyone know the answer to this?

There also remains the question of animals that die in shelters locally because you went somewhere somewhere else to find dogs. The goal of every rescue should be to eventually make itself obsolete, correct? As people have said, if you have no dogs in your area, this is a *good* thing, and if there is money to spend, it should be used getting dogs in other areas of the country. However, any kind of organization works to perpetuate itself, so it looks like there could be a conflict of interest here.

In any case, buying at auctions is a dicey issue, even if you believe it does more good than harm. I think rescues should be upfront about this and acknowledge the obvious moral hazard.