Your next pet is waiting at a local rescue group

We are back in the market for a family dog. Our Siberian Husky died suddenly on Memorial Day and after a lot of tears, we've decided we're ready to adopt again.

Oreo came from the Animal Welfare League on the first day he was available. He was a runner, so they didn't know anything about him. We took a chance and he turned out to be everything we ever wanted in a family pet.

When we decided to start looking for a new dog, we searched a couple of the pet adoption websites. The three we used most often were Adopt A Pet, Pet Finder and Pet Tango. There was some overlap, but there was also a lot of interesting information for us to read.

We saw a pattern of dogs we liked at certain rescue organizations. I didn't know much about these rescue groups so I did some research on foster-based rescue groups. We decided to adopt our next dog from a foster-based rescue group for one main reason: information.

These groups place dogs in volunteer homes. When you adopt a dog from a foster-based rescue, the family can tell you a lot about the dog from its habits to favorite toys to walk schedule to dog food type. When we adopted Oreo we tried nine or ten different dog foods before we found one that didn't upset his stomach. I joked that I would have paid more to adopt him if someone could have given us that information.

The animals in foster-based rescues come from various places including high-kill shelters and owner relinquishments. The foster families take in the animals and often work with them on things like housetraining and leash manners.

There are several local animal rescue organizations we've been impressed with during our search. Here are their websites:

All Herding Breed Dog Rescue

Disaster Dogs Rescue

Half-Way Home Animal Rescue

Long Road Home

Magnificent Mutts

Are there others? Oh, yes. The sad part is the need is so great that there are dozens of local rescue groups. Some are breed specific; others take in different breeds and animals.

If you're looking for a new pet, consider adopting from a local rescue group. The fee is a bit higher than what you'd pay at an animal shelter, but you know so much more about the pet.

If you're in a position to help, either by donating money or sponsoring a community service project, consider these groups. The volunteers work with the groups out of sheer love and compassion. The small fee to adopt a pet certainly cannot cover all of the expenses involved.

We think we found our next dog. We have two we're watching and approved to adopt. We're not quite ready to bring either home, so we'll see which dog is available when we're ready in a couple of weeks.  Of course there's always the possibility that both dogs will be adopted and we're ready for that to happen. The goal is for these animals to find "fur-ever" homes. If we have to start our search again we know there are a lot of dogs out there looking for a new home and we have a good list of rescue organizations to help us find our perfect match.