My aunt recently adopted a dog and the amount of time it took, paperwork, finance and background checks etc was ridiculous, then they almost turned her away for being too old until she put down my cousin as a reference. This wasn't for a puppy nor anything fancy, just a plain old dog.

When I lived in a more populous area I really miss having access to affordable vet students I knew from college, like sneak around campus at 5am set your cat's broken leg for 40 dollars tier and being able to ask for advice on caring for my pets without a formal visit. I also miss being able to get vaccines otc and using my lab experience to diy, while out here they're big on non-human animals getting autism and everything's way more gated ironically. I'm glad there's still vet places you can order basic things online for wound care but geeze, it shouldn't be like this, you shouldn't have to pirate-jammin up some reference vet textbooks and have animal handling experience to have some kind of limited access to affordable pet care.

I suppose there's a lot of truth to receiving better care when younger leads to better outcomes later, my cats are older now, 13 and 15, the later my old calico swiped from somewhere, the other was a kitten my mom found with some others that she figured were abandoned.