Having 100% rescue and pund animals and having worked with the rescues for years, I know our groups were careful, but quick. I’ve done the pre-screen work as well. We worked on adopting the most difficult dogs, Great Danes, since they are very often destructive in their puppy years (I mean they eat couches!) And people get one and don’t understand the scale of having a moose in the house. Our most recent Dane came to us after being returned to the rescue 2 times and he is deaf. He is a sweety, and needed to learn boundaries, but a novice Dane owner would have been in too deep for their own good. This is exactly why he was returned 2 times and why they are careful on adoptions. Also we had (and still have) an owner surrender female already who was more than capable in being a role model for him and bigger than him so he couldn’t bully her. These kind of dogs need extra careful placement, a dog that is 180+ Lbs. Is NOT a dog to give to someone without serious consideration.
I also know the cat rescue people do the impossible, they get a fee for cats. Our 2 cats are rescue and I paid 100 bucks for one of them because it will save more cats in the future. Kittens in the paper are still free.
My father had a young great dane that got him evicted from his (small) apartment in Yonkers, NY. He was a musician, and when he'd go to work (usually for about 5 - 6 hours at a time) he'd chain "Bucky" to a steel pipe that held up a cabinet in the kitchen. One night he came home about 4 hours late, and Bucky was standing at the apartment door, the cabinet trailing behind him, waiting for him to come home! And yes, Bucky shredded his couch and knocked down all of his bookshelves.
Mark