When I met my cat Lacey through a rescue group, she was so sad that she did not have the energy to engage me in any way. Her sadness touched me more than a jolly kitten would have and I adopted her. Almost ten years later, she has the energy of a kitten and is a very affectionate companion. All she needed was a home for her true self to emerge. I wonder how accurate temperament testing is in the artificial environment of a shelter. I don't doubt that it has a use but like every tool it has its limits.

I have to say that I understand the idea of the temperament test in animals in shelters and I believe it is important to know how an animal reacts in certain circumstances.
I do have my doubts though that this kind of test is really reliable in a stressful shelter environment.

I personally adopted dogs which were absolutely fine with other dogs to later find out they were dog aggressive (I trained them, but not everyone is willing to invest too much time). I adopted other dogs with issues and they were fine as soon as they were out of that very stressing shelter environment.

I am running the Boxer Rescue Network in Facebook and only yesterday after a long fight for a boxer we lost that beautiful girl because the shelter people deemed her aggressive. She had been in the shelter for 5 months, acquired a nasty ear infection while there which caused her to react cranky towards a few other dogs. She was still kept in a kennel (no hospital) surrounded of hundreds of barking dogs while she had her very sore ears. Everybody should know that sick animals and animals in pain react differently, often aggressive, and using this as an excuse to put an animal asleep is just appalling. Unfortunately that happens every day.

I am convinced there are many, many wonderful people in the shelters, do not get me wrong. What I believe too is that unfortunately the decision is not always up to them, not even up to the behaviourists (who needed so much more training and often do not receive it due to financial restriction), it really saddens me when innocent animals have to die in those cases.

We adopted our dog three years ago, and their weren't any questions asked about being a match. The shelter was struggling to make ends meet and has closed its doors since then. But I do believe it would be nice, if they would rate people and their potential new pets. I know of a case, and so do probably a lot of you, where it would have been helpful if the shelter would have done more research, regarding the new owners. They were allowed to adopt a high energy dog, even though, the family is not very active. Needless to say, the dog is not in this family anymore. When we adopted our dog Emma, she would have been rated as a very outgoing and curious dog. She reacted relaxed to other dogs and humans, but when we brought her home things changed. Emma still likes humans, but prefers females over males. It takes her quite a while to warm up to men and she seems to be terrified of them, if they are wearing certain clothing. But overall, we are glad we have her, and we just keep on working on her fears.

A shelter setting is such an artificial environment. The poor critter is probably frightened and confused because, after all, yesterday he/she had a some. It's hard to imagine any critter passing a temperament test.

I've heard lots of stories about "I adopted the cat because it seemed so quiet" and it is a terror once it gets comfortable in its new home.

The story Sunny2000 related about the dog with the ear infection is probably all too frequent. How many times do we hear about a critter that is relinquished because the humans can't/won't get the veterinary care it needs?

A gentleman at work found a dog in the parking lot and took it to a local shelter that gives critters every possible chance. The dog was mild-mannered in the parking lot, but so aggressive at the shelter that even the staff was afraid of him. The gentleman also volunteers at that shelter and took it upon himself to work with the dog and found that it was simply terrified of being locked up and needed human companionship. Moving ahead a couple of months, the dog was actually a sweetie and ended up being adopted into a good home. It just took time, trust and a gentle hand.

I've been a volunteer for a big shelter in northern California for nearly 10 years. We use the ASPCA "Meet Your Match" system for placing both dogs and cats. I'm very impressed with it and think it has lessened the return rate of our animals. Too many people come in with an "ideal" pet based on looks alone. The MYM program causes them to slow down and really think about what characteristics they would value in a pet.

A couple of shelters around here use the temperament coding and though I think it's a useful baseline, you don't get a sense of the individual animal. Granted, I'm looking at the Petfinder posting, and hopefully the actual kennel card gives more insights to each personality.