I'm getting slightly off topic here, but wanted to say a couple things.

You made a good point Sandra about the 'free to good home' part. I guess when I see that, at least I know they aren't a BYB, although sometimes they can be even worse. I guess I'm recalling a pup my mom and I rescued off the streets when I was younger. We were afraid to surrender him to the shelter because it was a high kill shelter. We ended up as unofficial foster parents for him for six weeks, naming him Bingo. We think he was a lab chow mix, he definitely had some chow in him.

I do think I remember my mom putting an ad in the paper, and she didn't charge a fee for him, but she did carefully screen who he went to. The people drove from a rural area about 40 minutes away to come see him. He went to go live on a farm, and Mom kept in touch with his new family for awhile. I never saw him again, but heard good reports about him. I think my mom handled things as responsibly as she could with him. I can't remember if she put in the ad that he was free, she might have. Where I grew up, there were so many dogs running around unaltered, the shelters were overflowing. Three different times we rescued puppies, once with Bingo and twice with litters, which we took to the shelter. One was a litter from a stray female who had gone wild. One was a litter in a box dumped on the side of the road. This was in the Missouri Ozarks. People with boxes of puppies sitting outside of Wal-Mart was something you saw every weekend.

Anyway, I just have to repeat and echo the sentiments that this pup's best chance would be from a rescue. This, and the hundreds of thousands of stories like it, are so tragic.