Is there anywhere in or around Chicago where I can find cheap puppy adoptions?

The adoption fee is only a drop in the bucket compared to the money you need to spend on a puppy. Spay.neuter, vaccinations, flea prevention, heart worm prevention, regular trips to the vet for routine check up and then there are always those unexpected medical bills that will come up.

This does not mention the food, bedding the obedience training, etc. You may want to reconsider is money is a factor.

What do you mean by an "arm and a leg"? Shelters/rescues DO have to pay for food, vet care, spaying/neutering, etc., and it's not cheap. Also, a dog will cost you over $1,000 per year anyway.

Local shelters/animal control, etc. usually charge less (sometimes around $75), although the dogs do not receive as much attention, exercise, etc., because they don't have foster homes. Check on Petfinder.

200 bucks or less isn't an arm and leg. Its quite reasonable considering what that price covers. Can't pony up more than 100 for a pup? Then I suggest you start saving up.

Animal welfare league charges 135

Anti cruelty society is 95

Red Door 150

South Suburban Humane Society 150-175

if you want to training your dog on your own, I'd suggest you http://onlinedogtraining.enle.info/?14X5

I would say that positive training is going to become even more popular than it is now!

For me, (in a perfect world) I would love to see a middle ground! I would like for dog training to become “settled” once and for all!

Purely positive training and dominance/alpha training are BOTH extremes. Neither side gets along well with the other. I can tell you right now that BOTH sides are not going to go away without a fight. There’ll ALWAYS be people standing by their chosen side no matter what.

Here is how I categorize dog training.

There are the alpha/dominance old school/traditional dog training people and the positive reinforcement dog training people.

I’ve found that the alpha/dominance old school/traditional dog training people are extremely close minded and set in their ways. They scoff at ANY and ALL positive reinforcement training. They believe that corrections all the time with a quick pat on the head as praise is the way to train a dog. They tend to be OBSESSED to the point of just borderline crazy (just my opinion) with corrections and being the pack leader. Now, I’m not saying ALL traditional trainers do this, but some of them use physical abuse as “training.” Some trainers, hit, slap, punch, spank, alpha roll, pinch, strangle, and the most popular hang their dogs as discipline. This is considered animal abuse to me and I WILL NEVER do that to my dog. To be blunt, these people are very hard to be around (I personally despise them) and I definitely would not want to associate myself with them. The end.

I much prefer the positive reinforcement people. These people really care about building a relationship with their dogs and training them in a humane way. Positive reinforcement includes training with clickers (clicker training) treats, praise and toys. The only thing that most positive reinforcement trainers DO NOT advocate are the use of tools like choke collars and prong collars. This bothers me a bit because I've seen with my own eyes that these tools do not cause pain or harm to the dog when used properly. Notice how I didn’t mention shock collars because in my opinion, this tool does NOT go under positive reinforcement. How can it? You can’t change the fact that you’re still issuing an electric current to your dog.

My dog has a prong collar and I do issue corrections when necessary but those corrections do not hurt her in any way. This is the only place where I differ from the positive reinforcement dog trainers.

I’ve found a middle ground between the two methods. I LOVE all aspects of positive reinforcement training and that’s how I mostly train by but I also use corrections.

I hope this all makes sense lol!

In order to find a middle ground or balance in the dog training world, PEOPLE will have to open their minds and change. People definitely don't take to change kindly, so it will take years for the perfect balance to be found. That's sad because I know a couple of people have already found it including me. We'll just have to wait for the other slow pokes to catch up and swallow their prides.

the shelters are charging what they do to keep people like you who can't afford a dog from getting one..

try a hamster or a goldfish instead