prof-peach:

I actually am regularly sent pokemon to hand out by the board of education, it’s part of our job to ready trainers for the world and to help them look after their new friends. The big difference is I often release a lot of the pokemon sent to me.

A lot of pokemon are intensely bred and shipped around to be handed out without any regulations or prior examinations of the trainers. They get little choice in what happens to them and often end up in the hands of inexperienced children age 10 or so.

I do things a little differently. You have to graduate my classes to receive a pokemon, and the pokemon picks you. You come to the island lab, stay in the dorms, or if preffered you can come and go on a family pokemon or ride pokemon; and then after training the trainer, and watching them interact with the many Pokémon that live on the island, it’ll become clear if they have what it takes to care for another life.

When they are ready, a pokemon will pick them, not the other way around. My fellow professors and peers in the field often tell me it’s too intense, but to care for a pokemon is a huge responsibility and ultimately they have to want to be with you as much as you want to be with them.

Because of this I hand out all sorts when people become ready, just the other day 3 new trainers graduated age 12-15 and they were chosen by a Lotad, a Pikipek, and a relicanth.

I have seen many a sad case of rescue and neglect, I deal with the recovery of injured pokemon all the time, where a living breathing creature does not want to fight or perform, or has its own mind, and people seem to think that’s an excuse to treat them with little to no respect. I try to encourage empathy, friendship and above all else loyalty between a pokemon and their trainer, and in doing so people leave the island with a better understanding of the creatures we love so much. Hopefully more professors come around to my way of thinking but it’s still hard to get the message out when so many of them willingly let untrained children run off without even a questionnaire to fill out.

Thanks for the ask about this, it’s a tough but important subject.