New players are totally at a disadvantage with the pound having pets visible, there's no question in that. Players who have checked the pound's available pets, maybe even memorized what's there, or who in general have been here long enough to know what the rarer pets look like, obviously they will have a better chance than any newer players in picking up rare pets of any kind. It's a bit silly to pretend that's not true. Geez, I've been here for? Wow, is it TEN YEARS already? Never gotten anything good from the pound, couldn't even tell you if I'd seen anything worth anything in there either, since rarity bars exist for a reason I've never in any other situation had to check what rarity a pet is so my long-term memory isn't wasting any space on whether a random pet in the pound is worth something or not.
A solution to this, I feel, would be making it a blind pick. Or listing the rarities under the pets, like you're making a trade. I'm still erring on the side of "no, it's not fair", because of what's discussed above. No one will argue that lowballing Dec 18th pets owned by newer players is taking advantage of them and thus unfair, so I'd find a hard time arguing that this is fair. Even if the new players happen to figure out that you can see what pets are in the pound, even if those new players make a chart to reference every time the pound is open, they won't recognize it before an older player that knows how to recognize older pets instantly.
Also more openings is just better- there's such a huge repository of pets in there right now, which isn't such a bad thing except that the ratio of low value to high value pets is so weighted that we'd be lucky if any of the older pets get in any of the openings to even find them in the first place. And then there's people like me, who always lose the Timezone Draw, and don't have a chance to begin with since the timezone only agrees once in a blue moon that I'll be available and have time to sift for something I actually want in the first place.
Overall, my experience with the pound is bad and change is clearly needed to make it more fair for everyone.