HELP! Our public shelter has no money to buy vaccines in order to vaccinate pets at intake. Therefore pets with suspected communicable diseases are killed immediately or, if it’s a weekend or holiday, allowed to suffer without treatment until they die. Can you donate money to us so we can buy some vaccines?
Yeah, see – no. Public shelters have some of our money already in the form of taxes. Sure, they could always use additional donations and honestly, if the plea was for donations to work toward or maintain a no kill status, I’d be all kinds of supportive. But as I said, public shelters have some guaranteed money. This one is just choosing not to spend it on vaccines. But they are buying other things.
Ya ever notice how shelters don’t run out of Fatal Plus?
HELP! Our public shelter has no money to buy Fatal Plus in order to kill healthy/treatable animals for space. Therefore healthy/treatable pets are being cared for until they are adopted. This takes hard work and a commitment to lifesaving that we hadn’t previously embraced. The sweeping changes have been very stressful on shelter staff. Can you donate money to us so we can buy some Fatal Plus and get back to killing?
A typical public shelter’s wish list will include things like bleach, canned food, treats and Kuranda beds. I know those beds are pricey but a 99 cent jug of bleach? Come on. The shelter director doesn’t consider inexpensive items like bleach and canned food to be important enough to include them in the budget. Those things have to be begged for and donated by generous individuals. Because the director has spent the shelter’s allotted funds on items considered essential – such as Fatal Plus and body bags and dumpsters.
Imagine if public shelters were mandated to spend their entire budgets on lifesaving efforts, reserving euthanasia only for pets deemed medically hopeless and suffering. Can you picture the shelter wish lists? Kind of a downer, huh?
To my mind, the needless killing of healthy/treatable pets in shelters is a downer. That’s why I think so many shelter directors budget for killing first, and allow the staff and volunteers to beg for lifesaving items and comfort supplies later. “Help us buy vaccines so we can save lives!” sounds heroic. “Help us buy Fatal Plus so we can kill adoptable pets!” – not so much. But in too many shelters, that’s the reality behind the pleas.