On the Bossier City Animal Control website, it says:
Euthanasia: Doing what is best for animals they love and the community they serve forces animal control personnel to make some hard decisions.
The problem: Animal shelters can usually offer only temporary shelter for the millions of unwanted animals. The cost to taxpayers for the housing of all unwanted animals on a permanent basis would be enormous. The alternative allowing animals to live in the wild or on the streets would inevitably lead to their destruction by starvation, disease and accidents.
The answer: Animal Control personnel are working tirelessly to bring the animal population under control and end the need for euthanasia. Unfortunately, until they succeed, euthanasia will remain a tragic necessity.
What I learned: There are only two option available to us in this country.
- Force taxpayers to provide lifelong sanctuary for every homeless pet.
or
- Allow homeless pets to roam freely until they starve to death, succumb to the plague or get squashed by a bus.
The ACOs are apparently working day and night to bring no kill to the community (there are 4 hours every week that the public can actually adopt pets!) but until the pixie dust settles, they’ll just have to keep killing pets. Because death is what’s “best for animals they love”.
In fact, death is so great, they even offer it to people’s pets they are “holding” at the shelter:
After a mix-up at a local animal shelter, a dog that was supposed to be returned to its owner was instead euthanized.
[…]
“Unfortunately the paper work got mixed up with one of the animals that showed the animal was not a hold animal,” said Bossier City spokesman Mark Natale.
Oops. But don’t worry. These folks are used to making the hard decisions:
The employee at Bossier City Animal Control who mistakenly put the dog down has been reprimanded.
You were supposed to needlessly kill this dog, not that dog. Bad ACO. Stupid paperwork mix-up!
One would think with all the kill Oops that happen at animal shelters they would put some new laws and/or rules in place to try to prevent these from happening again and again and again. But I never seem to read anything in the new articles about their plans to help prevent these oopses.
Animal control policies come under fire after cats disappear – http://www.sthelenatoday.com/view/full_story/11562284/article-Animal-control-policies-come-under-fire-after-cats-disappear?instance=secondary_news_left_column
Well it appears as if not everybody is ok with their policies…”District 8 Council Carlos Notariano said the public needs better and easier access to animal control records. Councilman Lionell wells said, in agreement with Notariano, tax payers should be able to get copies of records, concerning the status of their pets, and maybe the parish could establish a fee that would allow access of records.” It’s too bad that the Assistant Finance Director Jeff McKneely said “allowing the public access to animal control records and personal information could cause privacy issues”. But my question is this – WHAT PRIVACY ISSUES? Last I checked Animal Control is publicly funded and therefore the should have transparent records.
It would be nice to know what the final outcome is on this case. I’ve read about it before but it is a week later and there appears to have been no change either way.
Read more: Tangilena.com – Animal control policies come under fire after cats disappear
Goodness – yet another oops situation within a shelter. At least this time they tried to do *something* to make up for it – waiving the fees and a free adoption. While that doesn’t take away the pain of losing a beloved pet in such a manner..it’s better than what we heard about Pepper’s response to a similar situation.
This DOES indeed seem to be a trend amongst shelters. There needs to be mroe safeguards in place to keep this from happening. And I was just flat out aghast that they are only open for 4 hours a WEEK for adoptions. Maybe there’d be less killings if they had a few more hours of accessibility for adoptions…but you know – that’s just ME.
Gosh, perhaps if they weren’t euthanizing a bunch of animals, then mistakes like this wouldn’t be happening? But what do I know? I just help transport dozens of dogs every week to rescues that can help them get adopted faster and make more room for intake. How novel, amiright?
Also, this is a lie:
“There are such places, but they accept only animals they can house or place in homes. Most other shelters must accept all animals, including the sick, old and injured. These shelters have vast shortages of space and resources. ”
I know plenty of no kill shelters that take in the sick, dying, and unadoptable animals.
The only other thing I’d like to point out is that the 4 hours is when they are Petsmart… and on the website they have more hours:
“Office Hours M – F: 8:00 am to 5:00 pm
Adoption Hours M – F: 10:00 am to 4:00 pm”
Not that it will help people who have a 9-5 job and can’t go in to adopt during those hours. I think if I had the job of running a shelter, I’d try to do a night or two a month where we’re open until say, 10 at night, and a morning or two where we open at 4-5 am.
Thanks for catching that. I only noticed this part:
Pet Adoption Scheule: (Updated Information)
* Every Saturday.
* Time: 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
* Location: Petsmart, Bossier City
If indeed they have additional adoption hours, they should probably include those under the “pet adoption schedule”. And they should correct that typo in “schedule”.<—spelling Nazi
It took me a while to notice more hours, because I saw “Scheule” and started scouring for more errors. I’m a typo queen, so I try very hard to read and edit before I post things.
Regardless, screw-ups like this would not happen (or very rarely) if shelters weren’t so set on euthanizing.
If shelters euthanized only those pets who are medically hopeless and suffering, it would be more obvious to the person(s) performing the euthanasia if the animal on the table was actually someone’s healthy pet waiting to be redeemed.
Really? You think may be we should double check things and make sure -yes this is right dog to die. It is the heart of of what needs to change in our shelter system, lack of responsabilty and no forward thinking that can be better and there are more options!!