For as long as I can remember, I have been hearing variations on this theme from those who enable the killing of shelter pets about why shelters “have to” kill animals:
- Until we get more fosters…
- Until we get more donations…
- Until everyone neuters and vaccinates their pets…
- Until people stop buying pets instead of adopting…
- Until breeders are all shut down…
Let’s clear this up straight away. The unspecified future time being referred to in these scenarios is NEVER. None of these things will ever come to pass. Never ever. The shelter system in this country is broken. There will never be enough foster homes or donations to seal the gaping holes in this broken system. There will never come a time when EVERYONE does Magical Thing A that some person has decided will forgo the need to mend this broken system.
So when you say to me, “Until we have MSN in every state in the country, shelter pets will continue to be killed”, what I’m hearing is “There will never be an end to shelter pet killing.” And that thought is too horrific to contemplate. Mercifully, we don’t have to, since it’s not true.
There are dozens of communities all over the country who have put a match to these myths and excuses and started saving every healthy/treatable animal in need. They didn’t wait until everyone vaccinated their pets. They didn’t wait until breeders stopped breeding. They didn’t wait until they had a zilliony dollars in donations. They just stopped killing. (Note: Once you stop killing animals, morale improves!) And they started doing the hard work of saving animals using the programs of the No Kill Equation. Every community in the country could do the same as long as the commitment to reform is there. It could happen today.
