The Petfinder page for the Gallia Co Animal Shelter in Ohio describes the facility as a “HIGH kill shelter”. There are 4 pets listed as available for adoption at the time of this post.
On February 14, a group called Friends of Gallia County’s Animals posted on its Facebook page that “11 dogs were euthanized at the pound this morning because the assistant warden couldn’t wait a day for us to clean the facilities from the dogs who are leaving.” Friends of Gallia County’s Animals appears to be referring to dogs who were pulled for transport to the New England area, where shelter dogs are also killed, for anyone keeping track.
WSAZ reports today that the 11 dogs who were killed were all vaccinated and friendly:
“There are 11 (other) dogs that we can’t help because they’re aggressive,” [Friends of Gallia County’s Animals board member Nathan] Weatherholt said. “They’re cat-aggressive, they’re food-aggressive, they’re people-aggressive. He could have picked 11 of those dogs and euthanized any of those 11 dogs. It would have still been tragic and horrible, but it wouldn’t have been the 11 dogs we were looking at.”
Never fall into this trap of saying it would be better to kill shelter dogs who don’t like cats or have some other perceived flaw than to kill animals who fit an arbitrary, subjective standard. All shelter animals have the right to live. Full stop. If you aren’t advocating equally for the least adoptable animals in the place and the white and fluffies, you aren’t advocating. What you are doing is buying into the culture of killing and bolstering the position that shelter animals have no inherent right to live.
An unnamed member of the Friends group alleges that the assistant warden killed the 11 dogs via heartstick without sedation. Ohio code states that heartstick may only be used “on a sedated or unconscious animal”. The Gallia Co sheriff is investigating the matter and the assistant dog warden has been reassigned to a different county department while the investigation takes place.
Gallia County Commission President David Smith says the shelter is not a no-kill shelter, and it’s unclear at this point if anything wrong was done.
This is a consequence of maintaining a culture of killing. If you believe shelter pets are born with the right to live, opt out.
(Thanks Clarice and mikken for the links.)