I often skip the comments section of articles I read online (not the comments that readers post here of course, because you guys are strong, good looking and above average). But after reading this depressing article on the consistent 70% kill rate at the Augusta pet killing facility in GA and the director’s blame-the-public excuses, I was just hoping I might find something redeeming. So I started scrolling through the comments and was pleased to find several people questioning the killing. A commenter called Navy Gary wrote:
How can these places just kill healthy animals? I guess they think God put them in charge of cats and dogs. I could maybe understand if they were old or diseased but to kill them just because it’s cheaper than feeding them.(?) That is just plain wrong. What are these people thinking? How can they reconcile that certain death for these animals with a needle is better than getting hit by a car or whatever fate might befall them had the “animal shelter” not intervened? We should all be ashamed that it is funded with our tax dollars.
Another commenter replied:
Navy Gary, I know you mean well when you think the animal shelter employees are bad people by killing these animals. Do you have a solution when 150 dogs come in the door unwanted, 15 get adopted, and the pens are full. But wait, 100 more just came in the door. Now what? stack them on top of each other? Pretend they aren’t there? They don’t want to euthanize these animals. It is the irresponsible people that are to blame for their deaths. Do the math.
In fact, the math has been done. It shows that there are more than enough homes for every shelter pet in America. And the great thing about math is, it continues to be true no matter how many killing apologists deny it. I don’t know if Navy Gary has seen the math but I’m guessing that like many people, he has not. Even so, he knows killing healthy/treatable pets is wrong, as he says in his response:
Just don’t kill them, find food, find homes. Let them go wild. Anything is better than killing them. Don’t build an “animal shelter” and kill 70% of the pets. It just isn’t right. Geez, the dogs at Michael Vick’s house had a better mortality rate than the “animal shelter” and he did prison time.
Thank you Navy Gary for making my day. If you happen to find this blog and would be interested in reading Nathan Winograd’s book Redemption, please let me know so I can mail you a copy. I think you’ll appreciate it and maybe it will inspire you to take action in your community. Because you are right, killing shelter pets is not the answer. And there are plenty of homes for all of them. We just need shelter directors to stop making excuses and start doing their jobs.
I just love that irresponsible public. They give me hope.
(Thanks Clarice for the link.)
It’s so consistent with these killing facilities – “Hey, we get so many in, what do you expect us to do?!?!?”
Well, if the killing isn’t working, I expect you to do *something else*. God, why is it so hard for these people to say, “Okay, we obviously can’t kill our way out of this, so let’s try something different.”?
I mean, besides wholesale killing, what else are they doing? Adoption “sales”? Offsite adoptions? Low cost/free s/n with increased access? Fosters? TNR? Anything?
If killing is SO HARD on their people, why not look for ways to NOT DO IT?
Navy Gary is right – they’d have a better chance out on the streets than in the “shelter”. And throwing up your hands and saying “boo hoo, we don’t want to kill but we have to!” just isn’t good enough, anymore.
I always wonder what would happen if these folks had a different type of job. “But boss, my inbox was so full, I had to start shredding!” Umm, maybe you could, y’know do your job and get stuff moved out of the inbox? I mean it was cute when it was Lucy and Ethel with the chocolates, but these are real live animals, not candy. If you have too many coming in you have to figure out how to move them out faster.
interestingly enough, there are MORE than enough homes for all the shelter pets AND purpose bred pets… shelters in the NE are very low on ‘saleable’ puppies, so they IMPORT them… not just from ‘full’ shelters elsewhere in THIS country, but from across the borders (Mexico) and overseas (Puerto Rico, Taiwan, the Phillipines, Mediterranean, and now from Sochi Russia. EVERY ONE of these imports (and there are tens of thousands of them now) displaces a shelter dog already HERE…
overly onerous regulations being passed including number limits, size limits – some places will not allow you to have a dog over 20#; restrictions on pet ownership… and of course the economy… all have taken a toll on pet ownership. More and more pets are being left at shelters in the hope that homes will be found. For older pets, or those with some medical issues (often costly…) that hope is extremely slim…
there are many changes that could – and often SHOULD- be made… and it is up to us as pet owners and animal lovers to make that happen.
Oh, yes. Let’s pass the buck! There is a way out through Redemption. So stop making excuses. Redemption work, commit to it!