A shelter’s job is to shelter animals.
Animals have a right to live.
These two things trump all the excuses offered by killing apologists.
Therefore, I have zero fucks to give about the following:
- An owner didn’t microchip a lost pet.
- An owner didn’t see his lost pet’s photo on the shelter’s website as soon as it was posted.
- An owner let a cat outside.
- An owner accidentally left a gate open, had a hole in the fence, whatever.
- An owner couldn’t come up with the cash to pay the shelter’s ransom for a lost pet.
- An owner didn’t neuter and/or vaccinate a lost pet.
- An owner didn’t have a collar and/or ID tag on a lost pet.
- An owner was unable to physically visit the shelter during its open hours throughout the holding period to look for a lost pet.
- An owner failed in some other way to meet the standards set forth by people who defend pet killing.
Nothing eclipses an animal’s right to live or mitigates a shelter’s obligation to shelter.
And while I would not condemn an owner for any of the above, I want to make myself perfectly clear so let’s just take this all the way. I don’t care if the owner was on crack and punching baby pandas in the face when he lost his intact, unvaccinated, unmicrochipped pet from his unfenced yard and didn’t sober up enough to look for him for 2 weeks. And when he finally staggered into the shelter, he was holding a neon sign that said KILL MY PET! and announced he was willing to sign any waiver the shelter had for him so long as they killed his animal. Because even if – IF<—-get this! IF the owner is a total jerk who doesn’t deserve to have a pet, that’s for a court to decide and has absolutely no bearing on whether the animal has a right to live or whether shelter directors must do their jobs to protect animals from harm.
Killing healthy/treatable shelter animals is never, ever, under any circumstances, the fault of anyone but the people killing the animals.
I don’t like victim blaming. Pet owners, along with their animals who were needlessly killed at shelters, are victims. I put up with it on this blog to some extent in order to educate and hopefully change wrong thinking. But if you’re new here and just popped up to blame the victim and defend people who kill shelter animals, don’t take your coat off.