me, and it's truly sad. It's written by a shelter worker.
A little Knowledge goes a long way:
I think our society needs a huge "Wake-up" call. As a shelter manager,
I am going to share a little insight with you all...a view from the
inside if you will. First off, all of you people who have ever
surrendered a pet to a shelter or humane society should be made to
work in the "back" of an animal shelter for just one day. Maybe if you
saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would stop
flagging the ads on Craigslist and help these animals find homes. That
puppy you just bought will most likely end up in my shelter when it's
not a cute little puppy anymore. Just so you know, there's a 90%
chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it's dumped at,
purebred or not! About 25% of all of the dogs that are "owner
surrenders" or "strays", that come into a shelter are purebred dogs.
The most common excuses: "We are moving and we can't take our dog (or
cat)." Really? If you have a pet, make sure the house or apartment you
move to is pet-friendly, don't just throw a life away because you like
a certain layout. Or they say "The dog got bigger than we thought it
would". How big did you think a German Shepherd would get? "We don't
have time for her". Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have
time for my 6 dogs! "She's tearing up our yard". How about making her
a part of your family and stop ignoring her for hours while she's
outside? They always tell me "We just don't want to have to stress
about finding a place for her we know she'll get adopted, she's a good
dog".
Odds are your pet won't get adopted & how stressful do you think being
in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you, your pet has 72 hours to find
a new family from the moment you drop it off. Sometimes a little
longer if the shelter isn't full and your dog manages to stay
completely healthy. If it sniffles, it dies. Your pet will be confined
to a small run/kennel in a room with other barking or crying animals.
It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be
depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it.
If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers in that day to
take him/her for a walk. If I don't, your pet won't get any attention
besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste
sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose. If your dog is big,
black or any of the "Bully" breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc) it
was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those
dogs just don't get adopted. It doesn't matter how 'sweet' or 'well
behaved' they are.
If your dog doesn't get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is
full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn't full and your dog is
good enough, and of a desirable enough breed it may get a stay of
execution, but not for long . Most dogs get very kennel protective
after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the
sweetest dogs will turn in this environment. If your pet makes it over
all of those hurdles chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper
respiratory infection and will be destroyed because the shelter gets
paid a fee to euthanize each animal and making money is better than
spending money to take this animal to the vet.
Here's a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never
witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being "put-down". First,
your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look
like they think they are going for a walk happy, wagging their tails.
Until they get to "The Room", every one of them freaks out and puts on
the brakes when we get to the door. It must smell like death or they
can feel the sad souls that are left in there, it's strange, but it
happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained,
held down by 1 or 2 shelter workers depending on the size and how
freaked out they are. Then a shelter worker who we call a euthanasia
tech (not a vet) find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose
of the "pink stuff". Hopefully your pet doesn't panic from being
restrained and jerk. I've seen the needles tear out of a leg and been
covered with the resulting blood and been deafened by the yelps and
screams. They all don't just "go to sleep", sometimes they spasm for a
while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves. You see shelters are
trying to make money to pay employee pay checks and don't forget the
board of directors needs to be paid too, so we don't spend our funds
to tranquilize the animal before injecting them with the lethal drug,
we just put the burning lethal drug in the vein and let them suffer
until dead. If it were not a "making money issue" and we had to have a
licensed vet do this procedure, the animal would be sedated or
tranquilized and then euthanized, but to do this procedure correctly
would cost more money so we do not follow what is right for the
animal, we just follow what is the fastest way we can make a dollar.
Shelters do not have to have a vet perform their euthanasia's so even
if it takes our employee 50 pokes with a needle and 3 hours to get the
vein that is what we do. Making money is the issue here not loosing
money.
When it all ends, your pets corpse will be stacked like firewood in a
large freezer in the back with all of the other animals that were
killed waiting to be picked up like garbage. What happens next?
Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? Or used for the
schools to dissect and experiment on? You'll never know and it
probably won't even cross your mind. It was just an animal and you can
always buy another one, right!
I hope that those of you who still have a beating heart and have read
this are bawling your eyes out and can't get the pictures out of your
head, I deal with this everyday. I hate my job, I hate that it exists
& I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some
changes and start educating the public. Do research, do your homework,
and know exactly what you are getting into before getting a pet. These
shelters and humane societies exist because people just do not care
about animals anymore. Animals were not intended to be disposable but
somehow that is what they are these days. Animal shelters are an easy
way out when you get tired of your dog (or cat), and breeders are the
ones blamed for this. Animal shelters and rescue organizations are
making a hefty profit by keeping this misconception going.
Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only
you can stop it. I just hope I maybe changed one persons mind about
taking their dog to a shelter, a humane society, or buying a dog.
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