Hi. If a cat or dog is in good medical condition, not feral, and otherwise adoptable will a shelter euthanize the animal after the animal has sat in a cage (and up for adoption) for a predetermined amount of time (this amount of time, of course, will vary depending on the shelter). Maybe your local shelter is great and this would never happen, but is this scenario plausible elsewhere in the United States. If more animals are coming in than can be adopted or placed elsewhere (like other shelters) is it plausible euthanasia would carried out (at some shelters, maybe not yours locally) after the adoption time (plus any extra leeway) is up. I have presented this question on a couple of occasions to my local city animal shelter and humane society shelter. On each occasion the shelter representative gets rather defensive of the nature of the inquiry and why I am even asking it. Their standard line is no adoptable animal is put to sleep (this, to me anyway, is circular logic if by definition an animal that sits around for month at the shelter is not adoptable). So I need the straight dope, does this happen?
For sake of discussion assume (1) we are talking animals in good health (not sick or feral) and (2) the shelter is city operated and located in the United States.
At our local shelter, animals that are not adopted within 72 hours are euthanized. There is a rescue group that collects as many as they can, but they only have so much room.
If the shelter accepts any animals brought in, then they have to. Oddly enough, these things breed like animals, and there is an inexhaustable supply that is far larger than the number of people willing to adopt.
I know of one “no kill” shelter nearby and guess what? No space left! There’s only so many old ladies willing to take in 50 cats.
So when there’s no space, no budget, and no manpower to fill a city block or 10 with dog kennels and cathouses, what is your suggestion, other than painless euthanasia? Heck, you can’t even load up a big rig with cats and haul them 100 miles away…
to MD2000 - please do not assume I have an agenda (in regards to “whats your suggestion”) - I don’t - I am on a fact finding mission. The question being: is this customary practice?
Standards vary. We had a no kill shelter around here, and they ended up over-crowded and the animals were in bad shape as a result. Also it was being run by a nut who disqualified almost everyone who wanted to adopt. The end result was many animals ending up in smaller shelters and euthanized sooner because of overcrowding. Blame the idiots who abandon the animals, not the shelters (well except that one I mentioned).
Our dog jumped out of our fenced back yard, and it took us 4 days to find him. FINALLY we turned him up at a shelter in North Charleston (way the ass far away from where we lived) and literally raced to get him. He had been there for 3 days, and was on his last day before they put him down.
He was a beautiful, purebred chocolate lab, with a collar and tags (they didn’t try to call us because the person who dropped him off said that they saw him get “dumped” at a park) and he would have died the very next day if we hadn’t been persistent. I was HORRIFIED.
So yes. Every day, and many many many of them. There’s just no room.
[QUOTE=burkdaddio]
{snip} Their standard line is no adoptable animal is put to sleep (this, to me anyway, is circular logic ** if by definition an animal that sits around for month at the shelter is not adoptable**). {snip}
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Bolding is mine.
Your other questions and comments have been addressed so I will address only this comment.
You start from an incorrect assumption. Some animals, because of their species or breed* are at a higher risk of what animal welfare professionals call “inappropriate adoptions”. For example, heavily coated dogs or cats that require extensive, frequent and/or expensive grooming. Far too many people fall in love with a fluffy puppy or kitten only to find themselves months later with a filthy matted animal they have no idea how to take care of. The shelter takes in this animal, gets it cleaned up, and the wrong sort of owner applies to adopt it.
It may take a while for the right adopter to come along. I have fostered many dogs and cats who were with me for months before the right adopter came along. I would much rather take care of the animal for months than place it in an inappropriate home and have the animal returned, find out it was given away, turned in for euthanasia at the local “open admissions” shelter/ “kill facility”, or dumped along a back county road.
*I have been rescuing Dobermans for over 20 years. A very common way for a Doberman to come in to rescue is the case of a nine-month-old puppy whose owner “works long hours and no longer has time to take care of it”. What the foster parent finds out is the dog has not been housetrained or received basic obedience training. Who wants to adopt an unruly 70-pound dog who shreds everything he can get his mouth on and who pees and poops all over the house?
It can take a few months before this dog is properly trained and socialized to the point where he is appealing to adopters. But this investment in time is well spent when it can virtually guarantee the dog has a good home for the rest of his life.
Sorry.
Good old internet “lost in plain text” - it’s not an accusation or suggestion of agenda, just an observation that “really, what other alternative can you think of”? (I can’t)
Any animal shelter will accept whatever it can hold.
Apparently, most will fill up rather fast.
Yes, a small number will for various reasons need to be put down.
The rest - unless adpotions (outgo) matches incoming, there is no other choice except put one down for each new one coming in. When an animal arrives in, it’s got to go out or down.
After all, there’s no othr country that’s going to take in our excess animals the way we adopt Chinese or African babies… (we’ll skip the Korean jokes.)
They try all sors of remedial measures, like spaying every animal that is adopted - but in the end, the new animals keep coming.
Well, when you immediately dispute the stat as “misleading” without providing a citation, or even quoting the post, it seems like the response of someone whose mind is already made up. I’m not saying you are biased, but your early posts matched a pattern typical of posters with an agenda, whatever that’s worth.
Are being bred (commercially) is a bigger part of the problem than strays breeding on their own, although you probably already know that.
Any time something is a commercial commodity, there will be unavoidable wastage. When that wastage is living beings, the results are something most people try not to think about.
Although softened with a smiley, which is nice (no snark), your post suggests that OP was putting up an argument one way or another. She asked “is it plausible.”
(I’ve just been exposed to this gambit in another thread, with far less genorosity, and today I’m sensitized.)
Plus, there are shelters which automatically kill pitbulls - might as well, as the top 2 “most likely to die at a shelter” breeds are pits and chihuahua.
Now, go to Craigslist and search (the entire “for sale” - not just pets) for “puppies”, “puppys”, “puppy” - most of the backyard breeders can’t spell chihuahua, so you can’t really limit by breed (pit or pitt? or just pits?)
The “parents on site” (they can’t spell sight/site/cite) are openly backyard breeders. And try to read about the purebreds - pure bread is common.
Now you get some idea of what the shelters are up against.
Then there are the assholes who think a female just has to have at least one litter to “calm her down” or whatever insane theory they have.
And don’t let an unaltered male cat wander the neighborhood - they will produce a couple of hundred kittens a year.
What “gambit”? That shelters kill animals? Even “nice” ones?
If you can’t take your pet with you (and that means can’t not “too much trouble”), be aware that if you don’t find it a new home, nobody will. Dropping it off at the shelter is a death sentence.
There is a woman in our neighborhood who scans all the kill shelters within a 300 mile radius (and there are many, and we are on the coast) and takes them out and tries to find homes for them. Most of the dogs here come from her, and I think most if not all would be dead without her intervention. And I’m sure you all know this but . . . we have the most kind, affectionate, well behaved dogs I’ve ever seen. Our beagle is adorable and the best dog I have ever had. It breaks my heart to think she was 24 hours from being gassed.
I will never ever ever ever go to a breeder again with so many great dogs being put down.
Just to re-iterate, since the whole thing seems to be derailed/lost in transaltion as happenes with text-only postings…
Not suggesting anyone has any agenda. (Oddly enough, the same topic was in the news about some Canadian city’s shelter changing its policy as to whether it would even notify people dropping off animals that the animal would likely be euthanized withing a few days)
Just simple reality.
Unless taxpayers are willing to pay huge sums to warehouse dogs and cats for a decade or two (where’s the kindness in that, either?) then the only solution is to put down (as humanely as possible) any animals that are not going to be adopted very soon.
To return to the OP… Yes it’s not pretty so it’s not surprising if the shelter people are evasive. Plus, they do get fanatical types who can’t face reality berating then (to their face and in the media) for something that they have to do.
Face it - based on the reality of the situation - these people work with animals. Presumably it’s because they like animals (I sure hope it is) and they are upset every time they have to do such things. Attacks by whackos don’t help. So if you start asking questions about euthanizing animals, they presume this is the same conversation they’ve endured a hundred times already from people who don’t udnerstand logic. Sorry. They have a pat answer which they use to try to close off that conversation, I’m sure.
But, no snark. What’s the alternative? They die, or they live on. If they live on, someone has to feed and care for them. That costs money. Paying for food and cage atttendants costs money. Good workers who truly do things right will cost more than minimum wage. Cities have better things to do with their money. Humane societies have limited donations to work with. Nobody really wants to handle a dozen dogs in a modern suburban home, so the animals are not going back out.