Pit Bulls are more likely to be euthanized than any other dog at a shelter... simply for being a live.
“This is an article that gets posted on CraigsList quit often. I have no way of verifying that it is true but having volunteered in two shelters in two different states: I feel comfortable posting it as realistic fiction. Please remember different states have different rules and regulations.” For everyone that posted a reply, I’m sorry that this post implied that I wrote it. This wordpress template lists everything that I post as if it was written by me. I will try to update the template to list me as poster and not writer.
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 breeders/sellers 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 change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don’t even know.
That puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it’s not a cute little puppy anymore. So how would you feel if you knew that there’s about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at? Purebred or not! About 30% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays”, that come into my shelter are purebred dogs with AKC papers (not that they’re any measure of quality in a dog).
The most common excuses I hear are; “We are moving and we can’t take our dog (or cat).” Really? Where are you moving to that doesn’t allow pets? 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? 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 (which hasn’t been the case in the past 3 years, thanks to the economy) 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 about 25 to 100 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.
In most states the meat is processed and used in dog food for can and dry kibble. It's labelled 100% meat! However the chemicals to kill the dogs is still in the meat... so now your dog is getting slowly poisoined!
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 shelters just don’t have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment.
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 vet techs depending on the size and how freaked out they are. Then a euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They will 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.
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? 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 that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head I deal with everyday on the way home from work. I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter.
Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes. My point to all of this DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!
Hate me if you want to. The truth hurts and reality is what it is. I just hope I maybe changed one persons mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say “I saw this and it made me want to adopt”. THAT WOULD MAKE IT WORTH IT.
-Anonymous
BRAVO Matthew!!! A truly compelling story, the heartbreaking reality is that you are 100% correct. THANK YOU for sharing this and I hope it saves the life of a least one shelter pet.
Thanks for sharing – I have adopted 5 animals, because I have volunteered and witnessed things people should never have to see if they love animals.We recently adopted a senior dog who is deaf and has really bad arthritis, we are giving him a year or 2 with love and peace. People need to also realize in many parts of our country animals are still being shot, killed with heart sticks and baked in the gas chambers – I think euthanasia is a light term for what goes on in most county shelters. People need to own up to being responsible, what kills me most is these low class humans dumping their pets off at the shelter with the lamest excuse while they have their kids in tow – if we do not teach our children about being a responsible pet owner.
Living in Germany and not having animal-kill-shelters at all (naming an animal kill station shelter is contradictory per se!) this is beyond my understanding, that such concentration camps do exist on US territory. Not devoloping castration programs or prohibiting all these ruthless backyard breeders from their doing, but maintaining this Holocaust on helpless and wonderful creatures instead, puts in my point of view the US on this miserable level of countries such as Romania, Bulgaria or Turkey, that are damned behind in concern of protecting the animals that had the bad luck to get born there. Matthew, I fully understand, that you hate this job and I can tell you, that I would turn into a killer, if someone delivered me his dog or cat – well knowing, that it never will leave these walls alive. These people are not worth being called humans and I feel ashame for each of them. I have 7 (mostly handicapped) cats, a blind dog from a Bulgarian shelter, 23 pigs rescued from slaughtery such as 4 cows and they are the most precious things in my life! May the anti-animal-kill wave, still at it´s very beginning win and please fast. It costs so many wonderful and loyal lifes otherwise!!
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way its animals are treated.” — Mahatma Gandhi
Thank you. I hope your job becomes obsolete in my lifetime. I mean that in the nicest way.
Matthew,
I am one of the ones bawling their eyes out. The sadder truth is, the people who NEED to see this won’t care enough to read it. I adopted a lab mix from a friend who was going to bring her to the shelter because she “didn’t have enough time”. I had her for 16 wonderful years. Some time after she died, my husband and I decided it was time bring a new member of the family. We ended up coming home with 2 springer spaniels (sisters). They are a joy. I wish people would understand THEIR responsibility in how a pet behaves. It is no different then raising a child. It takes time, patience, and a lot of positive reinforcement. Although this artical is difficult to read, I appreciate you sharing your experience. Perhaps the breeders need to put in some mandatory time in the back, or the people giving them up should have to be present for what happens later…then maybe they would think twice about doing it again. Sorry, just had to vent a little. This really bothers me. How can we get people to understand that a shelter is not a jail, and that most animals there did nothing wrong?
This is heartbreaking. It hurts me that people look at them as “just a dog”. If they could feel the pain they put on our companion animals perhaps they would be more compassionate. They need to see the saddness in a shelter for a while to snap them into real life.
I have to dogs. A GSD/Border collie and a Rott/Lab The GSD mix was in the city sheter and had kennel cough and was in the euthanasia room waiting her death. A local no kill shelter who had worker who was friendly with the people in the city shelter went in there and saved her and all the others that day. A week later, she was home with me and I have had her for the past 8 years.
The Rott x’s owner was an older gentleman who passed away. He lived near a friend of mine who brought her to the warehouse where she worked, thinking to make her the warehouses second dog. (not a vicious dog jut the presence of one is enough to deter break in’s) But I fell in love with her and home with me she came.
I am one of the few who wold rather adopt an older dog then a puppy. Adopt rather then buy. All of my Cats and dogs have been either a shelter rescue or a street rescue or a ” they need a better home” rescue.
Thank you for writing this. I am in your boat and know what goes on behind the scenes at a shelter. It sucks!
Matthew, While yes most of us with a heart do bawl our eyes out and I do applaud you for speaking the truth many of us knew – you personally DO NOT HAVE to have that job. TBH, I know I couldn’t because I love & care about animals too much. Yes, if you don’t have it someone else will but you’ve added that personal side to it so I am responding to that. Yes, dealing with that much death would haunt anyone with a heart but you choose to personally see those images. There are many killpounds across the US & UK going “no kill”. I cannot call the place you describe a “shelter” because of the very definition of that word. I wish you and other shelter managers would consider what cities like Austin TX (which now only has a 10% kill rate) are doing. I don’t know if you’re reading this still after so much time or get alerted to comments but, tbh if I were you I would highly consider another “career” choice. It angers me that “shelter managers” think it has to be this way, because it doesn’t. Please look up the “No Kill Revolution” information because they even hold seminars to help. As to the people who take animals to such a place, well they should be notified when the animal is killed imo even with a picture if someone wants to add a dose of “reality”. Sometimes it isn’t the owners fault – either ill or deceased, but there are a lot of non profits out there who can help even though many now are also overfull. If anyone cares about the precious lives being wasted then please there are many ways to help – adopt don’t buy your own companion, crossposting kill lists across social media takes only a moment of time but can make the difference between life & death, helping to educate people about spaying, neutering, adopting the animals which also doesn’t cost any money, volunteering time with local charities for animals if you can’t stomache going into a killpound, donating money to humane organisations who do not kill their animal charges, sending petitions to lawmakers askinf for atrocities to end (look up Miami Dade & NY ACC for 2 big ones, or attending rallies & peaceful gatherings to also bring awareness. These are only a few thoughts as many of us have quite a number on this emotional subject. Blessings to all & their companions and please “share the love” not hate.
I have seen more than my fair share of animals euthianized. Yes I have seen one spaspm and jerk, he was not administered the sedative first becuase the stupid vet forgot. That is why a sedative is required first, then the euth liquid. Defecating on themselves is natural, its what happens when we die. Euthinasia is a good thing sometimes, shoot there is a horse rescue that if the horse does not find a home in a set amount of months they do euthinize so that they can have more room. Death is not a bad thing, we cannot save them all, there are way more animals than there are people. But i do think owners should be responsible and instead of taking them to a shelter they should go ahead and see about getting them euthed from their vet. Also one thing that would stop alot of people from taking dogs to the pound, start charging a $150 fee to drop the animal off. yeah the animals may get a higher chance of being dumped but hey there are people like me who have picked up strays all their life, I have had so many go through my heart its not even funny.