CAME ACROSS THIS AND THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE WITH MY BROTHERS,,, YEA I LOVE ANIMALS

A Letter From a Shelter Manager - This is Reality!!
Date: 2012-06-22, 1:41PM

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? Where are you moving too 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 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. For those of you that care--- please repost this to at least one other craiglist in another city/state. Let's see if we can get this all around the US and have an impact.

Below is From: June 25, 3:22 PMPhiladelphia Animal Advocate ExaminerMegan Drake
Euthanasia is a fact of life for many animals living in shelters. No one likes to talk about it let alone have to be the one to perform it on shelter animals. The following is written, verbatim from the video below. It is powerful. It is first hand testimony. And, it needs to be read. . .

"Recently it has come to my attention that there is a misconception about euthanasia in animal shelters. More than once people have told me that they feel those who euthanize animals are heartless. Nothing can be further from the truth. Four months I worked at a humane society. I worked in the dog kennels caring for around 100 dogs at any one time. The first day I walked in the euthanasia room the sense of sadness and desperation came over me. The room was lovely, painted with rainbows and soft pastel colors but nothing could hide knowing what goes on there. Eventually they started having me go in the rooms to assist with euthanasia. Whether it was the first dog or the hundredth - nothing changed.

Before we euthanized them myself and several other workers would often give the dogs more time to play, eat junk food and simply knowing their last memories would be good ones. We made them a lunch of dog or cat canned food mixed in our own lunches for the day, even sometimes candy and other food that is forbidden for dogs but they love them. We'd play fetch and let them have the run of the entire back yard.

When the time came we would leash them up and walk them into the room. It never got any easier. Two types of dogs would go into that room - the ones who knew and the ones who didn't. I don't know which was worse; the ones who knew would often fight and push, they'd pull, drag themselves, cry, bark, run, anything they could do to get away. Sometimes we'd have to carry them in and sometimes it was too hard for us and they would have another day.

The dogs that didn't know were equally hard. They would jog along, tail wagging into the room. They would watch us curiously as we got everything ready. We had a big bucket of treats in the room and would feed them the treats, their tails still wagging until their dying breath.
Beauty was a dog I will never forget. She was a pit bull, scarred and beaten but wanting nothing but love. She had a litter of puppies; everyone wanted them but no one wanted a pit bull covered in scars. The day she was on the list we walked her over to her puppies where she kissed them through the bars and they kissed back. Beauty was led away from her puppies, she as she always did walked gracefully to that door. She looked back one more time at her puppies and entered the doorway. I remember another dog who did nothing but stare at the person injecting her with the drugs. She was named Phoenix but she never rose again.

So when I hear those who euthanize shelter animals have no heart, listen to my words carefully. Anyone who can hold a dog to its dying breath, knowing that dog is young, healthy and unwanted has the biggest heart that can be. It's not easy, it's not fun. It was one of the hardest times in my life. Nothing can prepare you for it. The shelters are not to blame for this. There wouldn't be a need for animal shelters if people would stop buying dogs and cats from flea markets and pet stores were they get them from puppy mills. We wouldn't need animal shelters if people would spay and neuter their pets more. We wouldn't need animal shelters if people would care for their pets for their entire life expectancy and not dump them when they grow too big or old or boring.

Dogs and cats aren't babies forever. They aren't toys or fashion accessories, either. I have adopted three dogs from the shelter and two cats. One of those cats is a Sphynx, a rare breed costing $1,500 to $2,500 each. She was only six months old when I adopted her. Yes, you can find purebred animals at any age at the shelter or breed rescues. You never need to go to a breeder to find your favorite breed. Over a third of all animals in shelters are purebred. The rest are designer mutts.

You can find your dream pet at the shelter and also save a life. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that animal shelters care for between 6 to 8 million dogs and cats every year in the United States of whom approximately 3 to 4 million are euthanized.

Make a difference in an animal's life and adopt one today."