What Really Happens When You Take Your Pet To The Animal Shelter? Answered Straight From The Mouth Of A Shelter Manager

People sometimes think that dumping a dog or cat at an animal shelter will ensure that it finds another home, other people just don’t care, they just want to be rid of the pet that has become a “problem” usually through no fault of its own. I honesty don’t believe that most people even realize what happens when they take a pet to an animal shelter. Maybe a look inside, behind those closed doors, will open some eyes and make someone think twice. If even just one pet can be saved, it will be worth it!

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.  
~Albert Schweitzer

This is from an animal shelter manager  in ORLANDO FL which was originally posted on Craigslist. It's an inside look at what really happens behind the scenes of a animal shelter. Take the time to read it and share it. It is definitely time for people to wake up and see, really see!!

I am writing this because 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.

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 50% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays” that come into my shelter are purebred dogs.

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?

• 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 bringing her inside, 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, and how stressful do you think being in a shelter is?
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 about 25 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 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, rottweiler, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those dogs just don’t get adopted. 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, though not for long.

Most pets 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. That is, until they get to “The Room”, when 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 their size and how freaked out they are). A euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They 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 it’s leg. 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 pet’s 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 do everyday on the way home from work. I hate my job, I hate that it exists and I hate that it will always be there unless 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 is 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 person’s 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 thing on line and it made me want to adopt”. That would make it all worth it.

FAST SHELTER FACTS
Approximately 8 million to 12 million companion animals enter animal
shelters nationwide every year, and approximately 5 million to 9 million are
euthanized (60 percent of dogs and 70 percent of cats). Shelter intakes are
about evenly divided between those animals relinquished by owners and
those picked up by animal control. These are national estimates; the
percentage of euthanasia may vary from state to state.

According to the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy
(NCPPSP), less than 2 percent of cats and only 15 to 20 percent of dogs are
returned to their owners. Most of these were identified with tags, tattoos or
microchips.

Twenty-five percent of dogs who enter local shelters are purebred.
(Source:NCPPSP)

Only 10 percent of the animals received by shelters have been spayed or
neutered. About 75 percent of owned pets are neutered.

The majority of pets are obtained from acquaintances and family members.
About 15 to 20 percent of dogs are purchased from breeders, and 10 to 20
percent of cats and dogs are adopted from shelters and rescues.
(Source: Ralston Purina and NCPPSP)

More than 20 percent of people who leave dogs in shelters adopted them
from a shelter. (Source: NCPPSP)

Five out of ten dogs in shelters and seven out of ten cats in shelters are
destroyed simply because there is no one to adopt them.

The following data are ASPCA estimates unless otherwise indicated.
~Shelter facts complied by ASPCA, Craigslist shelter manager author unknown