primary objection to my working at the shelter is that going in, you know your heart's going to be broken and, bless them, they want to protect me. they've nursed me through some losses. they want me to feel good, to enjoy life. they think that if i have to do this dog thing, i should volunteer at the no-kill Humane Society shelter. and on the right day, they might come close to convincing me... like last week when 52 animals came through the shelter doors in 9 hours. by the end of that day, they were far past maximum capacity. at the Humane Society they would have said, "we don't have room" or "we don't take dogs off the street" or "we have a waiting list".
they get to say those things and still claim they're no-kill cause nobody dies on site. cause the animals they turn away are going somewhere else for that to happen. they'll be abandoned and picked up as strays or they'll be turned in with 51 others like them at a place that doesn't have the luxury of saying, sorry, we're full up. they'll go to the county shelter cause it has to take them. and then someone has to figure out what to do in a situation when there are already more dogs than places to put them. and the genuinely awful, heartsickening truth is that most of them will have to be put down cause there's just no choice.
i'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that there's no such thing as a no-kill shelter. there're just shelters where the actual killing is handed off.
this is not meant as an indictment of the Humane Society and other rescue organizations that are out there doing a wonderful job and dedicating themselves to saving every single critter they've committed to. thank God for them. love and support them. but recognize that they're spitting in the ocean, folks. every one of them has a limit and sadly, when they hit that number, other animals have to be turned away. i'm not faulting them...but i am saying that nobody is blameless. we are ALL responsible. we've gotten comfortable with a nightmare situation right here in our own town cause we don't have to look at it. and we don't have to look at it cause shelters in this state are not required to publish their kill numbers. if we have this rosy illusion that there's any kind of balance between the number of dogs being saved and the number being sacrificed, it takes the burden off us to ask why is this happening? and what can i do about it?
i'm not suggesting you work at the shelter. though you might. but the real problem starts way before anybody drags their family pet through those doors, pretending to themselves that Snowball has a chance in hell of survival. It's a very lucky, very small percentage who ever walk back out. Nobody's saying that. Nobody's waving the flag of truth. Everybody's being polite. The assumption at the county shelter has to be that surrender is the best option for most of these animals. abandoned dogs and cats may be starving out there, but they're also procreating and the problems keep expanding. so the intake staff is friendly, regardless of the situation and they always say they're doing their best to find homes for all the critters. and that part is true. they are doing their best. but they're spitting in the ocean, too.
today as i returned to the building with funny little Iris - one of those lucky few who made it to a place in adoptions - i stopped to talk with a couple of kids with a sweet mutt they were holding with a piece of rope. i spoke first to the dog and gave her a treat. she seemed a happy girl. then the little boy pointed me to a plastic storage bin by the door. it was full of pups. 8 fat, sleepy babies. they pointed out their favorites, telling me which ones played all the time and which just slept. when i asked where they got these dogs they answered, "our yard".
shelters, at least in this state, are not required to publish their kill numbers.
seems to me it might be a good first step in the educational process to show us the truth - maybe we'd start making better choices.
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