The Shelter Perspective

This blog is dedicated to every life lost in cold concrete rooms with their steel tables and eerie chills.

Lots of statistics for you. This is directed toward dogs but is applicable also to cats, rabbits, birds, and any animal unfortunate enough to wind up in a shelter.

Chances are the litter of puppies you bred, that you made sure you found 'good forever homes' for, really didn't. The chances of a puppy, purebred or not, finding a permanent lifelong home from the time it is sold as a pup until death are slim to none. Probably only about 20%. 80% of animals will wind up with a second or third person, many will bounce from home to home, some will be dumped or turned loose, others will run away/escape, some will be stolen, and yet others will find themselves in a different place due to whatever circumstances. That's it. 20%. A drop in the bucket. The rest will end up here, there, and everywhere. A great number will wind up in shelters, pounds, and rescues. 70% of people that acquire an animal will end up selling it, giving it away, turning it loose, or taking it to a shelter. 6-8 million dogs/8-10 million cats wind up in shelters in American alone, every single year. 60% of dogs 70% of cats will be killed.

The amount of reasons/excuses for an animal to be surrendered to a shelter/pound/rescue are innumerable. A few of the common ones are:

"The puppy got much too big." Oh gee, you didn't think about size when you bought a lab/shepherd mix!?

"We have to move. The new place doesn't allow animals." You should have kept looking for a place that allows animals!

"The dog sheds too much!" It's called a brush, fucking idiot. Maybe you should have thought that before you got a long-haired/double coated dog!

"The dog is too rambunctious/hyper!" Why'd you get a breed that has a high exercise requirement!?

"The dog has no manners!" It's called taking time to actually fucking train the dog!

"The dog barks too much and tears up the yard!" If you spent your life outside on a chain you'd be pissed off and lonely too!

"The kids don't want to take care of the dog anymore!" Uh yeah, shouldn't have gotten a dog 'for the kids' to begin with, parenting fail.

"We just don't have time for her/him!" A lot of people work 10 hours a day and have 3-4 dogs + kids that get plenty of attention/exercise/companionship!

"She's pregnant and we don't want to deal with puppies." Wouldn't have happened had you ponied up the fucking money to fix her!

"We're allergic." Which means, usually, more than one of the above reasons and you irresponsible cowardly ass doesn't want to admit it!

That's not the end of it. Think about it from the inside. The inside of the shelter. About 80% of the animals, purebred or mixed breed, will never again, once they enter through those doors, see the outside again. Over 50% of the animals that wind up in shelters are owner surrenders, which mean a human willingly brought them in and left them there. The rest are strays, abandonment, seizures from humane association cases, etc. 35-50% of the animals that wind up in shelters, be them strays or owner surrenders, are purebred. That's right, half of the animals that wind up in the pound were purpose bred purebreds.

The people that bring them in say things like "She is still very young, someone will adopt her." or "He is very well trained, good with kids, and good in the house, even though he is an older dog, I am sure someone will adopt him." and even "I don't have the time to find a good him for her. She is a good dog. I am sure someone will want her."

But what they don't realize is that few people actually get time to see the dog in any kind of home environment, acting as they would with a family. They don't get to spend an extended period of time with the animal to see how it's personality is. They don't get to see what training the dog has learned, or what it needs work on. The animals in the shelter are stressed, confined, more often than no they are crowded, and they are barking and throwing a fit trying to get any kind of human interaction and attention. All of the things that drive people away. Older animals have it worse. Few people want that twelve or thirteen year old dog. They don't know it's history. It's too big. It's no longer cute like a puppy. A lot of animals linger in shelters for an extended period of time. 20% of the animals surrendered at the shelter are adopted animals being returned.

After an animal is surrendered it has 72 hours, three days to find a new home or it looks grim. 90% of shelters are only required to keep animals for 3 days before they can legally kill and dispose of them. If an animal is surrendered and it has any kind of health issues, the chances of it finding a new home in those three days diminish greatly. If the animal has any symptoms a contagious illness, hope is lost. It's a dead creature walking in all accounts. Few shelters will risk the spread of disease/viruses and will almost immediately kill the animal in question, even for just a sniffle.

Once surrendered, chances are the dog will end up in a 6x8 chain link dog kennel with concrete or cold tile floors. Most of the time with other animals in the same space. Much of the time the room is full to capacity with other stressed, frustrated, lonely, and confused animals. The sound is usually deafening, as all of the dogs are usually barking, yelping, and howling in a futile attempt to get any kind of human attention. The dogs are forced to urinate/defecate in the same space there are also required to eat, drink, and sleep. Some shelters have volunteers/staff that will walk the dogs daily. This is rare. In reality, most animals lack human attention unless it is to feed/water, clean out the kennels with a power sprayer, or take an animal out to be euthanized.

If the dog is solid black, is on the larger size, is older, or is any one of the commonly mislabeled 'dangerous' breeds ('bully' breed, rottweiler, mastiff, doberman, German shepherd, etc.) it is a dead dog walking as soon as the kennel door closes. Solid black animals rarely get adopted for two reasons, they are so incredibly overly common ("If you've seen one black dog, you've seen them all. They are just a 'generic' dog.", and the superstition that having a solid black animal is 'bad luck'. If it is a larger sized dog chances are it won't get adopted either. People frown upon a big (sometimes hairy) dogs they know nothing about that will be 'too big' for their home. If it's an older dog most shelters won't even try to adopt them out. They just get killed. Few people want an older dog. It's not a 'cute playful puppy' anymore or it's believed to be 'too old to be trained'. If it's a breed commonly shunned for being 'aggressive' few people will want it and it will probably be killed, even if it has a superb family-suitable temperament, simply because it looks a certain way and people fear breeds that have the 'aggressive', 'dangerous', or 'vicious' dog label attached to them.

If the shelter isn't full to capacity, the dog is of a desirable breed, and has a decent temperament it may get a stay of execution. This usually doesn't last long. Sometimes, on rare occasion, rescue groups will come in and pluck certain dogs out for fostering. More often than not, the stay of execution only lasts a short time as eventually the space that dog is taking up will be needed for a new dog that's being/been abandoned or the animal's behavior will change.

It happens to every single animal in the shelter, for a short period of time or a long stay. They all change. The mental psyche of a dog (or any other animal) is not meant to deal with the overwhelming goings-on of the shelter. It takes a toll, and quickly. Animals turn neurotic, they pace, chew, dig, bark, etc. Being confined in a small space is a big one. After a few short days dogs, especially if caged with other dogs, tend to become aggressive and protective of their personal space. They are frightened, confused, overwhelmed. They don't want other dogs coming close to them in the kennel, they may even get into fights, and then the aggression turns to humans. They dislike having someone come and go constantly and not pay them attention, they dislike having staff shouting at them to "shut up" for barking all the time, or having their kennel/feet sprayed when hosed down. They just are so overwhelmed they just don't want to do it anymore and they introvert themselves, they just shut down, like a brick wall, and that's when the aggression comes up (confusion = stress = fear = aggression). For them, over time, enough is enough. When the day comes that they growl at a volunteer or snap that's it, they are usually euthanized the same day.

In the rare chance that a dog doesn't go completely mentally unstable from the shelter environment when given a stay of execution, chances are that some kind of illness will eventually be caught by it. If that happens, it's almost guaranteed that it will be killed. Most shelters, especially small low-budget ones, don't want to waste funds on treating illnesses, especially long term ones, when the animal's likelihood of being killed is probable anyway. Kennel cough is the number one illness that effects shelter dogs. It spreads like wildfire. If a dog even coughs or sniffles once and kennel cough is suspected it will usually be killed straight away.

When D-day comes for the dog (the day it is to be 'Destroyed', in other words euthanized or to put it bluntly, killed.) it will be taken from the kennel by a staff member with a noose-leash (or a catchpole if it's aggressive or dangerous) and led or often dragged from the kennel toward the 'the room'. The ones that are fearful/aggressive often put up a fight and are dragged off anyway. Many of the dogs are happy to see a human and they are all 'puppy smiles' and wagging tails as they 'go for a walk', unrealizing that they are being led to their own death. Once they get to that doorway they usually put on the breaks, dig their paws in, and fight to get away. They can smell the unease, the fear, and the death in the air. Sometimes they can hear other animals in there. Once the door opens they usually have to be forced in, fighting all the while.

Once in 'the room' they will be placed on a cold steel table and restrained by one to three people, depending on how big/stressed/fearful the animal is. Then the euthanasia tech or vet will load up a needle and syringe with either a pink or blue concoction of barbituates, usually sodium pentobarbitol. The leash is usually wrapped around the dog's muzzle two or three times so it cannot bite. Locating a vein on the leg is the method most vets use when administering the 'juice'. Some animals freak out and have to be forcibly held down by the techs until the needle is all the way in and and drug is administered. Sometimes the animal will tense and then explode in fear/pain/stress and jerk the leg being held, causing the needle to be ripped out and blood to go flying, the yelping/screaming can be ear piercing. Once under control again the drug is administered by the euth. tech or vet.

Most people think the term euthanizing/being 'put down' means all animals go peacefully and quietly. This is often the case, most animals do have a quick humane death like this, but there are some that will gasp for breath, shake, tremble, convulse, bite their own tongues, blink repeatedly, spasm, urinate, or defecate on themselves between the time the drug is injected and actual death occurs. Not all deaths by lethal injection are serene and uneventful, although most are. Afterward and the dog is no longer moving/breathing, most of the time laying there limp with eyes wide open, the tech will check the petechial response (the blink reflex) by touching the surface of the eye and checking for a heartbeat. Euthanizing animals day in and day out takes a toll on the techs until they become desensitized to it. After a while it just becomes the job at hand and each dog is just another dog, another weeks paycheck.

Once the dog has been killed it's lifeless corpse will either be thrown in careless piles with other euthanized once beloved family pet, stray, and abandoned animal corpses in a freezer to await the rendering truck or thrown into bins to await mass incineration or hauling off to a landfill somewhere. Some shelters sell off all the carcasses to rendering plants where they will be broken down and used for everything from fertilizer to companion animal food. The rest will be burned by the masses in huge unfiltered incinerators or trucked off by the load to landfills where they will be left to rot.

Most people don't know or care what happens when an animal is left at the shelter, it's no longer their responsibility. A lot of them have a happy adoption story in mind. The realities are grim and few ever learn that. It's 'just an animal' after all isn't it? They can just go buy a new one when they want to. And when they don't want it anymore, there is always a place where someone will take care of it until it can be adopted by someone else when they are done with it, or in reality, be disposed of. How convenient. It doesn't matter that it was a life. It means nothing once they walk out the doors and leave it in the hands of the shelter staff. It's no longer a once loved, once happy, living, breathing, sentient dog that trusted you with every breath it took, looked to you for care, protected you, loved you... it's just another statistic.

It's this mentality that keeps the shelters/pounds/rescues overflowing. The mentality that they're just animals, that responsibility for their lives does not matter. That someone else will do the job that you either no longer want to do as a pet owner, or that you failed at doing to begin with. It's that mindset that keeps backyard breeders producing litter after litter of puppies in the quest to make a few dollars. Once they sell or give that puppy away it's life is no longer in their hands and has no place in their mind anymore. It is also that mindset that causes people to buy from pet-stores, dump their dogs on the street, and keeps them from getting their animals fixed. It's lack of responsibility and lack of education. Furthermore it's a lack of giving a damn at all. Half of the people who buy puppies from pet stores know they come from puppymills. It doesn't stop them. Most people know that dumping their dog in the woods is not only illegal but is cruel. Still it happens. Because they don't give a damn.

If you're sitting there with tears streaming down your face, with mental images of wonderful pets being dragged away to their death, good. The truth hurts but it is what it is. Maybe next time it will make you think twice about taking your dog to the shelter for whatever reason, getting your kids a pet as a gift, breeding 'just one litter' of puppies, or buying from a pet store. Perhaps it will get you thinking about adopting from a shelter and saving a life instead of buying from a breeder when you commit to your next pet. Maybe it will make you think twice about the animal life that is in your hands. If you do have to give your dog up for whatever legitimate reason, at least do right by he/she that loves, protects, and looks to you for everything and take all of the necessary steps to ensure that your once beloved pet doesn't become just another lifeless corpse in a shelter dead pile and another tally in the statistics.