An Outside View On US Animal Shelters
Coming from Austria and watching US movies I was always confused why shelters are portrayed as a negative in movies, like when Garfield gets caught by Animal Control and he needs to get out as quickly as possible; coming to the US and seeing what was actually going on – this is going to a local shelter and being referred to the long “diseased list” at the entrance, playing down the meaning of their cause of death like these animals died of some natural cause ever week – just blew my mind! Why is this happening? How can this happen? How could this even start happening?
Approximately 6 to 8 million animals enter U.S. shelters every year, with 3 to 4 million of those animals are being euthanized; this is 50%, (which is 57.692 – 76.923 a week!). I also read that in the early days some numbers were as high as 15 million!
What I really do not understand is why US animal shelters are killing millions of animals every year. Shouldn’t a shelter, by definition, protect these animals? Why does it take a rescue group to rescue animals out of shelters?
It’s like if the Red Cross starts killing shelter inhabitants because there are too many poor people and a SWAT team is formed to get as many people out as possible.
Why aren’t the shelters renamed into prisons or death camps, maybe it would not be so confusing, and less people would dump their animals then.
But this is not the real solution…
In Austria we do not need rescue groups that work 24/7 under enormous pressure to get as many animals out as possible. As a matter of fact euthanasia of healthy animals is forbidden by law, you also can’t just go to the vet and say I don’t want this animal any longer, get rid of it for me. If I read in the Austrian newspaper that a shelter gets full, the same article reports that a new shelter is going to be opened which also secures more jobs.
The real solution is
.) educate people – spay and neuter,
.) help the ongoing efforts of the No Kill Shelter organizations,
.) help your local rescue groups,
.) Take responsibility!!! This means don’t throw away your animal like old clothes you don’t want to wear any longer. If you have an animal this is a bondage for life!!
.) And simply, open more shelters which would also mean more jobs.
Verenas Welt Blog | Verena 2010/07/15
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