Posted on 08/13/2007 1:35:37 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
SAN ANTONIO (AP) - In the old lobby of San Antonio's Animal Care Services, a cheerful-looking sign written in neon pink, blue and yellow delivers a somber message: In a week's time, the city-run shelter took in 1,004 dogs and cats and adopted out or rescued 76. It killed 925.
The shelter wants to turn those numbers around. By 2012, San Antonio plans to become a "no-kill" facility, meaning it wouldn't kill any animal deemed healthy or treatable.
By reducing the homeless pet population through spay-neuter programs and working with other shelters to find permanent homes for animals, the San Antonio shelter believes it has learned from those that have tried, but failed, to become no-kill.
But the pitfalls are many, animal welfare advocates say, and some aren't at all convinced that the national trend toward no-kill shelters is always in the best interest of the animals that need help.
"It sounds very good, but the reality is that it will probably leave some animals to suffer," said Daphna Nachminovitch, director of the domestic animal department at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
No-kill shelters that have worked elsewhere in the country have succeeded because they partner with other local facilities.
"We are definitely seeing a broad movement toward no-kill," said Richard Avanzino, president of Maddie's Fund in Alameda, Calif., which aims for the U.S. to be no-kill by 2017. "And there are some isolated examples of horror stories where things have gone astray and people in their zeal have actually done harm. ... It's not something that you just flip a switch and it happens immediately."
National organizations want to reduce needless killing. The ASPCA this year launched "Mission: Orange" to increase adoption and reduce euthanasia in five U.S. communities. The American Humane Association has an initiative called "Getting to Zero."
But many no-kill shelters have no backup plan and hang onto animals for months, sometimes years, until they are adopted, causing crowding and health problems for the animals.
The practice of "warehousing" is a top concern for animal organizations when a shelter decides to go no-kill. And animal advocates say they understand that killing the animals is sometimes the only humane way to ease overcrowding.
PETA said it routinely receives complaints that animals are stacked in kennels one on top of another and allowed water only once a day so they don't urinate in their cages. Others spin around and around in their cages because they're rarely let out for a walk.
"I've been to good no-kills, and I've been to bad no-kills," said Jef Hale, the San Antonio shelter's director. "I was at a no-kill in Louisiana and basically what they did is they just put animals in a cage and they just continued to add animals to a cage. ... If we put them in a cage and we don't interact with them, we slowly drive them crazy."
But no-kill shelters that don't warehouse animals fill up quickly and are forced to stop taking in new ones.
"Now what's their alternative?" said Kim Intino, director of animal sheltering for the Humane Society of the United States. The animal likely ends up either in an open-admission facility that does euthanize, or worse, on the streets.
Animal Care Services has traditionally taken in 50,000 dogs and cats and euthanized 95 percent of them, Hale said. It once used a gas chamber, but switched to the more humane lethal injections about a year and a half ago.
Nationally, about 6 million to 8 million dogs and cats enter animal shelters each year. About half are killed.
"The problem of course is that 8 million animals are being discarded," Nachminovitch said. "If it were as easy as simply stopping euthanasia, then that would have been done a long time ago."
In pursuing the no-kill label, some shelters will only take in animals they're sure they can adopt out, said Charlene Jones, founder and director of Animals at Heart, a nonprofit in Jacksonville, Fla., that works to help people keep their pets longer. Others will adopt out potentially dangerous animals just to make space.
Another topic that has created a tense divide is the no-kill label. If one shelter is "no-kill," that makes the others "kill" shelters.
"There is no room for no-kill as morally superior," said Ed Sayres, president of the ASPCA.
That is the question.
Funny how PETA is waffling on this issue.
It’s like abortion “every animal a wanted animal”.
PETA is not waffling. It’s squarely in the “kill them all” camp.
A lot of no-kill shelters also have foster families who volunteer to care for pets in their homes until they find a permanent home.
That makes sense.
Liberals deem it ‘ethical’ to murder/abort unwanted children.
Animals too.
True, but if there are 6 - 8 million animals per year, then what.....
If you’re looking for a pet, try http://www.petfinder.com/
You can plug in your zip and even the breed of pet you’re looking for and it will access it’s database of shelters and rescue animals and present you with results.
But there’s a limited number of foster homes available. There are several million cats and dogs euthanized in shelters every year. With dogs, a harsh crackdown on breeding for profit and paper-selling for profit (i.e. the AKC) should be the first step. The whole fraud of “pure bred” dogs is disgusting. People are routinely paying over $1000 for puppy-mill bred dogs of unknown but definitely unhealthy parentage, accompanied by “papers” that deceptively mislead the buyers into thinking this is a “better” dog than one without “papers”. The papers are utterly meaningless, but they are what’s driving the whole puppy mill industry.
Expect a surge of Chinese restaurants to open soon in San Antonio..........
According to something I’ve read, their own operation isn’t no-kill, they can hardly stand up for it now.
Now why can’t we use the “kill” logic as being more humane to the goal of alleviating prison overcrowding?
Euthanize a cell block of child molestors... unlike a litter of puppies put in a bag and tossed into a pond, child molestors will not be missed.
bttt
You ain’t lyin’!
I watch those “Maximum Security” prison shows on MSNBC. The ones that show how the worst POS’s of society that are ware-housed like animals.
I think it would be far more kind, more compassionate if they euthanized those ————. The mental derangement those prisons cause is amazing. And the stress to prison guards is incredible.
And these gang-bangers are still committing horrendous crimes in and out of prison — right from inside their own jail cells.
I have done tenant build outs for Chinese restuarants in shopping plazas and there is ALWAYS a pet store nearby! Coincindence? I think not! ;-)
I just shudder when I walk by those places and see either the teenage girls fawning over the cute young animal trying to convince their idiot boy-friend-for-the-week to buy one for them -or- the spoiled brats trying to convince their lazy parents that they just *need* a new pet.
I tend to think that many of those animals end up abandoned in a shelter...or worse...as the new owner realizes it actually takes a little work and responsibility to own a pet.
“Now why can’t we use the “kill” logic as being more humane to the goal of alleviating prison overcrowding?
Euthanize a cell block of child molestors... unlike a litter of puppies put in a bag and tossed into a pond, child molestors will not be missed.”
***
Or those nice “immigrants” who killed/tortured those three teenagers in Newark. Or the guy who shot up that church in one of the plains states over the weekend (assuming he’s still breathing).
These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but there are probably more.
I don’t understand why LOW LOW cost spaying/neutering is not seen as a major portion as the answer to the problem! When it costs $100 - $150 to fix each animal, it’s no wonder that there is a plethora of animals!! And when it costs that much to adopt a critter from a shelter, people are going to think to themselves, ‘hey! if I just let Imelda and Fidel have at each other, in short order I’ll have a whole litter of freebies ... so why shouldn’t I? I can always just take the extras to the pound when we’re ready ...’ The system is broke and needs fixed!
Easy problem to solve. If your dog or cat is not spayed- nutured it is a 10,000 dollar fine unless you are a breeder. A breeders license cost 1,000.00 per year and require semi annual inspections and all pets must be sold in advance. End of problem. Any animals caught running lose will disappear.
I Wish you'd suffer and STFU as well
What you propose sounds like a totalitarian country. No thanks!
That’s the part everybody knows. What’s more insidious is the home-based sellers who put ads in the paper claiming or implying that the puppies have been born to a family pet, when actually they’ve been purchased from a puppy mill wholesale.
My boss got suckered into this a few years back. After losing a very old Maltese, he and his wife decided they wanted another one and looked in the classified ads. On the weekend, they went to a home in a nice neighborhood and were shown a litter of adorable Maltese puppies and given some excuse why the mother wasn’t in sight. They forked over $1200 and took a puppy home. They’d been thinking of getting two, and after a few days decided they wished they had. On Friday, they called the seller and asked if there were any left. She said one or two were but couldn’t promise they’d be available for long, lots of people calling etc, but she also had a litter of Yorkies. So my boss and his wife went to the house the next morning, found all the Maltese puppies were gone and got suckered into forking over $1000+ for a Yorkie. By this time, he and his wife must have had a clue that these weren’t the offspring of the selling family’s pets, since there had been no mention of any Yorkies the previous weekend. But they wanted another puppy and there were the cute puppies right in front of them, and they’d already been born and were going to get sold to somebody . . .
I’m sure some of these home-based sellers carry the fraud even farther, keeping a female dog or two and having them pose as the mothers of the fast-moving merchandise. With long haired breeds, it would be hard to tell if the mother had actually been nursing pups recently. As far as I’m concerned, any dog that’s being sold (apart from shelters that charge a nominal fee) should be presumed to be a puppy mill dog. Even if it’s not literally a puppy mill dog, it’s part of the “legitimate” breeding industry which fuels the puppy mill industry by staging high profile dog shows and publishing magazines about purebred dogs, to promote the idea that it’s much better to get a “purebred” dog with “papers”. If people really care about their purebred dogs, they will breed them rarely (like one litter max for one female) and give them away to the best homes they can find. The minute they start charging money, it’s a business and the dogs are merchandise, and then the motivations for breeding and selling are no longer driven by concern for welfare of the dogs or “preserving/promoting the breed”.
I would agree... It’s ridiculous to me that to adopt even a full-grown cat/dog from a shelter costs upwards of $150.00. I understand that they are also taking in money for the care and feeding of these animals, but they could more easily get these animals adopted and out of the shelter if the adoption costs were less, IMHO... Usually the dogs are not pure-breds, and it’s cheaper to buy a pup through the paper than a dog at the shelter...
Also, our dog broke his collar and was in our county shelter for 8 days last winter. (We called and called and they repeatedly said he was not there...) Finally, we called and someone said they might have him (can’t explain it as he’s a 140 lb. Black Lab — pretty hard to miss). He was miserable, very sick (he had lost 25 pounds — in 8 days! — and was wheezing and coughing when we brought him home), and they already had him up for adoption (the law says 10 days at the least and his picture was even up at the local Wal-mart as available for adoption!).
Anyway, I felt bad we couldn’t take more of those poor dogs home with us. As it was we had to spend over $250.00 to get him healthy again — well worth every penny — but total needless if they had kept adequate records. We honestly think that they were trying to get the money had he been adopted out, and the only reason they told us that last day is because it was obvious he was getting very ill being in there...
Some animal shelters are good, but the majority of ones I’ve seen have horrible problems with illness, cleanliness, etc... What’s kind of ironic is that the no-kill shelter I knew of in Lake County, IL years ago was one of the cleanest places, with the happiest animals I’ve ever seen...
A less intrusive solution would be to simply outlaw the sale of cats and dogs. Most of the end-buyers of bred-for-profit animals aren’t really interested in getting into illegal activity. This would virtually eliminate the social cachet that prevails in many circles, of telling people you bought this very expensive “purebred” dog from some high-falutin’ breeder (who often bought the puppies wholesale from a mill). And it wouldn’t put the slightest dent in the activities of amateur hobbyists who genuinely want to help perpetuate a healthy line of a certain breed.
Fat fines are appropriate for unspayed/unneutered pets found roaming off their owners’ property.
“I don’t understand why LOW LOW cost spaying/neutering is not seen as a major portion as the answer to the problem!”
***
Where I live, one of our local shelters has a low cost spaying/neutering programs available to low income and senior citizens. When you donate to the shelter, you can designate that your donation go to this or that program, and I usually designate mine to go to the spay/neuter program.
Problem is getting people to actually use the program. Just like those who think it is more “natural” to let their critter run loose all over the place, biting people and making “deposits” on the neighbors’ lawns, there are also those who think it’s not right to spay/neuter. And of course, you have those who are just plain lazy or stupid or ignorant. We have a particular problem with cats — many of them have been abandoned and without being fixed, they just continue to breed and breed. I know of one woman who has been trapping strays, taking them in to be fixed (paying for the procedures out of her own pocket) and trying to place them in loving homes. But she has told me that the more cats she traps and has fixed, the more there seem to be. The population never goes down — just keeps going up.
"Breeding for profit", as you call it, includes the breed enthusiast who sells dogs of good bloodlines and good genetics in order to continue to refine the breed. These people also participate in activities which maintain and refine the animal's instincts, like herding, tracking, earth dog trials, etc, in addition to providing loving homes.
"Pure bred" dogs are not a fraud. I admit that some unscrupulous or ignorant breeders will further bad genes in a particular breed for profit, but you are painting all of us enthusiasts with the same broad brush. My pure bred Australian Shepherd is a genetically sound, well behaved animal. He has the intelligence and breed instincts I want in a dog. He would not be possible but for AKC and ASCA.
You are also wrong on the "papers", or breed registration, driving the puppy mill industry. What drives the puppy mill industry is profits and the market. How else do you explain the exorbitantly high fees paid for crosses like the Labrdoodle or the Border Jack, dogs which cannot be registered or participate in AKC activities? If people are willing to pay an exorbitant price for these crosses the market will supply them.
Don't blame the AKC, or hobby dog breeders, for the existence of a market for dogs. I agree it's unfortunate that stupid people obtain the wrong breed dog, have no idea what the dog wants or needs, and give them up to breed rescue or a shelter, in effect tossing them away like a used Kleenex. But that's not the AKC or pure breed dogs' fault.
You'd be better off banning stupid people than getting rid of the AKC.
The AKC rakes in tens of millions of dollars a year by selling papers to puppy mills. Anybody who does business with the AKC in any way, or lends credibility to it in any way, is participating in this massive scale cruelty.
“Refining the breed” has included destroying the hips of American-bred German Shepherds to the point where most police/military/rescue dogs have to be imported from Europe, where the breed registries never promoted the abnormal, unstable angled-hip structure that the AKC standard demands and rewards in it its shows.
Worst place to get any pet is from a classified ad. Best to go to a reputable breeder or, if you don’t want purebred, get one from a good shelter. My first cat came from a local shelter that has been in business for years. No she wasn’t purebred, but she was healthy (the shelter mandates that all of its “residents” are thoroughly checked and given first shots by a vet) and by various exercises and just general observation, the shelter knows the temperament and other characteristics of all of its animals.
Friend of a friend is partial to Russian Blue cats. So after each one of her pets has passed, she drives to Ohio to a breeder she knows and gets another. Since this friend of a friend does not care to show her cat, she usually gets one of “pet” quality — that is one that does not have the characteristics eligible for pet shows — usually at a huge discount from show quality cats. I think her current Russian Blue cost around $100, which is rather cheap for a purebred (show cats can cost thousands of dollars). As I said, this woman always goes back to the same breeder and has never had any problems.
Yes but that's part of the problem. that is very good that it is available to that population, but the lower middle class and the middle class don't qualify and so they can't afford to have it done and so they don't. It's difficult for some people to understand but a lot of families just don't have an extra hundred or two for that. They can give an animal a loving healthy home but they don't have the wherewithal to afford the spay/neuter and all the shots and boosters. Needs to be much more affordable and needs to be the Law of the Land as far as I'm concerned. To allow it to continue as it does, unabated littering, just causes too many societal ills.
Worse than that, at least in my neck of the woods, are the "backyard breeders" -- who are nothing more than people who don't spay or neuter their dogs (usually pit bulls), then advertise the litter in the local paper; or sell them by word of mouth. It's no coincidence that most of the dogs available for adoption at local shelters are often pit bulls or pit bull mixes.
Once those cute little puppies grow up, after being mistreated, neglected and untrained, it's out onto the street they go, and into a shelter, if they're lucky.
The puppy mills are a problem, for sure, but those buyers, who usually pay a hefty price, are more apt to try to sell the dog to recoup some of the money. Those who buy from backyard breeders, or get the pup for free, could care less once the cuteness wears off.
Sorry to agree with PETA on this issue, but many of these dogs have been so mistreated, and their health so neglected that the more humane thing is to put them down.
I am with the Milton CatSnippers. We are a TNR group in Milton, Delaware. Trap/Neuter/Release really works and it works BETTER than killing the cats.
It turns out that when you take cats out of the wild, the other cats in their colony INCREASE their breeding cycle. Also, if you kill a mothers kittens, she will go into heat again.
It is impossible to trap every cat in a colony all at once. What we do is trap the cats we can, spay/neuter them and bring them back the next day with one of their ears clipped. This way we can tell what cats have been “snipped”. We go through the entire colony and monitor the colony for any new cats who wander in.
With the kittens, we trap the mother and spay her and trap the kittens and tame them. They are then found homes within the community. The person who adopts a kitten must pay in advance for spay/neuter services and is given a coupon and a number for the vet.
This works very well! Our police department and town council who were against this are considering putting us on the town budget.
There is a way!
Cheers,
Donna
Let me ask you this, Donna ... I have a Siamese cat that needs to be TNR and he flat refuses to BE TNR'd! LOL He will NOT go into the trap. He's half starved. He's spraying all over everyone's cars. He fights with the other cats in the neighborhood and scares them half to death and has chased off my neighbor's cat. When you can't trap one, what do you do? (I'm working with my local pound about him and next week they're going to try placing a dog trap out for him with a chicken leg in it!). But they have stated that they have only run across ONE other cat that couldn't be caught. What have you done in similar circumstances, if you have had this experience?
I understand what you mean. It is a huge expense. I deferred a number of household projects to spend huge bucks trying to keep my one cat going only to have her succumb to kidney failure a couple of months ago. The last expenditure was $1,200. It’s not cheap trying to keep our pets going, but for someone like me, who doesn’t have anyone else, it’s worth it. I always say my cats have received better medical care than I have.
People have to understand that our pets are like our children. Just as we would go into hock and forego things for ourselves so that our children are well taken care of, so too should we be aware that we may have to make some of the same huge monetary sacrifices for our pets. That cute kitten or puppy is going to need a lot of medical care, first as a youngster and later when he/she gets older. We have to know what we are going to be getting into when we adopt a critter. Otherwise, we should just not adopt at all.
By the way, I have also been asked why I never got pet insurance for my pets. Pet insurance is a scam to put it bluntly. Most of the time you pay through the nose for the huge premiums, only to find when your animal needs some big ticket procedure done, the insurance doesn’t cover it.
One of my dogs is from a no kill park... she is a great girl.... love my dog.
I’m grateful that my vets have allowed for me to set up a payment schedule from time to time as expenses got out of hand. Critter owners really need to establish a relationship with a good vet and they will work with you when they see that you’ve kept up your end of the bargain in the past.
You wouldn't do that to widdow old me now, would you?
I almost hate to say it, but I think people need to be held MUCH more responsible when it comes to house pets. How to go about it without trampling on individual rights is the conundrum.
Sign me, "A Responsible Pet Owner Who Has Always Had Spayed &/or Neutered Adopted Pets"
Trouble with PETA is they also advocate euthanizing just about all animals who aren’t going to be adopted almost instantly by someone who buys into the whole PETA cult system. I read a story a couple of years ago where they were taking in pets telling people they’d find homes for them, and then euthanizing them immediately after the former owner left — no efforts whatsoever to find homes or to take adoptable animals to shelters that tried to find homes. In one case they did this with the perfectly healthy rabbit of an elderly man who was being forced to give up his pet due to an age-related change of residence.
But, if a cat is feral you can get the animal spayed for nothing. Not so for animals that have owners. So, yes, your post is so correct.
What a great site. Bookmarked for future use
I found it when looking for a pet for a friend. As I was searching our local shelters I came across a dog that had just been listed...we already had one dog of the same breed (Weimaraner) and were talking about getting another...so we went out and ended up adopting the dog. It was so nice to see the dog online and go into the shelter knowing which dog we were interested in.
The shelter in our area spays or neuters all the animals before they are adopted out. They have vets on staff, so the cost is included in the adoption fee, which is only 75 - 150 dollars depending on the age of the animal. (Young puppies are the most expensive while adult cats are free.) They also have a free vet program for low income pet owners.
The program is so successful that they are able to bring in dogs from out of state, where there are too many strays.
The real solution requires changing attitudes. Too many people live in a culture that doesn’t care whether their pets are fixed and have no problem leaving unwanted animals on the side of the road.
I don’t wish to argue about this with you... I don’t have time to explain to you everything that happened — and in our area there is but one shelter. As far as the people at the shelter lying repeatedly, and daily about not having ANY black labs in the shelter when we later found that he had been picked up the day he was lost — well, yes, I do blame them — and so did our vet (this has happened numerous times with dogs like ours (labs in particular) as we learned from our vet). And, the weight loss was due to the fact that he was sick and close to death when we picked him up — that according to the vet.
We have had our dog for 8 years and this was the _only_ time he has ever gotten loose (and the ONLY time he has ever gotten sick as well). It was a horrible time for myself and my family — and most especially for our dog!
Thank you for your suggestion about the micro-chipping, but as for the rest — well you know what you can do with your condescending attitude. I sincerely hope you never have to go through what we and our beloved dog did...
???
I have that relationship with my local vet. My late cat was among her first customers, so the vet cuts me some slack once in a while. She also accepts credit cards, but she has also established a 3% discount if you pay cash. The discount might be small, but it’s a good deal for both of us — shaves something off the bill for me and reduces the hassle of dealing with credit cards for the vet and her staff.
BINGO!!!!!
First off, PETA and the HSUS, along with dozens of other “Animal Rights” and so-called “Animal Welfare” organizations give ZERO of the millions they raise annually to address this problem, like financing free spay/neuter clinics. With all the money raised by these huge organizations there shouldn’t be any euthanization of millions of cats and dogs annually.
So, local shelters have to struggle to care for unwanted animals while these huge organizations rake in the dough on behalf of “animal overpopulation.”
Do you wonder why these huge organizations aren’t supportive of no kill shelters? Just remember why the majority of the gullible public sends dollars to them, to help save these poor unwanted animals, they are great props for fundraising efforts. Also, remember these huge organizations run NO shelters, shelters are run, in most cases, by underfunded local volunteers.
Do you two honestly believe new laws prohibiting people from owning pets that are not spayed/neutered will force irresponsible people (the ones who won’t spay/neuter their pets) to obey the new laws?
That’s like outlawing guns, so criminals won’t use guns.
GS, I don’t want the govt. telling me what kind of dog I can have. And, who do you think is going to pay for enforcement of any new laws?
Yes, the discount is small but it is still a discount and worth it, esp. if the bill is approaching what vet bills certainly can at times!
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