Everyone should read before buying a pet...

[bellachow]

Yes, this is disturbing but so very true and worth sharing so I have borrowed it...

By: Popeye Vasquez

A Letter from a Shelter Manager - anonymous in North Carolina

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. So 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 too that doesn't allow pets? Or they say "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 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 & how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you, 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 in 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, rottie, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door.

Those dogs just don't get adopted. It doesn't matter how 'sweet' or 'well behaved' they are.

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, but not for long . Most dogs 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. Until they get to "The Room", 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 the size and how freaked out they are. Then a euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They will 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. 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 pets 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 deal with everyday on the way home from work.

I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you 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 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 persons 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 and it made me want to adopt". THAT WOULD MAKE IT WORTH IT.

shelter freezer.jpg (47.68 KiB) Viewed 4401 times

[Sirchow]

Heart rendering Thank you for posting this.......

[Ursa's daddy]

So Sad, So True. I have 4 cats and four dogs at the house. All the cats and three of the dogs are rescue animals. Maggie, the rat terrier, was not walked or taken outside, so housebreaking was a real issue. She simply did not know. A while back, I had adopted a Himalayan cat. When I picked him up from the family, they told me he did not liked to be handled. I guess so. He was so matted, that he was in pain. We had him neutered, and while he was still under sedation, we had him closely clipped. After that, we would daily brush him. He became a wonderful cat that liked to be handled and brushed.

Animals are not born wonderful pets. They have certain genetic predetermined characteristics that humans have found desirable. These can be brought out by proper training and handling. They also have undesirable characteristics (puppies will chew shoes and other items, cats will claw furniture, etc) that have to be suppressed or redirected through training. Most of the problems people have with animals is due to the humans not acting correctly rather than the animal acting incorrectly.

I know I am preaching to the choir, because if you are reading this forum, you are interested in doing the best you can for your pet.

[Michael's Maggie May]

Heartbreaking-Thank you for waking some of us up. Many years ago I applied for a job at a county pet shelter, when I found out that my main job was to put animals to sleep everyday I turned and said no thanks.

[Victory]

There is no part of pet ownership and pets in general that doesn't need a real wake up call on all fronts. 1st, don't breed unless you are willing to take the pup back (no matter how old) and have that in the contract of sale to the point it is legal and binding. Also check on the pups every now and then, once or twice a year, drop an email or phone call to the person that purchased the pup, ask for pictures to prove that the pup or kitten is still there and being taken care of, or check with the Vet, on record, (and make sure you have one on record before you sell) A good pet owner is willing to do all that. I got Darkwind, Firesong and Dreamdancer from WTCR, and I gave my Vet's name to Linda before I got Darkwind, I still have the same vet and I do send pictures of Firesong and Dreamdancer to her every now and then...I would do the same with a purchase from a breeder.
This will help raise the quality of the people buying pets.
2nd, Pets are for life, this needs to be a national campaign, we need to really start looking down on people who just abandon their pets, because: he's too old; I'm moving and I can't take her with me; he/she is too big; he/she destroys x, y, z; he/she is too expensive; he/she is sick and I can't/won't pay to put him/her down, (that one really ticks me off); I don't have time for him/her...all these stupid, selfish excuses should have one answer and one expression by society, "what you didn't think about all this before hand. And would you treat your child like this?"
3rd society as a whole, every state should invest in places like Best Friends. Troubled teenagers, (those who haven't commited serious offensence as yet) can be sent to these facilities, (outside of big cities) to help care for the animals and get some counseling. Companion and special needs training groups can then go there and find the pets needed to work for people who need them.
4th Insurance companies, should be made to drop Breed Specific restrictions. When people drop off their animals to a shelter and give the excuse, "I'm moving and can't take them with me, further info should be gathered, is this a landlord issue, where the landlord's insurance company has restrictions? A lot do and this needs to be expressed, I know a man who couldn't find a place that would take his two rotties, so he lived on the street. He only had himself to worry about, but if he'd had a wife and kids what then would be his choice? The attitude that certain breeds of canines or even more ALL canines don't belong in apartments has got to go! Especially with the current and future housing crisis where more people will be forced to live in apartments.

5th More charitable places to help pet owners wit pet needs, food, dishes, bedding and even needed medications. Right now I'd more be more than willing and I'm able to donate a largebag of food per month for someone, maybe a bag of dog food and one of cat food. This will help as well, big bags could be opened and then put nto smaller bags like they do at human food shelves 6 pets could be helped for 1 donation. I'd even volunteer to help rebag food. We need the room to do it though, PetCo and PetSmart could help, they could have some places have a food shelf day, like on adoption days maybe and have volunteers hcome to help.

You know we need a national organization to do these things, and I don't see one out there. I'm going to look into starting one...I don't know how to start such a group, but I can learn. If we can get everyone who feels that things have to change, every shelter worker that is tired of seeing helathy adobtable animas being put down because their owners can't take care of them any more, then I think we can start to make a difference.

[BeckiHutton]

Good on you victory i couldn't aggree more with everything you said there

[Victory]

It's easy to say, "Don't breed!" or Get your animal spayed or neutured and that will fix the issues. The problem with this is that it can go too far, there have been several breeds in the past that simply died out, one cat breed as recently as WWII simply died out because no one was breeding them. What would happen if we looked up one day and there were no more Chows? Or Rotties, or Collies or Golden's?

The answer is not just no breeding...but RESPONSIBLE breeding. That along with equally RESPONSIBLE owner ship. And I think there should be ways to help people be just that. Puppy and kitten mills have to go, I think with the current trend of boycotting petstores that sell puppies and kittens this is begining to be a reality. We have to add boycotts at research and medical facilities that pander to puppy and kitten mills...this will be more difficult as most of these facilities are closely guarded now. But even a website or two that lists products produced by companies that use such facilities will help with this one, and that includes medicines. I am not completely opposed to medical research performed on animals, but I believe it should be performed only if the animal is 1) treated humanely, (no procedures without anthesia, decent living quarters and proper diet and exercise) and 2) only if the breed is suseptable to the disease or ailment that is being researched. This means only certain things would qualify, most cancers for instance, particularly oral cancers, pancreatic ones, liver, stomach, urinary and bowel...chows and many other dog breeds get these...Cats get a feline form of HIV, curing them, could bring a cure for human HIV. Almost all animals get artheritis, so that's okay too. Also developing artifical limbs etc...good. Humans have to stop thinking of themselves first and look at helping not only ourselves but our furred, finned, shelled companions as well.

I think we need an entire new dialog, we need to stop using the word, pets, or owned animals, or research animals, we need to start really referring to these as "COMPANIONS" they share our world, our lives, offer us comfort, absolute love and acceptance, give us pleasure and in many cases these days are the only family a lot of people have. We need to start thinking in these terms about them....

[Sarahloo]

Thank God things are nothing like that here. I don't think I could sleep at night if they were. Most pets in German shelters actually find a new home. If they're friendly, they're golden, they get a new home almost immediately. If they're old or difficult or black or sickly, they get a chance when "idiots" like me come looking for pets that are "a challenge". They'll have to wait a while, but they'll find a home, eventually. If they're completely unmanageable, they stay at the shelter where they lead very okay lives being taken care of by "professionals" until they die. Not perfect, but okay.

Just today I thought about pets I knew that were taken to the shelter. I could only think of one. Everyone else sort of managed without the shelter somehow: I remember my uncle's dog went to my grandma when he had to go to Afghanistan, a neighbor adopted another neighbors' cat when they moved, a Golden Retriever moved in with Grandma (not my grandma) when an unexpected family addition arrived, a grieving sister adopted her dead brother's dog and cat... Are we more responsible here? I don't know. Maybe.

When someone decides to get a pet here, they very often visit the shelter first before they think about buying a pet. So I guess it kind of works out, we don't have floods of newcomers at the shelter and quite a lot of people who actually adopt.

Problems arise now that we think it is our responsibility to rescue the pets of the world. Shelter pets are imported from countries like Spain and Greece, because they would be put to sleep there and we can't have that. (My Kitty was a Spaniard, and she was adorable!) That makes too many pets for one country to deal with, of course, but the situation is not yet all that critical.

I think we here are all doing the right thing, adopt as many as we can, and keep our own pets out of the shelters at all cost.

[Ursa's daddy]

3rd society as a whole, every state should invest in places like Best Friends. Troubled teenagers, (those who haven't committed serious offenses as yet) can be sent to these facilities, (outside of big cities) to help care for the animals and get some counseling. Companion and special needs training groups can then go there and find the pets needed to work for people who need them.

I love that idea. It can go beyond that. Animals, especially dogs, can be trained to assist humans. I am glad that Funky Winkerbean decided to show Wally with the dog for PTSD. Hopefully, more of our vets will be helped by such a program. We certainly owe them that and more. And there are so many other functions that dogs can do to help people with disabilities. I can go on and on with this.

Victory, you also mentioned medical research. We had to put Frisbee, one of our cats to sleep, because of cancer, bone cancer I think. It started in his jaw, and after two operations, we could not give him any relief, he was always in pain, and that was the best we could do. Done properly, I have no issue with medical research. If it is something that is painful, they should use politicians rather than innocent animals.

Responsible breeders can help improve the various breeds. We all know that the larger breed dogs frequently suffer from hip problems. I have read that the shyness found in some chows is hereditary, and occurs when both parents are shy. Ursa has Pemphigus Foliaceus and thyroid issues. If genetic records were available, perhaps this could have been predicted, and through selective breeding, eliminated in future generations. (All my pets have been fixed, in case anyone was wondering)

[Victory]

3rd society as a whole, every state should invest in places like Best Friends. Troubled teenagers, (those who haven't committed serious offenses as yet) can be sent to these facilities, (outside of big cities) to help care for the animals and get some counseling. Companion and special needs training groups can then go there and find the pets needed to work for people who need them.

I love that idea. It can go beyond that. Animals, especially dogs, can be trained to assist humans. I am glad that Funky Winkerbean decided to show Wally with the dog for PTSD. Hopefully, more of our vets will be helped by such a program. We certainly owe them that and more. And there are so many other functions that dogs can do to help people with disabilities. I can go on and on with this.

Victory, you also mentioned medical research. We had to put Frisbee, one of our cats to sleep, because of cancer, bone cancer I think. It started in his jaw, and after two operations, we could not give him any relief, he was always in pain, and that was the best we could do. Done properly, I have no issue with medical research. If it is something that is painful, they should use politicians rather than innocent animals.

Responsible breeders can help improve the various breeds. We all know that the larger breed dogs frequently suffer from hip problems. I have read that the shyness found in some chows is hereditary, and occurs when both parents are shy. Ursa has Pemphigus Foliaceus and thyroid issues. If genetic records were available, perhaps this could have been predicted, and through selective breeding, eliminated in future generations. (All my pets have been fixed, in case anyone was wondering)

Yes, yes and yes! In the US we as a society are often way too reactive. Even hardened criminals those serving life sentences have had their lives turned around by training dogs for special needs. Why wait until someone is at that stage? There is a home for "troubled" youth in my neighborhood, but I'm not sure it's doing much for the kids there, they often will invade the park near by and are rude, ill-mannered and have a very "I'm entittled' attitude. I think serving their time at a rescue like Best Friends would help them get over themselves and be better members of society.

And yeah I've lost 3 of the four chows I lost to cancer, stomach cancer, liver and stomach cancer and lymphoma, so if they want to try out cures on animals for these three I'm all for it, but humanely!

A responsible breeder waits until their females are 2 years old and has them screened for all kinds of genetic issues, eyes, thyroid, heart, hips, elbows to name a few. A responsible breeder has the same records going back serveral, (more than 3-4) generations. A responsible breeder breeds for health first and a close second temperment, (2 shy dogs of any breed should never be bred together) Selective breeding is the primary reason for breeding at all, to improve the breed, not just to make money from it.

As I said I'm going to start working on these things...I'm making a list and checking it twice and then I'll look into forming an organization to accomplish these things...I'm tired of other agencies which talk and protest a lot but aren't really helping.

[chica_2626]

I've read this before and it's gut wrenching to me. While I don't completely dismiss the idea of breeding because as was mentioned you would lose certain breeds of dogs. But when it seems like much of the breeding world is so irresponsible, I definitely stand by the don't breed or buy while shelter dogs die mentality. As J.D. is maturing I'm wondering more and more if he actually is purebred as the lady who dumped him claimed, but if he isn't, it makes no difference to me. I love mutts. Love 'em.

I've mentioned before that I volunteer with a local dog rescue and I've seen the damage that humans can do to dogs. It is shameful. Dogs that have been shot, dogs that have been bred so much that their bodies are hardly recognizable and then they're dumped at a shelter because they're no longer useful. Dogs that have been tortured in ways we don't even know that have traumatized them practically beyond hope. We have two dogs in our rescue, one has been officially adopted by his foster, the other is most likely going to stay with his foster forever too. They came from the same home and though they have made great improvements, they are for the most part scared of the world. They've been out of that home for over six months and have experienced nothing but love and attention and they still can't shake their haunting past. Dogs are by nature so happy and forgiving, I can't imagine what happened to these dogs to make them this way. I could go on about the things I've seen but suffice to say the way America regards it's pets is horrifying and disgraceful.

I also volunteer with a local pet food pantry. An office space was donated by some local businesses and collection bins are placed around the city at vet's offices, doggie day cares and such. Sometimes pet food suppliers make large donation as well, and cash donations are put towards food. Once a month there is a distribution for up to 150 people for a two weeks supply of food for their pets, up to a certain limit of course. People that have 30 cats are not going to get a sufficient amount of food for all of them for two weeks. They have to bring income verification, and they cannot acquire any additional pets while using the pet food pantry month to month. The purpose is to help people keep their pets from being dropped at shelters because they cannot afford to feed them, but we are not condoning people taking in more pets while already struggling to get by. It's a pretty awesome program that I'd like to see more places implement. People are so grateful for the assistance.