Written by a shelter worker>
You cant keep your pet? Really?
~By a Shelter Director
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, any of you whom have surrendered a pet
to a shelter or humane society should be made to work
in the back of an animal shelter - for just ONE DAY.
Maybe if you saw the life drain from those sad,
lost, confused eyes, youd stop flagging the ads on here
and help these animals find homes.
That puppy you just dropped off will most-likely end up
in my shelter when its no longer a cute little puppy anymore.
Just so you know, theres a 90% chance that your dog will never
walk out back out, once entered in to the shelter system
Purebred or not!
About 25% of all of the dogs that are owner surrenders or strays
that come into a shelter are purebred dogs.
The most common excuses: Were moving and cant take our dog (or cat).
Really? Where are you moving to that doesnt 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 dont have time for her.
Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs!
Shes tearing up our yard.
How about making her a part of your family?
We just dont want to have to stress about finding
a place for her & we know shell get adopted,
shes a good dog.
Odds are, your pet wont get adopted
& how stressful do you think it is for your pet?
Did you know
Your pet has 72 hours to find a new family
from the moment you drop it off?
Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isnt full
and your dog/cat manages to stay completely healthy.
If it sniffles, it is euthanized.
Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room
with other barking & crying animals.
It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps.
It will be depressed and will cry constantly for you.
If your pet is lucky, there will be enough volunteers in that day
to take him/her for a walk.
If not, your pet wont 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.
If your cat is scared and doesnt act friendly enough,
or if it catches a cold (which most of them do),
it will be put to sleep.
Those dogs & cats just dont get adopted.
In most cases, it doesnt matter how sweet or well behaved they are.
If your pet doesnt get adopted within its 72 hours
and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed.
If the shelter isnt full and your pet 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 the shelter gets paid a fee to euthanize each animal and
making money is better than spending money to take this animal to the vet.
Heres 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 they get to the door.
It must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there.
Its strange, but it happens with every one of them.
Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 shelter workers,
depending on the size and how freaked out they are.
Then a shelter worker who we call a euthanasia tech (not a vet)
finds a vein in the front leg and injects a lethal dose of the pink stuff.
Hopefully your pet doesnt panic from being restrained and jerks.
Ive seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood
the yelps and screams are deafening.
They all dont just go to sleep, sometimes they spasm for a while,
gasp for air and defecate on themselves.
You see, shelters are trying to make money to pay employee pay checks
and then, theres the board of directors
who need to be paid too!
Consequently, corners are cut, & we dont spend our funds to
tranquilize the animal before injecting them with the lethal drug,
we just put the burning lethal drug in their vein and let them suffer until dead.
If it were not a business for profit, wed do it humanely and hire a
licensed vet do this procedure.
That way, the animal would be sedated or tranquilized and THEN euthanized.
But to do this procedure correctly would only cost more money
so we dont necessarily do what is right for the animal,
we do whats expedient so we can continue to make a buck!
Shelters do not have to have a vet perform their euthanasia procedures.
Oftentimes, they are untrained personnel administering lethal injections.
So that employee may take 50 pokes with a needle and 3 hours to get inside the vein.
In the end, your pets corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer,
usually in the back of the building with all of the other animals that were killed.
There they will sit until being picked up like garbage.
What happens next? Cremated?
Taken to the dump?
Rendered into pet food?
Or used for schools to dissect and experiment on?
Youll never know and it probably wont even cross your mind.
After all, it was just an animal and you can always buy another one, right?!
I hope that those of ou who still have a beating heart and have read this
are bawling your eyes out and cant get the pictures out of your head.
I deal with this everyday.
I hate my job, I hate that it exists &
I hate that it will always be there unless you people make changes
and start educating yourselves, your children, the public.
Do the research, do your homework, and know exactly
what you are getting into before getting a pet.
These shelters and humane societies exist because people just do not care about animals anymore.
And PLEASE stop breeding!
Animals were not intended to be disposable but somehow that is what theyve become.
For those of you that care-
please repost this to at least one other Craigslist in another City/State.
Lets see if we can get this all around the US and have an impact
You cant keep your pet? Really?
~By a Shelter Director
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, any of you whom have surrendered a pet
to a shelter or humane society should be made to work
in the back of an animal shelter - for just ONE DAY.
Maybe if you saw the life drain from those sad,
lost, confused eyes, youd stop flagging the ads on here
and help these animals find homes.
That puppy you just dropped off will most-likely end up
in my shelter when its no longer a cute little puppy anymore.
Just so you know, theres a 90% chance that your dog will never
walk out back out, once entered in to the shelter system
Purebred or not!
About 25% of all of the dogs that are owner surrenders or strays
that come into a shelter are purebred dogs.
The most common excuses: Were moving and cant take our dog (or cat).
Really? Where are you moving to that doesnt 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 dont have time for her.
Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs!
Shes tearing up our yard.
How about making her a part of your family?
We just dont want to have to stress about finding
a place for her & we know shell get adopted,
shes a good dog.
Odds are, your pet wont get adopted
& how stressful do you think it is for your pet?
Did you know
Your pet has 72 hours to find a new family
from the moment you drop it off?
Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isnt full
and your dog/cat manages to stay completely healthy.
If it sniffles, it is euthanized.
Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room
with other barking & crying animals.
It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps.
It will be depressed and will cry constantly for you.
If your pet is lucky, there will be enough volunteers in that day
to take him/her for a walk.
If not, your pet wont 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.
If your cat is scared and doesnt act friendly enough,
or if it catches a cold (which most of them do),
it will be put to sleep.
Those dogs & cats just dont get adopted.
In most cases, it doesnt matter how sweet or well behaved they are.
If your pet doesnt get adopted within its 72 hours
and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed.
If the shelter isnt full and your pet 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 the shelter gets paid a fee to euthanize each animal and
making money is better than spending money to take this animal to the vet.
Heres 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 they get to the door.
It must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there.
Its strange, but it happens with every one of them.
Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 shelter workers,
depending on the size and how freaked out they are.
Then a shelter worker who we call a euthanasia tech (not a vet)
finds a vein in the front leg and injects a lethal dose of the pink stuff.
Hopefully your pet doesnt panic from being restrained and jerks.
Ive seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood
the yelps and screams are deafening.
They all dont just go to sleep, sometimes they spasm for a while,
gasp for air and defecate on themselves.
You see, shelters are trying to make money to pay employee pay checks
and then, theres the board of directors
who need to be paid too!
Consequently, corners are cut, & we dont spend our funds to
tranquilize the animal before injecting them with the lethal drug,
we just put the burning lethal drug in their vein and let them suffer until dead.
If it were not a business for profit, wed do it humanely and hire a
licensed vet do this procedure.
That way, the animal would be sedated or tranquilized and THEN euthanized.
But to do this procedure correctly would only cost more money
so we dont necessarily do what is right for the animal,
we do whats expedient so we can continue to make a buck!
Shelters do not have to have a vet perform their euthanasia procedures.
Oftentimes, they are untrained personnel administering lethal injections.
So that employee may take 50 pokes with a needle and 3 hours to get inside the vein.
In the end, your pets corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer,
usually in the back of the building with all of the other animals that were killed.
There they will sit until being picked up like garbage.
What happens next? Cremated?
Taken to the dump?
Rendered into pet food?
Or used for schools to dissect and experiment on?
Youll never know and it probably wont even cross your mind.
After all, it was just an animal and you can always buy another one, right?!
I hope that those of ou who still have a beating heart and have read this
are bawling your eyes out and cant get the pictures out of your head.
I deal with this everyday.
I hate my job, I hate that it exists &
I hate that it will always be there unless you people make changes
and start educating yourselves, your children, the public.
Do the research, do your homework, and know exactly
what you are getting into before getting a pet.
These shelters and humane societies exist because people just do not care about animals anymore.
And PLEASE stop breeding!
Animals were not intended to be disposable but somehow that is what theyve become.
For those of you that care-
please repost this to at least one other Craigslist in another City/State.
Lets see if we can get this all around the US and have an impact
patton:
downloading them now! i've heard fair to midland before, i dig them!
talamia:
What a sad read 
And that is why I am and have always been against breeding. I would never be able to hand over puppies/kittens etc to complete strangers simply assuming they will be loved and taken care of for the rest of their lives. Far too many people are just heartless when it comes to a point when they don't want the animal anymore and drive out somewhere and just leave it to fend for itself. God there is no other issue that renders me more sad+angry than human cruelty against animals.
And that is why I am and have always been against breeding. I would never be able to hand over puppies/kittens etc to complete strangers simply assuming they will be loved and taken care of for the rest of their lives. Far too many people are just heartless when it comes to a point when they don't want the animal anymore and drive out somewhere and just leave it to fend for itself. God there is no other issue that renders me more sad+angry than human cruelty against animals.