I Had No Idea They Still Killed Puppies [View All]

I Had No Idea They Still Killed Puppies

I live in New York where, for the most part, we have no-kill shelters for dogs and cats. I have read statistics that New York puts down about 20,000 dogs a year, but many of them are ill or unadoptable due to a bad temperment. Those shelters that have to kill do everything they can to find homes for the dogs and cats, and really try to adopt out the young and healthy dogs. I always heard that we still kill about 5,000,000 animals a year (yes, that’s millions) but I thought of it as an abstraction. Until I got involved in dog rescue.

I just began in dog rescue. Many others have been doing this for years. It is heart-breaking work, expensive, gut-wrenching. Much of the rescue involves transporting dogs from the south to rescues or new homes. I have had nightmares every night since I found out about the slaughter in the south. As state senator in South Carolina dumped his pregnant dog at the high kill shelter because “she wouldn’t stay in her kennel.” He got the dog from the shelter, and by law she was supposed to have been spayed, but she wasn’t. She got pregnant due to his lack of responsibility, and he dumped her back into a shelter with an 80% kill rate. Yes, 80%. Young healthy dogs, puppies, they all get killed. You see, many people in the south don’t spay or neuter their dogs, many let them run free, they make lots and lots of puppies, and the owners of the mother dogs dump the 4 week old puppies at the shelter, where they either die of parvovirus or are often killed for lack of any kind of attempt to adopt these dogs out. They also have outdoor facilities where they put the puppies, kennels that don’t even have a dog house, or a tarp over the pups. Newborn pups with their moms die of the cold in the winter because they are housed outside. It is a disgusting, inhumane disgrace, and it is a dirty secret of these southern states.

Lots of rescues try to help, but the numbers are overwhelming. Last year, the shelter in Greenville County, South Carolina, got in 18,000 to 22,000 dogs and had a 71% kill rate. You do the math. I have pulled from this shelter three times now, and the dogs are wonderful: young, gorgeous, laid back, much calmer than my overbred northern dog. They have a new rescue director, and she is working wonders, but the story is quite different at most shelters in the south. The Charleston, South Carolina shelter, a brand new $11 million facility, still has a 50% kill rate, a fact that is not known by the community. Rural shelters run at a kill rate of 80 to 90%, and they kill 6 week old puppies, as well as young and healthy dogs. And don’t think that being a purebred saves a dog: black labs are killed at a much higher percentage than other dogs. Black dogs, in general, don’t fare well. Don’t ask me why – I loved my black lab.

Whose fault is this slaughter? I think there is plenty of blame to go around, but the responsibility lies first with the lawmakers, who don’t have strong spay and neuter laws and programs in place for the counties to follow. In many New Jersey counties, you cannot get a license for your dog unless you show that he or she has been spayed or neutered. In South Carolina, even if there is a leash law, no one enforces it. Funding needs to be made available for the counties to offer a low cost or free spay/neuter day, and the schools need to allow volunteers to come in to talk to the young people about how many dogs are euthanized when their family pet is not spayed. Shelters need to make it more difficult for people to drop off their pets. Why should tax dollars go to housing a family pet, a dog that family chose to bring into their life, and then killing that pet because the family tires of it? The pet owners need to take some responsibility for that pet, and perhaps could use some help with behavior issues or housing issues. This should be the focus of the shelters: teaching the community members how to be responsible pet owners, and helping them with issues, not just taking in pets everyday, and then killing them to make room for more pets that they will kill in five days. In my view, that is immoral. Every pet owner in this country should be aware of this, and be outraged that in a nation that calls itself humane, we regularly kill our best and most loyal friends, and the southern states should be ashamed that its “culture of life” does not extend to our four-legged friends.

I want to close with a story. I was pulling from the Greenville shelter, and I thought a few dogs had a day left, so I was frantically trying to find adoptive or foster homes for them, when I got an email that they had been killed. One dog was a small black lab mix, less than a year old: his name was Stanley. His picture showed him hiding in the corner, as if he knew he would not leave the shelter alive. I missed pulling him and he died, alone and in a cold, concrete shelter. I am dedicating my efforts in this to Stanley, and the 5 million Stanleys who die alone and unloved because their people were too ignorant or too irresponsible to do the right thing. This slaughter has got to stop.


I am going to submit this to some magazines and newspapers. I am going to be away for the afternoon, but I will comment or answer any questions when I get back.
Thanks,
Adigal