You can't keep your pet?? Really?

Tiller

Registered
*This came form another forum I am a memebr of. A local member recued two dogs who were left to die at his house and they have grown to become beautiful wonderful dogs. Another member sent out his story if the rescue to a lot of people and received this narrative in return from one of his friends. It will really open your eyes and make you think about what you are getting into before you get a dog. And make you think twice before you let one go to a shelter thinking it will be good for the dog.*

You can't keep your pet? Really? By A Shelter Director


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 people who have ever 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 a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would stop flagging the ads on craigslist and help these animals find homes. That puppy you just bought will most likely end up in my shelter when it's not a cute little puppy anymore. Just so you know there's a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it’s dumped at? 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: "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 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.

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 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) 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.

You see shelters are trying to make money to pay employee pay checks and don’t forget the board of directors needs to be paid too, so we don’t spend our funds to tranquilize the animal before injecting them with the lethal drug, we just put the burning lethal drug in the vein and let them suffer until dead. If it were not a “making money issueâ€￾ and we had to have a licensed vet do this procedure, the animal would be sedated or tranquilized and then euthanized, but to do this procedure correctly would cost more money so we do not follow what is right for the animal, we just follow what is the fastest way we can make a dollar. Shelters do not have to have a vet perform their euthanasia’s so even if it takes our employee 50 pokes with a needle and 3 hours to get the vein that is what we do. Making money is the issue here not loosing money.

Then 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? Or used for the schools to dissect and experiment on? 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 who still have a beating heart and have read this are bawling your eyes out and can't 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 some changes and start educating the public. Do 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. Animals were not intended to be disposable but somehow that is what they are these days. Animal shelters are an easy way out when you get tired of your dog (or cat), and breeders are the ones blamed for this. Animal shelters and rescue organizations are making a hefty profit by keeping this misconception going.

Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I just hope I maybe changed one persons mind about taking their dog to a shelter, a humane society, or buying a dog. For those of you that care--- please repost this to at least one other craiglist in another city/state. Let's see if we can get this all around the US and have an impact.
 
Probably a fairly accurate narrative but I bet it was not written by a shelter manager.
 
That's the most depressing thing I've read in months. Thanks for that...
Now to lighten the mood, here is my boy.. Not dropping him off anywhere.
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I would say the ones that get dropped off at shelters are sorta lucky. When I live out in the middle of no where Texas we would have litters of puppies dropped off at our drive way. The lucky ones would make it to our house, the others would either get lost and die from starvation and or flea and tick infestation or the coyotes would get to them. We would attempt to find homes for the ones we would find but you and your friends can only care for so many. I remember one time we had like 11 puppies dropped off at our place in 2 day's. We ended up putting a HUGE sign at the the bottom of our drive way that read "if you get caught dropping off unwanted animals you will be treated as an unwanted animal" It worked until the red paint faded.
We didn't find homes for all of them and did what we had to do. I wish I could find those that dropped off their unwanteds so I could beat the crap out of them for making us do their dirty work. It was never easy and not something I will soon forget.
 
here is my big goof. he aint going anywhere anytime. he is actaully a rescue himself. rescued him from manhattan ny. best thing i ever did. he is more than just part of the family.

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This is more true than you can imagine. I know in the county I live in. They have put over 10,000 animals in just one year. I would rather live on the streets in a box before I would ever work at a place like that.

Here is a picture of our two beagles we got from the MSPCA.

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All my babies have been strays or adopted from the shelter. Love them and can't imagine any situation where I would think a shelter was a good option. My heart would break if I ever have to give them up, but I would find a good home for them.
 
I don't think I could ever give up my babies to the human society. I'll find them a good home. It's hard to do I know but I'll find them one.
 
Breaks my heart. Everyday. RSD.

It absolutely kills me to see animals that have been abused. I even felt terrible when I went to the Dominican Republic this past december and every dog there is a stray. There is no such thing as a pet dog there.

But I do know that any animal that may run across my supervision will always be loved just like my children (future) would be.

Here are my two that I could probably spread their spoiledness across 100 dogs and they would still be super "kept" :laugh:

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Here's my little buddy.. we rescued him from a shelter on 13AUG10.... Awesome dog and great with my daughter as well!

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wow... depressing read...


I actually volunteered at an animal shelter for a few years... It was a very unique shelter though. It had a large ammount of very dedicated volunteers, who worked so hard to socialize the animals and get them adopted that it was a "no kill" shelter. The only animals that got killed were the overly aggressive, dangerous ones, and they got shipped to a shelter in CO.

It really is sad... And being in a shelter is soooo stressful for any animal. Extremely loud with dogs barking all the time, dark most of the time, cramped... they get so timid and scared...
 
I hate the excuses I hear from people that can't keep part of their family in moves etc...
How could one ever do that to an animal that has been part of their household, especially after years together? The dog (or cat) cant speak to let you know how much it hurts them. I will never do that to my dog or any other pet I get in my life, no matter how difficult things get.


Here's some pics of Homer when I took him to the dog beach last summer. And he was a rescue too (beaten, stabbed, and kicked so much that he now has seizures). I hate his previous owners for doing these things to him. I hope they rot in hell.

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my puppy is sleepin in my lap, twitchin from dreams, right now. :thumbsup:

some folks are sad and sick, selfish creatures. non humans.

i found my puppy in my shop christmas eve 3yrs ago. -31 outside. santa (my buddy mailman) and i went to the dark gloomy shop and tried to retreve a spiderman bike. well this tan flash ran out at us. we thought she was a mountain lion! we screamed and ran out of the shop with her ahead of us. as we got outside we realised it was a dog. she was in her 1st heat, had been beaten alot, and tossed out of a moving vehicle. abandoned on christmas eve.
she has changed my life. shes my codependent puppy. :thumbsup:
 
I knew that this story wouldn't really apply to most people on here. You guys are good people. I love hearing these stories about you guys rescuing your now extremely loved and awesome parts of your family. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :laugh:
 
Here's three of ours who were going to be put down by friends so we had them, I wish we could have more but we have another dog as well and haven't got the room.

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Here is a couple of our 'Pedestrian Speed Bumps'
Alfred the dalmatian. We rescued him from a Virginia shelter when he was about 8-9 months old.
He will be 14 this July.


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