One topic that is certain to turn my face blue and start me frothing at the mouth is rescue shelters claiming to be "no-kill" shelters when in reality that is far from the truth. The next time you are considering supporting a shelter that claims to be no-kill you had better take a look at the fine print! As an example, let me tell you about a situation that I know of personally.
A true no-kill shelter that I am familiar with was asked to pull a gorgeous little pug/pekinese mix out of a so-called "no-kill" shelter. This dog had been scheduled for euthanizing the following day because he was considered unadoptable. When asked about this the response was that this dog was known to try and bite people. When further asked about when these attempts occurred it was stated, "When you grab him by the collar or when you try to take his food away." My first thought was, "Well, duuuuhhh!!" Actually this was not my first thought; I've taken a little artistic liberty and cleaned it up for general viewing. The rescuing shelter showed this sweet little guy at their next adoption event at a local pet superstore, and throughout the event he was on his best behavior. One of the store's trainers even tried a few things and declared him a highly trained dog. No evidence was seen of food aggression or any other type of aggression. Okay, he was a little territorial and yappy, but aren’t all pug/pekes?
I decided to look into this "no-kill" policy of the shelter from which the dog was pulled and, lo and behold, under all the declarations that this was now a no-kill shelter was the statement that by this they meant no dog will ever be killed to make room for another. Leaves a lot of wiggle room, doesn't it! Under this policy, declare a dog unadoptable—often an opinion rather than a fact—and they are eligible to be killed. What makes these word-games worse is that they are often played by some of the biggest and best supported shelters in any given geographical area. The particular shelter that I am thinking off saw a massive increase in donations when they declared themselves no-kill.
It is understandable, not acceptable but understandable, when a shelter finds itself having to implement euthanasia policies because of space or money--we all know that there are far too many abandoned or neglected dogs on our streets—but it is completely unacceptable to declare your shelter no-kill when what you actually mean is: okay, we kill the dogs sometimes but not in every circumstance. Don’t play word games with us! The only time a true no-kill shelter will euthanize a dog is for medical reasons. We owe it to these dogs to understand exactly what we are donating our time or money to, and these shelters owe it to the dogs to make sure that the public knows what their policy is. We shouldn’t have to have a law degree to work through all the possible implications of a well-worded statement.
In case you are wondering, the dog of which I spoke was adopted after a couple of months and, last I heard, he was bringing joy and laughter to the adopters—not a biting attempt in sight.
No comments:
Post a Comment