"Accident", “Bureaucracy Gone Mad”, or “WTF?” The Needless Killing of Healthy Animals!

Think Lucky would surviuve your local shelter? Fortunately, she is in a no-kill shelter!

I believe in a no-kill philosophy when it comes to shelter animals. I follow several animal related blogs, Facebook pages, etc. But I can hardly be accused of obsessively scouring the news each day for stories about shelters needlessly killing animals in their “care”. Yet here we are on only the 19th day of October 2012 and already this month two horrendous stories regarding this particular topic have caught my attention. Some describe the situation leading to this as bureaucracy gone mad but, to me, a more appropriate response would be an acronym that is popular in the modern vernacular: WTF?

The month began with the story of “Toothless”, a cat belonging to eight year old boy in Logan, Utah, being “accidentally” killed by a humane society shelter when the family had informed the shelter that the cat would be picked up the following day. 

Yesterday, through a Facebook post by the No-Kill AdvocacyCenter, I learned of a dog being “accidentally” killed by the Central California SPCA when the family had already informed the shelter that they would be there to pick up the 11-month old Pit Bull named Scar. Apparently, after getting out of the yard, Scar was taken to the shelter by a neighbor who made various accusations against the dog, none of which were substantiated during an investigation by the SPCA.

In my opinion, there are two issues here. One is the culture of these shelters where killing healthy animals is not only accepted but even expected and often encouraged. The rush to kill animals is, in its own right, abhorrent!

The second issue is the apparent lack of checks and balances to ensure that such “accidents” do not occur. It is not difficult to disseminate information throughout a shelter stating that a family is coming to pick up an animal or that a rescue, be it adoption or fostering, is imminent. As a nurse I have worked in many hospitals and know that, although mistakes happen, the policies and procedures in place to keep these mistakes to a minimum are numerous: two licensed nurses checking medication orders, the five “rights” of medication administration (right medication, right dose, right patient, right route, etc.), the physical marking of limbs to be operated on, etc. to name just a couple of examples. So why aren’t there similar policies and procedures in place where animals’ lives are at stake? Or, if there are, why is nothing being done about incompetent workers? A nurse found guilty of such incompetence would be fired and their license revoked in a heartbeat. 

Think I’m exaggerating the problem by just naming two incidents? According to the No-Kill Advocacy Center, “‘Accidental’ killings of beloved pets happen every day in shelters in this country. Google ‘shelter mistakenly euthanized pet’ and you’ll get ‘About 205,000 results (0.34 seconds).’” Try it. I did and got 226, 000 (0.40 seconds). Now, admittedly, some of these results may be reported in more than one place. Some may be reported in more places than in others but, to pick an arbitrary number, let’s say that each incident is reported in an average of ten places . . . that is still 22, 600 incidents. Before you object, I know that this is not a scientific assessment of the number of individual incidents, but I hope you get my drift.


While hospital-like checks and balances may help—they don’t solve the problem, but they may reduce these “mistakes”--the only true way to end these tragedies, to stop healthy animals dying needlessly, is for the pet-loving public to pressure their local shelters into adopting a no-kill philosophy. Find out how you can achieve this at the No-Kill Advocacy Center’s website. Some of the rescue groups in your area may already be no-kill, but it is likely that the local government-run facilities—even if run by a “humane society” or a “society for the protection of animals”—are not! 

Unfortunately, until this happens, it seems that I am destined to say frequently, “WTF?” followed closely by, “Not again!”