At Least give the Dogs a Chance!!!

There are times when animal rescue volunteers just want to throw their hands in the air and give up and I'll admit that this is one of those times! Just now, I am so angry that I'm having trouble finding words.

As we entered a holiday week, the week of July 4, Pet RescueNorth received notification of a senior dog in the Putnam County, Florida, animal control shelter that was scheduled to be euthanized. We advertised the need for help on our Facebook page and two people were interested in rescuing this particular dog. This could've been a happy ending but we then discovered that the dog had already been killed. It had taken a few days for the plea for help to circulate around Facebook and by e-mail before reaching us, and the dog had been killed several days before we even found out that help was needed.

This particular animal shelter has become somewhat notorious in North Florida for its seeming enthusiasm for pulling the trigger. It is only in the last few months that, under pressure from rescue groups, the shelter stopped automatically euthanizing bully breeds. If you go to the County website and try to find a website for the shelter you are directed to the Sheriff's Department website. When at the Sheriff's Department website you click on the link for animal control you are taken directly back to homepage of the Sheriff's Department. There is no website run by this department advertising the need for foster homes, adoptions, or in any way letting people know of dogs available for adoption. The only publication of information regarding available dogs that I could find was a Facebook page run by volunteers who had no affiliation with the shelter. So my question is: how can anyone rescue the dogs if they don't know that they exist?

Through my volunteer work with Pet Rescue North I have learned that this is not an uncommon situation with shelters that are run by Police Departments in small counties. Whether it is lack of finances, staff, or other resources is unclear. However, many such shelters do not advertise the occupants and then, after the mandatory seven days, euthanize them--apparently without a second thought. Whatever the reason, this is a disgrace! Laws must be passed that such shelters MUST advertise what dogs they have, and when they are scheduled to die. In this age of communication technology it is abhorrent that government run institutions do not have this capability! Even if they do not have websites or Facebook pages they all have e-mail capabilities; it doesn't take much to compile a list of local rescue shelters that they could send blast e-mails to. In this way potential interest in saving the dogs could at least be distributed within the seven day window and if any interest was shown the death sentence could be commuted for a few days!

 AT LEAST GIVE THE DOGS A CHANCE!