Euthanasia Is Unavoidable

Unless we drastically change our ways.

Warning! Disturbing pictures ahead!

If you have a soft heart and are prone to cry, do not read on.

These title statements alone will make me a monster, a pervert, sadist and a ruthless murderer in the eyes of my peers with animal rescue groups and other animal lovers of all stripes and colors. It has happened before when well meaning rescue people called me a Bambi killer and the murderer of Miss Piggie because I also write books on hunting. Would it be acceptable if I wrote instead books on how to slaughter more 6 month old pig youngsters in less time?

It does not matter much to me what label one sticks on my lapel. Death is an integral part of our lives – and that of other living beings.

When considering euthanasia we need to examine for what reason an animal is put to sleep. There is a difference between killing an animal because he has outlived his use or has become inconvenient, the killing in animal shelters and euthanasia for reasons of compassion to name of few.

Let us address shelter killings first. As I pointed out in my previous articles, dog euthanasia rates in Los Angeles shelters dropped from a high of over 25,000 in 2001 (dog intake over 40,000) to a low of around 6,500 dogs in the years between 2006 and 2008 (intake of approximately 24,000 to 30,000 dogs a year). Pit bulls in shelters died at a rate of around 40 percent. However in 2008 the dog euthanasia rate in Los Angeles shelters increased by 24 percent.

Why are have dogs to die in shelters, you ask? Because shelter workers are merciless killers who come to work joyfully every morning in happy expectation of being allowed to help a few more 'cute' dogs to the great beyond? Wrong. True, there are shelter workers who treat their work assignments only as a job. But the majority of workers actually care for their charges and their well-being. Few enjoy having to put down dogs they have been taking care of.

Shelter dogs are euthanized in accordance with the law (legal holding periods), for health and for behavioral reasons.

There should not be any disputes over a dog that is relieved from his pain and suffering upon a request by medical staff. Likewise, if a dog is a danger to other animals and to humans, I can find no fault in putting the animal down – unless an animal rescue group that specializes in saving and holding highly dangerous dogs decides to pull the dog and to hold it in their kennels under strict control, supervision and rehabilitative training forever or until it is reliably rehabilitated. No rescue group without their own holding kennels should knowingly take such a dog out of the shelter. The risk to life and limb of humans and other animals alike is too high. And so is the liability the rescue group potentially faces.

It really does not matter how cute he is and how pretty she looks. Looks do not make the whole dog, personality does. I was attacked by one of those 'cute' dogs. Twelve stitches and a permanent scar are the visible result. I was lucky because he did not sever any arteries or nerves in my arm before he died.

That leaves the expiration of legal holding periods as the only gray area of shelter euthanasia. Here is where much is left up to interpretation of regulations and to the personal opinions of those in charge of a shelter. Some are more compassionate than others. It is a widely held belief among shelter personnel that it is cruel to hold a large dog in a small cage for extended periods of time because there is no other room in the shelter. If the dog is hardly ever looked at by potential adopters, it is more humane, they argue, to put it down than to let it suffer in his painful confinement.

I have seen large 95 pound working dogs that sat for weeks in small stackable cages designed to hold a dog temporarily during intake. That is cruelty. What is better: To see a dog slowly go crazy, become aggressive, go mad from lack of exercise for weeks or to put him mercifully to sleep?

And I have seen shelter personnel protecting, hiding and keeping alive dogs with a great personality and excellent pet potential against all rules, at times with the assistance of medical staff and silent acquiescence of superiors.

Animal shelters are a microcosm of life. Just as life is intricately interwoven with death, so is shelter life. Thus, no-kill shelters are a dream. A beautiful ideal, but a dream nonetheless.

The solution to the killing in shelters is not to rail against heartless functionaries and shelter personnel or to attempt to pull every old mongrel out of it, but rather to engage actively in combating irresponsible human behavior, such as puppy farms, backyard breeding, dogs as fashion statements, dog fighting, dogs in pet stores.

Emotional appeals that a life is a life and therefore worth saving do not save lives. Spaying and neutering does.

That is the hard part. As we have seen in my previous articles, campaigns to spay and neuter inevitably hit the wall. The wall of resistance, the hills of ignorance and the mountains of socio-economic and cultural barriers that most often only make sense to those who promote them.

Animal rescuers ought to concentrate their efforts far more and far better on preventing dogs from getting confined in shelters than from tearful attempts to liberate them from confinement. Rescue groups could save more dogs by designating a percentage of their funds to promoting population control methods in traditionally hard to reach and to convince communities than by the emotional rescue of one Chihuahua while dozens of his brethren are roaming the streets unaltered, unleashed and ready to mate with anything that moves.

I understand, prevention is less spectacular than rescue. Parading a rescued dog before potential donors or raising funds for the treatment of a rescued injured animal is even more rewarding – in a literal sense. However, by doing so, you have to admit to yourself that you lifted one small pebble from a mountain of rocks, but not dismantled the rock pile.The mountain will continue to give birth . . no, not to a mouse but to more Chihuahuas.

The challenge is to prevent the flood of pets in the first place. We need to increase awareness of the importance of spaying and neutering, regulate, license and control strictly all backyard breeding, reduce the number of commercial breeders and trap, spay and neuter all stray animals and release them instead of killing them in shelters.

Spaying and neutering of unlicensed dogs has to become mandatory when such a dog is found anywhere in public. Forget about the rights of the owners of the animal. They have established that they are unable or unwilling to be responsible by not licensing and spaying or neutering their animal. They do not deserve leniency and our compassion. Their animals do.

Yet, even when all this is done and the dog intake in shelters drops below the lowest intake rates so far, animals will still be euthanized in shelters and in veterinary offices. The reason is that there always will be pain, suffering and death in life. Think of the many dogs that are run over by cars every year on our streets. Most of them are injured beyond repair. Think of the animals that are suffering from painful diseases. Or those that injured themselves most severely. What quality of life do they experience? Is it worth living in pain and misery? I doubt their answer would be yes.

Instead of roaming shelters with overflowing love for incarcerated animals in your heart, consider taking some of your time to convert one or two die-hard knuckleheads who link their manhood to the ability of their Chihuahua to produce more disposable small nuisances.

WARNING! WARNING! 

Do not read any further if you have a soft heart and cannot handle upsetting pictures.

PETA fights vigorously not only for animal rights in general but also against individual cases of animal abuse. PETA can not be accused of wanton killing of animals, at least not by those who have a brain. Nevertheless, PETA has been accused of killing close to 100 percent of animals under their control. It forced them to publish an exculpatory article with pictures in their defense.

Though I am not always a friend of PETA because they are prone to extravagant operations and opinions, I am publishing excerpts from this article, including the pictures, in an attempt to drive home the point: Only prevention, much stricter animal control and mandatory spaying and neutering of pets will solve the problem of animal overpopulation and thus make most killings in shelters unnecessary. Here are excerpts from a PETA article:

“Why We Euthanize”

. . . I always wonder how anyone cannot recognize that there is a world of difference between painlessly euthanizing animals out of compassion—aged, injured, sick, and dying animals whose guardians can't afford euthanasia, for instance—as PETA does, and causing them to suffer terror, pain, and a prolonged death while struggling to survive on the streets, at the hands of untrained and uncaring "technicians," or animal abusers

Diamond was suffering from a painful facial tumor that was slowly eating away at his face.

Sasha had a severely infected bite wound.

It's easy to point the finger at those who are forced to do the "dirty work" caused by a throwaway society's casual acquisition and breeding of dogs and cats who end up homeless and unwanted, but at PETA, we will never turn our backs on neglected, unloved, and homeless animals—even if the best we can offer them is a painless release from a world that doesn't have enough heart or homes with room for them. It makes it easy for people to throw stones at us, but we are against all needless killing: for hamburgers, fur collars, dissection, sport hunting, the works.

PETA handled far more animals than 2,124 in 2008. In fact, we took in more than 10,000 dogs and cats and work very hard to persuade people to spay and neuter their animals and to commit to a lifetime of care and respect for them. We go so far as to transport animals to and from our spay/neuter clinics, where they are spayed or neutered and given vet care, often for free! Since 2001, PETA's low- to no-cost spay-and-neuter mobile clinics, SNIP and ABC, have sterilized more than 50,000 animals, preventing hundreds of thousands of animals from being born, neglected, abandoned, abused, or euthanized when no one wanted them. And on a national level, PETA is focusing on the root of the problem through our Animal Birth Control (ABC) campaign.

 Big Girl was still alive when a field worker found her

If anyone has a good home, love, and respect to offer, we beg them: Go to a shelter and take one or two animals home. The problem is that few people do that, choosing instead to go to a breeder or a pet shop and not "fixing" their dogs and cats, which contributes to the high euthanasia rate that animal shelters face. Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could hardly be called "pets," as they had spent their lives chained up in the back yard, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed someone's, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to place, and the like, and PETA offered them a painless release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.

Every day, PETA's fieldworkers help abused and neglected dogs—many of them pit bulls nowadays and many of them forced to live their lives on chains heavy enough to tow an 18-wheeler—by providing them with food; clean water; lightweight tie-outs; deworming medicine; flea, tick, and fly-strike prevention; free veterinary care; sturdy wooden doghouses stuffed with straw bedding; and love.

What we see is enough to make you lose faith in humanity. One pit bull we gained custody of . . . looked like a skeleton covered with skin when PETA released her from the 15-pound chain she had been kept on for years. Asia suffered from three painful and deadly intestinal obstructions, which prevented her from keeping any food down. She faced an agonizing, lingering death, so our veterinarian recommended euthanasia to end her suffering. We pursued criminal charges against those responsible for her condition, leading to their conviction for cruelty to animals. That is just one of the dozens of cases we see every week.

The majority of adoptable dogs are never brought through our doors (we refer them to local adoption groups and walk-in animal shelters). Most of the animals we house, rescue, find homes for, or put out of their misery come from miserable conditions, which often lead to successful prosecution and the banning of animal abusers from ever owning or abusing animals again.

Santana had facial injuries so serious that his right eye was swollen shut and his jaw was ripped and hanging

 This dog was suffering from advanced cancer

As long as animals are still purposely bred and people aren't spaying and neutering their companions, open-admission animal shelters and organizations like PETA must do society's dirty work. Euthanasia is not a solution to overpopulation but rather a tragic necessity given the present crisis. PETA is proud to be a "shelter of last resort," where animals who have no place to go or who are unwanted or suffering are welcomed with love and open arms.

Please, if you care about animals, help prevent more of them from being born only to end up chained and left to waste away in people's back yards, suffering on mean streets where people kick at them or shoo them away like garbage, tortured at the hands of animal abusers, or, alas, euthanized in animal shelters for lack of a good home. If you want to save lives, always have your animals spayed or neutered. (PETA 03-30-2009 ttp://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2009/03/30/why-we-euthanize.aspx)

Sounds like a promotion for PETA, though it is not intended to be one. As I said, I am parting ways with them on many subjects. And I am anathema to them anyway. I hunt innocent little, cuddly, furry bunnies that would make such great Easter presents for the kids. I do so much to the delight of my state licensed service dog! He is s scoundrel too.

The truth remains the truth even when it is stated by PETA. Only when we prevent more animals from being born in the first place through well designed, well executed birth control methods and strict enforcement of all animal related laws will we be able to make animal euthanasia in shelters the exception and not the norm.
Are you ready to take up the challenge?

PJJ