by Elisa Black-Taylor
(USA)
Jasper and Sammy were rescued from death row
Bad animal shelters can be found all over the country. From my guess, this isn't just in the U.S., but worldwide.
The idea for this article came from reading of some of the horrors my rescue friends were discussing on my website pages. Some shelters have even gone so far as to kill an animal just to prevent a rescue or adopter from saving an animal. In other words, call and say you'd like to rescue Smokey, and Smokey will be immediately taken to the back room and MURDERED!
I'm not exaggerating here readers. This subject gets me red hot. So I decided to do some digging. I found the most informative article on animal shelter abuse I've ever read here.
Do you think gassing is bad? I can tell you of worse ways an animal is put to death. Try FREEZING! I haven't looked into the validity of this article as there as references to the worst shelters as well as ways that murder is allowed in each state. If the article is true, one shelter is allowed to freeze animals until they die.
I did find what I'm looking for in researching these horrible animal shelters. Who do you inform in government to put a stop to them? Here's the list, and it's also in the above mentioned reference.
* Write to state Senators at http://www.senate.gov .
* Write to state representatives at http://www.house.gov
* Write to state governors at...link no longer works - sorry.
To find out your state legislature's track record in defending animal rights, check out this site (this is a PDF file - it looks different and may download).
Research has now shown that internet generated petitions do little to influence government leaders. This is one case where snail mail with written letters and petitions carry more weight than anything generated online.
The Department of Agriculture or the Department of Health are responsible for the policing of animal shelters. Yet far too many fall through the cracks. The ASPCA has even been known to investigate some of the worst of our animal shelters and turn a blind eye to the abuse.
It really angers me to think a government body or animal welfare society can go into a bad animal shelter and see the abuse and then go back to the same shelter and the abuse is even worse. Yet they do NOTHING!
To me this shows two major problems in our shelter system. Disrespect for life by the government charged to keep shelters humane (as if that's going to happen) and lack of remorse and action by the shelters themselves. They're not afraid of what the government may do to them because more likely than not the government won't do ANYTHING to them.
For things to change, citizens are going to have to speak up. Most shelters run on some kind of state or county funding. We must convince our leaders they will lose our vote to be elected to office until something is done to change the shelter system.
Lethal injection should be the only way an animal is euthanized. If an animal has a rescuer coming, there has to be a way to ensure that animal will still be alive when help arrives. Someone needs to be held accountable and even face a fine or jail time if a verbal contract to rescue is broken by the shelter.
These bad animal shelters have ruled long enough. Many have antiquated methods they use to kill. They think they are invincible.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong! Rescues need to start keeping written documentation and reporting when animals are killed when a rescue is on the way.
Elisa
