Euthanizing ALL shelter animals to fix the over-populated shelter situation?

Question

I know this question is going to get VERY controversial. Please NO thumbs down, name calling or abuse toward someone for voicing their opinion. There is NO wrong answer here.

Hypothetical Situation:
All governments in the world have come to a conclusion: ALL shelter dogs will be euthanized in order to fix the situation of overly populated shelters.

What is your reaction? Do you believe this will fix the problem, or just create more trouble? Will the amount of dogs being bred increase or will people learn from their mistakes?

***PLEASE NOTE***

This is a HYPOTHETICAL situation. I do not, in any way, condone euthanizing all shelter animals.

Answer 1

Please forgive the second poster for being a dick.
Yes, I believe that would be a start to control and maybe eliminate all dog issues all over the world, but, only if everyone that bred and purchased a dog after that did so with the full understanding that there would be no more sub-standard dogs bred/sold.
All dogs bred from then on would be bred for the exact purpose for which they were created. No more Goldens that cannot hunt, no more shepherds that cannot herd and do pilice work, no more terriers that would not do what they were originally bred to do...
In order to do that, however, the breed clubs would have to establish their own policing standards like they have in Europe where you do not even get registration papers for your dog if he/she does not pass a Koer test.
You want to breed? Ok, great, title your dog in what he was supposed to be doing in real life and then prove that he is worth to be bred by showing everyone that he can pass his genes on. That, of course, would require a lot of culling.
Your question is very good, but, this is America and people are used to doing pretty much anything they want and detest the idea of someone policing them, even if it means bettering the breed and their breeding practices.
You know, come to think of it, some of the people breeding now are the worst offenders to that rule.
If and only if everyone came to an aggreement to breed only exceptional dogs bred to the standard that they were created for would what you propose be able to get done!!!!!!
Great question!!!!

Answer 2

No. What shelters need to do is contact other shelters that have a high turnover rate. For instance, I work at a kennel, and we have the city impound license, so we get impounds and surrenders from 4 different cities. In some cases, the dog will stay with us, like Sequoia, a Chocolate lab who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She's not showing any effects of it, but we're not going to adopt her out, knowing she's dying. Or Smokey, a beautiful purebred German Shepherd that's showing great potential in his training for a K-9 police unit.
However, we have a lot of dogs that don't get adopted after months of being with us, so we take them to a shelter in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. They have a 2.5 day turnover rate (meaning that the dogs brought in are usually adopted out within 2 and a half days). We just took a load of 6 dogs down, and three of them had people interested before we left to come back home. The only problem is that they will euthanize a dog if it shows food or toy aggression, or just can't be placed, so we don't send those down until we've gotten them better training.

I don't think that mass euthanasia will help. There will always be BYBs mass producing puppies, and the shelters will fill right up again.

Answer 3

Nope definitely not.... Why? Animals adopted from shelters are one of the few that go out into the community altered and unable to increase the dog population.. Typically, it's not a dog adopted from the shelter causing the problem.. It's the dog gotten free out of the newspaper that someone doesn't bother to get fixed or supervise at all time.. Even if you did euthanize all the pets in animal shelters right now, irresponsible pet owners would still be cranking out more.. If anything, all animals in free ads or sold without altering from irresponsible sources should be gathered up and euthanized.. That could actually work..Not that I agree with that at all, but, hypothetically, that would work better.. But, no otherwise people will just keep getting unaltered animals and not taking responsibility for their own choices.. The shelters will be full again in a matter of months..

Answer 4

I worked in an animal shelter for nearly a year and can tell you that this would not solve the problem. And as much as people would love to tell you that mandatory spay/neutering will totally solve the problem--it won't. Of all the animals brought in on intake very, very few of them were puppies. That rarely happened as a matter of fact. Why? Because people can always find homes for puppies. Who says no to free puppies? NO ONE.

THAT is the problem. The irresponsibility of people. The majority of the animals we got were shelter surrenders or strays that never had an owner claim them. They were brought in because people didn't REALLY Think about the committment of having a dog, cat, rat, gerbil whatever. Some of the reasons these animals were being surrendered were absolutley absurd. I crap you not, one lady brought her dog in because it no longer matched the decor!!

Shelters can ease their over crowding while improving the quality of adoptions in fair and compassionate ways BUT it might take more time and money which most shelters just don't have. The shelter I worked for used a temperment test to determine the dog's adoptability. In other words, if the dog showed very aggressive behaviors then it was euthanized. It took awhile for some people in the community to support this and some still don't but I think it makes sense. Why put a dog out on the adoption floor that is really likely to bite!? All you are doing is setting up the dog for a scary situation and failure and the people who adopted are probably not going to EVER consider a shelter adoption again.

The temperment tests also give ALL breeds a chance. There is no automatic death warrant for "pit bulls", German Shepard dogs, Rottys, etc. And it is a darn good thing too. Those "scary" does rarely if ever failed. It was the mixed breeds, small dogs and border collies that seemed to have issues at my old shelter.

From there, the dogs undergo a personality assessment. The dogs are watched and assessed as they complete various activities and at the end are given a numerical score based on their response. The scores are then broken into colors and types of dogs. When people come in they fill out a card based on what they are looking for IN a dog...not what KIND or breed of dog they are looking for. They are assigned a color and a category based on their responses. They can adopt any color they want but the best matches are within their color. This way people are getting what they expect personality wise. The program is sponsored by ASPCA and is called Meet your Match and it is awesome...returns are way down.

They are working on a similar match profile program for cats too because of course they all have very different personalities too!

Sorry I got off on a tangent but this is something close to my heart obviously. :) Anyway, as long as uneducated, irresponsible people continue to purchase or adopt pets there will always be a need for shelters. People who breed responsibly are NOT the problem....we never had AKC registered anything come into the shelter as a puppy. What we got were the undertrained, quasi-neglected young adults of people who shouldn't have taken home a puppy in the first place.

Answer 5

The very sad truth here is that this is pretty much what is going on. The only difference being that we have some no-kill shelters and rescues in the mix, but for many animal shelters and humane societies, anything that isn't adopted out into a new home, is put down, regardless of if that animal would make a wonderful pet.

I don't see that this would solve any problems at all either. It is the backyard breeders and puppymillers that need to be stopped or at least change, in order for this to ever get better. Too many are selling pups to uneducated owners and simply could care less what happens once the pup is gone. THIS is what MUST be changed in order for people to actually make a difference in the over population problem. But people, quite frankly, are too lazy and don't care enuf to do it.

Answer 6

I think they should put down all unadoptable dogs, whether it be temperment, illness or such. A rescue person told me that there are many really stable, healthy dogs out there to save, that we're better off putting down the ones with problems and not using up limited resources on unadoptable dogs.

I also think that AKC is part of the problem. They don't require any health, temperment and/or instinct testing for the dogs being bred and registered. They so promote cookie cutter looks, forsaking temperment and instinct that the breed was originally bred for.

Hold breeders accountable and get rid of puppy mills. That's the only way we're going to get rid of this problem.

We have a feral cat spay/neuter program in the county I live in. Traps are loaned out and a donor pays for the cats to be spayed or neutered. Animal control has noticed a significant decrease in the amount of kittens being brought into the shelter.

Answer 7

That will be sick when all the governments in the world to require all shelters to euthanize all their dogs. By doing that, it only relieve the current situation but it won't cure the remedy. They still have to face the situation of backyard breeders and puppy millers. They won't stop breeding although all the shelter dogs are euthanized. The governments need to educate people on spay/neuter and purchasing puppies from puppy mills/pet stores. When bybs and puppy millers realize that all the shelter dogs are euthanized, I think they will need to breed more. They will tell people that since you can't adopt dogs from shelters anymore, we are the only place you can buy dogs from. That will be even worse than now.

Answer 8

Stina, you ask the most interesting questions! I love having you as a contact. :)

I slightly agree, slightly disagree with this. For one thing, if that were to happen, they'd be filled up again in two hours. Empty shelter, you say? BYB asks a puppymiller. Nobody wants my puppies, so off to the empty shelter they go!

However, I think euthanizing all the ill dogs wouldn't be a bad idea. Would put more room in the shelter, and the sick ones would no longer be in misery (lots of shelters can't afford to provide adequate veterinary care).

But euthanizing ALL shelter animals wouldn't be a good idea. More breeding would occur because BYBs would think the open shelters would have plenty of room for their unwanted pups.

Answer 9

I think that people who over-breed dogs and other animals should be the ones to be euthanized. I am the mom of 2 shelter cats that I adopted a little over a year ago and I cannot imagine not having them on this planet. It's sad that shelter animals are the ones to suffer from human wrong-doings -- ie: not having their pets spayed or neutered.

Answer 10

Sorry, but no way in hell do I agree with that! I know people all around my area that rescue dogs from the local shelters. I could never imagine the government even thinking about doing such a thing. Those dogs at least deserve a chance to be adopted. Yes, there is an over-population, but euthanazing all dogs in shelters is not the answer!

Answer 11

I would completely disagree, and I don't think it would solve anything. I don't think anyone would learn from any of their mistakes. Plus, NO ONE would want to volunteer at an animal shelter if this is what went on, so who is going to do it? People who volunteer at kill animal shelters know what happens to some of the animals who don't get adopted. But they continue volunteering because they get joy out of watching a wonderful pet go home with a new family. And if this was real, then I wouldn't have any of my pets right now, they are all rescues.

I don't think the animal shelters are the problem. I think they are doing a fine job, they are doing what they can.If we want to solve the pet over population problem we have to start at the roots, which is irresponsible owners and breeders. We need to educate them.