Are shelters with a "no put down policy" more humane than ones who do put down animals??

Question

I recently volunteered at an animal shelter in my home country of South Africa. I chose this place because it had a "no put down policy" (the animals never get put down). I was so positive when I got there. However that soon faded when I saw the true reality of it. The cages were so overcrowded and the animals had such bad wounds due to dog fighting. I saw so many animals there that I knew would never have a chance of finding a home. There was an aggresive boerboel stuck in a tiny cage which only had one leg. Most of these dogs had behavioural problems that made them impossible to home.

I decided to go look at another 2 shelters with the same policy and found them to be exactly the same.
Is it honestly fair to keep an animal stuck in an overcrowded cage for its entire life with such a poor quality of life?
Do u honestly think this kind of policy is more humane than say the policy of the humane society?

Answer 1

you opened a can of worms with this one, didn't you? good. that means it will make people think just a little, and maybe that will make someone decide to finally be part of the solution, not just part of the the problem.

having worked at both kinds of shelters, i can't stress enough that every shelter is unique, with their own policies and criteria. and while every shelter has the best of intentions for animals, sometimes they just fall severely short of being able to do much actual good (like the ones you've seen), but that can be the case with either type of organization. it all depends on the type of people running it. there are good & bad ones of both kinds. (and don't let the name of the shelter fool you - a shelter can call itself anything it likes, so "humane society" can go any which way. there is no set principle required to call yourself by that name. kill and no-kill shelters will use it, good and bad ones of each.)

if you ask which is more helpful in the long run, then i'd have to say kill shelters are. they take in more animals, but also adopt more out. the workers are more driven to place animals in quality homes, knowing they may have to kill it next week or see it back thru their doors if they don't do a good job of placing it in the right home the first time around. there is proven data on what being in a cage for a long time can do to an animal's psyche, particularly social creatures like dogs. mental abuse is just as damaging to a pet as physical, rendering it not adoptable just as easily as beating it. so it does little good to a dog to keep it living in a cage for a year, when doing so breaks it down mentally more and more each day. yes, it's technically alive, but at what expense? no one WANTS to euthanize animals. i've never met a shelter worker who said,"man, i just want to go thru and kill every cat i see today. what fun!" but we see that it can be a necessary evil, and we take on that responsibility if it is the best thing for the animal.

some no-kill shelters do indeed euthanize animals, just not at their building, so as to keep the "no-kill" name on the wall. some limit the animals they accept to take in only those with proven-adoptable standards, like only those under a certain age or certain sizes or breeds. while it's nice to help these animals, it does little to aid the general animal population. if my county has 8000 homeless animals needing homes, yet our local no-kill shelter only takes in 400 a year, what happens to the rest? the owners don't hold onto them until a good home is found...these are the animals let loose out in the country, drowned in the river, shot in the backyard, left to starve outside. and personally, i feel there are far worse things than death by me. i would much rather send an animal to sleep with a simple injection to still the heart, with my hands petting it lovingly and whispering gentle murmurs in the ear, than see it die a horrible death because a shelter decided they didn't have room for it or it didn't match the profile of what they will accept.

people who say death is the worst thing that can happen to a pet have never seen true cruelty. when they cut a cat out of a tree that had been hung & skinned alive simply because the owner didn't want it any longer, then i will listen to their argument...until then, they need to open their eyes and see what the world is really like and just what kinds of things wait for these poor things if we don't step up and take care of them in every way we can. that includes letting them go peacefully to a better place if the one here and now can no longer help them.

Answer 2

I am lucky enough to have had dealings with the only "no kill" shelter I know that truly lives up to the spirit of the words. It is, unfortunately always full, and animals are turned away because of it. In a situation like Hurricane Katrina, the shelter called all its foster volunteers and gathered together 37 foster homes for the dogs, so they would be able to take them in. The dogs were all adopted.
This shelter has heavy private funding by the founder and her family, in addition to a well established group of donators. They also have a huge base of volunteers who work with the dogs daily. Never have I seen more than one dog in a cage there, and the cages are always spotless. The kennel is designed to minimize the deafening barking you see in other shelters. All the dogs are given donated vet care and yes, they live there until they die if they are not adopted. This shelter has a dog "sponsorship" for each of their dogs. The person who sponsors the dog can come to the shelter and walk the dog, socialize, train, play, etc, to make sure the dog gets enough attention. Alot of teenagers do this regularly. When I attend the annual dinners, the sponsorships are always sold out by the end of the night-even the ones for the old dogs.
The shelter does euthanize-when a dog has been assessed as aggressive and dnagerous. It is necessary to do this-what would be the point of keeping a dog like that?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the no-kill shelters could get the funding and volunteers they need to be able to operate like this. It won't happen, though. Most shelters are the way you described.

Answer 3

I think that is an excellent question. There are way more dogs out there than homes for them and it makes brutal sense to rehome the easier cases. If a no-kill shelter has many dogs that won't make good pets then they are taking up space a lovely dog then misses out on. To be realistic, are you going to rehome a 12 year old dog? Or a diabetic dog? Or one with aggression problems? I hate the thought of a healthy dog being put down but when there is such overcrowding, what are the choices? I think the aim has to be to rehome as many dogs as possible, and to keep the dogs who are waiting for homes in humane accommodation. It sounds like the homes you volunteered for sacrificed those things for the no-kill policy and it didn't work.
I'm sure not all non-kill shelters are like that, I'm sure some are very well run. But you bring up an excellent point!

Answer 4

It depends on the certain situation. Here in MD, the city (kill shelter) works closely with several no kill rescue groups who will take a large amount of the dogs and cats from the city shelter. These rescue groups work off of foster parents only (they have no actual facility), so these pets are kept in a home type atmosphere until they can get adopted.

There are other no kill shelters where they are kept in cages (they are let our for exercise etc) and due to overworked staff, can not be socialized very often and end up developing behavioral problems. Even most no kill shelters will find an alternative for a pet who's been in their facility for a long period of time, still it's not always a healthy situation for that pet.

I've always said, it's better for them to be put down than to sit in a cage 24/7 for weeks or months....even years on end. I've seen it happen many of times and it's very sad and heartbreaking.

These shelters need more foster parents!

Answer 5

Shelters who do euthanise animals they are unable to rehome say that the conditions you describe, wihich can sometimes result from the no-kill policy, show that it's much more humane to euthanise dogs who may never find a home in order that ones who may can be properly cared for.

A number of UK no-kill shelters were recently investigated because they'd been rehoming animals who hadn't yet had their behaviour adequately assessed, with people who weren't suitable to be taking on dogs; the pressure placed upon no-kill shelters to find homes for animals to make room for others does occasionally drive some shelters to be less thorough in their adoption process than they should be being.

In such circumstances, I think I agree that it's better to make sure that rehomable animals have the time to find forever homes, than for shelters to be more leniant than the dogs require and deserve. I can't say I agree with euthanising healthy animals, but perhaps it's the lesser of two evils.

The shelters you volunteered at sounds particularly awful; it doesn't seem fair or right that dogs should be 'rescued' only to be treated little better by their rescuers.

Answer 6

No, it's not more humane. One thing that a lot of people don't know is that some animals are transfered out of no kill shelters into kill shelters to be euthanized. It is a common practice in the states, but I don't know about South Africa. In the states, there really isn't anything that is no-kill. They just transfer them into a kill shelter for the same outcome.

Answer 7

"Humane" is not to do with whether or not a person or group does or does not euthanase their dogs, it has to do with the CONDITIONS under which they keep the animals, and the CONDITIONS under which they eventually euthanase (or do they force the cancer victims and so on to "live" right to the very last breath?)
Me, I hope that euthanasia of old humans is legal by the time I'm ready to "go".

Anyone involved in rescue operations has to fight hard to avoid becoming a dotty "collector". It sounds as though the people running the places you saw have not fought hard enough.

And vocabulary:
I thought a "shelter" WAS the establishment run by a registered humane society. Which doesn't make sense with your final sentence.
I thought a "pound" was run by the City Council or County Council.
And that a rescue group kept the dogs in one another's homes.
Les P, owner of GSD_Friendly: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/GSD_Friendly
"In GSDs" as of 1967

Answer 8

As an animal lover and future veterinarian, I would have to say "no", as much as I hate the euthanizing of healthy animals. "No kill" shelters here are not as extreme as those you describe and typically accept only healthy animals that have not been involved in dogfighting. Unfortunately, "no kill" shelters have limited space and resources, just like the regular shelters do, and there aren't enough people to foster the overflow.

In the cases of the animals you described, even I have to admit sadly, it is better to euthanize these animals than continue to allow them to suffer and/or inflict more harm on the animals they are caged with.

Answer 9

No I don't think they are. I don't think the life they are subjected to is a humane way to live. I truly believe in my heart that many of these vicious dogs don't want to be here. This theory is my way of coping and making that decision. Something with them has made them unable to cope in this world and I can't see that as being happy in anyway.

I also believe that by keeping these unhappy dogs alive to suffer continiously we are allowing dogs that are happy and are good to die in shelters. I was told years ago the theory of the more you keep the less you save and by keeping these dogs we are not saving the ones that deserve to be saved.

Or you end up as a hoarder:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Atmuou0965katzcw0c0GBtXty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071220042327AAwyBhr&show=7#profile-info-0Ppo6VEDaa

Answer 10

Some of them are just glorified warehouses for animals. Most of the people running them are collectors, and just use the shelter setting to do their collecting.