Anonymous said to @ask-drferox: How do you feel about kill shelters vs no-kill shelters? I’m asking because I’ve heard that no-kill shelters are actually problematic a lot of the time because they either only take in animals they know will get adopted or they take in animals and send them outside the shelter to be euthanized if they need to so they can still call themselves a no-kill shelter.
I think the idea of a no-kill shelter is admirable, but in reality all shelters are aiming to be no-kill, it’s just not realistic or feasible for a lot of the world, especially when the general public frequently just leave their mistakes and difficult cases for shelters to clean up.
A lot of people working in the industry dislike no-kill shelters as a concept because it’s not any sort of protected term and it often causes more problems than it solves. It might work in an affluent area with a high adoption rate and mandatory desexing of pets, but it’s not going to work all the time.
Consider the following situations:
A very elderly dog is presented to the shelter that needs major dental work, has a heart murmur, and is in stage 2 kidney failure. Does the shelter fork out all that money to make the dog adoptable, even though it’s lifespan will be short and require lifelong medication, the bill for which the shelter will probably be obliged to pay even if they can find a suitable adopter/foster for such a dog.
A super aggressive, untouchable, large breed dog is presented. Nobody can touch it. It injures kennel staff. Do you put it on psych meds and consult a behavioralist vet, medication which can disinhibit aggression by the way, and then hope you find a home that can handle it when shelter staff can’t? Risk another story hitting the media of a foster/rescue dog mauling or killing its new owner, which then jeapordises the reputation of every other rescue dog, or individual of that breed, just because the shelter wants to be ‘no kill’.
A boisterous but plain dog languishes at the shelter for months or years. Because it is a no-kill shelter, other dogs are turned away to an unknown fate, because they are full. Eventually the shelter fills with these kind of difficult to adopt dogs.
Now a No-Kill shelter could absolutely avoid these scenarios by refusing to take such cases in the first place. Or they get stuck with them and end up sinking far too many resources into relatively few cases with a poor outcome. Or they rehome a dog which should never have been rehomed, to a tragic outcome.
A shelter has a tough job to do, and that includes making tough calls sometimes. Pretending you can not do that isn’t helpful in the current world, but it’s not the shelters creating those problems. The shelters are trying to clean it up. A No-kill shelter is a nice thought, but in reality isn’t accomplishing what unfortunately needs to be done most of the time.
And you know, those so-called ‘kill shelters’ will go to great lengths to preserve and care for animals which are adoptable but just haven’t found their home yet. The old but healthy, the plain but sweet. They are trying to do the best job with what they’ve been given.
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