Winter 2010 - PAWS Chicago

Transparency
in Animal Sheltering
A proposed law would cause shelters to work harder to save more animals by
stopping shelters from hiding or misrepresenting their animals’ fates.
By David Tenenbaum
If you took the time, effort and expense to surrender
your beloved pet to a traditional shelter to make sure that
the pet would find a new home, and you were promised
there was “no time limit” on how long the dog or cat
could stay, or that the shelter would use its “best efforts”
to place the pet, you can be assured that your dog or cat
did not wind up in the shelter freezer, black garbage bag
or incinerator.
Or can you Last year, 4 million pets were put to death
in shelters across the United States. Animal shelter euthanasia
remains the leading cause of death of dogs and
cats in this country. In fact, shelter euthanasia kills more
pets than any known disease. Nationwide, 60% of dogs
and 70% of cats entering animal shelters never make it
out alive.
Shocking Lack of Industry Transparency
You cannot be certain that your surrendered dog or
cat was in fact adopted and did not wind up as one of the
4 million annual euthanasia deaths, due to the shocking
lack of transparency in the traditional animal shelter
industry. As the public increasingly demands better
outcomes for shelter animals, some shelters work harder
and implement improved programs to achieve better
results for the animals. Other shelters, work even harder
to conceal the truth.
The public’s escalating vocal compassion has raised
shelter awareness, and sometimes shelter efforts, to
reduce the killing. A handful but growing number of
truly progressive shelters, working together with varying
combinations of volunteers, rescue groups, spay/
neuter veterinarians, donors, media and compassionate
politicians and community leaders, now reserve euthanasia
only for the truly gravely ill or incorrigible animal.
These modern shelters never use euthanasia to control
the pet population in the shelter and will never kill a pet
that is or can be made adoptable. Shelters such as PAWS
Chicago, which has successfully implemented the principles
of No Kill, has been able to increase the save rate
of its pet population to 97%.
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