Animal Shelters: The Good and The Bad

Over the years I have seen my share of animal shelters, have worked and volunteered in them, or adopted from them.  I will limit this discussion to public shelters, run by a city or county.  There are certainly private shelters, often not for profit, no kill shelters, but unfortunately my familiarity with them is limited to the worst cases.  The private shelters I have seen are poor excuses for animal hoarding.  Few if any dogs are ever placed in homes.  Basically there are people who make a living off collecting dogs.  Surely that cannot be true for all of them.  So rather than be one-sided, I will stick to the public shelters I have first-hand knowledge of.

These shelters are usually run by the LOCAL Humane Society, which has little or nothing to do with the HSUS who are animal rights extremists.  The local shelter is where animal control officers temporarily house the strays, abused or neglected animals they collect, and where owners may surrender their dogs (and other pets). 

Many animal shelters are overcrowded, underfunded, and use euthanasia to eliminate animals deemed difficult to place.  Those are not necessarily the bad shelters.  In fact, the closest shelter is adequately supported, staffed, and rarely overrun with strays; still I avoid this shelter at all costs. 

What makes it a bad shelter?  The staff, the people who work there.  Their concern is for putting their time in with minimal inconvenience to them.  This is painfully obvious when you arrive at this shelter and ask if they have a certain type dog in their kennels (without even defining whether you lost yours, or for adoption purposes), you have to attract the attention of the lone receptionist who can’t be bothered to look up.

Without further question you are referred to the kennel area via hooked thumb, and told to go check there.  The receptionist was so unconcerned and inattentive that we could have released all the dogs in the kennels, or walked out with any one of them.  Before leaving we tried to get her attention again.  She was disinterested to the point of rudeness.  Her motivation was clear; adoptions mean paperwork, reference checks, and so on.  Euthanasia is so much easier.  She did not want to be there, did not care about the animals in the shelter, and thought answering two simple questions was a great imposition.  Her colleagues were still in the break room.