This is why we are an open-door shelter helping all animals in need in our community: Nachminovitch: All animals count By Daphna Nachminovitch | January 18, 2015 I met Diablo years ago, when I was working at an animal shelter in Chicago. He was only 7 months old - a dashing border-collie mix with a curly tail and a huge personality. The reason given for turn-in: Apartment too small. Hed been purchased from a pet store just a few months earlier. Diablos owner explained: I wanted a small dog. This one is too big. My heart went out to Scram, too - a 5-year-old black-Lab mix with wise eyes. The reason given for turn-in: Opens the fridge. And to Addison and Viking, both 7 years old - Addison a dignified golden retriever and Viking a handsome husky. The reason given for surrender: Tired of taking care of. And to Carly, a beautiful retriever-mix whod been with her human family for six years. She was intelligent and demure. The reason given for turn-in: Moving overseas. My family moved overseas when I was a child. And our two dogs moved with us from Israel to Ivory Coast to France to the United States. My parents would never have abandoned them - any more than they would have abandoned me. But not all families see things that way. Diablo, Scram, Addison, Viking and Carly are just five out of millions of animals turned in to shelters every year. Failed by the people they trust and depend on, they are viewed as an inconvenience and discarded - given away indiscriminately, banished to the backyard or abandoned by the roadside to fend for themselves, terrified and alone. And now, thanks to a growing trend toward no-kill policies, animals are also being failed by their last refuge: the shelter. Under pressure to report lower euthanasia rates, many shelters are resorting to managing their intake or outright rejecting animals they know will be difficult to place. We are being asked to buy the lie that as long as animals are not a euthanasia statistic, they are a success story. But one has to ask, When shelters turn animals away, where do they go? In the few weeks leading up to Christmas, PETA received more than 120 calls about animals in need of somewhere to go. Among them were Storm, a pit bull whod spent a miserable existence at the end of a chain and was in critical condition - barely mobile and urinating blood; Kora, a dog whose chain was embedded in her neck; Calvin and Hobbes, cats abandoned by a tenant who moved and left them behind; Midnight, a cat suffering from a hernia caused by a traumatic injury; Tyson, a dog who had been hit and mangled by a car; and Sugar, Abby and Tigger - cats in various stages of organ failure. There was also Jolene, a shepherd mix acquired via Craigslist on Christmas Eve but so aggressive that the family could not even feed her (they had called several agencies before contacting PETA, but no one else would help) and Star, a tiny, 11-year-old dog abandoned on Christmas Eve because her humans were expecting a baby. She was matted, scared, anemic and suffering from a flea infestation, severe dental neglect, an ear infection and kidney disease. Diablo, Scram, Addison, Viking, Calvin and Star were adopted. Hobbes, Kora and Midnight are still waiting. But no one wanted Carly, and eventually she was euthanized, as are millions of other dogs and cats every year. Animals rejected by shelters are not saved just because theyve been excluded from unpleasant statistics. They dont vanish or magically find refuge elsewhere. Many suffer and die slowly from infections, injuries or illness, or they starve or freeze to death. Its easy to pretend that animals dont exist when theyre statistically invisible, but such self-serving fantasies are at the animals expense. The answer to saving animals from homelessness and suffering doesnt lie in the closed-door philosophy that if you dont count them, they dont count. It lies in preventing births through spaying and neutering, banning pet store sales, adopting animals instead of buying them, respecting animals enough to make a lifetime commitment to the ones we take in - and affording them all the opportunity to count not for the statistic that they represent but for who they are as individuals. Daphna Nachminovitch is senior vice president, Cruelty Investigations, at PETA, based in Norfolk. hamptonroads/2015/01/nachminovitch-all-animals-count
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 18:51:43 +0000
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