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Euthanasia

Animals Die Different Deaths in Different Facilities

Some animals who make it into open-admission shelters are reclaimed by their guardians or adopted into new homes. But the sad fact is that there are far too few good homes for unwanted animals. Even if there were enough good homes to take in unwanted animals, many animals ending up in animal shelters are truly unadoptable. Dogs and cats are often taken to shelters because of serious health conditions such as parvovirus, contagious mange, upper respiratory infections, fungal infections, and even broken limbs. Some are given up because of severely aggressive behavior. Many dogs have lived their whole lives on chains or in tiny, filthy pens and are generally unsocialized or fearful of people. Most potential adopters are looking for small, cute, housebroken puppies without medical problems. Few who walk into shelters want to adopt the sick, injured, or aggressive animals they will see there.

The result is that 3 million to 4 million dogs and cats will be killed at animal shelters this year.

Some will be killed by cruel methods, such as gunshot by municipal officials. Bullets are often not placed precisely in the struggling animal's head or are deflected, and some animals survive the first shot only to be shot again and again.

Many shelters still use gas chambers to kill animals who aren't adopted or reclaimed. Even the "best" gas boxes can cause conscious animals the horror of watching others suffer from convulsions and muscular spasms as they slowly die. Old, young, and sick animals are particularly susceptible to gas-related trauma and will thus die slow and highly stressful deaths.

And as hard as it is to believe, there are still facilities in the United States that kill animals using painful electrocution or in cruel decompression chambers, where the gases in animals' sinuses, middle ears, and intestines expand quickly, causing considerable discomfort to severe pain. Some animals survive the first go-round in decompression chambers and are recompressed because of malfunctioning equipment or the operator's mistake or because animals get trapped in air pockets. They are then put through the painful procedure all over again.

Fortunate homeless, unwanted animals who aren't adopted from shelters in a timely manner and are not claimed by their families receive painless, peaceful deaths in loving arms by way of an intravenous injection of sodium pentobarbital. This—and only this—is true euthanasia, a good death. Euthanasia is a kindness, often the only kindness ever known for animals who are born into a world that doesn't want them, has not cared for them, and ultimately has abandoned them to be disposed of as "surplus" beings.

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