All right, so I’ve made several videos before that I eventually deleted, but I think now is probably a good time to talk about this. Just for context, I do have experience working at a kill shelter and I work in rescue now. So there are both sides that I’ve been on of wanting to save animals and unfortunately having to be working for a system that doesn’t. And just a side note, this isn’t about Daniel. I actually have spoken with her and so of many people, and Danielle has yet to give any actual doable, practical solutions to the euthanasia crisis that’s happening. This is just in general for will that actually care and want to learn.
Let’s start with the biggest question I get, which is why all shelters aren’t no kill shelters. Why do shelters kill dogs when no kill shelters exist and continue to exist? And I hate to break it to you, but no kill shelters do euthanize still. They just don’t euthanize animals that they consider to be healthier, adoptable. That in itself is open to interpretation. So there’s that. But they do, so they do euthanize. Sometimes they’ll even send animals off site to be euthanized, like to an animal hospital or to a kill shelter where they know that they’re gonna euthanize the animal because they don’t want that on their hands. Some no kill shelters are genuinely like responsible about it though, and they do make the decision that needs to be made. Okay, that’s great. So then why don’t kill shelters just become no kill shelters? Why don’t they make that switch? Why do they continue to euthanize animals? It’s almost as if they want to right now kill. Shelters were never set up to be long term housing. Kill shelters were set up to be temporary housing for animals that were expected to be reunited with their owners back when they were established, this is what happened. I mean, you just had, you had strays that people would take into the shelter. They’d stay for a couple of days and then the owner would come and get them. Or, I don’t know, maybe the owner passes away, the owner gets arrested, the owner’s hospitalized, the animal would be taken to a shelter to stay temporarily. That means no kill.
Shelters are limited intake. They do not take in every single animal that comes to their gate. As a matter of fact, a lot of times they refuse those animals because they don’t have the space. So where do those animals end up going? Cow shelters. That system is the same system we have today. Nothing has changed within the decades of it being established.
So you can imagine the problems that come with this. You have unlimited intake and limited space, and we have so many animals within this frame here that are not leaving. They are not getting adopted. They’re not getting reunited with their owners. Matter of fact, the owners are the ones that are bringing them in. So now what? Once these ones come in, these ones have to go. They can’t stay. And to be clear, this isn’t just a couple of animals, you know, a week coming in and then we end up euthanizing just a bunch of them just because.
No, back when I was working in a shelter, do you know how many animals we took in every day? On average, it was about 10 dogs a day and 20 cats when you include the litter. So 30 animals a day in a space that holds a maximum 200, maybe even 500, you can quickly see how big of a problem this actually is. It’s not just a couple of animals. It is hundreds that accumulate to thousands in a year. And when I say thousands, I mean per shelter, this is that. And then you magnify it to the whole country. That’s how bad the situation is. And that’s what a lot of people don’t realize is like, yeah, you know, we want to save all of the animals. But do you know how many animals there are? Unfortunately, I do get comments of people saying, well, it would still be better if you were to just refuse the animal at the gate and let them be strays. Well, some shelters have done that. The one that I worked at, for example, started refusing unlimited intake of cats, specifically because dogs have leash laws. So the only legal loophole we could make was for cats are technically allowed to be strays and they do not have to be leashed in public. So with that, cats that are deemed healthy enough or able to survive possibly on their own outside were refused and still are. And ironically, not surprisingly, though, this has caused suffering and unalizing of thousands and thousands of cats. That’s because nature is not kind. Countless infections and fleas and ticks and maggots taking the lives of kittens who were refused intake at the shelter because technically they’re allowed to be out on their own. I’ve seen countless cats get hit by cars and be brought in have alive and we would end up humanely euthanizing them from there. That situation is happening every single day. I would recommend you do a quick Google search and look up cats with eye infections because that’s something I saw a lot working at the shelter. That’s usually enough for people, but if you wanna go further, just go to your local rescues or cat rescues page and scroll. You’ll find what I’m talking about. This is real.
So that brings me to kind of my final closing points. The first one being why dogs are not getting out, why people aren’t adopting. The reason is because they can’t. Simple. They don’t have space. We don’t have space for the amount of animals that need homes. It’s the tragic consequence of not staying and utering. And I know people are gonna come for me on that, but I will just let you know right now, staying and neutering could solve 90% of this issue tomorrow.
The only feasible solution that we have right now that we’re doing at this very moment is moving these dogs into long term housing. There are issues with that, though, because a lot of this long term housing is boarding. It’s basically the same thing as a shelter. And I mentioned kennel craziness before. That issue is still there. We’re keeping a lot of these dogs alive, which is the goal that these places have. But the issue is they’re just sitting in kennels all day for the rest of their life. Some places are able to find fosters that can keep them in a home, some places have the funds to get people in there and walk the dogs and, you know, make sure that they’re stimulated and have enrichment and all of that stuff. Most don’t. So that brings me to my final point, which is what the only real solution is in place of euthanasia. And ironically, it’s pretty simple.
Vote for people that care. Better yet, talk to the representatives that are in place now and tell them that they need to mandate Spain noodle laws they need to put in stipens for more affordable vet care. They need to put in Stipens to fund shelters. Tell them that, because those are the only people that can change this. They’re the ones that set the system up. So they’re the ones that have the funding and the power to change it, not me individually, not you individually if you’re going to be angry, be angry at the right people. Be angry at the people that actually do have the authority to change things because I don’t. I never did. Neither does the manager at your local public shelter. Neither does the executive director at your local public shelter because, again, all of the points that I’ve talked about, it all comes down to the way that system was set up. And if the government does not change how it operates, it’s going to continue to operate the way that it does. So, yeah.