“Oh, yeah, they put puppies down too,” I broke the news to the young man hired to do yet still more fencing reinforcement for Rasta’s “Big Dog” yard.
“But they’re just babies,” the young man said, gazing at Rasta’s newest rescues, three more pups from the Valencia County shelter pulled from death row.
I confirmed then a thought I’ve long had in the back of my mind, most people just do not know or realize the reality of the city pound or county shelter. I remember as a kid my mom telling me that she’d take the remaining kittens to the pound and being they were so cute they would find homes. Maybe they did find homes, then again, perhaps not. Well, here we are forty years later and mothers and fathers are still telling their small children: “we’ll leave them at the shelter and they’ll find homes ‘cause they’re so cute’," “because they’re just babies,” “because who can resist a kitten,” and so forth.
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| Cash: 4 months old, 2 weeks in the shelter, owner surrender, time was up.... |
At some shelters a box of kittens or puppies dropped by a family are simply labeled “owner surrender.” In the world of rescue that can mean those animals are placed on death row immediately.
Sometimes on Rasta’s page, people complain about the short notice in the life or death of a dog, often this happens because their owner has surrendered them. Shelters don’t tell the owner when they leave their animals that they have twenty-four to forty-eight hours before they’ll be put down, or in some places even less. I suppose this truth isn’t spoken because then people would be more inclined to just leave that box of puppies on the side of the road or behind the store or dump their dog or cat in a rural setting. But, hell, people already do that.
Why are we so afraid to educate people, to tell them the reality of the ways of the world? In raising my daughter, of course, I’ve often been told you have to teach your children for adulthood, prepare them for the “real” world. Well, here it is, shelters put down puppies all the time, brand new babies, days, weeks, sometimes just hours old. Shelters are over run and strive to be kill free, but again with people not taking responsibility “kill free” is often just plain “unrealistic.” Perhaps more would take responsibility if actually told the truth.
Rasta’s Rescue has removed 13 puppies from death row at just one shelter in New Mexico.
Honestly I could not work at a shelter. My heart is just to big. Funny story here. I am 54 now. But at the age of 16 my girlfriend & I broke in to our little rural mountain town shelter & stole all the dogs & set the cats free. We took the dogs out to various locations in the country where we knew ranches would take them in. This was like midnight. She told her Mom she was spending the night with me & I did the same vise versa. My Mom read about the shelter theft in the paper on Tues. She simply with a smurkey grin & her eye brow raised said MMMM seems as though someone set all the critters at the shelter free. Later on she told me she knew it was me & my friend all along. To this day my heart is just as big.
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