(no subject)

[greenbeats.livejournal.com]

Is there a pound (dog/animal) in Somerville/Cambridge/Boston?

I've always wondered that, but Google doesn't really provide a good answer.

Comments

[sly-salkie.livejournal.com]

They try to get as many animals adopted as they can! They're all good people and they love animals, and you're not supporting a kill shelter by adopting from there. They even put through special-needs animals and old animals in an attempt to find them good homes. The animals that are put down are on the vicious side (more dogs than cats) or very very sick animals that are beyond help, or wild animals that are guessed to be rabid. Wild animals with broken bones are sent to rehabilitation facilities in the woods, where they are most often released back into the wild with minimal human contact. I swear, it's a wonderful place!

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

I certainly had no problems with the treatment of the animals I saw. They seemed healthy and sociable.

Supporting a kill shelter?

[shelter-worker.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, could you please clarify?

Somewhere along the line, "no-kill shelter" has come to mean good and "no-kill" has come to mean bad. It's not only untrue, it's unfair. Not all animals can be adopted. It's a sad reality. There are only so many cages, so many foster homes and when these are all full, decisions are made. The decision to euthanize an animal is not one made easily or lightly.

But what do you do when a dog is returned from his second home for biting? Or when a 12 year old cat in the shelter is so depressed from living in a cage for 2 months that she stops eating? Or the cat who doesn't like to be held or petted and oh yeah, will require special prescription food for the rest of his life? What do you do with the all the pitbulls, which many people shy away from due to their reputation in th media? What do you do when all the cages are full and you run out of foster home?

The animal overpopulation epidemic in the US is a travesty. Blame people: for overbreeding, for not taking pet ownership seriously, for treating pets as disposable items to get rid of when they are no longer convenient. But please do not blame the people who choose to try to help this problem, even though certain aspects of the job are heartbreaking.

Re: Supporting a kill shelter?

[sly-salkie.livejournal.com]

My earlier post in this thread:
"The animal rescue league takes in animals from all the surrounding areas of Boston, and they are technically a kill-shelter. I worked there for three days and couldn't stop crying about the poor little animals so I quit.

That said, this is Boston, and if a shelter does put animals to sleep, it is for the sake of being humane. Animals can go crazy if they're kept in little cages, and also I don't think they have the funding or space to keep every animal that comes through. All adoptable animals (ie dogs that don't seem to bite people) are put up for adoption, and if I'm not mistaken, none of the animals, once cleared for adoption, can be put down. I always adopt from there. There's never a shortage of animals who are in dire need of a good human to give them a chance in life. You probably already knew about them, but they're the closest thing to real pound I know of."

Another poster was concerned that she had been supporting a kill-shelter by adopting her cat from the ARL. I was pointing out the positives of having a well-run, humane animal control system in Boston to reassure her that it was not bad to adopt from shelters such as the ARL, who aims to reduce the suffering of animals as much as is within their power.