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"No-Kill" - An Impossible Dream?

© Sherrie Walker

Just about everyone involved with any type of animal-related organization has the same dream - that every puppy or kitten born would have a permanent, loving home waiting for it. This is about the only point on which everyone agrees, however. On one side are the "no-kill" proponents, who often characterize traditional humane societies and animal control agencies as being little better than slaughterhouses. On the other side are the traditional shelters, who accuse the no-kills of practicing selective admission and leaving the less-adoptable animals for someone else to deal with. As with most arguments, there is truth on both sides.

So-called "open-admission" shelters that, because of internal policy or government contract, take in all animals, say that no-kill shelters accept only the cutest, youngest, most adoptable animals. Then, since they keep these animals until they are adopted, they quickly become full and stop accepting any more. And yet there are always more - what happens to them? "We take them," say the open-admission shelters. "And when we end up having to euthanize them because of lack of space, we're the bad guys." Another criticism open-admission shelters have of their no-kill brethren is that animals are sometimes kept in crowded, dirty conditions for extended periods of time, with no thought for their quality of life. Better to be euthanized, say the traditional shelters, than to spend years in a concrete run or a cage.

Many open-admission shelters have developed aggressive spay/neuter and adoption programs and do a good job of public outreach in their communities. Others, however, seem to find it easier to continue killing animals like they always have than to take the time and effort to create alternative programs. This is the reason, says "Animal People" magazine in their July/August 2000 issue, that no-kill organizations have placed more animals in adoptive homes and funded more spay/neuters than have traditional shelters.

This same editorial goes on to say, however, that some no-kill shelters are far from being an asset to the no-kill movement. Shelters that fail to take advantage of the tremendous power of the Internet, proclaiming self-righteously that all their time and money is being spent "caring for the animals"; shelters that fail to pursue effective placement programs, preferring, apparently, to keep animals in cramped cages or runs for months or even years; and most unbelievable of all, shelters that not only don't support spay/neuter programs, but don't even alter their own animals prior to adoption - these organizations are as much responsible for the continued killing of healthy, adoptable animals as are the traditional shelters that do the killing.