Some of the flimsy excuses people give up their animals to shelters are: Im moving. He has fleas. I got new furniture. My boyfriend or girlfriend does not like him. Yet shelter workers look at these people and think, “My God, this animal loves and trusts you! You have a responsibility here! How can you in your right mind just abandon it?”
Millions of dogs and cats enter shelters yearly. If lucky, maybe up to 4 million of them find new homes. Of the dogs and cats that get lost and are picked up on the street that end up in shelters, only up to 2% to 16% even get reclaimed by their owners. The rest are likely killed.
Only around 20 states in the U.S. kill by lethal injection while the rest of the states use other less humane methods, like the gas chamber. Big and little animals, the very old to the very young, are pulled and tugged toward the chamber. Pets that were likely once loved by families and children, their eyes now are full of fear as they are shoved into a large cylinder with lots of other animals, all with their eyes bulging out, nostrils flaring, shivering and scared. As they are packed into the chamber, there is lots of noise, screaming and fighting. The larger animals snap at the smaller ones, but all of them appear in a desperate struggle to survive and the gassing has yet to begin.
Then the gas button is pushed as streams of gas are pumped into the chamber. Terrified animals paw at the window. They start whining then start producing ear-piercing squeals. The larger animals next start a high, mournful wailing followed by a deeper howling that rises in great desperation. The whole euthanasia process may take up to around 10 minutes of torture. The final result is when shelter workers bag the bodies, load them into a pickup truck and haul them to the local garbage dump and are thrown away with the rest of the garbage.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: ANIMAL PROTECTION INSTITUTE SUMMER 2001