Animal Shelter

Being an Animal lover it is hard to work at a kill shelter. When I applied for the job I never realized the emotional roller coaster it would be. Sure you like to tell yourself that they only put down really old dogs or aggressive ones. I never thought that poor innocent
puppies would be put down because there not the right color or because they are not cute enough. Of course I am getting a head of myself. Let me take you back to the beginning. Dogs can end up at the shelter for different reasons.
One is because some brave dog decided to escape from its yard or jolt out the door and then couldn't find its way back home. These dogs are sometimes reunited with there owner some have to stay the seven day holding period. From there they if lucky enough they go up for adoption if not they get a one way ticket to what we call the quite
room.
Then there is the neglectful dog owner that just lets there dog run free at all times so we get a complaint and we go swoop the dog up. These dogs are usually pretty rough looking because they have not been properly taken care of. These dogs are less to get reclaimed by the owner because truly the dog owner does not care. So they
get held seven days in hopes someone with a big heart will rescue it from its faith.
Then there is the dead beat dog owner that gets a dog realizes its going to be work and decides this dog thing is not for them. So they bring us the dog and we give it a few days to try and get adopted then down the hall of death it goes.
So of course these are only a few scenarios that happens there are the
cases of elderly people passing away or people having to move for some reason or another. For what ever reason they all have the same fate if they do not find homes.
So of course everyone is concerned if we use injection or the scary carbon chamber. Well unfortunately we use injection. Any one who ever said that its the most humane way is wrong. Sure if you hit the vein in the right spot then the dog goes down and its done. Well lets remember we don't live in a perfect world and that happens like one out of ten dogs.
I am sure you think I am crazy for saying that I mean thats how the vets do it right. Of course vets do it on old or sick dogs that have no fight left in them. We are talking about doing it on young healthy dogs. So lets take an in depth look at this humane process.
So its start out you go get a dog we will use a year old lab-x as an example because they seem to be the most common dogs at the shelter. So you go and get the dog of course the dog can read your vibes and puts up a fight on the leash. After you have dragged this energetic pup down th hall to the dreaded quite room you have to muzzle him to make sure you don't get bit due to the stress level of the dog and the pain that is involved. You take an elastic band and put on his front arm above the arm and pull it as tight as possible to ensure you can find a tiny little vein. So then you have one person pretty much hold him in what looks like a wrestling choke hold. So then you have a person take a needle and stick it in the dogs arm sometimes it goes to deep or you get what is a rolling vein that just moves with the littlest touch. In this story we will say that it rolls so you have to dig the needle around hitting bone and other things that don't really feel good when a sharp metal object is stabbed into it. So finally after taking the needle out and sticking it back in about five times you hit the vein and it flashes full of blood. You slowly loosen then band and start pushing the liquid into the dog. Well at about the 2cc mark the dog starts feeling funny and panics and start wiggling and the needle pops out of the vein. So now this dog has only 2cc in him when he needs five to go down. So now this dog is stressed and organs and brain cells slowly start shutting down so you watch this dog try and walk and sit normal. So now you have to give it tranquilizer. So you take another needle drive it deep into his hip. About five minutes of walking around falling over and sometime throwing up and living little dog presents on the ground he lays down and slowly goes into a deep sleep. Of course you cant hit the vein now if you tried so because his system is shutting down so you take a long needle and stick it into his chest cavity and right into the heart. You put a little more medicine into him and watch the syringe so you know when his heart has quit beating. Finally the dog is gone and you can put him in a bag to be sent to the land field with all the other trash.
I know it sounds like I hate my job but that is not the case I wish people would care a little more about there pets and treat them as if they were more than household