What Do You Do When the Shelter is Full?

Here's a couple of articles that I thought you might find interesting.

The Nevada Humane Society is Winograd's bragging right. Bonney Brown, head of NHS, is on Winograd's broad of directors.
http://www.rgj.com/article/20101028/NEWS10/10290395/1321/NEWS

"We are incredibly full right now and so is Washoe County Regional Animal Services," said Bonney Brown, executive director of the Humane Society.
"Unfortunately, a number of animals continued to come in," she said. "While we're a no-kill shelter, the county facility can't be, so if we cannot pull them and other rescue groups are full, those animals are at risk of being euthanized."

So what else is new? So what will happen now? The County side will now tell their ACO's to not pick up new strays, they will turn away owner surrenders, they will allow animals to be dumped in hopes that cars and coyotes will do their job for them.

And another one, this time one that points out how cruel "No Kill" can be.
http://www.observer-reporter.com/or/editorial/10-29-2010-Crowded--Editorial

Washington Area Humane Society has a problem. With 350 animals in its no-kill shelter, it can't handle any more, and so its board has voted not to take in more animals or investigate complaints of abuse until adoptions reduce the population.
The organization has come under fire from Kym Secreet, animal control officer for 40 municipalities in Washington County, who said the shelter is "allowing animal cruelty to happen and doing nothing about it, which I think is criminal." Readers of this newspaper have written letters critical of the public for not being more willing to adopt pets from the shelter, and of the shelter for not being larger.

Few would argue with the fact that there are simply too many dogs and cats. The solution to the problem is to reduce their numbers, and spaying and neutering is an effective way to do it. But because many people don't bother to have their pets fixed, and abandon or neglect them and allow them to breed unchecked, sometimes more drastic methods are necessary - methods that few want to talk about, like euthanasia.

Ever since the American Humane Association was formed in 1866, it and other organizations that followed have campaigned for the humane treatment of animals, of pets, zoo and wild creatures and those meant for slaughter. The humane disposal of animals was and still is considered a necessary function, although no-kill shelters have become the rule rather than the exception.

The idea of euthanatizing unwanted pets is chilling and distasteful, but even more so are the other ways in which those animals might die: by starvation, poisoning or being drowned or shot.
The no-kill shelter creates another cruelty for the unwanted pet - living out its life in a cage in a noisy, crowded kennel.

By refusing to euthanatize, no-kill shelters ironically condemn unwanted animals to miserable outcomes their organizations were meant to overcome.

Animals should be treated with compassion, and cruelty to them punished to the full extent of the law. At the same time, we must come to realize that humanely ending the life of a sick, dangerous or simply unadoptable pet is not an immoral act.

Me thinks that this person gets it!!!!