Background

On Saturday, August 30,2003 a friend of mine found a beautiful black & tan German Shepard Dog. She couldn't keep him, but tried to find out if anyone knew his owners. Nobody in her area had any information about the dog. Because it was a holiday weekend, none of the local no-kill groups returned her calls. Finally, she took the dog to the SPCA in Stroudsburg.

Unfortunately, the local agencies were full and couldn’t go to get the GSD. My friend sent me an e-mail telling me how upset she was, but that she would try to find another avenue to save the dog.

I went to the GSD rescue site on the internet and contacted one of their representatives regarding the dog. He told me that it might be too late to save the dog, but he would contact the Stroudsburg SPCA and find out whether they would be willing to hold it longer just to give him a chance to get someone down there to evaluate it. 

He called me back a few minutes later and told me that the dog was dead. The person he talked to said it had been killed earlier that morning, but that there were two other GSDs there that were still available. He was very upset, and I was, too. Worse, he said that the woman he spoke with sounded unsure about exactly which GSD was dead. So, there was the possibility that she had informed him incorrectly.  If she had been talking to an owner looking for their pet, the owner would have been devastated.

This dog never had a chance once it entered this place. Its owners, whoever they were, never had a reasonable opportunity to contact this shelter and retrieve their dog. 

Shouldn’t this shelter give the owners and lost pets at least a week or two to reunite? How many animals are killed here every year? How many adopted out or reunited with owners? Is the ratio of adoptions to killed reasonable? Is there any effort made to contact breed rescue groups? Are the facilities here so small that animals cannot be given a real chance at life? Is it time to make the public aware of the situation and get government agencies to take some type of action to improve these conditions?

This is not a special case. It is the norm at this shelter. From my point of view, killing animals is their main function. If overcrowding and lack of funds are major problems at this shelter, shouldn’t our government take an active role in bringing about changes that would alleviate the situation?

Isn’t it time for our legislature to take steps that would make it mandatory to hold these animals for at least ten days? This would give owners of lost pets a better chance of recovering their lost pets. Also, it would give rescue groups a better chance of placing the animal in a new home or finding a foster family to give it temporary housing.