Wow! This article from the Columbus Dispatch is worth reading, even if you don’t live in Ohio. It compares euthanasia rates between shelters run by the dog wardens or sheriffs in each of Ohio’s counties. At the “good” end, only 1% of dogs are put down, while one county actually puts down over 80% of the dogs it takes in. That’s so disturbing!
Dog wardens attribute the vast difference to the willingness of volunteers to pull dogs from the county’s shelter and re-home them, either in foster care or at a privately run shelter such as the Humane Society. In Hamilton County (the Cincinnati area) the kill rate is about 30%. Reduced adoption prices, extended foster care that includes heartworm treatment to restore dogs to health, and other steps contributed to the low euthanasia rate, SPCA Cincinnati spokesman Scott Puryear said.
Urban shelters often have higher kill rates due to the number of aggressively-trained dogs they are forced to take in, often as a result of law enforcement raids in crime-infested areas of large cities.
And the method of euthanasia is also a concern. Shelters are slowly moving away from gas chambers to the more humane lethal injection, but the conversion is by no means complete.
This article focuses only on my home state, Ohio, but what do you know about your state’s euthanasia rates & methods? Might be worth checking out.
Until next time,
Good day, and good dog!