Animal Shelters

The black-and-white mixed cocker spaniel waited patiently in a cage at the Richmond County Animal Control Shelter.

He was one of about 11,000 unwanted, neglected, sick, injured, abused or vicious animals that will die in the center's gas chamber this year.

He had no name, only a tag identifying him as R-159. He had been picked up on Milledge Road a few days earlier.

In the same cage was 007, a short-haired, spotted pointer puppy, a red chow chow and a mixed shepherd dog that animal control officers had picked up running loose on U.S. Highway 25.

Kennel master John White caught them with a catch pole, a stick with a wire noose on the end, and led them into the death room, where he loaded them into a round cage on wheels.

He rolled the cage into a round metal cylinder that resembles a large barbecue grill. The dogs' tails were still wagging.

Mr. White closed the door, locked it and turned the handle on one of the nearby tanks of carbon monoxide. For a minute, there was no sound at all but the barking of dogs in other cages.

Then it started.

One high, mournful wail and then a deeper howl that rose in a crescendo of desperation that went on for about 45 seconds.

And then it stopped.

``This is one of the thankless jobs we have to do because people won't take care of their animals and have them spayed and neutered and take care of them,'' said the center's director, Jim Larmer. ``We have to be the ones who have to end up  putting them to sleep to dispose of them.''                                                                         

Mr. White left the dogs in the chamber a few more minutes to make sure they were dead. Some have revived at the landfill, only to be returned for a repeat gassing.

Mr. White unlocked the door, opened it and rolled out the cage.

All were dead.

Mr. White donned a pair of thick green gloves. He pulled the chow out and threw it onto the back of a pickup truck already loaded with dead dogs and garbage. Next came a dog with cancer and then the pointer puppy and the little spaniel mix.

Last year, the center killed 10,788 of the 13,913 animals it picked up, trapped or received from the public. Columbia County Animal Control put 2,495 to death.

A scientific fact, as noted in the American Veterinary Medical Association's 1993 Report on Euthanasia, is that agitation and vocalization occur among the animals in the first 20 to 25 seconds when the gas enters the chamber. Think what this means. After being placed in the chamber, the dogs and cats are howling, crying, and struggling to get away from the gas. They die in fear, without the comfort of a human presence at the end of their lives. And yet AHS tells us this is humane!

excerpts taken from http://www.ahsgaschamber.com/Summary.htm

"Shelter workers must daily confront the need to euthanize many healthy, friendly, adoptable animals. They must accept these animals from the public, listen to the flimsy excuses for relinquishment ("I'm moving," "I got new furniture," "My boyfriend doesn't like him"), smile politely, and swallow the words that they must so often want to shout -- "This animal trusts you! This animal loves you! You have a responsibility here! How can you abandon him?" Having accepted these unwanted animals, shelter workers must feed, brush, walk, care for, and get to know them for three or five or seven days, and then, except for those few that have been adopted, they must take them into a small, barren room and kill them."

"Not too long ago "shelter" workers in Griffin were caught drowning puppies and kittens because the gas chamber wouldn't kill them. Young animals do not breathe deeply enough to inhale enough gas to kill them, so for more than 12 years "shelter" workers routinely drowned puppies and kittens in five-gallon buckets. The gas may kill the pregnant mother but the babies inside her are still alive when she is dead. The gas chamber is unconscionable and cowardly".

This is how your unwanted "pets" end up, so please remember this next time you get fed up of her & send her to the Animal Shelters, or allow her to have puppies because they are cute, or out with the old in with the new!