THE SHELTER IS FULL! These four words strike fear in the hearts and minds of Newberry County animal lovers and shelter volunteers. These four words introduce a nightmare scenario of sad choices. Which dogs will live, and which will die? Every stray that must be picked up, every owner that walks in the door to surrender a shocked and fearful dog sounds another death knell.

This unhappy situation is normal all over the Southeast. Facebook posts are a catalog of pleadings for any number of dogs and cats to save them from “euthanasia.” Photos of stray dogs are posted by shelters with the date they become eligible for salvation, or failing that, the date they will be killed. They are already on the list, a routine list that will decrease their numbers by ten or twenty or more.

This is not euthanasia, of course. No matter what shelters call it, words come with definitions. Euthanasia is the merciful release of a living, sentient being from unremitting pain and suffering. Most of the “euthanasia” in shelters is simply killing, with terrible costs to the animals and to the staff which has to do it. Statistics tell us that about one percent of the animals in shelters are suffering from irremediable conditions. Most of these dogs and cats are healthy, treatable, and adoptable.

National statistics for shelters and the animals who pass through them are hard to come by. Not all states require reports from their shelters, and not all the reports are reliable. There is general agreement that approximately two million dogs and cats are killed in shelters in this country each year. That’s not nearly as bad as it used to be. In 1995, we were rejoicing that the estimate had dropped to 15 million.

Spay/neuter programs are responsible for most of that reduction, and they are still the best methods for locally controlling the number of pets that are killed. Rescue operations are another important element in reducing the death rate. They transport adoptable dogs from areas where there are too many of them to areas where they are wanted. We do not suffer from pet over-population so much as a problem in distribution.

However – News Flash! There are homes available for the two million dog and cats that are “euthanized” each year. Where? With the 30 million homes that plan to add a pet each year.

Those homes may not appear to exist in our area, but we cannot know because we do not have an adequate outreach program. Animal Control is not designed to market the animals which come into their care. Shelter animals are not for sale, but they’re not going to be adopted either if no one ever sees them.

The majority of potential adopters, people whose taxes actually support the whole operation, do not have access to the shelter. The shelter is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The working man or woman who wants to gather the kids and make a family outing to adopt a dog or cat has to go somewhere else, on a Saturday. And they do. Even those who would come to Newberry from out of county to see a dog whose photo they saw on Facebook also go somewhere else, on a Saturday.

This lament has been raised before, and the County always argues, quite reasonably, that they cannot afford to hire more staff. They could, of course, solve the problem simply by having open hours Tuesday through Saturday without any change in staffing.

If that should come to pass, and someone came into the shelter to look for a pet, the staff would, as they always do, greet the visitor in a friendly fashion and point out the way to the kennels. Unless there happens to be a volunteer in the kennel area, there is no one to offer assistance or supplement the scant information about the dogs posted on the kennel gates. The staff’s first responsibility is, quite rightly, to their duties as Animal Control officers.

If it should come to pass that there are would-be adopters in the kennel area who are being guided by volunteers, the would-be adopters are often holding their noses. The kennels stink. The kennels stink even when they are clean, and the dogs stink because the water that was used to flush the waste out of their kennels splashes on them, day after day. That is a very real problem.

If the Newberry County Animal Shelter is going to compete for homes for their animals, we have a lot to think about.

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Jay Booth

Contributing Columnist

Jay Booth is a retired university professor, a retired newspaper columnist, and the vice-president of the Newberry County Humane Society.