Shelters, No-Kill516 | would put the number of salvageable dogs and cats at roughly 3.6 million on the low end and 4.5 million on the high end of the spectrum.. But even at the high end
Trang 1Shelters, No-Kill
516 |
would put the number of salvageable
dogs and cats at roughly 3.6 million
on the low end and 4.5 million on the high
end of the spectrum
But even at the high end this means
that, nationally, shelters only need to
in-crease their adoption market by 2–3
per-cent in order to eliminate all population
control killing Today, there are about
165 million dogs and cats in homes Of
those, about 20 percent come from
shel-ters Three percent of 165 million is 4.9
million, more than all the salvageable
animals being killed in shelters (Keith,
2007) This is a combination of what
statisticians call stock and flow In
lay-man’s terms, some of the market will be
replacement life, that is, a companion
animal dies or runs away and the owner
wants another one, some will be
expand-ing markets, that is, someone doesn’t
have an animal companion but wants
one, or they have one but want another
But it all comes down to increasing
mar-ket share, that is, where they get their
companion animals from
No-kill advocates believe that these
same demographics show that every year
about twice as many people are looking
to bring a new dog into their home as the
total number of dogs entering shelters,
and every year more people are looking
to bring a new cat into their home than
the total number of cats entering
shel-ters (Winograd, 2007; Merritt, 2007)
Moreover, not all animals entering
shel-ters need adoption; some will be lost
strays that will be reclaimed Some cats
are feral or wild and need sterilization and
return to their habitats Vicious dogs, and
animals that are irremediably suffering
or hopelessly ill/injured will not be
eli-gible for adoption From the perspective
of achievability, no-kill advocates point
out, the prognosis is very good
Third, many downplayed the signifi-cance of San Francisco’s accomplish-ment for other communities by arguing that such a result could only be achieved
in an urban community, not a rural one, because of poverty and antiquated views
of animals When No-Kill was achieved
in the rural Tompkins County, New York animal control shelter, it was argued by some that it could not be done in the South When it was achieved at an animal con-trol shelter in Charlottesville, Virginia, these same groups claimed it could not be similarly achieved in developing commu-nities that are seeing tremendous popula-tion growth and urban sprawl, because the influx of new people and animals would overwhelm the infrastructure of ani-mal control, forcing shelters to kill The
90 percent rates of lifesaving in the com-munities in and around Reno, Nevada,
a more than 50 percent drop in killing and doubling of the adoption rate in less than one year, despite rapid population growth and approximately 16,000 dogs and cats entering the system annually, disproves that, too (Brown, 2008)
These and other cities have either achieved No-Kill, are close to doing so,
or have begun moving aggressively in that direction by implementing the programs and services of the No-Kill Equation Building the capacity to save lives after years of failing to do so may take time, but that does not obviate the fact that shelter killing is a result of shelter practices and not pet overpopulation Furthermore, no-kill shelter advocates say, the argument that success in less affluent, more rural,
or Southern areas is precluded by some peculiarity of lack of caring is not only wrong, elitist, and mean-spirited; it is sim-ply another example of making excuses
It ignores the success in rural Tompkins County It ignores the tremendous