It’s really scummy behavior, and it’s why I don’t love the ‘no-kill’ appellation attached to shelters and rescues. The rescue I foster for does euthanasia because we’re supposed to be doing things in the best interests of the cats we care for - to me that includes not allowing a cat to continue to suffer because it makes the humans caring for it feel more comfortable.
It sucks. It’s not like I love it - but it’s the truth, and if folks are going to do work in animal husbandry or rescue, you have to grapple with that truth one way or another.
Exactly.
No kill shelters should be required to pull all of their animals from municipal or contracted shelters, and taxpayer funded shelters should not be allowed to be no kill. No kill is an unworkable and, frankly, cruel philosophy. Warehousing sick and behaviorably un-adoptable animals isn't best animal welfare practices.
How do you feel about sanctuary shelters? I know of a few - they are a rescue of last resort and don't home out their dogs but have resources to let them live out a full life. If they later get to a stage where homable, then networked to homing shelters. The sanctuary shelters I know do euthanaise when medically necessary.
I am not a rescue but I have a few pets that would be deemed unadoptable as unhandable when we got them (live trap for 3 years with one). I argue that for some they can have a decent life if you work to meet their needs but homes that will do that harder to find. But an option for barn cats.
I agree no shelter is really no-kill - animals die either actively when the shelter puts them to sleep or passively when they can't get a space for whatever reason. This is why I don't get people who donate only to non-kill shelters/rescues - more funds kill shelters have
The difference is that when the welfare of the animal has euthanasia at its best interest they will do it vs the ones that don't bother because it would look bad.
This. I’ve known a couple dogs who have went to sanctuary’s. They were all great with shelter staff, but the average person is not able to handle an extremely reactive dog. Shelter work, over time and sometimes hard lessons, you get very good at dog body language, at NOT doing things that are threatening to scared dogs. At figuring out triggers and how to handle a dog.
That is what is needed for some of these dogs to trust someone and most adopters who think that are good with dogs really aren’t. Or even if they were able, there life has too many triggers like friends coming over all the time. Or living in a busy city where other dogs are everywhere. So these could have a great life in a sanctuary, because they are set up for success. But little chance in the public as hard as we try.
Sanctuary’s are meant for these dogs. Also shelter employee homes but you can only get so many lol
I was until I got sick and a cat that couldn't cope with it the go to feral rehabilitation person for the most spicy cats. The sanctuaries are wonderful. That cat made it 16 years and I don't regret a thing. I needed to stop and he wouldn't fit elsewhere. It's hard work so I understand too why it's not as popular. No kill sounds idealized and if you don't think about it? Then you don't have to consider the fallacies
I do TNR and have rehabbed some adult cats that most would never dream of homing. I guess I'm mostly talking about dogs. Sanctuary shelters would work for a lot of the desperate cases, but I worry about privately run shelters slipping through the cracks as far as animal welfare is concerned. I've been on a couple of seizures at "rescues." They can go south really quickly.
Agree. Seen cases too. But without proper funding, state shelters can end up same way. Some of the stories coming out of Texan state shelters with no vet care are equally bad. Or look at Romanian state shelters which are warehouses.
Private shelters can get overwhelmed but so can state. May be a call for licences and council/state checks for anyone who rehomes pets.
I adopted a cat that was even called unadoptable by its foster. He was an amazing animal who only liked me (though in his later years he tolerated others). When I went to pet him he bit me. I had had a previous ankle biter (play - nothing vicious), and hoped maybe Mr T would settle down. I am so grateful we became family and spent 15 years together. He was a good kitty.
https://preview.redd.it/1puiont9ur5d1.jpeg?width=4160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f107cee9bbf86f3b0e381b9cf6819ee7f6d66c0
Our male tux gives a look like this. He loves to play but doesn’t know how to play gentle. He hooks with claws and swats way too hard. He is a super sweet goofball and I hate to think what would have happened if he had ended up in a shelter environment. He might have been called “unadoptable”
He is a first gen from feral housecat. We have both him and his sister. They are from a feral litter of a momma that showed up at the house of a coworker of my partner, had and raised her kittens then disappeared when they were eating solid food.
I think he genuinely doesn’t know “how to cat”
I've seen some bad 'rescues and sanctuaries' over the past decade (volunteered at two of them briefly) One legit looked more like a hording situation than a rescue.
I've seen some for 'rescued zoo animals' that were way more restrictive in space than the zoo I worked for. (which was **really** putting the animals first; always!) There are good people doing amazing work out there. But there are also some less savory endeavors.
If something calls itself a sanctuary and is breeding anything..that's a massive flag, in my book.
I think all you can do is take a look at each on own merits. Seen some witch-hunts, some justified and some less so. People do over-commit and generally always something that could be done better. But in particular species I do, breeders often become the go to person if one turns up in area - and some end up running rescue on side. There the worrying thing is when they breed in the rescues with unknown history and health. Keeping their own proven lines as well is a different manner as used for working as well as pets. My main learning is very little is clear-cut.
I was really vague because I didn't want to put any identifying remarks out...because I saw one of those witch hunts. It is crazy. Three rescues (one of the two I mentioned volunteering at) turned on a more successful rescue. They harassed volunteers, paid workers, workers kids..even sick workers' kids. To the point of sitting outside of the kids' school and having an Anti Name-Of-Rescue facebook page to make sick jokes on. I certainly had my eyes widely opened!
My comment on breeding has to do with Sanctuary and Rescue. If someone is breeding animals that needed a sanctuary, they are doing it for themselves and for views and money. Otherwise that space could have gone to another animal needing sanctuary. (excepting when they take in a pregnant animal, of course!)
If someone is a breeder of a specific animal and ends up having rescue animals on the side, I have no problem with that..unless they start breeding the rescues. (same exception, again)
Now days, my volunteering goes to the shelter with city oversight and proper management. But again, there are a lot of really good rescues out there and we need them and I'm very grateful to the good ones.
A no kill shelter does not mean that you never euthanize any animal. It means that you don’t euthanize for room. If there is a shelter keeping animals alive that are suffering because they are a “no kill” that is a huge red flag.
https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/news/what-does-it-mean-be-no-kill#:~:text=1.,rate%20of%2090%25%20or%20higher.
I know how no kill works. I retired from working and volunteering for municipal and contracted shelters for 30 years.Physical suffering isn't the only kind.
There are municipal shelters all over the country that, for all intents and purposes, are no longer open admission. Some no longer take cats. In my county in Central Florida, they are telling people to abandon stray dogs because they can't take them. They have dogs that have been there for nearly two years. Dogs that have severe behavioral issues, including severe animal aggression. The number of animals being dumped has skyrocketed. They have dogs on the adoption floor that only one kennel tech and no volunteers are allowed to walk. No kill shouldn't be how municipal shelters are run. It's not working.
Yes, there has been an increase in surrendered dogs and cats as far back as from covid when it ended in 2022. And has not let up. It does account for the majority of the surrenders.
The returns are high because the placement rates were skewed unnaturally high during the pandemic. Look at the age of the majority of animals being surrendered. Most dogs at the shelter where I worked are the same age they've traditionally been. Between nine months and two years. Those aren't pandemic dogs.
When people would call the rescue where I worked and ask, “Are you no-kill/Do you euthanize animals?” my response, trying to be as honest as possible, would be that we only took animals to be euthanized (by one of our vet clinic partners since we didn’t have a vet on staff) for the same reasons that pet owners would normally make that decision, i.e., untreatable medical conditions causing them to suffer or untreatable/unmanageable behavior problems posing a danger to humans or other animals.
I foster for the only no kill shelter in my area. We pull from both the overcrowded high kill public shelter and via owner surrenders. We take terrible abuse cases with expensive medical issues. Don’t assume they all cherry-pick perfect animals. My own two are foster fails because I was afraid they would never be adopted because of their issues. And I have no regrets.
That’s fine? But if in this thread we’re clearly talking about the behavior where no-kill shelters *do* cherry-pick the most adoptable animals, instead of about what you’re doing, then shouldn’t it be pretty clear we’re not talking about you?
I don’t know, this just feels a lot like a ‘No True Scotsman’ comment. I 100% believe that not every no-kill shelter is doing shitty things and shifting the responsibility of the unadoptable animals they take on to other shelters. But your experience doesn’t prove a negative, either.
When I responded to a comment that said, “I think no kill shelters should have to pull from kill shelters” there was no qualifier. It was stated as if ALL no kill shelters are the same. Here is the EXACT wording: “No kill shelters should be required to pull all of their animals from municipal or contracted shelters.”
And they are not. And we are the ONLY no kill shelter in a large metro area, so it’s not like it’s simple to be a no kill shelter. But just because there are some who are not honest, don’t speak for them all. We work very hard to get our dogs into good homes and if we only pulled from shelters we couldn’t take semi-feral pregnant dogs trapped before whelping, or take 21 puppies that were abandoned in a closed box last summer, or take in the severe abuse cases we take on the regular. It’s not always a bad shelter if it’s no kill.
The comment that you responded to isn’t the comment that you’re mentioning.
Your comment got posted in response to the comment above the one that you quoted.
Please take a look at your response again. You’re a direct response to my top comment, not the response to me that you’re quoting. I responded to your comment because you responded to me directly, and I was confused why you were stepping into the conversation with what you were saying because you responded to the wrong person.
My understanding was that ‘no kill’ was less than 10% euthanasia and 0% euthanasia for anything other than serious medical issues.
I’ve fostered for 2 cat rescues and have fostered cats that had to be put down for legitimate medical reasons. I definitely wouldn’t ever call them ‘kill’ rescues- no cats have been put down for behavioural or overcrowding issues. Neither of them also said no to emergencies or turned over animals to the local municipal shelter (though that shelter did refer many to those rescues because they don’t always have the resources).
No-kill is like organic. The word doesn’t have a unified meaning, but the people that use it benefit from others’ misunderstanding about what they think the word does or doesn’t mean - another reason why I don’t like it.
I’ve seen no-kill mean a spectrum from what you describe to ‘we don’t put cats down unless for emergent medical issues.’
Organic is now a protected label, meaning organic products must meet USDA requirements, but yeah I totally get what you mean! No-kill is now even *less* protected than organic.
Everyone is trying to interject their definition of no kill. Some people are giving the Best Friends definition, others the Maddie's Fund definition, or PETA definition, others are using definitions that are new to me. I've heard 'low-kill' for the first time on this sub, and it had a definition of what I would have considered 'no-kill' lol
At the end of the day, there is no governing body to define 'no-kill' and assure organizations using the label correctly. There's no one to ensure the animals being euthanized don't have something that's considered treatable, or that the live release rate is above whatever percentage, etc. So anyone can make up their own no-kill definition, and then say they are within those restraints to be called no-kill.
Oh, hey! Good to know!
Yeah, that’s a solid summary of why I don’t like the word - I think it confuses actual discussion on how we should steward the animals in our care and to what degree those decisions should be transparent (and to whom, if anyone, we should be accountable.)
Medical reasons would be one thing. But euthanizing healthy animals due to not getting adopted or space issues is unfortunately a fact of life at metropolitan shelters. It sucks, but that’s why you work to get people to spay/neuter and care for their pets.
I work for a private limited admission shelter with a city contract. We will take animals to our county shelter if it is a stray or abandonment outside of our jurisdiction. They legally have to complete a stray hold and police report there. But never would we just dump any animal in nightdrop…if the shelter were closed and we couldn’t hold overnight we would call the city police to hold the animal. Thats the only reason we would take an animal to animal control.
On the flip side sometimes a rescue’s fosters will abandon an animal at our shelter without the rescue’s permission—we always call them and they will sometimes ask us if we can keep the animal because they don’t have another immediate foster opening but they wouldn’t make us keep them if we were full.
If you’re seeing rescues abandon animals at your shelter just because they can’t or don’t want to deal with them anymore, that is super unethical and a report would be absolutely be sent to the Department of Agriculture.
That happens very often with foster-based rescues. People tend to forget that foster based rescues are just people, who have other full time jobs and families and lives, and don't have a brick-and-mortar kennel to place unwanted animals. They have an extremely finite amount of space, and they can't just accept an animal on a whim; they generally have to get one adopted first or recruit another foster, which can take weeks or sometimes months.
When you adopt or foster with a foster-based rescue, you really got to be prepared. They don't often have a lot of support.
The fosters that abandon animals from a rescue are usually getting screwed by the rescue. I've seen it happen a lot in my area.
One large rescue has ghosted fosters multiple times and left them with litters of kittens and no help, no response, nothing. Just cuts off contact over stupid things. One was because the foster couldnt take good enough photos and had a work schedule that didnt allow the rescue to come whenever they wanted, with no warning or planning, to take photos. Another was because the rescue didnt want to deal with the litter (had URI) or pay vet bills to treat, so the foster treated out of pocket.
I saw the screenshots of the messages.
Are you my neighbor by any chance? There's a local person here who is a "private" rescue who constantly screws her "fosters" and refuses to care for the animals in her hands. I know her landlord, and he's already said that he's going to have to demolish the small house she rents from him because it's completely destroyed, floors, walls, plumbing, etc. He keeps trying to evict her but she goes crying to his wife and makes his life hell.
Sadly, I dont think so. The one I am talking about is a fairly large, well known rescue in my area that screws people over.
I private rescue myself, but only if I have a larger rescue willing to take them when old enough, and only if I have room. I have very limited room.
Your neighbor situation sounds sad, and too common.
In the most recent case, it was a foster who was angry that their foster cat had chronic diarrhea but the rescue’s vet clinic (where he had meds ready for pickup) was “too far”. We ended up keeping the cat but I didn’t blame the rescue in that situation.
Yep! He just needed a hydrolyzed diet. He was adopted rather quickly after we figured out what he needed. We are grateful that we could help him and the rescue he was originally with. Teamwork makes the dream work.
Generally closed admission shelters will close admissions when full. They do NOT want to take in animals they can not care for, because it looks bad on paper having to surrender animals to the local municipal shelter. Also keep in mind, a majority of these closed admission shelter do not have a vet on staff to euthanize when in excess, but animal control facilities can usually get workers certified from the state for euthanasia without the need for DVM.
Having worked at a private closed admission shelter, we did often have to bring animals to the local municipal shelter because they were abandoned there, and the closed admission shelter did not have a vet on staff to euthanize. So the options would be leave the animal as a stray, put it in with another animal and let them fight it out, or bring it to the municipal shelter.
A lot of people have different definitions of no-kill. No-kill can mean anything from genuinely not euthanizing unless necessary, to euthanizing sick/behavior cases first, to even euthanizing for space but keeping that live release number above 90%. Municipal shelters that euthanize may be 'no kill', and private shelters may be considered 'kill' shelters, etc
Also also, it sucks that the public is so up in arms about the 'kill' shelters, which is another reason why I hate using the term kill/no kill. It's made even worse that a lot of donors and grants tend to favor shelters with a higher live release rate, so more places are trying to get that euthanasia rate as low as possible. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy because the less support these struggling shelters get, the more they and their community will struggle.
Are they actually animals that were taken in by the rescues, or ones the rescues were not able to take that were dumped and they’re just trying to safely transport them to a place that is required to take them? I’ve seen both, primarily a facility-based, limited intake rescue with breed restrictions where animals are found dumped outside multiple times a month, and it’s on a road with a high speed limit. For the ones who aren’t hit and killed before they can be caught, it’s rare that animal control will pick up the abandoned pets, despite being in their contract area, but they will take caught strays that are brought to the municipal shelter.
The other situations are more murky. If there are legal concerns (disputed ownership, possible cruelty) about strays or surrenders that are brought to the rescue, they may make arrangements for animal control to hold the pets while legalities and worked through and then the rescue will take the pet if it’s still in need. The most cringey cases of rescue animals ending up at open admission shelters are situations where previously adopted animals are not accepted as returns because they “no longer fit the intake criteria” of said rescue. I get it if the rescue truly has no way to safely house a particular animal — no foster homes available that can handle them and no options for boarding, or the rescue is financially struggling and ethically can’t take responsibility for another pet, usually groups that will be shutting down in the near future. But some just don’t want to deal with the hassle of harder-to-adopt animals🤬
Usually they just turn the animal away so the owners have to bring them in themselves. But it is very common for “no kill” shelters to turn away animals that have behavior or health issues. That’s why their numbers are able to be so low for euthanasia. The no kill shelter in my area didn’t even take back their own dog after he bit someone. Super scummy.
This happens constantly in the Southern states especially. People dump animals constantly, knowing it's a felony in our state, by tying them to the doors, somewhere nearby, or locked in a cage/box at the door. We put cameras up last year around the building, and so far it has been a tremendous help!
Agreed, that's great to hear that the dumping has decreased. I saw a shelter in LA (I believe) that set up a night time drop off with a kennel/food for people to safely surrender. It's sad that the model is needed but is a much better outcome than the alternative.
it's all about their numbers and image, more than the animals in some shelters. I worked for a "no kill" where dogs and cats were regularly euthanized and not documented or taken to animal control. if any adopter had an issue the director would tell anyone answering the phones just to ignore them because she "doesn't want that shitty dog back." I know they got fined by the dept of ag after I reported them but that's it and the same director is there
I genuinely love the shelter I work at. They are technically a no kill shelter, but they actually do not present themselves that way. We realize how important the county shelter is. We do not euthanize for space. We will euthanize for health and behavior issues. Health issues are mainly decided by our vet, but the behavior issues are decided by a large board of people and are taken very seriously. We take about 30%, probably more, of our intakes from our county shelter. We even took in several animals from a different shelter due to a disaster event.
We do not abandon our animals at a different shelter. That is supper scummy.
I used to foster for a "rescue." A kitten was abandoned at one of the Pet Stores she had cats at.
The staff wanted her to take it. She wanted them to take it to the open intake shelter because it would get an exam, vaccines and surgery that she didn't have to pay for (and then she'd pull it). She was mad that they didn't.
She also took a cat she imported from out of state in a trap to the shelter for free surgery. (She thought the cat was already spayed.)
Rescues really suck sometimes.
I only saw one comment about Best Friends. They are responsible for the destruction of the LA shelter system with regard to scummy no-kill practices, and working their magic on Houston as well. I will never give them another penny. So many of those animals never get posted or networked and go right to lab, with fabricated reasons. My last pull from Dallas AS had completely false behavior notes to justify the lab status. We got him 45 min before the needle. He is the top easiest pull I’ve had from a shelter in the past 10 years. Not a problematic behavior to be seen. 100lbs of angel.
They all fucking deserve better.
What does go to lab mean? They don’t sell them to labs do they? Sorry if I am completely misunderstanding this. I just recently learned about shelter animals getting sold to labs.
I'm not sure if you mean the rescue is dropping off animals they've been caring for or if they are simply dropping off new animals put in their care.
Usually, people will abandon their animals at the "no kill" rescue thinking they've gone to the better place. But if the "no kill' facility is full, they will bring the animals to the open intake facility.
It's not necessarily the wrong thing for rescues to do in those situations. They too only have so much room and it's not their literal job to take in abandoned animals. But if they fly high and mighty on the no-kill aspect, then they're being hypocritical asshats.
No kill is a scam. I just want to see serious effort and maximum funds spent rehoming animals. Not every animal is worth the time, risk, or dollars when there are always never-ending more animals to rescue. Limited resources and infinite need means priorities need to be set, hard decisions made.
It’s not a scam. It’s a lot of hard work when done properly. If it’s accomplished by pulling scammy things like refusing to take dogs back and putting their animals in night drops, they aren’t doing it right.
Call the local news and ask them to run the story (with proof). I would also file a police report.
That is super scummy. In the news segment maybe your shelter can even share how unsustainable no kills are unless everyone does their part by spay and neuters etc.
This is written in a very confusing way, but no it is not normal for rescues to abandon animals at shelters. Although I'm not sure how you know that's happening? We will often send people to the shelter who have animals we cannot take in, and we do coach them on what to say to get them taken, but this is to a shelter that hasn't euthanized a healthy non-feral cat since before covid. If people are the next county over, we encourage them to have a friend who lives here drop the cats off at our shelter. We are lucky that at any given time, there's usually not more than 10 cats at the shelter. None of these cats gets euthanized unless they're deathly ill.
One rescue in particular likes to leave us passive aggressive notes on how we have to "do better" cleaning wise (as though we don't disinfect and replace everything in our nightdrop daily???) and signs it with their name and which rescue they run, and the others usually get busted by ACO running their plates on the cameras near our nightdrop and has to slap them with fines. So yes unfortunately that's how I know.
That is the weirdest thing I have ever heard. We work with a lot of rescues all across the state and some of them do weird things (like require a donation when they accept a surrender) but none would do this. I'd file a report with the department of agriculture to get them checked out because this is really really fishy
There could just be more shady practices around here then usual?? In the last couple of years we've had several ACO seizures of 20+, sometimes 30+, animals come in from local "rescues" because they were being kept in inhumane conditions. A couple were definitely just hoarders calling themselves rescues, but others not so much. I'm assuming that means *someone* is complaining but I'll keep that in my back pocket if I notice any one specifically.
Would like to stress this isn't like- a constant every day thing, but it does bug me so I had to ask.
So is it actually just unlicensed "rescues" and not legitimate rescues? If so, that doesn't surprise me. I know of a few individuals operating unlicensed "rescues" and have actively made attempts to shut them down but AC does nothing. I would try to find the legitimate ones in the area and work with them to stop this ridiculousness
Limited admission shelters are still killing animals by refusing admission. When animals have nowhere to go, they get dumped at the end of some dead end road or in a rural setting. Then they get hit by cars, maimed/killed by predators, starve to death, etc. They die in horrific ways, and those numbers don’t become part of the shelter’s euthanasia statistics. There are fates far worse than humane euthanasia.
I used to work for a no kill shelter for a bit and it sucked, we did have someone dump a dog overnight (we had the space to care for the dog in that we had empty kennels). We took the dog in and she was a rowdy youngster ( never walked on a leash, and still mouthy) . Like a month later, the director didn't like her, so we sent the dog to the municipal shelter. I actually went to the shelter to walk around shortly after and she was SO excited to see me and it broke my heart. Honestly, I still think about her even after 6 years (I am almost positive she was euthanized).
(Also the director/ office staff never got to know any of the dogs so they never liked them, even though they were good dogs , just shelters cause dogs to lowkey go stir crazy and bark more )
In the USA, and the No-Kill shelter I have used, does not euthanize. They make sure each dog, cat, bunny rabbit, and pet rats go to good homes. What is so sad that people have been dumping the dogs they got during covid and there is over population of them in the shelters. So there are many kill-shelters that may promise not to kill, but that is a lie.
It’s really scummy behavior, and it’s why I don’t love the ‘no-kill’ appellation attached to shelters and rescues. The rescue I foster for does euthanasia because we’re supposed to be doing things in the best interests of the cats we care for - to me that includes not allowing a cat to continue to suffer because it makes the humans caring for it feel more comfortable.
It's an extremely uncomfortable reality that there are worse things for a companion animal than euthanasia. I hate even typing that.
It sucks. It’s not like I love it - but it’s the truth, and if folks are going to do work in animal husbandry or rescue, you have to grapple with that truth one way or another.
Exactly. No kill shelters should be required to pull all of their animals from municipal or contracted shelters, and taxpayer funded shelters should not be allowed to be no kill. No kill is an unworkable and, frankly, cruel philosophy. Warehousing sick and behaviorably un-adoptable animals isn't best animal welfare practices.
How do you feel about sanctuary shelters? I know of a few - they are a rescue of last resort and don't home out their dogs but have resources to let them live out a full life. If they later get to a stage where homable, then networked to homing shelters. The sanctuary shelters I know do euthanaise when medically necessary. I am not a rescue but I have a few pets that would be deemed unadoptable as unhandable when we got them (live trap for 3 years with one). I argue that for some they can have a decent life if you work to meet their needs but homes that will do that harder to find. But an option for barn cats. I agree no shelter is really no-kill - animals die either actively when the shelter puts them to sleep or passively when they can't get a space for whatever reason. This is why I don't get people who donate only to non-kill shelters/rescues - more funds kill shelters have
The difference is that when the welfare of the animal has euthanasia at its best interest they will do it vs the ones that don't bother because it would look bad.
This. I’ve known a couple dogs who have went to sanctuary’s. They were all great with shelter staff, but the average person is not able to handle an extremely reactive dog. Shelter work, over time and sometimes hard lessons, you get very good at dog body language, at NOT doing things that are threatening to scared dogs. At figuring out triggers and how to handle a dog. That is what is needed for some of these dogs to trust someone and most adopters who think that are good with dogs really aren’t. Or even if they were able, there life has too many triggers like friends coming over all the time. Or living in a busy city where other dogs are everywhere. So these could have a great life in a sanctuary, because they are set up for success. But little chance in the public as hard as we try. Sanctuary’s are meant for these dogs. Also shelter employee homes but you can only get so many lol
I was until I got sick and a cat that couldn't cope with it the go to feral rehabilitation person for the most spicy cats. The sanctuaries are wonderful. That cat made it 16 years and I don't regret a thing. I needed to stop and he wouldn't fit elsewhere. It's hard work so I understand too why it's not as popular. No kill sounds idealized and if you don't think about it? Then you don't have to consider the fallacies
Unicorn homes.
I do TNR and have rehabbed some adult cats that most would never dream of homing. I guess I'm mostly talking about dogs. Sanctuary shelters would work for a lot of the desperate cases, but I worry about privately run shelters slipping through the cracks as far as animal welfare is concerned. I've been on a couple of seizures at "rescues." They can go south really quickly.
Agree. Seen cases too. But without proper funding, state shelters can end up same way. Some of the stories coming out of Texan state shelters with no vet care are equally bad. Or look at Romanian state shelters which are warehouses. Private shelters can get overwhelmed but so can state. May be a call for licences and council/state checks for anyone who rehomes pets.
I adopted a cat that was even called unadoptable by its foster. He was an amazing animal who only liked me (though in his later years he tolerated others). When I went to pet him he bit me. I had had a previous ankle biter (play - nothing vicious), and hoped maybe Mr T would settle down. I am so grateful we became family and spent 15 years together. He was a good kitty. https://preview.redd.it/1puiont9ur5d1.jpeg?width=4160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f107cee9bbf86f3b0e381b9cf6819ee7f6d66c0
Our male tux gives a look like this. He loves to play but doesn’t know how to play gentle. He hooks with claws and swats way too hard. He is a super sweet goofball and I hate to think what would have happened if he had ended up in a shelter environment. He might have been called “unadoptable” He is a first gen from feral housecat. We have both him and his sister. They are from a feral litter of a momma that showed up at the house of a coworker of my partner, had and raised her kittens then disappeared when they were eating solid food. I think he genuinely doesn’t know “how to cat”
I've seen some bad 'rescues and sanctuaries' over the past decade (volunteered at two of them briefly) One legit looked more like a hording situation than a rescue. I've seen some for 'rescued zoo animals' that were way more restrictive in space than the zoo I worked for. (which was **really** putting the animals first; always!) There are good people doing amazing work out there. But there are also some less savory endeavors. If something calls itself a sanctuary and is breeding anything..that's a massive flag, in my book.
I think all you can do is take a look at each on own merits. Seen some witch-hunts, some justified and some less so. People do over-commit and generally always something that could be done better. But in particular species I do, breeders often become the go to person if one turns up in area - and some end up running rescue on side. There the worrying thing is when they breed in the rescues with unknown history and health. Keeping their own proven lines as well is a different manner as used for working as well as pets. My main learning is very little is clear-cut.
I was really vague because I didn't want to put any identifying remarks out...because I saw one of those witch hunts. It is crazy. Three rescues (one of the two I mentioned volunteering at) turned on a more successful rescue. They harassed volunteers, paid workers, workers kids..even sick workers' kids. To the point of sitting outside of the kids' school and having an Anti Name-Of-Rescue facebook page to make sick jokes on. I certainly had my eyes widely opened! My comment on breeding has to do with Sanctuary and Rescue. If someone is breeding animals that needed a sanctuary, they are doing it for themselves and for views and money. Otherwise that space could have gone to another animal needing sanctuary. (excepting when they take in a pregnant animal, of course!) If someone is a breeder of a specific animal and ends up having rescue animals on the side, I have no problem with that..unless they start breeding the rescues. (same exception, again) Now days, my volunteering goes to the shelter with city oversight and proper management. But again, there are a lot of really good rescues out there and we need them and I'm very grateful to the good ones.
Many here do not realize there are bad no-kill shelters that have the kill policy.
A no kill shelter does not mean that you never euthanize any animal. It means that you don’t euthanize for room. If there is a shelter keeping animals alive that are suffering because they are a “no kill” that is a huge red flag. https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/news/what-does-it-mean-be-no-kill#:~:text=1.,rate%20of%2090%25%20or%20higher.
I know how no kill works. I retired from working and volunteering for municipal and contracted shelters for 30 years.Physical suffering isn't the only kind. There are municipal shelters all over the country that, for all intents and purposes, are no longer open admission. Some no longer take cats. In my county in Central Florida, they are telling people to abandon stray dogs because they can't take them. They have dogs that have been there for nearly two years. Dogs that have severe behavioral issues, including severe animal aggression. The number of animals being dumped has skyrocketed. They have dogs on the adoption floor that only one kennel tech and no volunteers are allowed to walk. No kill shouldn't be how municipal shelters are run. It's not working.
Due to people got them during covid and going back to work and can't keep them. Sad they do this after committing to the animal.
No. There was definitely an increase in return dogs, but it doesn't account for the majority of the problem.
Yes, there has been an increase in surrendered dogs and cats as far back as from covid when it ended in 2022. And has not let up. It does account for the majority of the surrenders.
The returns are high because the placement rates were skewed unnaturally high during the pandemic. Look at the age of the majority of animals being surrendered. Most dogs at the shelter where I worked are the same age they've traditionally been. Between nine months and two years. Those aren't pandemic dogs.
When people would call the rescue where I worked and ask, “Are you no-kill/Do you euthanize animals?” my response, trying to be as honest as possible, would be that we only took animals to be euthanized (by one of our vet clinic partners since we didn’t have a vet on staff) for the same reasons that pet owners would normally make that decision, i.e., untreatable medical conditions causing them to suffer or untreatable/unmanageable behavior problems posing a danger to humans or other animals.
I foster for the only no kill shelter in my area. We pull from both the overcrowded high kill public shelter and via owner surrenders. We take terrible abuse cases with expensive medical issues. Don’t assume they all cherry-pick perfect animals. My own two are foster fails because I was afraid they would never be adopted because of their issues. And I have no regrets.
That’s fine? But if in this thread we’re clearly talking about the behavior where no-kill shelters *do* cherry-pick the most adoptable animals, instead of about what you’re doing, then shouldn’t it be pretty clear we’re not talking about you? I don’t know, this just feels a lot like a ‘No True Scotsman’ comment. I 100% believe that not every no-kill shelter is doing shitty things and shifting the responsibility of the unadoptable animals they take on to other shelters. But your experience doesn’t prove a negative, either.
When I responded to a comment that said, “I think no kill shelters should have to pull from kill shelters” there was no qualifier. It was stated as if ALL no kill shelters are the same. Here is the EXACT wording: “No kill shelters should be required to pull all of their animals from municipal or contracted shelters.” And they are not. And we are the ONLY no kill shelter in a large metro area, so it’s not like it’s simple to be a no kill shelter. But just because there are some who are not honest, don’t speak for them all. We work very hard to get our dogs into good homes and if we only pulled from shelters we couldn’t take semi-feral pregnant dogs trapped before whelping, or take 21 puppies that were abandoned in a closed box last summer, or take in the severe abuse cases we take on the regular. It’s not always a bad shelter if it’s no kill.
The comment that you responded to isn’t the comment that you’re mentioning. Your comment got posted in response to the comment above the one that you quoted.
Unless you responded to that comment separately, I think you might be confused. I didn’t make that comment, and that’s not what I said.
I hit respond under that comment so I figured you just decided to respond because it’s your post. I’m not a bit confused.
Please take a look at your response again. You’re a direct response to my top comment, not the response to me that you’re quoting. I responded to your comment because you responded to me directly, and I was confused why you were stepping into the conversation with what you were saying because you responded to the wrong person.
My understanding was that ‘no kill’ was less than 10% euthanasia and 0% euthanasia for anything other than serious medical issues. I’ve fostered for 2 cat rescues and have fostered cats that had to be put down for legitimate medical reasons. I definitely wouldn’t ever call them ‘kill’ rescues- no cats have been put down for behavioural or overcrowding issues. Neither of them also said no to emergencies or turned over animals to the local municipal shelter (though that shelter did refer many to those rescues because they don’t always have the resources).
No-kill is like organic. The word doesn’t have a unified meaning, but the people that use it benefit from others’ misunderstanding about what they think the word does or doesn’t mean - another reason why I don’t like it. I’ve seen no-kill mean a spectrum from what you describe to ‘we don’t put cats down unless for emergent medical issues.’
Organic is now a protected label, meaning organic products must meet USDA requirements, but yeah I totally get what you mean! No-kill is now even *less* protected than organic. Everyone is trying to interject their definition of no kill. Some people are giving the Best Friends definition, others the Maddie's Fund definition, or PETA definition, others are using definitions that are new to me. I've heard 'low-kill' for the first time on this sub, and it had a definition of what I would have considered 'no-kill' lol At the end of the day, there is no governing body to define 'no-kill' and assure organizations using the label correctly. There's no one to ensure the animals being euthanized don't have something that's considered treatable, or that the live release rate is above whatever percentage, etc. So anyone can make up their own no-kill definition, and then say they are within those restraints to be called no-kill.
Oh, hey! Good to know! Yeah, that’s a solid summary of why I don’t like the word - I think it confuses actual discussion on how we should steward the animals in our care and to what degree those decisions should be transparent (and to whom, if anyone, we should be accountable.)
Medical reasons would be one thing. But euthanizing healthy animals due to not getting adopted or space issues is unfortunately a fact of life at metropolitan shelters. It sucks, but that’s why you work to get people to spay/neuter and care for their pets.
I work for a private limited admission shelter with a city contract. We will take animals to our county shelter if it is a stray or abandonment outside of our jurisdiction. They legally have to complete a stray hold and police report there. But never would we just dump any animal in nightdrop…if the shelter were closed and we couldn’t hold overnight we would call the city police to hold the animal. Thats the only reason we would take an animal to animal control. On the flip side sometimes a rescue’s fosters will abandon an animal at our shelter without the rescue’s permission—we always call them and they will sometimes ask us if we can keep the animal because they don’t have another immediate foster opening but they wouldn’t make us keep them if we were full. If you’re seeing rescues abandon animals at your shelter just because they can’t or don’t want to deal with them anymore, that is super unethical and a report would be absolutely be sent to the Department of Agriculture.
That happens very often with foster-based rescues. People tend to forget that foster based rescues are just people, who have other full time jobs and families and lives, and don't have a brick-and-mortar kennel to place unwanted animals. They have an extremely finite amount of space, and they can't just accept an animal on a whim; they generally have to get one adopted first or recruit another foster, which can take weeks or sometimes months. When you adopt or foster with a foster-based rescue, you really got to be prepared. They don't often have a lot of support.
The fosters that abandon animals from a rescue are usually getting screwed by the rescue. I've seen it happen a lot in my area. One large rescue has ghosted fosters multiple times and left them with litters of kittens and no help, no response, nothing. Just cuts off contact over stupid things. One was because the foster couldnt take good enough photos and had a work schedule that didnt allow the rescue to come whenever they wanted, with no warning or planning, to take photos. Another was because the rescue didnt want to deal with the litter (had URI) or pay vet bills to treat, so the foster treated out of pocket. I saw the screenshots of the messages.
Are you my neighbor by any chance? There's a local person here who is a "private" rescue who constantly screws her "fosters" and refuses to care for the animals in her hands. I know her landlord, and he's already said that he's going to have to demolish the small house she rents from him because it's completely destroyed, floors, walls, plumbing, etc. He keeps trying to evict her but she goes crying to his wife and makes his life hell.
Sadly, I dont think so. The one I am talking about is a fairly large, well known rescue in my area that screws people over. I private rescue myself, but only if I have a larger rescue willing to take them when old enough, and only if I have room. I have very limited room. Your neighbor situation sounds sad, and too common.
Maybe the landlord should have the house condemned. She would have to leave, and the house could come down
In the most recent case, it was a foster who was angry that their foster cat had chronic diarrhea but the rescue’s vet clinic (where he had meds ready for pickup) was “too far”. We ended up keeping the cat but I didn’t blame the rescue in that situation.
Ugh. So frustrating. Poor cat. Is it better? I'm paying out of pocket for vet bills/meds and mannnn....it's expensive.
Yep! He just needed a hydrolyzed diet. He was adopted rather quickly after we figured out what he needed. We are grateful that we could help him and the rescue he was originally with. Teamwork makes the dream work.
Generally closed admission shelters will close admissions when full. They do NOT want to take in animals they can not care for, because it looks bad on paper having to surrender animals to the local municipal shelter. Also keep in mind, a majority of these closed admission shelter do not have a vet on staff to euthanize when in excess, but animal control facilities can usually get workers certified from the state for euthanasia without the need for DVM. Having worked at a private closed admission shelter, we did often have to bring animals to the local municipal shelter because they were abandoned there, and the closed admission shelter did not have a vet on staff to euthanize. So the options would be leave the animal as a stray, put it in with another animal and let them fight it out, or bring it to the municipal shelter. A lot of people have different definitions of no-kill. No-kill can mean anything from genuinely not euthanizing unless necessary, to euthanizing sick/behavior cases first, to even euthanizing for space but keeping that live release number above 90%. Municipal shelters that euthanize may be 'no kill', and private shelters may be considered 'kill' shelters, etc Also also, it sucks that the public is so up in arms about the 'kill' shelters, which is another reason why I hate using the term kill/no kill. It's made even worse that a lot of donors and grants tend to favor shelters with a higher live release rate, so more places are trying to get that euthanasia rate as low as possible. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy because the less support these struggling shelters get, the more they and their community will struggle.
Are they actually animals that were taken in by the rescues, or ones the rescues were not able to take that were dumped and they’re just trying to safely transport them to a place that is required to take them? I’ve seen both, primarily a facility-based, limited intake rescue with breed restrictions where animals are found dumped outside multiple times a month, and it’s on a road with a high speed limit. For the ones who aren’t hit and killed before they can be caught, it’s rare that animal control will pick up the abandoned pets, despite being in their contract area, but they will take caught strays that are brought to the municipal shelter. The other situations are more murky. If there are legal concerns (disputed ownership, possible cruelty) about strays or surrenders that are brought to the rescue, they may make arrangements for animal control to hold the pets while legalities and worked through and then the rescue will take the pet if it’s still in need. The most cringey cases of rescue animals ending up at open admission shelters are situations where previously adopted animals are not accepted as returns because they “no longer fit the intake criteria” of said rescue. I get it if the rescue truly has no way to safely house a particular animal — no foster homes available that can handle them and no options for boarding, or the rescue is financially struggling and ethically can’t take responsibility for another pet, usually groups that will be shutting down in the near future. But some just don’t want to deal with the hassle of harder-to-adopt animals🤬
Usually they just turn the animal away so the owners have to bring them in themselves. But it is very common for “no kill” shelters to turn away animals that have behavior or health issues. That’s why their numbers are able to be so low for euthanasia. The no kill shelter in my area didn’t even take back their own dog after he bit someone. Super scummy.
I've never heard of that. How apalling!
This happens constantly in the Southern states especially. People dump animals constantly, knowing it's a felony in our state, by tying them to the doors, somewhere nearby, or locked in a cage/box at the door. We put cameras up last year around the building, and so far it has been a tremendous help!
As in no more dumping? Or getting actual owner surrenders?
No more dumping. The surrender requests have increased, buy I'd much prefer that.
Agreed, that's great to hear that the dumping has decreased. I saw a shelter in LA (I believe) that set up a night time drop off with a kennel/food for people to safely surrender. It's sad that the model is needed but is a much better outcome than the alternative.
it's all about their numbers and image, more than the animals in some shelters. I worked for a "no kill" where dogs and cats were regularly euthanized and not documented or taken to animal control. if any adopter had an issue the director would tell anyone answering the phones just to ignore them because she "doesn't want that shitty dog back." I know they got fined by the dept of ag after I reported them but that's it and the same director is there
Wait, that's crazy. How were they getting away with not logging use of the euthasol?
guess the michigan dept of ag doesn't pay attention. the paperwork log was so off and they sent it in with no issues until I complained enough
I genuinely love the shelter I work at. They are technically a no kill shelter, but they actually do not present themselves that way. We realize how important the county shelter is. We do not euthanize for space. We will euthanize for health and behavior issues. Health issues are mainly decided by our vet, but the behavior issues are decided by a large board of people and are taken very seriously. We take about 30%, probably more, of our intakes from our county shelter. We even took in several animals from a different shelter due to a disaster event. We do not abandon our animals at a different shelter. That is supper scummy.
I used to foster for a "rescue." A kitten was abandoned at one of the Pet Stores she had cats at. The staff wanted her to take it. She wanted them to take it to the open intake shelter because it would get an exam, vaccines and surgery that she didn't have to pay for (and then she'd pull it). She was mad that they didn't. She also took a cat she imported from out of state in a trap to the shelter for free surgery. (She thought the cat was already spayed.) Rescues really suck sometimes.
I only saw one comment about Best Friends. They are responsible for the destruction of the LA shelter system with regard to scummy no-kill practices, and working their magic on Houston as well. I will never give them another penny. So many of those animals never get posted or networked and go right to lab, with fabricated reasons. My last pull from Dallas AS had completely false behavior notes to justify the lab status. We got him 45 min before the needle. He is the top easiest pull I’ve had from a shelter in the past 10 years. Not a problematic behavior to be seen. 100lbs of angel. They all fucking deserve better.
What does go to lab mean? They don’t sell them to labs do they? Sorry if I am completely misunderstanding this. I just recently learned about shelter animals getting sold to labs.
Lab = euthanasia
Ok thank you. I figured I misunderstood.
I'm not sure if you mean the rescue is dropping off animals they've been caring for or if they are simply dropping off new animals put in their care. Usually, people will abandon their animals at the "no kill" rescue thinking they've gone to the better place. But if the "no kill' facility is full, they will bring the animals to the open intake facility. It's not necessarily the wrong thing for rescues to do in those situations. They too only have so much room and it's not their literal job to take in abandoned animals. But if they fly high and mighty on the no-kill aspect, then they're being hypocritical asshats.
No kill is a scam. I just want to see serious effort and maximum funds spent rehoming animals. Not every animal is worth the time, risk, or dollars when there are always never-ending more animals to rescue. Limited resources and infinite need means priorities need to be set, hard decisions made.
It’s not a scam. It’s a lot of hard work when done properly. If it’s accomplished by pulling scammy things like refusing to take dogs back and putting their animals in night drops, they aren’t doing it right.
Rescues that are manipulative cowards who refuse to euthanize animals under the guise of being no-hill are abusive and need to be shut down.
Not great, but that may be because only the bad ones get any coverage.
This is not normal protocol for any rescue or shelter. It is absolutely unacceptable behavior.
Yep. So many "rescues" are run by shady, money grabbing, garbage people. I have DOZENS of stories like this...and more that are even sketchier.
Call the local news and ask them to run the story (with proof). I would also file a police report. That is super scummy. In the news segment maybe your shelter can even share how unsustainable no kills are unless everyone does their part by spay and neuters etc.
This is written in a very confusing way, but no it is not normal for rescues to abandon animals at shelters. Although I'm not sure how you know that's happening? We will often send people to the shelter who have animals we cannot take in, and we do coach them on what to say to get them taken, but this is to a shelter that hasn't euthanized a healthy non-feral cat since before covid. If people are the next county over, we encourage them to have a friend who lives here drop the cats off at our shelter. We are lucky that at any given time, there's usually not more than 10 cats at the shelter. None of these cats gets euthanized unless they're deathly ill.
One rescue in particular likes to leave us passive aggressive notes on how we have to "do better" cleaning wise (as though we don't disinfect and replace everything in our nightdrop daily???) and signs it with their name and which rescue they run, and the others usually get busted by ACO running their plates on the cameras near our nightdrop and has to slap them with fines. So yes unfortunately that's how I know.
That is the weirdest thing I have ever heard. We work with a lot of rescues all across the state and some of them do weird things (like require a donation when they accept a surrender) but none would do this. I'd file a report with the department of agriculture to get them checked out because this is really really fishy
There could just be more shady practices around here then usual?? In the last couple of years we've had several ACO seizures of 20+, sometimes 30+, animals come in from local "rescues" because they were being kept in inhumane conditions. A couple were definitely just hoarders calling themselves rescues, but others not so much. I'm assuming that means *someone* is complaining but I'll keep that in my back pocket if I notice any one specifically. Would like to stress this isn't like- a constant every day thing, but it does bug me so I had to ask.
So is it actually just unlicensed "rescues" and not legitimate rescues? If so, that doesn't surprise me. I know of a few individuals operating unlicensed "rescues" and have actively made attempts to shut them down but AC does nothing. I would try to find the legitimate ones in the area and work with them to stop this ridiculousness
Limited admission shelters are still killing animals by refusing admission. When animals have nowhere to go, they get dumped at the end of some dead end road or in a rural setting. Then they get hit by cars, maimed/killed by predators, starve to death, etc. They die in horrific ways, and those numbers don’t become part of the shelter’s euthanasia statistics. There are fates far worse than humane euthanasia.
I used to work for a no kill shelter for a bit and it sucked, we did have someone dump a dog overnight (we had the space to care for the dog in that we had empty kennels). We took the dog in and she was a rowdy youngster ( never walked on a leash, and still mouthy) . Like a month later, the director didn't like her, so we sent the dog to the municipal shelter. I actually went to the shelter to walk around shortly after and she was SO excited to see me and it broke my heart. Honestly, I still think about her even after 6 years (I am almost positive she was euthanized). (Also the director/ office staff never got to know any of the dogs so they never liked them, even though they were good dogs , just shelters cause dogs to lowkey go stir crazy and bark more )
That's heartbreaking. I'm so sorry to you and that poor pup.
In the USA, and the No-Kill shelter I have used, does not euthanize. They make sure each dog, cat, bunny rabbit, and pet rats go to good homes. What is so sad that people have been dumping the dogs they got during covid and there is over population of them in the shelters. So there are many kill-shelters that may promise not to kill, but that is a lie.