I have seen many films, mainly children's/animated films, in which stray dogs are afraid of the dog catcher. Now I've somehow heard through Reddit that seemingly dogs in American shelters are killed if no one picks them up within 7 days.
Is this true? If so, does this also apply to other animals like cats and birds? Do dogs in the USA get an ID/owner chip?
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Some shelters kill dogs and cats. Usually because they don’t have the capacity to care for any more stray pets. What you’re seeing on TV isn’t necessarily accurate though. Not every shelter kills animals, that’s more common with shelters run by a city/county. Private shelters are more likely to be no-kill.
It’s not always a time-based thing either. Lots of shelters evaluate the animals as they come in to see how likely they are to be adopted and keep the ones that are highly likely to be adopted. This means older animals, animals of undesirable breeds, or aggressive animals are more likely to be put down.
But shelters also try their best to reunite pets with their owners. Many animals are microchipped these days and if the animal has a chip or an identification tag the shelter will contact the owner to come pick up their pet.
So there are kill shelters and no kill shelters. This applies to both cats and dogs. A lot of other pets actually have to go through dedicated organizations, exotics aren’t exactly common in shelters.
Essentially it comes down to overcrowding. No kill shelters turn away cats and dogs when they are full. Kill shelters, more or less always take in new cats and dogs. Unfortunately they take in new animals more quickly than they adopt them out, so euthanasia balances the scales.
My understanding is that, except in cases of failing health or violent/aggressive histories, this isn’t exactly happening all the time. They run adoption promotions and advertisements to help when they have overcrowding.
It depends on the specific shelter. There are many no-kill shelters, but many other shelters do euthanize animals that aren’t adopted within a certain period of time. (Not sure about 7 days, I imagine it varies.) This does also apply to cats. It’s sad, but it’s not done out of cruelty or malice, most of the time it’s a question of space or resources. We have ID chips, yes.
It really depends on the location as each state, county and even city will have different policies. As well as multiple different organizations that take care of strays. Generally dogs at least in my area dogs are scanned for a Id chip first to see if the owner can be located if not a social media post will be made and if the dog is not claimed within 30 days the dog is put up for adoption. My area does not have any kill shelters.
I went to my local county shelter to adopt a cat (southern US) and there was a year and a half old black male cat that was in bad shape. He was so sweet but could barely stand up he was so skinny and covered in fleas. When I asked about coming back with my spouse the next day to see him they told me either take him now or he will be euthanized. He was only there for three days and the worker there said for a black cat that is not a kitten it was typical to keep 3 days and then put down because of overcrowding. I of course adopted him and he was the best cat I have ever had. So yeah, depending on the county & type of shelter animals can be put down, sadly even being there briefly.
Yes, sadly, hundreds of thousands of healthy dogs and cats are killed in American animal shelters every year. How much time they get varies. Most shelters wouldn’t start killing pets unless they are out of space, but many are underfunded and can run out of space easily.
Most do have to hold pets for a certain number of days if they’re picked up as strays. Pets surrendered by their owners could get less time.
How bad a problem this is varies by region or city. Here in the Northeast, a lot of rescue organizations will actually import rescue dogs from the Deep South because we don’t have as many homeless dogs here, and most of the ones we do have are pit bulls.
But things have been getting worse everywhere the past couple of years as people are abandoning their pandemic pets. Also we’re starting to euthanize more dogs than cats. I don’t know about birds.
People do microchip our pets here. I just got my cat chipped a couple weeks ago, actually. But he’s an old man who came through a rescue about 10 years ago and wasn’t chipped then so it’s a relatively recent development, particularly for cats
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The shelter I volunteer at only euthanizes animals when we are over capacity.
We work hard to get these animals adopted, transferred to a rescue center, or another agency.
Citizens petitioned that we needed a new larger building, we got it, and almost instantly we were at capacity again.
People need to stop abandoning animals, being backyard breeders, and no a puppy won’t save your marriage.
No kill shelters are actually pretty bad for everyone, pets and owners.
What happen is pets with extreme and untreatable behavior problems get repeatedly returned and warehoused in these no kill shelters, to be farmed out to another unsuspecting family who thinks love and cuddles in a 500 sqft apartment are all you need to care for a highly reactive dog that hates other animals, children, and adult men. They eventually bite or destroy everything around them and get returned.
They are essentially going to live their whole lives out in a concrete cage until they die, with occasional stays in new homes and new owners that cause them even more anxiety and stress. It’s cruel in itself.
Yes.
There are “No Kill” shelters as others have said… but it’s not like a bunch of dogs and cats just live out their days at the “No Kill” shelter. The unadoptable eventually get sent somewhere that will kill them. “No Kill” just means “We don’t kill them here” for the most part… although the timeline is waaaay beyond 7 days. There for sure are shelters/rescues that the dogs and cats DO just live out their days… but they are exceptionally rare.
Spay and neuter folks. And if you buy a puppy or kitten from the pet store you’re part of the fucking problem. And JMO… but I think you’re also an asshole.
It depends on the shelter. There are high kill shelters where certain breeds, an animal with any behavioral issues, or an animal with a treatable illness gets euthanized that quickly. There are other shelters that have a big enough adoption and foster network to not have to euthanize for space. Microchipping has come a long way but we still don’t have a reader at every shelter.
Dogs and cats get euthanized in shelters regularly. The government animal control shelters usually have to do the most because they’re the ones that pick up the animals. The PETA shelter in Norfolk, VA does an absurd amount of euthanizations for a non profit organization. Non profits are usually no kill. All shelter data (intakes, adoptions, eithanizations, etc) is available through VDACS.
In 2023 PETA euthanized 944 out of 1243 dogs that they took in. 75 % Norfolk Animal Control euthanized 312 dogs out of 2162 that they took in. 14%. PETA has more money than animal control.
We’ve had three dogs. One was a rescue and the other two were from show dog litters and that the breeder believed weren’t of show quality. They were still expensive but we had to prove spay/neutering. Never ever buy from a random breeder.
Yes. And the ‘no kill’ shelters just turn away dogs that wind up at the ‘kill’ shelters.
Please please please spay and neuter your pets!
Puppy mills, irresponsible breeding, and accidental breeding are a MAJOR issue in the US and lawmakers refuse to do anything about it.
Yeah, it’s not like they do it for fun but they do it when they’re at capacity and don’t have the resources to take care of more animals.
That’s why people should adopt their pets and stop paying some guy from your Facebook friends a few hundred bucks for the “purebred” that he bred in his backyard.
I love dogs, I have one myself, but the world doesn’t need more of them. We need to take care of the ones that are already here.
yes
and cats too
Having lived in an apartment for years, where people abandoned cats all the time, and well-meaning but misguided folks would leave food for them, which only compounded the problem, my cat was a street rescue specifically because he would probably have been euthanized in a shelter:
* He’s a brown tabby – the most common color/pattern among cats and one that few people feel strongly about: white cats are Bond villain cats, calicos are lucky, tuxedos are elegant, gingers are Garfield or Morris, and even black cats are sensual and mysterious, but brown tabbies are mere alley cats.
* He’s not a lap cat nor playful
* He had an umbilical hernia which required surgery to correct, which a shelter probably wouldn’t have spent the effort on in light of the other issues
Dogs are killed in shelters everywhere in the world. Not just American shelters.
What do other countries do? Surely it’s the same thing
Of course. People refuse to spay and neuter so we have more animals than will ever be adopted
Sometimes they have to. There’s an incredible number of stray, orphaned and abandoned animals in America, and there’s just no room for them all at many shelters. Sometimes a shelter will unknowingly take in a violent animal who attacks another animal in the shelter, and in that case, the euthanasia would be justified. Fortunately, there are no-kill shelters that exist, but even they run out of room.
Yes, in some cases but not all.
When I was in college (Biology major), the cats for our anatomy labs were strays that had been euthanized, supplied by a local animal shelter. The one I worked on for one semester was a big yellow tomcat that had been hit by a car or something – he had a badly broken leg and some other fractures.
Anyway, sometimes they go on to serve a valuable educational purpose after being euthanized is the point I was trying to make.
Yes.
In America we have nearly 100 million stray animals, that includes all domestic species. 70 million of those are cats and dogs. Only 6.3 million enter animal shelters annually.
There about 65 million homes that can have dogs and they already have dogs, sometimes multiple dogs.
So there is a staggering imbalance between the number of animals and the number of medically safe and otherwise appropriate homes.
The only compassionate thing we can do for these animals is to euthanize.
Otherwise they are left to a torturous existence until their untimely death.
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(And now I will stand on my soapbox with a bull horn)
How to fix this:
Assertive animal control which means more officers
Mandatory spay and neuter for all pets. Stiff penalties for owners who don’t like community service working stray animals and attending euthanasias. Make them get a close up look at the problems they’re creating.
Only licensed breeding
Prohibit marketing animals as hypoallergenic because there is no such thing and so it’s been quite damaging to human health. It makes people do things like surrender their old dog for a new dog that will equally continue to make them sick.
Consider human health in regard to placement, so we stop creating severe disease which ultimately lessens the number of available homes for decades.
No TNR. There are no benefits to this program. The cats are tortured. The ecosystem is devastated. Pest populations increase. Human health is harmed. It prevents timely identification of new strays before breeding. It prevents finding lost pets. It’s a terrible waste of precious resources like time and money.
And yes there would have be extensive population culling until we can get to a manageable number.
Hopefully, all of this would make the public take notice of this terrible problem we have.
Hopefully, it will stop people from thinking it’s cutesy for your neighbor’s cat to have kittens or that you’re a cool bro when your dog has puppies. Breeding just makes you an asshole who neglecting your animal.
Yes, but it’s not for evil reasons. It’s usually either because shelters are full and there is no more physical space available, or there are severe behavioral/medical problems that would make the animal unadoptable/cost more than the shelter can afford to treat (if they have to help every animal, they can only spend so much on each individual to continue to help others in the future)/have a poor quality of life
Some shelters are limited admission, and some are open admission. I’ve been volunteering at an open admission shelter and we have to take in and dog that is surrendured to us. You could have a hoarding situation where someone brings in over 20 dogs and the shelter will have to figure something out. However, the shelter workers ALWAYS scan for a chip first and do other things to try and reconnect lost dogs with thier owners.
I have never seen a shelter with a 7 day time limit for their dogs/cats. Unless that reddit post was talking about PETA, then that’s a whole other story as PETA is one of the worst ‘shelters’ on the planet.
Dogs and cats have been getting chipped more often now with a lot of vets suggesting it as well.
I have also never seen a ‘dog catcher’ in my life or heard of it being a real job, except animal control. But usually people will call animal control for wild animals and not stray dogs.
Our old dog got out before chips were even invented (or if they were only for the rich at that time) and someone found her and took her to a shelter and we found her there in a few days. She was fine and certainly not on any death row.
My shelter killed over 5,000 dogs last year. They’re about to do another round of 50 or so.
It’s real hard on the shelter and rescue workers. It seems like it’s never enough.