Canine Capers: When Good Intentions Go Bad

By Lesley Liddle

Lesley Liddle is a certified service and pet dog trainer. First Mate Lulu is a Corgi/Red Heeler with spots like a baby harbor seal; Crewman Leonard is a Chihuahua/Doxie with tall ears like a rabbit. Both dogs have very short legs and were originally found in California shelters.  Lesley has average legs and can be found on Orcas Island.

Sue Sternberg founded and runs Rondout Valley Animals for Adoption in upstate New York. She spends her life giving seminars all over the country in an effort to teach people about humane handling of shelter dogs, acceptable shelter conditions and how to get shelter dogs quickly trained and prepared for suitable adoptions. She promotes the need for responsible euthanasia rather than mandated no-kill sheltering when a dog proves unadoptable.

I sadly agree that euthanasia is the humane course for dogs that have extreme issues which render them unadoptable.  We know that dogs who are confined in shelter cages begin to show seriously neurotic behaviors within a very short time  – behaviors such as twirling endlessly, chewing on themselves,  rebounding off walls, gnawing their teeth away on metal bars and incessant barking. Shelters have been too often just unbearably noisy overcrowded jails. I am not talking about the Orcas Shelter, which is exemplary. Here at the shelter, dogs have every opportunity to improve their lives and find a family; they are walked outside twice daily, and they are given love, medical help and training. But even under the best of circumstances,  a dog’s shelter time is mostly spent caged and it  is imperative to rehome every dog as quickly as possible.

If a dog is relinquished to a shelter who has seriously bitten people or otherwise has major issues that make adoption impossible, it is the kindest course to end its life humanely. Keeping such an animal languishing in a cage without hope of adoption is cruel. No kill shelters are now forced to either refuse unadoptable dogs who are then dumped on street corners, or they may be mandated to accept all dogs and keep some without hope of adoption. This means that many no kill city shelters are insanely crowded and have become receptacles for unadoptable dogs. There can be little or no training time for dogs in such shelters and the overall living standards are unbearable. People who created the mandate for no kill shelters acted with the intention to save dogs and did not consider the down side – the fact that not all dogs can realistically be saved. Put another way, when life is without hope and becomes a living hell, that life is not justified. It is a moral duty neither to cause nor to prolong the suffering of any living creature.