But is there a fate worse than death?
Yes. And the hideous irony comes when that fate is delivered at the hands of would-be saviors. That may be the case with the Raeford-based Haven no-kill animal shelter in Raeford, where a husband and wife keep 1,300 animals on 140 acres — without paid staff. Haven has until Sept. 1 to upgrade conditions at the facility before the state shuts it down.
The shelter was founded on the premise that it is wrong to euthanize healthy animals.
That seems like an obvious good deed, but consider the All Creatures Great and Small shelter in Hendersonville, where animals were never killed.
Instead, they lived in their own excrement, were confined to small cages, often went without food, and were left without medical care after they were injured in fights with other animals.
Conditions are also pretty bad in Raeford: A July 12 state inspection listed 24 pages of violations that included sanitation, veterinary care and living conditions. The full report is online at http://tiny.cc/HavenViolations.
Animal overpopulation is North Carolina’s disease, one we share with a lot of other Southern states. We turn a blind eye instead of treating it like a serious public health problem.
That willful ignorance leads to exactly what we see at these independent, no-kill shelters, where the urge to do the right thing twists under the pressure of an endless tide of unwanted animals.
There are plenty of ways to solve the problem:
n The General Assembly should have passed the bill that would ban puppy mills in this legislative session. They must do so in 2011.
n Local governments can take a page from Durham’s pet ordinances, which charge owners an extra $60 if they want to keep a pet that hasn’t been spayed or neutered.
n Pet owners can do the most. About a third of the shelter’s intake is owner-surrendered pets. Owners certainly should commit to lifetime caregiving, and to spaying or neutering their pets, which costs as little as $20 for income-qualified families at Animal Kind in Durham.
Simon Woodrup is director of community outreach for the Animal Protection Society of Durham, which runs the county animal shelter, and he has it right: “When animals get euthanized here, it’s because some human being failed in their responsibility, and I don’t think the humans that failed them are the ones who work at the shelter.”
