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JR blogs here about Jason Hardin's A-1 centerpiece Sunday about euthanasia at the Guilford County Animal Shelter. The story, and particularly the accompanying photo, upset some readers.

'Twas ever thus. On April 1, 1990, I had a story published in the N&R that began like this:

The aging Boston terrier quivers as Gay Williams, dressed in a dark blue lab coat and hands swathed in latex, lifts him onto the tailgate of the Chevy pickup.

"You poor little pitiful thing," Williams says, trying to soothe the animal as she runs one hand over his knobby spine and ribs.

Holly Patton, also in a lab coat, picks up a syringe with one gloved hand, a bottle of sodium pentobarbital with the other, and draws the deadly drug into the syringe.

Amid a cacophony of dozens of other dogs barking in kennels nearby at the Guilford County Animal Shelter, Patton lifts the dog's right front paw and swabs its leg, dripping disinfectant all over the tailgate.

As Patton sticks the needle into the animal's leg, dark, venous blood oozes into the syringe, moving in the pale blue sodium pentobarbital like thick oil in water. She must hit a vein, or the drug will be injected uselessly into fat or muscle.

Patton's right thumb squeezes the plunger home. Almost instantly, the animal wilts, eyes still open but now unseeing. Williams caresses the terrier's head, then slides it on its side to the right side of the truck bed. Like a stick protruding from a bag of leaves, one leg points awkwardly toward the cab.

Patton, Williams and their co-workers will repeat the procedure eight more times this morning. As the dogs are laid out, another worker, Jay Browning, moves among them, feeling their rib cages for heartbeats and finding none.

When they're done, the pickup truck will take the animals to be buried in the landfill.

The last dog to die, a small, mixed-breed sheep dog, struggles so much that he must be given a nonlethal sedative injection just to calm him long enough to receive the injection that will kill him.

Patton gives him the shot, then watches as the dog convulses five times, a sixth. She lays her left hand on the animal's rib cage. Though the animal is still, she keeps her hand on it another full minute and more before turning away.

"That's it for now - until we open to the public and they start bringing more in," Patton says.

The photo isn't in our electronic archives, but if memory serves, it was of one of the dogs being injected in the back of the pickup, with previously injected dogs, now dead, visible in the background. That memory is bolstered by descriptions in some of the letters to the editor we published five days later:

There are no adjectives strong enough to express the shock I felt at seeing the picture of a dog receiving a lethal injection of sodium pentobarbital on the front page of the News & Record April 1. To say it was in poor taste would be an incredible understatement. ... I do not expect to open up my Sunday newspaper and be forced to witness the death of any other animal. You can be sure that if anything like this ever appears again, I will cancel my subscription immediately. * * *

Why not just put a big, color photo on the front page with the caption: KILLING ANIMALS OF NEGLECTFUL PET OWNERS. We get the message: The editors of the News & Record obviously have no sensitivity to those of us who are disturbed about neglectful pet owners.

* * *

The only possible explanation for the picture showing the dog being
euthanized was that your staff works part time for one of the tabloids and got confused as to which paper they were working for.

(The writer of the middle excerpt above also said that my story read like a horror-film script. I don't think she meant it as a compliment.)

Dying animals upset us. Needlessly dying animals upset us a lot. I understand that. I get that. When our last two cats died, in 1998 and 2004, I was a wreck for weeks, and they died of old age.

At the same time, these needless deaths happen for a reason: There are still, after decades of public education, people out there who let their animals breed without any thought of the consequences. And because that phenomenon creates issues of public health and safety, your tax dollars pay people to deal with the problem. And unfortunately, euthanasia is the best solution that they've been able to come up with when all other available solutions fall short.

Some people would rather not hear about it. And I see their point. Others (although I haven't heard from any today) would rather we focus on Lebanon/Israel/Iraq/Afghanistan/sub-Saharan Africa or wherever else today's catastrophe du jour is taking place. And I see their point, too.

But I'll tell you what else I see, at least a couple of times a year, even after 16 years: In my dreams, I see that venous canine blood mixing with the pale-blue sodium pentobarbital inside the veterinary syringe like thick oil in water.