This week's column: Gimme shelter
Now that I've owned a pipsqueak of a pooch for five years, I finally get it.
I get it when co-workers tack doggie photos right next to family in their cubicle picture galleries.
I get it when they swap stories about their pups' latest escapades.
I get it when they fret over a pet's illness or weep at the loss of a cherished dog or cat.
And I get why impassioned pet lovers invest so much time, money and emotion in saving abandoned dogs' and cats' lives at the Guilford County Animal Shelter.
Pets are not stuffed toys to be blissfully tossed aside when we're bored with them. They are family. And they are lifelong responsibilities.
At least they should be.
I have visited the shelter several times in recent years and never fail to be moved by the smells, the sounds ... and the sadness.
Guilford County euthanized by lethal injection nearly 22 unwanted animals per day in 2005. That's nearly one death per hour.
The population of the shelter typically totals as many as 1,400. Yet by one estimate, only 20 percent of the stray animals in the county ever make it to the shelter.
So I don't get the ongoing war of words and wills between the shelter and local rescue groups. I don't get how they waste so much emotion and energy sniping at one another rather than joining forces.
"It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life," says Trudy Wade, a Jamestown veterinarian, former county commissioner and former chairwoman of the animal shelter board.
The shelter and several pet rescue groups remain at odds over the shelter's policy of not allowing those groups to handle the adoptions of certain breeds of dogs. The shelter wants to keep those breeds, which it deems "more adoptable," in the belief that their presence will attract more traffic to the shelter, which in turn increases the chances of all animals being adopted.
The rescue groups argue that the shelter's primary goal should be to place abandoned pets in caring homes, period.
How can the shelter fret about putting animals to death while it turns away from the help rescue groups can provide? says Carol Fama, who works with a local Doberman pinscher rescue group.
"You can't have it both ways."
Both sides' passions are understandable. But the rescues and the shelter seem to agree on so much more than they disagree.
Marcia Cleveland, who works with one of those groups, German Shepherd Rescue and Adoptions, says she sympathizes with the shelter's predicament.
"I know they have a terrible job," Cleveland says. "My heart just bleeds for them, having to put dogs to sleep."
Cleveland also squarely placed the blame for pet overpopulation where it rightly belongs. "It's the people's fault and we're left to pick up the pieces."
All she's asking, Cleveland says, is at least a chance to save a dog's life.
"Do your adoption time," she says. "If it looks like a dog's coming to the end of his time, call us. Give us a chance. All we want is a chance."
Fair enough. But if rescues are willing to deal with symptoms of the problem, they also should work with the shelter and the veterinary community to attack the root cause.
Wade believes a blanket spay-and-neuter campaign would make the biggest difference, especially in low-income communities.
"You've got to go to where the problem is," she says.
So here's a proposition for the shelter and the rescue community: Stop your bickering. Come up with reasonable working agreements on adoption. Pair that effort with massive spay-and-neuter and public information campaigns.
"We already do that," counters Fama of the Doberman pinscher rescue.
But not on a scale that a collective effort could achieve. No one group can do that. A community of organizations can.
Otherwise thousands of pets will continue to die. And quarreling humans will continue to address the tragedy with a lot more bark than bite.