Petey didn't have a chance
Friday's No. 2 editorial.
A sad story out of Alamance County serves as a reminder that government-run animal shelters in North Carolina are more often killing factories than adoption centers.
The Times-News of Burlington ran a story this week about Elon University sophomore Lee Dickinson, who took his dog, Petey, to the Burlington animal shelter in February, thinking he had a good chance of being placed for adoption. The bulldog mix was neutered, current on its shots and had its papers.
Dickinson had a change of heart just hours after surrendering Petey and asked a friend to retrieve him. She went to the shelter only to discover Petey had been killed within an hour of his arrival.
Fortunately, this scenario can't play out here. The Guilford shelter holds a surrendered animal 24 hours before it's considered shelter property. Surely, it wouldn't break the bank for the Burlington shelter to adopt a similar policy, even if it required expansion.
Dickinson said he wasn't clearly told by shelter workers that Petey would be killed. While the shelter disputes his claim, the reality is that it's human nature to soft-pedal hard topics.
Perhaps shelters should be required to give those surrendering pets their kill rate stats. (The Alamance shelter killed about 70 percent of the animals it impounded in 2007.) A cold, hard number may mean fewer broken hearts.
The reality is that the odds of a happy outcome for an animal surrendered to most public shelters in North Carolina aren't good. And it's likely they'll be worse this year than last: Economic downturns see more surrendered pets.
The Times-News story quoted Tamee Penley, supervisor of Burlington animal services, who gave this good advice: "If an owner isn't sure or doesn't feel good about leaving it at the shelter, they are better off running an ad in the newspaper or putting a picture in a pet shop."
That's what one anonymous online commenter on the Times-News story did. Backing away from an animal shelter, the person took out a newspaper ad and screened applicants: The dog now lives on eight acres in the country.
Other good alternatives to shelters are local humane societies and rescue groups.
Dickinson learned about shelters' kill rates the hard way. By sharing his story, he hopes others can avoid learning through personal experience.
Due to recent automated spamming attacks on our blogs, we are temporarily requiring commenters to authenticate themselves via TypeKey® before posting comments to any News & Record blog in order to prevent denials of service. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.