Dogland by Jacki Skole

Author:Jacki Skole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dog rescue, dogs, shelters, humane society, rescue dogs
Publisher: Ashland Creek Press
Published: 2015-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Based on conversations with folks in and around Gaston County, that spirit of collaboration has been slow to take hold between rescue groups and the Gaston County shelter. The consensus of the animal welfare community is that the shelter historically hasn’t done enough to promote adoption or rescue; rather, it has stymied efforts. They point to the difficulty they had persuading Reggie Horton to overturn the 1999 rule that no animal could be adopted out unless it had evidence of being vaccinated for rabies. That left, they say, few animals available for adoption and a euthanasia rate that, at times, topped 90 percent. When Terry Kenny got wind of the issue, she said, “I started my research again, and found that other counties didn’t require the rabies vaccine for adoption. And I learned that ours was imposed temporarily but had been in place more than seven years.”

Another reason for the animosity remained the issue of gassing animals to death at the shelter. Kenny’s appeal to county commissioners to stop using the gas chamber had reaped little more than a few newspaper stories on her efforts. There was no state pressure to end the practice, either. A 2009 bill that would have banned gassing in North Carolina never made it out of a House committee. The bill, known as Davie’s Law, after a puppy who had survived being gassed, was opposed by the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which oversees shelters. The department argued successfully that it be permitted to implement and enforce regulations that would allow the continued use of county and city gas chambers, so that what happened to Davie would not happen again.

North Carolina isn’t the only state that has permitted the use of carbon monoxide gas chambers for shelter euthanasia. Nationwide, only twenty-one states have passed legislation banning their use, while several others lack legislation but do not gas. Still, the national trend is toward lethal injection, a method preferred by most animal welfare advocates and both the American Veterinary Medical Association and the National Animal Care & Control Association. Feeling the pressure from Kenny, the animal welfare community, and concerned citizens, Gaston County’s commissioners adopted a resolution in the fall of 2010 making lethal injection the primary means of euthanasia at the county shelter. But for many, the resolution didn’t go far enough because it allowed for continued use of the gas chamber in instances in which animals were “deemed wild, dangerous, or otherwise unmanageable through designated safe handling practices.” It wouldn’t be until the fall of 2014—nearly a decade after Kenny addressed the commission—that the shelter would officially cease using the gas chamber to euthanize animals. That November, commissioners had the large stainless steel structure loaded onto a flatbed truck, hauled off to a local recycler, and reduced to scrap metal. Then, in December, North Carolina’s newly named animal welfare director announced the state would institute a ban on gassing at all public shelters beginning in early 2015.

I have to admit that I

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