LETTERS: HUMANE SOCIETY WORKERS CARE ABOUT THE ANIMALS

To the editor:

Once again it seems the Humane Society and its shelter and staff have been accused of not adopting to a "perfectly good home" because "they would rather put them to sleep than adopt them out." Shelter staff members across this nation have been having that statement thrown in their faces for years. It's nothing new, and it's not true, but it always hurts as if it were the first time it was heard.

The fact is, nothing could be further from the truth, and people who are truly responsible, caring owners know that this is a complete distortion. I have been a Humane Society member and volunteer for nine years and have served in a variety of capacities. I've seen the turnover that occurs in shelter staff, not just the one in Cape Girardeau but in others I've visited in other states. The primary reason for that turnover is burnout, not due to the hard physical work involved in caring for tens to hundreds of animals at a time or the typically low wages that shelters are usually able to pay. It is, for the most part, due to the emotional devastation caused by having to euthanize healthy, adoptable animals day after day.

These animals don't fall from the sky. They don't grown in a cabbage patch. They don't just materialize. They don't just happen. They are the result of pet overpopulation, a fact that our Humane Society has been trying to educate about in its nearly 20 years of existence. This newspaper has reported, over and over again, the fact that the Humane Society of Southeast Missouri takes in 4,500 or more animals a years. Perhaps the number is so large that it doesn't make a connection tothe heart. It has to get down to one animal before it gets someone's attention.

So this times, we're dealing with just one, the one a woman wanted to adopt and was not allowed to. I can guarantee anyone who asks that the staff at the shelter would get down on ther knees and give thanks if everyone who walked into the shelter to adopt would be the kind of home they could dare to put an animal in. The be accused of preferring to put them to sleep is ludicrous, insensitive and totally uninformed. These people are crying inside every day because so many are not place. It it's not their fault.

As a society, we all bear a piece of the blame. We've become a throwaway society in which animals have no value. We give them away when they're not cute anymore, when they behave badly (usually with little training in how to act right), when we have to move or when we'd rather be doing something else than fooling with them. And we let them breed at will with no thought for the consequences. Well, the consequences end up on the shelter doorstep, and those animals are the lucky ones. The rest are hit by cars, die slowly from disease, starve or are abused and neglected until they die. Until people are willing to take responsibility by having their pets spayed or neutered, the tragedy will continue.

In the meantime, shelters like ours will do as much as they can with limited resources to try to let the public know what the reality is. And they will keep records of people who adopt from them, people who sign a contract agreeing that spay or neuter surgery will take place, as is now mandated by state law. If these same adopters ignore their contractual agreement, they also lose any possibility of adopting from the shelter again. When these owners return for another animal, the shelter staff must say no because of the past history of the potential adopter. The Humane Society is not at war with people. They are at war with irresponsibility and lack of commitment. They would prefer to not have to be there at all. They would prefer that the situations that bring animals to the shelter simply didn't exist.

So if unhappy adopters are going to accuse the shelter staff and the Humane Society of not caring, of preferring to euthanize rather than adopt, I'd like to suggest that they walk a mile in a staff member's shoes before throwing that particular blow in their faces. They might learn something and feel differently for it. And they might, finally, be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

DIANE TIDD, Volunteer

Humane Society of Southeast Missouri

Cape Girardeau