Why We [PETA] Euthanize (please click on the link to see photos)
Chris Holbein
(I am not trying to start yet another war of words about euthanasia and “no-kill” shelters; I just wanted to post this as a counterpoint to the rash of hostile and misleading diatribes posted against PETA here recently. I’m sure that since those blog posts were allowed by AR-News this one will be too. Thank you.)
http://blog.peta.org/archives/2009/03/why_we_euthaniz.php
Posted at
05:56 PM | Permalink | 
Comments (15)
In my first year working at a grossly substandard animal shelter in Maryland, I forced myself to go in early to euthanize dogs by holding them in my arms and gently helping them escape an uncaring world without trauma or pain and to spare them from being stabbed haphazardly—while they were fully conscious, terrified and aware—in the general vicinity of their hearts with needles blunt from reuse and left to thrash on the floor until they finally died by the callous people who would arrive later to do the job.
I always wonder how anyone cannot recognize that there is a world of difference between painlessly euthanizing animals out of compassion—aged, injured, sick, and dying animals whose guardians can't afford euthanasia, for instance—as PETA does, and causing them to suffer terror, pain, and a prolonged death while struggling to survive on the streets, at the hands of untrained and uncaring "technicians," or animal abusers.
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It's easy to point the finger at those who are forced to do the "dirty work" caused by a throwaway society's casual acquisition and breeding of dogs and cats who end up homeless and unwanted, but at PETA, we will never turn our backs on neglected, unloved, and homeless animals—even if the best we can offer them is a painless release from a world that doesn't have enough heart or homes with room for them. It makes it easy for people to throw stones at us, but we are against all needless killing: for hamburgers, fur collars, dissection, sport hunting―the works. PETA handled far more animals than 2,124 in 2008. In fact, we took in more than 10,000 dogs and cats and work very hard to persuade people to spay and neuter their animals and to commit to a lifetime of care and respect for them. We go so far as to transport animals to and from our spay/neuter clinics, where they are spayed or neutered and given vet care, often for free! Since 2001, PETA's low- to no-cost spay-and-neuter mobile clinics, SNIP and ABC, have sterilized more than 50,000 animals, preventing hundreds of thousands of animals from being born, neglected, abandoned, abused, or euthanized when no one wanted them. And on a national level, PETA is focusing on the root of the problem through our Animal Birth Control (ABC) campaign.
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If anyone has a good home, love, and respect to offer, we beg them: Go to a shelter and take one or two animals home. The problem is that few people do that, choosing instead to go to a breeder or a pet shop and not "fixing" their dogs and cats, which contributes to the high euthanasia rate that animal shelters face. Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could hardly be called "pets," as they had spent their lives chained up in the back yard, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed someone's, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to place, and the like, and PETA offered them a painless release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.
Every day, PETA's fieldworkers help abused and neglected dogs—many of them pit bulls nowadays and many of them forced to live their lives on chains heavy enough to tow an 18-wheeler—by providing them with food; clean water; lightweight tie-outs; deworming medicine; flea, tick, and fly-strike prevention; free veterinary care; sturdy wooden doghouses stuffed with straw bedding; and love.
What we see is enough to make you lose faith in humanity. One pit bull we gained custody of, named Asia, looked like a skeleton covered with skin when PETA released her from the 15-pound chain she had been kept on for years. Asia suffered from three painful and deadly intestinal obstructions, which prevented her from keeping any food down. She faced an agonizing, lingering death, so our veterinarian recommended euthanasia to end her suffering. We pursued criminal charges against those responsible for her condition, leading to their conviction for cruelty to animals. That is just one of the dozens of cases we see every week.
The majority of adoptable dogs are never brought through our doors (we refer them to local adoption groups and walk-in animal shelters). Most of the animals we house, rescue, find homes for, or put out of their misery come from miserable conditions, which often lead to successful prosecution and the banning of animal abusers from ever owning or abusing animals again.
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As long as animals are still purposely bred and people aren't spaying and neutering their companions, open-admission animal shelters and organizations like PETA must do society's dirty work. Euthanasia is not a solution to overpopulation but rather a tragic necessity given the present crisis. PETA is proud to be a "shelter of last resort," where animals who have no place to go or who are unwanted or suffering are welcomed with love and open arms.
Please, if you care about animals, help prevent more of them from being born only to end up chained and left to waste away in people's back yards, suffering on mean streets where people kick at them or shoo them away like garbage, tortured at the hands of animal abusers, or, alas, euthanized in animal shelters for lack of a good home. If you want to save lives, always have your animals spayed or neutered.
Posted by Ingrid E. Newkirk
Chris Holbein
Project Manager
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity." -George Bernard Shaw
In these difficult times, please remember animals and donate today.
Dave Shishkoff
Chris emailed me Sunday, asking about posting retorts to no-kill
submissions, to which i haven't had the opportunity to reply. Chris took
the liberty to post anyway.
I will reply here, instead of privately, to the fraudulent claims of Chris
and PETA.
No one i am aware of is advocating against euthanasia. The problem is that
PETA has a perverse definition of euthanasia - one that apparently demands
that any animal with the slightest discomfort ought to be killed.
The images depicted in this message are indeed horrific, and if a vet deemed
these animals to be suffering immensely, or unable to live any sort of
meaningful life, or terminally ill, then yes, these animals should be
euthanised.
Let me be clear: no-kill advocates are not against euthanasia, which is
defined as "The act or practice of ending the life of an individual
suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition". (Answers.com.)
Without doubt, the vast majority of the animals PETA kills are far from
terminal, or suffering from incurable conditions. Yet, PETA and Newkirk
conveniently re-define euthanise in order to satisfy their evident
bloodlust. The illness here isn't in cats and dogs and they need-not pay
for this -- the illness is in the heads of humans who mistreat cats and
dogs.
Does anyone reading this honestly believe PETA locates five animals a day in
the conditions depicted below?? In 2008 PETA killed about five animals a
day, as with previous years. When i interned at PETA in 2001, i saw the
animals they were killing - often puppies and kittens who were perfectly
healthy (as far as i could tell.) Even on the HBO special about Newkirk, 'I
Am An Animal', they killed a dog who likely could have been treated. (Was a
vet even consulted? It is not clear in the program.)
PETA claims to have a $30 million annual budget. Yet cannot find homes for
~2,000 cats and dogs each year. Not with $30 million dollars, or millions
of members, and huge lists of email addresses. (Literally an armful of cats
and dogs somehow survived PETA's "rescues" each year.)
PETA claims to be an animal rights group. Why would any animal demand the
right to be murdered by their supposed rescuer and advocates??? Can you
imagine Amnesty International or the UN demanding that a population of
humans be killed because they don't want to bother finding any food or
shelter for them? PETA is not an animal rights group, in any meaningful
sense of the term.
It's disgusting and perverse that PETA is working so hard to derail the
no-kill movement. I believe it was a vet that reported that PETA should be
reclassified as a slaughterhouse, since they kill animals with such
frequency.
Who needs an 'advocate' like that?
The AR in AR-News is Animal Rights. No animal needs the 'right' to be
killed. Yes, there are concerns about the way some no-kill shelters
operate, and these need to be dealt with accordingly - but to lump them all
together and to oppose no-kill entirely is wrong-minded, dishonest and in
opposition to animal rights.
Let me be clear: the advocacy of killing healthy animals will NOT be
tolerated on AR-News.
- Dave Shishkoff, AR-News Co-List-Owner
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Holbein" <Chr...@peta.org>
To: <ar-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 6:34 AM
Subject: [AR-News] Why We [PETA] Euthanize (please click on the link to see
photos)
(I am not trying to start yet another war of words about euthanasia and
"no-kill" shelters; I just wanted to post this as a counterpoint to the rash
of hostile and misleading diatribes posted against PETA here recently. I'm
sure that since those blog posts were allowed by AR-News this one will be
too. Thank you.)
http://blog.peta.org/archives/2009/03/why_we_euthaniz.php
Posted at 05:56 PM | Permalink
(15) <http://blog.peta.org/archives/2009/03/why_we_euthaniz.php#comments>
In my first year working at a grossly substandard animal shelter in
Maryland, I forced myself to go in early to euthanize dogs by holding them
in my arms and gently helping them escape an uncaring world without trauma
fully conscious, terrified and aware-in the general vicinity of their hearts
finally died by the callous people who would arrive later to do the job.
I always wonder how anyone cannot recognize that there is a world of
untrained and uncaring "technicians," or animal abusers.
caused by a throwaway society's casual acquisition and breeding of dogs and
cats who end up homeless and unwanted, but at PETA, we will never turn our
or homes with room for them. It makes it easy for people to throw stones at
us, but we are against all needless killing: for hamburgers, fur collars,
dissection, sport hunting―the works. PETA handled far more animals than
2,124 in 2008. In fact, we took in more than 10,000 dogs and cats and work
very hard to persuade people to spay and neuter their animals and to commit
to a lifetime of care and respect for them. We go so far as to transport
animals to and from our spay/neuter clinics, where they are spayed or
neutered and given vet care, often for free! Since 2001, PETA's low- to
no-cost spay-and-neuter mobile clinics, SNIP and ABC, have sterilized more
than 50,000 animals, preventing hundreds of thousands of animals from being
born, neglected, abandoned, abused, or euthanized when no one wanted them.
And on a national level, PETA is focusing on the root of the problem through
our Animal Birth Control (ABC) campaign
If anyone has a good home, love, and respect to offer, we beg them: Go to a
shelter and take one or two animals home. The problem is that few people do
that, choosing instead to go to a breeder or a pet shop and not "fixing"
their dogs and cats, which contributes to the high euthanasia rate that
animal shelters face. Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could
hardly be called "pets," as they had spent their lives chained up in the
back yard, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a
building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed
someone's, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to
place, and the like, and PETA offered them a painless release from
suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.
prevention; free veterinary care; sturdy wooden doghouses stuffed with straw
bedding; and love.
What we see is enough to make you lose faith in humanity. One pit bull we
gained custody of, named Asia
been kept on for years. Asia suffered from three painful and deadly
intestinal obstructions, which prevented her from keeping any food down. She
faced an agonizing, lingering death, so our veterinarian recommended
euthanasia to end her suffering. We pursued criminal charges against those
responsible for her condition, leading to their conviction for cruelty to
animals. That is just one of the dozens of cases we see every week.
The majority of adoptable dogs are never brought through our doors (we refer
them to local adoption groups and walk-in animal shelters). Most of the
animals we house, rescue, find homes for, or put out of their misery come
from miserable conditions, which often lead to successful prosecution and
the banning of animal abusers from ever owning or abusing animals again.
neutering their companions, open-admission animal shelters and organizations
like PETA must do society's dirty work. Euthanasia is not a solution to
overpopulation but rather a tragic necessity given the present crisis. PETA
is proud to be a "shelter of last resort," where animals who have no place
to go or who are unwanted or suffering are welcomed with love and open arms.
Please, if you care about animals, help prevent more of them from being born
only to end up chained and left to waste away in people's back yards,
suffering on mean streets where people kick at them or shoo them away like
garbage, tortured at the hands of animal abusers, or, alas, euthanized in
animal shelters for lack of a good home. If you want to save lives, always
have your animals spayed or neutered.
Chris Holbein
Project Manager
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be
indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity." -George Bernard Shaw
In these difficult times, please remember animals and donate today
.
Phyllis Bedford
OK, well without Chris' messageS the list won't be as good so I guess I'll join Chris, Bryan and Carla (not sure if Anne will escape or not). THANK-YOU PETA FOR REFUSING TO BE SILENT AND FOR TAKING ACTION TO EXPOSE AND STOP ANIMAL SUFFERING. YOU'RE THE BEST!
Phyllis Bedford
When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel
pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.
Ingrid Newkirk, www.peta.org
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Ronda Roaring
Dave Shishkoff <da...@earthfuture.com> wrote:
Posted at 05:56 PM | Permalink
| Comments
(15)
.
If anyone has a good home, love, and respect to offer, we beg them: Go to a
shelter and take one or two animals home. The problem is that few people do
that, choosing instead to go to a breeder or a pet shop and not "fixing"
their dogs and cats, which contributes to the high euthanasia rate that
animal shelters face. Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could
hardly be called "pets," as they had spent their lives chained up in the
back yard, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a
building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed
someone's, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to
place, and the like, and PETA offered them a painless release from
suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.
Every day, PETA's fieldworkers help abused and neglected dogs-many of them
pit bulls nowadays and many of them forced to live their lives on chains
heavy enough to tow an 18-wheeler-by providing them with food; clean water;
lightweight tie-outs; deworming medicine; flea, tick, and fly-strike
prevention; free veterinary care; sturdy wooden doghouses stuffed with straw
bedding; and love.
What we see is enough to make you lose faith in humanity. One pit bull we
gained custody of, named Asia
Chris Holbein
Project Manager
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be
indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity." -George Bernard Shaw
In these difficult times, please remember animals and donate today
.
Dave Shishkoff
As made clear in my previous post, further comments will result in a
permanent removal of posting privileges.
Ronda Roaring, Ann Berlin and Phyllis Bedford have chosen to send outbursts
to the list, and are no longer welcome to post.
This is unfortunate, as we have set up ARNews...@Gmail.com as a means to
venting or voicing off (as described at the bottom of each message to the
list, and mentioned numerous times.)
This is, far as i can determine, a fair and reasonable option and outlet.
Especially since previously there was NO means to do this.
If people choose to be disrespectful and break list protocol, then they will
suffer the consequences of their actions.
If anyone else has something to say, i respectfully request either emailing
Peter and myself privately (list admin address is also listed at the bottom
of every message), or send to ARNewsLetters. Further outbursts will be
dealt with in this manner.
Acting like a spoiled child and venting seems to me like a poor substitute
to contributing to AR-News. Consider carefully before acting out in this
manner.
Remember PETAphiles: you don't *have* to drink the Kool Aid.
Back to your regular AR-News, and thanks to all others for their
contributions,
- Dave, AR-News Co-List-Owner
wiseb...@aol.com
"Twixt kings and tyrants there's this difference known;
Kings seek their subjects' good; tyrants their own"
Robert Herrick, KINGS AND TYRANTS