While writing to someone about the realities of no-kill shelters, I wrote this and later realized that it would be good to put it here.

Well, it's not quite like no kill shelters advertise the fact that they kill animals. Most metropolitan, public shelters have to euthanize at some point when they run out of room. We do all we can to spring the excess animals but in the end, no space=dead animals. Private kennels can be more selective in who they take in but again, the end result can be death when they turn away animals.

A good example is the big bright shiny "no kill" San Francisco SPCA. It's beautiful all animals are kept until placed in these 'home-like' kennels w/ couches and crap. What they don't mention is that for the rest of the animals (stray and owner-surrendered), they go across the street to Animal Care and Control. It's the nasty sister to the lovely building, old and not very well kept. This is the regular kennel, where the animals do get killed due to all the regular reasons (illness, lack of room, agression, etc). Most fancy no kill shelters have this kind of counterpart, it's the only way they can stay around. Between all of these, 5-6 million animals are killed each year, mostly due to lack of space.

So it seems clear that the only answer is to spay and neuter. The good news is, before public awareness of this issue grew, 17 million a year were killed.

But it still gets me when one I'm trying to save becomes part of that statistic, and eventually part of the shitty dog food you can buy at the grocery store. Nope, I'm not kidding.