Euthanasia: Gentle death, or killing performed in the animal’s best interests.

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Reasons Why Euthanasia is Performed:

• to end suffering of an old or ill animal
• if animal is deemed unadoptable (e.g. aggressive)
• if animal has been in the shelter for an extended time (i.e. to increase turnover rate)
• if financial constraints are too great to continue caring for the animal

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Two Types of Animal Shelter:

1. Traditional Shelter – performs euthanasia for all or most of the reasons outlined above
2. No-kill Shelter – only euthanizes animals when necessary, i.e. to end suffering of very old or ill animal

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The Procedure:

• usually performed by shelter workers, but some shelters transfer animals to a veterinarian for euthanasia
• inhalant anaesthetics are suitable to euthanize small dogs, but for large dogs should only be used as sedation before injectable ananesthetic administered for euthanasia
  

  Photo Credit: mliu92 on Flickr

• common drugs include pentobarbital sodium, carbon monoxide,and injectable T-61

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The Controversy:

• killing healthy animals for the sake of making space for another animal might not be ethically considered “euthanasia”
• approximately 29.5% of dogs taken into traditional shelters are euthanized by the shelter–huge numbers of dogs!
• in 2015 alone, the BC SPCA rehomed 2,706 dogs–if the BC SPCA euthanized animals to promote turnover rate, maybe this number would be much lower!
• average length of stay in a traditional shelter is 1/8 the length of stay in a no-kill shelter

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Essentially, is it ethical to euthanize a healthy dog just because no one has adopted it?