The Caring-Killing Paradox

Animal shelter workers usually choose their careers due to a love for animals, and a desire to care for them

Employees at traditional shelters, unfortunately, are often faced with the prospect of having to kill (euthanize) the same animals for which they have been caring.

This is called the caring-killing paradox, and may be a cause of great stress in some staff at traditional shelters. This paradox directly considers the ethics of euthanasia.

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Employee Concerns

Some traditional shelter staff feel anger toward no-kill shelters. Since no-kill organizations do not euthanize to promote turnover rate, they fill up very quickly. As a result, more animals come to the traditional shelters, and traditional shelter employees are forced to euthanize even more animals.

Many employees at traditional shelters feel that there are not enough training programs offered to staff. Seminars dealing with the caring-killing paradox would be beneficial to reducing employee stress.

Further skills-based training on identifying stress indicators in dogs may help shelter employees deal with their own stress, as well as the stress of the animals. Maybe performing euthanasia on unhappy, anxious animals causes shelter workers to feel bad, and enforces the caring-killing paradox.

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Overall, it’s important to ensure that shelter employees are well-trained and not stressed, so they are better capable of caring for dogs throughout the euthanasia procedure.