A Love Letter to the Kill Shelter

Thank you for working at a kill shelter—because I know what it really means. I know your preferred term is “open intake shelter” because it more truly reflects what you do. You take in every single animal that is surrendered. That means regardless of medical status, behavior, history, or how full you are, you take in every animal. Even when it’s a duck or a cow or a mangy, snarling, crazy cat. You take them all in. And that means that when space is full, yes, you do sometimes have to euthanize, because you can’t invent space, or money, or staff that doesn’t exist.

Thank you for making that decision when you have to. Thank you for making the decision to euthanize dangerous animals. Ones that can’t be handled by the public, that pose a true danger to humans, especially children, or other animals. The ones who give other rescue dogs (or yes, other pit bulls) a bad name, even though of course we know it’s not their fault. The ones who suffer in the shelter because they can’t be safely adopted, because rescues won’t or can’t take them, because there’s nowhere else on this earth for them to go. Thank you for helping them leave the world painlessly and loved. Because you do love them.

Thank you for loving them. Thank you for showing up day after day, for choosing to take the salary of an animal shelter employee, for choosing to work at a non-profit, for choosing to work long hours, for choosing often to take work home with you and foster or do social media outreach, for often adopting the hardest ones to place. Thank you for loving them after seeing the worst in them, and the worst in humanity. Thank you for fighting for them.

Thank you for showing up every day when everyone seems to be against you. Thank you for showing up even when people who could never understand call you murderers. They call you terrible names, they say you never cared, even while you lay on the floor in tears because your favorite dog just deteriorated too much to be safely placed, and there’s nothing you can do, and you had to let him go, and you take his paw print home and you place it on your shelf and you whisper to it that he mattered, even as they tear you down. Thank you for going back to work the next day and doing it again.

Thank you for what you do. Because if you didn’t, my dogs wouldn’t be sitting here today as I write this. Dozens of my foster dogs wouldn’t have made it to rescues. Thousands of animals every year wouldn’t have homes. Yes, animals are euthanized at your shelter. I know you hate it. I also know the fault isn’t yours. It’s the public’s fault, and it’s city/state/government management’s fault and it’s the fault of those who sit behind their keyboards and yell about how terrible the shelter is and not to support it, so the donations don’t come in, no one advocates on the city budget, people keep abandoning animals, and not spaying or neutering. I know it’s not your fault.

So thank you for everything. I will stand up and support you with my voice and my dollars and my time. I know how hard you work. I know how much you care. And I am so grateful for you. Thank you for working at the kill shelter.

*thank you also to all the volunteers who do the same <3