You appear to be posting this “letter” all over the Internet, including every Craigslist in every city.

While I do not doubt the depth of your caring, you are clearly an ill-informed armchair activist. Frankly, I doubt you’ve ever seen the inside of a shelter.

The only “shelter” with an 90 percent kill rate is PETA’s. Any “shelter manager” with a kill rate that high needs to be fired and replaced with someone who can catch a clue about community-based no-kill efforts that turn the live-release rate around — communities where 90 percent of shelter pets leave for new homes. In cities, in rural areas, in large shelters and small ones.

Find out about the no-kill revolution — and no, it’s not about closed admission or hoarding, no matter what you’ve been told. Pick up a copy of Nathan Winograd’s “Redemption” and see where the animal “shelter” movement went wrong — and how we can all set it right.

Being an “armchair activist” posting to blogs and Craigslist without a grasp of the facts isn’t going to help a single pet.

A Letter from a Shelter Manager

I think our society needs a huge “Wake-up” call. As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all…a view from the inside if you will.

First off, all of you breeders/sellers should be made to work in the “back” of an animal shelter for just one day. Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don’t even know.

That puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it’s not a cute little puppy anymore. So how would you feel if you knew that there’s about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at? Purebred or not! About 50% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays”, that come into my shelter are purebred dogs.

The most common excuses I hear are; “We are moving and we can’t take our dog (or cat).” Really? Where are you moving too that doesn’t allow pets? Or they say “The dog got bigger than we thought it would”. How big did you think a German Shepherd would get? “We don’t have time for her”. Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs! “She’s tearing up our yard”. How about making her a part of your family? They always tell me “We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her we know she’ll get adopted, she’s a good dog”.

Odds are your pet won’t get adopted & how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you, your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off. Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy. If it sniffles, it dies. Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it. If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk. If I don’t, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose. If your dog is big, black or any of the “Bully” breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door.

Those dogs just don’t get adopted. It doesn’t matter how ‘sweet’ or ‘well behaved’ they are.

If your dog doesn’t get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn’t full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed it may get a stay of execution, but not for long . Most dogs get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment. If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don’t have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment.

Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down”.

First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk happy, wagging their tails. Until they get to “The Room”, every one of them freaks out and puts on the brakes when we get to the door. It must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there, it’s strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs depending on the size and how freaked out they are. Then a euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They will find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the “pink stuff”. Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerk. I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood and been deafened by the yelps and screams. They all don’t just “go to sleep”, sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves.

When it all ends, your pets corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back with all of the other animals that were killed waiting to be picked up like garbage. What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You’ll never know and it probably won’t even cross your mind. It was just an animal and you can always buy another one, right?

I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head I deal with everyday on the way home from work.

I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter.

Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes.

My point to all of this DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!

Hate me if you want to. The truth hurts and reality is what it is. I just hope I maybe changed one persons mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say “I saw this and it made me want to adopt”. THAT WOULD MAKE IT WORTH IT.

That means that - no matter HOW cute and appealing they may be, and no matter HOW much you want to “rescue” them from that cage - NO buying of puppies from pet shops. Because ALL pet shop puppies come from commercial puppy producers, plain and simple.

Buyers need to know where their puppies come from. They should know the breeder - preferably via person-to-person conversations, and ideally via face-to-face meetings. In the best of all possible worlds, buyers should see where the puppy was raised (and that it was not in a bank of wire-bottomed boxes in a dark drafty barn, or some variant thereof).

Seeing where the puppy was raised is not always possible, and this is why buying a puppy over the Internet carries an especially heavy charge for the puppy buyer to do his or her homework. For while not every breeder you might meet over the Internet is a commercial puppy producer, the Internet certainly has made it much easier for such puppy dealers to peddle their wares to an unsuspecting public. So puppy buyers who are using the Internet to find and buy their puppies need to remain especially aware of what to look out for in a breeder so that they don’t end up supporting one who treats their animals as nothing more than a cash crop.

A lot of it is about education and awareness. Oprah worked to accomplish some of that on her show (and she certainly has the exposure to do it!). Every one of us can carry on our own piece of that work by being ready to talk to anyone we know of that is looking for a dog or puppy about the things they should look out for in order to avoid buying their next dog or puppy from a commercial breeder.

Bring new meaning to USDA “animal husbandry!”