The SHAME of #America !! This is Maya, one of the victim!!! Dumped at the US shelter by the family she loved and trusted. Killed by shelter staff several days later. Look into her eyes. She knew she wouldn't leave that place alive... 'Animals would have better chances being given away free than going into the kill shelter system.' Looking at what happens to animals in the kill system, I tend to agree... I would trust the average person on the street with any animal before I would trust the people who abuse and murder animals all day long. Statistics: Out of 165 million U.S.A. pets, only 3.64% of companion animals ever end up in U.S.A. "shelters." Only 4% of those animals show signs of neglect or abuse. However, 67% of all animals, and 8 out of 10 cats who enter a "shelter" are violently murdered. In short: 240,000 cases of yearly neglect or abuse by the public vs. 4,000,000 cases of abuse ending in death by the "shelters" that should be saving them... That means that all animals face a 67% chance of an abusive death in a shelter BUT, if given away free, they face less than a 1% chance of being abused or neglected in the hands of the general public. "Frequently overseen by ineffective and incompetent directors who fail to hold their staff accountable to the most basic standards of humane care, animal shelters in this country are often poorly managed houses of horror, places where animals are denied basic medical care, food, water, socialization and are then killed, sometimes cruelly. The first time many companion animals experience neglect and abuse is when they enter the very place that is supposed to deliver them from it: the local animal shelter." In Davidson County, North Carolina, the pound not only kills nine out of 10 animals, it does so in one of the most brutal ways possible, putting different species into the gas chamber to sadistically watch them fight before turning on the gas. In Memphis, Tennessee, animals are forced to cannibalize other animals to keep from starving to death. In Chesterfield County, South Carolina, cats are beaten to death with pipes and dogs are used as target practice. In Dekalb, Georgia, workers kill cats by “holding them down with a foot on the back, sometimes breaking their bones.” In Cabel-Wayne, West Virginia, animals are simply thrown into the trash alive and sent to the dump in garbage bags. As I document in the 270 pages of Friendly Fire, these are not aberrations. How can we, as animal lovers, condone animals being placed at the mercy of such institutions? How can we prefer such treatment to the compassion the evidence shows they are far more likely to get from your average, animal-loving American? http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=11272