As an employee of a police department, I also do volunteer work with our local animal shelter that is ran by our department. Unfortunately, this shelter isn't a "no-kill" shelter due to funding and that breaks my heart. Every day I see animals who have been lost, neglected or abused end up at our shelter and I know that in such a small town their chances of being adopted out are not likely. We try our very best to keep these animals as long as possible before having to put them down but we can only do so much ourselves. We need the help of the entire country for matters such as this one. I have no doubt that our shelter isn't the only one experiencing this and having to be the ones to determine when an innocent animal's life has to be over for no reasons other than "not enough room" or "too expensive to keep any longer" or "because the animals has been in the shelter for months and no one is claiming or adopting them." Those reasons aren't good enough for me and I can't stand to see animals put down anymore.
I'm asking that we start at the root of the problem, which in my personal opinion, is when people first purchase/adopt pets. I believe stricter guidelines need to be placed for the adoption/buying process to even be allowed to take place. Whether that means potential owners have extensive background checks ran to see if they have any histories with animal abuse or negligence, requiring all owners to implant microchips so their animals are easier to locate when lost, requiring all owners to purchase engraved tags for their animals with their contact information on them at the time of purchase/adoption, requiring all owners to be registered on a website with every pet they own with photos and registered with their local vet, even going as far as to making potential owners take some form of test with questions aimed at mentally evaluating them to see if they are fit to own and care for a pet or to see the reasons for wanting to own one (Example: I see so many people post online wanting a "puppy" for their kids. Do they want a puppy because it's cute at the time or are they fully prepared for that cute puppy to grow up into a dog and still show it the save love and care?), or any other similar ideas that would result in owners/potential owners being required to be more responsible with their pets. This would result in less animals being lost and ending up in a shelter that has no choice but to follow their own guidelines and eventually put these animals down due to their owner's actions. This needs to change and the change is up to every single person out there willing to make a difference for animals with no voice of their own. Please sign and share this petition so we can get this done!
