What are some TV shows like "Boston Legal" or "rescue me"?

Can someone explain why the shows 'Animal Cops' (Animal Planet) seem so ready to put down animals?

• I love animals. I am much more comfortable with them then with humans, because of my own issues. Naturally enough, my favorite TV channel, when I watch TV, is Animal Planet (except for Nat Geo's Dog Whisperer, of course). I didn't have a regular source of these shows until just a little while ago, so when I started watching the 'Animal Cops' shows, I didn't know what I was getting into. On the one hand, they do wonderful things. It is painful to see the animals they rescue, but you feel like cheering when they do. On the other, EVERY SINGLE EPISODE I've watched so far has at least one animal killed after the cops 'rescue' it. You can see the guilt on their faces while they try to explain why this is the only way. It seems to me that some times (NOT all the time) they just don't want to take the time to find another situation for the dog for him/her to be rebiliated. And don't tell me it can't happen...Cesar Millan, Victoria Stillwell, and Dog Town trainers prove over and over that it can. I understand why this has to happen when the animal is gravely suffering, but way too many times the animal has simply not been quite healthy enough (nothing time and care won't fix) or has some behavorial problems that shows like DogTown, Dog Whisper, and It's Me or The Dog show CAN be fixed. They just never take the time! It make me so sad, I've cried myself sick. I don't understand why this is happening. It's often (again, not always) OUR fault that animals get like that, and then, after we supposedly 'rescue it' ,we turn around and give the ultimate punishment for something that WE did! Yes, when a dog seriously attacks a human, I understand that that is a very bad, serious situation. I understand that it may be needed to take serious action...but surely not as often as these people do it! T put dogs down because they are neverous about their food after they've been starved or because they have been trained to fight...it just makes me cry. Isn't there a better way? I'm not saying that the SPCA isn't doing good things, but I can't help feeling they've gotten a little tigger happy. What do you think?

• Answer:

  There just is not enough time, space or money to save every single animal no matter how 'fixable' they may be. The show is meant to be an honest depiction of the decisions that have to be made in animal shelters. The animal shelter nearest me is an open admission shelter which means they have to take every single animal that is brought to them. Every year they take in over 20,000 animals. That's around 55 animals per day EVERY single day of the year. There are 200 dog kennels (the place is huge) and 100 cat cages. Most of those cages have to be used for 'stray hold' which is the 3 day period of time they have to keep every single animal to give the owner a chance to claim it. They need 165 cages JUST to keep the amount of animals that come in every day alive for the 3 day stray hold. That means there are only 135 cages available for animals that make it through screening and to the adoption floor. Every single day, 55 animals coming out of stray hold will pretty much compete for the same few open spaces in the adoption rooms. There are 12 employees, and about 15 regular volunteers. It takes all day, every day, just to keep the kennels clean and the animals fed and to process the paperwork. How many adoptions are there? Not many despite billboard advertising, petfinder posting, newspaper ads, tv spots, adoption days at local pet stores and so on which all take volunteer time. I would say they on average adopt out 5 cats and 5 dogs per day. That means every day there are 10 empty cages and 55 animals that need to go into them. That means that 45 of those animals have to die because there is nowhere for them to go. You can't fill up the employees and volunteers homes, we're all at capacity. The rescues are full, the other shelters are full and we already used up several million dollars to add-on to the buildings a couple years ago. All that did was give the same few adopters coming in a couple more to choose from. When your making a decision on which pets make it to the adoption floor, you do so with the knowledge that if you put a 'slow mover' in an adoption kennel you still may not save that one AND you may cause the deaths of a lot more adoptable animals that could've had that cage had you chosen a more adoptable one that got adopted faster and opened up a cage for the next one in line. Anyone who will work in a shelter for minimum wage and work like a dog is doing so BECAUSE they love animals. I hate when people say they love animals but don't volunteer. Even more so when they look down on animal shelter workers as though they love animals less. Animal shelter workers make a large sacrifice of their own emotional stability and mental state. It is a LOT harder to do the humane thing and euthanize animals in the process of saving animals. It is a lot more painful emotionally for me then it is for the animals I've euthanized. At least I've tried to save them. I can't help it that no one came to adopt them. I bathed them, cleaned their kennels, fed them, washed their bedding and walked them. I posted their photos online and promoted them anyway I could. There comes a point where there is nothing more an animal shelter worker can do. From there, it depends on the local neighborhood to step up and choose to adopt and choose to neuter. The animal shelter worker always gets the blame when they're the ones stuck cleaning up after everyone else's irresponsibility. If people actually came in and adopted all of our healthy, well-adjusted pets we would actually have the time and resources to work on the other ones. As it stands, we kill plenty of healthy, happy, well adjusted pets and thus it doesn't make sense to spend resources on ones that aren't desirable to the average adopter.