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Recent media reports about the Fresno Animal Center in California include one describing the experience of a resident who found an apparently ill, pregnant dog. According to the report, “Upon arriving at the Fresno Animal Center, [the resident] says she was told that they could not take the dog unless the dog was injured. [The resident] alleges that the employee told her to leave the dog where she found [the animal] and not look back.” A former mayor of the city recently recounted being given the same outrageous instructions after he found two lost or homeless dogs: “Just take [them] to where you picked [them] up and drop [them] off,” he was told. And a shelter worker was recently filmed abandoning a large, panting dog on a city street during dangerously hot weather.
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Turning away animals from a public shelter is a dereliction of duty and a betrayal of human residents and animals alike. When shelters stop sheltering animals, more are born into homelessness and more are neglected or cruelly killed by people who can’t—or won’t—care for them any longer. Animals rejected by shelters don’t vanish or magically find refuge elsewhere. They’re often dumped by the roadside, where they’re at risk of being run over and dying alone and in pain; abandoned to starve to death when their owners move, are evicted, or are hospitalized; or killed in other horrific ways. There are hundreds of disturbing documented examples, including the following: In Las Vegas, three dogs were abandoned in the parking lot of a publicly funded animal shelter after it refused to accept them. One dog was run over and was so badly injured that euthanasia was required. In Louisiana, after a publicly funded facility refused to accept a dog, the animal was abandoned in a crate behind a levee on a hot day and died.
Turning away even one unsterilized animal from a shelter can result in the births of thousands more unwanted and homeless animals. Please contact Fresno’s elected officials today and ask them to require that the city shelter accept all companion animals in order to help prevent animal abandonment and suffering and to ensure that the city doesn’t contribute to the homeless-animal overpopulation crisis.