A few months ago, while scrolling through my newsfeed, I came across a picture of a group of heroes standing in front of a plane with puppies in their arms. Before I read the headline, I knew the story—another group of rescuers transporting pets to find them loving homes. I felt relief for the source shelter, and happiness for the destination about to receive these little beauties. When my eyes moved up to the headline to see where this took place, I felt immediate sadness. A major news network picked up the story and labeled the source shelter a “high kill shelter.”

We must do better for our municipal animal shelters. These shelters are forced to take every pet that comes to the door. While many are working hard on managed intake, at the end of the day, their role in the community is to take in homeless pets. The majority of them are functioning with limited resources and exhausted staff. Adoptions are slow, and pets keep coming through the door. They rely on the community to adopt, rescues to pull, and peer shelters to transfer pets, but sometimes it’s just not enough. They implement low-cost adoption fees, enroll in online adoption websites, talk to the local media, and share images of their pets on social media, with no stone left unturned. When none of these tactics work, they are forced to euthanize pets because more pets are coming through the door than space will safely allow.

Labeling a shelter as a “kill shelter” implies that the staff kills animals at will rather than euthanizing animals because they have no choice. This label creates a stigma we are desperately trying to eliminate. How can we ask people to visit their local animal shelter when it is referred to as a “high kill shelter”? The messaging drives the community away from the shelter, subsequently decreasing adoptions. At BISSELL Pet Foundation, we have witnessed the damaging effects of this label firsthand, including being denied corporate sponsorships because we assist “kill shelters.” Unfortunately, these are the shelters that need our support the most.

The buck stops with you, me, and everyone who cares about animal shelters. We all must stop accepting the “kill” label. Make the correction when you hear it: comment on social media posts and write to the media outlet that printed the wrong headline. Let them know that labeling our municipal shelters as “kill shelters” does not solve the problem of pet homelessness; it makes it worse. We need to explain that lifting up our shelters and driving the community to them are crucial to solving the problem.

You are the animal welfare professionals; your voice matters. The start of a new year is the perfect time to break the negative stigma and gain the community support this industry so desperately needs. Let’s do it together.

  Until every pet has a home,