By Debra J. White
Euthanasia duty rattled nearly everyone at the Colorado shelter where I volunteered in 1991. As a volunteer I wasn’t expected to participate but I watched the supervisors, Kathy and Leslie, compile the dreaded E-list every day. An ID card posted on each animal’s cage told their age, sex, if they were good with children, what kind of food they liked, etc. Supervisors scrawled a yellow “x” across the cards of the doomed. How did Kathy and Leslie decide who lived and who died? Sometimes the choice was obvious due to illness, injury, age, or bad temperament. On days when the shelter was full, gut-wrenching choices were tough to make. Healthy dogs and cats, including puppies and kittens, had to go, but which ones? The two-year-old dog with brown and white spots or the orange tabby with one eye? Kathy or Leslie made sensitive selections. Life was unfair but the shelter lacked the space and the resources to keep every unwanted animal alive. Euthanasia ripped me apart every time I saw a kennel worker lead a tail-wagging dog or carry a purring cat to the back room, the end of the line.
After each euthanasia session, Leslie barged through the back door to puff away. I once followed her.
“I thought you were trying to quit smoking,” I said, as I glanced at the mountains jutting up towards clear blue skies.
“I only smoke on days I work,” Leslie said, sucking hard on a Camel cigarette, then exhaling slowly.
“It’s stress,” I said, acting the role of social worker, yet I blinked back tears.
“I hate putting animals down, especially when there’s nothing wrong with them.”
“I couldn’t do it,” I said.
“I didn’t think I could either, but it’s better to be put down by someone like me than starve, get hit by a car, or live with a sadistic owner.”
I couldn’t argue with her.
Besides the unpleasant, emotionally agonizing task of destroying dogs and cats, body disposal ensued. The shelter operated a crematory, unlike other shelters that resorted to
landfills or rendering companies. Rendering companies bought shelter animals and unused parts of farm animals turning them into soap, fertilizer, and other by-products. Strict air pollution rules limited the number of days the shelter could fire up the big oven that generated plumes of thick, acrid smoke.
I’ll never forget the first time I participated in a burn. For safety, only a supervisor knew how to ignite the oven. Once it was hot enough, we removed the rock-hard bodies of dogs, cats, and sometimes small animals from the freezer where they had been stored. The crematory had an opening, sort of like a pizza oven. Obviously, we were careful because life-threatening burns or death would have resulted if we faltered.
One by one, we tossed the frozen bodies inside. When I saw favorite animals, solid and misshapen, my throat tightened. I fought back tears. The stench of burning flesh sickened me. Ron, the aging hippie, assured me I’d get used to it. I never did.
For a modest cost, the shelter performed private cremations for the public. Those animals were burned separately so their remains were not incinerated with the others. By the next day when the oven cooled, a kennel worker swept out the charred bones. Every now and then, the remains backed up, requiring a worker to slide in and unclog the machine. I absolutely refused to go inside the crematory, even if it was cool. Ron usually volunteered. The bleached bones were dumped into a plastic bag and thrown into the large trash receptacle. That was the end of our unwanted animals until the next cycle.
To prepare remains from private cremations, Julie, a front desk worker, devised a unique if weird method. Instead of pounding the brittle bones with a sledgehammer into a fine meal, she dumped them into a donated blender and ran it at a high speed. The finely ground bones were placed in a small tin, sealed with glue, and given to the bereaved pet owner with a condolence card. The blender was off limits for human use.
When I felt sad, I walked around the pet cemetery. Perhaps about one hundred pets were buried there, mostly dogs and cats. Some grave sites were plain and simple. Others were lavished with flowers, dog or cat toys, or plastic-encased photos. On days when lots of pets were surrendered for trivial reasons, I strolled through the cemetery. I smiled at the mementoes left behind by owners of treasured pets. I needed reinforcement that many dogs and cats were valuable parts of the family.
Euthanasia heaved significant mental health problems on shelter employees and volunteers. Although I didn’t participate, I closed my eyes to shield myself from the pain. Having to destroy a favored cat or dog rocked workers’ nerves. The sadness sometimes spilled over from the early morning, when the unwanted animals were killed, to later in the
day. To help us cope, the shelter manager invited a hospice worker to discuss the far-reaching impact of euthanasia. Volunteers were invited too.
Almost everyone attended the session, even front desk employees. They didn’t administer the fatal injections or take part in body disposal, but they saw the confused, pitiful faces of dogs and cats as they were handed over by owners who suddenly saw them as inconvenient or excess baggage from a divorce. Front desk workers dealt with an indifferent and sometimes hostile public because pet owners usually blamed the shelter for their lack of responsibility.
The hospice worker, a social worker like me, opened the discussion. “Does anyone want to talk about euthanizing animals?”
Kathy, the usually stoic kennel manager, responded. Her voice cracked right away.
“It’s never easy making up the E-list. How do I decide who lives and who dies? That’s part of my job that I hate.”
“That’s incredibly hard. Of course it’s upsetting to you,” the hospice lady said. “I’m glad you’re able to share that with us.”
The next sound was sniffling noses. We all glanced at one another with long gloomy faces. Someone passed around a tissue box and we dabbed our eyes.
I raised my hand. “I love being a volunteer, but when I see a dog or cat led to the back, I lose it. I know what’s about to happen.” And the floodgates opened. Tears poured down my cheeks. Then nearly everyone wept, even some of the guys shed tears. After a few minutes we got a grip.
“It’s obvious you all carry a huge burden,” the hospice worker said in a soothing manner.
“Dealing with this grief is tough because so few people share it.”
No kidding. It sapped my soul more than I thought, and I didn’t even participate in euthanasia. Imagine if I had?
A few employees vented bitterness at callous or abusive owners and the anguish they felt snuffing out the lives of healthy adoptable animals, especially puppies and kittens.
“It gets to me when they lick my face as I’m injecting them,” Kathy, the kennel manager said. “I brace myself for the tears but as supervisor, I don’t let them flow. I tell myself it has to be done and I do it.”
Kristin, a young lady at the front desk, often felt helpless when people relinquished dogs and cats for stupid reasons. “I feel like running outside and screaming at them, but I can’t. I have to act nice. On my drive home looking at the mountains, I sometimes cry.”
At the end of the meeting, a bunch of us hugged. I felt a bond with my colleagues, even though I was only a volunteer. I had no such camaraderie at my full-time job.
After making some calls, I discovered only a handful of experts specialized in the emotional treatment of animal shelter workers. Social work schools and psychology programs didn’t teach grief therapy for pet owners. When I was in school, nothing was mentioned about the emotional impact of euthanasia on animal shelter workers.
In bed that night, I saw a way to combine my social work background with my love for animals. I made an impromptu decision to quit my social work job and work full-time at the animal shelter as soon an opening arose. That would give me hands on experience euthanizing animals, although I dreaded the very idea. I had to know what employees really felt like. After about six months to a year, I planned to open a private practice and offer professional grief counseling to animal shelter workers. Maybe even go nationwide. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but I was on a roll.
A full-time job opened in early January, so I resigned from the hospital. I started on the Wednesday through Sunday shift from 7 am to 6 pm, with an hour for lunch and two fifteen-minute breaks. Part of me wondered if I had Play-Doh for a brain. I now worked twice as many hours for half the money. I saw a future for myself, though.
Nothing was different at the shelter except I would now participate in euthanasia. The back room, marked for authorized personnel only was the end of the line for unwanted animals. Inside the tiny, barren room there was a stainless steel table, a locked cabinet where the drugs were stored, and a small sink. The room was cold and sterile.
On my third day, Leslie, the assistant supervisor, said, “Watch how it’s done. I’ll expect you to take part next time. Remember, we only have euthanasia duty once a week, unless someone calls in sick or we get busy.”
I could barely move as Ron escorted the first victim inside. The tail-flapping dog, a large Dalmatian mix, would die because the shelter was filling up. We needed the space and this dog was there the longest.
“Watch Ron as he puts pressure on the dog’s front leg,” Leslie said as if giving directions for a cake recipe. “Then I’ll inject her.”
Usually good-natured and talkative, Ron remained quiet throughout the session. He did not look at me.
A lump clogged my throat. My hands were sweaty.
“When you ease the syringe into their veins, slide it out a little. If you draw blood, you’re in. Then inject all the pink juice,” Leslie said. “Be careful with cats. Their veins are smaller. They’re harder to handle. I had a hard time learning cats.”
Fatal-Plus, also known in shelter parlance as pink juice, was a barbiturate. Shelters injected just enough to stop the heart in about fifteen to twenty seconds. Two workers were needed for the process. One worker administered the drug while a second worker handled the animal.
I wanted to crouch behind Ron as the next dog entered the room, but I had to show Leslie I was brave. After three or four animals were euthanized then tossed into the freezer, I survived. As always, Leslie flew through the back door and smoked herself into oblivion for the next several minutes. I ducked into the bathroom, cried, then composed myself. I promised that Dalmatian mix I euthanized her life wouldn’t be in vain.
My social work practice never got off the ground. I could never talk about euthanasia without crying. Then a pedestrian car accident in 1994 ended my social work career due to significant brain trauma and other injuries. After a long recovery, I returned as an animal shelter volunteer. As a volunteer and writer, I spread kindness and caring about animals. I kept my promise to the first dog I euthanized.
Despite the decrease in euthanasia and an increase in adoptions at shelters, euthanasia remains a daily occurrence at a lot of shelters. Millions of dogs and cats are surrendered every year. There are not enough homes for them all. Employees go through the daily ritual of destroying the lives of dogs and cats, many of which are young and healthy. Their emotional anguish continues.