1000 Dogs Are Put Down Every Day but These Trainers Aren’t Taking It

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The ASPCA promotes animal welfare in a wide range of ways. To name an example, it runs the Behavioral Rehabilitation Center For Cruelty Victims. This is exactly what it sounds like, which is to say, a place that specializes in rehabilitating dogs that have been so traumatized that they have either no or next-to-no chance of being adopted. Apparently, the Behavorial Rehabilitation Center For Cruelty Victims was the first facility of its kind to exist, so it is no exaggeration to say that it is a pioneer in this regard. As such, it is no wonder that it has just received a fair amount of recognition in the form of Rolling Stone coverage.

In any case, the Behavioral Rehabilitation Center For Cruelty Victims started out as a pilot program in 2013. It proved to be successful, as shown by how it managed to rehabilitate 237 dogs over the course of four years. Due to that, the ASPCA made it permanent. Nowadays, the Behavioral Rehabilitation Center For Cruelty Victims is housed in a Weaverville, NC facility that can house a maximum of 65 dogs at any one time. There are various training spaces, with examples ranging from an indoor training area to so-called “real-life rooms” that are meant to help the dogs become more accustomed to home environments. Furthermore, the facility has online resources as well as an on-site training program that are meant to pass its accumulated knowledge on to other interested parties, which promises to be even more critical in the long run. After all, there are serious limits to the number of dogs that the Behavioral Rehabilitation Center For Cruelty Victims that can help at any one time. Something that is far exceeded by the number of traumatized dogs out there. However, the more animal welfare organizations that can acquire such capabilities, the more dogs that can be helped out. This is particularly true because those animal welfare organizations can go on to teach that accumulated knowledge in turn.

Why Is It So Important?

The Behavioral Rehabilitation Center For Cruelty Victims is helping out dogs that a lot of people would see as being at very high risk of being victimized twice over. For starters, traumatized dogs aren’t just traumatized dogs from the very start. Instead, they become so by suffering very poor treatment. Something that often makes traumatized dogs either afraid, aggressive, or otherwise problematic in the presence of humans. As a result, when they are sent to animal shelters as well as other animal welfare organizations, they tend to have lower chances of being adopted. Traumatized dogs can get food, healthcare, and the other necessities of life. Unfortunately, trauma doesn’t just go away like that, meaning that the effects of trauma will continue to manifest themselves. As such, it isn’t uncommon for traumatized dogs to wind up being euthanized. Something that a lot of people see as being very unfair to them for very understandable reasons.

Of course, animal shelters tend to be unhappy about this kind of thing. After all, the overwhelming majority of them exist for the purpose of helping animals. Sadly, animal shelters are working with limited resources, meaning that the euthanization of animals is something that they tend to see as the best option out of a bad lot rather than something that they want to do. Sometimes, a transmissible disease has managed to get in. It is easy to prevent its spread when the sick animal is living in a one-animal household. The issue is that preventing its spread is less easy when the sick animal is living in close proximity to other animals, so much so that even trying to do so will exceed the animal shelter’s budget. Other times, there are just too many animals for the animal shelter to handle. This is particularly common during times when animals are breeding more. To name an example, animal shelters are infamous for being overburdened during kitten season, which starts up in the early spring and can continue until quite late in the year.

Animal shelters and other animal welfare organizations have been using a wide range of methods to reduce the number of animals that are being euthanized. Rehabilitating traumatized dogs is one example. If a dog is too traumatized to be adoptable, then helping them overcome the effects of their trauma is a good way to resolve the issue. However, there are numerous other methods being used towards the same end. For example, animal welfare organizations are working to encourage pet owners to spay and neuter their pets. Simultaneously, animal welfare organizations are working to spay and neuter stray animals before releasing them into the wild. Both of these methods serve to reduce the number of stray animals that can be found out there, which in turn, reduces the strain that is placed upon them. On the whole, animal welfare organizations have been making progress. The euthanization of animals is still happening. However, it is happening at a reduced rate when compared with past decades. In other words, progress is being made, though much progress remains to be made.

Why Does Animal Cruelty Happen Anyway?

Speaking of which, animal welfare organizations also often take the initiative when it comes to combating animal cruelty. Often-times, this happens because animal cruelty cases are less of a priority for the police, meaning that someone else needs to step up if they want surer results. Unfortunately, animal cruelty is a multi-faceted issue, meaning that it doesn’t have a simple and straightforward solution anymore than the euthanization of excess animals does. In some cases, it is very much intentional. Perhaps someone wants to either shock, offend, or even intimidate other people. Alternatively, perhaps someone wants to flout the rules of society. In other cases, the same kind of intent isn’t there, though the relevant actions result in trauma nonetheless. For instance, animal hoarders do an enormous amount of damage to their animals’ physical wellbeing and mental wellbeing. Despite that, the people who do such things often delude themselves into thinking that they are doing nothing wrong. In fact, they often delude themselves into thinking that they are the ones who are looking out for their animals’ wellbeing. Summed up, these issues are complicated, but there are nonetheless a lot of people out there who are willing to dedicate serious time, effort, and other resources into overcoming them.