Well, here's the stupidest way ever not to fund a shelter.

[LeftyMom]

http://www.helena-arkansas.com/news/x441908968/Mayor-turns-dogs-loose-Freed-in-the-St-Francis-Forest

Helena-West Helena, Ark. -

Faced with continuing problems at the city street department shop at the temporary shelters where captured animals are housed, Helena-West Helena Mayor James Valley Wednesday ordered all but three animals contained in kennels released into the St. Francis National Forest.
The city does not plan to house any more animals at the facilities.
“In the mean time, we are (in the process of) or have released all but a few our those animals heretofore housed at the sanitation shop. We fed and watered them and took them to the St. Francis National Forest and released them to freedom. We are disassembling the pens or fences and will not any longer house or keep any of these animals,” stated a press release issued via email by Valley.
...
Two puppies and one adult dog with mange was picked-up by the Humane Society from the city confined area.
“This problem is dogging us and taking away from our ability to focus on the greater good for the community as a whole. One of our animal control officers has been to the hospital three times in as many months. Twice for bites and once for a severely sprained ankle growing out of incidents with these animals,” said Valley in the e-mail.
Valley said that in the future, when the city receives a complaint about a stray, the city would capture the animal and then release them “away from the complaining person.”

[flvegan]

1. Hmmm...where I live, domestic animal abandonment is a felony.

It seems they aren't even trying to find their proper homes. Nor are they performing any sort of spay/neuter before they release them? Stupid.

[LeftyMom]

2. Active animal cruelty isn't even a felony in Arkansas.

There was a bill, but it didn't pass because people objected to the felony charge being an option for the first offense (apparently beating your dog once might be an accident or some stupid shit like that) and new bills are expected in the next legislative session, one that only allows felony charges for repeat offenders, and one that allows felony charges for the first offense, but only for cats, dogs and horses.

[Coyote_Bandit]

3. To put this in perspective

Helena-West Helena is home to just over 15,000 people. It is the county seat and largest city within Phillips County, Arkansas. There were 26,445 people, 9,711 households, and 6,768 families residing in the county according to the 2000 census.

According to Wikipedia:
"The median income for a household in the county was $22,231, and the median income for a family was $26,570. Males had a median income of $24,675 versus $17,520 for females. The per capita income for the county was $12,288. About 28.70% of families and 32.70% of the population were below the poverty line, including 45.50% of those under age 18 and 26.20% of those age 65 or over."

In terms of median income Phillips county Arkansas is among the 100 poorest counties in the entire United States. And it just misses the cut when the measure is per capita income.

These are largely poor people who are barely surviving. One third of the population is below the poverty line. One half of all households have annual earnings below $22,231.

[LeftyMom]

4. Poverty is not an excuse for animal neglect and abandonment.

Were other options pursued? How many nearby facilities were asked to take the dogs? How many regional or national organizations were asked to help by either helping the county to provide care or arranging alternate placement for the dogs? Did anybody spend any time at all looking for a safer and more humane alternative than dumping dogs in the woods, where they'll almost certainly die?

Apparently the local humane society is in the process of building an alternative shelter, and had criticized the county for animal mistreatment, so rather than fix conditions or wait and turn the animals over to the humane society shelter when it was ready, they dumped the dogs (some of whom were in poor health, at least one reported to be mangy) in the woods in order to end the criticism.

Now other than the obvious animal cruelty issue, stray dogs are also a threat to public health, particularly in areas where they will have lots of access to potentially rabid wild animals. If the county could no longer provide care or could not upgrade care to minimum humane standards, the animals should have been adopted out, transfered to another facility or to private rescue operations, or in the worst case scenario humanely euthanized. Abandonment of domesticated animals is illegal in most places for a reason, and is never an acceptable or humane option.

Kindly read the sticky and stop defending animal abuse in this group.

[Coyote_Bandit]

5. I am offering

one explanation for why the folks in the little town cannot extend the same rescue efforts that are available in large more prosperous cities and towns.

I do not believe I live in a black and white world. I think there are many shades of grey. I would judge these folks far more harshly if they had more resources. But likely many of them are foregoing basic necessities for themselves and their children and their elderly parents.

These poor folks don't operate a kill shelter. Which IMHO puts them a step ahead of some of the more prosperous citizens in our country. These folks at least took the animals to a remote area and turned them lose and gave them an opportunity to fend for themselves. While that certainly is not optimal it is better than being put down without such an opportunity.

Thank you (NOT!) for attributing motives that were not present. You can disagree without distorting what was said.

[LeftyMom]

6. Dumping them in the woods is killing them slowly. Dogs are domesticated animals.

Even if they were all healthy (and they were not) few would be able to find enough food to survive, and most of those would quickly die of exposure or disease. It is quite unlikely that any of those dogs will survive the winter, assuming any make it that long, without human intervention.

Further, I said only that euthanasia was a better worst case scenario than abandonment, obviously (and as I stated) the only acceptable option would be to find another placement, or to make arrangements to continue care.

[flvegan]

7. I have to interject on one point.

Suggesting that one org that operates a limited intake shelter puts them ahead of an open-intake shelter is absolute bullshit.

8 million animals enter the system, 5 million get killed. Somebody, somewhere pushes that needle.

We ALL carry that burden, regardless of the flag we wave in this. No-kill, right now, as much as it pains me is an absolute fucking farce. A divisive, fundraising, finger-pointing fucking farce.

That's what I took from your third paragraph, and if I'm way off base, then I apologize for what I've said.

[Tumbulu]

8. boy this brought back memories

When I was a small child (late 50's early 60's my family lived in the country near a large city. My grand aunt lived up the hill. She was in her late 70's. She loved animals and this is what she used to do.

Starting first thing in the morning she would start cooking these huge pots of food. She bought meat by the whole and unfroze some every day to cook up. Plus she added grains and beans, I think. All day she would cook and stir and I got to help. In fact this was my favorite thing to do- go help cook all the dog and cat food.

Then in the afternoon she would have me put all the dishes out. And we would fill them up and set them out.

Then she would call out : "Here puttawootas, here doggies" and they would come. It seemed to me as though hundreds of animals came out of the woods and peacefully ate this food (although I recently heard from an older relative that it was something like ~40 cats and 30+ dogs) that my grand aunt cooked up every day. And never was there a fight. They would eat and then disappear back into the woods.

In those days there were not animal shelters and people used to drive out to the country and dump their pets to fend for themselves ( I live in the country now and it still happens damn it!, just not as much).

So, this is what she did in her years of retirement. I loved her dearly.