Give Them Shelter
If you have a pet at home, there’s a good chance it came from an animal shelter.
Animal shelters care for millions of abandoned or injured dogs and cats each year. There are about 5,000 animal shelters in the United States.
What is a shelter?
Most shelters are places that care for animals for a short while. Few can care for animals for the rest of their natural lives. Shelters care for the animals while workers search for good homes for them. They find homes for millions of animals every year.
Dogs and cats are the main animals in shelters. However, they also care for many other animals people have as pets. Sometimes wild animals end up in shelters, too.
What do shelters do?
Shelters take in abandoned or injured animals. Often they care for lost or stray dogs and cats until their owners claim them.
Animal control officers also rescue animals from situations where the animals are being treated cruelly. Animals that have been pets don’t do well on their own. Shelters look after these animals.
Shelters provide food, water, housing and medical care. Workers pet and play with the animals.
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Mini Fact:
Animal shelters take in many kinds of animals, including guinea pigs, lizards, ferrets and snakes.
Spaying and neutering
Experts say the most important thing people can do to help their pets is to get them spayed or neutered. This means the animals get an operation to be sure they can’t have kittens or puppies. They are asleep during the operation, so they aren’t scared or in pain.
Spaying and neutering are important because there are so many animals needing care and not enough homes or shelters for them. One cat or dog can have many litters in its life. Its kittens or puppies can have many litters, too. This can end up creating thousands of new cats and dogs.
Good homes needed!
Unfortunately, shelters cannot care for all the hurt or abandoned animals that come through their doors. Experts say that from 6 to 8 million dogs and cats are brought into shelters in America each year. About half of those are euthanized (YOU-thuh-NIZD), or painlessly killed.