Across the U.S., the typical "Humane Society" or SPCA building remains an ugly wreck located in a depressing and trash-strewn part of town. The employees there are so over-worked and underfunded, that it's all they can do to keep the killing machine going full-bore.
But they manage.
Poor infrastructure and poverty-level funding are a commonality to animal shelters across the country. This is what you get when you make a pact with City Government to become a municipality's dog-and cat-killing machine.
Municipalities know that after years of dependency on government funds, most SPCA and Humane Society shelters are in no position to turn down low-ball contract offers.
And since the shelters are located in out-of-the-way locations, and have no constituency (because most do very little outreach to the community), they are in no position to bargain or raise a stink.
This is the death business, not the adoption or pet-placement business.
Out of sight is out of mind. The goal of these shelters is simple cost-effective efficiency.
And nothing is as cost-effective or as efficient as disposing of an animal in a gas chamber or with a killing overdose of drugs.
Absolutely nothing.
If you are a parent looking for a dog for, and with, your kids, dog shelters are awkward places where you are being asked to pick one dog, right now, who will live, even as you walk away from 100 other dogs who will likely be dead in a week.
Who wants to subject themselves, or their kids, to that kind of "Sophie's Choice"?
Not many.
And so, even as dogs are being killed down at the shelter, folks looking for mere companions and pets are perusing the listing for home-whelped puppies for sale being sold on the internet or in an ad at the back of the local newspaper.
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