Animal shelters

An animal shelter or pound is a place where stray, lost, abandoned or surrendered animals, mostly dogs and cats, and sometimes sick or wounded wildlife are brought. While no-kill shelters exist, it is sometimes policy to euthanize sick animals, and any animal that is not claimed quickly enough by a previous or new owner. In Europe, of 30 countries included in a survey, all but four (Czech republic, Germany, Greece, and Italy) permitted the killing of healthy stray dogs. Critics believe the new term "animal shelter" is generally a euphemism for the older term "pound". The word "pound" had its origins in the animal pounds of agricultural communities, where stray livestock would be penned or impounded until claimed by their owners. Some shelters even have sick tropical animals.

In the United States there is no government-run organization that provides oversight or regulation of the various shelters on a national basis. However, many individual states do regulate shelters within their jurisdiction. One of the earliest comprehensive measures was the Georgia Animal Protection Act of 1986. The law was enacted in response to the inhumane treatment of companion animals by a pet store chain in Atlanta. The Act provided for the licensing and regulation of pet shops, stables, kennels, and animal shelters, and established, for the first time, minimum standards of care. The Georgia Department of Agriculture was tasked with licensing animal shelters and enforcing the new law through the Department's newly created Animal Protection Division. An additional provision, added in 1990, was the Humane Euthanasia Act, which was the first state law to mandate intravenous injection of sodium pentothal in place of gas chambers and other less humane methods. The law was further expanded and strengthened with the Animal Protection Act of 2000.

Currently it is estimated that there are approximately 5,000 independently run animal shelters operating nationwide. Shelters have redefined their role since the 1990s. No longer serving as an until-death repository for strays and drop-offs, modern shelters have taken the lead in controlling the pet population, promoting pet adoption, and studying shelter animals' health and behavior. Shelters, and shelter-like volunteer organizations, responded to cat overpopulation with trap-neuter-return (TNR) programs that reduced feral cat populations and reduced the burden on shelters.

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