Tagged: Animal Care Services

More than 100,000  cats and dogs are euthanized every year in Texas shelters. Euthanasia by carbon monoxide – essentially a gas chamber –  is still common practice in nearly 30 shelters.  

Within the last five years, almost 30 Texas cities banned gas chambers, switching from carbon monoxide to lethal injection. Pennsylvania and Louisiana banned gas chambers statewide last year.

Drummers and dancers dressed in brightly-colored costumes from the percussion and dance company, Samba Vida, helped celebrate an accomplishment never before achieved by San Antonio’s Animal Care Services.

The award for saving 1,384 more dogs and cats than the same three months in 2011 – August, September, and October – garnered the shelter a $100,000 prize.

But the real prize, said ACS Director Kathy Davis, is the animals that are happy and healthy today because of the community’s efforts to choose adoption.

Thirty percent of the rescued animals in San Antonio have health issues or injuries. Because of this, medical fosters are a growing need on the road to San Antonio’s “No-Kill” objective.

At the City’s Animal Care Services facility that are used by San Antonio Pets Alive! to pull dogs off the kill list, Lynn Walker points to a dozen or so kennels. 

"Every dog you see here has been on the euthanasia list," she says.