Montgomery County Animal Care Kills Healthy, Adoptable Dogs

If you surrender a dog to the Montgomery County Animal Care and Control in Clarksville, Tennessee and they happen to look like one of the following breeds, consider that a dead dog walking:
* Pit Bull
* Akita
* Chow Chow
* Malamute
* Shar-Pei

The Montgomery shelter will consider Rottweilers and German Shepherds for adoption on a case by case basis, none are currently offered for adoption on their petfinder page.

A woman in Montgomery County found this out the hard way. She rescued a stray Pit Bull. The dog was friendly, but she was unsuccessful in finding a home for the dog. After two weeks, she brought the dog to the shelter where she was told the dog would possibly be placed.

Instead the dog was killed. It is the policy of Montgomery County Animal Care to kill dogs based on look, not behavior.

I like mission statements. They encompass the core values of an organization. Ideally, every municipal and non-profit entity should have one and should adhere to it.

Montgomery County Department of Animal Care includes this statement as part of their mission: "Promoting animal placements by increasing animal adoptions." and "To promote and enforce the humane treatment of the animal population."

In my mind, placing animals increases animal adoptions. Killing them based on physical structure alone does not.

Policies that end the lives of perfectly healthy, adoptable, temperamentally sound animals are bad ones. They have no place in a humane society. Either the shelter should change it's policy to better reflect it's discriminatory, dog-killing one or they should start considering the placement of dogs with wrinkles, sled dogs, dog with floofy hair, and dogs with mushy heads. I prefer the latter. The dogs probably do too. Every dog deserves a chance at a permanent home. Every dog.