Dear Editor:
Imagine walking through an animal shelter the cats and dogs are begging you to get them out, they're barking and meowing. You stop in front of one of the tiny cages, there's a big brown dog that has missing patches of fur covered in scars and bruises from slamming its body against the cage repeatedly. Animal shelters should be able to euthanize some of the animals. The animals go insane, they get overpopulated and they get dangerous. Have you ever heard of self-harm? People are trying to stop that, but they're ignoring animals self-harm. Why?

The poor animals go insane after being closed up in a small cage for long period of time or as some people call it "warehoused". According to PETA (an animal shelter), a staffer saw a pit-bull who had stayed in his cage for 12 years and he spent his whole day slamming his body against the cage door. The workers were too afraid to handle the poor dog. The cages are really small and it's not fair for the animals to only be able to get out of that prison a couple time a week. I know you're thinking why can't they just not have cages? I wish. But it's not that simple, cage less facilities encourage fighting and the animals are more likely to spread diseases. If some of the really old, sick animals were to be put out of misery than the other animals would be able to have bigger cages, and have the privilege to be sane. Think about it; imagine you were thrown into a small prison cell, less than 4 times the size of your body. And you had to live in that your whole life! The cell barely had anything. And you haven't done anything wrong, would you rather get a small shot and die quietly and painlessly or have to live through things worse than death? The helpless animal go literally insane after being closed up.

Another issue is that the shelters get overpopulated. Owners try to get rid of their animal by giving them to the shelters, and the shelters often find themselves filled to capacity. This overpopulation often leads to smaller cages or even worse some of the animals are dumped on the roadside to freeze and starve to death. The animals don't deserve to be treated this way. This shows that if some of the animals would get euthanized then the other animals would get more room and they wouldn't get kicked out of the shelter and die a far more horrifying death a than a small shot. The animals would be happier if some were euthanized. If we do not allow this then there will be too many animals and the shelters will get overpopulated.

Also the animals get very dangerous, especially the dogs. Each year there are 4.7 million dog bites in the U.S. Most of those are the insane ones. The dogs in the shelters get depressed which leads to aggression and that leads to dog bites. Of course the workers in the shelters have to take care of the dogs, so they get bitten. It's not the poor dogs' fault, the dogs probably don't mean it, I mean what do you expect? They're insane. This shows that if some were euthanized then it would help us too, not just them. We would have less dog bites throughout the year. And again it's better to die a painless death than to suffer for a long time. Therefore the animals deserve a happy life but in the shelters they don't get one.

The animals should be able to get euthanized. If we do not allow this, animals will continue to suffer, there will be animal overpopulation and there will be more and more dog bites each year. Animals should be treated the way we want to get treated. We can't just lock them up. Think of the adorable animals, I want them to be happy. It's not so horrifying to put an animal down, you never know, some people believe that cats have 9 lives! I have a cat and if he deserves a happy life then all animals do.

Sincerely,
Salome Demurger
6th grade, Madison Middle School