Lisa Hutcheon has written a moving and accurate article on what it is like to lose all heart and hope when you are an animal abandoned at a "shelter".

A real "shelter" of course does not keep animals in such sterile, bleak, stressful cages and cells that they become sick in body and spirit and die.

A real shelter provides socializing and play and exercise, a home atmosphere and remedial programs that prevent death by despair or killing for being too sick or ruined to pass on.