Real animal lovers wouldn't put Carol Pilkonis's shoes on, much less walk a dog to its death in them, just because no one wanted it.

Pilkonis's letter is an example of the mental gymnastics that must be performed by those in the pet disposal business. There are two wrongs that this business are built on - easy pet abandonment and killing as a solution. But everyone in this business has twisted their dirty work so that they are never to blame - in fact, we are all supposed to feel sorry for them.

Two wrongs will not ever make a right - two wrongs only make a greater evil.

Everyone who participates in this evil, every organization that takes more surrendered animals than it has the resources of money, staff, and physically, socially, and mentally healthy space for, and kills a single animal as a consequence, is lying if it claims to be doing animal welfare or sheltering.

To make this worse - the Nanaimo pound does not even have to take owner surrendered animals - that is just a side-line to its only legal mandate to protect citizens from the danger of stray and/or dangerous dogs. If the City of Nanaimo now requires its dog control agency to take surrendered dogs, that is outside its only legal obligation.

It is easy surrender that is the root cause of the evil of killing the unwanted, but money can, and is, made from the system of free product (surrendered pets) being resold if there is a buyer and killed if there isn't. Every agency that practices unlimited surrender is guilty of not only perpetuating and encouraging this evil, but of profitting from it. Until more animal lovers understand this, and stop excusing it, and insist on humane solutions to the too-easy breeding and owning of animals, this evil business will continue to thrive.