Disposal

By far, the most devastating "disease" in pets is euthanasia. It's an epidemic of biblical proportions. A veterinarian often becomes a kind of a death specialist.

Euthanasia, by definition, is the bringing about of a gentle and easy death in the case of an incurable and painful disease. But the afflictions of most animals that are put down are neither incurable nor painful. Euthanasia is in most cases a euphemism for the disposal of an unwanted pet.

If people have no money, if a couple breaks up, if someone moves, or if someone is tired of his pet or not satisfied for whatever reason, he can very well ask his vet to destroy it and dispose of it like everything else we consume.
The owner has complete control over the life and death of his animal, and many people exercise it. Most people keep their pets for an average of two years, and about 70 per cent of owners eventually abandon their animals. Only 5 per cent of the general population of cats and dogs reach the equivalent of 65 human years. The claim that animal longevity keeps on improving is totally bogus, a well-planned marketing scheme from a very ruthless industry.

In the United States, supposedly one of the most animal-loving nations on earth, at least 10 million dogs and cats are destroyed each year in shelters and pounds. And this number can easily be tripled if you add on horses used for pleasure, exotic animals and pets destroyed in veterinary clinics and hospitals. Quebec, with a human population of 6 million, puts down 500,000 dogs and cats a year – one of the highest euthanasia rates in North America, rivalling that of Alabama and Tennessee - two states that provide small, medium and large sized disposable bins where you can throw away your unwanted, live pet.

Various methods are used to destroy unwanted pets. Decompression chambers and carbon-monoxide poisoning are common. Some pounds, like the one in Drummondville, hose down the animals with water and then electrocute them. In Mirabel they just shoot them with a rifle. At a pound in Saint-Hyacinthe (now closed), staff used to knock their victims over the head with a sledge hammer and drop them half dead into a lime pit - and this went on for years within shouting distance of the province's veterinary college. A few pets find a more humane death by injection of a lethal dose of a quick-acting barbiturate.
The bodies - and there are enough every year in Canada and the U.S. to fill the Titanic eight times over - are thrown into public dumps or are recycled as compost, fertilizers and animal feed. A small minority is incinerated.