Real Animal Welfare groups tend to take only the medically and behaviourally unsound and rehabilitate. The SPCA's thoughts on this are well illustrated in the following interview.

From a C-FAX radio July 3rd, 2006 interview with Penny Stone by Stephen Andrew: transcribed from tape;

P.S. "No kill is a fallacy. A few years back we did say we were going to be no kill, and the problem with that you get the animals in… that you’re being cruel to keep them alive."

S.A. "Explain?"

P.S. "We accept in all animals, so it’s really hard. A lot of the no kill shelters will not take in animals unless they are medically and behaviourally sound. So it’s okay to be a no kill if you don’t take everything in, but the problem is then you miss taking in the animals who really, really need you. So we do take in a lot of animals that occasion that we will have to euthanize one or two of them, a case in point last week we had to euthanize a dog and it was very, very difficult for our staff and for all of us but it was a dog that probably would never be able to be adopted out, a very, very unpredictable angry dog, very sick, we did all the medical stuff with him, he started to show this very angry personality we had to make the very sad decision to euthanize him, and its very, very difficult but if we hadn’t made that decision to take that dog in where would he be would he have been let go or just passed around from people to people? We get cats in that have been hit by cars in such bad shape that to keep them alive, they’ll never be able to go to the bathroom properly then we do make the decision to euthanize.

"Or once in a while we’ll get a feral cat and we can’t find a foster home and it’s throwing itself up against the bars of the cage and its not fair. We have to think of the animals best interest it’s never about what’s easier for us, it’s always about what’s best for the animals. "

Comment:

Death of a healthy animal is NEVER best for the animal.