The SPCA kills demonstration dogs and cats when its Chief Animal Health Officer trains SPCA employees in killing animals. (Killing healthy animals is not "euthanasia" and though it may not entail physical suffering on the part of the doomed animal, killing helpless pets -- in lieu of other solutions-- is not most people's definition of humane, not when this is explained to them.)

This cheap in-house killing of animals by staff has been going on for a long time. Some of the trainees have been so upset by having to participate in the killing of cats and dogs that they were "caring for" during work hours that the SPCA has, on occasion, offered the management of a local pound to train its employees for free in exchange for using pound cats and dogs. The idea is that the SPCA trainees then won't be upset because they are not learning to kill on their "own" animals.

Aside from the stomach-churning image of a lot of trainees huddled around a terrified pet that was surrendered by someone to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, learning how to kill it, this is not, in our opinion, appropriate "education" for an animal welfare society. Nor in our opinion, is it real animal welfare no matter how it is spinned. Taking in more animals than you know there are homes for and killing the excess is a pest disposal business, not real animal welfare.