One of the lines from this film that caught our attention was the pound employee answering the confused young woman who said, "I thought you were no-kill", with the standard exoneration: "Even the ones that say no-kill, they just refuse to take in the animal and then it goes to a kill shelter."

The SPCA itself used to give this same answer when the media asked why the SPCA was still killing so many animals when other humane societies weren't.

The really interesting thing about that answer was that it was not only given in response to the growing interest in alternative groups, but in response to pounds that were doing a better job of animal welfare than the SPCA was!

We've never before actually heard the interesting term "kill shelter". A kill shelter is a logical impossibility, as you can't both shelter and kill, though a lack of logical intelligence is no surprise as no one has ever suggested that the people who kill animals for a living are terribly bright, at least not the ones at the bottom of the pound industry. The ones at the top, the management, and if it is a "humane" society, the members of the board of directors, can and do make the practical and rational decision to kill animals that Jim Miller defends in his post (below).

From today's Globe and Mail's "Social Studies": "We are unable to distinguish right from wrong," writes Roger Highfield in the Daily Telegraph, "if we rely on pure logic alone, according to a study that shows how morality is based on feelings."

Killing unwanted pets is practical as Mr Miller asserts - and it is logical too - but it is not right and it is not animal welfare.