We often hear well-meaning people say: "I could never volunteer at an animal shelter, it's too depressing!"
The truth is that for some rabbits, a shelter is the first place they've heard a kind word, felt a caring touch and had a warm, dry place to sleep.
Here are some other common misconceptions about animal shelters.
| Misconceptions | Truths |
|---|---|
| Shelter animals have been surrendered because they're damaged goods. | Because of pet overpopulation, healthy purebred and mixed-breed animals are frequently surrendered at shelters. |
| Shelter animals are on "death row." | The adoption rates at animal shelters vary. Some are very low, but some are very high. |
| Shelter staff are heartless killers. | It takes great love for staff to care for the animals until the very end, whether the result is adoption or humane euthanasia. |
While we may not agree with all of their policies, we've chosen to support shelters because we believe that through cooperation, we can help increase the number of shelter rabbits adopted (thereby decreasing the number that are euthanized). In fact, since we've been working with the Seattle/King County Humane Society, the rabbit adoption rate has increased to 95-100%. Equally important, we also work to promote responsible pet ownership through outreach events and rabbit workshops in hopes of reducing the number of rabbits surrendered.
We call this our "leaky faucet" philosophy. Rescuing individual rabbits is like catching the drips. However, this is only a temporary solution, it doesn't fix the underlying problems that lead to rabbit overpopulation. It takes cooperation and education to fix the leak.
For more information about shelters, please see the following articles: