"Wendy" wrote in message news:S9idnSXf49-
group. We do adoptions from a Pet Smart store on Saturdays. Last weekend
we
had a man bring us a kitten who was obviously on death's door. It appeared
to have injested some type of poison and was having convultions. It was
beyond helping so one of our volunteers took the kitten to the local SPCA
to
get it euthanized. When she arrived there the person at the shelter told
her
they couldn't help us because they didn't have room.

I have to ask. When confronted with this problem, why did *you* not force
yourself to take action? You had a kitten that was obviously in great
distress, you knew it had to be put down and you couldn't immediately find a
vet to do it. All the time and effort you spent trying to do the right thing
and the kitten was suffering. A few seconds of submerging it in a sink and
it's agony would have been over. Relatively quick and painless. That takes
real guts and real love of animals, putting an animal down that you care
for.

I had to do that once to a dog I owned after she got run over by a car. The
way her guts were splayed out on the road and she was still alive yelping in
agony, all I could do was run to get a tire iron and crush her skull. Then I
buried her in my backyard garden. I cried for over a week and it was the
hardest thing I've ever had to do, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

I still cry sometimes when I think of what I had to do, but I know that
under the same circumstances, I'd do it again. Putting aside society's laws
for a moment, if the situation was reversed, I'd want someone to do the same
thing for me. That was the only way I could rationalize myself into doing
what I knew I had to do.