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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Vet School Idea Deserves A Shot

Last year, the director of the Kootenai County Humane Society’s shelter killed an estimated 500 dogs himself. Some 2,000 cats were “put to sleep,” too.

Each of those animal deaths indicted irresponsible pet owners and was a waste - a waste of money spent euthanizing and disposing of the animals and a waste of an animal that could have benefited other pets.

Currently, shelter officials are weighing a Washington State University proposal that might help them out of a financial hole.

WSU wants to take animals marked for death and allow veterinary students to anesthetize them, practice surgical skills on them and then euthanize them.

The proposal has upset animal activists. Of course.

But we view it as an attempt to make the best of a bad situation - something similar to agreeing to donate the organs of a fatally injured loved one. No one wants to think that a former family pet is being used in medical training. But the bottom line here is that Spot is going to die - either in the animal shelter’s back room or under anesthesia on a teaching hospital’s operating table.

Animalkind as a whole will benefit if Spot goes to WSU, where students can learn to operate on live animals and become better vets when they enter practice. Said Sherron McKelvey, veterinarian at the Kootenai shelter: “There is positively no substitute for working on a real animal. I have heard a couple of real horror stories where new graduates (who haven’t worked on living animals) have just kind of panicked and fallen apart.”

Another hard fact to consider is that the Kootenai County Humane Society is about $16,000 in the hole. If the red ink continues, the shelter may need to cut back operating hours or consider keeping animals for a shorter time before killing them.

No one has talked about money yet - but WSU pays Spokane County Animal Control about $30 per dog for animal experiments.

Last year, the Spokane shelter received $8,042 for 212 dogs and 72 cats. The Kootenai shelter could continue to provide a full range of services if it had a similar financial arrangement or was provided with supplies instead of cash.

In a perfect world, animal shelters wouldn’t be needed. All pet owners would be responsible. They would neuter their dogs and cats, feed and train them properly, keep them in their yards.

But this isn’t a perfect world.

Unwanted animals are born every minute, taxing the ability of animal shelters to make ends meet. WSU’s proposal turns a negative into a positive by enabling the Kootenai County shelter to survive and by helping train veterinarians who someday will operate on wanted pets.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board