Please help dog and cat overpopulation by spaying and neutering and don’t ever buy from a breeder!

Remember how your mother explained to you when you were a child what happens when an animal has to be ‘put down’ at an animal shelter? I’m sure most of you still have the image of a single animal, a cat or a dog, being gently place onto a metal table in an all white room, while a nurse injects it with a lethal poison (that will, of course, put it out of its misery quickly and painlessly) while a tear rolls down her cheek. Well, my friends, this is not how euthanasia in animal shelters really works (it is in animal hospitals, where you’ve probably had a beloved family pet put to sleep before). The animals are rounded up and placed inside of a chamber like the one above. The chamber is crammed full of dogs and cats that need to be put down before the gas is administered.

Even the “best” gas boxes can expose conscious animals to the horror of watching other animals in the box suffer from convulsions and muscular spasms as they slowly die. Old, young, and sick animals are particularly susceptible to gas-related trauma and will die slow and highly stressful deaths.

And as hard as it is to believe, there are still facilities in the U.S. that kill animals using painful electrocution or cruel decompression chambers, which make the gases in animals’ sinuses, middle ears, and intestines expand quickly, causing considerable discomfort or severe pain. Some animals survive the first go-around in decompression chambers and are recompressed because of malfunctioning equipment or an operator’s mistake or because they get trapped in air pockets. They are then put through the painful procedure all over again.

-peta.org