Types of Animal Shelters

When deciding what type of animal shelter you will open, there are a few to choose from: municipal animal shelters,"no-kill" shelters, sanctuaries, and animal rescue organizations. They each play an important role in helping animals. However, as you will see, they are each unique in their own ways and will determine what type of shelter you would want to open based upon their functions.

Municipal animal shelters are the "animal control" agencies. These agencies are set up by cities to provide services to the community, such as maintaining pet codes and offering spaying and neutering programs, as well as other benefits. However, they believe in humanely euthanizing animals. This is because they accept all animals that come to their door, unlike "no-kill shelters". "No-kill" shelters are able to provide a "no-kill" policy by limiting the number of animals they allow. By not euthanizing, they would become quickly over populated. So, both exist for good purposes of providing animals with a place to stay. Although the municipal does euthanize, it gives an opportunity for animals to stay for a chance at adoption or the claiming of a pet and to stay off of the streets where they could otherwise be harmed. At both of these organizations, animals are trying to be adopted to people. However, a sanctuary does not provide that service. Their main focus is taking care of animals that can not possibly find a home and need place to stay for the remainder of their lives. This could be due to medical, behavorial, or other issues. Still yet, there are animal rescue organizations. They specialize in finding animals homes as opposed to sheltering them. They will foster animals for a short period if needed. Also, they usually are focused on a specific breed of an animal as opposed to all dogs, cats, etc. As you can see, each of these organizations have extremely differing roles.

Deciding on what type of animal shelter you prefer to open is dependent of your values and goals. Each of these organizations plays a vital role in helping displaced animals have a home. Obviously, if you prefer to not euthanize an animal, a municipal shelter would not be for you. However, if you do not want to turn any animals away, then it would be. Deciding your goals of helping animals will allow you to choose which of these organizations would be best for you. No matter which one is chosen, they play a vital role in the community and all have benefits of helping animals find homes.

For related information and a more thorough analysis of these topics, check out the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_shelter