From Caregiver To Executioner: Animal Euthanasia In The Borderland

The tan shepherd’s eyes light up as humans come toward his cage.

Instinctively, he rises to his feet – shaking from old age and severe arthritis – hoping the humans will offer a loving rub on the belly or a pat on the head.

He lumbers to his water bowl for a drink when the cage door is finally opened.

A shelter employee places a green leash around the 10-to-12-year-old dog and pats him on the back. A little wobbly on his feet, this is the last walk this old shepherd will take.

His tail wags as he strolls along, but the room he’s about to enter is not a happy place. It’s a small room that smells like disinfectants and death.

Curtis Herring takes out the pentobarbitol sodium, measures the fatal dose, shaves the shepherd’s leg and slowly lets the euthanasia solution travel in the dog’s veins.

Held only by a shelter employee, the shepherd shakes a little.

As the employee gently scratches the dog’s neck, the dog licks his lips one last time.

Then the shepherd slumps over.

In just twenty seconds another life is gone because there was no room for him at the shelter and his owner never picked him up. The nameless dog had been at the shelter for three days.

“It’s terrible that somebody has a dog for that long and then it come up missing and they don’t go looking for it,” said Herring, of the Animal Service Center of the Mesilla Valley in Las Cruces.

Herring has euthanized animals countless times at the shelter, but it is still painful for him to deal with.

“I’m not sure how or if I’m even dealing with it. Many days I do the same thing. I just lose it and go out back and I cry and I think that helps. Because it’s very heartbreaking to see them go to sleep when you know they just had a home several days ago. And I blame the people who own these animals who will not come up and look for them. I don’t know why they don’t,” Herring said.

According to the Humane Society of the United States, about six to eight million dogs and cats enter shelters nationwide every year and nearly half of those animals are euthanized.

Shelter officials said summertime is the busiest time for many shelters, including the Animal Service Center of the Mesilla Valley. Unfortunately, many of the animals don’t survive to see the fall.

On a hot summer day in Dona Ana County, 10 puppies were brought to Las Cruces Animal Control.

Officials there told ABC-7 a woman found the litter in a box at a park in Chaparral.

“She didn’t know where else to take them, so she brought them here to our office,” explained Las Cruces Animal Control officer Gino Jimenez.

He said he’s used to this routine. From the office, he took the shepherd-mixes to the Animal Service Center of the Mesilla Valley. Their future was uncertain.

“If you figure, there are 10 of them there and the rate of euthanasia in this community is so high, possibly six of them will be put to sleep,” said Jimenez.

“It’s very scary when they come in that young. We will try to keep them for as long as possible, but unfortunately, there can be a lot of disease brought into the shelter from other strays,” explained Curtis Herring.

Herring started working at the shelter four years ago when it was run by the Dona Ana County Humane Society.

He said back then he was euthanizing up to 80 dogs per day.

“If your time was up, you went down,” he said.

But that changed after Dr. Beth Vesco-Mock became director at the shelter two years ago. Her goal then – and still today – is to make the shelter a no-kill shelter.

“I know people have said I should never have that as a goal. I’m here to say, that as long as i’m living, that will always be my goal wherever I work,” she explained.

So far Dr. Vesco-Mock said she has brought the euthanasia rate down from 75 to 62 percent.

Thanks, in part, she said, to low-cost spay and neuter programs offered with the help of private veterinarians.

She’s also been to nearly every elementary school in Dona Ana County to teach the new generation all about pet commitment.

“It’s sort of like having a child. You are responsible, financially, for that child for the next 18 years. Doesn’t matter what comes along in your life, it’s your responsibility. Well, that’s how we should view our pets also,” Vesco-Mock said.

Vesco-Mock also lets Herring save everything he can, no matter what the species, including those hundreds of rats that were rounded up at a Las Cruces home in May.

“Everybody’s like, ‘euthanize those rats, don’t give them to these other rescues.’ But you’re not the one that has to sit there and stick the needle in these animals to put them down,” Herring said.

But Herring is.

“Some nights are very long,” he said.

Late in the afternoon, once the shelter is closed to the public Herring will have to choose between the sick, the violent, and the vulnerable. Which animal has the best chance to find a home and which one does not?

It’s at that point when animal caretakers like Herring turn into executioners.

“It’s not an easy task. The first thing I try to do is find the dogs that are sick or the dogs that are not adoptable behavior wise,” Herring said.

Then, there are the vulnerable ones, like the 10-puppy litter. Also, the sick, such as the tan shepherd.

One by one, euthanized animals in black trash bags are loaded on the bed of a truck. On this day, 60 animals.

“Again, there’s no room in the inn. So, this is what happens,” explained animal caregiver, Ed Warner. “Well, it’s hard. But it’s a part of life I guess.”

On the road to the dump, the bags flutter in the wind. The dirt mound seen in the distance.

“You’ve got to get a bond with them. Sometimes they’re only there 3 days, sometimes there a week or two, so they’re kind of like an extended family,” Warner said.

As a caregiver, Warner feeds the dogs every morning at the shelter.

He’s also the one who brings them to their final resting place, a dump 7 miles outside Las Cruces city limits.

In this group, there’s that old shepherd, who just a few hours ago had hope he’d find a forever home.

The animals bodies are mixed with the day’s trash. They are bulldozed, unwanted and discarded along with the other waste.

“I’ll say it again, it is very heartbreaking and the more I do it, the more it hurts. I thought the more I would do it, the easier it would get, but that’s not true. It seems to get harder on a daily basis because you want to save them all,” Herring said.

Veterinarian Dr. Bill Pearce said there is a way to do just that, make ‘no kill’ a priority.

“The public can demand that this program be put foremost. If the public wants it, you can institute one of many formulas there for having a no kill community,” Pearce said. “It’s within your grasp, but the public has to make it a priority.”

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