Humans are territorial creatures. When a human loses their home, it is an extremely stressful experience, having potentially significant impacts on their health and behavior. Until they can find a new home, and see it as home, they will continually feel disconnected. Even “homeless” people (the term changes so frequently, what is used today will inevitably change again and again… so pick your favorite term) create makeshift housing… tents, lean-tos, occupying tunnels, making “forts”, and such. It isn’t just to stay out of the rain and sun. We need the security of a territory, or we do not operate correctly.
In similar ways, a dog needs a territory to operate correctly. When a dog is brought into a shelter, and put into a cage, that place will never be home. It is in an unquestionably stressful situation they can’t handle and can’t resolve. They can’t express normal behaviors, have no den, no place to safely eat and store (cache) their food, no safe place to sleep, no ability to explore their surroundings to establish the boundaries of their territory, no place to normally urinate (and deposit the necessary scent) or defecate, no ability to sufficiently play or move about, and lastly, they are forced into eating too near other unfamiliar animals which is also a major stress. It is made worse being surrounded and flooded by unfamiliar others, forced on them, and unable to establish a normal hierarchy and set of relationships. This is why a perfectly normal dog can go into a shelter system and not come out the same dog, even after only a few days. Shelters are manufacturing dogs to later be killed, and no spay and neuter program is going to solve the root causes of abandoned pets. New ways need to be implemented.
Animal sheltering is all wrong. Instead of building these giant monuments (shelters) to warehouse dogs, that money should instead be invested in foster home networks. I have proposed this multiple times, but the powers that be gain and maintain financial and social power by building, naming, and occupying these giant dog warehouses. We can’t keep forcing dogs to live according to our actograms, including our work hours, our habits, our rules, and for our convenience, and then proclaim we are doing a great job of providing for the welfare of these dogs. It doesn’t take an expert to know all these dogs are in trouble. Don’t tell me your organization is “no kill” if you operate this way. Instead you are “slow kill”.
Fostering takes more hands-on work, better management skills, better networking (technology and efforts and skills). It isn’t for the lazy types. Giant dog warehouses don’t require all of that. But what we are doing is why so many dogs become unadoptable, or are overlooked, by retaining the current system.
Plan accordingly.