by Lucy Riquardo

Created on: December 10, 2008

So you want to start an animal shelter? You'll save adorable, wide-eyed orange kitties with fuzzy white paws that are being fed to wild animals by laughing zookeepers. You'll rescue crippled dogs who crawl toward their food, only to have it yanked away by maniacal sadists who want to eat that dog chow themselves. More importantly, you'll stop soft-bodied animals from being smashed to smithereens on the nation's highways by ignorant, fast-driving morons in SUVs. Good for you!

Why rescue animals? Because there are just too darned many of them, and they're expensive to kill. That mother dog who is giving birth in your garage right now, so your children can experience the "miracle of life," will have litter after litter, flaunting her tail all over the neighborhood, welcoming mutts and currs as well as purebred German Shepherds with monocles and foreign accents. And all of them will get her pregnant! In a year's time, one female dog can produce more than 100,000 puppies, and many of them will NOT be German Shepherds! Something must be done.

Start a shelter as soon as you can:

* Keep strays from facing horrific death in the animal pounds, where dogs are shaved without anesthetic and then forced into a machine that tweezes the remaining fur from their little screaming bodies.

* Prevent young, innocent dogs from being sold on the black market to people who use them for alternative lifestyle activities.

* Rescue dogs and cats who have been on the black market a while, because they have a hard time reintegrating into normal society and might turn to a life of crime.

I started a shelter once. It was in
Central Illinois, where some backwoods people actually still eat dogs and cats the way the rest of the world eats pigs and cows. I made it my life's work to rescue these animals from cooking pots and refrigerators all over town, and then keep them in pens in my backyard, where they lived out their lives in cramped conditions being fed whatever food I could afford. And they were grateful! You could tell by the way they would wag their stumpy tails whenever I came near.

The first dog I rescued was a small, bad-tempered black Lab mix with only one eye and one ear, on opposite sides of her head. Her back leg was mangled from a run-in with a family who wanted to have just a snack-because she was a good dog, and a dog like that you don't eat all at once. They called her Porkchop, but that was her slave name; we renamed her Savannah's Sigh of Love, and we bought her a prosthetic leg so she could keep up with us on long hikes in the Illinois
mountains. She lived with us until that day the camping party was stranded without food, and then she gave her life for a good cause. Savannah's Sigh of Love was happy to be part of the family and help keep our team going.

Don't let another animal go homeless for want of adequate funding. Animals like Savannah's Sigh of Love are being slaughtered every minute because there isn't enough money to keep them alive, because you and your overweight human friends are sitting around drinking wine coolers and watching sports on TV and failing to get adequately involved in volunteerism. Think about the sad eyes of all those animals being prepared for death tonight, who are counting on you and your creative ideas, and your willingness to do whatever it takes. Please, give them a second chance to live.

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