‘Just Don’t Let Them Be Born,’ Anguished Group Urges

Bill Smith once thought the pain of euthanizing healthy animals would go away.

“I have asked myself the question, back when I expected an answer, ‘When does it get easier for me? When does it get to the point that it doesn’t hurt me?’ ” Smith says.

Now he strives to transfer the burden from shelter workers to the millions of dog and cat owners who don’t care for their pets.

For five years, Smith, 59, was the chief euthanasia technician of the Humane Society in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Now, he travels around the country, showing shelter workers how to destroy an animal humanely.

“I can do it without regret and without guilt. But I can’t do it without thinking what a damn shame it is. Anybody can put down the sick, the injured, the old without feeling any regret. For them, death is not the worst thing.

“But when it gets to the point of putting down such fine creatures, such marvelous creatures, it just absolutely isn’t easy. They deserve a chance. And they won’t get it because just too many of them are born.”

People blame the shelters for killing the animals, Smith says. In truth, people who don’t spay or neuter their pets and who don’t make a lifelong commitment to their animals are really to blame, he says.

Smith’s own pain led to the creation of the nonprofit Mazer Guild, a Tuscaloosa-based support group for euthanasia technicians. The group has about 400 members.

The group takes its name from the sin eaters of medieval times. They would come into a home of a dying person and eat bread baked when a person died to absorb the sins of the departed, washing it down with wine or ale from a mazer bowl.

Smith’s brochure says that euthanasia technicians have been the public’s sin eaters: “We have put down their animals as they have tried to transfer the blame for the waste of their lives to us.”

Many pet lovers don’t understand their own culpability in the deaths of animals, says Nancie Liles, executive director of the Humane Alliance of Western North Carolina, a spay-neuter clinic in Asheville.

She recalls volunteering at an animal shelter, where every six months, the same woman would bring in a litter of puppies. Finally, an employee asked her why she didn’t have her dog spayed.

“She told him, ‘I love to see the puppies being born,’ ” Liles says.

His response: “Why don’t you come back here and watch me kill them?”

She complained to a county official; the employee was placed on probation, Liles said.

“The public sees them as puppy/kitten killers,” she said. “But it’s not their fault. They don’t breed their animals randomly.”

Smith says shelter workers should offer an honest answer when asked whether a cat or dog being turned in will find a good home.

His suggestion: “Gosh, I wish we could do that. We could all sleep better at night. But the best we can do is come to a balance.

“So tell your friends you don’t like what happens at this shelter any more than the people who work here like it. Spread the word: Just don’t let them be born.”