Eleven million cats and dogs are euthanized in the United States each year due to overpopulation. They are healthy and loving animals that are killed simply because no one is willing or able to adopt them and provide them with a loving and happy home.

If you allow yourself to feel the magnitude of so many lives lost, it will fill you with sadness and despair. These are not pleasant emotions, but it may take most of us to feel them to get angry enough to have a significant enough impact on the problem.

Backyard breeders and irresponsible pet owners who don’t spay their pets and allow them to roam free are the problem. When we carelessly allow our pet dogs and cats to breed, it adds to an already overwhelmingly sad state of affairs. What does it say about us as a country of citizens when we numb or settle for 11 million precious and innocent lives that are unnecessarily extinguished every year due to our carelessness?

A nation of people can be judged by its values ​​which are reflected in its laws, actions, policies and procedures. Millions of dogs and cats killed may seem like just a number, but when you consider that those numbers reflect the lives of one sentient being and another and another, it becomes real. If we are resigned and indifferent to the lives of our cats and dogs, how compassionate are we going to be to the people in our society who are homeless, hungry and living in poverty? What does it say about us as a nation when we allow that to happen? It’s heartbreaking and disturbing.

How do we solve this dilemma? What do we do to reduce these numbers to zero unnecessary deaths of healthy dogs and cats? The solution is simple. Spay and neuter your pets. Also, if you find stray dogs, try to capture and sterilize them and prepare them for adoption. Stay safe with animals you don’t know. Don’t risk your well-being to catch an animal you don’t know. Instead, contact the local animal control authorities in your area. They are professionally trained to handle such cases.

In addition to spaying and neutering your pets and encouraging family, friends, and neighbors to do the same, adopt and rescue animals from local shelters and rescues instead of supporting puppy and kitten mills that sell their often-sick animals to pet stores. . Adopting and rescuing pets helps reduce the number of animals in shelters that are at risk of being euthanized.

Another solution is to volunteer at your local Humane Society, animal rescue organization of your choice, or animal control center. When you spend time looking at the individual lives of so many cats and dogs living in kennels waiting and hoping to find a loving home, you can’t deny the problem. It’s real and right in front of you. You see it and you feel it.

Lastly, educate and inform the people you know about the problem of overpopulation and the solution to spaying and neutering pets. Save a life, spread the word. Be an advocate for the homeless. If each of us helps a little, it adds up to a big difference. Overpopulation is getting worse, not better. More people need to get involved so we can reduce the needless slaughter of so many sweet and precious lives. Please get involved. Take action, whether it’s adopting or rescuing a pet or two of your own, spaying your current pets, or educating people about this serious problem. Overpopulation will continue unless we do more to stop it. Spay, neuter and adopt your pets and ask a friend to do the same.