{"id":7362,"date":"2010-06-08T10:30:42","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T15:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=7362"},"modified":"2010-06-08T10:30:42","modified_gmt":"2010-06-08T15:30:42","slug":"animal-shelter-facts-one-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/animal-shelter-facts-one-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter, by Diane Leigh and Marilee Geyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author\u2019s Note: This is the first of three reviews of books published by the non-profit animal organization and book publisher<\/em> No Voic<\/a><\/em>\"one\"<\/em>e Unheard<\/a><\/em>, based in Santa Cruz, California. (The next reviews will be of <\/em>Thought to Exist in the Wild and <\/em>Ninety-Five. No Voice Unheard provided me with free review copies of these books.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Anyone who has spent time an animal shelter, whether browsing for potential companions or volunteering or working, knows how difficult it can be to be face to face with those innocent victims of human abuse. For animal lovers in particular, shelters are both sources of comfort–at least there is someone out there offering the victims some shelter and hope for a better life–and anxiety–at the bleak lives endured by the inhabitants before and after they arrive\u2026and the bleak reality about people that shelters manifest.<\/p>\n

But what about the beauty of animal shelters? What about the unique, wonderful reality that is each individual animal that passes through a shelter\u2019s doors? Amidst all the strong smells, noise, sadness, and fear of a shelter, there are individual living beings who want nothing more than to live happily. And what is more amazing, so many of them are willing to forgive<\/em> humans despite their abuse\u2026and even trust humans once again, giving them their love and loyalty.<\/p>\n

It is this side of shelters, the living beauty of the animals who inhabit them, that Diane Leigh and Marilee Geyer seek to show us in their splendid book, One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0The authors spent one week in a shelter in northern California, meeting the many animals who lived and died there during that time. \u201cThis book is about those animals,\u201d Leigh and Geyer write. \u201cIt is a testament to the faces we will never see and cannot imagine, because there are too many. It is a way to help us understand that the statistics are more than mere numbers: they are real lives, and they are utterly and completely at our mercy\u201d (viii).<\/p>\n

Some Facts about Animal Shelters<\/h2>\n

Of course, Leigh and Geyer have done their homework on the stark, disturbing realities of animal shelters and of the social conditions that make them necessary. The facts and figures they cite in the process of describing the underlying causes for animals\u2019 homelessness are staggering. Here are just a few:<\/p>\n