I tend to try and save things less than I used to. Now I may put injured wild animals in a quiet place to die. I took a run over fox to be pts a few years ago.

The rescues get into the situations with unrehomable dogs almost by accident. By the time they realise the dog has too many issues to make it homeable the staff are usually involved with it and don't want to give up on it.

The fall out from the decision being made can be devastating. I worked with one person who took a threatened dog home and ended up on valium herself. She had to do it in order to find out why she should not expect other people to do it. She no longer works directly in rescue. Had she not experienced what she did she would never have understood why some dogs should be pts.

Regarding cockerals---I had a friend come and neck 4 marran cockerals years ago because they should have been pullets (6 eggs under a bantam and 4 came off and guess what!) I also had my pet cockeral dealt with the same way. He used to sit on my wrist but he attacked anyone else in the garden (which was a large one) My pet ram lamb (who has his own rescue story!) was pts when it stopped the dogs coming in the garden and a goat (again a rescue) was shot by the huntsman because she was bullying my other original goat very badly. Shooting I would not do again.

I reckoned that if I was keeping a lot of animals together they had to be social and I wasn't going to pass them on.

rune