By Bette Harrison
Journal-Constitution Staff Writer

In the Paulding County animal shelter, supervisor Robin Parks walks past cages filled with dogs, each awaiting a lethal injection. The weariness in her voice betrays her disgust as she ticks off the reasons the owners gave for leaving their pets to die.

"Grew too big."

"We're moving."

"Don't have time to take care of it."

"Going on vacation."

"Too hyper."

"Unwanted gift."

"She got pregnant."

"Too old."

"Isn't attractive anymore."

Next door, nearly two dozen cats also await poison shots.

Parks and her staff hate Mondays, the shelter's weekly day to euthanize unwanted animals. To keep sane, she says, "We constantly remind ourselves that we're not killing these animals - the public is."

Increasingly so. In Paulding and other booming Atlanta exurbs, overwhelmed animal control workers and shelters must cope with a flood of unwanted dogs and cats.  

In the last two years, the gruesome toll has risen faster than the human population. In Paulding it doubled in a year; 1,247 animals were put to death in 1996, and that rose to 2,329 in 1997. Long-term numbers are not available.

 "Our numbers would be even higher, but we're maxed out," Douglas County animal control officer Leslie DeBusk said. "We only have X number of people to care for all the animals, put them down and pick them up. If they're caring for them and putting them down, then they're not out collecting them off the streets."

In Paulding, Douglas and other exurban counties the killing rate is much higher than in more developed counties, in part because dogs and cats can roam - and mate - more freely in open spaces. In those counties, the animal-population increases are straining modest facilities and manpower.

But the problem is in every community in the area. Last year in metro Atlanta, the area's shelters poisoned or gassed 104,255 animals, almost all dogs and cats, a 6 percent increase from the previous year.

Put another way, in 1997, metro Atlanta incinerated or landfilled an average of 20 tons of dead dogs and cats per week.

The animals come to shelters in boxes, suitcases, laundry baskets, car trunks or children's arms, Leslie DeBusk says. Often they are dragged in on leashes.

"One woman opened the door and just tossed in a shepherd-mix puppy like it was garbage," she says, shaking her head. "I guess to her he was."

"You just want to tear into some people," says Debra Cook, assistant director of Cobb County Animal Control. "Once I went up front and there were six or seven people with dogs. I thought, 'What is this, Turn in Your Dog Day?' "

One of the worst parts for DeBusk is when pets watch their owners walk out the door.

"They claw at the floor. They strain at the leash. And everything in their body language is saying, 'I have to go with them,' " she says. "And you have to stand there even though your heart's breaking, pretending that everything's fine."

Veteran animal control officers have their "favorite" abandonment excuses.

"Mine is the time a woman wrote on her intake sheet, 'Got new furniture; cat doesn't match.' I'll never forget that one," says Gwinnett County animal control officer Leanne Bond.

Robin Parks, of Paulding County, recalls an excuse from a man giving up his English bulldog. "He told me he was 'downsizing,' " Parks says.

Another time, she says, a woman arrived with her kids and seven dachshund puppies. "She lied, right in front of her children. She said she found them.

"I asked if she'd like to get her mother dog spayed for half price and she said, 'No, she's a purebred and we want to breed her.' I told her the puppies she had were cute and she said, 'But they're mixed.'

"The worst part is this is the third time in three years they've dumped animals here."

On a recent Saturday, Zhengyang Zhu brought his energetic, year-old mixed-breed dog, Gogo, to the Cherokee County shelter. He and his wife were expecting their first child, he said. Asked if he knew what would likely happen to Gogo, he said, "I know, and it feels bad."

Sickened by the slaughter, many shelter workers say they've stopped sparing the public. "We used to tell them, 'Yes, we'll try really hard to find homes for these 13 puppies,' " says Whitney Coutret-Norman, a volunteer in Cherokee County.

"Now, we say, 'Realistically? Maybe two will be adopted."

In North Carolina, Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes has gone even further. He made national headlines this month by televising pets being killed by injection at the local shelter.

"There's so many folks out there who don't have a clue about what happens," he says. "I hope they get angry at irresponsible pet owners. I hope they get angry enough to want to do something about this problem."

Shelter adoptions have surged there since the program was shown.

In metro Atlanta, shelter workers' candor hasn't lessened the flood of unwanted animals. Says Carroll County animal-control officer Sherrie Whaley: "I had a man come in with a pregnant female. 'You can find her a home, right?' he asked. I said, 'Probably not.' He said, 'OK,' and walked out."

Most shelters hold animals for three to seven days. After that, if space is limited, the animals must be killed to make room for new arrivals. In 1997, 70 percent of the animals that arrived at local shelters were gassed or poisoned. In some exurban counties, the percentage was 75 percent.

The reasons for the accelerating death rate are not completely clear. But it's a clear pattern in exurban growth nationally:

When rural counties begin sprouting strip malls, office parks and subdivisions, animals invariably pay the price, says Kim Staton, of the Humane Society of the United States. "You can go from a bad-enough situation to a nightmare."

Suburban dwellers may be less tolerant of strays than the country folks they displace, prompting animal control officers to round the animals up.

In 1997, 55,809 animals were killed in exurban shelters, an increase of 9 percent over the previous year, compared with 48,446, a 3 percent increase in core counties.

When the human population is factored in, the contrast between the areas becomes even more stark: The animal-death rate per 10,000 human residents was 195 in the metro Atlanta's core counties and 547 in the exurbs.

The most fundamental causes of pet overpopulation show up everywhere, but tend to be more prevalent in the relatively open spaces of exurbia. They're animal-control officers' universal complaints: Too many pet owners let their dogs and cats roam, and too many fail to have the animals spayed.

"Because of ... pet owners who don't spay and neuter or leash their dogs, it just gets worse every year," says Coweta animal shelter supervisor John L. Williams. "It's so bad in the summer, with all these supposed 'strays' on the loose, we have to put them down twice a week."

"I wish that every one of the people who bring in all these little puppies and says, 'I don't know how this happened, I had my dog tied up out back,' could be here when I have to put them down," says Mike Hughes, Walton County's director of animal control.

Some laws do address both roaming and sterilization, but they vary from place to place.

DeKalb has the strictest domestic-animal laws in the metro area, followed closely by Fulton. Both counties require dogs and cats to be leashed, and both encourage spaying and neutering by charging more to license unaltered animals. DeKalb also limits the number of animals a person can own to three.

But some counties, Coweta for one, don't have leash laws.

Pet owners are not required to neuter or spay their pet, unless they adopt from a shelter. State law requires shelter adoptees to be sterilized within six months.

Animal-control laws are not always enforced. When they are, it makes news. Last month a Stockbridge woman, Laura Taylor, 27, landed in jail for failing to have her shelter-adopted poodle neutered as required.

"It's ludicrous ... going to jail for this dog," the obviously surprised Taylor declared.

Adding to the torrent of unwanted animals from unplanned pregancies are the animals bred for profit in backyards and puppy mills. In March, the shelter in Cherokee was overwhelmed with 75 rescued dogs following a raid on a Gilmer County breeder.

The publicity generated by the raid prompted dog lovers to adopt all the animals. But in most cases, the results are more grim. Some puppies and kittens must be destroyed because unethical breeding produces sick or genetically inferior animals. Many of the purebreds that must be killed in shelters are the products of such breeding.

Also, dogs and cats that come from breeders aren't required to be spayed or neutered, as shelter animals are.

Citing these factors, Atlanta Humane Society Executive Director Bill L. estimates that backyard breeders and puppy mills, and people who buy from them, account for most of the animals that end up in shelters.

The Journal-Constitution contacted several breeders who were advertising animals for sale in the paper's classifieds. None advocated spaying and neutering.

"I leave it to the people who buy my dogs whether they spay or neuter," said Larry Wilson of Villa Rica, who with his wife sells six dog breeds. "I figure they pay $350 for a dog; they can do anything they want to do with it."

Larry Corbin of Fayetteville, who breeds Labrador retrievers, says that if a customer is buying a dog as a pet, it should be sterilized. But, he added, "My dogs, you know, a lot of people buy them for hunting.

"And if you're going to use one to hunt, you don't want one that's spayed or neutered, because it'll be more sluggish."

Not so, says, whose shelter supplies law enforcement agencies with dogs - all sterilized. In fact, he says, spayed and neutered animals live longer and have fewer health problems, such as testicular cancer, than animals that haven't been altered.

"I think Americans in general have developed this apathetic attitude towards animals," says the Humane Society's Staton. "Some think, 'We're moving, so let's get rid of CiCi. We can always get another CiCi.' "

Solutions to such a difficult, people-driven problem are elusive. As a stopgap measure, Paulding County built a new shelter two years ago, but during busy times, the shelter is already filled to overflowing.

Some cities, including Fort Wayne, Ind., and San Mateo, Calif., have developed programs to curb the pet population with low-cost spay and neutering, or with hundreds of volunteers acting as foster parents for animals waiting to be adopted.

In Los Angeles, commissioners are considering a proposal to increase the licensing fee for unaltered animals from $30 to $200, while keeping the fee for altered animals at $10.

"It's a complex problem, so you must take a multifaceted approach," says Sturla of the Fund For Animals. "Some people will be impacted to change by emotion; others by ethical concerns; others on how much money it costs to take care of and ultimately put to death so many animals.

"Still others you've got to make laws that if they break they pay big time. Each person has a different button you have to push."

One recent Saturday at the Cobb County shelter, a reporter's question pushed Jennifer Robinson's button. Robinson, of Marietta, had planned to give up a cat and five kittens. When asked if she knew the pets were likely to die, she hesitated.

"I think I'm going to change my mind about her," she said of the mother cat, and took the animal back outside to her car. When she returned she had changed her mind about the kittens, too.

The kittens were the result of one trip outside for the unspayed mother, Robinson said. "One time, that's all it took."

She vowed there would not be a next time. This mama cat would be spayed.

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