From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 15AUG03
Dog that beat death to represent strays
Gas chamber couldn't quell Quentin
St. Louis -- A dog that survived a trip to the gas chamber was tapped to star in a campaign to raise awareness about the millions of strays that are euthanized each year.
"His bad days are behind him for good," said Randy Grim, founder of Stray Rescue of St. Louis.
Grim became Quentin's guardian earlier this month after the 30-pound basenji mix went into a city gas chamber to be euthanized with other unwanted or unclaimed dogs -- then emerged very much alive, tail wagging.
The survival tale brought headlines, television cameras, and more than 700 offers of adoption.
"I didn't know how to pick one person out of 700," said Grim.
Quentin -- who is named for California's forbidding San Quentin State Prison -- will be the poster dog for the awareness campaign by the Mill Valley, Calif.-based group In Defense of Animals.
The group's founder, Elliot Katz, said it would donate $5,000 to begin a fund to eliminate the gas chamber as St. Louis' primary way of euthanizing stray dogs, and he said a benefit was planned tonight at his shelter to kick off the fund-raising effort.
Katz and his group advise people to call themselves pet guardians instead of owners. The group has succeeded in replacing the word "owner" with "guardian" on licenses or other offical documents in several locations, including San Francisco and Rhode Island.
"Guardians don't buy and sell animals, they adopt and rescue," Katz said.
He said there were three ways to decrease the number of homeless dogs: change the mind-set of people who adopt pets, spay or neuter animals, and identify commercial puppy mills.
About 5 million dogs are euthanized each year because homes cannot be found for them, Katz said. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates that between 5 million and 9 million companion animals are euthanized every year in the United States.