http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21283986/

NEW YORK - Sweet William, a young black Labrador retriever in Illinois, has two days to live.

Sandy, a golden female Jindo in New York, also has just two days left. Kate Hepburn, a tan female boxer in California, has 18 days to live.

On Saturday, these were some of the dogs in shelters across the U.S. slated for death — their fate posted on a Web site that aims to save their lives by offering them for adoption.

Each is tagged with a death date set by a shelter — and a countdown clock showing the days, or hours, until the animal is killed.

Dogsindanger.com works with more than 120 shelters nationwide that destroy dogs. How much time the dogs get before death varies from state to state. In New York City, for instance, a stray dog must be kept a minimum of three days, while a shelter has the legal right to immediately destroy an animal that is abandoned there by its owner.

About 4 million dogs are put to death each year in the United States, by injection or gas.

Immediate impact
In the three weeks since the site has been up, dozens of dogs have found new homes. Their photos are posted on a section of the site marked "Success Stories." The images of dogs that did not make it adorn the site's "In Memoriam" wall.

"It's not the fault of the shelters," said Alex Aliksanyan, a pet adoption advocate who made money in the Internet travel business. "They don't like doing this, but they have to abide by the law, which requires a shelter to control its animal population."

Aliksanyan spent a half-million of his own dollars to start The Buddy Fund Inc., a nonprofit organization that operates the site and is named after his miniature American Eskimo dog.

"I've done well, and it was time to give something back," said the 50-year-old Turkish-born entrepreneur of Armenian heritage. "So I thought, let's bring the story of these animals dying quietly in these shelters to the public and say, 'Can you do something?'"

Daily updates
He hired a half-dozen staffers to manage and market the site. Shelters post information about each dog directly, with daily updates and information on how each shelter can be contacted. Aliksanyan ships out free digital cameras and software for the task.

A shelter can sometimes delay a dog's death date — if it has room in its kennel and few new strays coming in. A death date can get moved up, too, if the shelter becomes overcrowded.

The adoption service is free both for shelters and people looking for pets, allowing users to search by location, breed or time until death.

The in-your-face site, Aliksanyan said, "is not a place to sit with your 6-year-old and say, 'This one's going to die, that one is going to die.'"

He said he is driven by the philosophy of the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, whose words are posted over the "In Memoriam" page: "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

Hold me

Mach said:

i know i hate how unnecessarily inhumane we are to our fellow sentient beings on this planet

but maybe someone will adopt when they see this website
[Edited 10/15/07 11:35am]

...This is one of the big reasons I want to buy a house...then I'd be able to take in some of these animals.

Byron said:

it's one of the reasons why i want to win the lottery. i'd set up a trust fund to sponsor the animals until adoption.

XxAxX said:

This is sort of what I and many local business do in the area I live. With the local news papers we nagged them silly and they now do free advertising for the local rescues. If people do not want to rescue an animal they can sponsor until adopted or just purchase a few cans or packets of food and drop them of at local shelters or in the local businesses that are advertised, every little bit helps.