Being forced to euthanize animals at work is likely the number one thing that puts animal lovers off working at a shelter, and now one animal care worker is sharing details about what it’s really like to put a pet to sleep, in the hopes of changing the way people view the practice – and the people responsible.

In an article for Refinery29, animal lover Shannon Phillips, 31, who works as the Cattery Manager at an SPCA in Virginia Beach, admits that she was 'terrified' the first time she had to put an animal to sleep.

'Although the cat was very ill and suffering, I couldn’t help but feel as though I was making the wrong decision by taking her life,' she wrote for the website earlier this month. 'My coworkers tried to comfort me, assuring me I wasn’t killing her as much as ending her pain, but the experience still shook me.'

The downside of the job: Shannon Phillips, a Cattery Manager at an SPCA in Virginia Beach, Virginia, has written about what it's like to have to euthanize animals at work

Since then, Shannon has euthanized 'hundreds' of animals at work - and she is just one of many to have done so. Three to four million animals are euthanized in U.S. shelters every year with around 2.7 million of them being 'healthy and adoptable'.

Yet less than a third of pets in homes are reported to have been adopted from shelters.

But, despite the overwhelming statistics, and the frequency at which animals are having to be put down, Shannon insists that she refuses to let that horrific part of her job become routine, and makes an effort to treat every animal with respect and love in their final moments.

'I try to make her last moments the absolute happiest they can be. I always take a photo. In fact, I have a photo on my phone of every animal I have ever euthanized,' she explained. 'I always play music. I always tell the animal she is perfect and that I love her.

'I want her to know that her life is truly valued.'

But working in such a way has a downside for animal care staff, as mental health statistics such as those found in a recent study by American Journal of Preventive Medicine, show that on-the-job suicide rates are highest for those in 'helping' professions, such as police officers, firefighters, and animal rescue workers. The average number is listed as 5.3 suicides per one million workers.

Comfort: Shannon wrote that, when she has to euthanize an animal, she plays music, takes photos with each of them and speaks to them lovingly

Therefore, in order to avoid the potentials for mental health damage, it is sometimes easier for workers to become more 'numb to the loss of life', and some can be affected by what is called 'compassion fatigue', where the constant care for others results in feelings of apathy, distress or general tiredness.

But, wrote Shannon, the positive aspects of her duties - which include overseeing the health and well being of cats, putting them up for adoption and helping sort through behavioral problems - leave the euthanasia as a very small part of her job.

It is also mercifully a relatively small part of the goings on at the shelter.

'Last year at our shelter, we euthanized 244 animals: 125 cats and 119 dogs that, for whatever reason, we could not place in a home,' she said. 'While I wish I could’ve saved every last one of them, these are not numbers that make me feel ashamed.

'By healing the sick and finding loving families for the homeless, we saved 3,201 lives in 2014 — 90 per cent of the animals we took in that year.'

Shannon also explained that so-called 'no-kill' shelters are actually shelters that have a very low kill rate, such as hers.

Not just a number: Shannon's shelter saved 90 percent of their animals last year, but euthanized 244

However, their shelter refuses the label of 'no-kill' due to the negative impact it would have on shelters whose resources aren't great enough to maintain such a stat.

'So, what does that make them to the general public? "Kill" shelters,' she said. 'Doesn't that sound horrible? There are even people who suggest that workers at these shelters actually enjoy euthanizing animals, or that they're lazy and simply don't work hard enough to find these animals homes.'

But nothing could be farther from the truth according to Shannon, who described her colleagues as tireless workers and emphasized that for 'every bad day I have, there are a hundred good ones'.

But among all the constant efforts to nurse animals back to health, to help their behavioral issues and to find them permanent homes, Shannon revealed that they also work hard to honor the memories of every animal that lost their lives with a yearly candlelight memorial service 'for the animals that didn't make it'.

'Their names are written on hearts and spread out on a table,' she wrote. 'We gather the hearts and throw them into a fire after saying something to honor each animal. We couldn’t save them all. But we tried.'