Snowstorm of Puppies

Along with the snowstorms of...snow that we've been having, the shelter is starting to enter Puppy Season, leaving us with a snowstorm of puppies. ...puppystorm? Either way, we had two litters last week, and another pregnant dog come in on Friday. Add that to the litter of kittens we'll start having, and we'll be keeping pretty busy.

Tangentially, I had another idea: PSAs. Public Service Announcements. When I worked at a radio station 10 years ago, we'd do PSAs for non-profit groups, like "Quit Smoking!" or "Keep your guns out of reach of your kids!" I'll bet we could find a few radio stations that would be willing to do some PSAs for the animal shelter.

Shelter Updates

Spay or neuter your dogs. Somebody dumped off four pitbull puppies at the shelter this morning...now who's going to adopt those, especially with half the cities in our jurisdiction disallowing pitbull ownership?

...

One of the girls was on the phone with the shelter director, when a pheasant booked it across the parking lot. Being uninhibited and ebullient, she screamed at the top of her lungs, pointed at it, and shouted, "What is THAT?"

The poor director was probably deaf at that point, and from the tone of her voice I expected a tidal wave, raging forest fire, or possibly several platoons of armed ninjas sweeping down on the shelter. Fortunately, before I dove for cover, I glanced out the window and realized what she was pointing at.

"That...is a pheasant."

"A what?"

"A pheasant. You have never seen a pheasant before."

Apparently not.

...

There were a couple other things I was going to post about, but they slip my mind at the moment and my slip of paper with the reminder on it is not at my present location. Updates on the updates later...

Latest Animal Shelter Visit

I visited the animal shelter this morning, the first time in...about a month, I'd guess. At least, I saw some "Missing Animal" flyers on the bulletin board marked "10/11" in my handwriting.

It was good to see everyone again. Pat gave me some honeycomb. It's a little odd chewing a ball of wax with honey dripping from it, but it was more amusing watching one of the girls there eating it. She touched it with her tongue, then made a face and tried to pick a piece of wax from her tongue. I don't think she understood you were supposed to chew the whole thing at once, and the wax would ball together.

On the more unpleasant side, a lady called asking about a missing chihuahua. We didn't have one from her city, but the police had brought in a dead one that had gotten hit by a car in a neighboring city. She wanted to verify that it wasn't her dog, so it was my job to open the bags in the freezer to find the dog and transfer it to a bag of its own. Meh. I've had more fun.

Speaking of which, I went canyoneering over the weekend, so later this evening I'll post some pictures from that.

Stereotypes

A man came into the shelter yesterday. His dog had been hit by a car and crawled into a ditch, where it had been found by a policeman about midnight. The policeman brought the dog into the shelter and the shelter called the owner in the morning.

The owner was wearing a ratty Harley-Davidson tee-shirt, with chains hanging off him and a cigarette tucked behind each ear. The shelter employees told him about the fees (including $25 to license the dog, refundable if it died [it was in pretty bad shape]), then the police officer came in and gave the man a citation for letting his dog run at large. Meanwhile, the dog needed to get to a vet ASAP. All in all, the man had every right to be frustrated.

However, he stayed completely polite, "sir-ed" the policeman, "ma'am-ed" the shelter employee, and went over to the front door to hold it open when he saw a lady coming in carrying a heavy cat carrier. I've seen all sorts of people get angrier at far more trivial things than this guy did about his dying dog. If only more people could be like him.

Deadly Horse Ride

Whoo. Been a while since I last posted. When I get home this evening, I'll post some pictures from my canyoneering trip over the weekend.

For now, though, here's an unfortunate incident that also happened over the weekend. I found out about it when I asked about two horses we had at the animal shelter this morning. Apparently, two men were riding the horses when a fisherman's dogs and possibly some kids spooked the horses. One of the men was thrown off, but his foot caught in the stirrup and he was dragged 75 feet until his horse either fell into the reservoir or ran into it, drowning the man (who was probably unconscious, if not already dead, by then).

The police brought the horses to the the shelter yesterday, although two people (I think one was a family friend, and the other a relative) came to pick them up this morning. No charge by the shelter of course, it's the least you can do in a situation like that.


On an unrelated note, I was walking a dog around the inmate-run garden behind the shelter, and stopped to talk to one of the inmates while he petted the dog. A deputy who was out inspecting the tomatoes yelled at me to stop talking to them. What, the inmates aren't people now? I can't say hello? Maybe it's against the rules, I don't know, but either way, none of the other deputies have ever had a problem with me walking by.

I mentioned the incident to one of our inmates that works in the shelters, and he said the lady had a history of being a jerk to the inmates. It just seems bad form to me. Go ahead and be a jerk to people who can respond, otherwise you're just a bully.

Disabilities

A lot of disabled people don't like being considered "disabled." They simply have different abilities. Child tells me that the deaf community, for example, are very quick to point out that they are just as capable as any hearing person. So when a disabled person tries to use their disability as a crutch, it's not only annoying, but offensive to others with the same disability.

A lady called the animal shelter yesterday, and I answered the phone. The lady had apparently found a cat a few months previous, it had kittens, and now she wanted to get rid of the kittens. "They're tearing up my house," she complained. From the way she was talking, I got the impression she was a lower-income person, so instead of simply telling her she could bring them in and pay a $15 fee per animal to release them, I said, "Well, you can try giving them away; I've frequently seen people sitting on the grass by Walmart with boxes of kittens. Or you can post them for free on ksl.com, and lots of people look there for animals."

I was going to finish with the option of bringing them in and paying the fee just to cover all the bases, but she interrupted me. "What if I just want you to take them?" she asked.

"Well, you can bring them in, and there's a $15 owner release fee for each animal," I said.

There was a short silence, then, "Even if I'm disabled?" she demanded.

There were so many things wrong with her reply that I wasn't sure how to answer. For starters, why would our fee depend on whether she was disabled or not? And plenty of other people seemed to get along just fine being "disabled."

"Um, yes." I said.

There was another silence. "Well, I'm disabled so I can't sit by Walmart with a box of kittens," she snapped.

"It sounds like ksl.com is your best option then," I said.

"I don't have the internet," she said.

"Do you have a a friend with the internet?"

"No."

"A friend who has a friend who has the internet?" I said. I was getting irritated by her complete lack of helpfulness, she obviously wanted us to personally drive over to her house and take the kittens off her hands for free.

Anyway, she finally hung up. Ten minutes later, an animal control officer from her town showed up with a cage full of kittens in tow, and he was furious. "This woman is terrible," he said. "She has 20 cats at home, lets them have kittens all the time, then calls us up and expects us to come just take them from her. I've already refused to come get them several times, but she just calls when I'm off duty and the other officers don't know not to go over. She just barely called us, and I finally gave up and decided that the city would just eat the cost (each city pays for each animal their ACOs bring to the shelter). I'm going to check into the law, though, and see if we can refuse to take anything else from her house."

I'm not exactly sure what the point of this story is, except that there is nothing worse than a disabled person who tries to use her disability to take advantage. Grrr.

Oh, the usual...I got peed on...

It's been a long day: a praying mantis tried to assault a shelter employee, a policeman beat it back with his baton, and a dog peed on my leg.

Alright, it's not really as exciting as it sounds. I was in the kitchen eating some inmate-grown corn when there was a sudden burst of shrieking from the hallway. I went to investigate and found two of the girls that work at the shelter trying to alternately catch a praying mantis and fleeing in terror when it would fly at them. Once it landed in one of the girl's hair and the girl ran shrieking down the hall.

At the same time, an ACO came in bringing a squirrel. He heard the noise and came to investigate, then caught the mantis himself once he realized what they were doing. The girls were trying to catch it to feed our chameleon, so the officer tossed it in the cage, but it landed out of sight of the chameleon. Next thing I know, the ACO whips out his beat-stick (billy club? baton?) and starts poking the mantis, trying to get it to move. It doesn't work, so the ACO sticks a piece of tape on the end of his baton and picks the mantis up with it.

On an unrelated note, a dog peed on my leg. Oh well, part of the job.


A less fun side of the job is the disease we get occasionally. Right now the shelter is abnormally empty, we have pans of bleach everywhere to sanitize our shoe-soles, and there's practically armed guards patrolling the halls to make sure no one touches any of the animals. It started when a dog became sick, but it was an internal disease and we couldn't tell until it died suddenly. Since visitors (and even a couple shelter workers--we won't name names) can't seem to get the concept of "germs" through their head, the dog had been petted, then the people went on to pet half the other dogs in the place without sanitizing their hands between dogs.

The first dog died, as did a couple others that were adopted out. The decision was made to clean house, so we euthanized anything that looked in the least bit sick, or who's time was up. So the shelter is spookily quiet, no one is allowed to adopt a dog for a while until we're sure everything is safe, and we're keeping a close eye out for any more sick dogs.

The happy (sad?) thing is that in a week, we'll be back to full capacity. So many dogs...

Raptors!!!

Today we got a Cooper's hawk at the animal shelter. The man from the raptor rescue who came and got it said it was actually still young, as large as it was. He said it probably had just left its nest.



Also, if your dog gets loose, make sure it's friendly, especially towards any cop that might pick it up. Today wasn't the first time a cop brought in a dog and told me he was going to give the owner a ticket because the dog played hard to get. Technically they can give a ticket to every single owner whose dog is loose, since there's a leash law, but they normally don't bother, unless, as I said, the dog causes them problems.

A seven-woman show

At the animal shelter, there are eight employees. One is the director. He's a guy. The other seven are women.

I feel sorry for him sometimes. Usually everyone gets along well, but when differences arise, as they are bound to with that skewed of an employee gender-makeup, then he's the one who has to solve the problems. He spent all this morning (seriously, like two hours!) talking with two of the women about some issue, which started with a misplaced soda can, I believe.

Oh well, that's part of being the director.

On an unrelated note, here's a picture of the fawn we got in at the shelter a little while ago.

Crazy-psycho religious nut

Crazy psycho religious nuts and normal jailed citizens. Something interesting seems to happen every day at the animal shelter.

First, religious nuts. When someone wants to adopt a young kitten, we have them foster it for a couple weeks first, to make sure it's not going to die on them. If it's healthy after two weeks, they bring it back to us, we finalize the adoption, then they can take the cat home.

So this guy brought in his kitten to finalize the adoption. He was a pudgy, middle-age guy with a butch haircut and worst of all, a truculent expression on his face. The first words out of his mouth after the poor girl (we'll call her Amber) at the front desk said hello was, "I ain't getting the cat microchipped."

That was somewhat of a non sequitur, but Amber said, "Excuse me?"

The man snapped again, "I ain't getting the cat microchipped, and I don't care what you say."

Amber was somewhat at a loss, but hesitantly pulled out the fostering agreement and pointed to a line in it. "But you agreed to get it microchipped, and you even signed right here that you would."

The man was adamant. "You can take the cat back, but you ain't putting a microchip in it."

Amber didn't know what to do next, since our director wasn't in (it was Saturday), and the man was very confrontational. I stepped in, "Why don't you want to get it microchipped?"

"Religious reasons," he said.

"Oh. What religion are you?" I asked.

"Mormon," he said. That happened to be my religion also, but I couldn't remember hearing any sermons about the evils of microchipping, or reading any scriptural verse warning against it.

"Exactly what religious tenet warns against microchipping?" I inquired.

For the first time he hesitated. "Well...I just have my own ideas about where microchips are heading."

I got the impression he thought we were going to tattoo a "666" on the cat's forehead, then have a dozen spy satellites tracking its every movement. How do you argue with religious belief, though, especially when it's a "personal" one and not even in line with the man's religion? "Um, I'm sorry, your religion doesn't actually believe that. Now, do you want a matching microchip in you, so our agents can know where to find you at all times?"

Amber and I huddled, and I suggested that she go ahead and do everything else, let the guy take the cat, then we could discuss what to do on Monday, when our director would be in. We had the guy's address and phone, so we could get the cat back if necessary. She agreed, and the guy left, happy in the knowledge that he had saved one more poor cat from the belly of the Beast.

Later than afternoon, I was sitting with our three inmates in the break room, eating lunch with them. I was telling them about the psycho guy, and bemoaned the fact that there were so few normal people around.

"Hey, I'm normal," one of them protested, hesitated, then added, "Well, except for being in jail," and he grinned.

Shelter events

Microchip your pets, people! Yesterday, we had a couple pugs brought into the animal shelter by the Animal Control Officers. We scanned them for microchips and found that they were chipped. We called the owner, who was shocked to hear from us. "They've been missing for six months!" she said.

Shortly after, another lady called. "I just lost my two pugs, have they been picked up?" The story wasn't too hard to figure out. The original owner had lost the pugs six months earlier. The second lady found them, and rather than bringing them to the shelter, had kept them. Only when they had escaped and been brought to us and scanned had we found the original owner.

Ironically, the ownership of the dogs is still not clearcut. Apparently, as long as the finder makes a "good effort" to find the original owner, they can keep the animals. Since the original owner put up flyers all over town looking for their dog, and the finder had never brought the animals to us (or even taken them to a vet's office to be scanned for microchips), I would personally say that the finder didn't make a good effort, but I'm not the judge.

Adding an additional problem to the mix, the original owner had already gotten another dog (dogs?) to replace the pugs, and now if she takes the pugs back, she'll have more dogs than her city allows her to have. I'm going to keep informed on what happens, and I'll post here if I find out.

(Later: we gave the pugs back to the original owner, and promised the newer owner we'd give her first dibs on the next small dog [pug, chihuahua, dachshund] we got in.)

As interesting as that situation is, it isn't the only one of its kind when it comes to microchips and pet ownership. We got another microchipped dog in, and the owner said something similar about it being missing for several months. While we were waiting for the owner to come in, another guy came in looking for the same dog. We told him it had a microchip that said the owner was someone else, and asked him how he had gotten the dog. He gave a name (we'll say it was "Mary") and said that Mary had given it to him. We told him we couldn't release the dog to him until we got the situation worked out, and he beat a suspiciously hasty retreat.

When the original owners came in, we told them that a "Mary" had apparently given the dog to the latest owner, and the original owners looked shocked. "Mary is our relative! We gave her the dog to babysit while we were on vacation, and she said it had ran off!"

Apparently Mary had some sort of grudge against the owners (or perhaps dog). And apparently the guy she had given the dog to was at least somewhat aware that all was not kosher in the way he received the dog. Last I heard, I think we just left the original owners to deal with Mary how they would.

Remember: collars can be lost...or deliberately removed! Microchips are like diamonds: forever. (Or if not forever, at least a step more permanent than collars.)

Only last small incident, not concerning microchips this time. We had an old lady come in yesterday, accompanied by her younger neighbor and her neighbor's daughter. They were looking for a dog for the old lady, who's old dog had died a week previous. (Interestingly, three separate neighbors had called asking about getting a dog for the old lady.) Anyway, they wanted to look at a chihuahua, and I was taking them to the "Get Acquainted" room so they could let it run around. As they went in, the old lady leaned toward me and said solemnly, "I'm a child."

I stared at her, not sure I had heard correctly, and if I had, wondering if it was some manifestation of the slight dementia that her neighbor had whispered to us the old lady had. I said, "Excuse me?" and the lady repeated, "I'm a child."

I still had a puzzled look on my face, and the old lady finally clarified by saying, "Before I married, my name was 'Child.'"

Oh! That's...nice. I gave a polite nod of still-puzzled understanding. The lady followed her neighbor into the room, and I shut the door behind them. I went to the front desk where I repeated the incident to our shelter mom, who laughed. "'Child' is the big name in her [small] town," she said. "If you're a Child, you're really someone. You were supposed to be impressed."

Oops. Oh well. I guess I've been working with animals too long, because as a general rule, I'm as impressed by names as a dog is.