I lied. And I want the dog back.

When I arrived at the shelter, it was 9:15 and the shelter was still closed. I went around back and only found one car there. I knocked, and Pat opened the door. Apparently the person who was supposed to open with her (at 8:30--a half hour before the shelter officially opens) called to say she would be late...for about the 10th time in the last month.

Even worse, she didn't call Pat to tell her because she didn't want to face Pat's wrath, but called the shelter and left a message, knowing that no one answered the phone before 9:00. Something tells me this person will not work at the shelter for much longer.

As a result, Pat was glad to see me, because then she could open the shelter and call the inmates to come over and start working. When the phone rang, I answered it and there was a lady looking for a dog. Apparently, her daughter-in-law had gone into the hospital, and the step-father was stuck with caring for a half-blind Jack Russel terrier. As far as she knew, he had tried to get it euthanized at a vet clinic, they had refused because it was healthy, then he had gotten rid of it somewhere else.

The problem was that she didn't call it a Jack Russel, she said it was some strange breed, and I didn't see that breed in our book of occupants. I told her we didn't have it, so she said she would keep calling around.

However, later that morning, the step-father came in. He didn't beat around the bush. He walked up to the counter and said, "Last night I brought a dog in. I said it was a stray, but I lied, It's my step-daughter's dog and now I need it back."

Personally, I though we should have charged him for the owner release that he should have paid for the previous evening, then charged him for an adoption. However, Pat let him off easy with just paying for a night of boarding and a rabies shot (we couldn't even charge for the licensing since he lived out of our jurisdiction).

As he filled out the paperwork to get the dog back, he told us what he had done. Apparently, he hadn't been looking forward to caring for this dog by himself for an indefinite period of time, so he had taken it to a vet clinic to get it euthanized. They had refused since it was a healthy dog. Failing that, he decided to bring it to our shelter and claim it was a stray, but asked the vet clinic to say they had euthanized the dog if his wife called. They had refused that also.

Predictably, his wife had called the vet clinic, but all they could tell her was that her husband had taken the dog to a shelter somewhere. She didn't know which one it was, so she had been calling around. Apparently she had finally put enough pressure on him, and he came in to get it back.

Some people are crazy.

Incidentally, a second lady called asking if we had her cats. According to her, he had been dumping horse manure in her pasture, so she yelled at him. He had retaliated by trapping her cats and taking them to the shelter so she had to pay to get them out. She called him on the phone to yell at him, then he came over to her house to yell at her. Then he had apparently trapped her cats again, and she pondered aloud the possibility of going over to his house to beat him up. I told her to wait until he came to her property again to do that. :)

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.