How to become a pariah in one blog post!

It’s interesting to me that there are so many posts, memes, whatever out there maligning every person who ever takes a dog to the shelter. Not absolving those that truly are jerks, but what’s with all the “You would bring your dog to a shelter to die!?” when often times people really aren’t left with a whole lot of choice? Yes, if you bring your dog to a shelter your dog has a risk of dying. How big that risk is depends on the particular shelter, but let’s entertain for a moment when you’re faced with a dog you have no idea what to do with. Let’s entertain that because of the aforementioned dog I have here right now. Also, let’s not entertain it with the idea that I’m going to bring this dog to a shelter- I don’t do that nor is it the point of this post.

Saturday night I picked up these two dogs. Buster the Golden and Chelsea the Boxer/Pit mix. I’ve admittedly been kind of lost since Elsa was adopted, so when I got a message regarding helping them before the woman holding them took them to the local kill shelter I got involved. I like to help dogs, but generally where I make my first mistake is that silly part where I trust people to tell me a dog is what it is and they’re going to do what they say they’ll do. I was contacted at some point earlier in the week and so I started cross posting and asking for placement for these dogs. Offered transport and any help I could and that was supposed to be that. Needless to say a young Golden Retriever, despite being intact with no medical work up otherwise, was snapped up immediately. I STILL have rescues calling me today to take him. What do you think the odds are placing an older Boxer/Pit mix despite the fact she is spayed, an easy dog, and I’m offering to vaccinate and microchip? APPARENTLY NONE. I firmly stated to the friend of the now deported owner that I had no intentions of taking a dog without rescue backing or a place to go right now and she said if transport could be arranged she would love to take her. The red light is flashing repeatedly in my doofus face but god help me I like dogs and now I was involved. I did not want a 9 year old Pit mix ending up at our animal control, that had posted a week before that they were full to the brim and pleading for rescues to pull dogs with the same old “we will HAVE to euthanize some nice dogs and we don’t want to do that now do we?” so, I said I would hold her until a transport could be arranged. 2-3 weeks tops!

Until of course that woman stopped responding to me after I repeatedly asked for her information so I could put in the transport request. I requested her information 5 times and got bits and pieces before she ultimately decided she didn’t really want this dog and the best course of action was to ignore me now that the dog was here and my problem.

Don’t worry, I am an idiot and paying handsomely. No good deed certainly doesn’t go unpunished. Now I have this dog in my house driving me up the wall with no end in sight. I’m sitting in Elsa’s apartment with her because we have to rotate lest three of my dogs murder her in cold blood. The folks involved insisted she is a very calm older dog that doesn’t do much of any thing. That may be true if every one who happened to spend any time around this dog was blind, deaf, and confined to a small room without the dog. I am accounting for stress of being in a new environment, but she never stops doing stuff. Ever. Shambles is a busy dog, but this dog is a BUSY DOG. She spends every waking moment either bringing me a ball, snuffling every thing, or destroying the ball when I won’t throw it. As a result, we are rotating because that sort of behavior stresses three of mine out and it will result in some shit being thrown down. This dog is clearly not used to the routine of being rotated, so I get to feel bad for confining her every two hours and then feel ultra bad confining my dogs every two hours after that. She’s actually a very lovely dog. Does well with all dogs that are fine with her love of tennis balls and running them urgently through out the house, has nice manners, walks decently enough on a leash, and if we had no other dogs she’d be pretty welcome here and we could figure this stuff out, but I am a stupid ass. We’ll find out, but I’m suspecting that she has Cushing’s as well.

We are not having enjoyable times around here, which leads me back to opening statement. What exactly are folks supposed to do should they find themselves in these situations, with say even their own dogs? A dog that doesn’t fit with no where to go but apparently impending death? I don’t like death. I especially don’t like it for our canine friends, but I can definitely identify with having a dog in your house that turns every thing upside down. By this time tonight I have left messages with 40 different rescues in a three-four hour radius explaining my plight, Some of those messages the same ones that have room for the Golden but I guess he was worth it and this gal ain’t. I’m just musing here, but we really offer little alternative for these sort of situations except drop the dog off and hope for the best or pull all your hair out in the mean time. I do know that I need to make smarter choices on when to get involved and when not to and not every dog in the world is my responsibility, but that just feels yucky too.

I don’t know. All of this just leaves a gross taste in my mouth. I suppose I’ll stay up late with my beer and try to figure out how to be a smarter, better person.