Pet Talk

by Cathy Davis
    If you follow us on Facebook, you know that we just had a new resident come to the Shelter, a 6-year-old that was left in a cage by the front door. He is a beautiful dog, so very sad, and in desperate need of a bath and some loving. The look on his face would break your heart. Abandoned by a family he adored, I can’t imagine what he was thinking when he watched them drive away. And don’t tell me dogs don’t think because I know better. They might be thinking in doggie language but just look in their eyes and tell me they don’t understand every word you say and everything you do.
    We are so very grateful that the owners of this dog took the route that they did, bringing him to the shelter. We would have preferred that they had come to the shelter during business hours and discussed their situation with the shelter director, because it’s so much better if we can get a history of the animal. Are they good with kids, other dogs? Does he have health issues? And animal abandonment is illegal. We could prosecute.
    But at least he wasn’t abandoned by the side of the road or tied out back of a house and ignored. This family cared enough about this animal to take him somewhere that they knew he would be safe.
    I don’t condone abandonment, don’t get me wrong, but I also don’t condemn the situation. I don’t know the whole story, but maybe there was a serious illness in the house, maybe a fire, maybe some kind of tragedy that prevented this family from keeping this dog. Maybe it was simple finances. Sometimes we find ourselves suddenly without jobs or homes and our lives must change drastically. Sometimes we just don’t have a choice, we have to decide whether to feed our children or our pets.
    If you ever find yourself in a situation where you must re-home a pet, please don’t just leave it by the road or in front of a shelter or, like our poor little hamster we just took in, in a dumpster. For the reasons I just stated, a shelter really needs to know a lot of information about your pet that only you can provide and if you just ask, they will work to help you.
    We are a small shelter, and we are there for stray and abandoned animals first, that’s our contractual obligation to those towns who need a shelter and use our facility. But even if we are full, we have resources to help you if you need to place a pet. We have a list of people just waiting to adopt a certain breed of animal or a certain age dog or cat. We can help you by advertising your pet on our Facebook page. We can tell his/her story in this Pet Talk column. We can network with dozens of other shelters, we can find a foster home if we have to until a new home is found, we can give you the names of a dozen rescues that work with just your breed of dog or cat. There are resources.
    I often wonder if my dog Scruffy was abandoned. When he was brought to the shelter he had been running on the Back Ridge Road for a week, nobody could catch him until he finally just got so weak and tired he couldn’t run any more. Was that because he was a runner? Did he run away because he was mistreated? Or did his family just drive down the road one day and throw him out of the car?
    He’s been with us for two years and we have seen signs that indicate he was probably beaten in his former home. He also has separation anxiety, if we leave him just to go to town for dinner, he cries and barks and attempts to eat my favorite shoes (four pair before I finally found a place to hide them that he couldn’t get into). And yet he is such a loving dog. What’s his story, his background; did he ever have any injuries or health issues?
    The fact that nobody ever called the shelter looking for him leads me to believe he may have been dropped off along the side of the road. How can your dog go missing for a week and you never ever call the shelter to see if he’s been brought in?
    My point of this whole story is this — if you find yourself in a situation where for some reason you cannot keep a pet, please do not just abandon it. Honestly, the shelter folks don’t bite, they will work with you, they won’t make you feel like a bad person, and just having the opportunity to talk to you about your pet, get information on health, personality, temperament, eating habits, will make him so much easier to treat and re-home. If you have a hamster that is getting on your nerves in the night, please don’t drop him in a dumpster. If you thought having a bunny would be great at Easter and then you find out that you just know nothing about bunnies and have no idea how to take care of one, please don’t let him loose outside. Domestic bunnies will not survive outdoors. They are just an easy target for every predator out there and if they don’t get them, the weather and lack of proper food will. 
    Please do the right thing if you find you can’t keep a pet.   And to the family that left the six-year-old by the door, our hearts go out to you that you found yourself in a situation where you felt you had no other alternative and we will take really good care of your dog and find him a new home as soon as we can.