Shelter life: I am the poopsmith

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Pet Island > Shelter life: I am the poopsmith

Invalid Octopus: Jun 30, 2008; When is dinner?

I volunteer walk dogs at one of four city shelters in a very large city. Normally there aren't any more than 6 dogs or so on the walk list (so, up for adoption + soon to be), but last month one of the other shelters was under construction and we got their dogs and had as many as 13 or something. The drawback to being in a city with zero dog overpopulation is that we get dogs from outside the province (Quebec is the puppy mill capital of NA, northern provinces, and sometimes even the states) which have been in worse conditions than most of the dogs we get. Ones from up north have basically never been indoors and were often taken from packs, so they get pretty peeved at being kept in a kennel. Alternatively, the puppy mill adults/puppies have never been in anything but kennels and so going outdoors is an adjustment for them. In general it's a pretty nice gig that I've been doing for 4 years now, and I really love when I have the opportunity to help people adopt. I can say, though, that I'd be happy to never interact with another labrador in my life.

Here is a pretty cute puppy named Blue.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2015 01:34

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 21:11

Invalid Octopus: Jun 30, 2008; When is dinner?

Shithouse Dave posted:

Yeah, we get a lot of dogs in from Manitoba in winter. We're a small shelter in a small town and we have three actual kennels, which is why five dogs is pretty lol. We have a geriatric that is probably going into palliative foster (poor ol thing, she'd be a euth if the boss hadn't seen the guy who had to give her up sobbing), in what was designed as our volunteer room and converted, the bonded puppy-and-adult pair in in the first kennel - swapped with Gerri the geriatric because the adult can open the door! - and then the other two have these big lively mastiff crosses in who were both tethered res dogs. We can only have one (or the bonded pair sharing a kennel) out in the exercise yard at a time and it's heartbreaking hearing everyone else crying out for company when I've got all the cleaning to do and there's only one of me on.
Afternoons are better cause walker volunteers come in and I get a bit of time to hang out with my animal buddies.

For the first few days, Alpha would only eat his breakfast outside. He was stoked to have an inside bed and a big stuffy friend and a bone to chew, but I guess he had no idea that you could eat inside without being yelled at. He'd look at his bowl, then turn around and look at you and be like "uuuuuhhhhh, can I go out now?". He might be at a shelter near you soon, because we need to transfer him out of town for adoption. We're too small and isolated to adopt him here and risk him being seen around town and retrieved. We had phone calls and complaints about him at his old home for months and we couldn't do anything about it without getting in an animal welfare constable and the RCMP agreeing to come with, plus a good month of red tape legal poo poo to work with, but he broke his tether and got out on the highway and that's when we picked him up. We have the support of the band office, but his owner is unhappy and not a nice person in general so it's all less likely to cause trouble down the line if he is somewhere else.

Next time I will post pics of shelter friends! I was just way too busy this weekend to take any.

The location I'm at used to have room for close to 20 dogs which is hilariously unnecessary. But! They did some construction recently and removed walls in them to turn all of the kennels into double-size. There's no outdoor area for them to run around in off-leash or anything, which is a bummer, but at least none of them stick around for long.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2015 05:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Pet Island > Shelter life: I am the poopsmith