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The shelter where I work has a stray dog section and an adoption dog section, with a total of 90 dog kennels between them. I wear earplugs every day I work in there in order to protect myself from hearing loss over time (the sheer number of dogs and noise will damage your hearing over time) which makes it pretty hard to communicate with coworkers. Every kennel gets cleaned top to bottom daily, with small cleanups and spot checks throughout the afternoon. Stray cats is our current mess of a project, as animal control has brought in 55(!) cats from a hoarder house. With a total of 68 cages available in stray cats we've had to set up temporary cages and enclosures from floor to ceiling to house them all. Like with the dogs we clean every cage and enclosure top to bottom, fully change the food/litter and bedding. Depending on who is scheduled and whether we have volunteers around to help with the adoption areas, one person is often tasked with cleaning about 80 cat enclosures in 4 hours. Its pretty goddamn sad and insane and my coworkers are often cutting corners due to time constraints and sheer workload. A particularly large pit bull shoved me over two weeks ago and falling against the gate i got a nice gash above my right eye from hitting the kennel gate on the way down. Its healing up now, but there was a lot of blood and it will probably leave a nasty little scar in my eyebrow. I also get to deal with people on a daily basis who call me a murderer or decide to abuse the staff because their animal was taken by animal control for being starved/biting someone/chained outside in the middle of a midwest winter. It's been sort of a rough week, so its nice to have a place to vent.
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Feb 5, 2015 07:44
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 20:44 |
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Well, it seems like as good a time as any to resurrect this thread with a gross question. I work at a shelter and yesterday we had a litter of 6 kittens come in, all about 3 weeks old. Two of them were crawling with maggots, apparently hatching/bursting from small holes around the anus. All I knew to do was a very thorough wash with kitten friendly shampoo. Is there anything beyond this that needs to be done for the issue? Ever seen anything similar?
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Jul 7, 2015 01:10
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Yeah, I'm sure they were maggots. I suppose that out in the summer's heat they will lay eggs into anything that isn't moving or has any sores/infections. One of the two passed away, the other is going strong. The litter is still too young to worm, but a small dose of clavamox seems in order. Beyond that we are just full as hell. The shelter just finished up a court case against a hoarder and we have maybe 4 dozen adult cats to work on adopting out from this household alone. By themselves the case cats have taken up an entire adoption room and half of the stray area worth of space. I honestly don't know where we are going to find room for any other animals now, every bit of previously empty space is now occupied with stacked cat crates.
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Jul 7, 2015 23:47
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Well, after a year and a half I am looking to get out of the shelter work field. 40 hours a week feels more like 60 with the overcrowding of animals, the angry people, and the jobs that become incredibly unpleasant because of a low budget. Our dryers have not worked for months so we have been sun-drying laundry for a shelter with 80ish dogs and 170ish cats. Thats when it doesn't rain. Management turned off the cold water faucet in the dish area to save money. "If you need cold water, just wait till the hot water is used up" - an actual quote from a woman managing 30 employees. I carry plenty of stress home, and my dreams wind up being about work. So I've given 2 months notice to give them time to find a new employee and train them how to use the shelter software and work front desk. My immediate supervisor is unable to even give a positive reference because the board of directors will not allow the management to tell other companies anything beyond the dates someone was employed from. The kittens infested with maggots that I bathed both died, as did the rest of their litter of 6. The overcrowding and lack of time/resources lately has ensured that basically any kitten under 6 weeks without a mom is unlikely to survive without fostering. I took home a mom and litter of 4 to foster (3 days old now on the kittens) and they are all snuggled into a mass of black fur. Also gently caress everyone who comes in looking for a Barn Cat and decides that a persian/himalayan/ragdoll would be a match for that lifestyle when the summers here get to 110. I never adopt to them but goddamn how stupid do you get.
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Jul 15, 2015 04:03
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No maggots, but we had a dead dog brought in that had attacked a police officer. PD shot it 8 times (apparently out of 17 fired rounds) and while we are fairly sure this killed the dog, they neglected to decapitate it OR set it on fire. Put in my notice, little more than a month left. Feel like i've seen enough.
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Jul 20, 2015 23:09
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