Submit to “Voices from the Front Lines”
If you are an animal shelter/rescue worker, and would like to submit a story, a short vent, or any other words, please email Jessica. Sign with your first name only, or simply “anonymous”, and the state in which you work.
Yesterday I stood in my vets office as a man came in and gave 2 newborn, listless kittens to the front counter clerk. The clerk was giving me “the look” and I knew she wanted me to say something, but was not sure of the situation so I said nothing.
The man left.
As the clerk quietly handed the kittens to a tech she turned to me with a look of anger and sadness. She then explained that the man comes in over a period of time, every year and drops off kittens. Often he just drops them on the desk and leaves without a word, or leaves them on the floor when the office is busy and runs off. She was hoping that since my rescue partner and I were there that we would talk to him.
Over time the staff learned that the kittens are from his own cat. The vet has made a standing offer to spay his cat for free. It has been made very clear to him that the kittens are in bad shape and that the kittens are euthanized.
He will not have his cat spayed because he “doesn’t believe in that.”
I recently heard of a dog who bit another dog. It was a “family pet” – just a puppy – who got out of the yard unsupervised. The family immediately gave the pup up to the shelter, and he was subsequently euthanized within hours.
I heard this from their neighbor who loved the dog and would have taken him in a heartbeat. She didn’t find out about what the family did until four days later. In these situations, my question is always, “Why aren’t the owners being punished for killing their dog?” Had the dog received the proper training and supervision, this would not have happened. Instead, these people, who don’t see the wrong in what they have done, are out looking for another dog.
People laugh or sneer when they find out how extensive rescue adoption applications are, but they are exhaustive for good reason. Rescues want to weed out people like this from adopting from them. Sadly, these people could probably walk into any shelter, answer any internet ad, or most certainly walk into any pet store and leave with a new dog, who most likely won’t fare much better than the one who just died.