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I work 20 hours a week plus a bunch of volunteer time at an animal shelter. I've had pets before but this is a whole new world to me. I started in November and I have no veterinary training at all and I am learning a lot of things very quickly. Today I learned about pee. I have never seen so much pee in all my life. We have five dogs, and one of them is a puppy, somewhere around three months, maybe. I was really tired from driving to another town four hours or so away to pick them up and missing a ferry coming back, then getting up balls early for work the next morning. I let the puppy out back first and mopped out the kennel for the first time while pup had a bathroom break outside. I let the big bull mastiff out next, carefully closing all the doors and putting the gate up on the corridor, opening the outside door first. Alpha walked with me to the door, sniffed the outside and immediately slung all of his 100 pounds back up the corridor, wiggled out of his collar and sauntered up and cocked his leg on the hose we have in the kennel hallway. Goddamnit Alpha. Alpha goes outside and I set to cleaning up that pee but meanwhile pup has just lost her poo poo from all the excitement of that and peed in her kennel again, but also the other three dogs have to go out and they're all just in within the last couple of days and none of them have been behaviour tested so they each have to go out into the yard alone on rotation. I scrubbed out the kennel four times today for lil pup and put down a bunch of puppy pads but i can't stay overnight and spend enough time with him to make sure he knows what they're for. Tomorrow morning will also be a lesson in pee. Also five dogs means SO MUCH POOP. And spending a good half hour finding all the clever spots they put that poop in the rain with a shovel and pusher thingy and a lined rubbermaid bin thing that you put out with the mounds of cat poop and rabbit pellets and litter that you scoop every day cause you are a critter housekeeper. Cause we also have cats, kittens, rabbits and guinea pigs that all constantly pee and poo. In between dealing with the humans that come in and want to tell you their life story while you stand there with a bucket of soapy water in your hand knowing poo poo really has to be done right now and ain't nobody else gonna do it. It is totally awesome no matter how much poop i have to shovel and I love it because i have so many rad critter friends that find awesome people to live with but some days I also feel totally helpless. Tell me your shelter life stories, please.
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Jan 18, 2015 08:50
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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. 
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Jan 20, 2015 01:34
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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.
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Jan 20, 2015 05:39
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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. 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.
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Jan 20, 2015 05:43
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I love shelter stories. You're good people for doing this.
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Jan 29, 2015 16:03
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What do your shelters look like? I've been considering volunteering at the shared humane society/city animal shelter kennels, but with around 25 dogs in one building, that's a lot of barking. You can tell all the dogs are stressing each other out too. Is this setup the norm or do people generally go about this in better ways? I'll probably end up volunteering at the catteries, that place is always chill.
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Feb 4, 2015 21:28
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Yes it's a huge barkfest. The shelter I ALMOST volunteered for also had a gigantic cockroach problem, but with all the dog food around, and animals, they couldn't do much about it. In the light you don't notice it but I went in the evening for volunteer orientation and when they clicked on the lights OH GOD 
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Feb 4, 2015 22:45
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CompactFanny posted:Yes it's a huge barkfest. The shelter I ALMOST volunteered for also had a gigantic cockroach problem, but with all the dog food around, and animals, they couldn't do much about it. Diatomaceous Earth is a fantastic thing.
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Feb 5, 2015 02:35
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Our shelter is pretty small compared to city shelters, and the building is only 18 months old so everything is pretty new and clean still. We clean every kennel, cage and enclosure every single day, and most animals will eat their wet food straight away, so there's not too much crud lying around. We have 3 kennels and 3 cat rooms each with two cat cages, plus a puppy room and a kitten room. The cages are standard two-compartment things where the cat's hidey box and food is in one compartment and the litterbox in the other. The cat rooms have sliding doors to a courtyard fenced in with chainlink, and the dog rooms have dog doors to their outdoor areas. We also have one more cage in our medical room/intake area. With the cats, if we have two that don't get along, we rotate them so they each have time to enjoy the whole room, or if they're bonded cats we just let them hang out together. Same with dogs - some we can let outside in the exercise yard together, but we're constantly rotating dogs out during the day. We don't have any cockroaches (yet!). The number of animals at any given time fluctuates, but right now we have seven dogs (two of them are in foster at my house and one more is in foster at another girl's house), seven cats and four kittens, plus four rabbits and a lamb that comes in with one of our senior animal care people, who has a farm at home. It does get a bit barky, depending on the individual dogs we have. It is a stressful environment for a lot of animals and we do our best to make everyone calm and happy, but we can't change the fact that they're in a building with a zillion other critters and people coming in and out all day. Today a lady stopped by to make a donation and she had a Quaker parrot in her jacket! It just rides around with her all day and comes out to poop. We've had everything from ducks to raccoons since the building was built! Volunteers are a huuuuuge help to us. Some of the jobs are a bit gross and involve scooping litterboxes or picking up poo in the exercise yard, but we also have volunteers that walk dogs and socialise cats. Some shelters insist you do a gross job so you can do a fun job, but we're pretty relaxed and we have a couple of really great animal companions and socialisers that do laundry and dishes, but don't have to do the poo stuff. I often just do the gross things myself so the volunteers can do what they're best at. I don't mind poo, I'd much rather deal with that than say, finances. Pictures time! These two are my foster dogs until tomorrow. The blonde guy is Rex and the black and white is Bella. They're shih tzu crosses, so they have all the cute without the smushy faces! I'm lucky they're adopted already, otherwise I would probably keep them. The pic is taken at my house - excuse the dirty floor!  This is Basil the lamb hanging out with his bun buddies, Igor and Skip  And this is one of our feral kittens (unnamed thus far) chillin next to her litterbox like a weirdo. The ferals are always the most anxious and fearful when they come in. Some warm up reallyy quickly, like this one but others can take months of our cat wizard (a lovely retired lady) visiting them every day with treats and brushes. 
Shithouse Dave fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 04:01
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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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Oh god, the way people will bitch about you is incredible. I spent hours and hours not getting shelter poo poo done with one lady who adopted a GSD mix transferred in jfrom the prairies while she wavered about wanting a vaccine so the dog could go to daycare and not wanting to vaccinate her dog, talking her through why it will give the dog diarrhea if you suddenly give her huge amounts of wet food, and having her come back the next day and go "oh she still has diarrhea. I was going to feed her less but she looked really sad", explaining that no we cannot tell her who owned her in manitoba; only to have her send a complaint in about the shelter saying we wouldn't give her the dog's records and that it was really easy to google the previous owner from the vet records (THAT WE GAVE HER, only with the name blacked out) so why wouldn't we just tell her (because uh, we have privacy policies). I'm going to cruelty call training next week, and I just can't wait to make a bunch of enemies in my small town where I will see people I investigated at the supermarket. I get a few scratches most weeks, and I have a huge healed gash on my arm from a six month old feral kitten who was making really good progress and letting me pet her, but I needed to crate her and I thought I could put my arms around her while she was on my knee and NOPE. It's going to make a cool scar. No cat scratch fever, it was immediately washed, alcohol swabbed and wrapped. Shortly before our shelter was built, when it was all volunteers fostering, a cat hoarder died and his estate wouldn't let anyone on the property. I haven't had a hoarder case, and I hope I never do, cause it sounds awful.
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Feb 5, 2015 08:38
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Oh god, don't tell me there are anti-vaccers for pets, too. Do they think they'll get doggy autism from them? 
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Feb 5, 2015 13:58
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Been thinking about volunteering at my local shelter. For those of you who have, how accommodating were they when/if you didn't want to do specific tasks? I don't want to care for dogs for example, I'll happily shovel cat poo poo though. All that barking and walking...
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Feb 5, 2015 16:08
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In my experience they will be happy you are there doing anything at all. I think they know they will chase people off if they try to make them do things they aren't interested in.
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Feb 5, 2015 19:50
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We're pretty accommodating for that sort of thing. We have one lady who loves cats and doesn't dig dogs at all, a guy who loves dogs and cats, but freaks out at rodents, and a few dog walkers who don't want anything to do with cats. We're stoked to have every kind of help!
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Feb 6, 2015 03:57
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Drawbacks of a small town shelter: today we ran fresh out of dogs! This is actually awesome; in the last week we've found forever homes for eight dogs and now we have room to take more from overcrowded shelters in other places. It was a little bit weird this afternoon though, when I went to get dog dinner ready and prepare kongs, and then remembered there's nobody to eat the dinner or enjoy a nice peanut butter kong with some goodnight pets. This gal was the last to leave today, and her forever people took her home under a huge fuckoff rainbow that stretched right over the shelter.  It's going to be super quiet tomorrow with only five cats and four rabbits in the joint.
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Feb 8, 2015 04:26
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Shithouse Dave posted:Drawbacks of a small town shelter: today we ran fresh out of dogs! You have the weirdest problems.
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Feb 8, 2015 18:51
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Suspect Bucket posted:You have the weirdest problems. I have the weirdest happy moments too. Today I was very pleased to see a cat poo and congratulated the artisan that produced it with pets and treats. She hadn't been eating very much, and I hadn't seen a turd in her litter box for three days. Good kitty, excellent poo, keep up the good work!
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Feb 9, 2015 03:50
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Ran out of dogs, huh? Congratulations, that doesn't sound like it happens often. How long do you think it will take for your shelter to fill up again? I registered to attend a volunteer orientation this wednesday at my local humane society. I have a good bit of free time nowadays so why not, right? I guess I'll get to learn how this all goes down. That Blue is adorable, by the way.
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Feb 9, 2015 09:59
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quote:Been thinking about volunteering at my local shelter. We would take you and let you do cats, but if you complained about doing anything in the cat area we probably wouldn't be excited to have you back. quote:The shelter I ALMOST volunteered for also had a gigantic cockroach problem, but with all the dog food around, and animals, they couldn't do much about it.
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Feb 12, 2015 03:46
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Psycho Society posted:Ran out of dogs, huh? Congratulations, that doesn't sound like it happens often. How long do you think it will take for your shelter to fill up again? It's about to be kitten season again, so the cat side will start filling right up in a month or so, and we should have some dogs transferred in in the next week or so. Some chinchillas are arriving tomorrow also, but I have cruelty investigation training for the next two days in another town, so I won't get to meet them until the weekend. It can be hard to predict when animals will come in as strays or surrenders though, they're often very short notice to us. Cruelty investigations are the part of my job I'm most worried about. Even in my quiet, isolated town I'm likely to see some horrible poo poo and meet some awful people, who I will then see at the supermarket and the doctor's office. We currently have two people trained to do them and I'll be the third, taking the pressure off my very burnt-out workmates. Tomorrow and Friday I'll be riding along with some experienced people and I am not sure what to expect. I've done two investigations here so far. One was a report of a skinny horse, and we went out there and the owner was very co-operative and explained that she is 32 years old, and he knows this is likely going to be her last winter, but he wanted to try and put some weight back on her before he has her put down. The farrier is out there every six weeks and his other horses are healthy, so it wasn't so bad. The other report was a tethered dog on the reserve and we were working through the process to seize him when he broke tether and got out on the highway. There's a lot of red tape and paperwork involved in seizing an animal, but we are allowed to pick up a roaming one if they're on public property. The elders on the res agreed that it wasn't a good situation for the dog and we found him a great new home with a trail runner, and they're very happy. I'm not looking forward to my first unhappy ending, but I think I will feel good about being an animal hero anyway.
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Feb 12, 2015 03:57
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I feel like my shelter is always changing policies and not for the better.
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Feb 13, 2015 02:18
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Bananaquiter posted:I feel like my shelter is always changing policies and not for the better. Are you comfortable expanding on this any further? I love to hear outside perspectives, and sheltering can be such a divisive industry.
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Feb 13, 2015 03:49
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mookerson posted:Are you comfortable expanding on this any further? I love to hear outside perspectives, and sheltering can be such a divisive industry. When I started we would do things like 10 to 14 day medical/observational holds for under-vaccinated puppies pulled from high risk open intake shelters. Or at least they would stay in foster till their second booster. Now we're getting them neutered the very next day and adopting them out two days after that. It's hard to counsel when you're adopting out a 2 month old puppy that's only been in the shelter for a handful of days and only has the first initial booster. I think I spend a full ten minutes talking about parvo. I think at least half of me is trying to talk them out of adopting at all. Man I'm never going to adopt a puppy.
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Feb 13, 2015 05:48
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I did day one of my two days of ride-alongs with cruelty investigators today. I met a man who performed a home euth (badly, but he was genuinely trying to do the right thing and I felt bad for him) and a lady who couldn't afford a vet so allowed her cat to die slowly of a urinary blockage. Charges will be recommended for both. The investigators are much harsher than I think I would be, but they each have three years of it behind them and I think they're a little jaded. There was a big difference between the way they treated people and the way we treat people back in my town. I know it's because they've seen some awful things, but I still think I would have worded things a little differently than "your cat is DEAD and you let it DIE HORRIBLY". Even poor and/or stupid people really love their pets, and I think I'd rather have people not be afraid to come to us for help. These people are never going to call our organization for anything ever again, and much worse poo poo goes down when people are afraid to ask for help. I hope tomorrow is better.
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Feb 13, 2015 06:54
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Bananaquiter posted:When I started we would do things like 10 to 14 day medical/observational holds for under-vaccinated puppies pulled from high risk open intake shelters. Or at least they would stay in foster till their second booster. What kind of resources do you guys have? How many animals a year? It sounds like you are limited admission, have you done any reading on fast track/slow track adoptions? A lot of shelters are prioritizing adoptions and as a result are able to help a lot more animals. I think it's pretty universal though to hate adopting out puppies in the shelter world, for all the reasons you brought up.
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Feb 13, 2015 18:20
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Shithouse Dave posted:I did day one of my two days of ride-alongs with cruelty investigators today. I met a man who performed a home euth (badly, but he was genuinely trying to do the right thing and I felt bad for him) and a lady who couldn't afford a vet so allowed her cat to die slowly of a urinary blockage. Charges will be recommended for both. Conversely sometimes it takes using those words in that manner to really drive things home for people. I had a woman who wanted to take home a cat with a urinary blockage, and I said just that to her. Your cat will die, and it will die in a terrible amount of pain. Point blank. You can't sugar coat that poo poo with some people. If you can't afford to treat the cat at least loving euthanize it and end its suffering. You will find a vet who will euthanize the animal for cheaply or free.
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Feb 14, 2015 02:34
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There really needs to be more jurisdictions with animal rights and the ability to force a guardian to surrender an animal when they are doing horrible poo poo like that. Some of the poo poo I see volunteering at my shelter makes me so loving angry.
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Feb 20, 2015 20:16
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I assisted in my first euth today. Last Sunday I got a call from a lady from a nearby town that is on an island. Her friend has gone to jail and he might be there a while, and he has a dog that the neighbours are feeding, but nobody wants to take him on in their home, because he is a human aggressive rottweiler who bit his owner last Wednesday. I had the day off Monday, and while the shelter is staffed, we're not open to the public and we do not have excess staff, so off I went with the truck, a selection of party hats (muzzles), a catch pole, a Y-pole, water bowl, leash and treats. I got the ferry over and met up with the caller at the local gas station, who was in the back of a sedan smoking with two burly guys in the front seat. I'd been in touch with the local police and they were fine with me doing this and offered their assistance should things get rough, but these guys looked like I shouldn't need any extra help. We rocketed up some tiny backroads and pulled in at this tiny trailer in the woods. It's a truck bed camper thing without the truck that the guy was living in, and that's where the dog is overnight. The lady told me that he was pretty jazzy that morning, when the neighbours let him out, but he sauntered up and sniffed my hand and didn't react at all. He was 80 pounds of rottweiler cross wearing a shiny choke chain and he looked pretty boss. He hopped right in the back of the truck and into a crate, because obviously car rides are awesome! When we got back to the shelter and went out for a pee (him) and to drink a coffee (me), I noticed that he walked kinda funny. We booked him an appointment at the vet the next day, and he was sweet on the way there, but once we got in, he snapped at the vet and was immediately muzzled. Sure enough, he has hip dysplasia and is probably in pain. The next day, he started getting aggressive at being back in his kennel after being outside. He showed teeth at me, and barked aggressively at any man who came up to his door. He was on pain management meds, but he got more aggressive in the next two days while I was off (and managing to be the Neighbourhood Cat Lady when a neighbour found a cat at his house and panicked that somebody had abandoned this cute as hell cat - turns out no, cat lives two houses away, duh). He doesn't know what toys are, doesn't want to eat or lick a peanut butter kong, doesn't want a milk bone. He's scared as hell and he will fight you if you make him do the scary thing. Our shelter does not have the budget for a multi thousand dollar surgery on a dog we can't adopt in good faith to anyone. We cannot send a human-aggressive dog out into the community. His owner is probably going down for ten years, and this guy is already 8 or 9 years old. Guy looks at me with his big brown eyes and says "I don't wanna go back in there, I want my dad and my truck bed camper in the woods". I offer him a donated frozen weiner. He raises his lips in a snarl and I toss it in the kennel, hoping I won't have to fight with him. He goes. He likes those sausages. He hates the dry food we have. It's all vet-prescribed and not what he knows. I know we have to do this. I'm just done tempting him back in with a weiner after scrubbing the kennels this morning when Sylvie comes in like a hurricane with a coffee for each of us and a fast paced rundown of her life for the two days since I last saw her. As she puts it, "I'm crazy and French, I can't help it!". She's talking a mile a minute, smoking and drinking coffee. She's not scheduled on, but she's often here anyway because the shelter is her life, like I'm discovering the shelter is my life, so it's not a surprise. She is second to my boss, and is the most experienced and knowledgeable with animal health. She's talking about the rotti and checking his file, and I ask her, "What are we going to do with him? We can't let people in to see him" and she says "We've got to put him down". I kind of know this already, but then it hit me, this is right now. She's got her euth ticket and that's why she's in right now. That's what we're doing this morning. Scooping cat boxes is gonna have to wait. We lead him into the medical room and he knows something's up. I give him another bit of weiner, tell him he's a good dog and we put his party hat on. I pet him and straddle him while Sylvie injects the sedative into his hind leg. I sit down on the floor and tell him he's a good boy. We lay a blanket down, turn the lights off and let him settle down. We go outside for a cigarette. Fifteen minutes later, he's conscious, but laid down on the blanket. I put a towel over his neck and shoulders and he relaxes. Sylvie shaves part of his hind leg, to see where the femoral vein is. I hold him in a tight hug with the towel as she slowly pushes the euthasol. He's breathing heavily. He is a good boy. Sylvie slowly pushes and he breathes, in, out, out, in, out, in. out. in. out. in........ out. He breathes a huge sigh and he is gone. Sylvie bandages his leg where she shaved it, and we wrap him. He is heavy and loose, not yet in rigour mortis. We close his eyes and wrap him tightly in a warm blanket, as though that will stave off the inevitable cold. We wrap him in black plastic, attach his cremation tag and lower him into the morgue, which is a big chest freezer. Two teardrops fall off my face and hit the black plastic. Maybe they'll freeze, or maybe they're too salty. Then the rest of the day happened. Volunteers, other staff and members of the public came looking to me for answers, and I gave them. I went and picked up a roaming elderly dog, scooped cat boxes, got volunteers to scoop litter and pick up poo, skipped lunch, went on a wild goose chase for chinchilla food in town. I know this won't be my last euth, but it is sort of bewildering that life just carries on and so do I. I think I'm gonna drink now.
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Feb 22, 2015 05:42
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That was super depressing, and to remedy that I offer you A STRAY CAT THAT LOOKS LIKE SALEM 
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Feb 22, 2015 06:01
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tower time posted: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. This is me, but closer to 150 (that's just dogs, there's probably similar or more capacity for cats, but gently caress cats.) Also, if you're thinking about volunteering, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE YES WE LOVE YOU. Also, to those sharing euth stories, y'all are doing heart sticks before dumping the animals in the freezer, right?
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Feb 22, 2015 06:22
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Error 404 posted:Also, to those sharing euth stories, y'all are doing heart sticks before dumping the animals in the freezer, right? omg yes.
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Feb 22, 2015 06:42
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Shithouse Dave posted:omg yes. Good.
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Feb 22, 2015 15:35
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Shithouse Dave posted:
He was a good dog and you are a good human.
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Feb 22, 2015 21:29
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Pile of Kittens posted:He was a good dog and you are a good human. Emptyquote
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Feb 22, 2015 23:26
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Well today was weird. I was kinda running on fumes because funnily enough, I didn't sleep that well last night. I didn't have any volunteers in until 2pm, which is odd. Usually there's a couple of girls and their mom who come in and do the litterboxes and vacuum the cat rooms for me, as well as a very quiet but sweet autistic guy who does dishes and laundry. I let our jazzy pit/lab cross out and then roused an old girl who came in yesterday, a sheltie cross approximately a million years old who'd been left to roam the streets until she wandered into a seniors' village where some nice ladies fed her and let her sleep in the garage on some blankets. No collar, no ID. I think I know who owns her, but I left that off the paperwork. She's not going back to be turfed outside again. She's totally deaf, almost blind and she doesn't move well. She'll get up and walk very quietly and stiffly on a leash in the back yard to do her business, but other than that she just wants to sleep. A couple of times I went in to check on her and had to put my hand on her to make sure she was breathing. She stinks, her teeth are totally hosed and she's covered in mats. She can't eat dry food so I went and found the tastiest and best looking donated can of wet food for her. We have a palliative foster lined up for her, I just hope she makes it into foster. She is so old and sad and stiff and sweet. I got a call about a dog wandering in a different part of town, and I took a quick Facebook break to see if anyone had reported a lost dog, and that's when I found out that one of my best friends' dog died in the night last night. He was about 6 years old, big healthy friendly lab/malamute mix who loved everyone, and everyone loved him right back. He started vomiting in the night and my friend called the vet (we don't have a 24hr hospital here, the nearest one is a ferry ride away and the ferries don't run in the night), and he said to keep him calm and warm, it would probably stop on its own. I guess it didn't. He must have eaten something strange in his new neighbourhood - they just moved house last week. I took ten minutes to have a wee cry into my coffee before starting on the cat rooms. I started in the intake room, like I always do. We just have one cat cage in there, and all our medical stuff is stored in the fridges and cupboards. Salem is in there for now, she'll graduate to a cage in one of the larger rooms tomorrow. I let her out to have free run of the room since all the med stuff is stored away and we sanitize the counters before and after every intake anyway. That was a mistake. Turns out Salem doesn't know about litterboxes, so she found a nice pile of clean towels someone had stacked on top of the cage in there yesterday and went hog wild. We already had Mount Laundry piling up because we have a single domestic washer and a single domestic dryer and they do not handle the abuse we throw at them. Every towel in that stack had to be washed. Goddamn it, Salem! She's lucky she's so drat cute, even with her scabby head. I couldn't help but laugh though. When I came in she was just finishing up and she sheepishly tried to pull the towel over to cover it, while looking at me like "uuuuuh, I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, can't prove anything". While it was weird and lonely to be sad by myself (animal company excepted, several kitty and doggy hugs were had), it was kind of a blessing in a way. The work takes your mind off things, and there are many definitely-alive critters with needs that must be met. We also have a couple of young volunteers on Saturdays who kinda create more work than they do (sometimes I feel like a fuckin daycare for school-aged kids) so I just threw myself into getting the shelter ship-shape until the cat lady Beverley came in the afternoon. She's a sprightly retired lady in her early seventies who comes in every day for a couple of hours to brush and pet all the cats, and especially to socialize our feral cats, and she is an absolute godsend. She is a total wizard with the ferals and less sociable cats, and she even wrangles other, less cluey volunteers. She doesn't much care for dogs, but she'll walk a nice small one. She's so cheerful and nice, she brightens my day every single day I'm in there. I get a couple of days off now, so I'm going to bake and go cry with my friend over her dog, and the rotti, and the sheltie who's owner doesn't give a gently caress and I'm gonna hug my cats and plant some things for the fresh new growing season and gear up for Rabbitocalypse 2015. Oh yeah, did I mention we have a feral rabbit problem? They breed like uh....
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Feb 23, 2015 04:45
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You should really come up with volunteer shifts and a way to signup and schedule them online, doing this and trying to spread people around the day of week and time of day instead of come in whenever do whatever you want improved the volunteer experience and overall shelter quality where I volunteer immensely.
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Feb 24, 2015 18:49
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I got my first "failure to thrive" kitten of the year today  We got a mama cat with a really late litter of 7 kittens in last week. 2 of the kittens died in the first 2 days, then we got the whole family to foster. The foster mom brought in the runt of the 5 who are left today because the mother cat had stopped feeding it, and even with supplemental feedings the kitten had lost 10% of its body weight in 3 days and was starting to shut down. Euthanasia is hard enough, but gently caress unweaned kittens are heartbreaking. I am really not looking forward to summer.
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Feb 27, 2015 03:31
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Last week: We got in a stray APBT who was really sweet, we named him Western. He passed his SAFER eval with all 1s, and he was awesome for staff and volunteers alike, so we put him up for adoption. Until last saturday, when one of our volunteers threw a fuckton of loaded kongs into his kennel, we discovered he's extremely protective of kongs (gallows humor: "He's King of Kongs") This dog was staring down and hard growling anyone who tried to take him for a walk or even enter his kennel, he's refusing to get off of his bed, he's literally laying on top of 3-4 kongs. It took three people and a catch-pole to get him out of his kennel and moved into a kennel in the non-public isolation ward. BTW, this all happened on the adoption floor. While we were open to the public.  The day before yesterday: Time to escort Western to the gates of Valhalla. We give him a dose in food to get him shithoused before we go into the kennel, this guy is enough of a concern we don't even try to move him into 'The Room', we're gonna do this thing right here. So he's drowsy and can't put up too much of a fight, and even when he was being crazy he still liked me enough to be fractionally less crazy, so I'm assisting even though it's not my day for this poo poo. I try the towel thing on the neck and shoulders that Shithouse Dave mentioned, it worked pretty well (thanks for the tip). I'm sitting on homeboy, someone else has his leg, and a third person has the needle. When it's done I sit there in the kennel petting Western while someone goes to get the cart and a few blankets so we can cart him to the freezer. When the cart gets here I pick up the meat and set him on the cart, and cover him up. I pat his head and say goodbye. Fun Fact: sounds like some of you guys have a cooler chest, we have a full-size industrial walk-in.
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Feb 27, 2015 06:03
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 06:42 |
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Awwwww Western. I hate when they start so promising and end up crossing the bridge. We had another one this week and Sylvie just couldn't. I took her to the vet. Fun fact: I've not had any temperament testing training at all so far. I am really feeling my lack of dog knowledge beyond my childhood dogs - a yeller mutt and a springer spaniel - and my three months of shelter work. I've always been a cat lady and I can cat like a mofo, but I just don't have much experience in the world of dogs as an adult. I'm absorbing everything I can like a sponge, but it'll be summer before I can go do our organization's dog workshop in the city. I'm bouncing between wanting to be the magic worker that takes the pressure off my boss (Brenda) and Sylvie who go above and beyond every single day, and really really needing them for guidance, especially on the days that they have things going on and can't be there. If you guys have any resources I can learn from, please post them! I went in for a volunteer shift today and OH GOD OUR DRYER IS BROKEN. I have two garbage bags of laundry to dry at my house and there's a small himalayan peak of laundry still to go at the shelter, and also we have a facility inspection on saturday with a real stickler inspector. Someone come and euth me please.
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Feb 27, 2015 08:35
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