abandoned dog, everybody's dog

[f0rrest]

My first real paying job was cleaning up dog shit for $7/hr at a no-kill animal shelter.

I was an eighteen-year-old high school dropout with a fresh GED, an addiction to cigarettes and Adderall, and an unhealthy attachment to massively multiplayer online computer games. I lived with my mom, and if I wanted to continue living with my mom, abusing her money and internet and kindness to fuel my apathetic adolescent bullshit, I had to get a job. That was the rule. And, at the time, working at the animal shelter seemed like the most obvious choice, not only because I loved animals more than people, but also because my mom was the president of the board. Pure nepotism.
 

The animal shelter was called “The Humane Society,” and its motto was “An abandoned dog is everybody’s dog.” It was a nonprofit, funded entirely through adoption fees and donations, but it sat in a pretty poor part of town, so actual adoptions and donations were few and far between, meaning the place was underfunded, dilapidated, and probably broke every animal-healthcare regulation in the book. We’d clean kennels with cheap Walmart bleach, if that tells you anything. The main building was converted from an ancient auto-repair shop, and by converted I mean they just took out all the old auto-repair shit and did no real renovations at all, except to add a building in the back full of dog kennels. The walls were made of old, rotting wood, and the metal roof was rusted through and full of holes. The whole place always looked like it had just been hit by a tornado.
 

There were five main rooms, not including the dog kennels. The main lobby sat in the front, a rectangular layout with a single wooden desk pushed against the back wall, facing the entrance. The receptionist was a sour-faced old woman named Marcia with a perpetually raised eyebrow who made snap judgments about everyone who came in. All transactions were made in cash, rung up on an antique register complete with classic ding noise. In the corner stood a waist-high wire fence within which one lucky dog was chosen each day to greet whoever came in. We called them “fur ambassadors.” And it was always a cute, well-behaved small dog, because those were the most likely to be adopted. We treated animals like products.
 

Attached to the lobby was the employee lounge, which is where I would punch my timecard every morning around 7AM, although I was usually late from long nights of online role-playing games, so it was more like 8:30AM, or sometimes 12PM, or sometimes I just wouldn’t show up at all. The lounge had a long wooden table for employees to eat at, a refrigerator, a small CRT caged up in the corner always playing smooth jazz courtesy of the local weather channel, and the director’s desk, tucked in the corner near the window, its torn curtains decorated with adorable cartoon cats. The director’s name was Lilian.

She was dirty, screamed counterculture, and must have been like fifty years old, although it was hard to tell her actual age. She came into work every day late, stinking of alcohol, half-drunk from the night before. I had no idea how she managed to land the Director job, because she was clearly dysfunctional. She was thin as a rail, with wiry brown hair in the slow process of turning gray, and she always wore the same pair of ripped-up men’s jeans, and she had the most angular, tan face I had ever seen on a woman. She was not attractive at all. My first impression was that she was into other women, which later turned out to be correct. But that was cool with me. We actually got along quite well. We would talk books, mostly old classics, and music, mostly ’70s shit like Zeppelin and Floyd, and sometimes drugs. She insisted that those days were behind her, that she was clean, but it was obvious to anyone that she absolutely was not. I caught her smoking fat blunts in the back a few times. I never ratted her out. She was the boss, after all. Sometimes I would take a few hits myself. One time, after a smoke session, she told me that the shelter depressed the hell out of her but that it was also the only thing keeping her alive, then she passed out, head on the table, crazy long hair overflowing off the table like a dirty waterfall. And by the time I clocked out that day, she was still passed out. All of which suggested to me that maybe she didn’t actually care much about the job, maybe she was only in it for the money.

Beyond the main lobby was the cat room, full of scratching towers and toy mice and free-roaming cats of all shapes and sizes. From there, a door led into the medical room where the on-call veterinarian did all the spaying and neutering. This was also where all the mangy, sick cats were treated. It was there that I met a kitten named Randy Travis. He was a solid gray shorthair, and he was very handsome. His left eardrum was busted, so his head was always cocked to one side, and he couldn’t walk straight, and his meow sounded deep and strange. I thought he was adorable, and I felt sorry for him, so I took him home, gave him a new name, “Digit,” and hid him in my room because my stepdad hated cats. My stepdad actually didn’t want any animals in the house, other than his prized boxer show dogs, all of which were inbred and so had genetic heart problems that ensured they lived no longer than six years tops. I disliked my stepdad very much.

But he never found out about Digit. Digit watched me grow, for better or worse, into a full-fledged adult. He was there when I got my first apartment, my first house, when I got married, when I had my first kid. I thought of him as my coming-of-age companion. I loved that cat more than anything in the world. He died of cancer three years ago. He was fourteen years old. He’s buried in the backyard. I had a special stone tablet made for him, with his face and paw print engraved into it.

Beyond the medical area, there was a large backroom with a bunch of sinks and cleaning supplies and laundry machines. Then there was the break room where everyone smoked cigarettes, though it was really more of a large open garage in the back, a holdover from the auto-repair days, with one ash-encrusted recliner and a bunch of chairs that were not really chairs but actually cardboard boxes full of food and cleaning supplies. After cleaning kennels and walking dogs, I would often disappear back there, slacking off, chain-smoking, listening to music on my iPod, just doing as little work as possible.

My morning routine went something like this: come in late, punch my timecard, put on latex gloves, grab the industrial pooper scooper and metal bucket, drop a canister of bleach into the bucket, turn on the hose, then drag the hose into the kennel building, which was a long tiled hallway lined with kennels on both sides. There must have been about fifty kennels in there. Each had an indoor section and an outdoor section, separated by a dog door that could be lifted by a rope that dangled outside the kennel door.

Entering that place in the mornings, groggy from a night of chain-smoking and computer games, was hell. The moment I’d open the big double doors, those dogs would go fucking nuts. It was a heinous cacophony like you’d never heard before in your life. All those dogs, locked in their kennels all night, with their warped sense of time. I felt sorry for them. I sometimes wondered if they talked to each other at night, kept each other company, and if so, what did they talk about? Sometimes I imagined them sitting there patiently in the dark, just waiting for someone to show up, to give them pets and ear rubs and bones. Some would become so excited upon seeing me that they’d launch themselves at the metal mesh over and over, violently rattling the thick-wire doors, desperate to escape. Some would bite the metal wiring, lock their jaws onto it, gums bleeding, like rabid beasts. Others would run circles inside their kennels, chasing their tails, slip on their own piss and shit. It made me hate the world.

We called ourselves “The Humane Society,” but I didn’t think there was anything humane about it. I remember thinking, if the goal is to turn sweet animals into wild beasts, then locking them in kennels is a good first step. I’m sure it’d work on human animals too, just look at the prison system. I thought the whole thing was fucking awful. I wanted to set those poor dogs free. But the thing is, the first few times I walked into that building, I was heartbroken, but within a few weeks, I was mostly just annoyed and wanted them to shut the hell up. It’s terrible how quickly one can become desensitized to grave injustices. You think it won’t happen to you, that you’ll always care, but unless you’re mindful, it will. No one is above it.
 

The normal procedure went like this: lift the dog door, coax the dog into the outdoor part of the kennel, close the door behind them. Then I would step into the indoor part, scoop up all the shit, and pour some bleach. The bleach had to sit for ten minutes before being hosed off, after which I would pour fresh food and water and then let the dog back inside. A long gutter ran along either side of the hallway, parallel to every kennel, so all the bleachy water flowed into those gutter drains. I was told explicitly never to hose shit into the gutters directly, as it would inevitably clog the drains and become a huge pain in the ass, but I would often get lazy and spray the shit down the drains anyway. It would save a lot of time. Out of sight, out of mind, that was my motto back then.

At first, the whole procedure took me a very long time, since I did each kennel one by one. But eventually I developed a more efficient method. At the start of my shift, instead of coaxing the dogs out one at a time and cleaning as I went, I would open every dog door, coax each dog into its outdoor section, trap them all back there, and then clean the inside kennels one after another. Then I would do the same to the outdoor half of the kennels. Once I got good at it, the whole process would take me something like an hour. Afterward, I would take a few dogs out for a walk in the wooded area behind the shelter. They loved going on walks. Those walks were the only time any of them ever got to leave their kennels. Sometimes, depending on the dog, I’d take them off the leash and let them run all throughout the woods. They’d blast off like thunderbolts, weaving between trees, jumping over logs, all wild and free. Some of them loved to play. They’d bring me sticks, pounce on me, knock me to the ground, lick my face all over. Those moments made the job almost bearable.

Naturally, I would become attached to the dogs. There was this one dog I got especially attached to, a German Shepherd mix whom I named “Radar” because he had the biggest ears I’d ever seen in my life. I only took him off the leash one time, though, because I quickly learned he was aggressive toward other animals. That first time, he immediately took off into the brush, caught a squirrel, tore it apart. I got really mad at him, even shouted at the top of my lungs. He cowered in fear, like he thought I was going to beat him or something. It was then I realized that he had had a rough life, and still did, considering he was effectively in prison. So I took him home and hid him in my room, just like I did with Digit. At first, Radar was aggressive toward Digit, but after living together for a few days, they warmed up and became good friends. The rivalry between cats and dogs is greatly overblown. I would take Radar out for walks at night, when my mom and stepdad were asleep. But it didn’t last long, because Radar was boisterous as hell. He’d stick his head up in the window and bark at anything and everything that passed by. When my stepdad found out, he demanded I get rid of him. I guess Radar wasn’t inbred enough for him or something. I disliked my stepdad very much.

My stepdad was serious, though, so I had to come up with a plan quick. I called my dad in Atlanta, and he agreed to take Radar, give him a permanent home. So I drove five hours up to Atlanta, Radar riding shotgun. We listened to NPR and shoegaze albums the whole way there. I cried when I had to drop him off. I remember, when I was leaving, Radar’s big, thoughtful eyes, staring out at me from behind the sliding glass door. “Where are you going?” It killed me. But it was the right decision. My stepmom loved dogs. She doted on Radar, gave him everything, let him sleep in the bed with her. And they had a huge, fenced-in backyard, so he could go wild back there whenever he wanted. I would visit him sometimes, when I had the time. He always remembered who I was. Ten years later, he died of cancer, but that’s OK, that’s life, and he lived a good one.

That was the thing about working at the Humane Society: I wanted to save every dog and cat that caught my attention. But I was selective. I selected Digit because I thought he was cute with his cocked head and his strange meow. I selected Radar because of his big ears and troubled past. But what about all the other animals who needed a home? Were they not worthy of my love and attention? This, I realized, was not just my own personal problem, but a larger problem with the Humane Society as a whole.

Working at the Humane Society, I came to realize that we treated animals like products. Small dogs, for example, were always preferred over big dogs, as small dogs would get adopted faster, meaning they were more profitable. The same concept applied to young dogs versus old dogs. Some dog breeds we wouldn’t even accept at all. Pit bulls, for example, were usually rejected, because no one except shady shady-looking dudes with bad attitudes wanted them. Our motto was “An abandoned dog is everybody’s dog,” but it seemed to me that we didn’t follow that motto at all. It was more like, “An abandoned dog is everybody’s dog, provided that dog has a cute face and can fit into a designer purse.” And I would occasionally bring this up with my co-workers, but they didn’t seem to care. In fact, they’d usually respond with something like, “Hey, at least we’re not Animal Control.”

All of us at the Humane Society felt a strong hatred toward Animal Control. We’d use words like “evil” and “monstrous” when talking about them in normal conversation. We were proud of the fact that we never euthanized an animal simply because it was unwanted. We felt morally superior. But were we really so different from Animal Control? We may not have killed animals directly, but every dog we refused to house would inevitably end up at Animal Control, where it could potentially be put down. Meaning, by refusing to accept the unwanted, we were killing them all the same, just indirectly. Did it really matter whose hand was holding the syringe?

This whole thing slowly ate away at my conscience, until eventually, one day, I decided to talk to Lilian about it. I wanted something to change. I didn’t really think she’d care, though. She didn’t seem to care about anything other than getting drunk and high, and collecting a paycheck. In fact, that day, she was face-down at her desk, per normal.

“Hey, Lil, got a second?”

“Ugghhh… what is it?”

“You OK?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, long night, what is it?”

“I was just thinking, you know how we normally take in smaller dogs? What’s that about?”

“Adopted faster.”

“Yeah, I know, but isn’t that kind of messed up? Doesn’t that kind of like damn all the other dogs to death?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I wanna show you something, kid.”

“OK… What is it? Where?”

“Not here. After work.”

After work, I got into my cheap Kia and followed her pickup truck for about thirty minutes. We drove over backroads and dirt roads and non-roads until we ended up at a large wooden gate far outside of town. She got out of her truck and opened the gate, then we drove through it. We followed a dirt path for about five minutes, passing fields and fences and farm animals, until a big farmhouse came into view.

The moment we got out of our vehicles, we were surrounded. They came running up to us, wagging their tails, jumping all over the place. Dogs of all kinds. Small dogs, big dogs, ugly dogs, beautiful dogs, purebred dogs, mutt dogs, three-legged dogs, dogs missing eyes and ears and tails, dogs on wheels, and pit bulls, lots of pit bulls. There were so many that I couldn’t keep track of them all. And when I started looking at them, I mean really looking at them, I suddenly realized something.

I had seen these dogs before.

 

Comments

[comix64]

sweet :-)

[asakiyume]

OMG, hit me in the heart why don't you!

She's like the woman I met in Leticia.

What I love that you highlighted in this is how you never know what another person is doing. What kind of good (or, I suppose, bad) things they're doing out of sight of you.

Really nice.