Adoption Day

You might notice the title and think that today is the only day we do adoptions. I don't mean to mislead you, the reason I called today's blog this is merely due to the fact that the majority of pet adoptions at our shelter are done on the weekend. Don't get me wrong, when I walked into work after having off the last three days I did notice one dog and two puppies had found homes, but this was a rare occurrence.

With a few adoptions happening while I was off it started my day out right. Then of course it was time to sanitize the South kennels that put a huge smile on my face. It wasn't too bad, I just like to complain because I was being lazy and wanted to start the week off slowly. I teamed up with another staff member and knocked it out. Of course right when we were about to finish we realized it was already opening time. Even though we got everything cleaned in time we still had to do feedings and a little kennel swapping.

We had to move around quite a few dogs today in order to make a chunk of kennels available for some new arrivals that were coming in. We had the room, just spread out across the shelter. Once we had five kennels open, that were all next to each other, the new dogs arrived. Talk about perfect timing. There was a total of eight dogs, all toy size except for one precious little Cocker Spaniel. The dogs were all very young and updated on all of their vaccinations. I was curious who brought them in but it was a women that was taking animals in when their owners couldn't take care of them. Similar to what we do but she was doing it at her own home. It turns out in the past eight months her "collection" has grown from about five animals to about thirty five, that is when she called us.

All of the dogs were very well taken care of. One of them however was a little nippy and made our trainer a little uncomfortable so we couldn't take him at this time. That was another good thing about this woman, if for any reason these dogs were unadoptable she would take them back. It is always sad seening dogs brought into the shelter, but the amount of attention these little guys were recieving made it clear they wouldn't be here too long.

With the new dogs settled in it seemed business as usual. Cleaning, cleaning, feeding, and cleaning can usually sum up any day. Of course there was the rest of the staff doing showings and adoptions. Today was a great day for adoptions. From the moment we opened there were dogs, cats, and rabbits finding their forever homes. Six dogs, two cats, and one rabbit all were able to go home today. It might not seem like that many animals but it is a huge number for us. It was truly an exciting day seeing the smiles on the adopters faces...as well as thea animals.

As the day moved on we took out the animals for their afternoon break. It is always fun trying to find room for all of the dogs when you have a bunch of new ones that you have no idea how they get along with everyone else. Of course we found room and gave the guys some room to run around.

With adoptions on the books and all of the animals ready for bed it was time for a little afternoon treat. Usually I don't mention it because, well, I'm lazy sometimes about my writing. At the end of every day the staff gets a whole bunch of treats ready for the animals. Everything ranging from cream cheese and peanut butter filled kongs to chicken jerky. You always want to tuck them in and make sure they have a nice little treat to go to sleep on.

Today was a very tireing day but when I go home at the end of it I know that there are people out there making a difference for these animals. Of course it isn't always an easy day or full of lots of adoptions but today was and it was great. It's nice when you can go home, take a shower, and realize that people and animals are happier becuase of some of the work that I do.