I wonder what's changed since I've been off

It's generally a given when I come back from my days off that there are usually a few changes that I have to adjust to as soon as I walk through the door. Usually dogs have been moved around or there are a whole bunch of new dogs you have to get used to, but today there really wasn't much to my surprise. I couldn't even believe it but there wasn't a huge number of adoptions either. Now I don't want to seem like a total pessimist because some great animals did get adopted including the little poodle mix I wrote of last week that had the heart murmur. Turns out the family came back and did the intro with their animals and it was a perfect fit.

Back to today, I have found that I usually am one of two ways when starting my week. I can either be a complete optimist and motivated or the complete opposite when I actually see how much work has gotten done in the past few days. Well, lets just say my day didn't start as planned. I won't go into to much detail but when all of the garbage doesn't get taken out you know that there is a problem. I try to not let it get to me but when it happens on many occasions it tends to linger in my head the rest of the day which is not a good thing. Anyways, got all of the cleaning done and thankfully we had another staff member come in on her own time to help out with meds otherwise we would have been in a sticky situation because once again we were short handed.

Initially I thought today would be a bit slower than expected just from the amount of adoptions I had seen on the website from the past few days. Yes, I check the website everyday to see if any of the animals have gotten adopted, I know, a little too involved but I can't help it. Of course as soon as I thought we would be slow the showings started coming in. I have to mention that I was happy to see our behavior therapist back from vacation helping out because we really needed it today.

Not sure how many showings past until I grabbed one but my first was with a cat. Typically cat showings are a lot easier than dogs just because there are fewer factors to contend with when adopting out the feline friends. Your biggest concerns are dealing with de-clawing, an immediate disqualification if they would want to do it and also whether or not they would keep the animal inside at all times or let it run outside. Now these aren't necessarily going to keep us from adopting to an individual, it just narrows down who we can adopt out. Anyways, back to my showing. It was with Sumo our giant sized kitty that you can guess really tops the scales. If you have read in a past blog I talked about how he was relinquished because his family wasn't home enough to monitor and deal with the problem of the heavy guy bullying their other cat and stealing all of her food. This is the main reason that the guy is still here. Well, a potential adopted was not deterred by all of my negativity and still wanted to see him. It turns out she absolutely loved him and wanted to adopt. I do have to mention that I have been in showings lasting upwards of an hour but this entire experience with Sumo was the grand total of ten minutes. Like I said before, cat showings tend to be a little less complicated than dogs.

That was really the highlight of my day. There were a two more dog adoptions which I was glad to hear and of course I forgot to mention that our little Dachshund puppy went home as well. I only had one more showing with a very sweet family that was looking at a small dog named Mr. Burns. Unfortunately we're not going to send him home with small children because of his unpredictability and his timidness towards new people. I did offer up a few more dogs but not seemed to be that right match when I was showing them. The good part was they were in no rush and wanted to find that perfect dog and were willing to wait. They said they will check back to see if there dog has arrived soon.

Asside from me being a little bitter at the beginning of my day for haveing to clean up after others the day went pretty well. It was nice to see so many faces in the shelter looking to give these animals a second chance. We might not have had a record day of adoptions but even if there is one I am a happy camper. Thanks for reading everyone and I look forward to your comments. Oh yeah, the picture of top is with Jerr Bear, one of our dogs that got returned because he started going after some cats. I just had to show him laying down with his "wings".