A bit of irony to end the day

The schedule said I had dogs today, fine with me, less sneezing and I get to be outside. I do have to say that it was a pretty easy cleaning day today with the small task of moving all of the dogs to one side of the south kennels. I was informed that our behaviorist would be heading to another county shelter in the next few days to give some animals a "second chance" at our shelter.

Once I got all of the bedding, toys, and water bowls moved I got to spraying. It didn't take long at all and in fact it probably took longer to transfer the guys to their new kennels than it did to actually clean them all. After they were all squeegeed out I moved on to making their breakfasts. There was one less to make this morning since the adoption yesterday but of course I had to add one for the sweet lab that was returned to us because of some unforeseen circumstances.

Moving on, we took the garbage out and got the dishes washed but of course there was another error code with our commercial dryer so that had to be dealt with before any more laundry could back up. It was the same error code that had come up a few weeks ago so we were at least glad it wasn't anything new. The problem was to reset it you have to open up the lint trap, literally crawl in, unscrew a small metal box in the back of the machine and hit a reset button. After a gnarly shock and completely getting caked in lint I was able to reattach everything and get the machine working again.

Before I knew it we were open. I was a little disappointed that my showing from yesterday didn't come back to do an introduction but if it wasn't right it wasn't meant to be. We did have some women come in and ask to see their little Betsy which they had adopted on Saturday but wouldn't be able to go home for about another week until after she is spayed. The was uplifting to see the smiles on these women's faces when they were able to spend some time with the little black and white mutt. This little dog really does look like something out of a Disney movie, I wasn't surprised at how fast she was adopted.

Today being Monday meant it was poo bucket day. Luckily we aren't running at full capacity when it comes to dogs so there were a few yards that were still empty. We were able to knock it out rather quickly leaving the first four yards for last since we didn't want to cross contaminate anything. We loaded it all up in the wagon and headed back to the dumpster. Unfortunately it was already pretty full and once we got the enormous load of poo in the dumpster I had to climb on top in order to actually close the thing and lock it. Not so much fun.

Luckily my next task was a showing. It was with a teacher who had adopted from us a beautiful greyhound mix about five years ago and her other animal had passed after about 15 years and felt that she would always need two. Rather than her going out and looking at all of the animals she explained what she was looking for and how her dog reacts to others and wanted our suggestions. After getting a good feel for her puppy I had a few suggestions for her. The one that really stuck out to the adopter was a pointer/border collie mix from Gulf Port, Mississippi. She is just under a year, super intelligent, and loads of energy. Once she calmed down the woman really got attached to the sweet dog. It was decided it was time for an interaction. We were a little skeptical of how it was going to go since her dog can be a bit of a handful and we felt the same way about the shelter dog. After the initial intro you could tell both dogs were very nervous and on edge. We decided to walk them together to get them a little more comfortable with each other. That seemed to work pretty well, so much so that we moved them down to a yard. Surprise to us was that our little Mississippi girl was completely submissive. She wasn't uncomfortable but she would roll on her back pretty quickly. She was still curious and would continue to "investigate" the smells of the greyhound but it wasn't until about fifteen minutes into the showing did we see some great play play bows and a whole lot of running. I thought that it would be a good fit but like anything in life it would have to be monitored and of course would take some adjustment time, for both of the animals. I told the woman how big the decision was and she agreed and would sleep on it. I really do hope that she comes back though because the fact that the dogs got along so well and she is out for the summer with the time to get them acclimated makes this home a very good one for our Ellie Mae.

After the longest showing of my life I had one more to attend to. It was with a sweet cat that has a whole room to herself in the new cattery. It pretty much works on seniority since the poor girl has been here going on seven months. After I read over the adoption profile I realized that there really couldn't be a better home for cats. It turns out that they have been looking for about the past two weeks for a new feline friend since they lost their last one a month ago after 24 years. It was a real heartfelt showing with a lot of emotions and a few tears. They asked if it was ever too soon to replace a pet and of course my response was I will never go a day in my life without an animal. Once I came back into the room where I had left them with the cat they told me they absolutely loved her. I was also glad to hear that they were going to think about it. You never want people to make hastily decisions when it concerns something that could possible be a 24 year commitment. I do hope that they come back and take our long term kitty home because I truly thing that it would be a mutual benefit for the couple and little Libby the cat.

Closing out today I learned that a cute little stray had been turned in to the shelter. Unfortunately he wasn't chipped or have any tags so we had no way of finding the owner. Surprise to all of us the owner called the shelter hoping he was there and once he was identified the owner was on his way down. I the poor little dog was so frightened I had to coax him out with a trail of treats. The funny thing was, once I got him out I was told to bring him back to the medical office because the owner wanted to chip him. Now this is the kind of funny/kind of sad/kind of scary part...we decided to muzzle the dog because he was so fearful and before we could get it around him he was intent on biting one of us. Luckily our med staff is pretty experienced and like a cowboy riding a bronco she was able to wrap the muzzle around his head and get it attached. Of course the little guy was so scared that not only did he pee all over her he pooped the nastiest smelling poo I have smelled in a while. The ironic part is the person that was doing the chipping was being nice in staying late to help out and she ends up getting pooped on for the car ride home. The good part is he got his chip, he found his home, and no one got bit.

Hopefully we have some return showings tomorrow and we can get some animals into some new homes. I am not a big fan of not having any adoptions but it was good that we at least had some showings.