Just another day at the office

      Today, Ray had some business at the shelter before we opened. While he was in a meeting, I was in the front office, when two employees came in to get me. I went out the side door and they pointed down the driveway at a pile of what looked like trash. One employee told me that he and the other guy had been standing in the driveway when a car pulled in going the wrong way, started unloading items onto the side of the driveway, then backed out and sped off. The people in the car saw the employees point at them, so they were careful to leave before our staff members could see the license plate. As the three of us walked toward the pile, which we could see contained a large container of cat litter, one of the guys said "I think I see a cat." Sure enough, behind the pile was a small wire crate containing a large black and white cat. So the jerks had dumped the cat along with what probably amounted to close to $50 worth of supplies, including the wire crate that appeared to be brand new. We get animals dumped all the time, but this is the boldest daytime dumping I have ever seen. I would pose my usual question, which by now has become rhetorical, asking "what the $%^& is wrong with people" but I know the answer. There are many humans that are nothing more than "biological trash."
       The next excitement happened when we opened. A new, underage,volunteer came in to walk dogs and decided that instead of doing what I tell them to do, which is check in with the staff when they first get there, he went on his own and tried to get a dog out of the kennel who proceeded to let the dog run loose in our main kennel. Instead of trying to catch the dog, he was more worried about getting the kennel door shut while this loose dog ran directly toward one of the dog that really hates other dogs. I ran down to catch the dog and nearly got bitten trying to corral the dog. His mother in the meantime was in the cat room (she was supposed to be supervising her son), so I had to retrieve her and give her a lecture about our policies, which put me in an awkward position since she and I are in a 10 week class for work. While I tried to steer him toward working with the dogs in the small dog room, he refused to take my hint and continued to insist he wanted to walk big dogs. All this AFTER his mother told me the kid has NEVER been around dogs before. Sigh. We need volunteers, but ones that have some damn common sense. I'm the "liability police" and situations like that are the reason my hair stylist has to dye my roots every 4 weeks.
      Then we got in a dog with severe mange, another husky/malamute (we now have 5), and an owner surrender with nails that look like they had never been cut. This just illustrates the challenges we who work or volunteer in a shelter environment face. It's a balance between what is best for the animals, dealing with the "customers" or volunteers in a fair way, and trying to make space for animals when they keep coming in the front door and going into homes in an unequal proportion.