Tuesday, July 01, 2003

Quite a few months ago, Jamie and I decided we would be getting Melbotis a little friend so that his hours wherein Jamie and I are not at home would not just be spent with Jeff the Cat. Dogs are a social animal, and we were doing our best to appreciate that.

So, we’d done our reading and considered our options, and we decided to explore two options this weekend. PetsMart hosts adoption fairs every weekend in our area, and we have a fairly standard animal shelter up near campus in Tempe.

Our first stop was at PetsMart where we noticed, right off the bat, that there were no dogs to adopt. Apparently their current MO is to put photos online, and you select your dog based on a picture and an interview with the Adoption staff. Less than a minute into the interview, it became abundantly clear that being a dual income family with no children is, apparently, no place for a dog. I wasn’t really sure what went wrong, but the adoption agent got the same look on her face my high school guidance counselor got when I told her I was planning to major in communications. Short of saying, “fuck this,” I let it slide and we decided we would have better luck at the animal shelter.

If you are considering going to an animal shelter to adopt a pet, keep one thing in mind: It is going to be one of the most sentimentally heart-breaking things you can do short of having to select a child. There are rows and rows of animals in small cement cages, and they have nothing better to do than to stare at you through chain link.

We saw three dogs and settled on a little black and white border collie who had a very sweet disposition and warmed up to us immediately without jumping or biting. We had picked a winner. She was to be spayed and receive a battery of shots on Monday morning, and in the afternoon, I was picking her up.

Sunday we voyaged to PetsMart and picked up a “crate” for potty training and easy animal storage for the first few weeks of night time sleeping arrangements. I took a few days off work to be here for adjustments, etc… We even ran into the animal shelter volunteer while we were in the store, and we double checked with her that we were doing the right things and that we weren’t going to scar the little dog right out of the gate.

Monday morning I received a phone call from the animal shelter telling me that our dog had green mucus coming out of her nose, which would indicate either kennel cough or distemper. I was told that they could not diagnose which one it was, and that distemper was a neurological disease which is fatal and highly contagious. And, by the way, it’s your dog, so what do you want to do? The options did not include the shelter keeping her for observation.

So before I ever even got her home, I had to tell some anonymous lady over the phone to put my dog down.

Next, I was told I could get a refund or exchange, which seemed callous, but I wanted a shot at saving some little dog, even if not the one we had selected. And I had to call jamie and tell her what happened.

So yesterday afternoon Jamie and I were wandering through the kennels again, but it just wasn’t working. It’s tough picking out a dog when you’re not even sure if the dog you thought you were spending the next ten years or so with has been put down.

We returned home from the animal shelter, utterly exhausted over this stupid little dog, and the answering machine was blinking. It was the PetsMart based animal rescue group. They left a message telling us that they didn’t feel we were home enough and they didn’t really have any dogs right now which matched our schedule.

I tried again at the animal shelter this morning, and it wasn’t any better. I also found out that distemper gets pretty bad out here during the summer, and many, many dogs at the shelter contract the disease. No matter which dog we might select, we run a risk of exposing Mel and Jeff to Parvo or distemper.

I would never suggest that people not visit their animal shelter to select a dog, especially when puppy farms are selling dogs for hundreds of dollars. Those dogs at the shelter need a home as much or more than any thoroughbred. Right now, I’m just not sure I can give a home to one of those other dogs. And I am not posting any of this to keep anyone reading from adopting a dog from a shelter. That is not what this is about, and I think that's the worst thing you could take away from all of this. You run risks in losing anyone you want to get attached to, and I don't think Jamie and I really knew how much we wanted this little dog until we couldn't have her anymore.

Mel is sweetly oblivious to all of this. All he knows is that there is an empty metal kennel in the living room and a couple of bowls sitting empty inside. And I know I’m really, really lucky to have a great dog who I hope I treat better than people who let their dogs wind up in tiny cement cells.

We’ll fold up the kennel tomorrow, and we’ll try the shelter again in the future, but right now, we’re still saying good-bye to the dog who never got the chance to come home with us.

Bye-bye, little doggy. Bye-bye.

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