Pets Are Not Disposable!

On Sunday, 5/20/07, we saw a "Found" flyer up near our neighborhood that described a dog we were sure was this one. I called the number on the flyer (an unfamiliar area code) and left a message. The next day I got a call from the woman who had found Floppy. She had moved to Boston, and had to take the dog to the Memphis Animal Shelter after unsuccessfully trying to find the owner for a couple of days. There's no way the owner didn't see these flyers. The bad news is that our city animal shelter will euthanize dogs after just 3 business days (the Memphis Animal Shelter takes in about 15,000 dogs and cats per year, and has to euthanize about 13,000 of them), and the woman thought she had dropped the dog off about a week ago. I left work and went to the Animal Shelter to see if Floppy was there, but they had already closed (at 2:30pm) and wouldn't let me in to check. They told me to be there at 9:00 Tuesday morning, so I told my wife to let Floppy's owner know that he needed to be there when the doors opened to make sure his dog wasn't euthanized.

My wife and I can't have a third dog, especially not one this big. Our house isn't big enough. But having taken care of him for just 4 days, we felt more responsibility for him than his owner did. So our plan was to get Floppy from the shelter and take care of him until we found a good home for him. Of course, Monday night we didn't even know if he was still alive. On Tuesday I went to the shelter and searched all the cages, but I couldn't find Floppy. The shelter's record keeping isn't great, so they couldn't even find that he had been taken in, let alone what happened to him. So now, while it's possible that he was adopted last week, it's more likely that the shelter euthanized him, simply because he had an irresponsible, uncaring owner.

What is wrong with people? There are things I thought would be obvious in the year 2007, like:

1. Get your pet spayed or neutered. Now.

2. Put identification on your pet. This doesn't mean your dog's name. This means a phone number so people can reach you immediately.

3. If you lose your dog, look for it.

4. If you don't want your pet anymore, try making even the slightest effort to find it a home. Also, never get another pet. You've proven that you're not capable. Accept it.

On Sunday, 4/29/07, I saw a dog on the other side of the street that was obviously lost. I had never seen it before, and it had about ten feet of a tie-out cable still attached to its collar. I took it in (my wife and I often take care of lost dogs until we can find the owner), and we began the process of trying to reunite it with its owner.

It had a collar but no identification. (PROBLEM 1 - ALL IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN WAS A TAG WITH A PHONE NUMBER AND WE WOULD HAVE INSTANTLY FOUND THE OWNER) We put a classified ad in the local paper (you can run a "Found" ad for 3 days at no charge). We put flyers up at nearby vet clinics. We posted information on the local Humane Society's website. We posted information on our Neighborhood Association's online forum. I put a big sign in our front yard that said "FOUND DOG" with a picture of the dog attached. No one could look for this dog without finding our "advertising".

PROBLEM 2 - THE DOG WASN'T NEUTERED.

We had to keep this dog (my wife started calling him Floppy) separate from our 2 dogs because our dogs don't always play well with others. By Monday night though, the logistics of letting the dogs out separately was too tedious, so I worked with all 3 and got them OK with each other. By Tuesday they were playing with each other. Floppy was a sweet dog who loved to play, and was content just laying in the backyard. He got so excited when I came home from work. Here's a video of him playing with our dogs (Floppy's the big one).

On Wednesday afternoon, 5/2/07, my wife called me at work and said the owners had picked up Floppy. Three boys on a schoolbus that went by our house saw the sign in the front yard and recognized their dog. It turns out they lived in a cove just down the street. PROBLEM 3 - THE OWNERS HAD NEVER EVEN DRIVEN DOWN THE STREET TO LOOK FOR THEIR DOG. IF THEY HAD, THEY WOULD HAVE SEEN OUR SIGN. The kids told my wife they thought their dog would find its way back to their house. My wife gave them a long lecture about how they needed to make an effort to find their dog, needed to put identification on it, etc... If Animal Services had picked up their dog, it would have been euthanized already because they hadn't bothered to look for him. My wife also went to their house and talked to the kids' father. The father was very appreciative of our efforts, and the kids were genuinely excited to see the dog.