she veers

left, right...whoa, she's hit some bumps...she's catchin' air....

there have been some grumblings about how i started out writing about my experience at the animal shelter and now i'm talkin about the wizard of oz forgodsake and gypsies and the web of life and at least one of my three readers would like to know where i'm headed with this whole thing.

fair question.

i dunno.

there was some irrepressible thing about hope and faith going on.  something about believing in a better future.  but today i'm back to sad reality.  Brice was euthanized yesterday.  Brice whom i loved but couldn't help. They call it "taken out of adoptions" or "no longer available."  He was in foster care for a month or so and then he was returned and his number was up.  according to the fates, he'd had his chance (you couldn't prove it by me) and so, also, had some of the adolescent puppies...too big, too uncivilized, too much challenge compared with the wee, cuddly, adorable ones that haven't yet gotten frantic with inactivity.  the fawn-like little clown, Vaugh; sweetheart Cody, with the pleading eyes and galumphy Boone, of the ironically tiny ears...they and many more like them, no longer available.

they took in 150 animals in 3 days this week and the shelter becomes a death machine when that happens and if you aren't pedigreed or lucky or little, you get chewed up.  that's not to say the folks at the shelter prefer the pedigrees or even the little dogs.  it's to say that the people adopting prefer them.  we had a shitzu (gawd i hope i spelled that right) a week ago and it flew back out the door trailing a waiting list of applicants who got there too late but who, nonetheless, threw their names into the pot, just in case.  people still come in asking for him.

everybody's got a breed preference, i guess.  somebody at the shelter loves beagles.  at one point there must have been 7 or 8 purebred and an additional couple mixes, some of them difficult placements (behavior and medical issues) that were there for a surprisingly long time.  they never got taken out of adoptions.  the hard cases hung around till a space opened up at a breed rescue, "no-kill" agency. it's weird, how you come to resent their obvious immunity when you're fighting to save your own favorites and if you were in charge the place would be thick with big, ugly workin' dogs or little shivery shy dogs or pits and rotties and labs.

me, i like a nice mutt.  something untidy and not entirely tamed...like me.
(which makes it all the more confounding how i ended up with the adorable, fluffy rottencockers.  i must have been having heat stroke or something cause to this day i look at them and shake my head and wonder what was i thinkin?  i love them but they are foreign to me.)

as i left the shelter yesterday a woman got out of her car, opened the back seat door and i knew. it's a telltale sign, the pull up/get out/open the back door sequence cause it's almost always followed by the reach in and the voila!

and sure'nuff, large black adolescent puppy.  the kind that's already too big, too uncivilized, too much of a challenge in a dog eat dog world.