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Isn't the world odd?
You think it's only about hurt and death, then, kindness creeps in.
First, one of our volunteers who works for a local paper inserted the editorial below. An hour ago, as I was discarding things to leave for New Mexico (and knowing my old, VW camper will never make it), a guy drives a gleaming '87 Toyota Dolphin into the drive. "Ask no questions. It's in perfect condition. Here's my card; if anything ever goes wrong, i've been paid to fix it." I know where it came from: a fellow volunteer who we are supposed to dispise: a 'trophy wife', a woman of such stunning beauty, she chose a husband from the pages of the Wall Street Journal. It frees her to work tirelessly for animals. It would have been simple for her to spend $100k for a luxury motor-home, but she knew I would hate it, so she spent 4 days, researching, driving, and arranging. That is humbling, puzzling, and confusing. Just when I had decided the entire human race is beneath contempt. (That's a joke, too, btw.) On which birthday does 'the wisdom of age' arrive? =========================== By MARYANNE DELL The Orange County Register Subject line on an e-mail from a friend: "Dog that was dumped at the agility trial this weekend." Flier on a telephone pole in an Orange County neighborhood: "Found. Black dog. Red collar. Knott Avenue. Call ... ." Phone call from a friend: "Who do I call? I have a dog that I just saw get hit by a car ... ." Sentence from this week's Pet of the Week: "Max was left behind when his people moved to a new home." The e-mail made me sigh. The flier made me angry. The phone call and the sentence made me cry. I don't get it. I just don't. How could someone treat an animal as if it had no soul? As if it weren't sentient? As if its life didn't matter? How could you move and just leave your cat behi nd? How could you just up and take off without a care or concern that he might wonder, just a little, about what the heck happened to the life he knew? How could you lose your dog and never go looking for her? How could you care enough, at some point, to buy her a cute little rhinestone collar, then not care at all? How could you hit a dog with your car, then just drive away? How could you do that and sleep at night? Of course, I know how. I've been in and around animals and their lives and the lives of those who do and don't love them long enough to know. The cat? His former owners never intended to take him to their new home. "We'll leave some water and food. There are plenty of people in the neighborhood. Someone will take him in. And if not, he's a cat. He can fend for himself. Cats don't really need people." The big, black dog with the cute, red rhinestone collar? She was dumped. There are some kennels in the neighborhood where she was found. I'm sure her former owners figured something along these lines: "There are lots of dog lovers there. Someone will take her in and find her a good home." And the dog that was hit by the car? No doubt his former owners didn't provide a lick of training and they'd long ago grown tired of his barking, his digging, his jumping on them when they walked into the yard where he spent all his days and nights. No doubt they didn't understand any of this; they didn't comprehend that dogs left alone dig and bark and jump on people for attention. No doubt they thought the plastic doghouse that they provided, without a blanket, rug or even a sheet inside, was sufficient shelter. No doubt they didn't care when he either jumped or dug his way out of their yard. I wish I could do something more than just vent about such people. But, sometimes, venting is all we have. So I, like m any other people who would never do any of these things, do what I can to ensure that no animal that crosses my path will endure a fate such as this. Sometimes people ask me why I screen so intensely when I place an animal in a home. They want to know why I insist on seeing the home, on talking with everyone who lives there and anyone who's a frequent visitor, on going back and visiting after the animal has been placed, on keeping in touch. It's harder to get one of my animals, they say, than to adopt a child. Exactly. Because I am the last stand. I'm what's between the animal and any of the fates described here. I'm that dog's best hope for a future that won't end in misery or worse. Animals get dumped all the time. What the dumpers don't understand is that there aren't dozens of people lined up to take the animals in. Those of us who are suckers for fuzzy, homeless faces have houses full of fuzzy, once-h omeless, faces - often more than we can afford, or more than we should have. Somehow, we make it work. I don't know what happened to the dog at the agility trial. Princess, the girl with the cute collar, is safe with a rescue and she'll be placed in a home when the right one comes along. Max will, I hope, find a good home thanks to being featured in Pet of the Week. And the dog who was hit by the car? The young, brindle-shepherd mix whose back end wasn't working when my friend stopped, took him off the street and drove him to her vet? He died. His spine was broken in so many ways, and there was so much internal damage, the vet told my friend, that he couldn't be put back together. So they did the kindest thing they could and sent him on to a better place, where he could be whole again. And the only people who cried for him were some total strangers who didn't even know his name. Animals don't lack soul. They have plenty of it. But people? Some of us, I think, have grown so far away from what should be in our souls that we must have lost them |
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