First off, all of you breeders/sellers should be made to work in the “back” of an animal shelter for just one day. Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don’t even know.

That puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it’s not a cute little puppy anymore. So how would you feel if you knew that there’s about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at? Purebred or not! About 50% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays”, that come into my shelter are purebred dogs.

The most common excuses I hear are; “We are moving and we can’t take our dog (or cat).” Really? Where are you moving too that doesn’t allow pets? Or they say “The dog got bigger than we thought it would”. How big did you think a German Shepherd would get? “We don’t have time for her”. Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs! “She’s tearing up our yard”. How about making her a part of your family? They always tell me “We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her we know she’ll get adopted, she’s a good dog”.

Odds are your pet won’t get adopted & how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you, your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off. Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy. If it sniffles, it dies. Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it. If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk. If I don’t, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose. If your dog is big, black or any of the “Bully” breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door.

Those dogs just don’t get adopted. It doesn’t matter how ‘sweet’ or ‘well behaved’ they are.

If your dog doesn’t get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn’t full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed it may get a stay of execution, but not for long . Most dogs get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment. If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don’t have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment.

Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down”.

First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk happy, wagging their tails. Until they get to “The Room”, every one of them freaks out and puts on the brakes when we get to the door. It must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there, it’s strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs depending on the size and how freaked out they are. Then a euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They will find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the “pink stuff”. Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerk. I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood and been deafened by the yelps and screams. They all don’t just “go to sleep”, sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves.

When it all ends, your pets corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back with all of the other animals that were killed waiting to be picked up like garbage. What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You’ll never know and it probably won’t even cross your mind. It was just an animal and you can always buy another one, right?

I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head I deal with everyday on the way home from work.

I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter.

Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes.

My point to all of this DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!

Hate me if you want to. The truth hurts and reality is what it is. I just hope I maybe changed one persons mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say “I saw this and it made me want to adopt”. THAT WOULD MAKE IT WORTH IT

For those of you that care— please repost this to at least one other craiglist in another city/state. Let’s see if we can get this all around the US and have an impact

I am waiting for China to foreclose on the government…..

Only problem is that I know what the next few days it will transition from the pretty white wonderland to cars being pulled out of snow banks, brown snow and more packed ice than I want to think about.  It is too bad that it can’t just disappear as fast as it came.

The only thing that is good is that there should be some great snow on the slopes in WV.  I think I am going to have to get around to taking Bekka snowboarding!

later…

How can you go wrong?

Heard this song on the movie Fired Up and had to have it.  I ended up downloading the entire album from Amazon.com!

kate nash dickhead mp3 | lyrics

Ice SUCKS!

There is something about being crowded on an interstate or for that matter stopped on an interstate and it being the norm vs. the exception.

I think my blood pressure rose 20 points while I was there and I felt physically better as I drove away on Sunday.

All you that still live there… do yourselves a favor, find a small town and I guarantee your lives will benefit from it.

Sometimes things amaze me…

My twitter address is http://twitter.com/riverbrewer

and Mike Pensinger on Facebook.

Mike

Oh but if I wait until the day of the flight it will only be $50. WTFx2??!?!

Why it the hell should it cost anything to change and electronic ticket that has not even be printed to another flight that HAS EMPTY SEATS? 

Cap that off with having to pay $15 per bag to check luggage.  Come on.  This makes everyone carry their bags onto the plan where it creates a cluster in the cabin. Do the airlines honestly believe that people take less with them? Why can we not just set a max weight per passenger including baggage.  Say 350 pounds or so.  If you want to carry more stuff with you then lose weight.  I packed for a week and carried more stuff back with me and the bag still weighed under 50 pounds (and it is loaded with beer!) plus my weight and I am well under 350 pounds. If you go over then you can pay and excess fee. Say $1 per pound. I support this and I expect anyone who has been stuck in a seat beside a fat traveler probably supports it too.

Enough to say airlines can cram it up their hind ends.  I think I will start carrying my roll along on board. Wait a minute. They can check it at the plane… wonder how much that costs?