Surrender

We sit around and talk about some recent surrenders and the people who surrendered their pets to the shelter. We paint the owners either black or white because it's easier that way.

There are the necessary surrenders, the ones which were necessitated by concerns for the health and safety of the humans and/or dogs involved and you can't really fault anyone for that.

And then there are the convenience surrenders. We go over the list of excuses.

We're moving.

We've got no time.

We're getting divorced.

We're getting married.

We're getting divorced again.

The dog sheds too much.

The dog pulls too much.

The dog doesn't listen.

The dog scratches the floors.

We didn't know the Old English Bulldog was going to cost so much money to raise.

We didn't know the Great Dane was going to grow so big.

We didn't know the Border Collie would have so much energy.

All those excuses from people too oblivious to even feel the least amount of guilt over the abandonment of their dogs.

Some people who might be more inclined to feel guilt or want to avoid censure when they surrender their dogs, often just lie about their situation. The easiest lie is to say the dog isn't theirs and they just found it. We know these lies happen a lot because there are computers and microchips and vets' records and all that CSI stuff and background checks are pretty easy to do. Like the person who turned in a "found" dog a couple of weeks ago and when TAS brought it to the vet clinic for a health check, the vet was like, "Hey I know that dog," and it turned out the vet knew the owner who happened to be the person who dumped the dog at the shelter.

What a douche.

But then I hear about something like this (Ditching of dog in Milton schoolyard was caught by security camera):

Footage from security cameras at J.M. Denyes Public School shows a car pull up near a fenced-in play area, a passenger get out of the car carrying a dog, and drop him four feet over the side of the fence, says humane society spokeswoman Brenda Dushko.

That was on Feb. 24., a rainy, snowy, and blustery night, with temperatures below freezing, according to Environment Canada historic data. Winds were gusting up to 65 kilometres per hour.

“He was left there basically in the cold to die. There was no way he would have survived the night,” Dushko said. The dog, a white, year-old male boxer had been seriously neglected, with a fractured hip that had never been treated. He also had a skin condition and two different infections that caused him to lose more than 85 per cent of his fur. He was in “terrible shape” and required emergency vet care.

Suddenly, all those people who brought their unwanted dogs to the shelter, even with all their stupid excuses, aren't so bad.

It's easy to paint people in black or white but we're really all splashed with grey.

We pay the puppy miller $50 to rescue the old breeding dog who has never seen the sun.

We are courteous with the owners who are giving us their dog because they are going on vacation and don't want to pay for boarding.

We smile at the hoarder for letting us take a couple of his shit-caked, semi-feral pups.

We shake hands with the devil so sick dogs don't get dumped in the middle of a winter's night into a schoolyard and left to die.