OT Stray dogs story part #2--NO CATS FOR YOU

Flashback to last fall and summer: We had 2 stray or unwanted dogs dropped off at our farm over the course of last year. Thinking that we were doing the right thing we found the owners of one of the dogs, filed a report with the Sherrif and the other dog had no ID we called the Sherrif and took the dog to the county humane society.

Fast forward to today. My wife seen and ad by the same county humane society in the local shopper paper. The ad stated that they have too many cats. Both house cats and ferral barn type cats. So she went down to see if she could help them out by taking either type of cat home.

After filling out 6 pages of paper work and waiting for a review person she was told "HELL NO! we can"t give you a cat."

When she asked why she was told that, "LAST SUMMER WE RELINQUISHED A DOG to THEM!"

My wife told them it was a STRAY that we brought in, we have a Sherrif"s report on it.

That didn"t seem to help and she was told to wait and see if they will call us in a few days!

I guess this proves once again, NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.

I guess I know why some of the neighbors shoot stray dogs. To think we fooled around getting the Sherrif out, loaded the dog into the SUV, hauled it into town 18 miles, cleaned up the mess it left in the SUV, all the time thinking we were doing good.

I forgot to tell you that we have 4 dogs, 3 with vet traceable records going back to when they were born and one that came with the farm. She was left behind un-feed for a year by the former farm owner. That dog, Sparky, is the best dog I have ever owned and I couldn"t farm without her.
I think I will give Sparky a big hug when I get home from work tonite, I"m glad SHE didn"t end up at the humane society! (Before we bought the farm, we used to sneek up to the farm and feed her, for 6 months, it was a 160 mile round trip)

Roger

Bless you for taking care of abused and abandoned animals. It's too bad there's no way to use misery as fuel---there has never, ever, been a shortage of that.

My experience has been that more than 2 out of 3 people will abuse any amount of authority they have. (My belief is that the real figure is closer to 9 out of 10, but I'm trying to be fair about it.) On top of that, most people miss the point of any policy (well intentioned or not) it is their job to administer. If there was a site called Stupid Actions of People in Charge, the supply of examples would be virtually infinite.

In any case where you are outraged by the actions of fools who are in charge of the well being of helpless innocents, the worst thing you can do is to turn your back on the victims. But there's no point butting your head against a wall, either. There is no shortage of miserable, unwanted animals in the world, so if you are thwarted by the stupidity of the staff of one so-called animal shelter, go somewhere else. You can only do what you can do. Millions of unwanted animals are destroyed every year in the U.S. so it hardly matters where you go to get any you can save. But do take MarkB's advice to bring the stupidity to public attention. Stupid administrators who miss the point of what they're supposed to be doing are always subordinate to other (usually equally stupid) administrators. Those in higher positions of authority generally care even less about the actual mission, but they are often very publicity conscious, AND they enjoy bringing grief to their subordinates, (see Lewis's first law of abuse of authority---that would be Stan Lewis, by the way.)

My wife and I have had extremely good experiences dealing with the city animal shelters in Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia---better than good in some cases. I feel that this is the case because people in the Pacific NW are, on average, intelligent enough to get the point behind what they're doing. Certainly the opposite is true in much of the country.

All the best, Stan

I agree thoe on the shooting thing, Strays make good target practice(Ecpecily if the coasing trouble)

Went to the pet store and bought her one, no questions asked.

I don't want anything to do with any peta.

Maybe I'll do that next time instead of being "kind" which is parallels rather paradoxically to "unkind" by the peta.