Mercy, Please

            I really do not understand why some people treat animals as if they are replaceable. Their mentality is simple.  There is a dog; that dog there.  Sitting right in front of me.  And if he goes, there is another dog sitting right by him that can trade places with him.  He has no personality.  No mind of his own.  No quirks and no certainly no self.  He is a thing.  Such as a table or chair.  Objects that are to be moved around to fit one’s lifestyle as it changes.  Never considering how the chair or table might feel about the change.  They just merely go about their lives figuring that if that dog goes it wouldn’t mind much.  It doesn’t care if it lives or dies.  Certainly it cannot feel pain and has no concept of it being alive.  It is just there staring back at you.  No more of a soul than a rock.

            I see this mindset when people come in looking for their pet after it has been missing for several weeks.  Of course there are those people who never come looking for their animal and people who come crying because they are distraught that their beloved pet has gone missing.  Yet there is a particular breed of person who not only looks for their old possession, but for a new one.  A new hat to be tried on, a new pair of shoes to go with their outfit.   I take them to look through our dog strays and they look through the kennels at each one.  Not really hopeful, but more in a browsing fashion.  Then the question emerges. 

            “I don’t think my dog is here, can’t I just take that one home?”  No concern that their dog got hit by a car or froze in the cold.  I look at them puzzled.  Waiting for a smile that surely means they are kidding, trying to break the somewhat awkward and guilty feeling rising within them.

           

            “Uh, well. No.”  I mumble out.

            “It’s just that our dog has been gone for a week and I don’t have any hope for him.  That lab there, he looks pretty cool.  We’ll just take him.”  I sigh, knowing they are serious this time.

            “No.  You cannot just take one of these dogs.  These are dogs waiting for their owners.  Waiting out their stray periods.”  I know what the company would like me to say next.  They would like me to say, “But you can see our adoptable dogs.”  We are full and even bad owners have to be better than the euth room, right?  But instead letting my emotions take the better of me I say,

            “No.  If your dog is not here then we have no dogs for you.  I can escort you out or file a lost report but that is really all I can do.”  They don’t want to file a lost report.  I lead them out holding the door open, glade to seem them gone.  Did I do the right thing?  Other people came in and our adoptable dogs went out, as they should.  Space was made available by some good people and others that will have to do. 

            I would love to say that I exaggerated this conversation.  But I didn’t.  True story.  Dogs and cats even though they are amazing life that once lost cannot be substituted, are as it turns out, to many people replaceable.  Somehow all I can imagine when people now walk through our dog stray room or the adoption floor are the dogs quietly whispering, “Mercy, please.  I am not a pair of shoes.”