For the last seven years, my focus has been only on the numbers we've saved. I'm always pushing to try for one more. Yesterday, I started an internship with animal control to get more experience and a better understanding of my role and pursuit in animal welfare. Yesterday was awesome; I played with puppies and put their photos on Petfinder. Today, someone came to meet one that I was already pulling from there for our rescue, and by the time I got home, there was an application waiting. But that's just one.
For my duties today, I was enlisted to do paperwork... the kind that shows the numbers of those that don't make it to rescue. After the fourth stack, I had to go outside and get some puppy therapy from a big Rottweiler doofus that was more than eager to oblige. The sad thing was that I only did numbers for four days. I won't say what they were, but it was more than we pulled into rescue in all 2006. It turned my stomach.
I've always known when I come in to Animal Control from one day to the next what the empty pens meant, but I never really grasped the overall picture. It hit me today as I walked in and headed to check on Delilah, the puppy I would be taking home with me, and walked past all the other pens, noticing that the faces and wagging tails I had seen yesterday were no longer there. I can't put enough into words just how little I felt, and how sad I was that there just are not enough people who want to help. And as I put my puppy back, I stood up to face three of nine puppies that came in just a few hours earlier, wondering if anyone was going to be giving them a chance. I went back into the office to do more papers, finished another stack, then headed back to the puppy cages, grabbed the one new white one and buried my head in his fur, muffling his little cries of confusion. I put him back, grabbed my pen and marked his card. It's only one, but it's one less that someone else will have to put down on those papers.
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