Somehow I was allowed to adopt a dog ten years ago even though, when searching for one, I did not have a fenced yard. A fenced yard is generally a hard requirement for dog adoption. Have you ever filled out one of those pet adoption applications? It is a humbling exercise. There are the basic questions: Are you married? Do you own your own home? Then there are the soul-searching questions: Why do you want to adopt an animal? Uhh…because I’ve always had one? Because I have a mouse problem in my home? Every answer seems like the wrong answer to those questions. There should be similar questions on marriage license applications: What will you do with your spouse if you can no longer take care of them?
Animal shelters save lives—and not just the animals. My father died suddenly of a heart-attack on January 5, 2000. Three weeks later, I turned 30. Alone, and heart-broken, having been let go from a relationship several months earlier, in which the other party was adamantly not in love with me, I began to feel myself careening down a dark slope of despair. I knew I had to get out of my own head and stop feeling sorry for myself, but I didn’t want to be around people. So I volunteered at a local animal shelter where I cleaned cat cages, laundered the dirty blankets and towels, and took the dogs for walks outside.
Being new at the shelter, I wasn’t experienced enough to take on intake (“surrender,” they call it) or adoption placement. It won’t surprise anyone when I tell you: those good people who work at animal shelters—they are animal-people, not people-people. Most of them do not like people, especially the ones who surrender their pets. There’s never a reason that makes sense to them. Even when the person surrendering their pet is obviously distraught about the situation, wracked with guilt and still trying to rationalize this painful decision; even then, those shelter intake representatives have very little patience or sympathy. “Is there absolutely nothing you can think of to do to keep your dog?”
Sometimes I overheard these conversations (and the crying) while wiping down the feline play room. It was during those moments when I felt less sorry for the newest shelter resident, Snowy the West Highland White Terrier than I did her former guardian. I wanted to take this wounded ex-guardian home, feed them lasagna, and say: “No one will ever hurt you like that again.”
I say this as someone who believes that there are very few reasons good enough to warrant giving up a pet that has come to depend on and trust you, even though I have twice been in a situation where I had to come to that painful conclusion myself. Deciding to give away my pet was devastating for me, and I think about Keyser Söze and Carlton—two beautiful black cats— all the time. I hope they lived a longer and better life with their new people than they would have had I kept them.
As hard as the good people working for animal shelters can be on the unfortunate souls giving up their pets, they can be even harder on prospective adopters. First, there are the applications, which are generally two-to-three pages long, and not composed only of easy check-box type questions. There are essay sections. And if you really want that dog or cat that no one else seems to want, you will have to hope you’re a good enough writer to convince someone to let you take it home with you.
Should your essay answers pass muster, you move on to Phase 2 when you will need to speak with someone—in person—who will decide at last whether you are worthy to take home that recently de-wormed fluffball that you have suddenly fallen in love with. Now, I understand why there’s a need to run applicants through this gauntlet. Re-homing a pet who has already been given up once is a big responsibility, and similar to hiring employees, the interview process doesn’t always answer the ultimate and most important question of how steady and solid a person will actually be day in and day out.
There is nothing more heart-breaking than to see a previously adopted animal be returned to the shelter for reasons that are usually no more compelling than “it just didn’t work out” or “my new boyfriend is allergic” or “I don’t have the time any more.” I often wonder what would become of all of us if it were this easy to give up a child because there wasn’t enough time to spend with them or the new spouse was inconvenienced by their presence.
The good people who work in animal shelters have to make quick and critical judgements of character that can have lasting consequences on both the animal and the person involved. There were times when I suspected that the adoption placement rep might be so attached to a particular dog or cat in question that they continued to reject applicants who applied to adopt them. In their eyes, no one would ever be good enough to take Snickers the brown tabby cat home.
Or maybe that’s how I would have run the show had they put me in a position to make those decisions. Perhaps the good people at the shelter who took me in during my time of feeling emotionally homeless could sense this about me, and that is why they let me alone to clean cages and walk the dogs. Maybe they knew that I didn’t need to absorb any more grief by having to say no to the hopeful, or throw piercing questions at the surrenderers. What I needed most was to feel a purring belly underneath my hand and to walk in silence in the company of a lonely dog.
Many years after I volunteered at the shelter, I found myself filling out a pet adoption application followed up with a heartfelt cover letter as to why I might be well-suited to take home the German-shepherd mix that I had only seen a photo of. I sent the letter to My Beloved as well, who was traveling at the time. He said the letter was so good that if it were up to him, he would give me all the dogs in the shelter. But I only wanted the one with honey-colored eyes and the black toe nails who was wearing a pink polka-hearted bow tie. Lucky for me, I passed all the sniffs, and was allowed to become a dog owner again, even though I answered one of the questions honestly that No, my yard is not fenced but I’ll be putting one in soon. (That cover letter must have been really amazing.)
Back in the good old days, everyone had a dog but no fence. You just opened up your door in the morning and let your dog out. For the rest of the day, your dog roamed the neighborhood, peeing and pooping in other people’s yards, and on occasion, knocking up a sassy little mutt who would become the mother of the puppy you would bring home just a few months later. But the world doesn’t work like that anymore. We have fences and leashes and people are expected to use them.
With a newly adopted dog and no fence (yet) I was forced to walk my new hound at least twice a day. This was good for both of us, of course. I met my neighbors. I discovered new things about my neighborhood; became familiar with each house on every street; mapped various walking routes to take me by different yards and through various alleys. Over the next six years, and long after we built a fence for our yard, I still walked the dog every day, because I looked forward to seeing certain familiar trees, shrubs, and flowers show off their stuff as the seasons changed.
One of my favorite trees in the Lockmore neighborhood was an old magnolia with an arching moss-clad trunk and limbs which held the most beautiful pale pink blooms every April. This tree lived in the front yard of a house which had no fence, and so I could see not only all the blooming cups still attached to the limbs, but also the spent petals laying on the newly sprouting grass.
Six years later I find myself once again with a fenceless yard. And even though there are mornings when I wish I could simply open up the door and let my hound roam in the woods and romp with the squirrels all day, walking him every each morning has allowed me to discover the sights and sounds within the seasonal shifts emanating from the branches and birds that surround me now.
Micro-Seasons: Thirty-One through Thirty-Six
February 21st - March 22nd
Thirty-One—Catkins droop from red alder branches: Feb 21st - 25th
Thirty-Two—Skunk cabbage lifts its yellow-hooded petals: Feb 26th - Mar 2nd
Thirty-Three—Salmonberry blossoms: Mar 3rd - 7th
Thirty-Four—Northern flickers return: Mar 8th - 12th
Thirty-Five—Serenade of the frogs begins: Mar 13th - 17th
Thirty-Six—Shadow and light in balance: Mar 18th - 22nd
This is the mid-point of the micro-seasons exercise. Thirty-six more to go. The first 30 can be found in previous posts collected here - I’m still working on that summary view.
