people suck!

Today is one of the days I get to watch the phone lines for the animal rescue I volunteer for, in addition to the daily emails with pictures. People suck. Everyone wants to bail on their pets. "We no longer have the time to give our family dog of five years so we want to do the right thing by him and find him a home that can give him the time and attention he deserves". How altruistic of you. Right, like those exist. What they really mean is "this is way more work than we thought and we're just tired of dealing with it, so we'd like to dump our responsibility on someone else. We don't care that it's traumatic for the dog, we really only care about ourselves anyway and the fun has worn off". Today alone I have 6 dogs that are now looking for new homes - I think the oldest is 5 years old and the youngest is 2 years old. And oh by the way, they need to be gone like yesterday because "we're moving tomorrow, going out of town tomorrow, the landlord found out, etc." whatever makes us think they are the most urgent. And lets not forget that if we can't run right over to their house to pickup the dog - because they couldn't possibly bring them to us or give us some time to make room - it will go to the shelter to be put to sleep and it will be our fault because we didn't take it. Nice rationalization, anyone's fault but your own I say.

Let's be clear, a pet is a commitment for the life of that pet. You make sacrifices like you do with other loved ones, be they children, parents, other relatives or dear friends. A pet is not a toy. You do not get to just get tired of the work and dump it on someone else. Sometimes it will be VERY hard. Sometimes you may have to go home when you want to go out with your friends, because you need to feed the dog and play with the dog since you worked all week - like all of us do by the way. I don't personally know of any rescue people that have the luxury of simply staying home all day to foster unwanted animals. I'm sure they're out there but I don't know any. The ones I know work,may go to school, have families to care for, have their own pets to care for, and now have someone else's pets to care for. If you think you're too busy to take care of your pet, try being the people you're going to abandon them to. Get your head out of the fantasy world that when you dump your pet they get to go to the "perfect home" and live out their lives as all pets should. Hopefully they get a home better than the one that decided they were no longer worth the time and effort but very few will get a perfect home any more than the majority of us had the perfect family.

I'm all over the place in this I know. But I am so tired of not being able to tell these idiots exactly what I think about what they do. Get your head out of your ass and deal with the responsibility you took on - it's not like you got pregnant by accident and had a puppy or kitten - YOU WENT OUT AND GOT IT!!! You made the choice to have it in your life, now deal with it and deal with it the right way you pathetic bunch of losers.

I'm not anywhere near feeling better but at least I did get to pretend yell.