Giving

This post is a little bit different from our usual Hunter photos, but it felt important for me to write it.

For those of you that know me really well, you know that I love animals and that I have a strong passion for animals. I have been volunteering at the Oregon Humane Society (OHS) for over five years, was a rep for Dogs Deserve Better years ago, and now having moved to Newberg I decided to volunteer at the Newberg-Dundee animal control since their shelter is just two minutes from our house. (Dundee is a small city next to Newberg, we have a combined animal control ) I still volunteer at OHS in Portland but it’s only once or twice a month.

This past sunday morning I went into the Newberg shelter to be trained on how to clean and feed all the animals. I knew the building was small and that they are in the process of raising money for a new shelter, but I was surprised at how small and run-down it is. It’s a one room building (maybe 300-400 sq ft) with 7 kennel runs for the dogs (cement floors) and about 8 small kennels for the cats (those stacked stainless steel kind). Almost all the kennels had 2 dogs in them and there was also a dog in an outside kennel. There were two cages for the cats that had kittens, one had 6 kittens and another had about 10 kittens. I’m all about jumping in and don’t mind getting dirty, so cleaning and feeding and letting the dogs out was pretty easy to learn.

What I did not anticipate was having to watch her put down the kennel of 10 kittens.

I was washing some dishes and looked around to see her injecting the kittens with blue liquid. I will spare everyone the details of everything that I saw, let’s just say it’s something that keeps playing over and over in my brain and I can’t shake it. These kittens had eye infections and diarrhea and they were put down. That is so sad.

I am under no illusion that hundreds of thousands of animals in shelters don’t die every day (even OHS is not a no-kill shelter), but having to see it first hand has hit me really really hard. I wanted so bad to take them into my home and try and get them back to health, but we have no spare room for kittens away from our own animals in our house. I asked her if she could work with another shelter (like OHS) to take in the kittens or to see if they had a foster animal network to take them in. The answer I kept getting was this was the best thing to do for them. Being new to volunteering with them, I felt like I couldn’t jump in and try and save the day, I know it was hard for her to do, but I just can’t help but feeling I could have done something to save them.

I am going to try and stop beating myself up about it though and do something for future kittens that just need some time to get better to be able to be adopted out.

First, I’m going to talk with my connections at OHS to see if I can work with their Second Chance program to give Newberg and Dundee animals that are to be put down a second chance at their shelter if they have the room.

Secondly, I am going to talk with Newberg-Dundee animal control to try and develop a bigger volunteer network for the shelter, maybe even some foster homes for taking in pets that need extra attention before going to a new home. I was surprised to hear that Newberg-Dundee shelter did not have that many volunteers. For cleaning the shelter, I think there are only like 4 women, and now me. The animals are only fed and let out of their cages in the morning, they have nobody coming in to let them out in the evenings. I’m sure I am thinking big and don’t know if I will make a difference, I’m going to try.

I’m also going to continue volunteering there every week. I can’t let this one situation get me so down that I don’t do anything about it. I’ve setup one day a week for now that I will go in for a few hours in the morning and take care of all the animals.

And lastly, I wanted to share this with all of you as well, in hopes that maybe you can make a difference for animals and save future litter of kittens from being put down.
While I don’t think anyone that reads this is going rush out and volunteer at their local animal shelter or animal control, I just hope maybe you can take a look at your time and if you don’t already give back to the community, maybe now is the time to give just a little. Even if it’s a few hours a month, it’s something, and you could be making a huge difference to an animal, a adult or a child.

If you don’t have time, then please please PLEASE, spay and neuter your pets. Pet overpopulation is a serious problem. If you are going to adopt new animals, check out your local shelters, they do have full breed dogs and cats, it’s not just mutts. And really, mutts are great dogs too! If you buy from a breeder make sure they aren’t a “backyard breeder” and are reputable, not just in it for the money, but seriously interested in breeding the best of that breed. In my mind, good breeders have homes for all their puppies before they are born. I didn’t get my three dogs from a shelter, so I know it’s easy to go other routes, but that was many years ago and in the future I will think long and hard about where we get our next dog.

So, if you read all the way through this, thanks. :)