Two Situations

Two situations happened of late that give food for thought.

One was about three months ago. One Saturday, a classic "low-life" straggles in with a strange little hunchbacked, deformed gargoyle of a Chihuahua. His story was that the dog had belonged to his elderly neighbor, who had just gotten committed to a nursing home. He wanted to help, like a Good Samaritan, but couldn't keep the dog himself. So he brought her to us. I came in to her on Monday, as she'd been put in the clinic...no one knew what the deal was with her grotesque look. She turned out to have a huge cherry eye and obvious congenital skeletal deformities, disturbing to visitors...very "Awww!"-inducing. But she had a plucky spirit and would gamely crab-trot outside with me for potty breaks. Of course, staff started getting attached.
Next thing you know, she went out for cherry eye repair surgery, and after a few days, the same weird guy comes back with a very convoluted story, which I couldn't even follow...talking to our director. He now wanted to adopt the dog. It was all pretty fishy and long story short, he finally caved and confessed that the dog was his from the beginning.
Well, naturally, all the staff (including, at first, me) was mega-pissed that our director was going to give this man the dog back. I suppose everyone was feeding their big rescue, rags-to-riches fantasies about this weird little monster dog.
Our director agreed after a lot of discussion with the man (the "lowlife" who everyone had rolled their eyes about at least once) that it would be best for him and the dog if she went back to him.

And here's the punchline, which I still use as an example if a current situation warrants...

The dog had been a sweetie with us...agreeable, good eater, tolerant of affection.
But that was nothing compared with the way she lit up like a friggin' jackpot slot machine when her owner walked into the room to get her. He was crying, she was going nuts in happydance ecstasy. I am CERTAIN that she did not want us magnanimous shelter workers to "rescue" her from the "lowlife." It just goes to show how we let our twisted, overly cynical yet overly idealistic thinking cloud our vision in a situation like that.

Another similar one was just last week. Family member of a staffer called our law enforcement officer, all up at arms about the treatment of a dog in her deadbeat tenant's apartment. Eviction was in the process...landlord goes in to inspect apartment and finds a rat terrier in a wire crate inside the coat closet behind the front door. Supposedly no food and water. Well, with her Animal Planet sensibility, she calls in alarm...describes a situation that sounded awful. I mean, the words: abandoned apartment, no electricity, evicted, dark closet, etc. Sounds horrible, no?
I tagged along for that one. We get there and it's just a mildly messy apartment in moving-out stage. No electricity, but not that hot this time of year. No one home. Landlord lets us in. Dog in crate, barking her head off at us, perfectly healthy-looking. No laws are being broken here. For all we know, the guy (a college kid) just stepped out to do errands. But. Since it's a staff favor thing and we don't really know, we scoop the dog just for safekeeping. It was horrible. A balls-out fear-aggressive little female rat terrier. A snappy snare, some godawful screaming and fish-flopping, some heads peeking from adjoining apartment doors....and we finally got her out. I guarantee you that she would've chosen to stay in her crate in her closet if she could've. But....we had to do our noble duty, right?

She sat in the shelter, plastered against the back of her run, snarling at anyone who so much as looked at her in passing, for 3 days. Sweettalk got nowhere. An irate girlfriend (the dog's actual owner) was in touch with us, beside herself that we took her dog. After she got polite, and after we discovered that the boyfriend was slated to move out of state with the dog to be with the girlfriend within a matter of days, it ended up that we delivered the dog back to him at his apartment. That was even more of a horror show. She was the lovechild of a pirahna and a screeming banshee. Nasty. It took a while, a lot of drama and the sacrifice of a metal snappy snare via bolt cutters to finally get her into a carrier and into the car.

Bleedyhearty Animal Planetaholics might be appalled that we gave the dog back.
But I am here to tell you: she was in no way interested in being "rescued."
This was not a rescue to her....it was Hell on Earth.
She was completely intractable and completely suffering mentally. In no way adoptable unless you wanted your fingers amputated by your new dog. Thank the blue heavens that they wanted her back.
So I ask: what is better? Back to an "imperfect" (and in this case, objectively, merely transitory at the time) home or dead in our freezer?
I vote for the former.

Sometimes our superidealized version of a happy ending does not match up with the animal's. And who are we here for, anyway?