For the first couple of days in California, Dave and I just relaxed. We went to the ocean, walked the San Francisco bridge, and spent the rest of our “free” time with the dogs. I met Dave’s father, Pop, who kept the Novato home running efficiently while Dave was in Oregon. Though 83 years old, Pop was up earlier than Dave or me, worked harder, got more accomplished, and generally put us to shame. He’d come by the house to ask what we’d like for lunch each day around noon, already having accomplished much more than Dave or I would by dusk. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Pop would soon become a very bright spot in my days.
Shortly after arriving, it was time for us to complete the mission we’d come to California for. For the past several years, Dave had been working closely with rescue efforts at the Merced County Shelter, a high-kill facility located in Merced, California. He’d recently committed to taking a couple of their pups, as the summer onslaught had arrived and they were forced to put down a long list of both cats and dogs each week.
We got up early that Wednesday morning in order to ensure that everyone got a full rotation in the yard before being crated for the remainder of the day. Once rotations were complete, Dave and I were on the road once again. Our destination of Merced was over three hours south of us, which translated into a long day of travel. The time-temperature display in Novato read 86 degrees at ten o’clock that morning, so Dave assured me that it would be a scorcher in Merced County. Nevertheless, I was ready and willing – or so I thought – for my first exposure to a major county shelter.
The Merced County Shelter, like all county shelters in this country, is a division of animal control and thus mandated by state law. That shiny, happy feeling you get when you walk through the doors of your local Humane Society? County shelters definitely do not inspire those feelings. Animals who have been dumped on the side of the road, left for dead in trash barrels, dogs who have bitten people or other animals… These are the animals one finds at county shelters. They are the most unwanted among millions of unwanted animals in this country, and a large percentage of them – about six million per year in the U.S. alone – are euthanized.
Prior to arriving at the shelter, we’d stopped briefly to meet up with Dave’s contact, Dana. As part of an outreach program sponsored by Petco, she had received a trailer full of cast-off pet food – the bags that had been punctured or torn, or the labels hadn’t printed correctly – that she was distributing to those rescues working to save animals from Merced. Once the van was loaded with as much food as we could reasonably handle, we followed Dana back to the shelter.
That afternoon, we pulled through a six foot fence and parked in front of a cinder block building. Though I could not see them up close, it was impossible to miss the barking: High pitched and low pitched, squeals, yelps, and thunderous roars. I had no idea how many dogs were there, but based on sound alone, I would have guessed about six thousand. Outside the front door, I watched Dave step into a kitty litter pan to wipe his feet on a wet towel.
“Just in case we’ve got something on our shoes that could contaminate the place,” he explained.
I nodded silently, and followed suit. Inside, Dana and several volunteers worked in a tiny room lined floor to ceiling with cat cages. Every cage was filled with at least one cat, many of them with three or four.
“I’ve got a bunch ready for you – they’re in the other room. How many do you want?” Dana asked. She is the kind of woman I immediately feel incompetent beside. She is blonde, hilarious, and obscenely capable. She is also the one to whom most survivors of the Merced County Shelter owe their lives. I don’t know how she does what she does, facing the death of animal after animal every single day, but I thank God that there are people like her out there doing it.
Dave hesitated. A batch of calico kittens, three weeks old at most, nibbled my finger through the bars of their cage. “I don’t know – how many you got?”
Dana laughed. “About two million and twenty, and more on the way. Gotta love kitten season.”
I was still absorbed with the babies delicately munching on my fingernail when Dana nodded toward the next room. “Your guys are in there. Did you bring crates or are you gonna steal more of mine?”
We’d brought crates. As Dave walked out to get the first of them, he called after me. “No kittens for us. Kittens get adopted – we take the guys nobody wants.”
The guys nobody wants indeed.
First came Cash, a big old tomcat whose right ear had been torn off in a fight. He’d just come out of surgery, freshly neutered and sporting dissolvable stitches in the flap where his ear used to be. He was black and white, covered with scabs. Dana looked at Dave.
“He’s a big baby, but you know there’s no way anyone’s taking this fella home.”
Dave nodded. He petted the “big baby,” and I could hear purring all the way across the room. “Yeah, we’ll take him. Who else have you got for me?”
We took ten cats from the shelter that day: Cash, Boots, Ben, Samantha, HG (Head Grabber) Wells, Charlie, The OC (Orange Cat), Billy Bob, Knott, and – at the last minute – a big, fuzzy, battle scarred fellow whom we named Flat-Tail because… Well, because his tail had been run over or flattened in some other, equally reprehensible way. With the cats safely crated and their fates sealed, we turned our attention to the dogs.
Dave’s foster partner called as we were headed to the long alley of kennels. He lagged behind to discuss the dogs we’d be taking, and I was left on my own to take the walk of shame. The canine facility is a long, open-ended building lined with kennels on either side. Huge fans blow constantly in a futile attempt to ventilate the place and keep the temperature down. Because one dog to a kennel would mean many more pups would be put to death much more often, each kennel houses a minimum of two – and typically three to five – homeless dogs. The smell is horrendous. The sound is deafening. And the knowledge that many of these mutts – about 60% – will not make it out alive makes the entire experience almost unbearable.
Halfway through, I stopped at a kennel where two long-legged, silent dogs stood together. Based on their appearance, they had to be related: they were both brindles, greyhound mixes by the look of them. They didn’t bark, but both stayed close to the front of the kennel as though waiting for acknowledgment. Or redemption. Dave was still at the entrance, shouting to be heard on the phone with his partner, while Dana gave him the lowdown on the dogs she was hoping he would take. I remained with the brindle brothers for what seemed a lifetime, and it took a moment before I realized that I was crying silently. Embarrassed, I hurried through the rest of the facility and found a corner in which to compose myself.
When Dave came out, he was off the phone. “You okay?”
I nodded, though not convincingly. “Yeah. What a horrible place. So… Are we taking anybody?”
He grinned. “We’re always taking somebody.”
Dana returned a few minutes later leading a little border collie-esque dog. “This is Rosie. She was supposed to go down yesterday, but we ‘forgot’ her,” the way Dana’s eyes danced at the words made it clear that the lapse in memory had been intentional. “But she’ll go down tomorrow for sure if somebody doesn’t take her.”
“How is she with other dogs?” Dave asked, seemingly unmoved by Rosie’s plight.
“Good as far as I’ve seen. You wanna take her into the yard?”
He nodded, taking the leash and leading the dog to a large, fenced enclosure. The shelter is housed directly next to an airfield, which means that barking dogs aren’t nearly the problem that they would be otherwise. Dave and I shouted over the sound of planes landing and taking off, while our little Rosie danced in circles around our feet.
“This is the temperament test – we can work with guys that don’t pass it, but it’s a lot harder to adopt them out.”
I nodded, watching as Dave sat down on the ground. He pulled Rosie to him, enveloping her in his arms. She squirmed briefly, then relaxed as he pinned her with his full weight.
“Grab that ball, would you?” he motioned toward a tennis ball on the ground. I brought it to him obligingly.
He released Rosie, then showed her the ball. She quivered from head to foot, her tail and body wagging ecstatically. Dave held the ball out for her to take; very gently, she took it from his hand. When he reached out to take it from her mouth with a firm “Leave it,” she dropped it without hesitation.
“She’s had training,” he noted.
“So we’re taking her?” I couldn’t imagine leaving the place without Rosie; didn’t know how I could live with myself if I sent her back into that barking, seething madhouse.
“We’ll see how she works with other dogs, but as long as she’s okay… Yeah, we’re taking her.”
The next dog that we met was W.C. Fields, a happy-go-lucky little bulldog mix whose time had also run out. He and Rosie played happily in the enclosure, and we added him to our list. Sara, a pit bull pup barely six months old, came out next. She had kennel cough and runny eyes, but she rolled over to expose her belly when she met the others and then spent the remainder of the time contentedly in my lap. There was little chance someone would want a pit bull to begin with, let alone one with kennel cough. Sara was voted into the transport.
While Sara and W.C. had their shots inside, I sat under a tree with Rosie. She’d been picked up as a stray, but based on her knowledge of basic commands like “sit” and “down,” it was clear that she’d belonged to someone at some point in her life. I worked with her on commands, played fetch, and walked the yard while I waited for Dave to emerge. When he did, he was leading a shy, malnourished brindle pup who lagged far behind him on the lead.
“This is Buck Jones. Dana said we should take a look at him, see what we think.” At sight of Rosie, Buck sprang to life. He wagged from head to foot, lowering into a play bow to try and initiate some fun. Rosie was more than obliging, and soon the two leashes were completely intertwined.
“Do we have room?” I asked doubtfully.
“We always have room.” He thought for a minute before conceding, “It might be a little tight in there right now, but if we commit to him, they’ll hold him for a few days. Otherwise his time’s up tomorrow. We can come back for him.”
One of Buck’s ears stood up while the other flopped sideways, his mouth open wide in a panting grin. He was a bull terrier mix, no more than six months old and clearly full of fun. “So, yeah… If you can take him, I guess you probably should.”
“Anybody else you want me to tell Dana to hold?”
I thought of the brindle brothers I’d seen halfway up the aisle. “There are two guys who look kind of alike – two brindles. They look like greyhounds.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Just show me, and we’ll tell Dana.”
“I don’t know how they are with other dogs or anything,” I quickly qualified.
Dave grinned. “Neither do I. But if you’ve got a feeling about them, we can at least give them a shot.”
Just as we were preparing to leave, Dana shoved a shivering, wailing Chihuahua into my arms. “Stray. He keeps getting attacked in the kennel with the other dogs, and we don’t have a place for him to be on his own. You want him?”
The dog – if you could call it that, as it was barely the size of most of the cats we’d agreed to take – snuggled into my chest immediately. Dave nodded without hesitation.
“We’ll take him.”
I stared at him. “Don’t you want to do a temperament test? See if he’s aggressive?”
“If he’s aggressive, he’ll be eaten before we get back to Oregon,” Dave laughed at his own joke. I just smiled uncertainly. “Besides, it doesn’t matter – these guys get adopted in a heartbeat. We’ll have thirty calls within an hour of posting him; he’ll be gone by the end of the week.”
I thought of the hundreds of medium and large dogs we’d just rejected; their fates were sealed now. It seemed too cruel to believe that size alone – not temperament, or health, or training – could determine whether these animals lived or died. But I was getting used to the cruel reality of this business, and simply nodded. “Okay. So this guy comes home with us.”
We drove away that evening with what I considered at the time to be a full load: Ten cats and four dogs – Rosie, W.C. Fields, Sara, and the Chihuahua that I soon dubbed Milo. Milo slept contentedly in my lap for the entire trek, as it was likely the first time he’d been able to relax since he’d been on his own. W.C. Fields got sick in his crate and we had to stop and clean him up twice before he finally fell into a deep, snoring slumber. Rosie lay between the driver’s and passenger’s seat without complaint, and Sara whined once or twice but mostly just coughed continuously through the long journey home.
We headed back to Novato to introduce the newcomers.
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