A Conversation with Animal Control

I left Maggie and Henry here for several hours today - and they did fine. Henry wouldn't do any business on our brief "bathroom break" walk before I left. I went to Kinko's and made some lost dog flyers. Then I went to the pet store to put up a flyer and buy him a collar and id tag, and to return the dog bed that neither he nor Maggie stepped into. After this morning, I saw how easy it would be for him to get away and I thought he needed some identification (not attached to the harness - that comes off too easily).

I put flyers up at Pet Supplies Plus, EarthFare (the regional Whole Foods), Jittery Joe's, Espresso Royale (coffee shop downtown), and Animal Control. Also had a really disturbing conversation at Animal Control. The girl behind the desk (an articulate senior at the journalism school) told me that if you keep a dog for two weeks he's your dog, legally. I was surprised to hear that, but didn't really think too much of it.

She told me that if I wanted to find Henry a home, I should bring Henry there, and he would likely be adopted quickly. He would be something unique, she said, since he wasn't a mutt or a pitt bull. I said, but he could get put down, right? She said, no, for lost dogs we give them 5-7 days so that their owners can find them. Owner surrenders - they get put down very quickly. She said I could file an application as a "last resort" adopter. Then they would call me if no one else adopted him before they euthanized him. No, she corrected herself, I'd have to call them. Could I ever put Henry in a cage there? That's so much to put a dog through.

When she was taking information about him for their database, she asked me if he was neutered. I said no, but he was about to be. From the parking lot, I had just made an appointment with the Humane Society's spay-neuter clinic for Tuesday. She said, he's not even your dog, and you're going to have him neutered? This seemed foreign to her. It made me doubt my plan. If I brought him there, she said, the adopter would pay for him to be neutered. (They certainly should have to take some responsibility - I liked that). She also said, though, that if I did have him neutered, he'd be a quick sale (or something like that), because people could just leave with him that day, rather than having to wait for him to be neutered, and that would make him more likely to be adopted.

If I were going to bring him, Friday would be the best day, because Saturday and Sunday there were tons of people there and he would probably get adopted. Never bring a dog on a Tuesday as an owner surrender, because it will probably just be put down on Wednesday, which is the day they're closed to the public, and the day they do the euthanasia. If I brought him in before I'd had him two weeks, he would be considered a lost dog. After that, an owner surrender. I could just tell them I'd found him more recently, but if I told them I'd had them for two weeks - or if they knew that (and I'd printed the date I found him on the flyer in front of her), he'd be an owner surrender and be put down quickly. The whole conversation had me upset for a while. The idiocy of putting down a dog they think is adoptable because of some arbitrary category! I hope she doesn't understand the practice fully, specifically that they would make an exception in the case of a dog who wasn't really an owner-surrender. But I'm not so sure. How does a system so overloaded and flawed encourage someone to bring a dog into it?

Even if there were a way to get access to their adopting public without traumatizing the dog, and even if it wouldn't be taking a spot from another dog, they have so many people who come in there and walk out with whatever dog they think is cutest. I can see them getting him home and realizing what it is to have a basset hound. That doesn't have a good outcome. Not the way people treat their pets around here.

No one has reported Henry missing, according to the Animal Control database - and they went back a couple of years.

My next stop was the area where I found him. I asked employees at the two open local businesses if they'd seen him around. I thought someone might know who be belonged to, or on the other hand that he'd lived there for 2 years. They hadn't noticed him there.