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As a person who worked in an animal shelter for five years, I have a lot of sad, cruel, stories I could tell. Sometimes cruelty comes from places, and in forms, you might never suspect. This is the story of a dog named Max.

I was working in the office on the day Max was brought in as a stray, a dog a lady had found. He was a smaller brown dog, if I recall correctly a Pug cross of some kind, a friendly well adjusted dog. We have a computer in the office, and lucky for Max, he had a collar with city licensing tags.

While my co-worker started the lady filling out the papers for bringing the dog in, I ran a check on the computer, typing in the tag numbers and waiting for the response from the system. It was slow those days... old dial up.

In the background I could hear the lady say she had never seen the dog before, and such and such. Then an interesting thing occurred. The owners name came up on the computer and it happened to be the same name of the woman bringing the dog in. Well, what could I do? I had to ask her about this "coincidence". She denied it, still insisting she had never before seen the dog. Our records indicated she had owned the dog for five years. Finally after teeth pulling she said "the dog has been hanging around her house for a few weeks".

I guess she didn't understand how the license worked. I had to full out explain it to her, that the license not only "suggested" she owned the dog, but it proved it. A person has to apply for a city license, they have to pay and provide their address and phone number. I tried to explain to her that we would still accept the dog, we never turned away an animal... ever. Still she was up in arms about the whole affair.
At this point the computer system had give us the dogs name, something she had been unwilling to offer for this "stray" dog. A name can mean a lot to a dog in a shelter situation. When scared and confused, the name might be the only thing a dog can hold onto. Some owners who surrender their own pets even bring the pets food, bedding, and toys, to make it more comfy in the shelter. This woman had not even been so kind as to give us the dogs name.

In the end the best she offered was her claim that the dog belonged to her daughter. She still accepted no responsibility for it at all. Poor Max, to be so unloved that not only was he dumped, but his owner cared so little about him as to not even admit to former ownership. She would not even provide details of what he liked or did not like, which would make it easier for him to find a home.

I want to note here, that while some shelters never put "strays" up for adoption, our shelter did. Had we been a shelter that followed the path of euthanizing all unclaimed strays after a period of time, Max would not have survived.

In the end Max did get a new home. I changed his name for this story to protect those involved. In all the years working at the animal shelter, this was just one of the stories of cruelty that I was involved with, and while it may not be your typical story, it is one that I think is important.

Learn more about this author, Brenda Nelson.
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