Service Learning Journal - Week Two

I discovered that I made the right choice about where to volunteer. I choose the humane society, not only because I love animals, but also because I figured that working with animals would be far superior to working primarily with other people. Turns out, that at least a few, if not most, of the other people who work at the animal shelter feel the same way. Case in point, last week I found a great little poodle there and I was really hoping that a nice family would adopt him. This week when I went in he was still here, only by then he had gotten ill, maybe stress, maybe something worse, not sure. So I had only been there a short time when a lady, and her somewhat annoying children came in asking about the poodle. My supervisor explained that he was sick, and stated numerous times that by law the dog must be neutered. At first, the lady agreed to have him neutered. By the time they got to the front counter to officially adopt the dog, she had a slightly different story. She said that it just didn’t seem right to have a dog fixed, in fact, she only got her other dog fixed because it got old. At this point, my supervisor started to show part of how upset she was by explaining to the lady that what was actually wrong was having to destroy perfectly fine animals every day since people don’t always get their pets spayed or neutered. One could tell that she was biting her tongue during this exchange. After the lady left with the poodle my supervisor pretty much exploded, the gist of which was that she was really sick of people. About the organization itself, I learned that when they get animals in they keep them separate for at least a week before they can go up for adoption. Also, I found out what happens when animals get diseases – they have to be destroyed immediately, and then their cage(s) is completely sanitized.