DOG EAT GOD

dog eat god

10/13/03---1:17 PM

Drained by working at the shelter I come home and take an uncustomary afternoon nap. The pit bull puppies have survived the Parvo epidemic. Force-feeding and Pediolyte. They have big stomachs now and wag their tails. The tiny fellow that had bloody diarrhea and vertebra poking through his skin was still alive this morning.

I helped this Coast Guard family adopt Rufus, the seven-year old limping dog minutes before he was to removed from the adoption ward to be euthanized. I walked around feeling good, why, oh yeah I saved an old limping dog from death. I then visit stray dog wards to check the waters and discover the two pit bulls covered in severe mange. They are almost unrecognizable, pink swollen skin, stinking, furless and bloody. It is a horrible suffering sight. They still wag their tails.

K. says that when she goes to get the dogs out of their cage to be euthanized they know it is time to die, and cower in their cage. The euthanization is not what gets to me, (though it boggles the mind to think of all that easy death), I am all for death if living equals suffering. The abuse directed towards something so helpless is what haunts me. I don't want to know these people.

Dogs at are at the bottom of the poverty spectrum. It is a luxury to take your dog to the doctor and feed it 30-dollar bags of food. I know that. I make myself look. Trying to see if I have any feelings. How much can I take. I absorb and then I come home and sleep it off in a hangover sleep.