We haven't fostered a dog since Mickey left us in July, but we're taking a short-term little guy named Teddy over the weekend. A question for you: is Friday morning part of the weekend in your mental calendar? The woman who currently has Teddy had asked for someone to take him while she traveled "for the weekend"; we volunteered. She messaged me yesterday to say "I'd like to drop him off on Friday morning." I said, "I have to be in the office until Friday afternoon." She responded with irritation. I did not say to her, "...don't most people work on Friday mornings?" but how many people have open schedules on Fridays? Elwood volunteered to work from home to accommodate her, but she was not at all gracious about the situation. Is that a little presumptuous? Is it a COVID thing, since many people are still working at home?
It is a little weird that I am kicking off this post by being judgy about this woman, because the thing that prompted it was someone else's judginess. In the alumni group for our organization, a different woman posted to say that she and her husband needed to surrender their dog. They had moved, they were working long hours, they weren't able to give the dog what he needed, they believed that he'd be happier in another setting. One of the commenters was pretty vicious: This sounds like a problem you should be able to solve! I hope your dog gets a REAL forever home this time!
That kind of comment doesn't align with the shelter's stated philosophy, which is that we're not going to heap judgment on people who surrender their animals. But it reflects an attitude that the leadership has to smack down pretty regularly across the various Facebook groups. And I have a theory: I think it's related to the whole "fur babies" change.
Obviously, you don't surrender a baby because you get a different job or a different house. Maybe it's hard, but you make it work. The baby is more important than the job. The baby is more important than anything. This is not true of a pet -- other things can be more important than a pet. It's not a personal failing to realize that you can't take good care of a pet. Maybe I would view it differently if I saw pets as "fur babies," but I do not.
When I wrote that post in the spring about changes in dog care, they seemed benign and amusing. This comment was not benign, though.
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