Some of you who’ve stumbled across some of my recent posts may have ‘heard’ that my Wife and kids are moving up to a rural area to caretake an animal shelter.
I don’t believe I’ve ever taken the time to adequetately describe the conditions of the place. Even my experience as a writer doesn’t qualify me to even begin an outline. But I must. If I don’t, surely I will explode.
It is an old industrial building. One story, flat. It used to be owned by a phamaceutical company who used it as an animal testing lab. To say it is in disrepair would be a gros understatement. The cracks in the cinderblock walls zigzag from the ground to the gaping holes in the side of the roof.
As you approach the buildings main entrance, you can hear the braying of the dogs, but you can’t see in the dirty windows. There is no doubt in your mind that there are a lot of dogs in there.
You step through a scummy puddle to the front door, open it and step into a dirty 3x3 foyer. Your previous estimate as to the number of dogs doubles with the decibels of barking.
Another muddy glass window gives you access to the shelter proper and almost immediately, your stomach is churning as as the most putrid, acrid stench you’ve ever experienced, punches down your throat with a viscious force that leaves you reeling. The dogs are deafening. You want to put your hand on the wall to steady yourself, but one glance at the crusty cement banishes all thought of ever touching anything in this shelter. Ever.
Right from the first, there are dogs. The first room you come to could once have been a waiting room of some sort. Two dogs live here. Corona and Conrad. The floor is slick with piss and water. Bags of wood chips in the corner are piled almost to the roof. The rats have torn the bottom bags and strewn the contents…
As you progress through the shelter, it only gets worse. The unbearable stench intensifies. Everywhere there is filth. It is a dark dingy maze, each doorway’s glass broken out and replaced with screen and everywhere, dogs. The first room on your right contains two dogs. One of them, “Old Man” is 15yrs old and blind. He’s been there longer than anyone except one or two of the volonteers. He spends his days barking at the walls and limping around his flooded pen. He sleeps on a half rotted, flea infested blanket.
Another dog has half chewed through his own leg. His eye is swollen, pus filled and dripping. His cell mate spends the day running in circles.
Everywhere you turn, there is a hallway or room filled with shit, garbage and dogs and rats. Some dogs leap at you, snarling, others stay in the corners, whimpering. Worse, some look up at you and are friendly. The rats ignore you. You are grateful.
Just as you believe your capacity for horror has been reached, you open a door and find the hallway of pens. You realize the the dogs with rooms are priviledged. The pens are concrete, with rusted chainlink fronts. Some of the doors are held closed with nylon dog collars, because the latches are a corroded mess. Gutters on each side of a narrow concrete path are filled with an indescribable muck. Piss, shit, rotted shavings, dead rats…
Many of the dogs are insane. Most of them are unadoptable… ‘saved’ from previously abusive homes… One room contains three dogs who were born there. They have never seen the light of day. They are too feral. No-one was ever capable of taking them out.
If you’ve ever seen ‘Hellraiser’ and you can remember the insane asylum… you’d be getting close. Or the boiler room on Nightmare on Elm St… Add rotted fibreglass hanging through disintegrated ceiling tiles.
Welcome to our no kill shelter.
See any dog you’d like to bring home with you?
I worked there for two weeks. I cleaned out one of the hallways and built an area for the 80 or so cats that needed housing. ALL of which had feline leukemia. I built a nice, cozy, bright and warm *death row[i/] for these cats. Some of which had feline HIV.
My wife has been doing volonteer work for the last few weeks, shit shoveling. Both of us have been volonteering our time at a house on the property, preparing it to be moved into by people, as the shelter could not maintain insurance without someone living on the premises. That people was/is? us. Who knows? We have a contract, but it’s a thirty day notice thing. If we get notice tonight, we may not even get to move in.
So far, that’s the plan. Pretty bleak, but it’s a plan.
Appalled yet?
Disgusted?
Horrified?
You’d better sit down. Cause here’s the kicker.
The executive director (a phys-ed teacher) gets IMHO a generous salary. Oh, she works for it alright, no doubt about that. As I understand it, her responsibilities included building maintenance, animal management, adoption clinics, volonteer management, a dog training course, liason with all the vets, and a host of other things which she apparently steadfastly refuses to delegate. Her workday ends at four. Sharp. When I worked there, she had 2 paid employees. $9/hour, who left when the doors were closed and locked. At four.
This is a non-profit organization, run on donations alone. To be sure, there are plenty of volonteers. In the time I was there, I saw two or three of them walking dogs from time to time, but for the most part, I just saw them standing around chatting. I’m not saying they never did anything much but gossip… just saying that was mostly what I saw.
Having virtually crawled through the bowels of that place, I can honestly say that if as many people as I actually saw up there worked seriously, in a co-ordinated manner, the place would have been immeasurably better.
But it wasn’t. And the inevitable happened. The whole fucking thing exploded. A dog got sick. Very sick. Lepto-spersomething or other… deadly. Comunicable to humans. Health Canada came into today and killed everything except the rats. I’ll provide a link as soon as one turns up.
I guess wherever you have a cause, you have fanatics. Miaouf seems certainly not to be excempt from that.
Prior to this, a few level headed folk came to realize that the whole shelter was failing miserably. No-kill was clearly not working. The was no organization. Dogs were going sick and hungry and there was no money. Authorities were called in and extreme action was taken.
Among the fanatics, this has caused some outrage. Misdirected thought it may be, it leads on to some extremely slanderous material that has quite serious consequences.
I’m way too angry to continue… you can read it for yourself if you’re still with me.
[http://www.miaouf.ca/]the official miouf website]( [url) currently controlled by some very upset people.
There are allegations (carefully worded) against me personally, my wife, and people who I know for a fact have given more than can be put into words (financial and otherwise) that are so twisted that my blood is boiling. I plan to attend that meeting, and address every single one of them. With full documentation and a lawyer at my side. I wish I could bring a chainsaw.