Had a crappy day and need to get some stuff off my chest.
So a little back ground: I volunteer with a dog rescue that specifically works with Dachshund and Dachshund mixes. I usually have one foster at a time and then transport other dogs for the rescue. How our rescue works is that when we get a dog from either an owner surrendering them or from a shelter that's getting too full we take them to a specific vet to get checked out and put into boarding until a foster can be found. Most of the dogs in our rescue our in foster homes to cut down on boarding costs and give the dogs a better place to stay until they get a forever home than a small cage with limited human interaction.
So the call went out that a dog needed to be transported from a large shelter in town to our vet. Not doing much else today I agreed. Usually with owner surrenders we don't get much info on the dogs and so I have no idea what kind of home this dog came from, but holy shit was Winston in bad shape. Being that he's a fourteen year old Dachshund I wasn't expecting a dog in peak physical shape but my God. A Dachshund in reasonably good health can expect to make it to eighteen to twenty.
Like I said I don't know who owned the dog before but they failed miserably at taking care of him. He had maybe ten teeth left in his rotting mouth. He was probably five pounds over weight, which might not sound like a lot but for a dog that should only weigh 15 lbs that's 25% of his body weight that he needs to loose. He was in pretty sever pain to the point that I couldn't pet him anywhere than on top of his head and forget about picking him up. I'd be willing to bet the farm that he slipped a disk in his back which is causing him the pain. When you let them/ feed them table scraps to the point Dachshunds get that big it's only a matter of time until their back goes out.
So because like I said I don't know the exact situation the dog came from I'm making an educated guess that this dog is coming from a home that failed miserably to provide even the barest hint at dental care (very little people food and a raw hide every now and then and they're good), gave the dog tons of people food with little to no exercise to point his back went out and now their either can't afford it or don't want to pay so instead of doing the responsible thing and putting the dog down themselves they just dump it off at a shelter and abdicate any responsibility. This dog has no quality of life and surgery is probably out of the question so his family abandoned him to a situation where he get left in cages and drug around from place to place until finally somebody puts him out of his misery.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't have all the facts on this dog but I've seen too many good dogs get dumped at the first sign of any health or behavioral issues to give people the benefit of the doubt.
TLDR: I'm in a shitty mood because I transported a dog in terrible health that a family probably abandoned just so he could be put down.
I vote for a discussion we talk about awesome dogs we got from rescues or shelters. Boomer was my first foster and I foster failed hard. Despite the fact that he ran away eight times the first week we had him something just stuck between us. He can be a complete pain in the ass but at the end of the day I know he'll be curled up by my feet in bed.
He's the black and tan one on the bottom, the other one is a year old Chiweenie (Dachshund Chihuahua) we just got adopted out. He was abandoned because he had non contagious mange (demodex) and happy tail (he wagged his tail so much he'd beat it on everything til it was raw and bloody and wouldn't let it heal, hence the cone)
So a little back ground: I volunteer with a dog rescue that specifically works with Dachshund and Dachshund mixes. I usually have one foster at a time and then transport other dogs for the rescue. How our rescue works is that when we get a dog from either an owner surrendering them or from a shelter that's getting too full we take them to a specific vet to get checked out and put into boarding until a foster can be found. Most of the dogs in our rescue our in foster homes to cut down on boarding costs and give the dogs a better place to stay until they get a forever home than a small cage with limited human interaction.
So the call went out that a dog needed to be transported from a large shelter in town to our vet. Not doing much else today I agreed. Usually with owner surrenders we don't get much info on the dogs and so I have no idea what kind of home this dog came from, but holy shit was Winston in bad shape. Being that he's a fourteen year old Dachshund I wasn't expecting a dog in peak physical shape but my God. A Dachshund in reasonably good health can expect to make it to eighteen to twenty.
Like I said I don't know who owned the dog before but they failed miserably at taking care of him. He had maybe ten teeth left in his rotting mouth. He was probably five pounds over weight, which might not sound like a lot but for a dog that should only weigh 15 lbs that's 25% of his body weight that he needs to loose. He was in pretty sever pain to the point that I couldn't pet him anywhere than on top of his head and forget about picking him up. I'd be willing to bet the farm that he slipped a disk in his back which is causing him the pain. When you let them/ feed them table scraps to the point Dachshunds get that big it's only a matter of time until their back goes out.
So because like I said I don't know the exact situation the dog came from I'm making an educated guess that this dog is coming from a home that failed miserably to provide even the barest hint at dental care (very little people food and a raw hide every now and then and they're good), gave the dog tons of people food with little to no exercise to point his back went out and now their either can't afford it or don't want to pay so instead of doing the responsible thing and putting the dog down themselves they just dump it off at a shelter and abdicate any responsibility. This dog has no quality of life and surgery is probably out of the question so his family abandoned him to a situation where he get left in cages and drug around from place to place until finally somebody puts him out of his misery.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't have all the facts on this dog but I've seen too many good dogs get dumped at the first sign of any health or behavioral issues to give people the benefit of the doubt.
TLDR: I'm in a shitty mood because I transported a dog in terrible health that a family probably abandoned just so he could be put down.
I vote for a discussion we talk about awesome dogs we got from rescues or shelters. Boomer was my first foster and I foster failed hard. Despite the fact that he ran away eight times the first week we had him something just stuck between us. He can be a complete pain in the ass but at the end of the day I know he'll be curled up by my feet in bed.
He's the black and tan one on the bottom, the other one is a year old Chiweenie (Dachshund Chihuahua) we just got adopted out. He was abandoned because he had non contagious mange (demodex) and happy tail (he wagged his tail so much he'd beat it on everything til it was raw and bloody and wouldn't let it heal, hence the cone)
I can't bear it when I hear of people treating their animals badly. I get incredibly angry. I wish I could work at a dog shelter, but I get the feeling that I'd probably run out in a murderous rage and would most likely kill whoever hurt the dogs. 
