I guess by now everyone is aware of what happened to Ellen DeGeneres and the emotional meltdown witnessed on national television. I don’t agree with how she acted on her show, and she probably set her gender back a few decades by perpetuating the stereotype that women are crybabies and driven by their emotions rather than their brains.
That being said, Ellen’s sad episode is an example of why most animal shelter workers and volunteers are assholes and hypocrites.
I sometimes peruse the Rant and Rave message board on Craigslist (although I go there less than I used to) and come across a post by some jerk who volunteers at an animal shelter. I was lucky enough to find such a post. Here’s an overemotional excerpt in which this fool attempts to make people who buy pets at pet stores feel like assholes.
I volunteer there about twice a week - on my days off from work for 3 or 4 hours each time. I spoke to the staff who work there about euthanasia. They have to put down about 15 to 20 dogs per week - mostly because the dogs will never get adopted. About 80% of the dogs they put down are pits or have pit in them. Very few are dangerous - in fact, it is rare to have to put down an animal because it is dangerous. The cold reality is that nobody is ever going to adopt these poor animals and there are more coming in every day.
and then ends with this…
…shelters, and the animals in them, need people to adopt from here. Do not buy pets from pet stores or from people who breed animals as a sideline income from their homes. At least give several shelters a look-over and give a chance to these animals who have been waiting for so long to get back to a family who will care for them.
Most people have probably heard this sales pitch before, pleading with the public to bypass the “evil corporation’s puppy and kitten trade” and adopt cats and dogs before the animal-loving shelter staff kill them three or four days after the animals arrive.
What these animal shelter folks don’t tell you is that the real reason many of those animals will never be adopted is because many of the adoption requests are denied. For years, I too was moved by many of the testimonies of animal shelter workers and could not understand why every shelter was overcrowded.
But about a year ago, my friend and his live-in girlfriend wanted to adopt a cat and asked if they could put me down as a personal reference for their pet adoption application with the North Shore Animal League in Long Island. I thought it was a bit odd: I’ve acted as a personal reference for friends and family who were trying to rent an apartment or get a job, but never to adopt a pet.
Then this guy calls me on behalf of North Shore and asks me all of these very personal questions about my friend and his girlfriend. I was asked whether my friend’s lease allowed pet. I told the guy that the truth, that I had seen several tenants in the building walking dogs in a nearby playground, so the landlord must allow cats. “I didn’t ask what you saw other tenants doing,” the jerk on the other line snarled. “I asked if your friend’s lease allowed pets.”
Okay, check New York sarcasm. I sharply replied, “I don’t know, man. I don’t have a copy of my friend’s lease.” This louse proceeded to ask me questions about my friend’s tendency to argue with his girl, whether or not any of them were smokers, what their combined incomes were and if my friend ever spoke of any long-term outstanding debts.
I felt very uncomfortable being asked these questions, but did so to the best of my ability and knowledge as a personal favor for my friend. What made me even more uncomfortable was that the North Shore interviewer wasn’t interviewing me, he was interrogating me in the tone and manner a suspect would expect from a cop. I was a little disturbed by the line of interrogation because I had no idea that such extensive screening was a part of the animal adoption process, especially since most shelter workers act like they’re screaming for people to adopt these animals (adopt these creatures of God before I have to kill them!).
My friend has had the same full-time job for five years, a rarity among people our age, rents an apartment with his girlfriend of two years, is not a crook or a pervert, and is someone I’ve known for the last 12 years. He also grew up around cats and dogs in his home. So I was surprised to hear such aggressive and accusatory questioning about a person that even the most jaded cop wouldn’t suspect of any major wrongdoing. What’s next, credit checks? Criminal background checks? Confirmation of religious affiliation? Paycheck stubs?
After I hung up, I called my friend and asked what the hell was going on at North Shore. Growing up in New York, I’d seen North Shore Animal League commercials all my life, and their benevolence and kindness was not conveyed in this interview. He apologized and explained that two other shelters in Manhattan, one of which was the ASPCA, has rejected his adoption application. He had put me down as a personal reference for those two applications as well, but I had never received any call.
Like the other two animal shelters, North Shore also rejected my friend’s adoption application. Ultimately, my friend and his girl purchased a cat for $300 at a nearby pet shop. Now I understood why people bought pets instead of adopting them. The pet shop didn’t ask my buddy to fill out a lengthy application or ask for references and then interrogate said references as if they were looking for a murder suspect. Besides, North Shore charges $250 in adoption fees for pure breed cats, my friend probably saw the extra $50 for the pet shop pure breed as a convenience fee.
Which brings me back to why I think poorly of anyone who works at an animal shelter and makes people feel bad for not adopting. I wasn’t surprised that Ellen was forced to agree to not re-gift her adopted dog as a term of adopting said dog. For those unfamiliar with the story, DeGeneres gave the dog to her stylist’s small daughters, and the animal shelter from where DeGeneres obtained the dog stepped in and confiscated the animal. I bet if the dog could talk, he sure as hell wouldn’t say, “Hey! My owner violated the terms of my adoption contract! Take me away from this nice loving family and home environment and shove me into a tiny cage where I can sit in my own excrement and wait 72 hours for my death.”
If I were a cat or dog, even a life as a stray or living with the most dysfunctional humans would have to be better than being placed into an animal shelter. Unless my adopters were planning to eat me, skin me, or use me to pull a plow, I would go with anyone who was willing to rescue me from an animal a shelter. Even death row inmates get more than 72 hours before they’re put to death. Ironically, it is the people who run these shelters who call themselves the animal rescuers.
But why have such strict adoption guidelines and then whine about how overcrowded the shelters are and demonize anyone who buys an animal from a pet shop? More importantly, how can you be affiliated with an organization that looks for any reason to reject people looking to adopt animals, kill animals who aren’t adopted after three days of admission into said organization, and still call yourself an animal lover?
It seems to me that if these “animal rescuers” cared so much for animals, they would loosen some of the restrictions for adopting pets. My girlfriend purchased her pit bull from an elderly man who raised them in his back yard in the Bronx because North Shore rejected her application.
Yet my pal and my gal would both be viewed as worse than Hitler, according to this Craigslist poster.
I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head…I do everyday on the way home from work. I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter. Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes. DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!
What a hypocrite.
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December 25th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Yeah, I wrote it.
You call me a fool.
Why?
Your anger at a shelter on LI is transferred to me - in California.
Are you nuts?
Many animals are not adopted because there are simply too many abandoned animals and the shelters have to keep making room for the next inevitable day of animals being dumped by people who treat animals like disposable toys - not because shelter volunteers and employees are assholes who are overly restrictive.
Shelters want to make sure that the people who adopt will give the animal a good home and be able to take care of it - provide shelter, affection, and medical care - if needed.
In general anyone expressing a sincere interest in an animal and has a stable residence will be able to adopt from us.
Are some employees rude? Duh. Throw a rock up in the air on LI - you will hit a rude person who will fall over and hit another rude person.
Most of the employees at the shelter are there because of their love of animals - or because that is the only job they can get - imagine a job which entails cleaning feces.
Guess how much it pays.
As I pointed out - many of the employees are also being ripped off by the city.
Of course pet stores don’t care who they sell to.
BTW, we don’t kill animals after 3 or 4 days - and many of us spend out of our own pockets for vet visits for animals which we will never see again. Last month I plunked down $400 for a difficult spay with complications for an animal at the shelter. She’s gone now.
Yeah - we are a bunch of fools.
Animals are put down for health reasons, behavioral issues (dangerous) and just if there is no more room - we get more animals every day and do not have the amazing expanding shelter.
We work with rescues to trade and juggle the population of animals in the shelter to avoid euthenasia.
You think poorly of people who volunteer at animal shelters?
I wasn’t trying to make anyone feel guilty. I thought it was a pretty gentle plea to consider a shelter to adopt from.
A hearty f*** you.
I’d go on and answer your rant point by point but I’m guessing that it would be a waste of time on you.
Here’s the whole post I wrote one day after volunteering.
I wanted to get more people to volunteer and to consider adoption from a shelter.
How foolish.
The animal shelter - what it’s like inside
Date: 2006-01-04, 8:18AM PST
I volunteer there about twice a week - on my days off from work for 3 or 4 hours each time. I spoke to the staff who work there about euthanasia. They have to put down about 15 to 20 dogs per week - mostly because the dogs will never get adopted. About 80% of the dogs they put down are pits or have pit in them. Very few are dangerous - in fact, it is rare to have to put down an animal because it is dangerous. The cold reality is that nobody is ever going to adopt these poor animals and there are more coming in every day.
I walked through the dog areas - healthy friendly pits were everywhere. Mixed in were dogs from different breeds. I saw 2 small dogs together in one cage - like the fluffy little ones people are always breeding and selling here on CL for hundreds of dollars - they looked bewildered and afraid. There is always a terrific racket going on - barking, wailing, mewling from the cats - the stench is omnipresent and very unpleasant. One gets used to it - sort of. I frequently gag and once went outside and puked. Many of the staff wear surgical masks and some even wear HEPA masks.
The staff at these places are a mix of paid city workers, full and part time, and volunteers. Some of the volunteers do anything and everything and some specialize in one type of animal or are members of rescue organizations.
These places are horribly understaffed and many of the employees are poorly paid but, even so, many are devoted to their jobs and the animals in their care. I regularly see staff working past their schedule (for free) because they are tasked to do too much due to under funding. They care so much about what they do there - that they work after their shift is over - for nothing. And this is not glamorous work. Scooping excrement, washing, feeding, etc. Many take these jobs because of their love for the animals. These people, in my opinion, are to be honored. It is one thing to volunteer. We can come and go as we please. It is quite another to do this day after day.
The city has a curious practice with some of their employees - to circumvent giving them health benefits some of the employees are laid off every 6 months or so and then rehired a month later. Charming. Now you know how the other half lives.
The animals, after a little time spent at the shelter, lose much of their sparkle and become depressed and withdrawn. The dogs take it the hardest. At any moment you can hear them wailing away. As I walked through the dog rooms each dog comes rushing to the front of the cage hoping for some attention and contact. A large light brown male pit sticks in my memory. He was literally shaking with excitement to see a human. He looked like he was ready to explode. The whole room was a mass of conflicting barks and yelps - some of the staff wear ear muffs to drown out the noise. Unfortunately, there is nothing like this for the dogs. Another dog, with most of it’s fur missing, yowled rhythmically and shivered. It sounded like a child crying. It went on for the whole time I was there.
I walked past the cat cages. A dozen paws in chorus reached out through the cages to touch something. There must be 100 cats at the shelter. Most will probably never leave this place alive.
There are rats and mice, birds, guinea pigs, rabbits - tons of rabbits in fact.
If you want to add some value to your life and the lives of these animals - volunteer at your local shelter. It is a huge gift to just sit with an animal or take one for a walk - one does not have to get down and dirty with cleaning to volunteer. If you can’t own a pet you still can enjoy the presence of animals.
The shelter also needs people to foster animals in their homes. This alleviates overcrowding, gives animals a break from the shelter, and gives people a chance to see if perhaps they would like to adopt a particular animal permanently. It’s a win-win situation.
AND, most importantly shelters, and the animals in them, need people to adopt from here. Do not buy pets from pet stores or from people who breed animals as a sideline income from their homes. At least give several shelters a look-over and give a chance to these animals who have been waiting for so long to get back to a family who will care for them.
January 17th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Wow. I feel like I’m in the presence of an Internet celebrity.
If you had read the post thoroughly, you would’ve seen that I also mentioned my friend attempted to adopt an animal from the ASPCA after North Shore rejected him.
Since you’re from California, I don’t expect you to know much about North Shore Animal League. This is not some struggling piss-poor nonprofit. They own three or four very large shelters and apparently have enough money to to air TV ads and pay their president $345K a year. So it’s a pretty big organization.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) also runs ads on New York television. From my experience both organizations are well-known due to their TV ads and are very strict in who they allow to adopt one of their animals. For years I wondered how pet shops made any money at all selling cats and dogs at high prices if one can simply adopt a pet for much less money. After asking people I knew who had bought animals at pet stores, I found out that they had all tried the ASPCA, North Shore, Humane Society, etc., but their adoption applications had all been rejected.
The people I asked weren’t crack addicts or homeless or Michael Vick, but they were all lower to middle-class New Yorkers whose adoption applications were rejected. The big problem is that ASPCA and North Shore are probably the largest animal shelters in NYC, and people who have been turned away from these two places will most likely not bother to seek any other animal shelters and instead go straight to the pet store.
The people I asked were friends, family and acquaintances, many of whom have children. So the home is all right for a human child to live in, yet it’s not good enough for a cat or dog? I understand you people want the safest, most suitable home for every animal, but even a living environment that doesn’t stand up to your ideal has to be better for the animal than spending its existence in a cage at an animal shelter, right? You would think a human baby, not a dog, was being adopted here. Then again, none of the people I asked were Caucasian, so maybe that may explain why their applications were rejected.
You say that shelter volunteers and employees are not assholes who are overly restrictive about who can and can’t adopt, but if that were the case, how do you explain all these pet shops? Every pet store I walk by always displays puppies at the front window, with even more dogs inside. They wouldn’t sell them if people weren’t buying them. Obviously, business is good. Sure, there are probably people with lots of money who don’t have the time or patience to fill out an adoption application but I have to wonder how many people who go to these pet shops to buy dogs and cats did so because they were turned away by a “passionate” shelter person such as yourself. I’ve seen mixed breed puppies sold for as little as $50.
I really don’t have any beef against volunteers, and I think your Craigslist post was great in trying to get people to volunteer. But I also think you’re setting people up for disappointment if they go to an animal shelter and are told they aren’t good enough to adopt. ASPCA and North Shore both run similar guilt-inducing ads of suffering dogs and cats waiting to be adopted. My disappointment-not anger-is focused on shelter employees, who I assume are the ones who get to reject or approve adoption applications, not volunteers.
And thanks for cursing me out…typical liberal debate tactic. If anything’s ever swayed my mind on an argument it’s cursing me out. Good going. And why say f*** when you really mean fuck? Are you trying to curse me out without offending me? Since you offered me “a hearty f*** you”, let me return the favor New York-style:
Fuck you, fuck your mother, and fuck your ancestors.
Every pet shop owner in the U.S. must be crossing their fingers, hoping the local animal shelters will reject a few more applications and throw some business their way. Every person who breeds dogs at home should personally thank shelters like the ASPCA and North Shore. If your shelter does not reject applicants with reasonable accommodations, then more power to you. But if your shelter is like the ASPCA or North Shore, then keep in mind that the general public aren’t the ones supporting pet stores, YOU are.
December 3rd, 2009 at 6:53 am
I can’t believe you spent this much time writing back to me. Just read parts of your rant.
Kinda pathetic. Do you get off thinking that people find your blog important enough to read it?
Do you think that being a latino from NYC offers you a special perspective?
Eh, hermano?
You reinforced why I left Long Island. thanks.
Write a few paragraphs in response.
I may read them in a year or 2. or not.
See ya.
December 20th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Thanks for reading.
Since you have nothing left to respond with other than personal attacks, I’ll have to assume you cannot defend your position on this issue. I’m guessing you’re the loser making everyone feel guilty for not adopting animals from a shelter. The shelter that in turns probably denies most of the people who apply for adoption. Now THAT is pathetic.
And no, I don’t think being Latino, libertarian or a New Yorker offers me a special or unique perspective. If I thought it did, the name of this blog would be I Am The Only One. Try thinking before you write next time, OK?
And trust me, I couldn’t give two shits if you ever read this response. Last month 300 visitors stopped by this blog. Granted, I’m not pulling in Huffington Post numbers, but it still means I’m keeping this blog up for someone else besides myself. Or you.
Going back to the issue in question, the fact that these animal shelters snobbishly reject so many adoption applicants keeps pet stores and puppy mills in business, and ensures that many shelter pets will ultimately remain in doggy jail until they are put to death. By people like you.
You did leave Long Island? I guess that’s why the property values started going up again over there.
March 15th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
I, too, have a very pit-bull who stands out as the most adoring animal I have ever owned. Soon, a brand new dog breed will come together for that media to blast, as they have accomplished rotties and dobies in earlier many years. Unfortunate that media sensationalism breeds so much inaccurate facts.
June 17th, 2010 at 9:15 am
Hi, love the Shrek movies, great animation!