“He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog.  You are his life, his love, his leader.  He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of this heart.  You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.”

As I was packing up after an adoption event last month, a woman tried to give me her dog.  She kept telling me that if I didn’t take her that she would have her killed immediately.  This woman refused to listen to me, take any advice or my offer to help her rehome, nor would she even consider holding onto her dog for 24 more hours to give me time to find a rescue.  She would not even consider just surrendering her dog to the city shelter in the morning.  Rather, the two options she was allowing were a) I could take the dog that very minute or b) she would walk into the vet clinic and order the dog put to death.

This poor dog, which I eventually learned is named Mandy, did nothing to deserve this treatment from her owner.  And this owner in no way deserved the love and affection Mandy had been giving to her for the four years they were together.  While I understand that some people out there have situations in life that require them to surrender their pet, there is NEVER a good reason for someone to have their pet killed unless the pet is suffering from an illness that cannot be treated or cured.

The good news is that we took Mandy for the night and she was then taken to the city shelter in the morning where she was adopted within a week of being surrendered.  If her owner had been a decent person, who actually respected her pet – an animal who depended on her – then she would have tried working with Mandy, or would have found a proper home for her, or would have surrendered Mandy to the shelter herself.

These animals are helpless. We have bred them to depend on us and therefore we have the responsibility of caring for them with all the love and affection they so selflessly give us.  “…He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of this heart.  You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.“