All the good dogs: Part 6

 It's a guessing game as I get to the SPCA at 7:00 in the morning: which dogs will be there and which dogs will have magically vanished?  I want my best dogs to be there but at the same time I want them to be gone, to have been adopted in the seven days since I walked them.  So it's always a bittersweet morning.

There is a lovely young (one year old, a bouncy puppy) black lab and pit bull mix, named Stan. (Come on, you gotta love a dog named Stan.) On the early shift we try to walk the dogs who are house trained first, because they have been waiting for at least 12 hours (more like 15) to pee and poop.  Stan is jumpy when I squeeze my body through the door, holding a piece of a hot dog in my hand to distract him from trying to bolt out the door. Stan wants to get escape, definitely, but at this hour he just wants to pee.  We get out, he walks about ten feet and he pees. And pees.  And pees. Seriously, he pees for about 45 seconds, which is a lot of pee!  Stan calms down a bit. We go to one of the large yards where he can be off leash and he zooms around like a crazy animal (!) and then, whew!  He poops.  (I know, TMI)  And now he is totally just a dog. Not a dog with huge needs, just a dog. Stan doesn't fetch, he cares nothing about a ball being tossed. He just zooms.  And then he jumps on the structures and waits for me to come over and I pet him and his entire body just relaxes into the petting. That's really what he needs: love.

And don't we all? 

Then Stan and I go back to his cell.  He gets some sliced hot dogs that I bring from home, he still wants to escape from  his cell but he fetches the sliced hot dogs that I toss across his little habitat and I scoot out the door.

Next is Shiloh, an older pit bull mix, the one that looks like a piggy bank, white with big black spots. Shiloh has been there for a while, like five months. It's difficult to figure out why he hasn't been "chosen" because he's so cool, so calm, such a lovely older dog. He also goes out, walks  20 feet and then pees a lot. Shiloh is so happy just walking around, so happy to be out of his cell. An easy walk, a romp in the play yard, back into his cell.

And so it goes. Some new dogs, a couple of huskies that are actually lovely, not as hyper as huskies can be. A small, older chihuahua mix that needs to get out to pee but you can feel the distain radiating off of her, like she knows she must do her business but she would rather 1) do it without someone watching her, 2) do it without being on a leash and 3) she would rather be anywhere but here. All she wants is to be on someone's couch, in a warm home and be loved all day. She cares nothing about me, and no offense is taken.

So many other dogs: I walked eight dogs on Wednesday in two hours..... and covered almost three miles doing so. It was a good morning.