Animal shelters: all different

Not all animal-helping gestures work out, but it’s looking as if the “McDonald’s boxer” mentioned in my last post may soon be on her way to a boxer rescue group from the Trenton Animal Shelter.

Assuming a rescue group looks out for its own, that’s good news, especially if the dog is in fact pretty old and therefore less likely to be adopted. (An awful thing to have to say: that advanced age, in a dog or cat -- or person, I’m afraid -- makes that creature less adoptable – i.e., loveable, desirable, fun to be with . . .)

Valerie Noble, the woman who phoned the shelter for help last Wednesday, and then phoned to check on Friday and again this morning, evidently feels good about the dog’s prospects. And I want to do the same.

This would make the 2nd animal shelter “with heart” that I’ve encountered lately. The first was only in a movie, “Wendy and Lucy,” but of course I lapped that up too. That shelter, somewhere in Oregon, actually notified the girl who had lost her dog when the dog turned up and was placed in foster care.

Both shelters represent a sad contrast to a local shelter that has been in the press lately as shelter volunteers and town politicos battle it out. The for-sure facts seem to be that animals there are terribly mistreated and in this particular town there doesn’t seem to be much sympathy for them. Nor do there seem to be ways of discussing civilly, arguing factually or solving the problems that exist in humane ways. It’s ugly.
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