Desperately Seeking Sammy

Well that didn't take long. Less than five days after I arriving back in Southern California, I received this email from my friend Siobhan:

Where are you?

I found a dog running loose....  Don't know where to take him.  Any suggestions?

I thought of my belongings strewn about the living floor from where I dumped them late Sunday night. I thought about how I had only been back a few days and that I should respectfully abstain from taking in wayward canines for at least a few weeks. I thought about how I really had a lot to do this weekend.

And then I called Siobhan and asked, “Do you need me to take him for the night?”

She is staying at an extended stay hotel in Burbank and is only out here for a month for a job, often flying back home on the weekends. However, when she saw this boy crisscrossing traffic on her commute back to the hotel Thursday night, she couldn’t ignore the situation. She and another good Samaritan pursued the pup until they convinced him to hop into her car.

She called up a friend with a house and yard who kindly took in the boy for the night and even constructed a makeshift leash and collar for him. Everyone had to work on Friday, and not knowing how he would be inside the house, it would be most secure (for both dog as well the humans and their possessions involved) in the backyard. However, the forecast called for the San Fernando Valley to be hotter than the surface of the sun by afternoon. Siobhan was worried about him, so after plastering the neighborhood with FOUND DOG posters and getting the pressing job necessities done, she picked the boy up and brought him to work.

Her friend christened him Sam. When someone asked Siobhan what breed he was, she replied with, “You know, Boxer missed with pure sweetness.”

 

His picture really doesn’t do him justice. He definitely has some Boxer and some sweetness, although I think maybe some English Setter or Queensland Heeler mixed in. He has a stunning coat, and is plush-puppy-soft. My guess is he’s about a year old, maybe even younger.

I suspected perhaps this was his first springtime and his jaunt out of his yard was probably being driven by the tiny set of nads he still possessed between his back legs. Intact male... probably not micro-chipped, indicating he was definitely not from a rescue or shelter.

He was obviously well cared for: his toenails were not only trimmed but rounded as if given a real pedicure; he was gentle and easy with his food as his rotund figure proved he was seldom without such necessities. He wasn’t keen on peeing or pooping on a leash; he preferred the privacy only a backyard pooper knows.

So what was his story? He might have been trying to tell me, but I couldn’t translate his groaning and moaning. Sammy vocalized so much about it as he wandered around the apartment whining that he wore himself out. He didn’t demand to be on the couch. He was a polite young lad and chose to lie on the floor, and drape himself across the doggie bed.

As he succumbed to exhaustion and felt secure in this new place, his snores vibrated the floor, he turned on his back, spread his legs wide, and unselfconsciously allowed himself to be carried off to dreamland.

He slept on my bed that night, sprawled out, legs spread wide, feet dangling on his chest and snores resonating through his muzzle.

This was not a stray; this was clearly someone’s dog. Siobhan had found the dog. Now how do we find his human?

Saturday morning Siobhan picked up Sammy to take him around the neighborhood where she found him, check in at the shelters to see if anyone had reported him missing, and to find a more suitable temp home for him until his owners could be located.

It has been five days since he got into Siobhan’s car. Siobhan has received no responses to her posters, online ads, or the shelter contacts. We’ve seen no LOST DOG posters or ads resembling Sammy. But time is running out. Siobhan doesn’t want to take him to a shelter, but what else can she do?

Burbank Animal Shelter is a fine shelter as shelters go.  They are not No Kill (meaning that no adoptable, treatable animal is ever killed due to lack of space), but they are very very low kill; dogs have been known to stay there for months on end. The officers, staff, and volunteers show compassion and understanding toward animals and the humans who love them; they have clean facilities; there is no doubt that everyone’s main objective is to find every animal a home and they go above and beyond to accomplish that. They have a weekly public access show highlighting the new arrivals. Volunteers take the homeless canines on hikes, and attend adoption fairs with them; they get a portrait-level photo taken of them when they enter the shelter, and the volunteers and staff get to know the animals so they are placed in more suitable homes.

But even still, when the kennels are full, difficult decisions have to be made. The least likely to be adopted, the longest residents... the decision isn’t easy, but for the safety and health of all, one must go.

The system is broken. This is how the system should work: a kind woman has found a dog running loose—probably just escaped his yard; she takes the dog to the local animal shelter where they accept him with open arms. They give him a bath, a vet checks his vital stats, and he’s placed in a calm space with a warm bed, a full bowl of food, and some water. There he can let go of the stress of being lost and confused, running from cars, disoriented by the noise and chaos of the situation.

As he relaxes, his info is sent over the internet and he is networked to find his owners. His owners, realizing he’s gone, come in search of him. They call the shelter. They make a match. Sammy goes home.

But if his owners never come, then he will be able stay there in that safe haven until someone else sees him, falls in love with him, and decides that he should be their livelong companion. All the while, he is loved and cared for, given his necessities of food and shelter and love and joy.

That’s how the shelter system should work.

But it doesn’t work that way.

The moment Siobhan hands Sammy over to the shelter, a clock will begin ticking. He will be welcomed in at the Burbank Shelter and treated well, I have no doubt of that. But he will sit alone in a concrete kennel until the volunteers and staff members come to give him love. He will be confused and cry about why he is all alone. He has the basics: a simple bed, food, water, shelter, and love however often as possible.

But that clock is ticking and the kennels could become full before his owner—old or new—finds him. We live in a country where a being without a human is a death sentence for any pet. There are reprieves and happy endings at times. But when less than half of the animals that find themselves in the American shelter system make it out alive, you can understand why it’s the last place any lost animal is truly safe and sheltered.

This needs to change.

For Sammy.

For the Skyline Kittens.

For your own dog or cat who might someday become lost.

For every animal in need who seeks comfort and shelter from the harsh reality of homelessness.

Sammy might couch-surf at my place again this weekend, but I can’t keep a boisterous young fifty-pound pup here long-term. He needs his own humans with their own place. I’ll do what I can but I have a feeling that in the end that only thing I can do is hope and pray and wish that the shelter system works for Sammy and that he’s one of the lucky ones.

Life is a dangerous business. It’s filled with risks. Any moment life can turn to death instantly. Sammy could have been hit by a car that night that Siobhan found him, but the chances of him being killed on the streets shouldn’t be higher than his chances of winding up dead by going to a facility society has created to protect him.

Yet, for the most part, that’s how the American animal shelter system currently works. And that needs to change. The only way it’s going to change is if we demand change and find solutions. We can’t just gripe about it. We need to demand a No Kill Nation where every homeless and lost animal is truly given shelter when in need; where the risk of death is brought down to zero by walking through its door. We need to step up, reclaim the shelters, and make them what we want them to be and what they should have always been: a safe haven for all.

Sammy is one of the many lost and homeless pets in America. Sammy needs a human guardian. If he looks familiar because you might know his owners or if he looks familiar because he is the dog of your dreams and you simply can’t live another day without him, please contact Siobhan. Because the time may soon come when Sammy truly can’t (and won’t be allowed to) live another day--without you.