Volunteering at the animal shelter

Junior High Kid has to do volunteer work somewhere in the community for his personal development class. I figured he’d volunteer at the library since he’s been volunteering there already, but no…he decided he wanted to volunteer at the animal shelter. I was all for that…I’ve considered volunteering there myself. And I told him so…I said, “hey, maybe you and I could do that together!”

I got The Look in response to that. What’s the deal? It wasn’t that long ago that my mother asked Junior High Kid whether he was willing to be seen in public with me. He said, “of course.” My mother said, “doesn’t your mother EMBARRASS you?” He said, “No, my mom’s cool.”

Am I not cool any more??? Actually, he will still be seen in public with me…he just doesn’t want to volunteer with me. (And for a school project, that’s probably just as well.)

So I drove him and one of his friends over to the animal shelter yesterday so they could talk to the volunteer coordinator and get set up. Then we spent some time just hanging out. Apparently Junior High Kid is more of a cat person…he and his friend spent the next 30 minutes playing with the cats. I am both a dog and a cat person, but I tend to have a slight preference for dogs.

The dogs at the shelter really got to me this time. That’s because they had a lot of these dogs there. OMG! I’ve never seen such malnourished dogs in my entire life! I wanted to cry! What in the world makes a couple decide to keep so many dogs on their property in such horrid conditions???

Granted, our Molly could maybe stand to lose a few pounds, but these dogs were only half as wide as she is! And they’ve been at the shelter for almost a month already! I came VERY close to asking for the adoption paperwork. But I decided I did still want to be married to my husband…and my husband says, “two pets is enough.” So I dragged myself away.

Those dogs still haunt me, though.