Giving the Dog a Bone

Every weekend Dana and I volunteer to walk the dogs at the Montgomery County Humane Society. Since neither of us live in a place where we can have a dog of our own it gives us the chance to pretend like we have our own pack. It has been a mostly rewarding experience for both of us, but every now and then I am appalled by the staff's behavior and their attitudes towards volunteers. One woman who works at the shelter in particular has gone out of her way on a weekly basis to give me a hard time about which dogs I walk.....and basically about not doing her job for her. Specifically I am talking about the awful state of the cages in the kennel. Half of the dogs are forced to sit in a cage surrounded by their own feces for hours on end. While Dana and I do make a habit out of cleaning out cages before putting the dogs back in, we are only volunteers. The kennel staff actually gets paid to make sure the dog cages are clean. I've been told that there is a new 15 minute rule in which the cages are checked every 15 minutes to see if they require cleaning. I was there for three and a half hours this weekend and saw one poor dog (who was a little too aggressive for me to dare to enter the cage) sit next to a pile of poo for the duration of my time there. I understand that a job is a job to a lot of people, but we are talking about poor homeless animals who are scared and lonely for human contact. I wish that kennels across the country would really consider this when reviewing their hiring techniques and staff.