Graveyard of the Heart

To be honest, I wasn’t particularly impressed with Daisy at first – she was just another pit bull being surrendered by an owner using one of the same old shitty excuses : “I’m moving and can’t take the dogs.”
The dogs in question were two rowdy pit bulls, and the owner in question was an old woman. I helped her get the two dogs out of the car, and while I was walking them into the shelter with her she idly commented, “Daisy here had a litter of pups, but they all died when it snowed last week.”

She added, “I don’t really know anything about dogs.”

Sadly, this is not the most disgusting thing I’ve heard a person say when surrendering a pet. I hurried her through the paperwork, and gave her an envelope to send in payment because she was not able to afford the intake fee.  Daisy’s owner walked out the door without looking back at the dogs she had abandoned to their fate.

She was a beautiful black and tan marked pit bull with lots of splashes of white. I didn’t have much hope that Daisy would be put up for adoption – her brother had to be put down almost immediately due to aggression.  The woman surrendering her was elderly and unable to handle two active terriers, and had left Daisy and her brother out in the yard with little human contact and less socialization. They had been allowed to breed freely together, and Daisy had the large, swaying nipples of a bitch who’d had back-to-back litters with no breaks between them.  Unsocialized, untrained, unloved.

I didn’t think about Daisy all that much until a week or so later, when I noticed that she had been put up for adoption. Unlike her brother/mate, Daisy was a very nice dog. Being thrown into the backyard and being all but ignored hadn’t damaged her – she was sweet and eager for human contact. Her loving temperament did not go unnoticed by the kennel staff. Daisy definitely got special treatment, such as soft blankets and beds for her cage, toys, and extra tasty treats. The kennel staff was generally too busy to bathe the dogs, but someone there always made sure Daisy was clean and comfortable.

Unfortunately the public failed to see what was plain to the shelter staff. Perhaps it was because of her breed, or perhaps it was because of her puppy-ravaged body, but no one gave Daisy a second look.  Unfortunately, pit bull terriers are one of the most common dogs to find in shelters and some of the hardest to rehome. She sat at the shelter for weeks patiently waiting for someone to pick her out, but no one ever did.

The day she was euthanized I didn’t need to be told – I was able to see it in the eyes of my coworkers. That was the first night I went home and cried for an animal at the shelter.  I cried for Daisy and for my coworkers who had loved her. I cried for Daisy’s puppies who had frozen to death while her owner stayed warm in the house. Most of all, I cried at the injustice of a world where there are no happy endings.