Sinbad

Saying good bye to a beloved pet is one of the most difficult thing that I have ever had to do. Just because I’ve done it many times, for various reasons, mostly health reasons due to old age, it’s never easy and it’s always heart breaking, even when one knows, it’s really time. When I had to put my lead dog “Sinbad” down, at the age of 15 years, I couldn’t even go to work. He had been my constant companion, going to work with me, meetings, out in the dog pack, helping me get other dogs ready to be adopted, the best dog I ever owned. At the end, he couldn’t use his hind legs. For such a regal, elegant dog, it was the end. I still cry now about losing him as I write this paragraph.

There were many others who have come into Downtown Dog Rescue to live out their final years in retirement from the street. Over the years, we have taken in many old ex-road dogs, allowing them a safe place to just chill. When I founded Downtown Dog Rescue, 14 years ago, I often wondered, what would have happen to these dogs if we didn’t take them into our rescue and what happens to dogs that are old, truly need to be euthanized because of medical issues that are often painful when the dog owner is homeless or is so poor that they can’t afford to euthanize their dog?

My guess was that most people in this situation take their dog to the pound. Even though the shelter, humanely euthanizes dogs, is it humane for the dog to be taken away from the owner who he/she has lived with perhaps, an entire lifetime and then put down? What about the owner’s feelings of regret that he/she had to do this just because they couldn’t afford to euthanized at a local vet where they could have elected to stay with their dog until the end.

I have the ashes of most of my dogs, like “Negro”, an old deaf pit bull that lived in my home with all of my dogs for almost two quality years before his tumor got too big and he just didn’t have the strength to keep going. This is not the case for the homeless and very poor dog owners, they have nothing when they are forced to walk away from their dog at the shelter just because they can’t afford to euthanize and cremate their beloved pet.

Operation Safety Net is set up to keep dogs out of the shelter. Most of the time, we work with the dog owner who has a medical issue or a behavioral issue and with our help, they are willing to keep their dog, avoiding the shelter all together! We also keep old dogs out of the shelter by offering to pay for euthanasia so that a dog owner can stay with his/her beloved dog until the very end. It’s not a service that we talk about much but it’s one that is very important to offer. I’m writing about this topic because I recently had a very low income dog owner tell me that he loved his dog so much and would not take him and drop him off at the shelter when he knew he had to be put down, due to advance stages of cancer, he shot his own dog. He borrowed a gun and shot his dog, then buried him. I’ve heard a lot of stories but this one really made me so sad that this dog owner didn’t know about Downtown Dog Rescue. This dog owner had actually tried to get funding to euthanize his dog from several different animal welfare agencies but no one would help or he just couldn’t figure out how to fill out the forms, there just wasn’t time. He knew, his dog was suffering, in a lot of pain, he had no money, no resources, so he did what he felt was most humane. He was not going to walk into a shelter, turn over a dog that had lived with him for 13 years, 24/7 since the age of 6 weeks and walk away.

If you have never been so poor that you had no idea how you were going to eat tomorrow, you might not understand. Put in extreme situations, I guarantee you, all of us would do whatever it took to survive and whatever it took to take care of business. Unfortunately, sometimes, the systems in place set up to serve the most needy are not user friendly to those in this category. That’s why, DDR makes Operation Safety is easy to use. There are no forms to fill out, we do ask the dog owner some questions which include income but none of us are going to ask for a pay check stub or proof that you are poor. We figure, if you are calling us, you need us. If you can use existing resources and we can assist you so that you can find them, great. However, for most of our clients, it’s overwhelming and they can’t, they need us to “hold their hand”. Operation Safety Net is just that, a safety net for the poorest of the poor dog owners who have nowhere to go and no one to help them. Our annual operating budget for this program is $35,000. Most cases can be resolved for as little as $200 sometimes less. We feel that this is the best investment in working towards a no kill model. Spay/neuter more high risk dogs, including pit bull terriers and prevent more dogs from entering the shelter so we won’t need to rescue as many dogs.