Busy Weekend at the Shelter

This weekend I was an extra devoted shelter volunteer and came in on Sunday for "field walking" training in addition to my regular shift on Saturday. Saturday was a typical day at the shelter. I walked most of the usual dogs; Otter (aka Mr. Bitey) who was a little calmer, Bianca, and some new dogs Zoro, a feisty yet fun pup, and Elmer an extremely laid back shepherd mix pup. I did learn something interesting about the auditorium where we are allowed to take the dogs off leash and play with them. The auditorium is a large gym like room that is divided in half by a wooden divider on wheels, one-half is our play area and the other is an open space that has been converted into an office area for all shelter volunteers. During my play session with Zoro, the feisty pup, the ball bounced in the corner of the room where the divider meets the wall and as he approached the corner he vanished. Huh...how is that possible!? The corner swallowed the puppy? From my bewildered stupor, I heard a surprised giggle and someone say "Hey how did you get over here?" On more careful inspection, I noticed the divider wall was a good 6 to 7 inches from the wall- a huge chasm for a small and wily puppy like Zorro. When I came in on Sunday for the field walking class I noticed they had a folding chair leaned up against that gap in divider.
The field walking class was fairly dry; here's a collar, adjust the collar, put the collar on your dog, and walk your dog outside. Although those collars do make me a little nervous because they are really hard to adjust especially on a squirming dog, they will take me a little time to get used to. Unfortunately, there was some drama at the beginning of class. We were each given a dog to practice walking with and adjusting collars for. One woman noticed her dog, Bianca, (a real sweetie I had walked before) was shaking and coughing and thought she should go to the in-house clinic. About 10 minutes later a volunteer came running in telling the woman not to touch her new dog and to immediately go home and wash her clothes. Bianca had distemper, an extremely contagious and serious dog virus. They immediately scrubbed the halls and kennels with bleach and sent most of the volunteers home. Fortunately, we were able to finish our class and I received my little sun sticker indicating I am now a field walking volunteer. Sadly, an email was sent Monday informing all the volunteers that Bianca had to be euthanized due to a severe case of distemper. The shelter tries so hard to be careful with diseases but it is hard to keep all those viruses out. Oh on a much happier note, Otter was adopted over the weekend by a family with kids which I think will be perfect for his activeness as long as the mouthiness doesn’t become an issue.