Gone To The Dogs

I am fascinated by people. People are weird. And I got to be immersed in people for a good while last week.

Our city has passed a new law stating that all cats and dogs must be microchipped. I’ve never chipped a dog, mostly because I didn’t want to pay for it. Don’t start on whether it’s a sign of the end times or something like that. Marking your beast is different than the mark of the beast, ok? Start talking about making me chip my kid and we’ll have issues, though. But I digress.

The animal shelter held a couple of microchipping clinics last week. Standing in line with a zillion people and their cats and dogs is not the way I imagined spending my Wednesday, but paying $20 to be within the law instead of paying $60 made up my mind for me. And thankfully, Caedmon was able to hang out at Mimi’s while I took Oz.

The clinic started at 11am. I knew that the line at the clinic held the previous Saturday had been crazy long…as in people lined up down the street. I thought surely for a Wednesday during working hours, it wouldn’t be too bad. I still arrived 15 minutes early. And promptly had to stand in line outside along with about 30 other people who were already there. We were standing outside.

I arrived at just the right time, because not long after I got there, the line stretched all the way down the side of the building. In front of me was a mother/daughter pair. The mother was an older lady, the daughter middle-aged. Mom’s dog was the tiniest Dachshund I’ve ever seen. The dog shook violently while the lady covered her with a blanket and held her like a baby. The daughter had a beautiful black German Shepherd who was a backyard dog (translation: never sees any other dogs except through a fence.) They were friendly enough, but that little Dachshund definitely was not.

The people immediately behind me were a father/young adult son pair with two cats, each in their own crate. The son looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, picked up some decently-smelling clothes off the floor and didn’t bother to comb his hair. I couldn’t decide if the dad lived in a perpetual state of being hacked off or if he was just mad he had to be standing in line outside with a bunch of other people and their pets. I also wondered why he didn’t just send his son with the cats, as one person would’ve easily been able to handle the job. They weren’t very chatty, to say the least.

I was thankful Oz is a fairly calm and obedient dog. He didn’t bother the neighbor kitties to the rear of us, and after a few minutes was content to not get to play with the dogs in front of us. I can’t say the same for some of the other dogs, though.

The lady behind the guys with the cats had a psycho Pomeranian. The lady in front of the mother/daughter pair had a very grouchy Jack Russell Terrier. She growled at anyone who even looked in her direction (the dog, not the lady), which was completely ignored or dismissed as protectiveness by the lady. And I must say that if she had lit into Oz, I would’ve lit into that lady.

I suppose people are people, whether they have kids or dogs. It’s usually easier to ignore or dismiss behavior you’d rather not deal with, whether it comes from a four-footed or two-footed creature.

Probably the most interesting thing about being there was matching the dogs and owners. There are certain people who have quaking, tiny dachshunds. There are certain people who have fluffy little psychotic Pomeranians. And there are certain people who have big, strong Pit Bulls (who all behaved quite nicely, I might add). I honestly think that if a dog had gotten loose, we would’ve been able to figure out who it belonged to without asking.

Thankfully, there were no fights. Between people or dogs. It was warm, though. The weather was in the low 80’s, which was, at the time, the warmest day for us so far this year. Standing in the sun made us all a bit hot. Oz sought shade in the shadow of the lady in front of us. Bottled water was handed out. And one lady almost fainted, probably from locking her knees, not actually from the heat.

We finally made it inside, where the Animal Control Officer who was heading up the processing nearly had a fit over Oz. Apparently they love Boston Terriers in the office. It took only a few minutes to get the paperwork finished and for Oz to get microchipped. I was thankful we had arrived early, because when we left, the line was still stretched to the rear of the building.

And I hate to say this, because it sounds terrible. But I hope we actually get to use that microchip someday. I’d like to know my sweat and time were worth it.