Heartless People Shelter’s Sad Pet Peeve

The flimsy reasons to throw away life begin every day as the doors open at the Kootenai Humane Society.

“He eats the plants in the yard,” a woman says, as if the flop-eared pup at the end of the leash ate a busload of children. The woman is leaving her half-grown, Labrador mix at the animal shelter for nibbling one too many marigolds.

She doesn’t want him anymore, no matter how hard he wags his tail or searches her face with trusting eyes. She hands the leash to an impassive shelter worker, dabs at her eyes and heads to the parking lot.

Except for barking in the background, the intake room is quiet until the woman is out of earshot.

Then it explodes with irritation.

“Well, he’s a pup,” one worker snarls with enough venom to wipe out an entire football team.

“Puppies chew things. What a shock,” says Connie Cane. She’s the shelter’s manager and often expresses her frustration with sarcasm.

She’s seen so many cats and dogs chucked like weekold leftovers that she struggles to stifle her disgust for people.

Connie’s day didn’t start well. She held the last of seven deserted Heinz 57 puppies while Pete Nikiforuk, who runs the shelter, injected a lethal dose of sodium pentothal into its tiny, pink stomach.

The pups were only a week old when they were dropped off last week - too young and frail to endure the shelter’s bacterial and viral initiation. Despite constant cleaning, the shelter is as alive with germs as a kindergarten room.

“I can’t stand to see them suffer,” Connie says. “They were going down at a gallop.”

She resents people calling the shelter a bad place because it kills animals. “Kill” isn’t a word shelter workers use much. Dogs and cats are “euthanized.” Death is doled out based on age and infirmity about 3,000 times a year when no other options are left.

The shelter doesn’t even follow its own policy of keeping strays up to five days. Some have stayed for months, wiggling into Connie’s heart while she and others desperately try to find homes for them.

“We’d love to be a no-kill shelter, but who’s kidding whom?” Pete says. “There’s not enough room for all the animals we’d have.”

After 10-plus years at the shelter, he’s still appalled at the disregard for life he sees daily.

“There’s this attitude out there of disposable pets,” he says. “The puppies people buy in the spring for their kids to play with all summer are dumped on us as soon as the kids go back to school. When the snow falls, at Christmas - we’re jammed. Whenever animals become a burden, we’re jammed.”

Connie tries to focus on adoptions and reunions. Nothing is more heartwarming, she says. But twice as many sheltered pets die than find homes. She knows the odds are against every arriving dog and cat, and she resents their thoughtless, lazy owners.

Take old Monty. Who knows his real name? Someone found the arthritic hunting dog roaming in the woods, probably abandoned because he just doesn’t move like he used to.

He’s nearly toothless.

Humane Society board member Joan Cline named him. She rubs his soft ears and brings him bowls of softened food.

“This is his last stop before death. and, by golly, he’s going to eat,” she says. “He’s such a good ol’ dog.”

Joan takes Monty to Kootenai County’s schools to teach children about pet care. She figures adults are a lost cause. But children could learn to respect life. Maybe.

“It’s amazing to hear what the kids say because they don’t know any better,” Pete says: “‘My dad shot the dog. My dad backed over the dog with our car.”’

The animals never stop coming. People throw kittens over the parking lot fence at night, ignoring a night drop-off area with blankets, bowls and collars.

They tie dogs to garbage bins at the dump. Owners leave pregnant pets because they were too cheap to have them spayed and too lazy to deal with the consequences.

Connie is sick of it all but returns every morning to the shelter despite her allergies to animals. Someone has to love the pets.

“In most cases, there’s nothing wrong with the animals,” she says. “It’s the people, irresponsible people.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: BARGAIN DAY On Oct. 18, the Kootenai Humane Society’s regular adoption fees will cover total, instead of partial, costs of spaying or neutering and booster shots. Shelter staff will serve hot dogs and soft drinks. The shelter is at the end of Ramsey Road in Hayden Lake.