good deed for the day

For a while now I've pondered a solution for my lack of animals. You see, we've owned cats since about 1990. We've had a dog since 1995. I miss not having animals around, and something that sits in a cage or a terrarium or a fish tank is no alternative.

My landlord doesn't want animals, being afraid of scratches on the doors.

According to German law, though, they can't forbid animals outright. So I've decided it's still a matter of discussion. Frankly, I don't see his point. If the cat damages a door, I have to pay for it, obviously. It's not as if he would get stuck with the bill.

Anyway, the other thing I missed was being around dogs. I have no problem walking around the countryside on my own for hours on end, but it's nicer if you have a dog by your side, and people don't look at you as if you're crazy.
Owning a dog is definitely out of the question. I work ten-hour days more often than not, and I like to travel. A dog needs too much attention and physical presence for that.

So I had two fields of interest: one was to approach the problem of having one, better two, indoor cats - living on the first floor, being gone all day and the memory of my parents' last two cats that were run over all keep me away from allowing my own cat outside.
There are several things that need to be done:
1. Get the landlord to agree
2. Figure out whether there is somebody willing to take care of the cat(s) when I'm away (neighbours, coworker who owns a cat...)
3. Find out what sort of damages done by pets my current insurance covers and whether I need any additional insurance
4. Look at cats
5. Get necessary equipment (toilet, toys, cuddly blanket, scratching post, food)

Secondly, the dog problem. One option was to find somebody who needed help with walking their dog. But as I actually only have time on the weekend, I wouldn't be much help to others who also only have time on weekends. The other option was the animal shelter. They are always looking for people to walk their dogs. The downside of this is that the nearest shelter is about a 45-minute drive away.

But I went there today to offer help with walking dogs.
I had made sure to pack my ID and mentally went through my experience dogs so I could answer their questions.

*snort*

Well, I arrived there, walked in, looked lost. A young woman asked me whether she could help, and I told her I was willing to walk a dog if they needed me.

She gave me a form to fill out: I had to give my name and address and had to sign that I wouldn't let the dog off the leash, which makes a whole lot of sense. But that was it. I could have written any name. They didn't check my ID. They didn't ask me whether I had ever held a dog before or was able to tell the end with the teeth from the wagging one.
Another woman just led me out to a Dalmatian/something mix (he had a beard like a Schnauzer), told me that he had diarrhoea but that there wasn't anything else she could think of I should know and off I went.

I figure if I had loaded the dog into my car and drove off, nobody would have stopped me.

Anyway, I walked with him for about 45 minutes. It was weird. I've walked our own dogs, I've walked a friend's dog, I've helped with training dogs. They all communicated with the being on the other end of the leash.
Not this one. I might as well not have been there. The only times when he acknowledged the existence of the leash was when I was going somewhere he didn't want to and the collar was too tight. When I patted him, he just stood there. Not curious, not wondering whether the touch was good or bad, nothing.
He was friendly enough to other dogs we met, but humans didn't seem to figure in his world view.
Considering that dogs generally tend to be happy to have a human, it broke my heart.
What sort of life must he have had to end up like this?

After some time, I noticed that there was blood on his ear. Half his right ear was missing, and I assume the old wound had opened again when he had been rolling in some interesting smelling dirt. Later I found out that the wound had been bleeding since the morning. Apparently, the people at the shelter didn't think it was an information I might have liked to have. Can you imagine what I felt like, the first dog I take from the shelter and it's bleeding when I bring it back?
It didn't seem to bother him, so I decided it couldn't be that bad.
But unfortunately, given that people like cute animals, I would think the wound reduces his chances of being adopted even more. The damaged ear doesn't really give him any sort of rakish charm, he's long lost any hint of puppy cuteness, and he's too - I don't know, cold or distant would be the words I'd use referring to a human - to immediately capture the heart of some loving family.


When I returned with him, I took another dog out. It was an old German Shepherd female who was only at the shelter while her owner was on a trip.
Frankly, I have no idea whatsoever why anybody would ever for whatever brief amount of time give their pet to a shelter. There are private pensions for animals.
This dog was very obviously completely overwrought. She was alone in her kennel so had the chance to at least go out of sight, but there were dogs barking all around her all the time. She whined almost constantly until we were out of sight and almost out of earshot from the shelter. The longer our walk lasted (I ended up being out with her for a good hour), the more relaxed she became. And she made it really obvious how fucked up the other dog had been. She didn't look back at me every five minutes like my Mum's dog tends to do (a case of very good imprinting there), but she reacted to change of directions, she communicated to me when she wished to go a certain path, she accepted me as the person holding the leash and therefore deciding speed and ultimate destination.
When we returned, she seemed to shrink the moment we stepped through the gate. Shepherds, at least those following the old breeding lines, tend to always look dejected and submissive, but with her it was different. During out walk, she had moved freely, sometimes reminding me more of a wolf than a dog. But back at the shelter, her shoulders sank, her tail was close to being tucked between her legs, she was clearly unhappy.
I really do not understand why the owner couldn't find a different solution for her while he was gone.


Before I left, I spent some time in the cat room cuddling some extremely cute cats. They had a large tabby with a huge head, the sort of cat that makes it very clear that humans are, at the most, a nice diversion and acceptable provider of food, some cuddly white and black ones clearly out for attention, and a large number of cats who didn't think the presence of humans was a good enough reason to wake up or even open their eyes.

The shelter, apart from the easy way they hand dogs to complete strangers, seemed nice enough. It was clean, they had play pens outside for the outdoor cats, a number of kennels so the dogs didn't have to spend all their time in small boxes, and it didn't seem overcrowded. Also, there were quite a few people out to walk dogs, some with the whole family, and several people had come to adopt animals.
I asked about indoor cats - most of the ones they have require outdoor access, but there were some cats still in quarantine and apparently some of those were indoor only.
So I'll see about that later. First I have to convince the landlord.
I have to find two that like each other sufficiently to share a flat, too. With me being away all day and the cats indoors all the time, I think it would be nicer for them to have company - even if they might spend all day each in its corner, sleeping.



Oh, and I am using the Bernd das Brot icon because he's been kidnapped (breadnapped?) Somebody stole a heavy, 2-metre figure of a toast with too-short arms from next to the city hall in Erfurt. Who does this sort of thing? And why? The police apparently did actually investigate a political background - a group of squatters took responsability. *headdesk*
Also, a depressive toast has its own English, German and Spanish wikipedia pages. Isn't the 21st century great?