MC Quixote

Tammy and the Shelter Part 51

Tammy has been working at an animal shelter for a long time, so it's kind of ironic that with all her experience, that Sancho ends up missing. Tammy explained it as,

"The cobbler's kids all need new shoes."

I didn't know what she was talking about until Tammy explained that a cobbler is what they used to call people who made shoes. Then I got it, like the doctor's kids are always sick.

So how can we use Tammy's experience to find Sancho? I just asked her straight out,

"What's the best way to find Sancho?"

She said something sadly defeatist at first, like,

"If you don't find the dog in the first 24 hours your odds increase dramatically that the dog will not be found or that the dog will be found dead from some type of an injury, usually from a vehicle."

Then, she threw my hopes a bone with,

"But many dogs get picked up in the first 24 hours by people in the community and they call Animal Control. This usually lands the dog in some type of shelter. Here's the list of shelters that I've visited and the time and dates I've gone over the last 4 days."

"I've hit all the shelters within 20 miles of here at

least once but it's a good idea to check them a couple times daily. There's a Utah Lost Pets Facebook page you should keep rechecking."

She was kind of detached but doing all she could in

a smart way to find Sancho. She had a map of the city and was using different colored highlighters to map out when and where she had looked and relooked - and there was no sign that she was giving up.

"Then, I'd start hitting the shelters. Some of the

shelters have photos of their lost animals online."

I was already in a pretty depressed state but going to the library and looking at websites with missing pets brought me down to a new low. Images of missing pets are like kryptonite for me, it's like a paralyzing kind of depressiveness that killed all my motivation to get to the shelters in town. I couldn't do much searching just sitting there on a computer in the downtown library with a bunch of homeless old guys around me and the smell of urine. It just started to sink me. I don't get how the richest country in the the history of humanity would let their people and public spaces end up becoming so destitute.

So I have to get up and move outside, feel the sun on my face, move my walking machine of a body, and breath. Not really walking but kind of pacing, pacing and breathing, and moving toward the first animal shelter I can find. I could take a bus and get to the shelter in Sugar House, but I know the risk of taking a public bus sends me right back into the possibility of being trapped in a space with people who aren't getting their basic needs met and the degradation that goes with that, like the homeless in the library.

It's like all these public spaces also serve as unspoken spaces of shelter with inhumane conditions but there's no hope of ever being adopted or getting papers. It's like some horrible zoo where no one ever cleans the cages and all the animals have to live in their own urine and excrement.

Why don't the people here wake up to the conditions of their fellow "Americans". Maybe they're scared, terrified, if they don't keep treading the water of their day-to-day life, that they'll end up in that zoo. Maybe they're all using what energy they have to create a buffer from the zoo, a buffer from the stench, a buffer from all the animals shitting and pissing in the streets. Maybe letting the weakest in this society suffer such degradation is part of the plan to keep people motivated to go to work, do what they're told, keeping people scared, terrified that they might have to be dependent on, live in, these public spaces of human despair.

So I just walk to the shelter in Sugar House, and it's a lot nicer than taking the bus. It's a beautiful day, and yet nobody is out walking. Maybe their cars keep them one layer away from the reality of the zoo. It's like being in those car bubbles they can't even see the zoo. Or maybe like a safari through the dangerous wilds of an inhumane animal park. In the cars people can see what they want to see and separate themselves from anything that challenges what they don't want to see.

And in this zoo, nobody cleans the cages of all their brothers and sisters, their fellow citizens. Can you really have dignity if you're blind to the lack of dignity of others? Maybe that's why it seems like there's this dignity deficit in this country. I just want to find my dog and get back home.

At the animal shelter, at least they clean the cages, but it's a very sad place. I remember my DJ nights, or "Raves at the Pound" as I walk the stalls and cages looking for my Sancho. All the memories of the volunteer hours, all the dog poop, all the lonely nights in these places filled with beings wanting papers and a home. No Sancho here, crushed, I start the walk back to Tammy's.