Please excuse the bits of foul language that will creep into this journal entry, but something happened yesterday that really pissed the living shit out of me.

I live outside of city limits, not really "in the sticks", but not in a subdivision either. One of the shitty things that low-life assholes will sometimes do is take an unwanted pet, drive to someplace that isn't too heavily populated, and dump it. Fucking assholes can't take the 30 minutes extra time to drive the animal to the shelter and leave it there. At least give the creature a chance.

I came home from work Sunday morning and took Zeus out for a walk, as usual. On returning home, however, I saw a dog a short ways down from my gate. It looked like a German Shepherd, so I put Zeus in the yard, and then walked down to the dog, calling to it. Its ears perked up, and its tail wagged, but it didn't move to come to me. After I reached it, I discovered why: her (as I also discovered) front paw pads were shredded, with the top layers of skin peeled back. So, I put Zeus inside the house, and then coaxed the dog--who was still pretty much a puppy, not at all full-grown--into the yard and into the kennel. I showed her the water bucket, and the first thing she did was put her front legs completely into the bucket. Her paws must have hurt!

She had a raggedy collar on, but no tags, so I called up the humane society where I'd adopted Zeus, hoping that I could take her up there and they could treat her. Nope. Not open on Sundays. Called the parish shelter. Not open. Called the city shelter. Not open. In mild desperation I called the Sheriff's Department to see if they could get animal control out to pick her up. (I need to digress here a moment and explain that she was too small to stay in my kennel--she kept worming partially out through the gap between the gate and the fence. Plus, when I left her alone she started howling, and I had to go to work that night. Plus, Zeus was having absolute fits. Plus I wanted to get her paws treated.)

But unfortunately the Sheriff's Dept told me that animal control was only Monday through Friday.

I couldn't believe it. If you find a stray animal on a Sunday, you're shit out of luck. So I called my mom and asked her advice, and she came over to see the new dog. Finally after much going back and forth and many phone calls we decided to take the dog into a vet who was open on Sundays. I figured that we could get her paws looked at, and then hopefully have her boarded overnight, and then in the morning I could take her up to the humane society. Only problem was that in order to board her, she had to have proof of vaccinations.

So, she got all of her shots too. Mom footed the bill, figuring that when I took her up to the shelter I could bring the proof of vaccinations with me, and then she could write the amount of it off as a donation to the shelter. The vet--young guy, fresh out of vet school--kept saying over and over, "It's really great that you cared enough to bring her in." I guess he hasn't met other weird people like my parents yet--total suckers for animals. (Gee, I have no idea where I get my love of animals.) The vet decided that she was a Shepherd/Rottweiller mix, with more Shepherd than Rott. Everyone marveled at her wonderfully sweet temperament. We also deduced, from the nature of the injuries to her paw pads (which luckily were not serious at all) that she'd most likely either been dumped from a moving vehicle, or tossed vigorously out so that she landed and skidded on her front feet, peeling the skin off.

Mother-fucking pieces of shit.

But, this story has a happy ending.

I mentioned the story of the dog to one of the security guards at work, and mostly-joking said, "Wanna dog?" To my amazement, he said, "Sure!" This guy's a really nice person, with kids, and I knew that he'd give this total sweetheart of a dog a really great home. So this afternoon I picked the dog up from the vet, where once again the vet thanked me for caring enough about a stray animal to bring her in. (I figure it's karmic payback for my finding the Perfect Dog in Zeus.) Then I loaded her into the crate in the back of my truck and drove to Gulfport to give her to this guy. I brought Zeus along as well, since he loves going for rides (and besides I wanted to show him off!)

And so we come to the end of this tail-tale, where the puppy found a nice loving home (they hit it off immediately.) I do dearly wish I'd seen the people (and I use that word in the loosest sense possible) who'd dumped her. I'd have called the cops on them in a nano-second. Mistreatment of animals like that, when it so fucking unnecessary, thoroughly offends me.

All right. I promise that tomorrow's entry will have much less profanity in it.

Unless something happens that rates such profanity, that is. One never knows.