You guys would not believe how bad today was. I am still shaking.
Some of you might remember last year when my shelter had its annual telethon and I worked myself ragged that weekend. Well this weekend was the telethon and it was high, high, high stress between cleaning the shelter during the past couple weeks, getting all of the tv spots planned out, worrying about all the problems that go along with live tv, etc etc. Anyway I was supervising the phone banks again this year (meaning I was on the actual tv set). Yesterday went pretty smoothly and then today happened......
I had Nookie at work with me both days in a crate behind the desk (he couldn't run loose behind there because we were SO busy, I didn't want him to get stepped on or anything). When I was at the phone banks, I would swap out puppies and kittens for the phone volunteers to hold while answering calls because it looked really cute. I got the (really stupid) idea to go get Nookie and let them hold him so he could be on tv. I cleared it with the shelter manager and my supervisor. I thought it might cause some problems if a lot of people thought he was up for adoption and started calling in for him (that happened with Reece last year). But they both said it would be fine. Then after he'd been at the phone bank for a little bit, a volunteer raised her hand and flagged me over. She told me a woman just called and said that Nookie was her dog and she was on her way over.
I freaked. F-R-E-A-K-E-D!!!!!!!
I slipped off the set and ran and told some of the adoption counselors that if that woman came in to play dumb and say they didn't know where the dog was. Then I went back to the tv set but I was stressing so bad, I went to go find the shelter manager. I told her the situation and she kept telling me not to freak out and when the woman got there to just try to appease her until tomorrow because we didn't want some big commotion on our busiest day of the year. She told me we weren't going to hand her over the dog today and I didn't need to worry and it'd be okay. So then I go back on set (I'm not really supposed to be leaving at all) and a short while later I see someone behind the camera flagging me down. They told me that the woman was there.
So I go up front and she shows me their missing poster. The picture had to be from a loooooong time ago because he looked really young and a lot different. I knew pretty much right away that it was him, especially after reading "LOST DOG WITH LONG TONGUE". She didn't know at this point that I'd been fostering him. I told her the dog was not available to be seen and we were really busy with our telethon, but that she could bring back vet records on Monday to prove the dog has been taken care of. Then it comes out that he's not really her dog, he belongs to a man who's in Japan right now and they were watching the house and dog. Later in the conversation she said the owner was in Florida though. Well where is he, Florida or Japan!?!?!?!?!! I asked her if she was aware of all of his health problems (she said no but later on said yes to somebody else). Granted its not her dog, but his medical conditions are painfully obvious to me after just a week. She's taking care of him for 4 months. Then the woman starts to go psycho yelling and accusing us of lying. My superviser came over and told her to lower her voice or she would be asked to leave. At this point I had to run back to the phone banks. About 10 minutes later, someone came to me and said they were filling in for me because 2 members of the Board and the operations director wanted to talk to me. They pulled me into an empty office and started right away telling me not to freak out. Well that made me start freaking out and crying. They told me that the woman refused to leave and to avoid a scene we needed to show her the dog to confirm that it is him.
(this is getting long so I'm going to continue it in another post...)
Alyson
Shiloh, Reece, Lolly, Skylar
and fosters Snickers, Missy, Magic, Merlin, Maya
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