Spring?

Needless to say, the PowerBall ticket of the last post was indeed worthless. At least no one else won either. {*grin*} Better luck Wednesday!

Sunday was a return to spring warmth, so I finally got to work on the sprinkler system and play in the water without being too cold. Of course that meant I awoke this morning to the sound of thunder and rain as a thunderstorm rolled through. I'm just happy I didn't wash the truck or it would have flooded for sure.

Today was symptomatic of the arrival of spring. I had at least 5 panicked calls on the office phone before 9:30 this morning. All from people who had lost their puppies Sunday. They were hoping that we (the humane society) had found and captured them Sunday or this morning. I passed the calls on to the animal control officers, really hoping that we had indeed captured their pets. Dogs that wonder into the fields and river bottom this time of year tend to become coyote food in very short order.

The first nice spring weekend and people were out working in the yard, removing debris, etc. and forgot that the gate was open and the puppy was in the yard with them. Many times it is hours later that the pet is discovered to be missing. We actually schedule more animal control during the time in an attempt to keep the animals out of harms way, but there is a limited amount we can do in our huge rural area.

One final observation: the economy must be picking up a little. We run the only no-kill shelter in a huge geographic area (hundreds of square miles), so we are getting calls from a 3 state area from people who have gotten a job elsewhere and cannot take their pets with them. It is good that people are getting jobs, but it is hard on them to leave their animal friend and companion behind. They look very hard to find a shelter that will ensure they are taken care of and not subject to euthanasia. That's how they find us. It will sure be a relief when we get the new facility built. Our current one (an old municipal shelter from the '60s) has very limited space and is almost continuously full in spite of volunteer fostering and help from the front range shelters with adoption and finding new homes out of area. We really hope to have the construction finished by December.

Back to the salt mine and then off to bed.