Adoption Day

I woke early at the Microtel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Friday morning (September 10, my Dad’s birthday), after the 18 hour drive from Lincoln, not much the worse for wear, and ready to meet my new pup. When I called Suzie to find out what kind of arrangements had been made, she sounded miserable, like she had about five pounds of snot in her head. We chatted for a minute or two. She told me she hadn’t been to work for two days and that she had an appointment with her doctor to give her some sort of shot; and she told me she would call the vet, Dr. Fairchild, to make sure that JoLee would be the first dog on the surgery roster. But I wouldn’t get to meet Suzie. I was so disappointed I nearly cried. In my mind, Suzie and I would have had breakfast together, and then I would have followed her to the East Baton Rouge Animal Control Center. She would have given me a tour of the place; I would have been able to help out in some capacity while waiting for JoLee to be ready to go.

After we hung up, I wandered aimlessly around the motel room, waiting for the time the shelter opened, making sure I didn’t leave anything behind (my worst fear is that I’ll leave my Sandisk camera card reader somewhere - old as it is, it may be irreplaceable). I could certainly have gone to get breakfast somewhere - heck, they had a small buffet of breakfast items set up downstairs in the lobby of the motel - but I just wasn’t hungry. My one true link to JoLee wasn’t going to be there. What if they didn’t know which dog it was? What if the surgeon resented Suzie trying to order his or her day, and put JoLee at the end of the list instead? What if there were complications during surgery? What was I going to do when I got to the shelter?

I only made two wrong turns on the way to the EBR Animal Control Center. I’m beginning to learn some things about myself: when something unexpected happens (like learning Suzie was out of commission), I tend to lose focus and make wrong turns that I know are wrong turns. The first wrong turn was one of those; but the second wrong turn was due to poor signage, and took me into a prison. Yes, that’s right, the East Baton Rouge Animal Control Center is located right next door to a prison. Just as I drove by the sign that said, “Do Not Enter - Must Present Identification” I thought, “Holy shit!” and quickly did a u-turn and beat the heck out of there. I pulled into the well-shaded parking lot of the Animal Control Center at about 10:15. It was a beautiful day in Baton Rouge - brilliant blue sky, huge puffy clouds and bright sunshine. It was also pretty warm and humid.

When I walked into the building, the young woman at the desk to the left of the door asked if she could help me, and when I identified myself, she grinned and said, “So you’re the one who’s come all that way for a dog!” I nodded, somewhat sheepishly. The lobby was in the center of the building, and was set up with four straight-backed chairs, two on either side, behind which were glassed-in play areas for adoptable animals. I sat in front of the one that had about ten kittens playing with each other on a cleverly set up kitty condo. Across from me, behind a sign that read “Adopted!” was a young yellow lab, napping on a blanket. I settled in for a long wait, not knowing what to expect. It was kind of fun, listening in on the conversations around me. I loved the soft southern accents. A uniformed woman strode through from a door behind me and to the right, through the lobby without talking to anyone. Another uniformed officer tried to explain the vagaries of football to the woman who had spoken to me, and another woman came from somewhere to the left, bearing something that smelled suspiciously like breakfast sausage. I half expected my stomach to rumble, but I was still too keyed up to be hungry. The same uniformed woman strode back past me, her eyes red and her face streaked with tears. No one else seemed to notice.

No more than 15 minutes after I’d first sat down, a veterinary technician came out to make some photocopies. The receptionist pointed me out to her, and she stopped to talk to me on her way back. “Your little guy is in surgery right now,” she smiled at me. “Would you like to hold him as he comes out from under anesthesia?”

I could have hugged her. “You bet I would!” Ten minutes later, she brought out a limp, lanky, fur-covered bundle on a flannel pillowcase. From the minute I first saw him, his tail was wagging, even still under anesthesia. Of course, he wasn’t so far under that his breathing tube was still in or anything - he was beginning to raise his head and come out of it. But still, that tail kept on wagging. My eyes filled - his tail looked just like Winnie’s, in miniature. Long and butterscotch, with a little white tip.

The time was 11:00 a.m. As the vet tech gently laid him in my arms, she explained to me that he should stay there for at least another 15 minutes, so he could wake up more, but after that, he should be good to go. She said that when they tested him, they found that he had giardia and coccidia, so they had started him on medications for those. She would give him today’s pills when he was fully awake, and she would send pills home with him. As I sat there with little JoLee in my lap, Persana, the woman at the front desk, took a picture for me. I marveled at the softness of his fur, at how tiny he was. One of the staff people came out, telling the others she had just gotten off the phone with someone who had adopted a dog from a different shelter, only to find out that it had worms, and that she wanted to bring it in and have it euthanized. The conversation that ensued was interesting (and, I’m sure, partially for my benefit). Apparently, the East Baton Rouge Animal Control Center tests for all parasites and has a strict rule on spaying and neutering all animals before they go home, but not all shelters in that area do. I heard horror stories about dogs who were sent to their new homes infested with heartworms. All the while I was watching little JoLee come back to life, thankful that he had come to this particular place.

I finally carried JoLee out to my car at around 11:30. Persana helped me out by carrying the bag of Science Diet Puppy Chow and JoLee’s prescriptions and paperwork. She laughed when I opened the back of the Dogmobile, seeing the little pile of toys laid out on the waterproof mattress pad, the towels, and the water bottles. “He’s going to be one happy dog,” she exclaimed. “You have a safe trip home, now!”