Day 4

Warning: this blog post is not for young children. Okay, let’s begin.

HOLY. SHIT. Just yeah, holy shit.

Ahem, okay, now we can read on.

OH. MY. GOD. Seriously. These people are saints.

Still feeling the pain from my hike, I started at Dog Town again this morning. They asked if I’d done the 30 minute puppy socialization class, which I hadn’t yet, so they suggested it and then said they could use me in puppy town for the morning. So you might think what I was thinking. WHAT?! PUPPIES?! YAY!!! PUPPIES ARE SO MUCH FUN!!! THIS IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME!!!

Yeah, no. Think again.

I think I sort of forgot what it was like to have a puppy. We go through that phase, train them, and then get to experience all the joy on the other side. But remember when they pissed everywhere, ate the furniture, shredded the pillows, didn’t know how or where to walk? Yeah. Multiply all of the excretion/elimination by about 50, given 7 runs in 1 building with at least 3 in each run and you’ve got shit up to your eyeballs. And the SMELL, my God the smell.

Our first chore was to clean out the back of the run, the outside area, which consisted of scrubbing the floors to get the crap off, then taking the squeegee to it, then washing out the poop pan and scooper. (There was a family with me – bless them or I’d have had to do it myself with the gal that worked there – and the son gagged the whole time. We all laughed, but he wasn’t laughing.)

After we were done with that, we did some walking with them. They were cute, but seriously clueless. First up was one from a room of 3, and he was pretty okay. Moved along and seemed to get the hang of it. Then I got the lovely Vampire, who needed two times around because he had so much energy.  Elizabeth (who works there) asked me to let her know how much he pulled so she could consider a harness. UH, YEAH! HE NEEDS ONE! I mean, seriously. This dog took me on a walk twice around this place and he knew what he was doing. Probably threw my back out 4 times. Sigh.

Then I walked one from the larger litter (7) named Aruba. He was clueless. Started walking and then completely forgot what he was doing and turned around, bumped into me, ran between my legs, stopped suddenly, and then I had to work with him to get him back on track. I mean seriously dude, it’s the same thing we’ve been doing. How all of a sudden are you soooooo confused? Yikes.

We finished by cleaning the inside the same way we did the outside… this time we put on gloves and picked up alllllll their soiled blankets, toys, etc. to get them washed. Then scrubbed again, squeegeed, dried, and replaced all their blankets, toys, etc. with fresh ones. They all came in from being in the outdoor part of their run, at which point the outdoors had crap and urine all through them again as they headed back in to their fresh world to crap in it all over again.

I love puppies, but this is serious business taking care of these guys and doing this every day. HUGE kudos to Elizabeth and whomever else does this on a daily basis. Elizabeth has been there for 3 years and wakes up and does this every single day (minus weekends). Bless her, because it takes a special person to do that. Incredible.

Anyhoo, by lunchtime I was exhausted, and anyone reading this is probably exhausted with the length of this post. But I’ve never been short on words. And anyone reading this probably knows that.

Lunch for $5 at Angels Landing with a beautiful view where I met Salome and David, a very young couple (dating for 3 months) but old souls. They were on spring break (turns out a lot of these people are) and stopping through for the day. She was in school to be a dental hygienist and he was studying respiratory therapy (which we all agreed I could have used on my Observation Point trek). Good couple, and impressed me with how young they were and how they had their lives together. Nice.

The second part of the day was Parrot Garden. Man were there a lot of parrots! All different kinds, and all very happy to scream at the top of their lungs. We started by cleaning the parrot cages – again, lots of crap and scrubbing and cleaning out trays, etc. I never really wanted a bird (tried a cockatiel when we were kids) and now I’m quite positive I don’t. We then went outside to socialize with all of them (maybe 70 or 80 or so total) with some really fun cockatoos that had a lot to talk about. Next was bringing some back inside (the ones who didn’t require staff to hold them) and then organizing donations (toys) outside at the gazebo from cardboard boxes over to bins to stay protected from the rain.

Headed back to the hotel around 4 (yes, only 4 and I felt like it was 10pm). Dropped by an outdoor store to pick up some new boots… I think these will be good. Will wear them around a bit before I pick hiking back up on the next leg after the sanctuary.

Headed to meet Katie and Jill for dinner soon, even though I can barely move.

Seriously, every one of these people that work at this sanctuary come in everyday and absolutely work their tails off. Volunteers mean EVERYTHING to them. I’m so impressed and humbled by how hard these folks work. Even though it was exhausting, it has been an amazing day to experience.

Here’s to getting out of bed tomorrow without falling over to head to Dog Town in the morning. And trust me, I’ll be doing everything I can to visit the adult dogs. 🙂