This took place a long time ago and has been condensed because the admin and legal stuff would honestly take up pages and pages.

A young-looking guy comes into the animal shelter where I work.

Customer: “How many dogs do you have?”

Me: “We have quite a few fostered on the books, and we have fourteen in the shelter right now.”

Customer: “How many fostered?”

Me: “I don’t know off the top of my head, but around twenty, I’d say.”

Customer: “What would I need to do to take all of them?”

Me: “All… the dogs?”

Customer: “That’s right.”

Me: “Uh… you want to adopt almost forty dogs?”

Customer: “That’s right!”

Me: “I don’t think any responsible animal shelter would do that. We need to make sure the dogs go to a good home, and no single person can look after forty dogs.”

Customer: “Okay, so here’s the deal. I’ve inherited a farm, and I don’t know anything about farming. I work in tech and just sold my company for good money, I have nothing but room and space, and I love dogs. That space is wasted on me, but dogs would love it. Tell me what hoops I need to jump through to get you all to trust me that I can look after all the dogs.”

Me: “I’m happy for you, but no single person would be able to attend to forty dogs, no matter how much time or space you have.”

Customer: “It wouldn’t just be me; it would be my partner and assistant, too.”

Me: “Assistant?”

Customer: “My assistant from the tech company. She’s still with me; I pay her too well for her to want to leave. I told her about my dog plan and asked if she wanted to continue earning six figures to help me look after dogs. She didn’t hesitate!”

Me: “I’m going to need to talk to my manager about this.”

Customer: “Whatever you need!”

So, my manager and this crazy tech guy go into the office and have a long meeting with the owner of the whole shelter chain. The meeting lasts almost two hours.

The guy leaves, seemingly happy, and is back again next week with several boxes of documents. This time, the owner, the manager, and the owner’s lawyer are all present for a meeting.

This lasts a fair bit longer than the first meeting. Finally, they’re all done, and I corner my manager.

Me: “What was all that about?”

Manager: “We were talking to that guy about how we can’t let him adopt forty dogs. No matter his means or his intentions, it just wouldn’t be responsible for us to do so.”

Me: “Yeah, I sadly have to agree. So, is he just gonna adopt like, two or three?”

Manager: “Oh, no, he’s still getting every dog.”

Me: “Uh… what?!“

Manager: “We can’t let him adopt all the dogs, but legally, we can let him foster them. The owner met with his lawyer and a vet, and they visited his site. It’s huge, apparently. They’re going through the paperwork required to essentially turn his home into a satellite branch of our shelter. He’s even offered to hire and pay for staff to run the place as a long-term foster home, and they would be trained by us.”

Me: “So… he’s just jumping through lots of legal loopholes to ensure he gets the dogs on his property?”

Manager: “He genuinely seems to want to have the dogs live their happiest lives with him until they’re adopted, and honestly, we could use the help.”

Me: “Why doesn’t he just donate?”

Manager: “He literally just donated a million dollars.”

Me: “Oh… wow. So, what happens now?”

Over the next few months, this crazy dog-loving millionaire renovated most of his farmhouse to be suitable for fostering dogs. He paid for the training and salaries of three staff members (technically our employees) to help look after the fostered dogs. He was fully hands-on himself, too, generally living his life walking them, feeding them, learning how to check them for health issues, and playing with them. That’s all he and his partner seemed to want to do.

A couple of years later, when I left for college, this guy was fostering mostly senior dogs who had difficulty getting adopted, and most of them stayed with him until the end. He asked for no fame, no recognition, no media, nothing. He just wanted us to make sure every dog that needed a home lived on his farm until either that dog had a forever home organized or passed over the rainbow bridge with him.

I’ve never known another human being like him, and I doubt I ever will. Most tech geniuses sell their companies to live a glamorous lifestyle. This guy just wanted to play with dogs.

This story is part of the Best-Feel-Good-Stories Of-2023 roundup! This is the last story in the roundup, but we have plenty of others you might enjoy!

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I work in a hotel. Like many hotels, we have a pet fee, and it is clearly listed on our website. A couple comes in to check in just past 11:00 pm, and they have a big fluffy dog with them, so I tell them about the pet fee since most people can’t be bothered to read. The man gets so pissed.

Guest: “Nobody on the phone told me anything about a pet fee!”

When I look at his reservation, I can see that he booked directly himself, not through the reservations desk or a third party.

Guest: “Can a manager make an exception?!”

Me: “There are no managers around right now.”

Technically, it’s still early enough that I could call my manager, but I’m not going to bother her over this.

Guest: “My wife and I are [Loyalty Program] members, and we deserve better treatment!”

He’s at the lowest tier of the program with zero points, so odds are that he just made the account.

He is still ranting about how there’s no way he’ll pay so much for one night.

Me: “Sir, I can cancel your reservation with no late-cancellation fee if you want to find somewhere else to stay.”

Guest: “Just hold on a second!”

He and his wife go outside with the dog, and like five minutes later, just the dude comes back.

Guest: “My wife left to go drop off the dog, so there’s no need for the pet fee now.”

Dropping off where? It’s after 11:00 in a small town several states away from the address they have on file!

Me: “Sir, I can still see your car idling out front.”

We have glass doors and a lot of people come to check in before parking.

Guest: “Well, I meant to say that she’s about to go do that.”

I gave him a look that made it very clear that I didn’t believe him. He ended up demanding that I cancel the reservation and saying he’d be leaving a bad review for all this!

I just read a story about helping with spiders, and it reminded me of something that happened when I was fourteen. I had just moved and was living in a basement room. My step-cousin needed to stay somewhere, so he was in the basement… almost a bedroom, except my bedroom opened into it.

I was on the phone with my friend, casually counting the tiny spiders coming out of the ceiling light. I don’t mind spiders much, but my friend and I were concerned when the number got bigger.

Me: “Twenty.”

Friend: “What?”

Me: “Little spiders. It’s okay, just counting.”

We continued the conversation.

Me: “Twenty-five.”

Friend: “…”

Me: “Thirty-five.”

Friend: “Um, maybe that’s a lot.”

Me: “I guess they just hatched.”

I was still calm until…

Me: “Oh, s***! They’re dropping down on strings—”

I hung up. At that point, hundreds of tiny spiders were rapidly gliding down, and I basically rolled out of my room, and suddenly, I was in my cousin’s room shaking and brushing myself off.

Cousin: “What’s up?”

Me: “Oh, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

He insisted.

Me: “There are spiders in there.”

Cousin: “Ha! That’s all? Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

I blocked the door. This guy was being macho because of where he grew up and my being “just a little girl”. He was underestimating.

Me: “Don’t go in there. You can’t handle them.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Somehow, he got past me. He opened the door, immediately started shrieking, and clambered out of there, tripping and falling and hyperventilating up the stairs. He slept in his overly-large truck overnight.

Parents: “What was that about?”

Me: “Spiders. There are many spiders in my room. Too many.”

My stepfather started down the stairs, and I didn’t really try to stop him because I don’t like him.

We heard my stepfather scream, and my mother looked at me.

Me: “Over a thousand spiders, probably. However many are in an egg sack.”

My mom soaked my room in Raid and ruined a bunch of my stuff. My stepfather didn’t talk to me for a few days, as if hearing another man scream and flee wasn’t enough warning.

Over fifteen years later, it’s still funny.

CONTENT WARNING: Animal Abuse
 

My favorite restaurant to go to for chicken got shut down. Their chicken tasted amazing.

My daughter worked as a server there. There was a health inspection recently, and the health inspectors noticed something dripping from the ceiling. They lifted the ceiling tiles to look, and they found thousands of eyes staring back at them.

It was an illegal, unlicensed, unregistered urban chicken farm. The owners were growing chickens, almost completely in the dark with no natural light and precious little ventilation, in the rafters. They’d built a whole system of cages and pulleys to get food to the chickens and to bring the chickens down for eating.

That was how they’d kept their chicken so fresh. Needless to say, they were shut down. A few months later, my daughter got a letter from them offering to hire her back at a new location in a different city. She declined the offer.

One time, an escaped hog got into our bakery during a health inspection. The health inspector was checking for vermin and opened the door leading to the alleyway in the back.

The escaped hog came barreling through the door, knocking over the health inspector. As it began to chew on whatever carbohydrates it could get its mouth on, the health inspector addressed our head baker.

Health Inspector: “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t fail you for this right here and now.”

Head Baker: “I’ll give you two. One, that’s not our pig. And two, you’re the one who let the pig in.”

We did not fail the inspection, but we did have to throw out an awful lot of product and deep-clean the entire pantry.