This Place Is Going To The Dogs

My daughter works for a pet adoption organization as an adoption coordinator. She usually works alone; her direct manager rarely is onsite. Her place of work is within a commercial pet store which also has a grooming center and a veterinarian clinic. In her “office” are kennels to hold at most three dogs and a dozen cats. Any animals that are held in this office have already been screened by their clinic; they’re up to date on vaccinations, have been fixed, don’t have any diseases, and are ready to adopt.

Most of [Organization]’s other animals are housed in foster parent’s houses; they stay there until they’ve been fixed and maybe a little longer. Many of the fosters work independently to find homes for their foster animals, contacting [Daughter] to take payments and get all the paperwork filed. Also, if an adopter wants to meet an animal that is housed with a foster, they make arrangements to meet at this office in a meet-and-greet room.

One day, [Daughter] arrives at work and begins cleaning the dogs’ kennels. After she finishes, she heads back to her desk. In the meet-and-greet room is a large Husky mix dog that wasn’t there when she arrived, with a note taped to the door from one of the vet techs.

Apparently, the vet tech found this dog lost in her neighborhood. She brought her in and scanned her for an RFID chip but found none. The vet clinic doesn’t have the facilities to hold animals, so she asked the store manager what she should do. [Store Manager] said that it’d be okay to put the dog in the meet-and-greet room — without consulting [Daughter].

[Daughter] confronts [Store Manager].

Daughter: “I legally can’t hold animals that haven’t been processed by [Organization]’s clinic. We could move the dog to the groomer’s area, which does have kennels to hold animals after their appointments.”

Store Manager: “We can’t do that because we don’t have any papers for rabies, distemper, etc., on this dog.”

Daughter: “That is exactly the reason I can’t hold the dog.”

The manager just shrugged this off.

[Daughter] called her direct manager at [Organization] and related the situation. She was directed to call the municipal animal control service (ACS) and have them collect the dog. In the meantime, [Daughter] kept the dog in the meet-and-greet room. This constrained the appointments that had been made for adopters and fosters to meet there. Also, the dog was in heat. Being a Husky mix, this meant she was howling, as well as bleeding (normal for females in heat). So, [Daughter] had to clean the room with disinfectant and put a “doggie diaper” on the dog.

After about six hours, ACS finally arrived and took the dog. In the meantime, [Daughter]’s manager had called [Store Manager]’s manager and complained about [Store Manager] just assuming that [Organization]’s space was hers to do with what she wanted. It turns out that [Store Manager] had done this about a dozen times before, just putting it on [Organization]’s staff to deal with an animal that they were not supposed to be housing.

[Store Manager] came over to [Daughter] after the dog was gone and complained to her that she didn’t need to go over her head and “complain” about the situation with the dog. [Daughter] countered with the fact that she was forced to deal with an undocumented dog, and that SHE would lose her job if it was discovered that she’d taken in an animal without going through proper channels.

This is just one of many horror stories that [Daughter] has about [Store Manager].