We are a crazy society. We take our cruelest behavior and we sugarcoat it with platitudes.

This month is the busiest time of year for most animal shelters. Children move away to college, people go on vacation, and so, the family pet gets discarded, like unwanted summer clothing. It's the American thing to do...

This month, I had the honor of helping to place a shelter dog in an adoptive home, a real paradise of a home, with its own fenced yard, a loving family, with regular veterinary care and other pets to play with. For this minor miracle to take place, a whole chain of unbroken events had to occur, in sync with each other; otherwise, this dog would have met its intended fate, an appointment with a euthanasia needle.

It all came about when a friend of mine asked me to visit the local shelter and check on a dog there for her. I told her I would, even though I knew it was a depressing chore... I knew I would see many animals I could not help and I would witness what I didn't want to know about: pets disposed of, or 'euthanized' as we put it... pets put out of their 'misery.' But then, I can be called on to do a favor for a friend and I would do this favor, this one time, for her.

Like many of my friends, I've learned to use 'out of sight, out of mind' logic: if I don't know about it, then I don't have to deal with it. I can pretend that everything is okay with the world, that all pets are loved, like mine are.

My dogs want for nothing; as example, they even have their very own dog beds scattered throughout the house. They have Nikon magnetic beds, to help with arthritis, Canine Coolers, aka water beds, to keep them cool when they travel in the car, and even a new-fangled electroheated kennel bed, a specially heated bed to keep them warm if they get too cool at night. I'm even contemplating getting yet another bed, this one to accommodate my sweet little chow girl, who likes to sit and watch a stone wall for hours, waiting to chase any chipmunk emerging from the rocks. I'd like to place a slatted platform there for her... We dote on our dogs; that's just how life is... normal.

Reluctantly, I drive to the Humane Society shelter and asked to see the stray dog. When I first saw this chow on August 5, 2004, the shelter had him isolated in the closed room, where patrons must ask to get in the room, before they are permitted to see the dogs. He was quiet; he was lying in a heap of filthy hair in a wire enclosure, surrounded by frantic barking dogs. I saw signs on his cage that said he had not been walked or visited. During this visit, I saw that he was unnoticed and patrons never even glanced his way, and if they saw him, they looked away. Things looked grim.

His appearance was so filthy and disgusting that no one would adopt him, I reasoned. Maybe I could throw things in his favor.. Before I left the shelter, I donated money to his grooming, thinking the shelter would clean him up and give him a bath and get rid of the bugs and filth matted in his hair. I asked them to run him over to the nearest groomer (half a mile at most) and I donated the money to pay for the grooming. The shelter told me they had 'lost' their groomer; some kind of shake-up had taken place and no one there could bathe him. But they promised me they would look into it. I felt better, knowing that he had half a chance now.

When I returned home, I called my friend and told her that the dog was filthy, but friendly and docile. He walked well on a leash; he smiled when I talked to him. He seemed unfazed by the conditions he was in, but he had also acquired a kennel cough. I told her they wanted her to take him in as a 'rescue'; after all, hadn't she also taken in another chow, just like him, last month. Last month, she agreed to take a female chow from the shelter, who had mamary tumors and also had kennel cough. She deferred, saying she didn't want another old dog; it wasn't fair to her, to pester her with the unwanted dogs. After all, she had enough sick dogs to take care of. I agreed, but I also told her I would not adopt a third pet. I had my maximum limit of 2; we have a small house and our two dogs are not small either.

Still, this stray's plight gnawed at my conscience. That weekend, I dragged my spouse down to the shelter, hoping we could come up with a strategy to save this dog. Immediately, my spouse saw what I saw: a sweet dog with good manners, but who smelled like dead fish; its ears matted with old, dark discharge. The shelter told us no one else had visited the dog. When I asked why he hadn't been groomed, I was told that they had to hold him for an owner (who hadn't responded to their letter) and thus, could not alter his appearance in any way. I told them that this dog's appearance was so awful that no one would want him, when he was up for adoption.

On Monday, I got the phone call: 'come pick up your money, we're euthanizing the dog. The only reason he hasn't been euthanized is that we're holding your check. If you want to save this dog, you must make a commitment, by adopting him or by getting him out through rescue.' When the shelter representative told me that he was going to be put down, I begged her not to, saying he had absolutely no chance under these terrible conditions. She responded that  'it is indeed fair, we've had held him for 7 days and no one had expressed any interest in him and we have to make room for other dogs who deserve the same chance.'

Desperately, I call my friend, who had asked me to check on him in the first place. She then offered to pay his medical bills, if I would get him out of there; I would, but only if I could either 1) foster him or 2) get him adopted. I go back to the shelter with the spouse that very day and we sign that dog out as a 'rescue.'

Once committed as a 'rescue', the dog went straight to a veterinary hospital, which treated his ears, bathed and shaved him, neutered him and treated his kennel cough. It was a miracle. I paid the bill, confident in the promise of repayment by my friend. Within hours, my spouse lined up an adoptive family, one which knew the chow breed was nothing to fear. Sure enough, they adopted this dog the moment he was released from the hospital.

This shelter dog's story is a sweet victory for him. With the help of the animal shelter, the adopters, the vets, the rescue organization, we saved a sweet, deserving chow from a terrible fate. It would have been a trajedy if he had died, never knowing what it was like to be clean, to have an indoor home, to have medical care and most of all, to have people who loved him for who he is: a sweet, docile dog.

We were lucky. The dog was lucky. Every one is happy.

... and yet, I can't forget all those other dogs, barking furiously to me, crying, throwing their little bodies against their wire enclosures. These dogs from that day are all dead now; other dogs have since taken their place. That is fair.

We take our kindest citizens and we force them to suffer at the behest of government policy; the very people who volunteer at our shelters are the ones on the front lines who witness the cruel fate we appoint to our discarded pets. And the people who work at these shelters, for the love of the animals, are the very ones we force to do our dirty deeds for us. The ones who love our strays are the ones who we force to perform euthanasia, day after day after day.

I was told that the volunteer turnover rate is very high at the shelter... no kidding. No one wants to be an executioner. No one wants to witness a pet's euthanasia. It's heartbreaking. It's insane. It's sad. It's terrible. It's what we do.

The status quo is the continuing slaughter of our strays and the only solution we seem to have. How else do you keep up with an estimated intake of 35 animals a day, in Montgomery County alone. Without an aggressive spay/neuter program, without responsible pet ownership, without a pro-active adoption program, we are dooming ourselves and our pets to this nightmare. The kindest people work at the Humane Society and these are the very people we force to partake in this continual horror.

We can stand silently by and do nothing, like I've done for years. Out of sight, out of mind is an easy strategy to take. You can't be blamed for what you don't know about.

Or we can help. When you volunteer, donate money for spaying/neutering, provide materials and educate others on pet care, speak to friends and neighbors, you work on behalf of those members of our families who cannot speak for themselves: pets who would otherwise have no voice and strays, disinherited pets who wander the streets until they are picked up by 'animal' control. Such pets die, never knowing love, only knowing neglect and in their last moments, the gentle hand that administers the needle of release from such a cruel world.

With these memories, I have a new understanding of the meaning of the term 'vicious.' We create vicious outcomes by our indecisiveness, our inaction, our cool detachment. For those of us who love animals and people, the choice is clear: make a difference and do something to help create a better world...