I stood in a puddle beside Kimberly, watching a black-and-white, Border Collie mix cleaning and rearranging her eight puppies. We were in the dank, gray hallway of the county animal shelter. The entire shelter, which was mostly concrete, had just been cleaned. My feet squeaked in my wet flip-flops and a strange mix of bleach and urine filled my nostrils. It didn't seem like a place that could ever really be cleaned.
I kneeled down with my face close to the chain link fencing that contained the mother and her pups. She stopped licking a black-and-white puppy to look at us. She was comfortable with the eye contact, and we stared at each other for a bit.
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- © Andy Myer
"I'm sorry you're in this place," I thought.
"I've got my puppies to keep me busy," her eyes said as she returned to cleaning her babies.
The other dogs--about 20 of them--weren't fortunate enough to have any small, fuzzy distractions. Most were barking frantically, shoving their noses or paws through the diamond-shaped openings in their chain link cages. Even if they hadn't seen any of their fellow canines put down--nine that day alone--these dogs knew the fate that awaited them.
Despite the warmth and smiles of the shelter staff, a cold, black cloud of death hung over the entire place. The man showing us around told us that he took the shelter job last year when his wife was injured and could no longer work. He was a dog trainer by profession and had 11 canines of his own. He had taken home as many as he could but still looked like he wanted to cry every time he introduced us to another shelter dog.
He brought out the Border Collie mix on a leash, and she seemed confused by the freedom. She looked back at her puppies a few times, but after sniffing around the small, fenced-in yard, she came right over to Kimberly and me. We kneeled down, and she licked both of our faces before rolling on her back with her tail wagging furiously. She was a heck of a salesperson, and it worked.
"We'll take her," I told the man. Kimberly nodded in agreement.
We would have to wait the week until the pups were weaned to bring her home. We gave the man every possible piece of contact information we had and said goodbye to the mother, who had returned to her duty of cleaning and rearranging her pups.
It was a fairly quiet ride home. I think a bit of that black cloud was in the car with us, and it was difficult to ignore. I couldn't imagine how a dog person could survive a job at a kill shelter. I have no desire to know what it feels like to put down a perfectly healthy dog. At least we would be saving a life by bringing the mother home.
"She looks almost exactly like Kit," I said.
"I know she's not Kit," Kimberly responded, "but looking at her makes me feel good. Plus we can give her a good home."
"By 'give her a good home' do you mean 'we can spoil her rotten?'" I asked.
"Yes."
A few days later I was on the metal roof of the new foaling stall. Just days from her foaling date, Mandy watched me from the riding ring. I drove in the last few screws and gave her an enthusiastic "thumbs up." She just shook her head.
Kimberly and I built the foaling stall with two doors. The stall measured 10 by 20 feet, and we wanted the option to install a center wall if we ever needed to create two 10-by-10 stalls. Also, Kimberly and I are saving up to buy siding for the foaling stall, but it's far enough along to shelter Mandy and her baby.
Earlier in the week, Kimberly had taken up a huge pile of wood flooring from an old barn on our property. I then took down the heavy, rough-sawn floor joists to be used for the stall's interior walls.
Kimberly had the floorboards planed smooth at a nearby wood shop. She framed out the Dutch doors for the foaling stall and faced them with the reclaimed flooring while I cut and installed the giant joists.
Deep down inside, Kimberly is a carpenter. She approaches woodworking projects in the way I would imagine Michelangelo approached his ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.
Kimberly's stall doors were perfectly stained and smooth. The wavy grain of the old pine boards was a rich mix of gold and pale honey colors. And the old-timey, heavy black hinges and latches gave the doors a classic functionality. I swung them open and shut a few times. They were satisfyingly solid with nary a squeak. Her doors made my rough, though well-engineered building look amateurish and unfinished.
