This was one of those moments... the kind of moment when you're on the clock, you have things to do, you're in your car and you see a situation that begs intervention. You can either keep driving, not look back in the rearview, and hope someone else does the right thing, or... you can stop, get involved, get your heart ripped out, and hope the boss understands.
I pulled my car into the parking lot, got out and slowly approached him. This beautiful, red, Pit Bull, about 2 years old, was scavenging for food on the side of the road in a less than stellar part of town. He was emaciated - literally starving to death. His ribs and shoulder bones were protruding so much I couldn't believe he was still standing. He looked good otherwise - his coat, his nails - not like he had been homeless for awhile, so I knew someone, some worthless waste of flesh, had let him get like this.
He was so intent on finding something to eat he barely noticed me. I called to him and clapped my hands to get his attention but it wasn't until I physically grasped his head in my hands that he looked at me. I thought he was deaf for a time, but in actuality, I think he was just the kind of hungry that makes everything else unimportant.
When I got him into the car (by lifting his only 30 pound body into the backseat), we drove to McDonald's where I ordered him 3 hamburgers and a water - to go. He went at the hamburgers with such voraciousness that he splattered ketchup all over my white shirt and the inside of my car. I looked like a critically injured trauma patient by the time he was done. I couldn't care less.
I knew I couldn't keep him. In the middle of a move with two neurotic Dachshunds already... it just wasn't going to happen. So, with a hefty donation in hand, I took him to the Humane Society where I said a teary goodbye and hoped for the best. He was such a gentle soul, and I would have loved to have kept him. As hard as it would be, I could see myself being one of those animal cruelty cops you see on TV. I'd find it so fulfilling to be able to make people pay for the way they treat animals. Unfortunately, we don't have such a unit where I live, but if we did, I think it would be my calling.
I'm so grateful that we have Humane Societies to care for all the lost and unwanted animals in the world. They do so much with so little.