Devin Spence

 

Course: English 101

Instructor: Dr. Jayetta Slawson

Assignment: Memoir

There are certain events in life that cannot be altered or changed, regardless of the effort put forth to do so. I learned this truth the hard way. Fueled by a compassion for animals that had grown inside me for years, I set out on a mission to change the fate of one innocent life. The aftermath of my actions led to my eventual contempt of the shelter system I supported for years.

My love for animals started at an early age. As soon as I was old enough, my mother and I signed up to volunteer for our local animal shelter. It was amazing to have a job that allowed me to spend the entire day with dogs. I would spend the days playing with them, walking them, and letting them go for a swim in the play yard pond. I learned quickly that the moment animals entered the shelter, there was an implicit timer looming over their heads, an hour glass quickly draining. We had twenty-eight cages for the dogs, not nearly enough for the steady weekly intake of animals. For some unfortunates (the old, the plain, the large), their timer was counting down a lot faster than the others. Every Saturday morning we entered the adoptable dog area and silently pointed out the empty cages of the poor dogs whose time had run out. Their legacy would be followed by new, desperate faces.

My mother became depressed very quickly, but it only made her more eager to push the adoptable dogs out of the shelter and into a home. With her patience and skills in photo editing, and my ability to capture the dogs’ personalities in their photos, we started up a web site and took over the shelter’s Petfinder page. This allowed people to look at our adoptable pets’ pictures, view short videos of the dogs being walked or taking a dip in the pond, and read the bios containing what we had learned about their behavior and history.

My mother constantly became attached to the dogs, and consequently our house was quickly populated by seven of them. The boss of the shelter had eventually said, “Absolutely no more!” I tried my best to move on with the fact that we couldn’t save them all. I was at peace with that truth until the week Macey came in.

I quickly grew attached to this young adult beagle that someone had tied to a pole outside the animal shelter. Looking into her eyes provided a glimpse into her damaged soul, and I could only imagine her life before she came to the shelter. As quickly as she had come in, this beautiful little dog was adopted. Sadly, even quicker than that, she was returned. The adopter said she was a biter which I just took to mean that he was an inexperienced and unprepared pet owner. However, she was adopted out once more and was brought back with the same feedback. This worried me because our pets received three chances to get adopted, the third signifying their hourglass’s last grain. She was adopted a third time, and I braced myself as I entered the animal shelter the next day. There she was, tail wagging miles a minute to see me. My mother begged the shelter workers to let us adopt her. After all, we knew how to rehabilitate any quirks a pet might have. They refused and deemed her as “unadoptable.” I knew her inevitable fate and could not bear to think of her being forced into that tiny gas box and suffocated to death.

Consumed with frustration, I drove that night to the shelter on a mission to save my Macey. The dogs sensed my presence immediately, emitting deafening barks that tore through the silent night air. I was reluctant to continue, but I remembered the reason I came and pressed on. I found a low spot in the wire fence and clumsily climbed over it, bending the flimsy material in the process. I was barely conscious as I ran, finally reaching and unlocking her cage. She greeted me with sloppy wet kisses as I somehow traversed back to the truck. I remember crying hot tears of uncertainty that Macey gratefully licked away. I dropped her off at my friend’s house where she was to stay until it was safe for me to bring her home. I had done it. My Macey was safe.

Early the next morning, the shelter called, claiming that my mother and I had something to do with Macey’s disappearance. My mother honestly told them she knew nothing about it, and they left it alone. Papers were posted at the shelter for anyone to report their knowledge of her whereabouts. My friend’s family quickly fell in love with Macey and told me they wanted to keep her. It seemed like a perfect ending. As much as I wanted to keep her, I knew she would be safer if she wasn’t at my house.

Mom and I spent our Saturdays at the shelter as if nothing had ever happened, until one day something seemed amiss with the shelter employees. Finally, the head volunteer spoke to the both of us, saying that Macey had been recovered from a local vet. Apparently my friend’s mother had taken her in for a check-up, and the vet scanned her micro-chip. Immediately they alerted our shelter and my friend was asked where he had gotten her. When he confessed all he knew, a shelter employee picked up Macey and she was euthanized the same day. Macey was gone before I even knew she was surrendered. I never even got a chance to say goodbye.

It was the very moment I discovered they put her down without even telling us, that I realized the true hatred I had for the shelter my mother and I put so much effort into. They knew why I did it, but all they thought of me was that I was a thief. My mother, only thinking of my safety, turned in her resignation letter for the both of us to keep the shelter from pressing charges. It was also in this moment that I realized how little control I had over my own life. Cascades of self-doubt and regret haunted my dreams. This regret was not for what I had done for her, but for my failure to protect her.

In the end, it was a loss for everyone. Macey was gone and all that I had gone through to save her seemed to be in vain. My mother, because of me, was forced to the leave the only job she ever loved. The animal shelter lost the only two people that would put as much time and effort into getting dogs adopted as we did. From time to time, I catch my mother looking at the shelter’s Petfinder page, and I know it gives my mother a heavy heart to see sloppy pictures and generic bios for the dogs.

This is not the story that I will be known for. I will only be known for stealing, regardless of my intentions. All the effort that my mother and I put into saving dogs felt worthless because in reality, all we made was an insignificant dent. Some dogs just have flaws that cannot be overlooked. In the eyes of the shelter employees, Macey was broken. According to a staff of cynics, broken can’t be fixed.

                 

Instructor Comments: Devin was asked to write a memoir as her first assignment in English 101. She has done a good job grappling with the meaning of her personal experience, an important aspect of this type of writing.