I wake up and it is dark. Another dog is barking because he is scared of something ... that must be what woke me.
The sun isn't up yet so there's not any light coming through the small windows in the shelter. I can't see the sun or the grass or trees through them anyway, but it is nice when the light shines through and I can imagine those things that I know are out there from when I get to go outside on a walk with a volunteer.
But, for now it is dark.
The air around me smells stale and like feces. I hate how it smells, but I can't blame the other dogs - we have all been in our cages for a really long time, so we don't have the option of going to the bathroom outside.
Sometimes a volunteer will take me on a walk and I run out and go to the bathroom in the fresh grass - well, if I'm being honest, I normally have to go so bad I just squat as soon as I get to anything that resembles grass - even if it is the dirt littered with trash outside the shelter.
I used to live in a house with a family and a yard, but one day they brought me here and said they couldn't keep me. I never understood what I did, but somehow I ended up here.
Even though I've been in a shelter for a couple months now, I still don't like going to the bathroom inside. But when you're in a cage sometimes for 24 hours a day - for a couple days at a time with a walk maybe once a day - you really don't have much choice.
There's a lot about this shelter that's hard to get used to.
Tonight is pretty normal, we all wake up when someone barks or gets scared by a noise or has a nightmare ... so now I'm just sitting on the cold concrete in the dark, trying to fall back to sleep. Sometimes in the middle of the night, in the pitch black, I can see the eyes of another dog glisten when it hits the dull moonlight - they are waiting to fall back to sleep like me.
It could be worse though. We do get a blanket here and sometimes a bed - I've heard the shelter volunteers say to each other that it's good we get that when not all dogs in shelters do.
We also get time because we somehow made it to a no-kill shelter. At normal shelters, dogs don't get more than 7-10 days to get adopted ... I know I'm a good dog and I'm still here, so I'm glad I didn't get put down after a week.
The shelter staff has to go home at 4:30 p.m., and they don't arrive in the morning until 7:30 a.m., so we're alone for a long time. In the morning, we don't get transferred into another kennel for our cages to get cleaned right away, so usually there is a stream of pee coming out of each of our kennels. It's humiliating for all of us.
Sometimes I try to remember what it was like outside of here.
There are people who take us all on walks - they sign us out on this notepad and then take us out for 15 or 20 minutes to go to the bathroom and stretch our legs a little. Sometimes they don't have time to volunteer or not enough people come to help, so we don't all get walks - some days we get lucky and get two walks.
When we do get out of our kennels, it's so nice to get some attention and get pet for a few minutes. Sometimes one of those volunteers will scratch behind my ear or even brush me once in awhile, and it makes me feel loved - like I used to feel all the time.
Now, every day I sit and wait, latched behind crisscrossed metal.
People walk through the shelter sometimes and look at all of us. It's hard to show them what a good dog I am from in here.
I know I'm one of the lucky ones, but sometimes it's hard to feel that way.
I know I'll feel lucky when someone who walks by finally calls my name and picks out a collar just for me ... maybe they'll even let me pick out my own bed ... maybe someday I'll have my very own family.
For now, I'll be here waiting.
The sun is coming up now, so maybe today will be my day.
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