Love and Death
Scenes from Knox County’s Living Dumping Ground
by Steve Jones
The first thing you notice is the smell: an undeniable mixture of feces, urine and wet dog that hits
you in the morning unlike anything ever to meet your nose. It is pervasive, nauseating and the
first of many sensations waiting to assault the workers at the Knox County Humane Society’s
Animal Shelter each day in South Knoxville, Tenn.
It is just before 8:00 a.m., and employees are gathering in the office, making small talk before
beginning the day’s work. One woman is opening a box of donuts she brought from Kroger.
Someone else is making coffee. Outside the open door, a tired looking man takes a last drag from
a cigarette before clocking in. It might be any office at the start of any business day were it not
for the constant barking and yelping of dogs and puppies at the other side of the locked steel door
that leads to the kennel. It’s been fifteen hours since the animals were last fed and they want you
to know it.
Soon, the humid, noisy rooms are awash with light and a buzz of activity. Missing layers of paint
on the floor combine with standing water to form puddles that seem to defy even the largest
squeegee. From speakers above, piped-in rock music from a radio forms a surreal juxtaposition to
the sounds of the dogs.
Wearing a down vest against an early March chill, Jim King makes a quick tour of the shelter. His
first question: how many empty cages are there? On this particular morning, not many. The
shelter has a capacity for only about 200 animals, and from experience he estimates how many
dogs, cats, puppies and kittens will arrive that day. A bit of quick arithmetic brings him to the
same inescapable, almost daily, conclusion: some of these guys have got to go.
But which ones?
How about the sad-eyed beagle over there with his head on his paws and eyes following your
every move?
Or that off-white Spitz whose former owners dumped her off before leaving town?
Maybe that six-month-old gray tabby in the cat room that’s already been here for three weeks?
While thousands of people around kitchen tables in Knox County are drinking coffee, reading the
funnies and eating Wheaties, King is removing the cap from a black Sharpie marker and making
notations on wet, laminated kennel tags — the identification papers that accompany each animal.
A he writes on one, indicating that animal can be put up for adoption. On another he scrawls an
arrow pointing downward, meaning that animal is to be “put down,” or euthanized.
As King finishes up this first part of his day, all around him men and women in green medical
scrub shirts and rubber boots are busy disinfecting cages, removing old, soggy food, filling
overturned water bowls, changing litter boxes, and moving animals from messy cages. Some are
taken to freshly cleaned ones in the same room, where they are given fresh food and water;
others are carried to a cage in the euthanasia room at the rear of the building to wait.
***
In the office, the phone is already ringing. Adoption Counselor Heather McCurry picks up the
receiver for what must already seems like the hundredth time that morning. Someone has lost
their dog during the night. “Did you pick him up?” they ask.
In a business voice that would rival a law office receptionist, McCurry politely delivers a speech
she will give several times that day. The humane society does not pick up animals, she explains, it
only shelters, cares for and tries to find homes for ones that are brought to it.
The caller is not interested in details. “Do you have my dog?” they ask impatiently.
“Was your dog wearing tags or any identification?” McCurry replies.
“Well, no,” the caller says, “but you’d know this dog. He’s big and brown and really friendly!”
McCurry tells the caller that, not only are there a lot of dogs at the shelter right then, but “big,
brown and friendly” could describe a number of them. Without a picture for her to refer to, there
is no way of knowing for sure. “Only you know exactly what your dog looks like. You’ll need to
come down here yourself and see if your dog was brought in,” she says.
“But I don’t have time for that. I have to work today. Couldn’t you just go back and look real
quick?”
“No sir, not without a picture.”
“Forget it, then. It’s just a dog,” says the caller, hanging up.
***
A set of Venetian blinds blocks the view through the glass door leading to the Euthanasia Room,
but since the shelter is not yet officially open to the public, no one has bothered to close it,
allowing full witness to the daily ritual unfolding inside.
No employee at the Animal Shelter is forced to euthanize animals, and some have steadfastly
resisted participating in that grim job. But the ones that do it and assist in the procedure share a
common look. The first thing you see is their eyes: almost expressionless, unemotional, focused
like a laser beam on the task at hand. But that facade is always betrayed by more naked body
language: a gentle stroke of a hand on a shaking, matted coat; a quiet word of comfort, almost a
whisper between two species; and tight, pursed lips that speak volumes.
Kennel Technician Paul Wise brings in a worn cardboard box containing a litter of puppies. Their
former owner did not want them. “The bitch keeps getting pregnant,” he said of the litter’s mother
as he walked away after surrendering them.
The puppies are too young to survive without their mother, too young to be adopted. The shelter
does not usually have the luxury of dedicating a cage to entire litters for the time it would take to
raise them by hand until they reached adoption age, even if they had the time, money and staff to
do so. A decision regarding this litter’s disposition is relatively easy to make.
Because they are so small, they will only need one cc each. But, also because they are so small, it
is next to impossible to find a vein. A “cardiac stick” — an injection directly into the heart — will
be the most feasible way of doing the job.
Wise lifts up a puppy, holding its front legs one way and its hind legs the other, thereby exposing
its soft underbelly. Using his thumb, King feels around the chest cavity. Having found the heart's
location, he picks up a syringe of Sodium Pentobarbital and expertly sticks the needle into the
pup’s chest. A small yelp is heard, but by the time the sound has escaped its mouth, the animal’s
tiny body has already started to go limp.
One by one, the procedure is completed until the entire litter lay still together on the stainless
steel table. After a moment to finish some paper work, the puppies are put into a plastic bag,
which is then stored in a large walk-in freezer a few feet away. The next day someone from the
city will come by to haul its rigid contents to their final resting place: the landfill.
Puppy size bits of urine and feces, innocently released at death, still adorn the table. Wise cleans
it up quickly, as a co-worker brings in a black and white cat, one of many at the shelter that has
been named Sylvester.
***
It is just past 4:00 p.m. in April, the first real hot day of the year. People are tired and want to go
home. Suddenly a kennel worker comes through the door with news: A woman has just brought in
four kittens she found sealed inside a plastic garbage bag, dumped by the side of a road. They are
alive but in shock, barely moving.
Scarcely before anyone realizes what has happened, the office is a mess of organized panic and
anxiety. Each person is now holding a kitten in one hand and a small, needle less syringe in the
other, trying to force fluids into the mouths of the former unwanted creatures, whose eyes seem
to stare through the giant beings gingerly clutching their frail bodies.
The babies’ gums are the color of chalk, and nobody is thinking too positively about the situation.
Indeed, one of the kittens is too far gone, and is put out of its misery. The other three go home
with a humane society worker, who will attempt to see them through the night, taking their
temperature and feeding them every two hours. If they can make it to the next day, they might
survive.
Such foster care is something almost everyone at the humane society has done at least once. But
sometimes they make it through the night, and still don’t make it. So you think twice before
attempting to be a Good Samaritan next time.
“Don’t get attached,” new employees often hear from veterans of the shelter. “Don’t get attached,”
veterans often hear from themselves.
***
Heather McCurry has just spent almost thirty minutes speaking to an older man who wants a
puppy. Eventually, however, it becomes clear that he does not want to have it neutered. In fact,
he seems to have very strong feelings about it.
McCurry finally points out that she cannot let him adopt an animal unless he agrees to the
procedure when the puppy is old enough. But the man is adamant, not necessarily opposed to the
neutering, itself, he says, but to some “agency’s regulations telling me what I can and cannot
do ... with my property!”
It’s not about regulations, McCurry explains. It’s about trying to curb the pet overpopulation
problem. She tells him that, during the previous year, more than 15,000 animals were brought to
the shelter, and the vast majority of them had to be euthanized. And the number exceeded
20,000,000 nationwide. There are just not enough homes for them all, she says.
The man pauses, and, for a moment, the weary adoption counselor thinks she may have gotten
through to him. At length he seems to have sufficiently organized his thoughts to his satisfaction:
“Don’t tell me that crap! I don’t want to hear it,” he yells, as he jumps up and storms out the door.
***
A shelter worker answers the phone.
“Are you takin’ puppies?” asks the caller. “I gotta’ litter of ‘em, and we couldn’t find homes for
‘em.”
The worker asks if the man knows where the shelter is located.
“Oh, yeah,” he says, “I brought litters there before.”
***
It’s been a good day at the shelter. “Elvis” has finally found a home. The stray hound mix, named
by kennel staff because he arrived suffering from a broken pelvis, had been at the shelter so long
that staff members had to occasionally remind themselves that he was available for adoption.
More often than not, untagged stray animals with serious injuries are euthanized. But Elvis was
special, and the kennel staff took an immediate liking to him. So a decision was made to try and
save him.
After a long period of monotonous convalescence, the good-natured dog was ready to leave, but,
possibly because he now had a permanent limp, no one was showing much interest in adopting
him. Finally, a young couple from Halls took him home.
Vicky Crosetti, the humane society’s executive director, was almost speechless. “There really is a
god!” she said, as Elvis rode off with his new family. For employees at the Animal Shelter, most of
whom earn but minimum wage, it doesn’t get much better than this. This was their pay-off. They
had gambled on a dog and their faith in him, and they had won. Months of extra medical expenses
and meticulous, loving care had paid off as a big, goofy dog, whose life they knew they had saved,
had found a new home and a fresh start.
The staff was still collectively basking in the glow of this small victory a short time later when a
woman came in looking for her lost cat. As she was escorted around the cages, she echoed a
remark frequently heard by shelter workers: “I could never work here; I love animals too much.”
***
It’s after 5:00 on Friday afternoon at the Animal Shelter. The last few employees and managers
are milling around the front office, drinking Cokes and unwinding before the drive home. Most
already have their jackets on.
Suddenly, Vicky Crosetti emerged from the kennel area. She has counted only one empty cage
available for animals that will undoubtedly be brought in by Animal Control officers during the
coming night. Room will have to made for more, she said.
There are a few puppies that could be moved up early for adoption, but that still won’t free up
enough cages. Jim King remarks that he has already put down a lot of animals that day. There is a
long pause.
Finally, Crosetti starts to break the awkward silence, but before she can get the words out of her
mouth, King has already taken off his jacket and begun walking back toward the kennel door.
“I know what needs to be done,” he says, waving her off. “I’ve done it before.”