Day 7 continued
The taxi pulled up to the Humane Society, I paid our fare, and we climbed out of the (not murder) van.
Now, when I had planned this, we had 3 options: Humane Society, Soup Kitchen, and Salvation Army. I know myself fairly well, and I do not do well with homeless animals. Meaning, I want to take them all home. It breaks my heart to think of all of the animals that do not have homes, or live in tiny spaces, with little to no human interaction. Breaks my heart. So I told DD in no way would we be going to the Humane Society. No no no no. When I spoke with the head of
Hope Floats, I told her we would like to work in the soup kitchen. Yes, homeless humans are sad as well, and I understand that people may not understand why I seem to care more about the animals. I guess it is because the animals don't understand their circumstances. Ugh I can't even talk about it. It all makes me sad but I really did not want to go to the Humane Society. But Cathy talked me into it. How could I say no?
I wasn't really sure what to expect, since we hadn't been in contact with anyone actually in the Humane Society. And I hadn't really thought about that until the moment we got out of the taxi. What are we supposed to do here? Who are we supposed to talk to? What are we even going to do for 2-3 hours? I started to feel nervous.
I am going to sidestep here to say there was some information that I did not find out until later, which affected our experience on this day. I hesitated to share any of our experience here because I didn't want to make the Humane Society sound bad, but I wanted to be honest about our experience. Let me be clear: this is not about the animals or their conditions or their treatment. That is not where this is going. The things that made this an odd experience had
nothing to do with the animals, and
nothing bad happened, and despite how things went I would still recommend this experience to anyone looking to volunteer or adopt an animal in Nassau. So as you read this, keep in mind that there is an explanation at the end, and that at no time did anything bad happen to anyone or any animal and that is not where this story is going. So exhale and read on.
We walked in to what was obviously a veterinarian waiting room. There were 4 or 5 people waiting, all with dogs. There were 2 young men in an enclosed reception cubicle, and one was on the phone. We walked up to the counter and said we were here to volunteer, and he said to have a seat. We admired the dogs in the waiting area. One was a little brown puppy named Chocolate, who was sleeping in a basket. One was a little dog wrapped in a blanket. One was a big dog that barked at any dog who came in to the room. There were a few others who came and went. All of the women with the dogs were very nice.
We waited, and waited. 30 minutes passed, dogs had gone in and out of the waiting room and vet's office, new dogs and owners had come in, and we were still waiting. I was hoping someone would come along soon so we could get started, so DD could get as many hours in as possible.
Finally one of the guys in the cubicle waved us back through a door. He didn't say much, just that this other guy would show us what to do. The other guy walked us through the building, through a smaller building where there were a few animals in smaller cages (this was where the animals who would be having surgery were; the cages weren't their regular homes, but we didn't know that until we walked through later and took a little more time). We went outside, walked past some large outdoor enclosures with dogs, past some other buildings (the whole place is a compound, with several small buildings, shelters, and outdoor enclosures), and over to a cinder block building that had a big dog in a fenced area next to it, and a bathtub on cinderblocks with a tap in the middle.
"You're going to wash some puppies" he said.
"What?" I said. "Um, well, part of that sounds OK, but part of that is a little bit of a concern because we have never washed animals before."
"No problem," he said. "Its just like you wash yourself."
No. It is NOT just like you wash yourself. It is nothing like how I wash myself. I do not try to claw my way out of the tub, screaming, only to be picked up and put back by a giant.
But we were up for helping in any way possible, so he handed me a jug of soap, fished 3 puppies out of a small enclosure, and went about his work cleaning out their little area.
Have you ever bathed a puppy? How about three of them at the same time, with people (including yourself) who have never bathed animals before?
Hilarity ensued.
I have no idea how to bathe puppies. But this is what we did.
I sort of wet the puppies first, cupping water in my hand and rubbing it on the puppies' backs, thinking that was probably a good way to begin. The puppies did not think this was a good way to begin.
I had no idea how to hold down a puppy and get soap out of a big heavy jug, so I put the jug in the bathtub (we didn't fill the bathtub, just let the water run with the drain open), opened the jug, tipped it to the side, stuck my fingers in there and smeared soap on DD and DS's hands. As I was doing this the puppies tried to climb out, we picked them up and put them back, they tried to get out, etc. And they were yelping and whining.
Meanwhile the big dog in the fenced in area next to us decided this would be a great time to escape. The fence was about 4 feet high on one part and very tall in other parts. The dog basically climbed the short part and just scooted itself up... up... up... and over the fence. The guys in the building didn't see it happening because they were very busy and they were inside so I started calling to them "Hey, HEY! HEY the dog is getting out, the dog over here, its climbing out of the fence... hey... um, its over the fence....!" and finally one guy came out.
"I knew the dog was crazy but I didn't know he was that crazy." And he calmly took the dog and actually I have no idea what he did because I was trying to keep 3 puppies in the tub.
So we managed to soap them up and then we cupped water in one hand while holding the puppy with the other hand and rinsed them off. I have no idea if that is how you do it but that is how we did it. DS and DD had no idea what they were doing, and were constantly just laughing and going "Aaaah, AAAAAH! MOM! Its trying to get out, help... HELP!!" and I had to try to help them but also keep my puppy in the tub and in case you can't tell it was like some sitcom moment but we were actually living it.
This makes it look so calm and peaceful and in all honesty I have no idea how I managed to get a photo of this.
But then how do you dry off 3 puppies? I don't know how I actually managed to do this and not have it end in disaster but I think I had DS hold my puppy down and his puppy, and I grabbed a towel, then gave it to one of the kids and lifted the puppy into the towel and they wrapped it around the puppy. Maybe, or maybe I did it myself and handed them the toweled puppy bundle. I don't know. It was chaos.
We gave the guy back the clean puppies (I wish we had snuggled them a bit more but we weren't really thinking clearly) and he handed us another round. These puppies were smaller, and younger, than the first set.
I felt so so so bad for these puppies. They were screaming. Screaming. They hated the bath so so so much. They were trying to get out even more than the first round of puppies. We were talking gently and calmly to them but that did nothing. We managed to get them soaped and rinsed and toweled, but as I was drying mine off I noticed fleas. I pulled back the towel and there were fleas everywhere. I looked at DS's puppies and there were also fleas everywhere. DD had given her clean and dry puppy back already but it likely had fleas, too.
I tried to wash the 2 puppies we still had again. I looked at the directions on the soap and it said "For best results leave on for 5-10 minutes." No, that's not happening, but I tried my best to keep the soap on for a while. But they were soooooooo unhappy with this idea. I tried my previous method of rinsing which was cupping water and rubbing the puppy with the water but that wasn't getting the fleas off. I held the puppy's back in the water stream to try to wash off any dead fleas and that puppy did not appreciate my efforts. We tried to wash DS's puppy again at the same time and it was the same thing.
I couldn't get the fleas off. There were just so many of them.
I suddenly had visions of us bringing fleas back and infesting the ship, and infesting the airplane, and infesting our home... I have no idea how fleas work but I was not interested in finding out.
I wrapped up my puppy and snuggled and did more calm quiet talking and got her calmed down, but I was still so freaked out about the fleas I wanted to give her back to the guy. I told him they were covered in fleas and we couldn't get them off and all he said was "Oh, they're supposed to have had their shots." And that's it. He put them back in the cage. We picked fleas off ourselves and I asked the kids if they wanted to try something else and they said yes.
I asked if we could do something else, and he walked us back to one of the main buildings.
We waited in the hallway for a while as he disappeared into some room. A woman walked by, and she was wearing a name tag with her name on it (of course). Her name rang a bell, and I realized it was the name the woman from Hope Floats had told me would be a contact for verifying DD's community service hours at school. I stopped her and said we were here from Hope Floats, and that we had been washing puppies but they had fleas so we were hoping to do something else, and I thought maybe she would take over for the guys who didn't seem to know what they were doing. She did not, however. She said that perhaps the guy who was helping us (whose name I did not know) would have us walk some dogs. Sure enough, as though she had summoned him, a new guy came out of a room with leashes and said we were going to walk some dogs. Ok, we don't really have much experience with that either, but at least we won't get fleas.
So he rounded up 3 dogs. DS got a dog who had free reign over the whole complex. DD got a mama dog. I got a dog that had a LOT of energy. A LOT. The guy took us out through a parking area that had cars and trucks of people who worked there, on a dirt and gravel area. As we walked through, we noticed that under every single car and truck, hiding in the shade, was a cat. We had noticed a few cats roaming the property, and here were a bunch more. I have no idea if they belonged to the Humane Society or not. Maybe they just know this is a place that animals hang out? Maybe they belong to people but come here to get extra food sometimes? I still don't know. It was really funny to see, though.
The guy told us to go down the sidewalk, around the bend, and to the big open area.
"[This dog] knows where to go. He will show you the way."
Ok.
So off we went. DS immediately fell in love with his dog and nicknamed him Burger. Burger was pulling at the leash to go faster, so DS ran with him a bit. My dog was pulling at me to go faster, and I wanted to run, but DD's dog seemed more timid. You can see how far behind she was.
DD tried to encourage her, but she kept stopping and trying to turn back. I took my dog back and tried to get the mama dog to go along with "the pack" but she was having none of it. We really tried, but we are super inexperienced so DD just walked her back.
DS and I ran our dogs around the bend to the open area, where they walked around and did their business. The neighborhood was beautiful, and if you have ever driven through Nassau we were near the Ardastra gardens/zoo that is one of the excursion options on many ships. In fact, unbeknownst to me, a friend had just been in Nassau a day earlier, on the Dream, and had gone to Ardastra, and had passed the humane society and heard about it from her tour guide.
Our dogs were done, so we went back to the Humane Society.
The dogs were returned to their places and we were told we would be going to the thrift store. As we were walking thorough the complex, we said we really didn't have experience with dogs, but were very comfortable with cats. He showed us the "teenage cats" house, and then the kitten house and I guess we must have had a big reaction because he ditched the thrift store idea and said we could just hang out and play with the kittens to help socialize them. Fine by me!!!
I don't know how many kittens were in there, maybe 10-15, and to be fair most were probably closer to a year old, so not really what you think of when you hear the word "kittens" but they were still very playful and curious. This was very familiar territory for us as we have 2 cats at home, so we just dove right in. Within a few minutes DD had a kitten in her lap and DS was playing with a few kittens.
They had named all of the ones that were interacting with us.
We named this one Mittens, for obvious reasons.
We have nicknamed one of our cats at home "Mittens" for similar reasons, though she is polydactyl so she really does have "mittens".
We probably stayed there for an hour, just playing and petting them. I tried to get some of the shy ones to open up, and a few of them did. There were a bunch of cats in one corner, sleeping and just being lazy, so I went over there to see them. There was a table there, that had a shelf down under it, maybe a foot off the ground. A few cats were on the table and a few cats were on the shelf.
While I was petting one of the cats who was on the floor over there, a cat emerged from under the table and startled me for 2 reasons. 1) I had no idea it had been under the shelf, and 2) it looked like a watered down version of one of our cats!
Our cat:
She is the polydactyl, who has mittens:
And for good measure, our other cat, who looks like a kitten but will be 17 years old next month:
Back to the Humane Society...
These two were soooooo cute, but when I got close the one that is staring at me ran away.
We played for a while, and then it was about 1:15. We hadn't had lunch, and the ship was leaving at 3:30, I think. I collect magnets from everywhere we visit, and I wanted a t-shirt, so I decided we should leave. I was getting anxious about having enough time to get to the ship.
We walked back through the buildings, this time we took our time and looked around a bit, and that's when we figured out that the one building was the surgery waiting room, or whatever. There were some TINY kittens in there that were SO SO SO cute!!!!!
We found the guy at the front desk, and said we had to leave, and said thank you, and asked how to get back to the port. He said he would call a taxi.
Now, what I found out later was, the people who were supposed to be "in charge" of us were on vacation, and no one had stepped up to be our volunteer guide.
When we got home, I emailed the founder of Hope Floats, who I had talked to on the phone and via email, who had set this up, and asked about our experience. She told me, and I shared our experience (very, very politely and pretty much the way I did here, which hopefully does not make anyone there look bad). They were supposed to give us a tour of the place, tell us about it, ask us what we wanted to do, and be nearby while we were volunteering. Pretty much none of those things happened. I only knew the names of 2 people there, and one was only because she was wearing a name tag.
I hadn't expected a big welcome party or anything, but in my experience with volunteering there is usually someone there who greets you and is in charge of the volunteers for the day. But those people were on vacation. That's why we waited for 30 minutes. That's why we were thrown into bathing puppies. That's why we didn't know anyone's names, or anything about the facility. That's why the technicalities of volunteering felt disorganized, even though everything else there seemed very organized and well-run. There was no one in charge that day. It happens. The place was obviously still running smoothly. Everyone was busy, animals were taken care of, no one was running around frantically trying to keep it together, it felt like business as usual, which is good because they were doing a great job with all of that! They just didn't know what to do with us, and if that is the worst thing I can say about them, then I consider that no big deal. If anyone feels differently, I could further explain my position.
We rode back to the port. On the way, I saw this sign, and had DD take a photo. Right as we passed this group of people moved in front of it and just stood there, like they were trying to hide it.
It must really be a secret.
Do any of you know why I thought this sign was funny? Think way back to the 1980's... or maybe 1970's. I'll leave you to ponder that mystery.
I know exactly who you mean!! We still have a hard time waking DS22!! And.... we're usually late getting out the door!! 
, real people don't like hearing all about someone's vacation. 
)). But seriously, it did feel different than other buffets. But again, it was closed so there weren't people there.
"No!" he said. "That is so early!" 
