Stella takes a call... From me!

This week, Stella has put her voice to our blog- Stella takes up to 100 calls a day so witnessing this on a day to day basis... I prompted her to tell me about what she thinks of the abyss of calls she receives daily... This was her response!

As the voice of Woodrock I take most calls requesting dogs advertised by Woodrock.

Most calls are easy and I can assist as best I can and if Woodrock are unable to provide the perfect pet to the callers needs we happily refer them.

But! There are those calls that hit me to the core like 'nails scraping on a blackboard..." ( can you tell I'm a qualified teacher) 

A few examples of the content of these calls are as follows; 

"We are looking for a pedigree ........"

"We would like our dog to have at least one litter...."

"Our dogs have always slept outside..." 

"We need a guard dog..."

I don't know why I engage in these conversations or feel the need to retaliate. I should merely end the call politely.....

Then there are the calls about that " We are unable to keep our dogs because....

" We are immigrating..."

"We are scaling down..."

" We are having a baby"

"We don't have time to walk the dog"

"We have to move"

My response once again is eeeeeek

I know I should put on my reasoning cap and attempt to assist but it can really press my buttons... What is an animal rescuer supposed to respond to these ignorant individuals who expect me to assist them when they haven't tried in the least to hep their babies?!?

At these times when I do try to be relatively pleasant and give the caller the benefit of the doubt the  first question i ask is how long have we got to rehome your pet?

Yet again 9 times out of 10, we are given the all too common answer of 1 day, 2 weeks...

Occasionally we hear in 6 months.

At this point my tail is rigid between my legs and my hair is standing upright on my back... I have restrained myself from producing the snarl just yet.

Then I proceed to ask;

Is the dog's inoculation up to date and is the dog sterilized?

Once again you can guess the all too often responses

Ok, now I just lose it. Clearly these people did not get proper education in responsible dog ownership.

Of course there are the calls I end quickly when the advert reads for a smaller breed like min pin CROSS Daschund. Here the caller enquires how small/ how big they are...

"No we don't want a cross but do you by any chance know of a breeder..."

Some calls proceed relatively well and we get to the part of do you have " any other pets" .

Yes, we have ducks, chickens and a free reign parrot. Ugh well how on earth will we be able to ascertain how our dumped shelter animal will react?

Oh the calls that we get!!!

My pet hate that gets me beyond riled up and in thorough snarl mode is when an animal owner thinks it is a good idea to have a litter from a large breed dog and now we have 14 Boerboel puppies to give away! I have no answers to this and must totally restrain myself from attack! Even worse is when they inform us that they have already given 4 away to the security guard to take "home".

My very worst and I don't know why this is -bearing in mind this economic climate is "how much do you charge" or what is the price of the dog I want to buy!?

My final hate and I know most rescuers will be able to identify with this is when we rehome a puppy and a year or two later we get the dog surrendered back to us as "damaged" dogs through irresponsible animal ownership. Fortunately these are few!

The calls that really leave me sad are the callers telling me their dog has gone missing. Immediately, I enquire about whether the dog in questions microchipped. Do they have ID number. Well now it's just too late to think about it. What have you done to find your pet?Why have you waited so long? Bearing in mind there are steps or protocol in place... Notes on poles, SPCA, social media promotion!

At month end I sit in the phone and do a follow up on dogs homed. At this point, I get very anxious as I trust the person who we have screened and promised to love our precious rescue as well as we did! Our main aim is to see if the animal has settled and we go to extreme lengths to ensure all our blocks are ticked. To my delight in most instances the home is perfect and the new owner is as thrilled as I am.

On the positive flip side of the coin is when I get the callers that ramble on about their pets that they have or that have passed. For these callers, I have all day much to my  awaiting callers dismay. I am often viewed as fiery and rash when it comes to dealing with people in the animal world but I can honestly say I am as fiery and passionate about each and every animal in my care. Woodrock is my baby and I will always speak for it!