I was homeless when they found me. I remember a wire going around my neck and being put in a cold cage in the back of a truck. The ride to wherever we were going seemed bumpy and long. Other dogs and cats were with me and we were all scared. We thought we might be going to our forever home. We were…. ….but not in the way we thought. We were taken to a shelter. Our shelter wasn’t bad. We all were given cards taped to our cages. The cards must have said what kind of dog or cat we were.. We were given a date on the card. We knew it wasn’t our birthday so it had to have a meaning. The date was the day we entered the shelter. That told the people who worked at the shelter how long we might stay. I could hear people saying that some of us looked like we might be adoptable and others of us weren’t very pretty, especially us black dogs. I heard them say that mostly black dogs were put down before others. I didn’t know what putdown meant.

The people at the shelter fed us & sometimes we had vet care, sometimes not. That was the sad part. Some of my friends had wounds from fights or suffered from arthritis from being out in the cold. We really wanted to see a pet doctor. We didn’t complain as long as they brought us food and water. Lots of tails wagging. The cats were in another room. Cats aren’t so bad after all now that I have learned to live in a home for all of God’s creatures.

Morning came, then evening, then night time. Many times the sun rose and set and we didn’t see anyone except the caretaker or we met a new friend but sometimes we would see one of our friends being taken away: sometimes more than one at a time. We could hear noises, lots of barking and howling and meowing. We heard a door close, then a guy with a big flat cart with wheels went past us and we could hear something like a door closing, and everybody would go their own way for awhile, then they would go back to the room where the big door was and we could hear thumps, like something was being thrown on the ground. We could hear plastic rattling. This happened when there wasn’t enough room in the shelter building for my friends . After each time the big door clanged and the sounds of the thumping and rattling, a big truck came and then there was silence.

We were all waiting on someone to come take us home. Once a week or maybe twice the doors opened up and people came by and looked at us. We were so happy. Some of us jumped on our cages but some of my friends were so scared they huddled in the corner. That is when I would hear someone say that ….”That dog just isn’t adoptable”. I couldn’t figure out why they would say that because my friend was just scared.

Time passed and I was one of the black ones and I can only tell you so much for the pain of it all is much more than I want to remember. It was the day God took me to Heaven.

I WAS GASSED IN A DOG POUND IN NORTH CAROLINA. I was put in an old box with some of my friends, cats to and we were all fighting for our breath. Some of my friends died before me, not sure what happened to the puppies before I drew my last breath, but after it was all over I heard beautiful sounds of happy animals and voices of Angels singing, and God said “Welcome Home”. I had finally reached my forever home.

- Anonymous