Let’s all get one thing perfectly clear, I love animals. Of course, you knew that already. I have several favorite animals, but if I had to choose one animal as the only one I could ever see for all of eternity, it would be dogs. I love dogs! When people treat dogs poorly, I get pissed. One reason is because they are innocents; they don’t deserve bad things to happen to them. Another reason is they are domesticated. We’ve spent the last 10,000 years training them to give up their wolf instincts and be dependent on us, so I think we have a duty to take care of them. The fact that they are adorable doesn’t hurt either!
Anyway, knowing my downright psychotic love of animals, you can imagine how I might react when watching a man abandon a box of puppies. That is exactly what happened on Sunday afternoon. My husband and I were headed to the High Museum in Atlanta, and being the little caffeine fiend that I am, I asked him to stop at Publix so I could get a Coke. Pulling into the parking lot, we saw a man getting out of his car with a box covered with a blanket and labeled “free puppies”. Ok, I thought, standing in front of a store with a box of puppies isn’t the best way to find homes for them, but it could be worse.
And then, it got worse. We walked up to the store and saw the man set the box down right in front of the store. Then he went back to his car. Then he started to drive away. Then I got pissed. I did the only sensible thing that came to mind, and marched right back into the parking lot and took a picture of his license plate. He didn’t like that too much, and he got out of his car and started asking why I had taken a picture of his license plate. I let him know exactly what I thought about his actions. After some choice words, I went back to the store to inform the manager, and the puppy-abandoner went and took a picture of MY license plate. What is he going to do, call the police and tell them some girl was mean to him in the parking lot? After that, he left. The store manager brought the puppies into his office, and I gave him the info about the man’s car, and my telephone number. I don’t know if the manager called the police or if the police would even do anything about it if he did.
What I do know is that there were three puppies in that box, and the store manager told his employees about them.Within a couple of hours, he called me to let me know he had found homes for all three. So, happy ending 
What bothers me is the total lack of responsibility on the part of the man who abandoned them. He could have easily taken them to a shelter or even the pound, instead of just leaving them where anything could happen to them. He could have stood outside the store and tried to find potential owners for them. But he didn’t. He just left his problem sitting around for other, more responsible people to take care of it for him. I get very sick of seeing good people have to solve problems left by very irresponsible people. It reminds me a lot of some of the economic problems that the government is trying to fix at the moment. A lot of it is just the volatility and cyclical nature of the markets. But some of it is complete irresponsibility by people who are probably not being held accountable. That kind of behavior makes me especially angry when it comes to pets. We humans have to step up and take care of them, because they can not take care of themselves.
