First Experience at the Fieldsite

My first trip to the RISPCA as a fieldworker was last Thursday, October 10. I stopped by at around 1 in the afternoon, and I ended up staying longer than the thirty minutes it took to take my preliminary fieldnotes. The experience was a little overwhelming at first because there was so much to see.

The first place I went to take fieldnotes was in the dog room. I ended up only spending about a solid five minutes in this location, and I somewhat surprised myself with the reason why. I had an Akita as a child, which is a large dominant breed of dog, and my best friend has two German Shepherds and her sister has Doberman Pinscher. Though my current dog is small, quiet, and docile, I figured my previous experiences with large, loud dogs would make me prepared for the dogs in the shelter. This was not so. I found the barking disconcerting and a lot of the large dogs intimidated me. I've never considered myself as someone afraid of dogs, so I was surprised that I was so unnerved by these animals. I ended up spending a majority of my time in the cat room, which in itself is not surprising, but I thought I could maintain a balance between the two for research purposes. In the future I will have to work harder against my natural affinity for cats and apparent discomfort with loud dogs.

Something I noticed was that each cage has a sign on it that lists information about the animal it contains. The things listed were usually the animal's name, breed, temperament, the reason it was surrendered, and any other information the RISPCA may have on that particular animal. I found myself intrigued by the reasons for surrender more than anything else. Some of the reasons listed seemed valid, but I found that most of them seemed like excuses. Of course that is my subjectivities talking, but giving up an animal you've had for months because your apartment doesn't allow pets seems fishy to me. Did you just move into that apartment, or did you not talk to your landlord before adopting a pet? That's just irresponsible.

Though I was intrigued by the reasons for surrender, a lot of them also disturbed me. One cat was back at the shelter because of an "inappropriate litter situation" that caused the cat to ruin its owners carpets. I find it disturbing that a person would take responsibility for an animal only to give it up because it became inconvenient for them. Having a cat that doesn't use the litter box correctly is definitely a problem, but it's one that isn't that difficult to solve either. I just did a very quick Google search and found this helpful article that offers reasons for this behavior as well as solutions. Another cat was back at the shelter a few months after its adoption because its owner is now in a nursing home, which made me sad. There were several cats at the shelter that were rescued from a hoarding situation, which I found very disturbing. Most of the cats were sleeping when I arrived, and I noticed that most of the cats rescued from the hoarding situation were sleeping hidden under blankets or underneath cat beds rather than on them. I feel like there's a correlation there but I'm not quite sure what it is.

I talked with a worker in the cat room for a while and we ended up talking about the animals she's adopted. She asked me if I heard about a dog called Indi that was at the shelter last year. I told her I had not and she told me to look him up on the RISPCA website. She mentioned that he has just started to walk again, which made me curious as to what the situation was with this dog. I found a page about him online and I was greatly disturbed by what had happened to this poor creature. Here is the link to his page if you are interested in learning about his situation but be warned, there are graphic descriptions of animal abuse and neglect as well as images of Indi that may be disturbing.

I can tell that it is going to be hard to ignore my subjectivities during this project, but I am eager to get back to my fieldsite and see what else I can discover.