The animal shelter is a horrid little place and I resent all fifteen hours I wasted volunteering there. Sure, puppies are cute and cuddly until they start crapping everywhere, and there is no smell worse than the waste from the back end of a dog. Every room smelled like urine, dog food and litter boxes and it took me three antihistamines to keep the allergies at bay. Because I was sent by the court to do community service the lovely people at the shelter would not let me walk dogs because I was a "criminal," but I did it anyway when they were not looking. Dogs should not have to be subjected to the politics of humans, and what I found ironic was that the nastiest people were found working at a pet shelter.

Each dog had a sad look in its eyes, praying that the human who entered its pen was going to permanently release it from this shelter hell. Nobody loved the dogs. They barked, they howled, they fought with one another and just as soon as you could scoop up the feces of one, another had laid a brown present. The only room I enjoyed being in was the laundry room because it smelled the least like poop.

There were dogs everywhere. In the office, outside, in the yard, in the break room. After this community service I am rethinking the notion of buying a dog or even having kids. Not like it'll take me a lot to stop from having kids. Some puppies licked their own waste like it was ice cream that had plummeted to the ground from atop a child's cone. There was one dog who barked only at men, one who snarled at everyone, three puppies that were sick and a mammoth of a dog that whined like a puppy. People were constantly coming in to look at puppies. Stupid, stupid people. They like dogs when they're little, but as soon as they get big they'll be coming right back to the animal shelter.

I'm never getting in trouble again and therefore I will no longer be required to complete any more community service. And I will never set foot in that animal shelter again.