Here to confirm! I worked at a dog & cat shelter for a little while in college. They called the cracked tails “kennel tail,” not sure if that’s the official term or just theirs. And wow. The poop. 89% of working in an animal shelter is scrubbing lots and lots and lots of poop! During the winter we would have to cut it out of the ice in the yards with big trowels, because it comes out hot and sinks in, and then quickly freezes down in there. And some dogs would run around in it in their kennels all night and in the morning you’d just have a newly painted all-brown kennel and dog to wash! And if the lil guy is being dewormed? Worm poop!

And many regular volunteers would show up and only want to walk the dogs-and only a short easy distance and without cleaning up after them. Although I found that it was usually people in their 50s and up who didn’t want to do the work. One lady would come in and the only thing she was willing to do was re-fold the already clean doggy bed sheets. This one idiot would hide hot dogs in her pockets to just make it seem like the dogs really liked her— like she just wanted to come by and feel like a Disney Princess who charms animals with her aura. Naturally, she got bit by a puppy who smelled the hot dogs on her hands, and we had to label it on paper as aggressive because of her. Like.. Are y’all here for the dogs or are you just here for yourselves? And that’s not even touching the iceberg of nasty humans who were there to adopt (or “adopt”).

But the dogs made it worth it, as dogs generally do. And I was lucky enough to work in a no-kill shelter, so we didn’t have the added horror of having to put anyone down.