Hayley S.

Topic: Animal euthanasia

I open my eyes and look at the digital clock. It is 6:37 AM; time to wake up. I slowly take my two front paws and lean forward to get myself up. I immediately sprint to my owner’s bedroom and jump onto her bed. As per usual, I bark and lick her face until she gets out of her bed. As she smiles and pets my soft white fur, I think about how lucky I am to have such an amazing life. My owner’s name is Madison Rose. She named me Snowball, Snowy for short. Madison is 23 years old and I am 7. We live together in an apartment in San Francisco, CA.

Later that day, it looks like Madison is getting ready for a gargantuan event. She tells me she’ll be back in a couple of hours. She pets me with her small hands and leaves me a couple of delectable treats. As she hastily walks out the front door, I bark goodbye, and she promises she’ll be back soon.  

As the clock in the living room is turning and turning, I can tell it has been a couple of hours. I keep going to the front door excitedly every time I hear a noise outside. I start to get very perturbed; whenever Madison says she’ll be back soon, she's always back soon. Madison never lies. I talk myself into believing she’ll be back in the morning, and I go to sleep.

When I wake up the next morning, I hear footsteps walking in, and I get ready to give my delighted greeting to Madison. I dash to the front door, and it is Madison’s brother. Madison is always talking about him and I’ve seen him at family gatherings, so I know the coast is clear. I start wondering if today is another family gathering, maybe Thanksgiving or Halloween, I wonder. Madison’s brother starts sobbing as he weakly turns his head to look at me. He then falls to the floor and softly says, “She isn’t coming back.” He then says to himself, “She’s dead.” At this point, I am so bewildered. I think, what do you mean she isn’t coming back? I wonder what being dead means. I start barking, and I feel my heart fall apart. The next thing I can remember after that is sitting in the back of Madison’s brother’s vehicle. He wipes the tears off his burning face and says, “I’m sorry, I’’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I have never seen someone so agonized.

After what felt like forever, we drive up to a building that spells out the letters, A-N-I-M-A-L S-H-E-L-T-E-R. Madison’s brother picks me up and takes me inside. He tells them that he cannot take care of me anymore. I keep trying to tell him to not leave me, but he won’t listen. I bark so loud that Madison’s brother cannot even talk to the people who work there because he can’t hear his own voice. The next thing I know, Madison's brother is gone, and I am sitting behind a fence in an infinitesimal room.

I am petrified. I am using the one ripped-up blanket to cover my shivering body. I am trying to remain calm; the lady told me in a menacing tone that there would be consequences if I barked. I want to go home so badly. All I want is to have Madison telling me everything's going to be okay. I keep thinking about how yesterday she was petting my soft white fur. That sounds like a fantasy now.

The next morning I get woken up by a tall strange woman. She tells me I’m leaving, and I get so excited. I think to myself, “Finally, I get to go home to Madison!” She puts a hard chain leash on me and eagerly drags me inside the building. It hurts, but my thoughts about seeing Madison outweigh my pain. I get taken into a room where there is some nerve-wracking equipment. The lady in there says, “I hope you had a good life.” I feel my heart speed up, I feel I am having a loss of breath, and my entire body is shaking. I start barking, and barking, and barking, trying to fend for my life. The lady tries to manipulate me into believing everything's alright. She keeps repeating in a soft voice, “Everything’s gonna be alright.” I’m uncontrollably barking, and my body hurts from shaking so violently. The lady picks me up, and I try scratching her as hard as I can. She throws me into a little cage. I sit in the cage seconds before my life is about to be taken away from me, panicking. All of a sudden, I see fumes of gas come out at me from the sides of the cage, and I start shaking even more rapidly. I hear the lady yell, “He’s having a convulsion, it’s working!” This two minutes feels like two years to me. I bark one last time, trying to say, “Tell Madison I’ll miss her,” and I traumatically feel myself stop breathing.

Approximately 2.7 million dogs and cats have their lives stripped away from them in a shelter each year. Snowball was just one of them.