[Dailydrool] Crying over bags of dog food

[Elizabeth]

For the last couple of months I’ve been trying to find someone who can use the two-and-three-quarters bags of kibble young Charlie left behind. Why did I have so much food for him? It was a combination of pandemic buying and denial. I was far more afraid of finding myself short of dog food than I was of running out of toilet paper last year. And Charlie was doing so well that it seemed as if he would continue on for much longer than the time frame his vet gave us when diagnosing him in May with a hemangiosarcomic tumor on his spleen. So I bought two 20-pound bags of Fromms kibble on July 16 to boost the 20-pound bag I’d just opened for him. Two week later, he was gone. 

These bags of food have proven to be significantly more difficult to both give away and to let go of than I’d anticipated. About the latter, I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because they’ve been like having a last, living part of him still here with me? I’m realizing there’s been something comforting about having his food in its plastic storage bin in my basement. I had no trouble mailing his leftover meds to a couple of basset rescue groups. I associated the meds with his tumor and was happy to see the last of them. With his food, I guess it’s a case of realizing that once that’s gone, he is really and completely gone. He will not be coming back to finish up his kibble.

I contacted four different basset rescues in my region, ones I could probably make a round trip to in a single day. I contacted a couple of non-breed-specific rescue groups that one of the basset rescue groups recommended. No one can use them. So then I asked on my community’s FB page for suggestions of rescues or shelters that could use it. There was an overwhelming response for one in particular that’s about twenty minutes from me. 

I called that shelter last Thursday, learned they could use the food, was told they could give me a receipt for it so I could deduct the donation on my tax return, and was given the hours they’re open. After I hung up the phone, I cried. 

Yesterday morning I was going to be out in that area anyway, so I hauled the two-and-three-quarters bags up from the basement and out to the car. Then I cried. 

After a stop at the mechanic’s for an oil change, I drove the food Charlie will never eat to the shelter, telling myself that the transaction would be over with quickly and I would not cry. Another woman was there to look at the dogs available for adoption. Because of the pandemic, it’s no longer possible to just walk into the office to ask for help. The other woman knocked on the door, and I tried calling the office on the phone. Eventually one of the shelter employees (or volunteers?) came out. She told me where to leave Charlie’s food and took the other woman into a building. 

I drove the car over to the barn she had pointed at, looked anxiously into the cluttered space, and worried about mice getting into the bags before the kibble could be fed to the dogs. I stood patiently outside the building for the employee/volunteer to come back out so I could ask about the receipt for my donation. 

Another woman drove up with a feeding stand to donate. A different employee/volunteer came out and told the woman where to leave it. Before she could disappear, I asked her about getting a receipt. She looked at me blankly and said she didn’t know anything about that. I explained what I’d been told on the phone, and she said she’d ask the other employee/volunteer. 

Finally she emerged with the news that there were only two people on the premises at the moment and neither knew how to handle receipts for donations for tax purposes. The only person who knows how to do that is Megan, and Megan won’t be in until Friday. Maybe I could come back on Friday? This, of course, immediately raises two questions: 1) Why didn’t the person I spoke with last Friday let me know I should schedule my drop off around Megan’s work schedule, and 2) why isn’t the organization training everyone how to provide receipts for donations? 

But I didn’t ask those questions. I swallowed hard and instead said that I wouldn’t be able to make a special trip back to the shelter, that bringing Charlie’s food out there once had been hard enough and I didn’t have it in me to do it again.

Then I drove as far as a strip mall and sat in the car and cried. 

Last night I went back to searching for dog rescues in Indianapolis that will be able to take Charlie’s food the first time I drive it out to them. At least I now know to ask whoever I speak with if the only person in the organization who knows how to supply a receipt will actually be on the premises when I arrive. 

This afternoon I heard back from Love of Labs, and it sounds as if they can use the food and know how to give me a receipt for it. The first true, deep love of my life was a black lab named Bobs (my husband continues to be jealous of him, even though Bobs has been gone almost thirty years now), so it feels good to give Charlie’s kibble to this rescue. When I replied to their e-mail I got weepy all over again.

I hope I’ll be able to get this kibble to them before field mice discover it in my car. I just don’t have it in me to bring those bags in from the garage to the house and back down into the basement and their storage bin. I can only cry so much before I end up with a sinus infection, and it can take up to three months to get rid of one of those. So Charlie’s leftover food is problematic in more ways than one. 

I hope that when I’m no longer carrying these heavy bags of kibble around physically I can also stop carrying them around in my heart.

Elizabeth