So, How Much Do You Have to Pay Someone to Kill Off a Basketful of Cute Little Puppies?

This is my new girl, who, at present, is going by the working-title "Daisy":

Cute, huh? 10 weeks old, and she's pretty much got me wrapped around her little paw -- just forget about resisting the Power of the Puppy!

I hadn't planned on getting a baby, but a local animal rescue group came up with a brilliant strategy to get Daisy and her 6 sisters and brothers placed. They invited me to come down to a pet store where they were having an "adoption fair" to meet a 2 year-old mutt who needed a good home. When I got there, I was told that the dog "couldn't come out" that day for some reason. But there was a play-pen brimming with puppies.

The rescue people listened patiently as I went on about how at this point in my life it would be utterly impossible -- foolish, even -- for me to even consider trying to raise a puppy on my own.

Then they asked me if I wanted to sit with them for just a minute -- and they plopped me down in the middle of this mass of wriggling little bundles of fur.

I can't be sure, but it's possible a rainbow appeared at that moment. The serotonin levels spiked. And needless to say I've been cleaning up puppy-poop ever since.

At 6 weeks, Daisy and her litter-mates were rescued from a high-volume shelter just 4 hours before they were going to be put down. As Liliana wrote back in April, animal shelters have seen a surge in new arrivals resulting from the economic crash, and Daisy was among them.

You have to wonder what it says about our society that we have both the puppy-mill, and also an equally horrific industrial process to dispose of our "best friends" by the litter.

And since hearing the story a couple weeks ago, I keep thinking about the fact that there's a person out there whose job occasionally includes killing a basketful of adorable, squinty eyed little 6-week pups.

I've always believed that most pets euthanized in shelters are the ones that are hard to get people to adopt -- the old ones, the ugly ones, the stinky ones, the growly ones -- and the cute young dogs generally had better luck. But it's obviously not the case.

Almost all shelters that euthanize pets in the U.S. do the deed by lethal injection. So someone would have had to kill the puppies one at a time. A vet often performs the act, but that's not always the case -- ordinary workers are given the task at many shelters.

How much do those people get paid? Do they have a high rate PTSD? Do they have nightmares? Can you do that job for 20 years, or is the burn-out rate sky-high?

Or does it all just become routine after a while? Another day at the office -- ho-hum? Do they tell themselves, 'hey, it's a pay-check?'

I'm sure most shelter workers are animal-lovers. Do they see themselves thinning the herd? Tell themselves that the dogs would have lived wretched lives on the streets without the service they perform?

Perhaps somewhere, in some shelter, there's a person who was mauled by a dog as a child, and takes secret delight in every animal he or she caps. Revenge is a dish, etc.

I know I'm making way too much of this. But I also know there isn't enough money in the world to make me do it ...