Wayside Waifs — Local services in Grandview

I feel obligated to make a review about the insanity I witnessed at Wayside today. This is an organization that I have come to love however, today was a nightmare. I asked a volunteer in the cat area if I could see a kitten. She said "of course" and I sanitized my hands. She opened the kennel door for me and I starting playing with the kitten. I was holding him and he was play biting me a bit and I was softly correcting him and he was quickly picking it up. Another volunteer employee approached me angrily and asked if I was being helped. I told her that another volunteer had opened the kennel for me and she had wondered off. She then grabbed a stuffed animal out of the kitten's kennel and starting jamming it agains the kittens face while it was still in my arms saying, "don't let him bite your fingers, we are trying to get him to stop doing that". I said, "yeah, I was just working on that with him." She continued trying to jam this toy into his face. She then got angrier and without saying a word grabbed the kitten out of my hands roughly, and then pinned the kitten on his back in the kennel with the toy in the most violet way I have ever seen anyone treat a kitten. Then she tried to slam the kennel door closed. As she slammed the door closed the terrified kitten slipped out and took off running across the room and hid under another set of cages. She chased him and reached under the cage and grabbed him. He bit her. Not a play bite, a real bite. And she deserved it. She put him back in his kennel and disappeared to the back telling another employee that he needed to be put on a bite hold. At this point no one had said anything to me and I was still standing there in shock. This continued. Every employee was actively avoiding me as they buzzed around talking about how this cat had attacked an employee and how it was MY fault. WHAT?? I sat down as I was shaken, expecting someone to approach me and ask me about it and no one ever did. They were actively avoiding me and trying not to make eye contact. I reached out to an employee and asked if the kitten was going to be okay and she told me he was on a bite hold. I started to try to explain to her that the lady attacked him and that it wasn't his fault and the SAME LADY THAT ATTACKED HIM called her over and said something to her. She then never came back and avoided me intentionally just like everyone else. Finally, being super upset I asked to speak with a supervisor. I was told that one wasn't available and they took me up to the front to talk to the lady at the counter. I recounted the events and told her how upset I was and that I didn't want that level of violence to happen to any other animals there and that I didn't want that kitten to be in trouble for defending himself when he was being attacked. This is a kitten people!! You have to be REALLY violent with a kitten to make it bite you hard enough to draw blood. I was basically given the run around and told that I would get over it and be laughing about it in an hour. No. I am not laughing. I would never laugh about someone being abusive toward a baby animal and then getting away with it. I asked for her to look over the report and she did saying, "oh, it will be blamed on the public". MEANING ME. It will be blamed on me. For literally standing in shock after being handed a kitten, having it ripped out of arms and handled in a super disturbing manner, and watching it run and fight for its life in response.Even when I asked to speak to a supervisor I was given the run around. It's not funny. It's not even okay. This is an amazing organization , but to let something so horrific happen and then punish the animal and blame it on ME without any repercussions for the abuser.... that is shameful. Absolutely shameful. I tried to reach out. I tried to make it right and help remedy the situation. It didn't work, and here I am. I will be a voice for these animals just like a true animal volunteer ...

Three years ago my now husband adopted a German Shepherd mix from Wayside. Aspen had been found as a stray and was one of the animals they were contractually obligated to take. He wanted a running companion and was told she would be a good fit, the only catch was that she had a seizure while in the shelter. He was willing to work with that since she was 5 and he has a soft spot for disadvantaged cats and dogs. When he brought her home we noticed she had pain during urination, and when he took her in for her post-adoption screen the vet told him she was suffering from urinary incontinence due to recently being spayed, and that she was trapping the urine causing burning and ulcers in the area. There were medical treatments but she would probably need surgery costing around $800. She also had arthritis and had difficulty walking medium distances, much less running. Despite their alleged return and treatment guaranties, when we went to see them a few days after the adoption they refused to help with the problems and said she could not be returned because after less than a week with those problems she was unadoptable. We paid for the surgery and now spend $50-70 per month to treat the incontinence and arthritis in on top of the surgery costs. The epilepsy has not recurred for the past two years and she is a member of the family. Wayside lied about both her health and what they would do if we complied with their rules. Also, despite what they claim in their current fundraiser for a new building, they do classify dogs as unadoptable, even when they just adopted them to someone else. Despite this bad experience my husband began volunteering up there to help with the pain of his daughter and grandson passing away earlier this year. While he claims most of the staff and other volunteers were great, the management and volunteer coordinator are still as untrustworthy as during the prior adoption. One of the coordinator's favorites repeatedly publicly insulted him, and instead of talking to her they blamed him. When this person claimed he was unfit to adopt one of the animals because he wouldn't take care of or work with it, despite the thousands of dollars and time to help out Aspen, they initially backed her and blamed him again even though he had not reported it or said anything back. When the person again publicly attacked him only a few weeks after his brother's death recently he did report it as the volunteer coordinator and manual said he should. Rather than deal with disciplining a favorite, she tried to claim he was resigning. When told that he was not, he just wanted the public harassment to stop, she terminated his being a volunteer because he did not fit what she wanted. She also stated he was being let go because he did not follow her version of conflict resolution, namely her favorites could insult and degrade at will with nothing being done and people like my husband should just agree to take it and do nothing, nothing else was ever mentioned. She would not even talk to him for 5 minutes before letting him go, and was only willing to do so after he either agreed to resign or was terminated, and made it clear he could not come back and she would do nothing to the party that had instigated the matter yet again. This is a common pattern. My husband was bitten in the face by one of their dogs while trying to take it out for a walk, and after having some self trained individuals spend time with him are going to put him out for public adoption. One of their favorites couldn't control a different dog and he bit another dog at the shelter. They killed that dog. Despite his having volunteered there for over 455 hours since 2/19 (60 hours per month), no one at Wayside can spend five minutes to answer our questions or even respond to an email. I was also going to volunteer there...

Don't waste your time contacting management, they won't respond and will protect the discriminatory practices of their staff to protect their favorites. I was a recent volunteer and after being abused publicly, followed their rules and contacted the volunteer coordinator who proceeded to try and twist events around and would not speak with me. When I corrected her rewritten history of the current and similar past events with what really happened I was dismissed with no hearing or reason other than I did not seem to comply with her conflict resolution policy. The only policy she ever presented was that her favorites could insult and degrade animals and people, and the person could just accept it because she would do nothing to them, and censure the person attacked. Furthermore no one will respond to say why protesting public abuse was grounds for dismissal, then the let the abuser remain while getting rid of the person attacked. While most of the staff and other volunteers were pleasant to work with, I had volunteered to help out the animals, not join a clique or brown nose the coordinator and management which seems to be the only way to protect yourself and may explain why many new volunteers seemed to leave or quit coming, while those in the groups were there for years, many protecting their territory. Despite what management claims, the only professionally trained staff besides the veterinarians seem to be in the financial and administrative sector. It was alarming that the others were the ones in charge of evaluating and behavior modification of the animals after a quick hour long online or in person class, and they also seemed to be the ones involved in deciding when a dog or cat should be terminated. The latter seemed to happen more than they let on as it seemed a dog or cat was taken off the floor for some reason, then never seen or heard from again because they had decided it was unadoptable. Also take their presentations with a grain of salt. I have adopted twice from there. The first time they misrepresented the health of the dog saying it would be a good running partner when it had severe arthritis, and then failing to mention she had urinary incontinence from being spayed, and it was causing burning in the area which required expensive surgery to correct. Even when told of it a few days after the adoption they would not help, or even take her back (which I did not want anyway) claiming she was unadoptable. To date I have spent over $3000 on her medical expenses, but we still love her and she is part of the family. Even after all that when I recently wanted to adopt a cat from them that no one else seemed to want, the person I had the recent problems with cried out I was not going to take care of or love her and would just bring her back in worse condition, despite what I had already done for the dog previously. She was initially backed by management as she is one of their favorites and I was denied. Later, after no one else would take her do to the person's inaccurate and biased personality assessment of the cat I did adopt her and she has adjusted and fits in great with all species, including humans, out at the farm. Despite all the responses claiming concern for public and volunteer bad experiences, don't waste your time contacting them, it is a PR stunt. I worked 60+ hours per month for the past 7 months at Wayside, and though I have contacted several members of management to find out why they had tried to claim reporting a second verbal attack from the same person resulted in that person staying while they tried to force my resignation and then tossed me from the program when I responded I did not want to leave. . No one responded and the coordinator was only willing to talk after she made her irrevocable decisions and nothing...