Ok so other than the crazy deaf lady, there was one other negative thing that happened at Animal Awareness Day.
Our booth was placed next to the only other dog rescue that was there, ****** ***. If you're interested in the rescue name, PM me and I'll tell you. Well, they came with two dogs. One was a yappy little chi, no biggie. They kept walking him really close to Alfred so we moved Alfred more to the back of our tent. That I can handle. Their other dog however.....I can't even begin to describe how disturbing it was. The dog was an adult, tanish shepardy looking thing. They had to roll it in in a WAGON because the dog had never been able to walk since birth. Not even a candidate for a wheelchair because without help the dog couldn't even hold it's head up. It was simply mortifying. All it could do was flop around on the ground, like a dog that had been hit by a car and had a severed spine. Every single one of us including Vi's kids were like, "WTF?"
Clearly the dog had been carted out to raise sympathy donations, and ya know what? It worked. I heard things like, "Oh, she's totally happy!" Wearing a diaper? Really? They let the little chi yap in it's face and it yapped back and I heard, "Oh they're playing!" Uh, no they're not. You're letting that little fucker harass the poor that can't even lift it's own head.
I'm super pissed off at myself for not saying anything. Really mad at myself. But this was our first event and we were invited and there were a TON of people around all the time. I certainly didn't want the image of the 'crazy tattooed Pit Bull lady' to be the center of attention. Also we were representing our rescue....yadda, yadda. I mean, we brought a gimpy dog too but he's still a freaking DOG. Can run and chase a ball and not urinate and crap all over itself. Eventually I had to pin two tapestries I had with me to the tent to 'block out the sun' for Alfred but really it was so that we didn't have to see that pitiful dog flopping around. Jesus it was bad. I seriously can't get the image out of my head.
I would welcome comments and advice as to how to deal with this.