JUMP TYPE

Robert Paul is turning 10 years old the next day, and he has come to the North Dade animal shelter with his sister, mom and grandmother to find a puppy.

Nearby sits Mark Smith, who hopes to take a cat home to his apartment near downtown Miami.

Finally, they are allowed to go in.

The five wind their way through a hallway lined with wooden fence boards, which opens onto a long room with a tile floor -- easily mopped.

On the right are a row of doors and windows of about a half-dozen canine ``apartments,'' each home to two or three dogs.

Here lives Alfa, a 2-year-old cocker spaniel mix left at the shelter two weeks ago by a grown man with tears in his eyes. The man's neighbors had been complaining about Alfa, and at last he was giving in and entrusting his little friend to strangers.

In his first days in the shelter, Alfa was inconsolable. He couldn't be coaxed out of his apartment. Today, though, he's wagging his tail happily as the newcomers enter.

The Diaz family pauses to look through the apartment windows, then moves on to the next room, where about a dozen puppies pad about in individual kennels.

Almost immediately, Robert Paul, a fourth-grader at Hialeah Elementary, focuses on two who are at least partly golden retriever. Soon, he's cradling one in his arms and declaring it his own.

``Don't you think we should go to the other place, too?'' asks his mother, Lucy Diaz.

He shakes his head no. Then a staffer tells them his dog is male -- a no-no to Mom, who thinks it'll be too aggressive. Luckily, the other pup is a girl.

``OK, OK,'' Robert Paul says, quickly putting the first dog back and rushing over to the second one.

Beyond the puppy area is the cats' room, which is overbooked today, with some kittens two or three to a cage, snuggled together in slumber or boxing each other softly.

Mark Smith carefully considers each one, cage by cage, from the oversized black adult to the pair of gray and white kittens.

Pausing for a moment, Smith pulls a leash and collar from his pocket and sighs. ``I was all ready for a dog, but the apartment building said no,'' he says.

So he settles on the big black cat. Well, actually, that's not quite how it happens.

``That cat picked me,'' Smith says. ``That cat stuck its paw out as I walked by, and I wasn't even looking at it. The moment we had . . .''

He won't name his new pet; it'll just have to answer to ``cat,'' he says. ``I didn't birth that cat, so I don't get to name it.''

Sterilizing a must

More and more people are arriving to look at the pets, and staffer Grace Carr -- one of about 40 paid workers at this shelter and a smaller one in Cutler Ridge -- is rushing among the three areas.

Carr helps one couple apply for an adoption, photocopying their photo IDs and finding out what kind of home the pet would have.

Then she scoops up a black puppy and tells a family they can pick up their new pet in the afternoon, after it's been sterilized.

No animal goes home without the surgery; population control is a major goal of the clinic. A flier on the wall notes that a pair of breeding cats could produce a tribe of 80 million in just a decade if none were spayed or neutered.

Back at the front counter, Pat Camas of Kendall is trying to take care of the paperwork for her new dog, a female somehow bestowed with the name Peter.

The shelter charges $50 (no checks, please) for sterilization, shots and an identifying tattoo, and it also collects the county's $24 dog license fee.

Camas' check-out is a little more complicated than usual because Peter's information sheet has been chewed into about two dozen pieces.

``OK, we know it's a dog,'' Camas says.

`I'll be back to get you'

A little later, Patricia Brownlee picks out a fluorescent-green nylon collar and leash from the lobby display of pet supplies.

She and husband Eugene are waiting for a staffer to bring out their new dog -- Alfa, the cocker spaniel mix.

She'd been to the shelter before, and when she had spotted the calm and friendly Alfa in his three-dog apartment, she made him a promise.

``The other two dogs were loud and noisy, and I said, `Dog, this ain't your thing. I'll be back to get you tomorrow.' ''

Besides the lobby, there's another way into the shelter, around back, where people turn in the animals they don't want or can't keep.

In the average month, the shelters here and in Cuter Ridge take in about 800 dogs and cats, plus the occasional rabbit or hamster.

The dropping-off point

At the counter is Martha Carballea, who has come from her home near Greynolds Park to drop off a healthy-looking puppy.

The mother dog had been a stray Carballea had taken in not long ago. She turned out to be pregnant and had a litter of 10, but after setting up a table outside a local Publix, Carballea had found homes for all but this one.

Puppies like this one are usually adopted quickly, the young man behind the counter assures her.

Kenny Tatum approaches next, setting a gray plastic animal carrier on the counter. Inside several 8-week-old kittens are curled together. How many?

``I don't know, maybe about five,'' answers Tatum, who lives near Miami International Airport. ``We've got a bunch of momma cats running around, and I'm just trying to give some of them to other people.''

The shelter worker suggests he have the animal spayed so he doesn't have to come back in several months.

Tatum shrugs. ``If we catch them,'' he says. ``Most of them are wild anyway.''

The shelter worker asks how much he's going to donate, and Tatum pulls out a folded check, already made out for $30.

Tatum is followed by Llamile Diamond of Miami, who has a huge shepherd mix called Blackie on a leash. Diamond had taken the dog home the day before, but now she's decided she wants to trade her in for a different pet.

``They told us she was an inside/outside dog, but she only wanted to be inside,'' Diamond says. ``She didn't even want to eat or anything. She didn't even bark.''

The shelter takes Blackie back, but she is told she can't have another dog until her home is inspected.

Because they love animals

Beyond the receiving-area counter are the animals that are waiting for a doctor's check.

About a quarter of them will find new homes. A few will go to Broward's shelter, but most of the rest will be put to sleep, the likely fate of a gray-spotted puppy -- a terrier, perhaps -- whimpering and shivering in one of the holding pens.

The anxious animal is longing for an affectionate rub, even just one tender touch, but Scott Jelescheff, the center's volunteer coordinator, knows better.

The puppy has mange, a parasitic skin disease that can spread easily to people and other animals, and the shelter must remain vigilant to prevent epidemics.

``It's not fair to take all our resources and pour them into one animal when we've got eight more healthy ones over here. How nice a dog it is doesn't matter,'' Jelescheff says.

``It's kind of a Catch-22. If we turned him into the street, he'd probably die a much worse death than to be put to death humanely. The people here kill animals because they love them.'' At the clinic

Across the parking lot sits the Humane Society's well-animal clinic, which offers low-cost shots and sterilization to the public.

Carolina Yaya and Edison Montes have brought their cocker spaniel Pumpkin all the way from Kendall on the advice of Yaya's mother.

Part-time veterinarian Jeff Bayard gives Pumpkin a shot, then asks the couple if they've started the dog on a monthly anti-worm pill yet.

``No . . .'' Yaya answers slowly.

Bayard pulls out a plastic model of an infected animal heart and explains how common the problem is in South Florida's warm weather. Worms can grow to more than a foot long, causing fatal problems like heart failure.

``Muy importante,'' says a nodding Yaya.

``Muy, muy importante,'' Bayard agrees.

Their final home

Behind the clinic, a large lawn is littered with marble and stone markers.

A painted wooden sign labels the area the Oaklawn Pet Cemetery, home for half a century to hundreds of dearly departed dogs, cats, birds -- even horses and a few people, including local Humane Society founder Charles William Pusey.

At the center, a life-size statue of a Great Dane stands sentinel. A stone at the base of the dog reads, ``Polar Prince 1934-1949 Hyland.''

Silk flowers and ceramic figurines decorate many of the plots.

At one grave, red satin poinsettias and a gold figurine of a Great Dane form a shrine to the beloved Sonia. ``Aun asi te sigo queriendo mi fiel amiga,'' the plaque says. ``Even now I love you, my faithful friend.''

Around the edge of the cemetery, a small, black lab walks with a woman who goes only by Nynda -- she never uses her last name because she's going to be a rock star one day.

Nynda comes by every Saturday to give the shelter dogs some exercise, and she loves reading the grave markers as she strolls through.

Her favorite, to a trio of pets who died in the 1970s, reads, ``Each its own master, dominated by none. Love, devotion, companionship in life and for eternity.''

The first time she saw it, it gave her chills, she says.

``It's funny,'' she says. ``Some people love animals so much, and others just don't care.''