to give is to receive, but taking is something else altogether.

when i first started out in organized rescue, one of the volunteers i worked closely with became my mentor. she taught me little of value except there is always a way to justify.

she dedicated herself to educate me about the "perks" in rescue, what she taught me is that the animals are never free of being exploited. she collected alot of donations for the animals and then picked thru what was "too good" for them but "good enough" for her. she bullied others and looked down on the losers from lofty heights. she pretended that she was rescue but she wasn't, she was just someone who happened to like animals and used them to get somethings that she didn't have.

over the years i have watched some astounding things like stuff going elsewhere than where it belongs. a store once accepted a $100 donation but never passed it back on to the rescue i was working at then. people have done independent fundraisers or set up donation cans and were never seen again. did they intend to commit fraud, did they even know they did...no. they had the very best of intentions but life got in the way, they got busy or they forgot, or they in a crises spent the money and intented to pay it back. but somehow it just got less important and they never actually got around to that part.

i have seen people donating their time and effort and really expending alot of that too but really they were looking for something. like a sense of value, or a sense of purpose or a sense of importance, or belonging, or whatever. and those things can freely come to you in rescue if you are here for all of the right reasons. but if you try to take them because you are entitled then it becomes a theft like any other.

when you take something that doesn't belong to you and wasn't about you then you are taking something that wasn't yours. and sometimes when you take what wasn't given, you can even steal the peace of others. i see this in other shelters where personalities and conflicts create strife and strife steals the focus away from where it belongs...how sad is that when we steal from our animals that all of us love simply because we don't know why we are really there?

we have such a great group of people here. i have to say for the first time in my entire career in rescue, there is not a single taker here. i was watching tammy and eva yesterday with everyone here...and i saw how much they give and how much they recieve in return...it was a good trade. and i was thinking of all the others who come...and i am not even going to start listing names...cuz the story is the same in every single person...they come here to give to the animals of saints and they receive some special gifts in return. and that is a gift to me too.

i think we all need to be very careful to watch what and why and how we do what we do, because we could easily be here for all of the wrong reasons, which would be because there are perks in rescue if you insist on taking, like free stuff, or free emotional fulfillment like importance or power or belonging to something so good. but that stuff just isn't real.

the real stuff you can't even see, but others can when they look at you. they will see the goodness and the light growing inside you of which you are unaware. i see it, i see it every single day when someone walks thru our gates and this is another good thing among many...it makes me feel all warm inside for free and all i have to do is open my eyes and that perk just rushes right in of it's own accord.