eileen has asked about the caregivers at SAINTS (her comment is awaiting approval, hint, hint)

this is such a responsibilty to capture everyone and get it absolutely right, here goes but i am going to have to do this in stages cuz there are more of us now then there were.

stage one...in the beginning

mo has been with saints from almost the very beginning. she is the reluctant rescuer here...she will tell you she is just a volunteer because it scares her to realize how utterly critical she is to all of us here. but..scared or not, mo is here in every crises, she is here virtually every day off...the animals adore her and so do i. she runs the dogs every weekend and lets them hang out with her while she cleans out the barn and she watches that i am not missing things on the barn guys because mo has a ton of more experience than i. she is the mom to 4 rescued animals (2 of them are former saints) they are her best friends and she is probably the only person in the world that i would have let adopt my beloved box babes. when i need someone i can trust in every single way, i pick up the phone and call mo and mo will always come thru. mo is second in command here (along with nicole and kathy k) and she is one of the successors if i crap out and die.

kathy K is another original, she joined us from another large and highly organized shelter and she walked into the chaos of carol. she is our "get things done" person (like newsletters out on time) and the original roll up the sleeves and find the bleach and mop and lets make this place shine. kathy guides me thru the politics sometimes which is not my strongest thing. she takes care of me emotionally (because emotionally i am a mess) and i take care of the animals, which she thinks is a pretty fair trade. and she has several of her own rescued, broken animals, including one former saint. if i say we need...then kathy makes sure it is here.

julie is sometimes a volunteer and sometimes a paid staff person. she has slogged side by side with me thru literally piles of poop. julie is our cat person (but she likes the dogs too)...but the cats are her children and i adopted out her beloved son beaver when she buggered off to britian for a few months. julie stood by jazz's side at the vets for almost two hours when jazz was waiting for me to come so that she could let go and die. and julie will always be there for me because she is my friend.

deb won't think she is an original but she is wrong because she is. she was there the very first day that we moved into the very first SAINTS. she LOVES the animals, all of them have value to her. and she loves me too because i care for the ones that she loves the very best. i can do no real wrong in deb's eyes simply because i do the one thing right..which is care for the animals that deb loves. she was here for the months when i was crippled with a broken ankle, (in fact she brought a broken me home from the hospital to my beloved crippled crew) she is here when the difficult dogs need a bath cuz i just won't do it, i call deb and suck her in instead. and i swear to god she is going to kill dexter down by the pond one day because she lets him have way too much fun, it will be a great way for him to go so i let her but i try not to watch. deb is my protecter and she will never let anyone hurt me cuz that will put the animals at risk. and having deb's heart to take care of you is a pretty special gift. deb and chris (who comes into the story later) have 2 of our most precious saints.

i am lumping sheila and leila together and they might say they are not saints volunteers.. but they are my friends and they have shared their knowledge and their skills and their expertise freely from the very first year. and don't think we don't ever argue...cuz holy smoke do we ever sometimes. but like everyone else here they care about the animals living at saints and they don't worry too much that we argue and neither do i because i like and respect them so much (and they think i am good heartedly crazy so they forgive me). they have fostered our puppies and found them wonderful homes and they gave saint luke the best home in the entire world and let him break their hearts when he died. sheila managed not to kill me over the piles of stupid paperwork that wee hopeful bug used to leak on and brought in 2 generous grants this year by doing a great job with the insane application processes. they have really helped with some difficult dogs, like phoebe who i still think they should take home. and leila helped me teach a 150 pound baby pig princess how to come when she was called and began a relationship between 2 species that i had never experienced before.

this would be the originals of our caring and that is the thing about the originals, they have cared for the animals well for several years now and they have cared equally well for me for just as long. saints was blessed from the very beginning by the people who came here to help.....just a handful of us with a love for the unwanted and the broken. and never forget, there were others that started in that first year too.... really special people popping in and out thru out the years and helping us along the way as much as they can...and if i have to start listing all of them i will never have time to blog about anything else ever again...but they know who they are and so do we.

in year two (which i will get to next time), even more incredible people joined our odd ball but expert at caring crew.