it was barking dogs that woke me up at 5 am on my day off.

not my barking dogs, but the neighbors. and the only reason i am actually up is any barking dog, drives me out of bed to make sure that firstly, it is not one of my dogs waking up the neighbors and secondly that whoever is barking is not barking anywhere near tiny edith. this is the trouble with in and out barns....little goats are a worry.

just as well i am up, my back was starting to hurt from immobility...i learned years ago, the only way to manage chronically damaged backs is to move them. the more they move the better they feel, rest them too much and they become toast.

today the kittens and mom are going to the vet for blacklighting to see if they are 100% ringworm clear. usually it is not such a very long haul and last check we were almost there...but these guys were covered and all were a mess so it takes longer to get the fungus gone for good. their young age didn't help...the first few weeks we could only do nizorol baths and then we added the antifungal sprays and finally we moved onto the oral antifungals...i am becoming impatient...i want these guys 100% clear and ready for homes. fingers crossed that today is the day.

i will pick up winter when i take them in and check on how diablo is doing. if they left his leg alone, he should be recovered from his neuter enough to come home at the same time too.

i realized last night that being good at presenting oneself to the public and fundraising has little to do with the actual reality of hands on rescue. except.... that if you are good at it, it should allow you the opportunity to help more animals in better ways.

there is a responsibility to this tho...like not raising money we don't actally need. that just sucks money away from other animals in rescue and this would be a very bad thing. luckily we have so many sick and elderly animals that need so much care..it just isn't an issue. i never thought i would see the day when our vet bills reached thousands of dollars each month. but we did and we still ride the feast and famine wave.

normally i freak out between january and june, this is when donations traditionally disappear and we play frantic catch up for the rest of the year. maybe with the help of the pacific palisades hotel in feb., and the silent auction this spring, maybe, the famine will not be so bad.

it costs alot of money to rescue on the scale that we rescue here. we generally have more dogs, cats and various others at any given time than even the local government funded public facilities have....and...our medical care has no dollar sign limit either....they get whatever they need...it is why most of them come here in the first place.
luckily...i don't add up their costs individually..i have no idea how much we spent on winter, how much on mom and babes, how much any of them cost...i never ask, and i never look at their individual bills....i just look at the total for everyone at each clinic for each time we are paying the bills and hope there is enough to go around.

steve asked me..."what is your limit on an animal needing vet care?" the limit is not in the financial cost, the only limit is the physical and emotion cost that each animal has to bear....some things are a good deal for them, some things aren't....that is ultimately how we decide.

if barking dogs would wait an hour or so to bark in the morning...i probably wouldn't ramble so much about nothing around here.