Rescue Journal

dogs were my first love

Carol  ·  Jun. 16, 2009

i fell for them when i was barely knee high. cats took some time...not so much for me..i always loved them..but for them to teach me how to be liked by them.

believe it or not..it was not until i started to do cat rescue that cats developed a taste for me. my own family cats had not much use for me..they liked everyone in the house better than me. in retrospect i finally figured it out. it wasn't anything i was doing..i was very respectful of the fact that they were not fond of me and i STILL cared for them really well and thought they were great!

they didn't like me as much because...i always smelled like dogs. now they over look it cuz even cats know which side their bread is buttered on and i am and have always been the bread butterer around here. but it took a lot of years.

next came a turtle, a chicken or two, the ducks, the rabbits, the sheep, the pigs, the horses, the llama, the cows and finally the goats.

now i am multi-species..dogs may have been the first, but not the last. but they are the ones i truly understand the best..i think because in many ways, i am most like a dog.

i started saints with the full intention of becoming multi-species. i wanted the chance to get to know other species better...i wanted other humans to have the same chance.

i am so not a "woman's libber" i think to be one, it means that women are less than men..i have never believed that. i have never needed liberation from anything. i am carol foremost and a human being secondly and my gender falls somewhere else down the list..far below...a dog person, crazy cat lady, an asexual plant, or animal rescuer.

and i am so not a singular species person..i don't level the value of the species of animal here...i just know some better than others (it is harder for me to think and feel like a chicken, and a horse, or a rabbit than it is for a dog or pig or a cat.)

each year i get better at "getting" inside of someone else's head.

but what i won't allow here to happen is to somehow imply that one species is "better" than another. we are so lucky here..all of us focus on everywhere..all of us focus on someone.

so i who fell for dogs first am totally in love with pigs (and goats and sheep (OMG, i LOVE sheep), and cows (even spoiled rotten ones) and goats and cats and rabbits and chickens and ducks and stealth pilot llamas)

and mo who fell in love with ponies first, loves cats and dogs and.....(add all of the others)

and laura who loves dogs now loves...goats and everyone else.

and tammy the cat person, loves phoebe and al and all of the bunnies.

and KO who loves dogs and cats, is now learning to loves chickens and horses and everyone inbetween.

no one is less than...no one means more than anyone else.

some we "know" better than others and some we are learning more and more about each day.

this is the beauty of multi-species..this is the beauty of saints.

this is the place of perfect opportunity to expand what we feel and think.

when we did the documentary with the national...the producer said to me...saints totally changed how she viewed old dogs..she looked at them differently.

so i guess we do more than just give loving sanctuary to the unwanted and peace and comfort to those who come here to die...we give the opportunity to see, experience and begin to understand more than we ever did before.

that is a very good thing.

remember the Open House June 27/28th 11 am -3 pm

(and remember the work party next saturday to get ready and spiffy for the open house!)

both weekends will provide many different learning opportunities with the animals teaching us themselves!

Comments

emma

I have been a cat loving freak since I was a little girl, dogs do come a close second but cats I think I understand better. I have to admit that being a city girl I am uncomfortable around livestock!! Birds I'm not too thrilled about either although I did pick up an injured pigeon off the road at a busy intersection and take it to Emergency - even though that meant I had to touch it with my bare hands and be dive bombed by crows who were pecking at it! LOL