it was nice to see so many of our volunteer family here today for the quickie meeting.

wee hopeful bug

it is truly a pleasure to work with such a caring group of people. it is so easy to get jaded in rescue..you see the worst of human beings in the eyes of the animals who come here.
but what is so amazing is the animals themselves are so forgiving, they don't hold their past pain and disappointments against us..they are happy we are their friends.

caspar, daphne, myles, came to the meeting too. reggie and champ and dusty and lucky were there also altho separated by gates. i like having them under our feet while we are discussing caring for them. it keeps us focussed on why we are all here.

i booked bond's euth. appointment for late next week...i think he will do ok til then..if not, i will move it sooner. but i don't want to leave it too long because i know soon as the toxins in his bloodstream build up, he will begin to feel ill. i will watch him closely to see how he is.

i wanted to talk about animals that we occasionally save, that sometimes we wished we hadn't. it could be that their daily care or medical needs or personalities, stretch us beyond our limits. wee hopefiul bug and romeo were like that for me. and i truly loved those cats...especially wee hopey. but living with them day after day was an ongoing challenge. funny tho...as hard as she was to live with..i would give anything to have her back again. to feel her claws barely poking into both sides of my face, to hear her little hopeful squeak. to feel the loudest rumbling purr resounding thru her chest to mine..oh what i would give to have her under my chin again, even for one brief night.

phoebe will always be a deep sigh of wishful thinking, that i never heard of her or her plight...but even with phebes..i love that dog altho most days... i am not sure why. i think that despite it all...deep inside, for her, she really does try (she just naturally sucks at being good for any lengh of time.)

and as cute as i think reggie is and despite how much i like him one on one...reggie in a group setting is a total nightmare that i will be living for a very long time.

i may be speaking out of turn here...but i think sheila and leila have their own second thoughts about oliver. not his fault he was hit by a car, not his fault he can barely walk, not his fault he is basically incontinent...probably it is his fault that he is oftimes a jerk....but oliver was salvaged and remained profoundly damaged so he had to have someplace good who would love him to live.

few animals actually have the option of someone seeing them thru thick or thin...especially when the hard stuff buries the good stuff time and time again. most truly difficult animals get sent onwards to another rescue or fast tracked to the end of their life...sometimes i wished i had that option, but these ones here do (did) not actually cross my end of life line.

today at the meeting we talked briefly about kodi-bear. people were asking about the pain in the ass stuff he does here and what to do about it. the problem with kodi is..he is not really doing anything wrong, he is just being a typically normal pain in the ass cattle dog. he is not a dog for the average family..he is not even the dog for most folks in rescue...but for me..kodi is actually the least of all of the problem dogs here..he is just bred to be kodi. that i can handle..he is not mean, he is not twisted, he is not the least bit insane (ok...well he is nutty in a normal cattledog way)...he is just bossy and busy and likes to herd anything that moves in a different direction than it wants to move....perfectly normal behavior for both of his primary breeds...aussie and blue heeler.

funny enough..i don't in the least regret taking in kodi...he does not have to be fixed or modified, he is doing what he was meant to do...even if all of the other animals find it annoying...they are getting used to him.

i will tell you one thing tho...when all is said and done...i look back on hopey, romeo, and clyde and i know not only did i do everything possible for them but i gave them a very good home and for this i am grateful...one day i will probably look back on phoebe and reggie and feel the same...but not yet. for now they are my very special and much loved, and somewhat frequent regrets.