we are lucky in rescue because it is our job to step up to the plate and try to fix. i can count on one hand only the times in almost 20 years that i have gazed upon utter devastation and not been able to try to help and turned away.
but when you think of the others who love and work with animals too...the vets, the animal control officers, the cruelty investigators, even the low (wo)men on the power totem pole...the actual shelter kennel staff.... and how sometimes they are in fact helpless to find any kind of solution except to witness the end of the suffering before them.
it hurts. and there are images seared into these caring people's brains that haunt them forever, long past the last suffering breath.
sometimes working with animals and witnessing what humans do to them, intentionally or thru ignorant neglect, and giving them the final free of pain and suffering solution.... takes a lot of strength.
so when these folks ask me if i can help an animal who has touched them to the core....i get how many times they are haunted and how this one animal can make the other hauntings bearable.
we may be welcoming a new saint this weekend...i don't want to introduce him until i know for absolute sure. and hopefully one day he will be a happy image..a rainbow with the pot of gold at the end.
amen to that Mo and Erin I'm still crying every time i think of him