tonight i want to talk about the overwhelming sadness in rescue...
Carol · Nov. 30, 2011
because the reality is..it is overwhelming sad.
these animals deserved from the moments of their births to be loved and cared for forever. they did not deserve to be abandoned, they did not deserve to be neglected or abused. most animals live in multiple homes in their lifetimes and many of those homes just simply are not aware or care enough to learn to be aware enough to provide them with even the basics of responsible care.
so many of these animals languish and finally die on the street or in shelters without ever really knowing that they did in fact deserve a better life than they had.
the fact of the matter is that those of us who choose to work in rescue know this sadness well. it is what motivates and drives us to one by one followed by the next one and the next one to work to minimize the sadness.
we cannot create a perfect world where no animal is ever de-valued, nor can we turn a blind eye to the devastation that surrounds us. somehow we have to find a place in our hearts and souls and inside our heads that allows us to not be beaten and bled to death by the unending hopelessness.
because there is hope. the hope is inside us. we carry the light to make the world a little bit better in just a few simple ways that make a great deal of difference to the animals who come to us. first we give them a warm, dry and comfortable bed, then we give plenty of fresh food and water, we add some treats, some cuddles, a kind word every day, and appropriate medical care. soon we start knowing their likes and dislikes and they become a unique personality to us and suddenly for the first time in many of their lives they have these simple things that they can count on.
these animals do not ask for a perfect world..they just ask not to be alone anymore...forgotten and invisible.
i get angry sometimes and many days i am overwhelmed at the unending lines of homeless senior and special needs animals. and if i look out too far at that line stretching on over the horizon, i sometimes think..."what is the point of this?"
well..the point is that monty died with my tears on his face..not under some shed or bush in the pouring rain. every day of his life since he came off the street, he knew he was important to me. he had warm and dry and comfortable beds, he had his soupy food and water available to him, he had the very best of medical care, and he was loved. monty's life was never perfect..not from the day that he was born and not on the day that he died..it was never perfect anywhere in the middle either...but for the last 3 or 4 years, monty was never forgotten or invisible...monty was real..probably for the first time in his entire life.
i cannot imagine living a life that is non existent, unrecognized. and that is where the sadness in rescue really ends because we take these nonexistent creatures out of the shadows of their invisible worlds and we bring them out into the light.
suddenly they become real.
the animals come marching into the light one by one...and soon there were hundreds..and in all of the rescues in our land...they became thousands...and millions.
and the people who choose to be involved in rescue made a difference to a million lives..that is where the darkness of sadness stopped and the light for each of them first began.
the only way to survive in rescue is to focus on what you are doing and do it the best that you can.
there is a lot of darkness out there in the domestic animal world..i have it in me to light a few more candles for them.
I can totally see where Barbara and Suzanne are coming from. For my crew of six cats this has been a bad year for vet bills - somewhere between $6000 and $7000 to date. That is over a third of a year's pension. But you also have to consider the cost of running a vet clinic in today's economy. Everything has gone sky high. Utilities, property taxes, you name it. The vets and vet techs are in the same shoes we are. They have make a living too. Kudos to the job they do taking care of my critters. You can complain about pet food and litter prices too. When you see a difference of 20 or 30 cents in the price of one can you know someone is making a hefty markup. For sure the cheaper priced store isn't selling it at a loss. The cost for taking care of the animals gets us more worked up because it is a very emotional issue but costs are spiralling all over.