Answering the call....

I'll just get straight to the point. No point sugar coating it.

If you as Jedi are not sure how to help the community, remember that there are always four leggeds that always need help in our shelters and rescues there is always room for extra hands.

I am a board member and volunteer a lot of my time for a local rescue. Usually I handle a lot of the horse stuff, as there is always folks to handle the kittens and puppies. Being that I also work for Animal Control sometimes I am the one that actually seizes animals from bad situations and gets them directly to the rescue, helps aid with recovery and then helps adopt the animal into a forever home.

Yesterday I got a call from my freind the Veterinarian who heads the rescue. She was in need of some help. A 5 month old Chihuahua puppy had come into the shelter under shady circumstances. Both front legs severely broken. (long story) Due to the nature of the injuries and the complex nature she did not feel she had the experience to rebreak the one leg and set it correctly and pin and plate the other one. The rescue had contacted another animal hospital 70 miles away who did have more experience and was willing to take in the puppy for surgery today if the pup could be gotten to them.

Well due to the veterinarians own emergencies at her clinic etc.......she reached for the phone and called me. I used to work for her and she told me how bad this one was. I quickly rearranged my meeting schedule for the evening and as soon as I got out of work my husband and I drove to the rescue. The vet came out in between client emergencies and gave me the rundown on this little kiddo. We took the x-rays and all of her paperwork and off we went.

We didn't get more than a quarter mile before she started screaming in her kennel. I stopped the car and checked her. She had summer salted forward and all the pressure of her tiny body was on those two broken front legs. I picked her up and calmed her down. This time laying her down in the kennel and bracing her legs with padding to help take off pressure. I started driving again and again she started screaming in pain. I looked at my husband and said he was going to have to drive because she needed to be supported without weight on those legs even though the vet had given her enough pain killers to knock down a great dane. We stopped again, changed drivers and I picked her up, cuddling her again in my arms. Her cries stopped instantly and went instead to whimpers as she snuggled into my chest. Within twenty minutes she was fast asleep, and would wake up from time to time the lick my face. We got her to the clinic who was waiting for us with two minutes to spare. When the vet tech picked her up out of my arms she started screaming again. I told her to be brave and I would see her soon knowing full well she's coming my house to foster so I can care for her while those breaks heal correctly.

Some jerk did that. However we can be better. Maybe animals are not your thing. Heck she's one little dog in this huge dog eat dog world. I share this story with you to inspire you to reach out and find something that you can do. I'm cried a lot of tears last night. But for those 70 miles I tried my best to comfort that little dog, she didn't know what was going on or why this had been done to her. She just knew she had strong arms wrapped around her, it was warm, safe and it was loving.

There are great organizations out there even with humans, I promise you this though. Once you start volunteering, your life will be forever changed.

Excellent story, and thank you for sharing...

I would also like to thank you for sharing this.
Animals are so important..
One of my favorite quotes about them:

"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals... In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." - Henry Beston

:passes tissue

i promise that volunteering is on the list

i dont know exact time line for when this new addition to the list will happen, but getting back into college has been achieved for a little while now, the scuba cert. course just started, and the car is probably about to happen this month, and my own place should be next after that

im saying this to explain that the list is actually moving along; a real list of things really being done. not just something i think about, and i promise that volunteering is, now, definitely on it

thanks for sharing this story, thanks for reminding me

Thank you for posting that, Roz.

I have a soft spot for animals too. Mostly cats, though. Where I live there have been a lot of strays, so my family and I currently have 3 cats, 2 of which we rescued as kittens that were apparently homeless, wandering the neighborhood, and 1 from a nearby farm that was overrun with cats. There was another mother cat that had several kittens that we decided to feed, even though she was too scared to actually come in the house or be touched often. They were living in an abandoned garage a couple houses down from us.

Sadly, it seems she and her kittens were trapped and taken elsewhere, or so the rumors went, because they all disappeared on the same day. We heard that someone was trying to "take care" of the cat problem in town, so we haven't seen many like we used to.

I know that isn't exactly volunteering, but there was an obvious problem and I felt bad that all these cats kept wandering around town, probably starving, and I felt I had to do something. I'm no saint, it just made me kind of sad.