I seem to have a new friend Zelda, she seemed to take a keen interest in me yesterday when I went out to the pasture naked to take some sunrise photos in the mist.
Today, I was fully dressed, but she still was following me around and nuzzling me, and posing for a close-up. Is this a real relationship, is it true love or just a momentary infatuation?
Will Zelda love me with clothes on, or just when I am naked? Is there a future for us?
Of all the many sub-cultures in the vast and diverse pet and animal world, none has interested me more or for a longer time than the dog and animal rescue world, a culture that did not exist a mere generation ago, and that now spans the world, involves tens of thousands of people (no one knows exactly how man) all over the country and much of the world.
Once, and not too long ago, dogs lived outside of the emotional world of people, sleeping in basements and garages, eating table scraps, running loose to break open garbage cans, assault mailmen and milkmen, they pooped where ever they wished, and have sex at will.
They did not have human names or sleep in human beds or go see human style doctors and specialists.
It is different today. Dogs no longer really protect us or help us gather food, their new work is the emotional support of human beings, increasingly disconnected from one another, and mired in conflict and disenchantment.
Dogs are our candles, they comfort us, light up our lives, love us without reservation or much hard work. The rise of the Internet brought with it the rise of rescue movement, many thousands of people, almost all women, who rescue dogs, heal and comfort dogs, foster them, and work to find them homes could now speak to one another instantly, and all over the country.
I confess that I have a love/ hate relationship with this movement, perhaps because I am such an ingrained part of it.
People are always lecturing me about the good works of the movement, they do not know or care that I have rescued scores of animals – sheep, cows, horses, chickens, barn cats, dogs, donkeys and even some Brown Swiss Steers.
Rescue people are not always good listeners. Some need to declare themselves. I was recently driving behind a car that had this bumper sticker: “Rescue Dog On Board, Caution!” I wondered what the real point of this bumper sticker was. That it is okay to plow into a car with plain old dogs, but not with “rescue” dogs?” Was the driver worried about the safety of the dogs, or tooting her own noble horn?
I know what it means to rescue an animal – Bud, is another one, coming here in October – I know how good it makes me feel when I rescue a dog, I know what an emotional experience it is. I will never refer to him as a rescue dog, he might just pick up the undertone of pity that goes with the term.
I am working with a very good and inspiring rescue to help the saddest of the saddest, the homeless heartworm dogs of the South. It’s called the Friends OF Homeless Animals (FOHA/RI), and that is a good and healthy turn for me, it opens me up. I admire them. It’s about time for me.
Rescuing a dog makes me feel good, it is quite selfish, but I do not ever think it makes me superior to someone who buys a dog, or gets one in a different way, or simply “adopts” one, as people used to say. One of my squawks with the movement is that it often seems to nourish a sense of righteousness and grievance.
Do dogs need to be called “rescues?” Do they care? Does it give them better lives? Can we really love dogs if we dislike people?
We can forget sometimes that American dogs are the most fortunate animals on the earth, the most loved, the most spoiled, the safest and the most protected and confined.
For all the good work they do, I wish some of the rescue-spawned ideas were better thought out. There are millions of dogs now living in shelters, many seriously ill or with no real hope of adoption. This generosity is accorded very few human beings in this world. Should we never euthanize dogs for any reason, and at any cost, in a country with so many vulnerable people?
And is it really true that the poor and the elderly and people who work or can’t afford tall fences should be denied the right to own an love a needy dog?
I wrote about rescue earlier today, and one rescue worker posted this message on my Facebook Page:
“Our rescue takes in quite a few dogs with serious issues. This girl is Amelia (a photo of a chihuahua). I pulled her from the shelter near Detroit in May. She is still recovering in foster care and she is the sweetest thing. That’s what rescue is really about. Finding those who would otherwise be left behind and giving a new life.”
This is true. But I wish the sender wrote something about her self as well as the good work she does.
She was right, this is what rescue is about, but it is not all that rescue is about.
it’s about people as much as dogs. This is just why I do it and have been drawn to it for years, even as it often makes me uncomfortable to save and cosset animals in a world where so many people suffer from hunger and deprivation.
But for me, as a writer, rescue is about much more than saving needy and vulnerable dogs. It is not just what dogs need, it is also about what people need. That is the fascinating and unexplored part of it. The rescue movement (I even wrote a book about it called The New Work Of Dogs) makes perfect sense once you study the time frame of its rise, as I have done many times over.
Our passion for dogs began to rise in the 60’s, when TV and highways and a loss of religious conviction and a disenchantment with politics and technology began to erode our sense of well-being and community. More and more we have turned to dogs, to loving them, needing them, saving them, to heal our own wounds and loneliness.
After the Internet, the movement just took off, everyone in it could now talk to everyone else in it. A community, of kind of nation, a blood tribe, was formed.
For me, the real story for me and for many others – I have so many friends in this movement – is not what the dogs need but what people need. Dogs are a mirror of us, and no movement mirrors our fragmented world as much as the rescue movement.
I can’t generalize too much about it, it is composed of so many different and diverse parts.
But the parts I always want to explore are our own motives and self-awareness.
Why are we do drawn to rescuing animals and finding homes for them when hundreds of thousands of our fellow humans live on the streets. Why do we need dogs to support our emotional lives rather than people?
The rescue movement can sometimes spawn a rigid kind of self-righteousness, a sense of moral superiority, quite evident in so many of the messages I receive, especially when I question it.
This is a disconnect for me. Dogs make me humble, not arrogant or certain, never superior.
They always reveal my many flaws, and challenge me to be a better person. I don’t like to wave the rescue thing like a flag, tnat is the opposite of humble, even if it is good.
Why do we spent billions of dollars feeding them elaborate and mostly unnecessary foods when millions of children don’t have enough to eat?
I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I think they are important questions. They force us to reveal ourselves.
When I decided to adopt Bud, I went off into a corner of the room and sat in solitude, and asked myself: why do I want this dog? What is this doing for me? What it is that I need? I love the dog, but not always me.
The dogs can’t ask these questions, there is no need. They love who feeds and shelters and loves them. But I need to know. When people thank me for rescuing a dog, an odd thing for me, it never makes me feel especially good about myself.
Instead, it makes me take a look at myself, and my deepening search for spirituality.
If I know what I need, then I know what he might need.
We love to look at them, we resist looking at ourselves.
Yet you can’t possibly understand the one without knowing the other, that is what our relationship with dogs is really all about. Any good dog trainer will look you squarely in the eye and say this is not about them, it’s about you. It is always about us.
I think all people yearn for a blessing. I see the one thing I share with all of the rescue people in the world is a hard truth fo me. I share a common sense of brokenness.
I have learned to own this rather than deny it or run from it. When I stop hiding and say “yes” to it, then I can face my own brokenness and that of others with open eyes.
That’s good news for Bud.
Stunning and wonderful news today from Sakler Moo, a member of the refugee soccer team and the winner of the highest grade point average in his entire Junior High School, was admitted to the Albany Academy this afternoon, on a generous but partial scholarship.
The Albany Academy is the most prestigious and academically challenging school in this region, if not the state. It is a remarkable achievement for Sakler and his family, who I know well as a gifted musician, artist and scholar.
He is a private, serious and intense student, he has no time for social media, smart phones or parties, he studies and reads and paints all the time.
Sakler’s story is the a great American story, and he is on his way to being an American success story. His family, caught in a brutal civil war fled Thailand and into Burma – Sakler was born in the woods while they were in hiding – and eventually to a United Nations refugee camp, where he spent the first years of his life.
His sisters were killed during the journey.
They came to America, where the family works hard but struggles, like all refugees.
His mother is determined to help Salker get into this school, her life, like most refugees, is about hope for her children, since everything was taken from them.
The Albany Academy, considered one of the most difficult schools in the state to get into, costs $28,000 a year. The school has offered Sakler an annual scholarship of $22,000 plus a $1,000 admission fee, due at the end of this week.
So Sakler needs about $6,000 a year for the next four years. His family is determined to pay a substantial portion of that.
I have offered to pay the admission fee, I have the money, and tomorrow, Ali, who has been Sakler’s mentor and supporter for some years, and his parents and Ali and me will meet with school officials to see how we can support Sakler and pay the difference between what his family can offer and what the school can give him.
One of Sakler’s elementary school teachers has been working with Sakler for some years to advance his education, she has been instrumental in getting him to this point. She’s coming to the also, she is his champion.
Needless to say, Ali and I have been on the phone all day – he is exhausted after four days in a summer camp with the soccer team – trying to figure out how we can help Sakler get into this school.
In addition to the $1,000, he will need additional funds this year and every year for the next four years. His mother promises to pay some of that money, using her tax refund and if necessary, and getting another job.
We will seek the help of other people, and I believe I can raise at least several thousand dollars a year, we’ve done that a number of times. That’s what he will need to make up the difference. We might find some other sponsors to help. I guess I am one of them.
Ali and I are committed to making this happen, and to supporting Sakler through this entire experience, we both know him and admire him, he has great character and serious of purpose, he is interested in becoming an architect or engineer.
His gifts as an artist will support him in that way.
I talked to Sakler just last week, he said his favorite activity is to be a member of the soccer team. We just raised money for him to go to high school with new clothes and shoes, the Albany Academy students wear uniforms. Ali is heartbroken to think of Sakler leaving the soccer team, but thrilled for this opportunity for him.
In the score or more conversations I have had with Sakler (who is working on a portrait of me for my birthday), he has never mentioned his horrific experiences in the jungles of Burma or in the notoriously crowded and violent refugee camps.
He has never complained about his life.
So I’m not asking anyone for money, not quite yet.
I think that will happen later in the week. I want to meet with the school officials, hopefully negotiate whatever I can negotiate on his behalf, if anything, and see if there is any give on their side.
I need to know precisely what he needs and to evaluate exactly what I think we can do. I think this is right in the wheelhouse of the Army Of Good, I can hardly think of a better cause, or one that does more good to an individual’s life.
After we meet, if everyone is comfortable, I will open a special Sakler Moo education account to raise funds for his education at this very good school and keep the funds separate and accountable, as all my work is.
I believe this must happen, this is a life that must be supported, a young man of great promise and purpose and setting out to live his destiny in America, the land of opportunity, especially for the tired and the poor.
I really want to make this happen, and so do many other people. Ali loves Sakler like a son, and believes this to be a message from God. I know Sakler well, he has great character and purpose.
Below. Audio: Sakler Moon Gets Admitted. Got To Make It Happen.
I asked Carol Johnson for the name of the toughest case on their adoption list, the one dog she thought would be the hardest of many sad and sometimes hopeless cases in the FOHA/RI adoption program to find a home for.
She gave me the name of Evie, a 10-year-old mixed breed chihuahua abandoned at a notorious shelter in Texas.
Everyone had given up on Evie, nobody wanted to pay all of her medical costs, so Carol and her group decided they had to try to save her, she was headed for euthanization. When I first saw Evie’s photo a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t bear to put it up on the blog, it was too disturbing for me.
All the more reason to write about it. What is disturbing is the work.
Evie, says Carol, has never known a human who treated her with affection, yet she is a sweet and affectionate dog. She has months worth of medical care ahead of her before she can be cleared for adoption, and Carol says she knows full well that the shelter would have euthanized her.
Carol drove three hundred miles to Texas to get Evie and bring her back to Arkansas.
Friends Of Homeless Animals/RI decided to pull her out of the shelter and give her a chance to find her first loving home, even though they know the odds are long. They are asking for an adoption donation of $299 (transportation costs included), she faces more than $1,000 in medical costs, which FOHA will pay for.
Carol is eager to point out that her group never makes any profit from donation fees, they go to pay the enormous medical costs they incur, the healthier dogs pay for the sicker ones.
Evie won’t be released for adoption until she is healthy. She is, says Carol, a nice dog. Carol doesn’t hype her dogs. And it is possible Evie will never be that healthy.
Carol doesn’t sugar coat the dog’s life, Evie was quite severely neglected before she was dumped off at the animal shelter. She has a grade 4 heart murmur, a hernia and heartworm.
For now, she is hairless.
I can’t honestly say that I would ever have adopted a dog like this, or that I would now. Maybe one day.
It takes a particular kind of heart and commitment to take in a dog like this, I don’t know that I’m up to that. Many shelters and groups would have put Evie down, so very few people would adopt her. And I’m not urging anyone else to adopt her or assuming that they will. I have no ego about that.
Evie represents a very personal decision for a very unusual person.
I am drawn to writing about Carol and her group, and these desperately needy homeless and abandoned dogs, the worst of the worst cases when it comes to abuse and abandonment. This dog and this group and this writing pushes me right up against my comfort zone, I’m not sure I agree that dogs like this ought to be kept alive, she has suffered so much.
But Carol’s dedication and empathy are both powerful and infectious, and I am eager to see if it is possible for dogs like this to find good homes, even as I do not think I would have the stomach for it myself.
What were you thinking?, I asked her when you decided to give this dog a last chance.
“I thought she deserved a good home before the end of her life,” she said, “something about her said “don’t give up on me.”
I asked Carol what it was that makes her and the others in her group decide to keep a dog like this alive, and she said that is hard to define.
Something about Evie conveyed the feeling that she has something to offer, is both loving and curious. She is already improving, says Carol and she is dedicated to making her comfortable and safe no matter how long she stays with her.
It’s not like her group takes in every dog. Some are too sick, she said, or are suffering too much.
I think in some measure, Carol wants to give this dog a loving and caring home before she dies, something the has never known. I can see how satisfying that could be.
If Carol and the other members of her group are willing to take this dog in, I wonder if anyone reading this would want to do the same. It would be months before she was even available for transport.
I think it will be interesting for me to see. This is the kind of rescue I have avoided for all of my life, the dogs I have “rescued,” were young, vital and quite healthy. Bud has heartworm, but he is a young and otherwise healthy dog.
There are rescues and there are rescues. He would surely have found a home, Evie may never find a home. If anyone out there wants to change that story – it is up to you, I’m not pushing it – you can contact FOHA/RI or e-mail the very dedicated and committed Carol Johnson, a new and valued friend of mine, at [email protected]. Carol has a big heart but she is a truth-teller, she will tell you no lies.
Let’s see what happens. I am somewhat in awe of Carol Johnson and her empathy, even as I wrestle with the many ethical issues relating to dogs and their lives. She is a very good person.
Maria and Kevin haul our second paper Burch tree into the car for the ride to Bedlam Farm. She dug the hole, I’m the waterer and chronicler. We promised to plant a tree on the farm every year, we want to leave a rich circle of green around the farmhouse for the people who come behind us, and global warming also suggests we should put as much shade as possible around the house for the future.
I won’t be alive to see these trees fully grown, they get to 30 or 40 feet and thicken out. This is the 12th tree we have planted around the farmhouse.
Here, below, something new, something different. I’ve set up a Quick Time Player so that I can record my voice at the end of posts when it’s relevant, when I want to make a point, explain why I wrote something, add something to the essay or piece.
I like the idea of communicating with my readers in different ways, adding my voice as well as my ideas. In our country, we are forgetting how to talk to one another, something I wish to keep alive if I can. So this is yet another way I have of talking with you, another way of your interacting with me.
See what you think, below is my first audio test.
I’ve ordered a microphone but I think this first effort went well. See what you think.
