They say sometimes you have to go through the worst to get to the best! These words are very apt when it comes to rescued animals: they often go through the worst days, weeks, and years to get to the best – the best life! Rescuers often make the impossible, possible for some of these animals when it comes to getting them out of their situations. It’s not always a straight forward surrender. Then again anything or person worth having is never going to be straightforward – we get that!
So, my fingers reluctantly type these once ‘hard to type’ words again, ‘Sia has been stolen’. Last September a rescue called me to tell me about a little female staffie who was living 24/7 in a tiny backyard filled with rubbish. The plan was to breed her. This plan had to be intervened with as the yard was extremely dirty and dangerous for puppies to be born into! Sia was lucky as a man who lived close by kept a caring eye on her. Everyday he would put food in tin foil in order to squeeze it through a gap in a fence and put a stick in that he would use to open it up. It was this man that brought Sia’s need for rescue to the rescue’s attention. He befriended the owners and they agreed to surrender her. I met him and together we took her for a walk to get her use to me before I would take her to the vet for the next part of getting her ready for her ‘second chance’. He had already done so much for her. Little did we know as we celebrated her new beginning that months later I would be asking for people to share her sweet face with the world to find her. Her second chance was in a lovely home where she got to lie on the sofa and watch TV and have her belly rubbed. She was so happy. . . and now someone has stolen her from her home and her happiness.
We’re lucky (well most of the time) because we can constantly bestow on ourselves and others the magical ‘second chance’. We forgive, we move on, we change, we leave, we begin again…. we are in control (if only we all realised that), like switching a channel because we don’t like what we are watching, we can switch the scenes of our own lives with time and with effort! Then again sometimes it’s only ‘parts’ of our lives that need up-lifting or ‘redecorating’. Parts are easier to change than everything! Sometimes we get overwhelmed when we think everything is wrong! Our thinking is not always right!
The heatwave has brought with it a new wave of pressure on rescuers and volunteers! Yes, it goes from ‘nothing to eat’ for some horses to ‘nothing to eat or drink’. I think one of the saddest things I’ve seen this week is a pony licking the drops from a plastic bottle that some passer-by cruelly threw over the gate! As she moved and squashed it a few drops came out. I was so happy to produce a bucket and water for her. She was grateful; they always are. I tend to keep my head down and get on with it when I have to pull up alongside busy roads and lift water and buckets out. So, to do it, I just block out the cars slowing down to see what you’re doing because I find it hard. I don’t really know why! But on one of these days this week, I got really angry; I pulled up on the hard-shoulder and watched a small pony wobbling from side to side, and I watched her fall down. Getting over wire fencing is never easy as there is no where to get your foot in,and in PE in school I was never good at scaling the jumps. So not only did I have to do it once, I had to do it three times as with panic I didn’t bring all I needed at once. On the other side of the fence, cars continued to slow down to see was the pony OK. Nobody asked.
I don’t know what it is about passer-bys – well some anyway, when you’re with horses that are not yours! It brings out the best and the worst in people; you remember both. Like the very assertive cyclist this Winter who cycled up to my car and bellowed, ‘it’s about time you fed her’ as I lifted a bale of hay out of the passenger seat. The words wouldn’t come out quick enough, ‘but she’s not mine!’
Back to second chances. . . many were dished out this week and two were taken away. Like Gobnait, the now 7 week old kitten who is now walking away with two pins holding her leg together. And a little dog who has had more litters than the owners can remember was spayed and returned home. A second chance of life without always being a mommy! Fionn, a stunning stallion, came up in my memories today. He once lived a very lonely life in Ennis. When he was a foal, I found him sleeping in a circle of rushes, that he had made his home. He was so very afraid of everything. To see him like a regal and proud gelding in Germany, well, it reminds me, it’s worth fighting for those second chances.
Yes, it’s heartbreaking to know, that someone out there has stolen Sia and her rescue friend and as I type this, they are somewhere out there waiting for their human Daddy to just come and collect them. For them, they went up to the unwanted visitor/visitors and welcomed them to their home. The visitors stole them instead from the only real home they ever knew!
But life will always offer us second chances; it’s called tomorrow. I hope tomorrow someone will ring my phone and I can get in the car to pick up two stolen dogs and bring them home.
This week I’m grateful to O’Connors Veterinary Surgery for helping Bella. Not the easiest mare to work with especially when it comes to her problematic teeth!!Thanks again to BabyDog Rescue for more dog food which I give to the dogs who need it around Ennis. Grateful to Botanica which is the best fly repellant ever! Thank you to Eva @ Souper for the carrots! Pat for driving me to Cork to do a home check! Finally, thanks to everybody who is sharing the story of two stolen rescues. x
(And no, for those who messaged after the last blog, there never was a second date with F.M!)
The Reluctant Rescuer 