The season of miracles

As director of a large rescue devoted to saving lives of small dogs 15 pounds and under, each day is filled with tough decisions, very hard physical work and emotional roller coasters.... I am not what I would term 'religious' as a person, but I do consider myself a spiritual person... 

Each day --- at a minimum --- I have to say 'no' to at least 10 dogs or more... We have limited space, but even moreso, we constantly battle the war of limited funds... Just like everyone else, I make decisions based upon what we have in the bank... Because we are a No-Kill rescue, when I say yes to taking in a dog, it is from the moment they arrive until they find their furever home... 

In between this time, we take care of their food, boarding, vet bills - you name it... I am amazed at how many collars we go through - between those being chewed, others wearing out, etc. this is a small but costly item that we consistently are replacing... We go through a large bottle of HE detergent every two days because of all of the laundry we do that provides clean blankets for the dogs, cleaning towels and rags, etc.  Our food bill alone is about $250 a week - we don't feed junk dog food, but not even close to the best available.

Everything is based upon how much money we have and it is seldom even close to being enough to maintain everything... 

Just like pet owners, we get faced with what becomes life and death situations based upon money as well... In February of 2011, we pulled a dog out of a high kill shelter that we felt would easily be adopted... 

BlueBelle was much larger than any Chihuahua I've ever seen, and she's a Blue - not a common coat coloring... I don't even believe she has any Chi blood in her but because most dogs with pointed ears and a curled tail are classified as Chihuahuas at the shelters, that is how they labeled her... 

And she's been one of our 'stabilizer' dogs... A dog we could put in with another new rescue suffering from shelter shock - scared, unbalanced, off track, with or without good canine manners... She has been my foster at times and with another foster mom as well... Nothing wrong with her - just hasn't been a choice when potential adopters looked at her... And because she's 7 years old, most people just passed her on by, considering her 'too old' to adopt (although she is a midlife dog)...

A couple weeks ago we noticed one of her mammary glands was bothering her and I think she chewed at it, opening it up and needing vet attention... At the time, we were also hit with three other dogs needing very expensive surgery, but with BlueBelle, we knew if it didn't get medical attention right away, the condition would get worse rapidly... 

Even with a rescue discount, a radical mastectomy estimate ran over $600... Faced with the other surgeries as well, all of a sudden we as a rescue were faced with $2,500 of vet bills that HAD to be done... And none could really wait, so we had to juggle... 

This is the tough part of what I do - making life and death decisions day in and day out... Which dogs do we save, how do we find the money to do these expensive surgeries and cover extensive vet bills, can we afford to take on any more 'hard cases' or another dog or mom with a litter?

And with BlueBelle - what if it is cancer we are dealing with?  Do we take the risk and do the mastectomy, hope we caught it in time and she regains her health?  Or would I have spent a lot of our very few dollars on a dog that will not regain good health again?  These decisions are what has given me so many gray hairs and at times, wears down the very spiritual fibers of my soul.

We took the risk and set up BlueBelle's surgery for yesterday morning... One of our TLC volunteers offered to foster BlueBelle temporarily so that she could recover in a home environment with lots of extra TLC and attention... 

Kathryn brought BlueBelle to the rescue shop yesterday morning and then I made the second leg to Caring Hands... Worried about what the end results of everything would be, I started to pull out of the Simi Town Center mall parking lot and was faced with a HUGE rainbow displayed across a very dark and angry looking sky... 

The sky looked like my mood and worried state... When I saw the rainbow, it's base at the earth in the direction of Caring Hands in Thousand Oaks, it lifted my spirits... I took it as a sign BlueBelle's results will come back that the tumor is not cancerous... Keeping our fingers crossed here for the next week to ten days that we get positive results back from the biopsy done... 

After all, it is the season of miracles, right???