Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs....I was reading a blog a bit ago written by a self proclaimed dinosaur. She's an animal rescue person who is my age. In the beginning she rescued cats, and for the last five years has been a multi-species rescue. Or, as she told me once, she now has the hobby farm she has wanted since she was a kid.

My immediate thought when I read her proclamation, was to think of the lady whom I met one day while she chasing a dog down my alley. I helped her finally catch him and we introduced ourselves to each other. She was Nancy Mason and she ran one of the very few animal rescues in B.C. which was called Mercy Volunteers For Animals. We talked for a bit, she explaining about her organization, and me immediately volunteering to foster. I fostered dogs for her for 8 years, then moved to Manitoba. I was 20 when I met her and she had to be in her mid 50's.

She did more work in the name of rescue than the self proclaimed dinosaur ever has done, and can ever imagine to do. Nancy passed away a number of years ago, she had to be in her 80's. Back in Nancy's day there wasn't the ease of the Internet. It was snail mail, horrendously expensive long distance phone calls where you waited till after 6 pm to call to get the cheapest rates, personally driving dogs across the provinces, not the free airline deals they have now. The fund-raising was almost nil, not like the $20,000 + the *dinosaur* can raise in one evening. Funds were for the most part, paid out of pocket by foster people like myself.

Now, Nancy was a true dinosaur in the rescue world.

Or the 2 elders on a reserve near Princeton. One is 87, her sister is 91. They STILL spay/neuter/feed/foster out of their own pockets. I met them in 1982, through Nancy. I cannot say how many dogs they have tended to, but the number might be 3 times as high, or probably higher as the year I met them! They've been rescuing since they were in their late teens! And there isn't any fancy fund-raising for them either. Or internet. I visited them 3 weeks ago and loaded them up with some kibble kindly donated by a grocery store in town. They are still rescuing, with the help of a few family members now.

They are dinosaurs in the rescue world.

So, until the self proclaimed dinosaur does even a smidgen of what these 3 ladies have accomplished, she should quit her ceaseless whining and just freaking do what she has chosen to do. What with the mass of volunteers, the few staff and fund-raising her rescue has, this is a cake walk compared to what Nancy did, and Mabel and Lorraine still do.

And here's a raspberry for anyone who thinks that they are all that and more!