love by...

necessity, not by choice.

i picked up angel from the vets late yesterday afternoon. she was a totally different dog...bright, alert, interactive...basically sucking up to everyone just like a good dog should.

i get her home, the ears and tail go down...she shuts herself off. her bed was saturated from where she laid for the next few hours. she bit me again when i tried to pick her up to give her the insulin injection. i put a blanket over top of her, picked her up, placed her in the cage, gave her canned food, gave her her poke, told her she was a good girl and did it all as kindly and gently as could be.

this dog hates me. she is a very smart girl. she has come to the conclusion that she is being held hostage in this horrible place and i am the one directly responsible.

to a certain degree, she is absolutely correct....i may not be responsible for her illness, nor that her family left her here rather than taking care of her. but i am responsible for letting her come here in order to save her life.

this is a minor detail of which angel is totally unaware.

in the end, however long it takes...angel will love me because she will have no choice. i will be the one to take care of her. i will be the one who sees to her needs, i will be the one who is always kind to her and she will eventually cave in and accept that i am all she will get.

isn't this sad for both her and for me? isn't it sad for all of us here to a certain degree?

i give them my life, every single thing i have inside me...and one on one..maybe it would be like this heavenly gift, but with 100 to one, it is barely enough for them to pretend at least the best that they can that they are happy with me.

and i pretend too, because i have to too. what is the alternative for all of them? nothing very nice.

it is an odd and hurtful way to live, this balancing on all of our dreams...their dream for one person to love of their own and my dream that one day they will love someone better than me.

i have done my job when they leave here thankful to never see me again.

it sucks and in an hour i go to get jesse from his lonely and boring kennel. i wonder how hard i will have to work to get him to pretend to love me because he has no choice in who he loves anymore either.

you know for all of my "this is the hardest part of rescue"...this is the hardest part of rescue...making them love me because now they have no choice, they HAVE to settle for me because there is no one else.

i don't like being a default love...it hurts my human heart.

feeling sorry for myself this morning, all weepy, sad and weird...here i am, this worshipper of unhappy and wrecked animals, committed to seeing them smile and feel well and today i am reduced to reluctantly torturing a little vulnerable, frightened blind dog because her world just bottomed out.

sucks to be me...and angel....and maybe jesse today too.

(and as i finish proof reading this, squirt and suzie are rolling around on my lap, licking me everywhere that they can..."you don't suck, we love you carol!"..if only they knew what a really good home actually meant.)

oh and...notice to all volunteers...wolfie and zues are in the shop (unlike angel who wants to break out) those two morons are still determined to break in.