Rescue Journal

happily ever after?

Carol  ·  Jun. 23, 2010

i moved brutus out of the cage today and over into one of the medical room pens. ruby is sleeping in sidneys anyway...she likes it better in there so brutus got her pen which was now empty.

i really should move the felv cats over to the medical room now..there is only the rock, murray, miranda, brianne and mama t left in that big open area with the nice outside and mostly empty run....whereas between the medical room and the holding pen outside the aviary...there are 9 cats without all that much room...plus i could move 3 or 4 more out of the house which would be good for everyone.

but..i just don't want to mess with the felv cats..maybe soon...but not yet. and once that area gets turned over to negative cats...we won't be able to take in felv's anymore.

i am scraping together all of the money we have to get onto the vet bills this week...i thought we owed about 17 thousand but it is actually more like 20...that sucks. i am hoping to pull at least together enough to pay them all down by half, and then i am putting a hold on all vet care except for emergencies or things that can't wait.

which means...we cannot save any more animals for a while...each new incoming costs between 1-2 thousand depending on the shape they are in....if they need bloodwork, xrays, spay/neuters, full dental extractions and tumour removals...on geriatric animals it adds up pretty fast.

so..while we might have the space for a couple of dogs right now....we don't have the money to care for them. maybe if we are careful we can pay everyone off fully in september after our big dinner/auction fundraiser.

i am so tired of 10 years of worrying about cash flow to cover the costs of throwaway animals...and as we get better known...the more animals seem to try to find a way in...today there is an email about a 13 and 15 year old pair of husky's plus a guy stopped up here today to ask about us taking in his friend's dog too...sorry you guys, we haven't the resources to help any of you.

saints is not the answer to anyones prayers...jeez, we cannot even get a decent answer on our own prayers...how the heck can we answer someone elses?

it sucks to live in the real world.

poppy's prospectives never showed up..i wasted the entire afternoon when i should have been hauling feed, waiting for them to arrive. oh well.... like i have all the time in the world to waste....anyway, i watched the book of eli for the 3rd time...getting the feed would have been more productive and eased up my day a bit tomorrow too.

apparently the house phone mailbox is full...maybe i should do something about that tomorrow too.

well i better go track frodo down and get him and the mp building settled for bed.

i have kind of lost my positive outlook...maybe too much head in the clouds optimism eventually turns into a pessimistic earthly mess.

rescue sucks, reality sucks....oh where oh where is the happily ever after?

sigh..that 50 million lottery could go a long way towards happily ever after for a lot of wanna-be saints.

but i won't hold my breath.

Comments

lynne

yeah all you need is love sung by the beatles who had money to burn. there is a saying that money does not buy happiness but it sure as hell comes in handy. and it can make one quite happy. i would rather be happy and rich than happy and poor. it would make carol a lot happier and probably make all the unwanted animals happier cause she could take them all in. on another note those are very beautiful pics of spritely. what a magestic creature. and you are right about the permanatly fostering program. it is more animals to pay for. i used to think that you would be paying for them if you still had them at saints so what was the difference. they had great homes but now i see that it only does leave you with another spot to fill and you do fill all the spots. got to get tough sometime carol.

Carol

it is not even about raising enough money anymore, i don't even know any more if it is even possible to really consistently raise the kind of money we need...it is about the rising costs of caring for these guys...there are more and more senior, neglected and medically ill animals trying to avoid death in the shelters, which means getting into a place like saints... more and more every single year. there are very few (if any) places like saints that only takes in the senior medical disasters...and takes in A LOT of them continuously.

the actual vet costs are rising...i remember the days of $25 exam fees and $50 spays and $200 full dentals on the geriatrics..now all of that costs 6 or 800 dollars.
ellie-mae's arthritis medication costs $15 A DAY...it adds up to alot of money to keep an 800 pound pink pig princess comfortable for just one year.
the staffing costs...shit we owe the receiver general about 6 grand already for wage deductions this year...and the accounting, rising insurence costs, the hydro, the heating...it is freaking insane.

saints did reasonably ok when we were smaller, it was still stressful but stress on a much smaller scale (like one in which my paycheque could cover if we ran short of funds)...getting bigger has helped many more animals but pretty much broken the bank.

i truly think that really the only answer is to struggle thru with the ones we already have and find a way to pay for their costs for now...but to let the numbers go down as they die off and not to give their empty spots to anyone else for quite a long while.

i also think we have to stop any more animals from entering our permanent foster program...if they stay here...their spot is already filled but if they go out, it makes room for more in here PLUS we still have to pay for the medical care of the ones who are out in foster.
it was a great idea to get our past guys homes...but eventually the crunch was going to happen. and we can't keep doing both forever.

so i am thinking we grandfather the current fosters under our care but nix that program completely for any new animals.

if the cost of their vet bills is going to mean they can't have a home...oh well, life truly sucks sometimes but at least they have a sort of home here which is better than the ones who we end up turning away.

i am not whining about money because i need someone to step in and fix it all for us (it would be nice but donald trump does not read this blog)..i am whining about it because it is a real reality in rescue for us today.

we are too freaking big...we have too many freaking medically challenged animals who cost way too much freaking money.

i love the little bastards but...love is not enough.
whoever wrote that song... "all you need is love..." was an idiot as far as rescue is concerned...you do need money (and a lot of it) too.

Jenn

online and offline fundraisers are great ... they bring in much needed funds for the vet bills but what we really wanna focus on is expanding out monthly animal sponsorship program because it will bring in reliable monthly funds http://www.saintsrescue.ca/helping/sponsorship.htm

Mauro Salles

What about another "online fundraising"? Or continue the last one (sponsored tables)?

Tracy

Carol,
When I pray to God that I win that Lotto Max 50 million dollars, the first thing I promise him I will do is to help SAINTS and Turtle Gardens!
Maybe if we all pray together, and an animal lover wins that jackpot, some amazing animal rescues will be relieved of their money worries.
Please don't despair...the work you do for senior and unwanted animals is wonderful.
Having adopted a 14 yr old starving, incontinent and wonky-back-ended shepard cross, I have a (VERY) small idea of what you go through in a day. Our local SPCA was looking for a place for her to spend her last few days so she became a member of our family. Nikko graced our home and lives for a full year and brought us hours and hours of joy. I can't believe someone would abandon such an incredible animal and we were lucky to have her. Hopefully, she was able to feel the love and joy back from us.
That's what you give to your animals, Carol, love and joy and peace and a family...when most of them were unwanted, unloved and/or abandoned.
Don't give up!!! Your work is so worthwhile. Those animals are so worth the effort.
Tracy

Lynne & Scott

This sentence made me wince in true pain.

"i am so tired of 10 years of worrying about cash flow to cover the costs of throwaway animals"



I can't imagine the stress you are under caring for all these animals 365 days a year. Please don't forget the wonderful things your work means to the very souls of these animals. Spot would not be where he is today, physically or emotionally, if not for you. And we, as caring people of our animals, would not know about the wonderful work you do. Every day SAINTS gives us faith in the world....

Thank you for that.