building bridges

i think sometimes i drive the staff crazy.
last year the staff set up my room for me..it was nice but i said keats didn't want his bed on the far side he wanted it next to me. finally they moved it for him but i said he wanted one bigger. they made it bigger.
keats had a bad night while i was gone, everyone thought he had a bladder infection...i said he was missing me. we took a urine spec to the vet, it was all clear, keats is settled at night again. i am home and at night i check in with him periodically in case he needs anything.
shyla apparently doesn't eat when i am gone, she has to be handfed in order to eat.she eats fine when i am here but when i am not she feels more anxious.
on the weekends mo tells me, my dogs sometimes won't hang out at the barn if i am on site. they are more interested in where i am and what i am doing.
today i was watching brooklyn, even tho she wasn't scratching, i knew she was itchy. when i mentioned it to renee she took brooklyn right away and gave her a bath. brook is more settled and content tonight.

i think someone might think that i think the animals actually talk to me.

they do and they don't but i am not crazy.
the relationships i have with the house or mp building animals are vastly different. it is the house animals that i have the strongest and deepest connection with, i live with them.

here is the thing...
i have been doing rescue for almost 20 years. its not an 8 hour day where i put in my time and then go home.
i live with them, i sleep with them, i eat with them. i talk with them, i touch them, i interact with them continually as part of their family.
there have been thousands of them over the years and not one or two or four at a time...there are 50 living in my house at any one time. i made my house a shelter but i also made it their home. and i became the one constant, never changing family in their time of stress and need.
i became their anchor in the storm.
and they became the links in the chain that binds me.
a chain without an anchor is subject to the waves of time and an anchor heeds the chain for purpose.
i went to disney, the happiest place on earth and i missed them and they missed me.

the connection i have to the animals here was forged thru deep caring but also from deep ponderings...i watch them all of the time. i have watched them all for 20 years. and somehow i started hearing them..not in words..maybe from vast experience, or from unconsciously reading subtle body language or maybe it is something more magical then even disney could conceive.
whatever it is..i hear them.
and my hearing them makes them feel safe.
and they hear me.
sometimes i think they hear me better than people even hear me.

i have said all along that the animals are a bridge.
i have just realized that i too am a bridge.
or maybe together we are a two way bridge.

i think we all have the ability to be bridges...connecting to each other.
but we have to want to connect, to understand the other or we are just a loose plank floating alone out to sea.