The Heart of Rescue

What is the heart of rescue?

Everyday, since beginning to volunteer as a rescue transporter (and general supporter of a rescue group) I  see pictures of loving animals sitting in shelters, waiting for something to happen.

There is one outcome, someone will come for them.
That's right, every single dog. There is a catch however. The catch is whether that the person who comes for this dog works for the shelter or not. If they work for the shelter, this poor person has to take the dog on their last walk, this is shelter life.

 
Shelter life doesn't care if the dog is healthy or not, it doesn't care if they are 8 weeks or 8 years. Shelter life operates on one thing, Time.


It is the one gift and curse each dog is given, Time, and in shelters it is a VERY limited commodity. Dogs are either adopted or rescued in the time they have, or their time runs out, and in a story repeated hundreds if not thousands of times per day, the dog is walked out of their cage, and never returns.


Here I must apologize, because I have given your name, your identity, to a thief. Well, perhaps not a thief, but all the same, this thing now knows you as it has known me for a while now. It is the heart of rescue.

Either by reading this, or seeing a picture of a dog in need, or just by visiting a shelter while looking for a pet, the heart of rescue will find you and will ask for one tiny piece of your heart. Not a lot mind you, just one little piece. 

It might be in the form of a donation to a shelter, or adopting your next pet instead of buying them, or transporting a pet to a rescue, or fostering one, or maybe simply by reposting the picture of a dog in need (or any of the other animals waiting for homes) or passing on an email, but all the same, you will feel, deep in your heart, a tiny pain. 

A twinge of pain about the suffering our best friends are facing. This pain is the heart of rescue preparing to collect it's tiny piece, all you have to do, is one thing. Just one. Share the picture, drive an hour in the car, open your home or maybe your wallet but there is some, single, special way you can help and it involves giving up this one little resource, and a little piece of your heart.

This one little piece, from each person, will come together, and with all those little pieces it forms one heart. This is the heart of rescue, and it is incredibly powerful! 

It is the force that helps thousands of dogs escape the shelter, sometimes with seconds to spare. It is that voice in your head screaming to pull over when you see a lost dog on the side of the road. It can rescue a dog from near death in Georgia, bring them to Florida, and then send them to Canada where one person is waiting to give their one piece of the heart and a home to a dog who will never be abandoned again.

The heart is like a bank loan. You give it your little piece, and it takes it for a while, but then it pays you back. You see photos of the dog in their new home, you hear how your donation helped a dog escape in the nick of time, or you know, deep down in your heart, that your one little piece, for one little life, mattered.

If you are anything like me, at this point, you might be reaching for the hammer and chisel because after I experienced this for the first time, I was ready to give about a thousand pieces of my heart. To some extent I have and some of them... some of them will remain holes in my heart.

I gave a piece of my heart to Elvis, a puppy who never made it out and whose face I can still see every time I shut my eyes... to a litter of puppies who were never born because the shelter aborted them all, within days of their impending birth. Those little holes will remain, and I am thankful for that.

The holes remind you that the problem still exists. Thousands of perfectly adoptable dogs will die this month because there was simply not enough time, not enough homes, not enough pieces to help the heart of rescue pull them from the shelter. The holes push you to give just one more piece. One more "share" on Facebook, one more mile in the car, one more bit of love. Lives hang in the balance, waiting, holding on to what little time they have left. Maybe you can feel the twinge, it hurts, and sometimes it can hurt a lot, but it is worth it, they are worth it.

This year as we make our Christmas lists, 

Please, remember that a shelter dog has only one thing on his or her list... 

......

To Live.

....

I'll donate a piece of my heart to that.

This post was inspired by the following Video: