The Desperation, Diversion, and Deals. Life, Survival and Philanthropy Inside A War

I think I’m going to shut down the go fund me account. I had started it with every intention of sharing my excitement and inspiring others to join the Ukrainian animal rescue cause. I estimated that the plane ticket would be about $2,000 and the needed medications would be about $3,000. Therefore, $5,000 it was. Within 48 hours I reached the goal. It was the fist big step in making and sharing this experience with the rest of my friends, family and the world. 

And I’m also going to probably start collecting for Ukraine for right now. I need to figure out what’s the best way to help the animals in Ukraine. Without contributing to the corruption and diversion of these dollars that are coming into Ukraine. Everybody around the world almost everybody, is providing resources to the people of Ukraine to try to help them in their effort to fight the Russian invasion of their country. It has affected every single aspect of their lives. Food is expensive gas is almost obsolete people can’t go out at night they can’t turn the lights on they can’t socialize they’re worried about being drafted they are restricted in where they can travel and how far they can travel and it’s frightening on a lot of levels and it’s also getting worse. When it comes to the animals there are a great deal of people who are very compassionate and empathetic inside and out of the country. But they’re also very limited on what they can do. Most people that are there now are the poor and the elderly. They don’t have a lot of land they don’t have a large house and they don’t have any money. Further they were multiple times that I was there and the banks were closed I didn’t know anybody who took a credit card there was no one that took a credit card there so that means people are in long lines for the bank machines if there’s even money there which creates more hysteria and more panic things like food of all kinds are in short supply and two are very expensive. Including dog food and cat food. I saw multiple examples of this. One of the guys from our group left a bag of dog food open on the side of the road in the town that we were in because there were dogs there. The neighbors called the police because they were worried about a new identified or unknown bag even though it’s a bag looks like a bag of dog food on their street. So the police came investigated and realized it was just a bag of dog food. It’s so abnormal for people to be feeding dogs on the street in with bags of dog food because the bags are so expensive that it created a panic in the towns people and the neighbors. When we do get food and the group that I was working with was giving massive amounts of food it Hass to be locked up either. Even if it’s locked up it gets stolen and then sold to private citizens who have pets at home and can still afford to buy food. So even though we’re just providing animal food it’s being diverted or sold. I can’t even get angry at this. Because those people are using that money to buy cheaper food to try to keep these dogs life because they have so many of them. Another good example is that the shelter we were working with which has over 500 animals was taking leftovers from the army base in town which was essentially bread some meat bones leftover meat bones and a whole lot of rice and vegetables. The rescue group got really upset because they had donated food but the food was nowhere to be found. And my answer to it all was although it wasn’t above board and it wasn’t ideal these people have not turned any animals away and therefore there cages are bursting.

I am not asking everyone to jump in, give money, donate a bag of food, but, I am asking you, you reading this, to consider adopting the next time. Maybe today? Don't make up convenient excuses, jut go out, adopt a pet, and save two souls. 

The Common Goal

There is no argument that the focus of everyone's immense efforts here is the animals. 

Me, and the compound kitty, Mitsi.. I do LOVE her!

To have such a strong common goal is the only way this many craggy, crazy people, all deprived of sleep, food, warm comfortable beds and all of the amenities associated with running water, AND, being from all corners of the UK, (and me the single American), could coexist together for weeks on end. Life here is complicated, and full of tragedies. People are trying to live normal lives, but, it is obvious that isn't possible here. Because of the poor living conditions, the overarching fear of air raids, bombs, and all of the insecurities war can present it is difficult to lose your way if you don't have a common goal and purpose. It is the glue that keeps us cohesive. If we didn't have this I am sure all of the ragged edges of all of the hardships would crack us. I am also sure that I am the person who fits in the least here. (I think I am proud of that.)

The depth and width of the pet dilemma that is here is oceanic. Mind boggling. This is a country that has very few frivolities. Dogs roam. Cats roam. People trudge in ratty clothes, and everyone sweeps bent over, scoliosis, kyphosis, nose to the dirt, sweep, sweep, sweep. An old country, old people, old stories of war, a country of tales of having been claimed by others, broken away from them, the castaway step-child and the weight of the world with whom you never know who you will saluting to lives here. These people have so much to manage already that the pets, the kind animals, are stepped over and passed by. To be honest there is probably no way to even begin to suggest an end to this mess. As the war drags on the problems deepen, intensify and coalesce. The lesion this began as has become a metastatic cancer of a wound that never received adequate treatment to begin with. How do we try to end the plight of these animals when we started at accepted indifference?

The animals here, at the compound I stay at, were all extracted (the term they all use) from the streets and abandoned shelters after they lost their residencies to the bombs that their homes became Russian targets of. They are all scarred. Some with obvious wounds, others with anxiety based fear so deeply embedded you don't want to know the source, or, excise the reason. You just assess, be kind, exude confident optimism and take small steps one heartbeat at a time. I am a fixer. I am wired to examine, dissect, treat, cure, and claim victory. here, each of these must be set aside. Reduced, and simplified to simply what I can do in the right here, presently, now. I will go mad, abandon the cause if I try to practice medicine like I do in my well controlled, everything accessible home. There are almost no spayed or neutered animals here. I assume with every tragic life threatening ailment that they come to me with they are also passing it forward to the half dozen offspring within them. Great, the problem multiples as I gaze upon it. There is no end. No finishing point.

The dogs here at the compound came from a shelter in Alexandria Ukraine. The shelter before the war used to run with a capacity of about 40 dogs and cats. When the war hit the numbers surged to 400. When the staff could no longer manage the animals and the war they reduced the care to feeding alone. No cleaning and no exercising. When the threat of further invasions and insecurities presented the shelter staff had to make an even more perilous decision. They opened the cage doors so the pets would not be left to starve. The group when in weeks ago to find many of the animals set free from their cages. The scene they came upon was about 150 animals alive the rest in some form of eaten. It is what we would all be faced with if 5 weeks went by without food or water. The weak, gentle and submissive were not who were left to rescue. Most of these dogs are German Shepherds. All are thin, matted, and apprehensive of humans. this is what war looks like. The war of abandoning human kindness and compassion. It is the face of people we should never be reduced to become. It is also why I am here.

I wonder if as the days pass that I won’t grow more indifferent to this place then desiring to stay and help? It is the same dilemma I face at home as a veterinarian. Do I give up as others have to save my fragile soul, or provide it with barricades shrouded in tattered clothes and fight on?

The Compound, Ukraine Day 2

Day three. Or maybe it is day 2.2-7? It’s a blur. Truly. Too many airports and too many people.

I’m going to do my best to sit down every night and record the day’s events. Many days start with overly ambitious plans that are quickly thwarted by mucky, meddling bureaucrats and their tedious paperwork bound permission slips. The weather seems to waiver between wet and cold and windy and cold. Layers are important, but, running water and washing needs are absent. Dirt is everywhere. Veterinary work comes with dirt, feces, urine and disease. Hoses, showers, and washers are the waterways and weapons of our disease prevention. It is not a luxury we are able to afford here.

This place, Ukraine, is a rainbow of colors, feelings, new experiences, new and vastly peculiar people, and a far-away place that actually fits the gilded Reese’s kiss-topped churches. Huge ornate, church-like facades perch at front gates of simple small one-story homes as proclamations of religious devotional deities met by small portly women walking down narrowly beaten dirt sidewalks in long dirty dresses, blackened knee-high wellies and brightly kerchiefed heads. The land is a stream of verdant ribbons. Manicured farmland, and fruit trees blooming tiny pink flowers from their writhing skeletal outreached branches. There are no mechanical sounds. No lawn mowers, weed whackers, or small engine of any sort. It is a peaceful, humble, simple and quiet place, save for the speeding daredevil cars racing haphazardly without regard to the suggested passing center lines.

The compound that I am staying at is about 6 hours inside Ukraine from Romania. It, the compound, is about as charming as the name implies. The entry is a large industrial era door, painted steel grey, with a poorly welded handle and in need of considerable greasing. The effort required to open it insures its bomb proof. The room it opens into houses 7 dogs, all unneutered and all unhappy to be caged near to each other. The veterinarian in me is having a terribly difficult time managing the messiness. The clutter from having donations of all shapes, sizes, and species coming to and fro. The animals in cages as if suspended at the border or airport. Sort of in transit and sort of hopeful there is a destination ahead that might add permanence. It is that way within chaos. The chaos of being prepared to flee. Grab and go is made inherently more challenging with pets and their varying ailments, invalidities and apprehensions.

The first room is first filled with audible requests from the dogs. They all have human attentions to demand and they don’t take no for an answer. They bark until they aren’t heard. The second feature of note is the darkness, this is a warehouse. Converted to be a home for dogs, cats, people. The people range from the crew of women who care for the pets. They name them, walk them, clean and feed them. They also cuddle many of them in the undefined hours between interacting with the outside world, and the rest of the days tasks. There is no clock here. There is no sign of time having fluidity. There is no start, stop or circadian rhythm.

The second room is storage. It’s a cluttered mass of boxes and bottles. A make shift pharmacy for all. I'm sure that we could treat or cure anything, but, I’m not sure we could find it.

A large, heavy tarp is strung up to provide a barrier for human living spaces and dogs. Before traversing into the displaced Winnebago kitchen and the living room of pallets and towels, there is a pop-up tent for a bathroom. Women’s facilities are a bucket. I may have foul smelling armpits, hair and body odor, but, I will have massively muscular thighs.

Meals, well, this leaves much to be figured out. I’ve been here for 3 days and had one meal. A random snack bar and as much tea as I can find hot water for.

 

P.S. I will add photos as I can. We take great care in maintaining security and not disclosing anything that might bring Russians knocking. I will share photos and videos from the groups we are working with to add color to the stories.

Be well, love your pets, krista

here is part of the rescue efforts from yesterday; day 1, the bear and the wolf

Elza the wolf

Bolik the bear

for more on this please see;

The Announcement

The Announcement.

Two weeks ago I broke it to my husband. I confessed that I wanted to go to the Ukraine, and do something. Something meaningful. Something needed. Something impactful. I had reached the place where I couldn't tolerate myself as an idle observer any longer. I didn’t want to feel helpless, mute, and privileged on the sidelines. Be the American so comfortable that other peoples issues didn’t take space, or deserve time to contemplate. The world is a mess more often because people sit by quietly and let it pass. How can so many people just watch? How do you not put yourself in their shoes and act? It is what oppressed victimizes. It is why oppressing persists. People let it. Specifically other people who know it to be such.

My husband reacted the way anyone who loves someone else would. He resisted. He challenged me to not put myself in the danger that wasn’t mine to defend. He reminded me how dangerous the life of the people over there is. How my life has obligations here, at home. I help the animals at my home. There is legitimacy and purpose here. And yet I still felt like a hypocrite; complaining about the atrocities to humanity because of the actions of a bully who needed to be punished. I was picking sides. I always do. I always root for the underdog. Vote for the newbie, never the incumbent. Where there is power there is too often corruption. Let that power last long enough and the rot of greed, arrogance, and entitlement metastasizes. Putin has become a plight. People are dying in war crimes while the USA strategizes how to help and not look obvious. We fear reprisal more than we fear the shame of watching it happen to others.

My husband texted me the worst thing anyone could have said to me; “you aren’t ready for this.” His less offensive doctrine to “I won’t let you.” The former incited a fire the latter would have laughed at. He knew from my long list of accomplishments that were never mine to proclaim for myself, that the last thing you tell me to not do is the first thing I will prove can be done. A source of pride that has cost me decades of doing something I never had my heart in to begin with. I have college degrees I never wanted based simply upon a threatening dare.

Telling me I am not ready? Like there was a university degree program I missed? Needed a certificate for? What the…? Ready? Who is ever ready to defend their belief of good should prevail over bad? A clergyman? Ready to travel? Yes. Ready to help animals? Umm? Always, yes? Ready to land near a war zone? Maybe..?

As composed as I could sound I replied, “I would rather die doing something I believe in, then wait for cancer to come find me and die with a list of things I wish I had done.”

I broke the news to the clinic a few days ago. The majority of the staff understand this. They understand me. They are supportive and inquisitive.

They cheer, and beam with enthusiasm. ‘Aren’t you excited? Are you scared?” always these two questions and always in tandem.

I still struggle and pause with a reply. I am a terrible liar. Worse I am hesitant to be transparent. It just doesn’t play back as plausible out loud.

I am not excited, nor, afraid. I am compelled. It is the most honest way to describe it. I'm not maniacally obsessed to go someplace people are fleeing from. I am not an adrenaline junkie who loves skydiving and roller coasters (I wouldn’t be brave enough for either), but, I am needed, and I can go. I have the passport, the vaccine card, the skillset and the experience to be gone for long periods of time, alone, far away, and perform a task. They need me, I can help, so, I am going. That’s all. Remove the emotional burdens of feelings,, maybe that’s my key? The autopilot every vet goes to when you do a surgery. You just go,,, one little step at a time. Push the emotions, all of them, to the back of your mind and jump in, do it.

My day to day life as a veterinarian in private practice is a bar maids soaked towel of feelings. Drowning, quick sand feelings. Feel a lot for the abused, neglected dying kitten, then try to swallow the feelings of intense hurt when a client talks down to you as the person “who does what they tell me they want me to do.” (Insert euthanize a pet that doesn’t fit their lifestyle any longer). Too often these scenarios are both the same case. People can kill you with their cruelty. Feelings hurt as much as they heal. We don’t get to choose how they are handed to you. Going away to a place I have never been to help animals without clients to tell me how I am supposed to treat them is bliss. The cruelty of war, the neglect of all human kindness being a luxury war wont permit is bare bones medicine. That’s adrenaline that feeds the soul. that’s where I want to be. At least for a little while. That’s compelling.

I am booking tickets tomorrow for Northeastern Romania. I will leave next week. There is a small group of people there already. They travel daily into the Ukraine to help move out the animals left behind. I will be there to help in anyway I can. I will post more as the journey unfolds. It is takes two days to travel. We stay in a makeshift warehouse kept warm by space heaters. There is no running water, bare bones electric and a narrow window that these abandoned starving animals have to find safety. Hundreds of dogs and cats have been extracted and taken back into Romania into an ever growing city of portable shelters. It is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Unlike a natural disaster which strikes and then vanishes after it passes through this has no end in sight. This just compounds the need and direness.

The Secrets Pets Bring Us

 The hidden world.

The best part of the job. Hands down.

I was always trying to get there. That other place. The place just on the other side of the fence. The end of the rainbow along the road I hadn't yet gone down. The woods on the other side of ours. Another state maybe? What about a country? I suppose I should start practicing their language now? You know just so I could find the loo should the need arise.

I was that kid. The kid not settled on here and now. There was no value in it; The present. This place I am already. It isn't a terribly detrimental character trait for a kid, but, these kids should try to grow out of it for fear of being trapped in 'never good-enough-land'. No one wants to grow old feeling like a foreigner. A nomad without a home to call your own. This feeling of not belonging in a world already full of coldness.

Frippie. Our morning wake up ritual.

But reality is that I was always this kid. I keep, and always have kept her alive inside of me. Albeit quiet. No one wants to build a relationship with a gypsy. 

Stealing a kiss before surgery. Maybe after too?

Well, almost no one. For me, then, now, always, the companions who left me feeling grounded, belonging, were just my animals. Named or not, they kept me at a constant. They provided the only place that I wasn't feeling alone.

I never let her grow up into any other kid. The kid who had relationships so deep that you grow deep like the roots of a Sequoia. Strong, formidable, permanent, present. It was never that I didn't value fortitude, strength, and mightiness, it was that I could never decide if here was where I belonged. If the exchange for staying-a-while was worth the potential of not being able to go again. What if staying here meant I had to forego the greener grass elsewhere? Was I ever ready to take such a gamble? 

Looking back I don't know why I was so unsettled. It wasn't so much the loss, or absence of what I didn't have, it was a longing for always something more. More in the way of experiences, places, people and all of the stories that they brought. It was the stories. Making them, finding them, living them and amassing them. More in the way of options, freedoms, liberty, and self-reliance.

Elvis. One of the 54 cats we helped rehome from a hoarding case.
He was brought to us with 4 littermates, 3 had died over the weekend the owner was away.
The previous owner had no idea how many cats she had, or how many were spayed/neutered and she begged us to allow her to keep him, "because he was the healthiest." He would have died like his siblings had he not been taken away. We spent months trying to keep them all alive. We did. He was here to be neutered marking the end of his kitten struggle saga. After this litter we realized that the problem was far bigger than our clinic could manage and we called Animal Control. They have removed dozens of additional cats from her property.

There were very few constants in this life of meandering. There was a dream, a goal, and, a constant companion beside me. Those pets were my guide as much as they were my inspiration to keep moving forward. It was the pets. As a young girl who only wanted to be surrounded by animals all pets held a place of great importance, but very specifically, my pets were of paramount importance. They were my constant. My grounding, the reason for understanding who I was and wanted to become. The sense of belonging in this world I never fit into that provided meaning and substance. They were everything in my world that I saw as just passing by.

My parents, more accurately, my mother, decided to leave Long Island, New York when I was very young. They moved to the country for all of the imaginary wonders and miracles that they believed a country life afforded, and were not attainable in the city. Grass, trees, land to get lost in, and peaceful discussions about days lacking agendas and human bustling. For me it felt more like being removed. I was being removed from some place with lots of lives, to a place without humans lives to interact with. It was the first time I ever felt lonely and alone. Lost and taken away. It was the beginning for me, and I think my mom too, that there was a world we were without within.

Autumn, one of our technicians, and the lead for the 54 cat rescue, kept Oaken. He was one of the 54 cats we helped from a hoarding case 2020.

My mom countered the cricket cacophony and automobile silence by amassing pets. Her little farmette crawled slowly with the menagerie to make it look like a legitimate country living poem. There were two dogs, three cats, a pony of my very own, and a sheep she bought unknowingly at the county fair. The little cottage-cape in the country my parents had purchased came with  shabby two car garage and a field, but, no barn for the livestock to cohabitate. They never fully planned much of the jumping into they did. They tended to jump, best intentions in hand, and land wherever the free-fall dropped them. The barn, or lack thereof, was a very good example. The idea that you would purchase a horse and a sheep and not have a barn for them to be safe in snowy-laden New Hampshire is ludicrous. And yet that is what happened. My parents converted the well house, a wooden structure about 8 feet by 10 feet into a barn-ette for their newly Christened farmette. Few creatures are born into immediately having to flee the nest and wander alone the rest of their days. How would one survive if they awoken from delivery, set off swimming, and hoped for the luck of the draw to magically and successfully make it to a ripe old age? Unless you are a single-celled organism you need a buddy to help walk you through the perils of life. For all of the alone-ness I felt, there was a togetherness that these pets supplemented to dispel the solitude. We weren't put together to remind each other of the holes we had as individuals. We came together for the friendship of each other, Maybe the sheep, her name was Lambie (as original as the thought process in acquiring her had been), or Memory,, the pony that my parents helped me purchase,, a lifetime of savings for the gift I wanted more than anything I could have ever imagined. Memory was $500. Five hundred dollars to a ten year old girl in 1980. Memory, was short for Sweet Memory, and that she still holds firmly. 

Cali. Here for a knee injury repair. Always smiling!

I think that there are a lot of small animal vets by default. We start out as a little seedling intent on animals, but most specifically it is the horses. The vast majority of little girls love horses. We love them so much we want to fill our lives, every minute of them, with more horses. As kids we might grow up with dogs and cats in our homes. Closer to them in proximity, but, there is some allure to horses. Little girls love the idea of the smell of the hay. The aroma of the flat coat that can be brushed for days and still never luster. Horses are big, yet gentle. Soft muzzles always inquiring for a peppermint snack. It is a feeling of belonging that horses give to little girls. Solid, strong, yet soft and safe. You can wrap your arms around their necks. Breathe in the musty, earthy, perfume of their massiveness and still cuddle up near them as they graze contentedly by your side. Horses capture and transport. It is the glitter of every little girls dreams.

It was that horse, Memory that started it all. The cement of a relationship that I hadn't yet ever figured out started with her. A horse vet was born from the days on that farm that was so far away from everything I thought I needed to have more. 

Dexter waits for me to come visit.
Here for his annual exam and a hug, of course.

The isolation that moving to the country also brought me a kindled a purpose. I learned from a very young age that where these pets brought me the only true friendship I had known. But this friendship came at a price of being vulnerable that I was not prepared to accept. A farm animal, and to this designation my parents cast a wide net (all pets, i.e. all animals, were pets for as long as they were healthy and free of trouble) when a medical need, or a behavioral nuisance presented their stature on the ladder of importance fell to below my parents being designated as responsible for. I joke about it now, twenty years into being a veterinarian myself... that my parents had to be the worst pet parents my poor childhood vet, and lifelong mentor, ever had. They were the clients who called him at home at 2 am to notify him that our dogs had just returned from their all day expedition with a face, and frontal chest-full of porcupine quills. The dogs were muddy, bloody and keeping my parents from being able to get back to sleep. My dad asked if he "could drop the dogs off now (at his clinic conveniently located downstairs from where he and his family slept each night) so they could try to get a few more hours of rest before work the next day?" That saint of a veterinarian, said "ok." I remember listening from the top of the stairs, (these were the days of one corded to the wall phone per household), and feeling so relieved that the dogs were A) going to get veterinary help, and, B) they weren't going to have to suffer with a face, chest, and mouth (yes they were in the mouth and tongue) of sharp quills. I know now that Dr. Barsanti opened the door at 230 am, pajamas and robe on, took the dogs by their leashes. Placed them in the dog cages in the back of the main floor kennel area and immediately aced the dogs into a few hours long nap to face the task of pulling them out one-by-one the next morning. It is what I would do now. Who starts a 3 hour quill removal surgery at 2 am? Heck, who answers a phone, and their door at 2 am? Not me. (Damn, I hope he charged my parents out the nose for that one. I'm sure he didn't my dad would have never paid for it if he had tried).

Jenn is the office manager in her office. Never alone with our clinic house cat;
Seraphina, and my pup Storm.

I have written about it before. The pivotal place where my childhood trauma of feeling like my most beloved, and often only friends, were continually at the mercy of another humans decisions transitioned into an adult obsessional determination to find that the place where my destiny rested was in protecting these, and all others, pets. I would never be left sobbing in the corner while someone else decided who was, or was not, worth the effort, or expense, to heal them. It would become only mine to decide. That place where no animal in my purview would be denied care based on anything other than fate, and even she would be dealt blows to humble her if not frighten her away for at least a few more moments. If I had to give up, travel on, and never have left a footprint behind, then so be it. Is there isolation when there is purpose? I think I learned very early on that to have my dream of becoming a veterinarian to come true I had to have dedication and determination to a level that no one else possessed. I had to make sacrifices and decisions based on the long game. Always the long game. Every relationship I had was based on that premise. There was a here and now but I was not going to get stuck in it. Not for longer than that semester allowed. I lived my life for many years, a decades worth, in semester blocks. One at school trying to maintain straight A’s to dilute the Academies implicit bias and baseless defamation via the measure of academic and excellence. And the other at sea, working as a deck officer aboard a cable laying ship to fund the quest into its next chapter. There is very little chance at life, its tapestry of relationships on a schedule built like this. Going to sea for a decade was the most challenging, and even lonelier existence than moving to rural NH brought. No pets out there. Not much of anything except hard work and too much time to self reflect.

It had to happen. A relationship had to evolve from a lonely girl who lived for the tomorrows she lived to see and she wished the present day away.

My kitty Magpie. A cuddle in the sunshine.

My parents never understood my chosen path to get to vet school. They never accounted for veterinarian in the same light as lawyer, doctor, politician. My mom loved animals, to be sure, but she never wanted me to have to deal with the clients the likes of my dad. Too much heartbreak in vet med she thought. Animals might die, (she didn't waste time on the ins-and-outs of why, how or by who's hand), they died, it was sad. I should avoid sad, and poor. My dad knew the kind of people he was to his vet and he thought I would be far happier being far wealthier and steered me away from vet med at every chance he got. He got about 3 decades of chancing me out of this profession. In the end I was always more determined than he to not live the life he wished for me. It has made all things possible. And an even lonelier girl on the other side of it. 

I think it is a deal many vets make. I am not alone. My story is not unique. So many veterinarians left humankind to stay firmly grounded in the pet loving world. We left our souls tied to the hearts of the pets who never live long enough, never hurt your sense of not belonging, and never question your life choices even when you aren't quite sure of them yourselves.

There are secrets we all hold. For me, and the little girl still living quietly by herself inside of me, the secrets are in the days, years and lifetime that I shared with the creatures who always mattered more than everything else could. 

Seraphina. She loves me, and more importantly, we need each other.

I think that while I recognize now the cost of the sacrifices I made to make this dream my profession, I am not sure it was an even exchange. So many of us forego relationships, friendships, two legged children and even our too compassionate souls for this profession. We die, or at least sacrifice so much along the way to help others who will never enunciate a human "thank you." All for the power of this purpose. It is the secret so many of us share, and one of the many cracks that remains us we are all too human and ever fragile.

Related blogs;

We All Need Options.

Remembering The Vet Who Inspired Me.

Safe Harbor Vet Style

Hoarders, Surrender, and the Worst Fate of All.

The hardest part is looking into the eyes of the patients who want to live and knowing you can't do anything to save them.

New Beginnings and Old Responsibilities.

The Measure.

This is a blog about my life. A place to put the feelings, experiences, troubles, and many of the great successes of the lives we share with our patients, and furried family members. It isn't a testimony, a plea for help, or a call out to the profession that struggles so much. It is a diary. An open love letter to the life I live and the choices made to stay alive and happy here. It is about purpose and contentment, and these often feel mutually exclusive while you serve the human public who "own" pets.