The Plight Of A Rescuer

This is an impromptu article, I was planning to post something that I have been drafting for the past days til the unexpected happens. What I thought to be just a laid back Sunday afternoon turned out to be a long and agonizing evening as I contemplated on what will be my best action with the situation that was presented in front of me.

In my very first article posted here, I introduced myself as an animal rescuer and that animal welfare is my main advocacy. I also belong to a SEC registered animal welfare group located here in my city. All of us are volunteers here and we do our advocacy only during our available time yet most of the time, we try our best to make ways because every now and then reports of pets in distress and animal cruelty needs to be addressed and be responded to. Currently, our group has a lot of inactive members. We also have officers who are on leave because of personal reasons and two of our members are on home isolation and the other one is confined at a hospital because they are tested positive for Covid :(

That Facebook Post

After a tiring day of bathing the dogs, I took an afternoon nap and was planning to go to the mall to buy a bluetooth mouse. I did some quick browsing of missing cats and dogs that are posted which I constantly share at my FB group intended for lost and found pets when I saw this on my newsfeed:

A dog in distress, a case of hit and run 😞

Whenever I saw posts like this, I always make it a point to check the comments first if there is an update if it was rescued or claimed by the owner and the latest one I read was 37 minutes ago: the dog is still there according to the reporter 😞 I also saw that it has been four hours since the post was made and no signs of the owner 😞

Here’s when my dilemma as a rescuer comes in:

Before I decided to get the dog, I was contemplating on a lot of things: Will I have the money to bring it to the vet? What if the owner never appeared to claim the ailing dog? Who will foster the dog til the dog is ready to be put up for adoption? (We also do a lot of interview and screening as well as ocular home inspection to everyone who wants to adopt our rescues). The organization I belong to does not always have a ready and available funds or is getting support from the government. We also do not have an animal shelter or a partner animal shelter where we can bring our rescues. We only rely from volunteer fosterers and donations from the public. We can only help as much as we can. Most of the time it is hard to find a fosterer for our rescues, and sometimes if the funds we got from our fundraising is not enough, we only have us and our own personal salaries if we have extra to cover up the balance we need to pay to the vet.

I knew in my heart I can not turn a blind eye and ignore this dog.

As I was on my way to the reported location of the dog, I could not help but feel disheartened with the sad fact that we only have less than a handful of rescuers in our city and that our local city government does not have that much support. The other members in our org were at work or out of town and I was thankful when one of them was able to join me.

We found the dog tied in a waiting shade, very calm and does not look like in pain. No signs of aggression also and I was able to check quickly that there are some wounds on her right hip but I felt relieved and thought that it is not a major accident.

We got there at the dog’s location at 9pm, most veterinary clinics are only open til 6pm and there are only two vet clinics opened 24/7 so we chose to bring her to Hayop Kalinga.

I was so positive when we were at the vet that what happened to the dog was not major and I am even ready to bring her home for fostering once she is cleared.

We named her Clawi.

Yes, she is a girl. No idea yet on her age. The vet has to do series of x-rays and that is when the bad news came out. Clawi has a pelvic fracture and dislocation and she has to undergo surgery the soonest to align her pelvic bones or else she will never walk again. 😭

Clawi needs to be confined for further observation. The vet told us that no therapy or other options are available except surgery. So after giving our downpayment, (We had to borrow some funds from another puppy rescue I had last month), I and my co-advocate went home and told the vet we will discuss Clawi’s condition with our group.

Here’s the vet’s quotation if we will push through with the surgery: (this does not include yet the 3,000 php per day confinement before and after the surgery).

Our group decided to push through with the surgery, we are aware of the risk that it will be a 50-50 chance of survival but we have no choice since Clawi will go totally disabled or she may also die of complications if her pelvic bones get dislodged to her other organs. We will be posting a fundraising campaign at our org’s FB page for her tomorrow. I pray that many will step up and help with her vet bills but most of all I pray that Clawi will survive her surgery and recuperate fast from this unfortunate event. I also pray that her owner will take heart and appear to claim Clawi. If you are reading this, please help us pray for Clawi as well. I admit whenever things like this happened, I felt like giving up and not do rescues anymore but I simply cannot ignore and sleep on it knowing a dog is in dire need to help and no one seems to be stepping up but just a few of us.

“Rescuers, rescue supporters and volunteers do not walk on water...

We do not wear capes and tights or leap from tall buildings.

We aren't better than anyone else.

We pursue a cause that we believe makes us better than we were before we started. We make mistakes.

We feel we can't do enough.

We go broke.

We have too many pets at home.

We rant out of frustration.

We lose our tempers and get snappy.

We have to reject people sometimes for the good of an animal.

We are not always likable.

What we do is draining, emotionally, financially, and physically.

Please bear with us and forgive us our flaws, because we are doing work that's bigger than we are." - Unknown

All pictures are mine.