Crazy Rescue People

29 Jan 2011 3 Comments

by dreamdachshundrescue in Rescue Life

The rescue community can be a little, let’s say, unpredictable. There are a lot of “crazies” who do this work (if you can call what we do work — we don’t get paid, and we do all seem to love it). And “crazy” can mean a lot of things. Let us muse on crazy for a moment.

Crazy can mean you are willing to live with a slightly higher number of dogs than the usual citizen would. Let’s say, 6.

Crazy can also mean you have few (if any) boundaries when it comes to number of dogs. Maybe you have 10, or 20, or 100, or even more. When does the line to hoarding (a real “crazy” disease — I think it is in the DSM-IV even!) get crossed?

Crazy can mean you perhaps occasionally are a wee bit judgmental when someone asks you for help because they can no longer keep their dog. (This is a tough one, as most dogs come into rescue for “people reasons” not “dog reasons” and the people reasons could have been avoided.)

Crazy can mean you’re a real idealist / purist, and you see everything in black and white. So you “never adopt to someone who XYZ” and you are critical of rescue groups that do.

Crazy can mean you actually feel competitive with other rescue groups. (I’ve never understood this one. There are plenty of dogs to go around!)

I’m realizing that each of these could be their own blog post (thank you, inspiration!). There is plenty of crazy to go around. I do think that to do this work, you have to be crazy in love with the dogs. Otherwise, who would put up with the poop, the pee, the barking, the fighting, the risks of disease to your own dogs, the biting, the noise during dinner parties, the inconvenience of trying to go on vacation, the extra expense, the late night drives, the horror of the animal control visits, the hassle of the high-maintenance foster homes, the extra time needed by the adopter who wants a million tiny questions answered when you have a full-time job and twelve other adoption applications to call, the hassle of the owners who act like THEY are doing YOU a favor by “giving” you a VALUABLE DOG? No one would.

We’re all a little crazy. Some of it is good crazy, some is bad crazy. We try to stay out of the bad crazy. What’s your crazy?