My last major post besides me being able to sneak in a recipe here or there had been about an amazing experience I had to travel to Ecuador to 2 weeks. It's interesting how my family's life has taken full circle since then in some life changing moments (super long life story of the past four months of my life to come so feel free to pass if you find that it will bore you!)
Mid-way through my travels (in Ecuador back in August), my husband Josh visited our local animal shelter that we are very involved with to pick out a foster dog during a big rush when their kennels were full. Often, the dog and cat kennels fill up and they rely on foster families and adopters to help open some kennels for newly dumped animals and stray pick-ups by animal control. I love our shelter because they really do all they can to avoid euthanizing (most shelters must euthanize when they are out of physical space to take in new animals), but it's up to the people who care to truly step up and help this happen. My first experience getting internet during my Ecuador exploration involved me sitting at an internet cafe, going on Facebook, and seeing our shelter's plea for help while their kennels were full. I did my usual share and desperate posting to try to get friends to help and take some animals home. In a couple weeks, after all, there would be a huge adoption event for the wrap of up summer when hopefully most of their animals would go home with waived adoption fees, ultimately clearing the shelter. It was up to volunteer foster parents to help save animals until this event. During my second and last opportunity at getting internet while in Ecuador I was lucky enough to get wifi so I was able to FaceTime Josh. There on the screen was not 2, but 3 bullies sitting there eagerly waiting for me to come home to the states. "This is Kimmie" he told me "and I want to keep her". With countless foster dogs coming and going, and one (Onyx) that had come and stayed earlier this year I wasn't the least bit surprised, and spent the rest of my trip fantasizing about coming home to 3 adorable pitbulls (our dachshund Weiner was staying with my mom during my travels since Josh had been traveling for work for the earlier portion of my trip and that limited our doggie day care expenses). Of course my not-so-smart husband walked into the shelter and asked to take home the dog he had his eye on and was attracted to the most because of her similar appearance to one of our other babies Manny. He probably had intentions of keeping her before even bringing her home. I had taken screenshots of Kimmie and once I got back to the lodge we were staying at I showed everyone my "new dog"-- or "probable new dog" named Kimmie that I hadn't even met yet... since I had a feeling Josh wouldn't be able to let her go.
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| My favorite pic that Josh sent me while I was away.. still saved on my phone. The all white dog is Kimmie. |
Upon my return to Gainesville, we were awoken early the next morning by new management of our apartment complex pounding on our door who had literally changed all the complex rules overnight. We were told that we were no longer allowed to have a garden outside, no more plants, and no more dogs or foster dog (2 dogs only!), and it seemed that they would be checking up to make sure we got rid of all our plants... and extra dogs. Thankfully, Weiner was already at my mom's but with Kimmie we still had three dogs. Not happy about the rules, and already starting to fight and take a stand about the new "plant laws", I did know that sadly we couldn't keep Kimmie at that time. It was also a bit crazy having three big rambunctious dogs in a small apartment. We were leaving town the next weekend to visit my mom in South Florida, so we needed to find a place for Kimmie during that time anyway, and being heart worm positive, she was due for her treatment at the shelter. We left her at the shelter to get treated and agreed to allow them to make her available as a "foster-to-adopt" dog to any potential adopters at their huge adoption event, since she was undergoing heavy duty treatment but they didn't want her to miss out on a chance of getting a good home since we couldn't commit to keeping her. We figured we would let fate take its course, and if she was adopted, she deserved a great new home, and if she was not, then we would go pick her up and help her through the tough recovery of her treatment and continue to foster her (and worry about fighting with our complex about it later). Of course, she got adopted, but it took several days before I was able to get any info from the staff there on who took her and what the family was like. I was told the family didn't seem "great" which had me on high alert, and I wasn't given much more info than that, but had a sunken feeling in my heart. Kimmie, like all the shelter dogs, was a great dog-- the kind of dog that would roll over into your lap to be pet and cuddle, the kind of dog that tried to hug you, the kind of dog that would do ANYTHING to earn love, after already being given up on and dumped more than once in a shelter. I wanted her to find an amazing home if it couldn't be us and it didn't sound like she did. Since she was technically a foster dog, we just waited for updates as she had to come in for an exam and the new owner would need to come in to officially sign her paperwork to adopt her if they chose to.
Unfortunately, none of that ever happened, and the family AND our Kimmie seemed to literally fall off the planet as countless calls, emails and home visits resulted in no answer but that the family didn't live there anymore and that they didn't respond to any attempts of the shelter getting in touch with them. Kimmie had to go under a 30 day bed rest period following her heartworm injections or she could have gotten a serious blood clot and died. My first thoughts were that this is what had happened to her and that's why the family disappeared. But as time went on with no answers, I tried to be optimistic to make myself feel better and made myself believe it was some kind of weird situation and that there was an explanation as to why they disappeared, and that they were just too irresponsible to have given Kimmie back or let the shelter know what was going on. I prayed and I waited.
In the mean time, life went on but a day didn't go by where I didn't think about Kimmie. Those photos on my phone that Josh sent to me, and countless others I took of her when I got home were still there, but looking at them made me cry. I deleted some, but kept a few in hopes that keeping her in my phone would keep her spirit alive.. somewhere out there. We vowed that if by any chance our lives crossed paths with Kimmie's again, we wouldn't let her go again. A bigger concern at that moment was battling with our apartment complex about their ridiculous new rules that we never signed up for. A "five plant rule" that later changed to "three plants only" was out of the question as we had 200+ plants outside our apartment in our courtyard. If we ever got Weiner back, we would have too many dogs again, plus we didn't want to be told we couldn't save more dogs from the shelter by fostering when we wanted to. A strategic argument got us an agreement to break our lease early-- or technically, extend our old one for just a few months, since we had literally just renewed 2 months earlier. They accommodated us moving out, while we frantically started shopping for a house--- something we planned to do in a year's time, but now our plan was forced to happen a year sooner. In just over a month from then, we were in our new home--- which to save you from the bore of that whole saga, was hell and back again (annoying realtors mostly), but ultimately was the best change that ever happened to us. I was thankful for our apartment complex's rule bullshit new rules giving us an out to a new and happier life for us and our fur-kids (and our plants!).
From October until now really, our lives have been on overdrive--- starting with the first of October when I was doing my first "art showing" at a festival, that overlapped with the eve of us cleaning and emptying our apartment to move out until 3 AM on the last possible day before being charged rent for an entire additional month--- and moving in early on a begged early occupancy agreement of our new home before we officially had settlement. What started as a nightmare led into the start of several art showings and festivals I had the opportunity of doing this year that proved to be successful, and the blossoming of our first home together which has since been updated, painted, and decorated to our liking and we love it.
4 months of staying up late into the night painting has also given me my most successful season yet of custom orders for my art business where I have tripled my orders from last year. Between numerous festivals and expanding my clientele I have been more proud than ever that I have achieved the status of an artist I had dreamed of since I was little. Prepping a new house, working a full time job, AND maintaining my own business has been exhausting but worth it. Time put into all of these endeavors has definitely taken away the time we had used to volunteer regularly at the animal shelter and has emotionally frustrated me. Throughout the year I've done fundraisers, sold merchandise for the shelter and Plenty of Pitbulls Dog Rescue, had art giveaways, and done raffles to make donations for various animal organizations to make up for it, started a coloring book project in collaboration with several artists which all together must have raised around $1,000 this year if not more.... but I cannot wait to catch a break to once again PHYSICALLY feel the grass beneath my Boggs and have lovable dogs jumping on me for love as I exercise them and photograph them, so they can be posted online to ultimately be their chance to be adopted. Hands on is what really makes a difference too.
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| My art banner, part of my display |
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| Manny checking out the Plenty of Pitbull Magnets that I have sold at my art booth, and are also available for sale at EarthWise Pets in Gainesville! Homemade by Nicole Neal, POPB volunteer. All $ benefits POPB. |
This whole experience of ultimately good and stress has really taught me a lot and helped me identify NEW goals and resolutions for the upcoming new year. Two years ago, I vowed to become vegan starting January 1, 2015 and have been since. The past two new years have made goals to drink more water, eat healthier, exercise more, and these goals lasted several months into the year but usually fizzle out half way through. I vowed to make time to make more art and expand my business, and that's one thing I'm glad to have achieved. I wanted to do more for others and put my creativity to use which helped start the Color Me A Forever Home Project I started up in March and was a big success at first--- but the effort of putting out new editions has lost stamina because of my over-comittment to too many things at once (which I really need to work on). There's always a price to pay for being able to achieve so many goals and that has cost me time with my husband, a ton of stress, time I'd like to exercise and get outside, time to play with and train our own dogs, time to cook and prep recipes and meals that have been on our list to make and try for the past year, and the constant guilt of not having enough time to help animals more and feel like I'm making a positive impact. So basically--- time. It probably sounds like I have done a lot already, but I never feel like I'm really doing enough. I may never feel like I'm able to do enough. I also suffer from a condition where I'm constantly feeling depressed, angry, and upset about what humanity does to animals and I can't get it off my mind. Abandonment, abuse, cruelty, over-breeding, fighting/torture, using and abusing for food and clothing, exploiting for entertainment, containing in cages for enjoyment and ability to own as pets, torturing and testing on for cosmetics and research.. the list goes on and on. I'm constantly feeling the pain for these animals and the need to make a change and try to undo the pain that others have caused. To know I can only save so many dogs that irresponsible people have over-bred and unloved, and rescue so many other companion animals that have been neglected and abandoned, that I can only NOT eat so many animals and their products they're tortured for, and I can only NOT wear so many skins that were ripped off of them alive, reminds me that I need to keep being a voice for those that do not have one, and that I need to let go of what I cannot change, because I am only one person and the worry and guilt I absorb has really negatively affected my life. My biggest goal and resolution of all is to try to let go of these things, stop crying for things I can't do anything about, and focus on the things that I CAN change, if even only on a small scale. I hope that by inspiring others, by fundraising, by sharing my stories---- that I can help the world a tiny bit. (If you're interested in making a difference for animals, feel free to reach out to me if you need some inspiration on how you can help. It's very easy to make a difference but you have to care enough to do it.)
Speaking of stories, Kimmie's story is not over. On December 1, my mom's birthday, almost a month ago already, I got an email from the shelter director that Kimmie was just dropped off at the shelter and I was the first person she wanted to tell. As soon as she had an exam and was evaluated, we rushed over to get her the soonest they would allow, which was the next evening. Kimmie has been living with us since, and won't be leaving us again. We are waiting to officially adopt her once she is tested again for heartworms and we can be sure she is healthy and clear of the disease since the past several months of her care are unknown to us. 2016 has been the worst year for several people I know. In comparison, it hasn't been so bad for us at all. The beginning of the year brought us our first ever (and certainly not last) foster failure, or should I say foster WIN, Onyx, my black beauty and little gem. The end of the year reunited us with our Kimmie, who we genuinely believe was meant to be with us all along. I found my calling at art and have been able to find success in making a business out of it. Josh graduated with his Masters and started his PhD program. We bought a new home. Josh and I have both gotten more opportunities to travel for work. I've gotten more involved in volunteering with a local rescue I love. I do hope to find the time again to help more at the shelter by volunteering, fostering when we can, and continuing to raise money for them. I can bitch and moan because I have TOO much going on in my life, but I realize that it's all my choice, and I'm grateful for all of it. It takes a full life to have a full heart. Now my goal must just be to learn a little lesson in balancing it all, so I can make the time needed for everything I really need and want in life... and be a better functioning and sane being while still trying to save the world.
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| Our pack of rescues. There's ALWAYS room for one more. |
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