10/31/2025
The good folk at Sanctuary Rescue have a way of explaining things that are poignant, not dramatically stated, just raw, factual, and real.
I got involved with their organization because I kept getting the goodest boys and girls as clients who were Sanctuary alumni. Dogs with scars that spoke to a traumatic, not so distant past. Dogs with severe cleft palettes that wouldn't have lived without the specialized round the clock feeding they received from loving Sanctuary volunteers. Dogs they pulled from shelters within hours, sometimes minutes, of their "expiration date." Their fosters put in the hard work to give these pups a chance to be the best version of themselves.
I always say when the world feels dark, and you don't know what to do, you'll find yourself in the service of others. I'm sure someone famous said that and I just picked it up somewhere along the way, but I find it to be true. If you're in a position to donate, to volunteer, to foster... let THIS be your call to action. Not my words, but theirs.
Part 1 of a 2 Part Series
We’ll start with the not very uplifting reality of things around Sanctuary Rescue, around the State of Virginia and around the nation as a whole, and that is animal welfare is in a crisis that currently feels pretty hopeless. The world is a tough place right now for the humans, a harsh economy that continues to get worse each day, job and housing insecurity affecting millions, wars and violence and weekly mass shootings, social unrest and political uncertainty. Everyone is fighting something, and the majority of Americans are financially and emotionally fatigued. Obviously this rolls down hill to the animals, the most vulnerable creatures. If you've lost your income or perhaps even your home, beloved pets can quickly become unsustainable. Meals get skipped, vet care gets put on the back burner and even pet ownership seems like a reasonable situation to eliminate when you’re struggling to put food on the table. What this means is surrenders are at an all time high, and adoptions are at an all time low. This perfect storm of terrible means there’s a logjam at rescues whose length of stay has doubled or tripled. Fosters and volunteers are burning out; adopters are fewer and farther between; rescue pulls are slowing to a halt. Shelters who have been begging and pleading now seem resigned to the fact that things are bad - - horrible for everyone everywhere and things likely aren’t getting better anytime soon. Euthanasia is inevitable, and the numbers are climbing. Everyone in animal welfare feels helpless and hopeless but keeps trying just in case there is a unicorn adopter about to walk through the door or a foster home suddenly about to open up. Things are very bleak, but there have still been a trickle of happy endings so we keep going one day at a time begging the universe for a victory.
For the first time ever we have puppies growing up in rescue. Wonderful, perfectly behaved, adorable young dogs that are aging out of puppydom before our very eyes. Donations are way down while requests for help are way up. Despite constant worrying about all the animals, all of our shelter friends and the heaviness this brings them, and the future of all things animal welfare, we keep asking ourselves, What can we do? How can we help? Is there anything we can do to affect change, to keep our finger in the dam just a little longer? Sometimes we think we have a new idea, an answer to alleviate the weight of all of the animals that pay the price of human-made problems. Every Monday we’re going to hand out pet food to anyone that asks. Every Tuesday we’re going to head to the shelter to take the dogs out for fresh air and exercise.
This is only written to let the average person know what animal advocates, rescuers, shelter workers, fosters, people in the vet field are currently experiencing and to lay the groundwork for understanding Part 2, coming tomorrow.
