09/10/2025
Rescue breaks you sometimes. It’s one of the hardest jobs to take on, yet those of us who feel this inner calling just keep going. I’ve often been asked why do I do this? The emotional roller coaster is constant and there are days you run through a range of emotions in the span of a few hours. We live for the success stories. Seeing dogs flourish and families happy with the matches we made fuel us to get up and do it again the next day.
But behind the scenes, behind the social media posts are many moments where we wonder how to keep going. We go days without stopping, sleeping just a few hours at a time. We stress about vet bills and how we’re going to meet the needs of the dogs. We panic, we shut down for a few hours, we cry. And somehow we always come back.
I don’t know if this is a disease, an addiction or a calling. Whatever it is, it’s something I’ve done since I was 22 and found a Great Pyrenees wandering a Walmart parking lot in Alabama looking for water. She was disheveled, tired and unkept. And from there I just kept going.
We named her Rose. The sweet little girl we pulled from the shelter yesterday. She has the warmth of an angel, the wisdom of a Sage and the courage of a warrior. I knew there was something special about her the minute I saw her picture. And I knew then we had to save her spirit.
The shelter warned me she couldn’t walk on a leash. She had to be carried outside to relieve herself. That’s not uncommon in shelters. Shelter life is terrifying for an independent breed like a Pyr. They’re used to being free and in control. There’s no control there.
When we got her home we realized she could walk but wouldn’t bear weight on her one back leg.
This morning we got her into Town N Country Animal Hospital where Dr Hillard took X-rays to figure out why.
She does have hip displaysia. Not uncommon for this breed. That wasn’t the part that broke me. It’s the fact that she was riddled with bb’s.
Someone used her for target practice. Someone took a BB gun and shot at this defenseless soul multiple times. One of the bb’s is lodged right at her knee. (Those are the white dots) And because she has a bad hip, she couldn’t even run away quickly.
Monsters are real. They don’t live under your bed or in your closet. They live next door, down the street and across town.
