17/11/2024
To all the amazing people who have supported us through food donations, financial help, and endless kindness - THANK YOU!🙏❤️ Your generosity has kept us and the animals we care for going during times when we felt utterly lost.
I owe you an explanation for my recent silence, and I hope you’ll understand why I’ve been so quiet.
When my husband and I first began rescuing animals, we never asked for help. We felt it was our responsibility to care for the lives we saved. For us, rescue wasn’t just about taking animals off the streets, it was about truly changing their lives for the better. That meant bringing them into our home, not locking them in a small pen in the back of the yard to not mess our home, we couldn’t bear to give them anything less than a real chance at happiness and comfort. And we did manage to change the lives of many of them with the care and patience of our beloved adopters❤️
As our numbers grew and emergencies arose, we were forced to ask for help. But even then, it was hard. Many of our appeals seemed to go unheard, perhaps because they spoke to only a few people, those who genuinely understood us and valued our honesty, respect, and unconditional love for animals. To those who responded and stood by us time and time again: YOU are the reason we’ve been able to carry on, YOU gave us hope, and we are eternally grateful!🙏🙏🥹❤️
However, that same gratitude is what has silenced me at times. It felt wrong to keep asking the same people for help over and over, knowing how much they had already done for us. I couldn’t shake the shame of feeling like I was burdening those who had already given so much🥺. This is why I sometimes withdrew, even when we desperately needed help.
Our journey hasn’t been easy. We lost our first home to the animals, it simply became too overcrowded and damaged. We moved to a larger house in a forgotten village, far from resources, where even basic necessities like food and vet care require long trips. Here, animals are abandoned constantly, and our efforts to help have pushed us to the brink.
We also lost our business, and so we started to struggle to maintain the quality of life these animals deserve, but we fallen into huge debt to try to keep them alive/fed🥺
This year, the weight of it all became unbearable. We couldn’t even afford the surgeries or treatments some of our animals needed, and we lost them😢 Those losses shattered us😢. To know we were their last hope and that we failed them is a guilt I can’t put into words😭💔 It’s added to a depression that was already consuming us because even feeding the animals became impossible for days at a time😢💔
Rescue work is so much more than providing food and water. It’s vet care, bedding, litter, cleaning supplies, it’s a never ending list of needs that we can no longer keep up with. To give just one example: trying to care for 30 cats without proper litter is heartbreaking. Cleaning our home with only water is not cleaning; it’s surviving. And survival feels impossible when we see the lives we’ve saved falling short of what they deserve🥺
We are blessed with people that deeply care and after the appeals Amanda Markey, Linda Hicks and Sara Jones posted, we received this Friday 110 sacks of dog food, 7 sacks of cat food, and treats for our animals. We also received donations on PayPal which helped us buying some food until Friday, cat litter sand, a bit of straw for the dogs that live in the barn in zero degrees temperatures at night 😢 and cleaning products, for which I am deeply, deeply grateful for this incredible generosity, it has brought us much needed relief🙏🙏🙏❤️
But even as I thank you, I can’t help but feel a weight pressing down on me. I know these supplies will only last 20–30 days. I can’t stop thinking about what will happen when the food runs out, how we’ll manage to feed them after that, or what we’ll do if we reach a point where we simply can’t feed them anymore. These thoughts consume me and make it impossible to feel the full joy this help should bring🥹
To everyone who has helped us: please know how much we value you. Your support has been a lifeline. But I need you to understand that even with your kindness, the weight of it all has locked me in a deep depression, with very dark thoughts😢 We don’t know how to move forward, how to make things better for the animals or ourselves. Every day feels like a battle we’re losing, and it’s destroying us🥺
This is why I’ve been quiet. It’s not because I don’t care or don’t appreciate you, it’s because I’m overwhelmed by the reality of how far we’ve fallen and how much more the animals need than we can provide right now😢
Thank you for everything you’ve done and for reading this. I hope you’ll understand my silence and know how much your support means, even when I struggle to find the words.
With love and gratitude,
Gabriela
