19/02/2022
The older I get the more I see the ugly side of animal advocacy. It’s crazy to me that any person involved in animal advocacy would criticize another. The only thing that matters is the dogs. How each person helps the dogs is their choice. It ALL matters. Dogs can’t speak for themselves so anything that anyone does to try to give them a voice is important. I love you Mom, Brittany & Desiree. Keep up the amazing work. Thousands saved, so many more to go ❤️
https://www.facebook.com/370216186684800/posts/1524525604587180/?d=n
📌IMPORTANT READ
On 2/15/2017 we started this page after spending years volunteering at our local shelter. Initially our intention was to share the dogs we were personally meeting & garner them a broader network. By the end of 2017 we realized there was a greater need for community and rescue support so we filed Florida Articles of Incorporation and applied for our 501c3. February of 2018 we became a tax-exempt non-profit organization through the IRS.
When we originally started RMO, we weren’t 100% sure what direction we would go. Would we function as many of our friend’s rescues and directly save dogs? Would we just continue meeting the dogs and sharing? We realized there was a need greater than directly saving the dogs. There was a need to proactively help families from surrendering their dogs. There was a need to fundraise for rescues. There was a need to facilitate finding fosters. There was a need to be a trusted source for temperament testing, fostering, transportation and homechecks. We made a decision to help the existing rescues by doing all of the above. We have fostered more than 40 dogs over the last 5 years. We have done countless homechecks. We have transported dozens of times. We have met & temp tested hundreds of dogs. We have also fundraised for ourselves and used those proceeds to help dogs (and cats) in our community when veterinary bills were going to cause surrender. All of this in addition to raising our 4 children (2 years old to 23 years old) with differing needs, working full-time, maintaining marriages/relationships, taking care of our pets (8 dogs & 2 cats between us), grad school and other business ownership.
Every once in awhile someone will say “you’re not a rescue” or “you’re a rescue, why can’t you save the dog”. We shouldn’t have to address this, but the above does.
There are also individuals who will question how we can be “animal advocates”, but not allow negative comments about shelters on our page. Please explain to us how allowing negative comments or questions to the shelter on OUR business page will help the dogs we are trying to share. It won’t. This page is our business page. The shelter isn’t going to answer questions on our page. If there are questions for the shelter, they should be directed to the shelter or the county government. We have said it more than one time before, we will not allow ANY comments on our page that will detract from the dogs. Period. We start by hiding these comments, but if they continue over and over, yes, we will ban.
For those individuals who also think we should “do more”. You have no idea what we do or don’t do. You have no idea what is happening in our professional or personal lives. You don’t know us personally. You see a very small glimpse of our lives via social media. The fact that you assume we have extra time to do anything more than we do is just that, an assumption. We put as much “free” time as we possibly can into RMO. As already mentioned, we do far more than run social media pages. If you think more should be done, by all means, do it. We will not continue to have OUR choices questioned. We do what we can, when we can. If at any point we can do more, we definitely will and always have. For now, we are giving RMO all we have. The type of criticism we receive is exactly why people stop being involved in animal rescue. We are getting close to our breaking point. Don’t ask us how we are “animal advocates” when you are the one that criticizes what we do. How does it make you an animal advocate when you judge or criticize what anyone else is doing? Doing something is better than doing nothing. We have been doing something for years and it has successfully assisted in thousands of dogs being saved.
For those of you who have supported us, we sincerely thank you. Your support is exactly why we continue. Thank you for doing something! Each of you are making a difference whether it be a share, pledge, fostering, adopting…it all matters. It all helps. Everything each of you do helps give a voice to those who need it most, the dogs. We could never thank you enough 💙
