ATTENTION CA NETWORKERS

Please read. CA networkers in particular, please take the time to read.

This comment was copy pasted here after Bethany spent the evening defending me from CA networkers that were bashing H3 for not taking more than the 16 dogs I took last week and for tagging a husky and not a pitbull puppy.

My response was "it's a damn good time to be a husky"

But Bethany, my CA rescue partner, always has the most amazing way of telling people to F off.

Like this . So I am going to let her say it.

As a rescue that saves huskies nationwide, we see huskies we couldn't save dying all over the country, every day. In fact, every dog that H3 saves from California is one they can't save from their own state of Oklahoma, and they have to deal with indignant comments from Oklahomans who want to know why they are saving California dogs rather than helping closer to home.

Here, H3 saved 25 dogs in the past couple weeks. 16 from SBC and 9 from OKC. They have their hands full, to say the very least. For their efforts, they have been getting bombarded with negative comments and messages because of two other dogs from Devore that they were not able to save (neither anything close to full huskies), mostly from people who have NEVER shouldered the full logistics of dealing simultaneously with 25 new, shelter decompressing and traumatized dogs in a single site (in addition to the existing 150+ on that site.) And ironically, it is mostly Californians who are coming at this Oklahoma based rescue for not saving more dogs from California. I'd say that is starting to not land especially well with the Oklahomans who are sacrificing greatly to come to our state and help us save our dogs, and with damn good reason. Meanwhile, this page discomfitingly asserted on Sunday that a dog had died at AVAS because no one cared about them because they weren't a husky. That was heard loud and clear by those of us working on husky rescue, and also didn't land well with any of the several people I discussed it with (mostly not H3 affiliates) given that we are fighting constantly to rescue one of the breeds that is most frequently slaughtered in our state's high kill shelters.

Fast forward to today. I had no expectation that H3 could or should take a single additional dog out of California today. I reached out to the networkers to ask about husky status at AVAS for other reasons. It was literally when I was so moved by one of the videos that I couldn't accept this dog being hours from death that I - literally with heart pounding in chest because I felt that I was making an unfair ask - asked H3 if we could tag Buck and said I'd cover the expenses and would work with the networkers to make arrangements for him until H3 could pick him up.

It was a reach for all of us. They are practically extended. I have financially gone as far in paying the bills for those we are rescuing as I can responsibly go, and then some. But we agreed to dig deep to help "just once more." I was overjoyed when AVAS confirmed the tag and so excited to report here that we had managed to get at least one of the dogs on today's kill list out.

I was astonished when the response from this page - far from being happy that one dog was saved - instead resembled an increasingly angry meltdown that the dog saved was a husky, rather than an apparently preferred puppy of a different breed. Rather than celebrating that Buck would live another day, the response was an angry and sarcastic "congratulations" to Buck (an abandoned and traumatized 5 year old dog who was locked into an outdoor cage in 100 degree heat earlier today and hours from death when we tagged him) since he was "prioritized" over a non husky.

That tone and that response to saving a life has no place whatsoever in rescue. We're all stressed. We're all exhausted. We're all juggling our personal commitments. We're all grieving the ones that neither we nor anyone else can save. But turning that anger on others for fighting to save the life of a dog (whether they are rescues or networkers, and whatever breed of dog and geographical location they may be working on) should not have any place in this world.

I'm grateful we were able to tag Buck. I grieve the ones of all breeds that weren't saved today, all over the country. And I hope we can all celebrate when every dog is fought for and saved, regardless of state or breed, and grieve when any dog is not (ditto).

I would have expected everyone on this page to feel nothing but joy that Buck is still breathing. I regret that our tagging him seems, all too bizarrely, to have prompted some very different emotions."

Well said Bethany. Shame on those who think that what we do isn't enough for CA. Shame on you.

#Huskyrescue