Have you seen this?
http://www.earthlings.com/earthlings/video-full.php
Its beautiful, and painful at the same time....and worth the watch.
Hope this finds you well my friend.
Nikki
When to give up?
Posted By Harry on August 21, 2010
When do you give up on an animal? Or perhaps better worded: When do you help an animal to move on? And why?
It was Dawn Watch pointing me to an article in Parade magazine titled Can you teach a bad dog new tricks? that got me thinking about it. In the article Jim Gorant discusses the fate (both good and bad) of the 51 pitbull terriers rescued from Michael Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels, the home of Vick’s notorious dogfighting ring. The judge presiding over the case ordered that almost $1 million be set aside for the rescue and rehabilitation of the dogs that had been taken into care. The article and attached slideshow detail the success with 19 of what many consider to be the world’s most dangerous dogs. It brings up the age-old debate of Nature vs Nurture. And can good nurture re-wire an animal who has been psycho-emotionally damaged with bad nurture? How long will it take? How many setbacks do you accept along the way? When do you call it a day?
Baldrick 2 days after the accident
Baldrick was in his late teens when a dropped lead rope slithering beside him panicked him through a rusty old fence and caused him to leave behind part of his right foreleg and chest on an unprotected star picket. Avondale received the call for help on day 2 – his new carer (he was about be put down because he ‘ran through fences’) resisted the vet’s urging to euthanise him on the night and wondered if we might be able to help. We said we’d try although the state of him on arrival shocked us more than we’d expected from the call; Baldrick didn’t look like he’d make it through more than a few days. Sue embraced him with love and expert wound healing skills, and the local community drew up a roster to attend a minimum of twice daily to get him walking again. Unable to move his right foreleg at all for the first 2 weeks one person would lift that leg and place it forward while the other would entice him over it with chopped home-grown apples and carrots. And Annie and Sally – Avondale’s 2 new goats – set about healing him in their own special way.
Annie, with fractured leg herself, shadowing Baldrick
While Avondale and the local community set about giving Baldrick a chance, experts on the local horse web forum set about criticising our efforts. “He’s crazy. They should put him down,” wrote one. “He’s obviously got a brain tumour. Put him out of his misery,” wrote another. Fortunately Baldrick didn’t read the forums for the negativity may have dampened his desire to survive. And thrive. After 10 weeks of dressing his wounds with honey (amidst swarms of European wasps) Sue left his almost healed wound to close on its own. And I set about investigating and working on his flight response.
Baldrick 10 weeks after the accident
Twice in his first 6 months Baldrick panicked enough to drive him through our fences. Twice miraculously unharmed. But the early morning discoveries of torn down fences and Baldrick in distant paddocks was enough to give us a year of anxiety-filled awakenings. It was a full six months before he was settled enough in a paddock with our other horses for their sideways glances not to panic him. Two years of intense feeding before he regained weight in earnest. Five years before he lost his winter coat in summer and we could tell all that asked that he did not have Cushings. And today you’d think he was never severely injured. This video - Baldrick & Charlie playing – shows Baldrick playing with his little donkey friend.
So we made the right choice with Baldrick but Nature dictates that things won’t always work out so well. The problem is you don’t know until you’ve tried. And during your trying you don’t want to prolong pain or suffering. Deciding what to do with severely traumatised animals (physical and emotional) too often brings up euthanasia as the first option. But trying gives an animal a chance. Not trying snuffs out a life instantly. With a once-feral cat that spent 10 days in kitty intensive care over a year ago, was given little hope of survival on coming home, and patiently accepts (and sometimes asks for!) her subcutaneous fluid to be injected three times weekly; with a 14 year old dog who was diagnosed with 3 separate primary cancers 5 months ago, is only with us still because of major surgery and chemotherapy, and still plays ball and does the twice daily feed rounds with us; and with a goat who 15 months ago was given no hope of ever walking again yet now leads the others to the furthest paddock, we’re now convinced that trying needs to be option 1. Wouldn’t you want that?
[...] Abbey and Chelsea’s healing her, teaching her, loving her. Like Annie and Sally healed and loved Baldrick through his recovery. What comes from Sue and I is plainly [...]