Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Rikki’s Refuge .... 15 Years in the Making


Mom and me took a walk down to Rainbow Bridge.  We were talking and she started telling me about the times before me at Rikki’s ....  what it was like in the early days .... and how many wonderful folks came together to make it possible .... and about what it takes to keep making it possible ....



.....  I ran inside and got my note book and started scratching out notes .....   I’m gonna share the story of Rikki’s Refuge ....  15 Years in the Making ... 

If you know mom, you know how she can just start talkin and tellin stories about Rikki’s.  I think she loves to talk about Rikki’s.  I think she loves Rikki’s!  I know she loves me !! 

Anyway, I’m gonna break up the story into parts, cuz she shouldn’t get more space in MY Good Morning Good News than I do, now should she?   Can’t be havin the hoomans taking over now can we?


Rikki’s Refuge ....  15 Years in the Making    ....    Part I


November, 2013 ..... 

The work to turn this piece of rural land into a sanctuary for thousands of animals all began this time of year in 1998. 

In November of 1998 a few of you were there, by my side, helping to clear the thick hairy vines of poison ivy that had taken over every building on the property, every tree, every pile of junk and garbage that lay in mounds all around. 

Who knew what we’d find under the mound we tackled?  We found the great big purple barn under the biggest one. 


But it wasn’t purple yet, and it had oodles of holes in walls.  And once cleared, it became the home to the stray dogs and cats and chickens who roamed the property.  These dogs and cats and chickens would become our first official residents as we caught them, got them vetted and healthy, and they learned what it meant to be taken care of. 


Remember all that itching and scratching we did uncovering pile after pile?  I don’t think there was a volunteer in the early days without some form of poison ivy patches .... the official ivy, the poison sumac that itched 10 times worse.  And yet you kept coming back.  You could see that dream of a home where thousands of animals would find love, peace and happiness. 

How many of you wielded your first hammer at that land known as the sanctuary-to-be?  Smashed your fingers there? 

Cut your teeth on power saws and your hands on fencing? 

Tired, frustrated, wet from the rain, sun-burnt on blistering days, your hands and feet frozen on cold days.

Yet day after day you came back.  Yes, you were the minority.  I know you remember the frustration of meeting that new volunteer wannabe, the one so excited about saving animals; the one you spent valuable work time showing around and telling all about the dream, about how we were getting there; about the hard work ahead to make it real; just to have them turn around and laugh and tell you what a waste of time, you’d never be able to do it, it was too much work.

 

I remember your dedication; to wash up, to bandage up, to get back to work ... and to smile and to see that your effort was making the dream for the animals materialize.  You knew something as wonderful, something as vast as we had planned, wasn’t just going to happen, it had to be created, it had to be worked for.  And so day after day, no matter how tired, how achy, how itchy, you worked on. 

I remember celebrating our 100th animal saved.  Our 1,000th.   Today, at our 15 year mark, we’re very close to having saved 5,000 animals. 

........

We’ll hear more from mom next time about the old old days .....  

And in the mean time would you help me by making a donation in honor of those early souls who helped build Rikki's literally from the ground up.  I mean Rikki’s is MY home ....  so you know what most shelters would have done to me?   And without these folks .... well ....  I wouldn’t be here writing to you.

Your donation TODAY will enable the Refuge to move past that 5,000th animal … toward 10,000. 

Thank YOU for saving lives -- we absolutely cannot continue to save lives without YOUR support !!

On line donations are easy at www.RikkisRefuge.org/Donate  you can even sign up for a life saving monthly recurring donation!!!

I’m always happy to hear the check is in the mail!  Rikki’s Refuge, PO Box 1357, Orange VA 22960

Credit cards are accepted on line at www.RikkisRefuge.org/Donate or over the phone. 

You can call me directly at 540-854-0870 x5  to make sure your credit info is kept confidential.


THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME TO SAVE SO MANY LIVES
... with your support we’re able to help so many into their new furrever happy homes ....  and to give that life long home to those not quite so fortunate ...  Thank you for your support
Without YOU none of us would be breathing today !!


Mom and me were snuggling the other day and she was telling me about the times before me at Rikki’s ....  what it was like in the early days .... about all YOU wonderful people who made it possible .... about all the animals saved ....    I’m sharing my scratches about Rikki’s Refuge .... 15 Years in the Making with you as much as I can paw in at one sitting .....  if you missed Part I ....  you can catch up here http://rikkisrefuge.blogspot.com/2013/12/rikkis-refuge-15-years-in-making.html and read from the beginning.




LAST TIME .....   
We ended up last time hearing mom say, “I remember celebrating our 100th animal saved.  Our 1,000th.   Today, at our 15 year mark, we’re very close to having saved 5,000 animals.“



Rikki’s Refuge ....  15 Years in the Making    ....    Part II

But that number is really misleading.  That’s not just saved, but almost 5,000 residents who lived and made Rikki’s their home.  Animals who lived because of Rikki’s Refuge.

During the dark nights of the winter of 1998-1999, while we often worked by the headlights of our vehicles long into the night, while we itched, ached and dropped into uncomfortably hard and lumpy sleeping bags, we dreamed of the animals we’d save. 

Those whose last chance we were creating.  Those who would escape death, torment, abandonment, abuse, to come live in what we were creating, those who would be loved again or loved for the first time. 

No, not JUST those nearly 5,000 residents have been saved by your dreams.  Just as many wild animals have come through the gates of Rikki’s Refuge.  Working with wildlife rehabilitators and animal control officers all over the state, our woods and wetlands are home to many wild animals who would have otherwise died.  Would have been left on the road to die.  Trapped in someone’s house or yard and sentenced to death for trespassing.  Lost their home to “development”. 

Your dream saved these wild animals too.  Gave them 350 acres they can live in, happy, secure, knowing it will never be bulldozed, never destroyed by humans. 

Wow, now we’re talking almost 10,000 animals’ lives saved in 15 years!  And it doesn’t stop there. 

So many animals have been saved, have had their homes saved, when we stepped in and helped them.  They didn’t need to come to live at Rikki’s.  They needed us to make it possible for them to stay in their loving homes.  People and animals who loved each other, who were going to be separated, the animals facing death.  Your dream made them able to happily and safely stay together. 

Sometimes that’s helping with an illness.  The animal’s or the owner’s.  No place for an animal to go while the owner is hospitalized or convalescing.  Time and time again, we’ve been called in by authorities in several counties to help.  Usually it’s an elderly or handicapped person on a fixed income, with a beloved animal they are risking losing.  An animal whose life would be lost if they were taken to a typical pound or shelter.  The need is simple, but beyond their means.  A dog house, a damaged fence repaired, vaccinations, a speuter.  So simple and human and animal live together happily ever after. 

We’ve saved hundreds of those animals.

Every day we help people we never actually meet or visit, find a way to keep their beloved animals.  Sometimes they just need resources.  How can I find an inexpensive way to speuter this stray, and then I’ll give them a home?  Where do I turn for help?  How do I handle this or that situation?  I’m afraid, what do I do now?    Finding the answers, working through the situation with the people, hearing the good results.  A handful of these are resolved everyday.  Handful a day, times 30 days a month, times 12 months a year, times 15 years ....  counting the times we’ve successfully saved a life, a home .....  you can easily add another 20,000 animals saved by Rikki’s dream !

Wow ....  so now we’re talking about 5,000 who found a home, 5,000 released wildlife, 500 touched and helped in their home, 20,000 saved through long distance assistance .....   30,500 lives saved, since we first started clearing up that poison ivy ....  


WOW -- that’s a lot of animals, domestic like me, that means cats and dogs and bunny rabbits and guinea pigs, and farm animals like Petunia the Piggy and Calvin the Cow, and wild animals who live in the woods and go bump in the night too ....  AND ... hoomans !!!  I guess I never realized how much Rikki’s helps the hoomans too.   But till we win the right to vote, there seems to always be a hooman behind each of us animals, doesn’t there?

We’ll hear more from mom next time about other things Rikki’s Refuge does to help animals everywhere .....  

And in the mean time could I please beg you to make a donation to help one of us?  You pick, donate to help a domestic animal, a farm animal, wildlife or hoomans in need ....  just let me know where to help YOU spend your donation! 

Your donation TODAY could enable the Refuge to help one more person keep their beloved animal friend out of a pound or shelter.

Thank YOU for saving lives -- we absolutely cannot continue to save lives without YOUR support !!

On line donations are easy at www.RikkisRefuge.org/Donate  you can even sign up for a life saving monthly recurring donation!!!

I’m always happy to hear the check is in the mail!  Rikki’s Refuge, PO Box 1357, Orange VA 22960

Credit cards are accepted on line at www.RikkisRefuge.org/Donate or over the phone. 

You can call me directly at 540-854-0870 x5 to make sure your credit info is kept confidential.


I Love you bunches,
           Opie







I love snuggling with Mom and hearing the stories of how Rikki’s came to be ...    what it was like in the early days .... about all YOU wonderful people who made it possible .... about all the animals saved ....    I’m sharing my scratches about Rikki’s Refuge .... 15 Years in the Making with you as much as I can paw in at one sitting .....  

We ended last time hearing mom say, “... 30,500 lives saved, since we first started clearing up that poison ivy.“

Rikki’s Refuge ....  15 Years in the Making    ....    Part III

But it doesn’t stop there either. 

We work with other shelters, rescues, organizations, to help them save more.  We teach the things we’ve learned about managing so many animals.  How to manage feral cats in a shelter instead of euthanize, why TNR is THE way to go, how to get them home or to good colony situations.  In the animal world what people fear, people kill.  When we teach understanding of ferals, we dispel that fear, we give them options, we give them a chance for life.


We teach management of fiv, feline leukemia, acceptance of elderly and handicapped animals for the adoption roster, not the euthanasia list.  We teach rescues to work well with pounds and shelters.  The contention between the two so often leads to the death of animals.  When they understand and respect one another, they can work together towards saving more lives. 

We teach disease management in large groups of animals, quarantine control, cleaning protocols.  Every new animal group will go through the same problems, they can reinvent it all, losing lives in the process, or they can learn from the experienced.  When you’ve been there, you know what works and what doesn’t.  I thank God every day for the valuable insights I learned from others, from spending time at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, from visiting sanctuaries across the country, from the long, long lists the really outstanding Directors told me of things NOT to do .... 

Yes, you’d think what TO do might be more important?   I mean taking care of animals is pretty obvious anyway, isn’t it?   Yet so many of those obvious things lead to disaster.  Disaster and lives lost that will happen if you keep learning from scratch.  I took those lists of DO NOTs to heart.  So often the plan warned against would come up in plans and designs and I’d remember, “Oh they said DON’T” ....   Sometimes I wouldn’t really see why this or that was a real no-no.  Later I’d always learn and see, had I not listened and not learned from those who’d gone before me, someone would have been injured or died. 

How many animals have been saved through information we’ve shared with others working to save animals?  I have no idea.  There’s no way to compute those numbers.  But I can tell you it’s thousands and thousands.  No doubt tens of thousands over the years.
.....

WOW -- so that means YOUR support helps save the lives of domestic animals like me, farm animals like Mikey the Goat, all kinds of wildlife AND animals that end up in other shelters in close by and far away places. 



Whose life would YOU like to save today?

Isn’t it wonderful to be a part of Rikki’s and know that YOU are helping others to create the same kind of paradise on earth AND avoid mistakes that can ruin it!

Your donation today WILL ENABLE ANOTHER LIFE to be saved.

Thank YOU for keeping Rikki’s alive and helping others stay alive too!

On line donations are easy at www.RikkisRefuge.org/Donate  you can even sign up for a life saving monthly recurring donation!!!

I’m always happy to hear the check is in the mail!  Rikki’s Refuge, PO Box 1357, Orange VA 22960

Credit cards are accepted on line at www.RikkisRefuge.org/Donate or over the phone. 

You can call me directly at 540-854-0870 x5 to make sure your credit info is kept confidential.




THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME TO SAVE SO MANY LIVES
... with your support we’re able to help so many into their new furrever happy homes ....  and to give that life long home to those not quite so fortunate ...  Thank you for your support
Without YOU none of us would be looking forward to Christmas this year  !!

Love you bunches,
           Opie

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Mom’s been telling me about the times before me at Rikki’s ....  what it was like in the early days .... about all YOU wonderful people who made it possible .... about all the animals saved ....    I’m sharing my scratches about Rikki’s Refuge .... 15 Years in the Making with you as much as I can paw in at one sitting .....  if you missed Part I or II or III ....  you can catch up here http://rikkisrefuge.blogspot.com/2013/12/rikkis-refuge-15-years-in-making.html and read from the beginning.

We ended last time hearing mom say, “...How many animals have been saved ...  ?  ...  I can tell you it’s thousands and thousands.  No doubt tens of thousands over the years.“

Rikki’s Refuge ....  15 Years in the Making    ....    Part IV

But that’s still not enough. 

The world has become such a small place.  Through social media we know animal rescuers on almost every continent and in many, many countries.  And through social media we can help these people help more animals.  We can help them with their so badly needed fundraising.  How huge to a tiny organization in Italy, to have us advertise their fundraising event.   How huge to the animals to spread the word of speuter clinics, vaccination clinics, free services and low cost services available. 

Feral cats are everywhere on the globe.  The “problem” is the same.  They are breeding unchecked, they’ve gotten in somebody’s way, and we don’t want to see them trapped and killed. 

The solution is the same everywhere on the globe too.  TNR (Trap Neuter Return; with a huge emphasis on Return).  Stop the reproduction.  Make sure they are cared for as the Community’s Cats.  So often a single person just needs some guidance, some resources, to be able to start a TNR program in their community.  It doesn’t matter what language the caretakers speak.  To the cats, it all says LIFE !


By helping people all over the globe with ideas, resources, knowing they aren’t alone, more and more are able to go forth and help the animals.  And each one of them helping, draws in others who want to help.  It’s a real domino effect. 

A few of you have been around long enough, or were isolated enough to invent rescue when you saw a homeless animal.  For most of you it rubbed off from someone you know.  You went to an adoption day and learned about the number of homeless animals, you went on a tour of a sanctuary and never before had thought about the elderly and the handicapped dying every day in shelters, you heard about a community “cat problem” and you read up on TNR and the solution, you had a friend who fostered for a rescue and you were talked into trying “just one”. 

For me, it happened something like 35 year ago.  One specific cat came into my care.  I needed help.  My vet referred me to “a lady I bet you’ll really hit it off with”.  She ran a humane organization.  I’d actually never even known about such a thing.  Though I’d take in strays and get them “fixed” and pass them off on friends and co-workers; I had no idea there were organizations, groups of people banded together, to do this.  How cool!!   I went to an adoption day.  I met really great people.  People who felt like I did about animals and life and death.  This was cool !!   

At that first adoption day, I listened and I learned that many, many animals were killed in shelters, were abandoned, had horrible things happen to them.  I was so stunned.  It was an eye opening experience I could happily have gone through life without.  How different that life would have been!  Sometimes I dream of it ....  but then I see the eyes of somebody who is alive because of me ... and I come back to reality.

Anyway, I went home that day with A foster cat.  How long that A didn’t last !!!  Soon it was lots, and soon I specialized in the handicapped, the elderly, the problems ... the ones that would have so much trouble finding a home and so likely end up dead without me.   You can see the seeds of Rikki’s forming here can’t you?  Well that’s another story for another time. 


Point here being, that for each person we help bring into the rescue world, they will bring in others.  And when everyone has brought in everyone and everybody is a rescuer ... it will no longer be acceptable to kill off the unwanted.  There won’t even BE any unwanted !!   Everyone will be loved and wanted and have a home. 

And yes, we have a long way to go.  But dog-gone it, look at how far we have come?  Rikki’s Refuge and all the others out there working tirelessly for all the animals.

And so through helping others with advertising, advice, just sharing that they aren’t in it alone, we’ve helped to save thousands and thousands more.  Just imagine if only one person in one country that we lend a paw to each year starts up a successful rescue or TNR program  ....  saving “only” 100 animals a year, over 15 years, that’s another 1500 animals ....  and I seriously bet the numbers are much closer to 100 people each inspired to save 100 animals ......  and that’s 150,000 more over the last 15 years .....

It’s a snowball effect ....  a domino effect .....  and it takes a lot of us to make it happen.  


All of us working to save all of them  .... one animal at a time ....  will you join the Rikki’s Family and help us make it happen?

Remember: Your donation does mostly go to support our animals ... for food, housing, medical care, day-to-day facilities cleaning and maintenance, etc.  But, it also reverberates around the world, as we spread our philosophy of love and life through various social media outlets and supportive help to other caring individuals and organizations. 

Rikki's believes that an animal helped
is an animal helped,
no matter which organization does it.

Isn’t it wonderful to be a part of Rikki’s and know that YOU are helping here at the sanctuary and all across this wonderful planet of ours? 

Especially at this time of year ....

it really brings our mission home ...

Peace on Earth ... Goodwill to all Animals !!

Your donation today WILL ENABLE SOMEONE to be cared for, to be loved, to have a home.

Thank YOU for keeping the animals of Rikki’s alive and happy this holiday season!

On line donations are easy at www.RikkisRefuge.org/Donate  you can even sign up for a life saving monthly recurring donation!!!

I’m always happy to hear the check is in the mail!  Rikki’s Refuge, PO Box 1357, Orange VA 22960

Credit cards are accepted on line at www.RikkisRefuge.org/Donate or over the phone. 

You can call me directly at 540-854-0870 x5 to make sure your credit info is kept confidential.


THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME TO SAVE SO MANY LIVES
... with your support we’re able to help so many into their new furrever happy homes ....  and to give that life long home to those not quite so fortunate ...  Thank you for your support
Without YOU none of us would be looking forward to Christmas this year  !!

Love you bunches,
           Opie and Timmy



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