Back to the Start

So. Here I have created a blog as a tool to document this journey. But where to start? Really, this journey started in May of 2010 because of...facebook. Good ol' facebook.

Wait. Let's back up another 30 or so years. I have loved animals, of all kinds, all my life. My family will attest to this. I grew up on 100 acres in a rural Alabama town (population 1,160 in the year 2000; so small and rural that the 2010 census results have not yet been published). My family's acreage is surrounded by forested land owned by Weyerhauser, a big wood/pulp/paper company. Weyerhauser leases their land to hunters throughout the year, so at any given time, there were people hunting various wildlife on the land surrounding our homestead. On multiple occasions during my childhood, we heard bullets whizzing over our heads while we were outside playing. Dad made us wear neon orange knitted hats whenever we went outside to play, in the hopes that hunters would not mistake us for shootable wildlife.

Deer season is the major hunting season in Alabama. Up until just a few years ago, it was legal for hunters to use dogs to "help" them during deer hunts. What they would actually do, was to drop off their dogs on one side of our property, drive around to the other side of our property, and shoot the deer that the dogs ran out of the woods. The dogs were valuable during deer season but often became worthless to the hunters on the day deer season ended. I cannot even begin to remember, nor do I care to remember, how many hunting dogs ended up abandoned on our property. It was like the hunters just drove away on the last day of hunting season, with their last "trophy rack" strapped to the truck, and never looked back for the dogs. I petitioned my parents to keep every single abandoned dog that ended up on our property. I (with the help of my siblings) succeeded in a few cases. I'll spare you the story about all the cases I didn't win. Thankfully, dog-assisted hunting has been outlawed in recent years.

I moved to Seattle from Alabama in December of 1998. Two gals named Katie & Missy have worked with my sister in Huntsville, Alabama, for many years. They are real rocket scientists, just like my sis. I met them a few times during my visits home over the years. In May of 2010, Missy & Katie visited Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, and posted pictures of their trip on facebook. I saw the pictures, read about their adventure, went to the Best Friends website and read all I could about the sanctuary and organization as a whole. I knew immediately that I had to visit the sanctuary, and experience for myself what it might be like to work for the largest no-kill sanctuary in the world.

It took several months to "get my ducks in a row" but I finally made the trip to Kanab in March 2011. I fell in love. Within 6 months of that trip I quit my dead-end job in commercial real estate, sold my house in Seattle, and began to aggressively pursue employment with Best Friends. Unfortunately, such big changes also led to the dissolution of my nine-year-long relationship. Fortunately, I have a wonderful family who welcomed me back to Alabama with open arms.

This is the view from my parents' house (the house I grew up in). It's a great place to relax, re-group, heal, and gear up for a new life-phase. Which is exactly what I did :o)

After several months of rejuvenation, with the help of my Mom's fantastic southern cooking, I felt ready to spread my wings again. I applied for a five-week internship at Best Friends and was accepted.

And so it happened, almost exactly a year after that catalytic first visit to Best Friends, I set out driving from Millport, AL to Kanab, UT. I arrived on March 25, 2012.