Shelby Angel- Some Final Thoughts

On February 14, Valentine's Day, I walked into the Humane Society to do my weekly volunteership with the dogs, and found out that Shelby Angel had been put to sleep.  This was not the end to our rescue that we had worked so hard to accomplish, and it has absolutely put a huge dent in my heart and my faith in fellow man.  I will share a larger part of this story on her blog for anyone interested in reading further.  

Two months have passed, and it has been so hard for me to talk about it that I have not written anything.  So many of you have been with Shelby during our journey and have been so supportive of her.  For those of you that are new to reading the blog, Shelby Angel is an abused pit bull that I rescued while on a training ride several years ago, and her story has changed my life and the way I respond to animals in need. 

This was a picture from last year that I did for Pit Bull Awareness Day. 

We are not doing enough to protect our world.  We are not doing a good job with SHARING our world with animals.  It is not ours to trash and abuse.  The world is not ours to fill with junk, tear down the trees, and build landfills.  Animals are not ours to hurt and abuse.  I do not use my blog to preach to everyone about hunting, eating meat, animal fighting, or any other thing that I feel leads to unnecessary cruelty to animals.  But I sometimes want to.  I want to tell everyone to adopt.  I want to tell everyone to NOT turn your head when you know someone is hurting an animal.  Confront them.  Call for help.  Go help the animal!  I want to tell people to not ignore the way your country condones the treatment of animals slaughtered for food.  It is not about eating meat or being a vegetarian.  It is about saying it is NOT okay to torture animals or treat them so poorly for our benefit.  If you watch videos of abuse, and it makes you sick, you know something is wrong.  Don't be tolerant.  I don't want to preach perfection- it doesn't exist.  But I want to encourage continued kindness to the animals that share this earth with us.  BE KIND. 

Could Ghandi have been any more correct?:  

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated.
I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.

I miss Shelby terribly.  I will post the rest of the story on her blog.  As for me, I feel a huge mixture of sadness and confusion.  I know there is some sort of calling for me to help animals, but I have not figured out which kind of direction it is supposed to take and whether it is a small or big part of my future.  It may be that I just need to keep doing little things throughout my life....but perhaps I am supposed to be putting my energy towards bigger things.  In the meantime, though, I am just grieving for the huge loss of a friend, and a dog that literally and figuratively changed my life and made me a better person.