Who wants to hear a story about some heroes? Well first . . . we have to rewind the story a little bit and take you back to June at the Lancaster Shelter (Los Angeles county, CA) Lancaster Shelter is only one of thirty plus high kill shelters that Camp Cocker Rescue monitors for cockers. On any given day, there can be more than fifty cockers spread out at those thirty shelters. On average, about ten new cockers are showing up a day, that means one out of three shelters is seeing a new cocker walking in their doors. Do the math, that is about 300 cocker spaniels (more if you include the cocker mixes) a month. Camp Cocker Rescue can only save a tiny fraction of those dogs. We can only save as many as we can either find foster homes for or get adopted from our existing dogs to make room for new dogs. Our volunteer Doreen, spends her time every single day of the year, watching shelter websites to look for new cockers as they turn up. She posts their shelter pictures on our website as well as on our Facebook page, in the hope that the general public might consider adopting directly from a shelter. On this particular week in June in Lancaster, there were six cockers at that one shelter alone. Two big hearted animal lovers named Caitlin and Holly, visit the Lancaster shelter regularly to take photos and videos of the cockers (they started to do this for Camp Cocker but now they do it to share everywhere because they know Camp Cocker cant save every dog). In June, that list of six cockers they were networking, two had already been put to sleep. The third one on the list next to be euthanized was a dog named Bosco. Here is the video clip that Holly and Caitlin took of him when he was in the shelter: youtu.be/V7-74OY7BU0 With heavy heart, we had no room to take Bosco into Camp Cocker. And like so many other dogs before him, we figured we would at least take the video that Caitlin and Holly took and promote it on Facebook a few times. It rarely happens that someone from the general public will go to a shelter to adopt a dog because they saw the shelter dog on our Facebook page. But you cant blame us for trying, right? We posted Bosco on our Facebook pages and asked if anyone would consider going to the shelter to adopt him. And what happened next is amazing . . . no really, this happens so rarely that we think it is super duper amazing! Krista and Doug, who live in Brisbane, CA drove 740 miles round trip (12 hours), to Lancaster just so they could save Boscos life! And then they surprised us by showing up at our Cocker Palooza with Bosco (who has a new name, Tanner) and told us their rescue story and how it was all because of that video that Holly and Caitlin made, and then we posted it on our Facebook page. There are days/weeks/months when sometimes rescue gets so depressing and discouraging, because we are painfully aware of how many dogs we are not able to save. Krista and Doug, you are our heroes because you saved a dog that was about to slip through the cracks of the shelter system and we are so grateful to you! Thank you to Doreen, , who has a really hard task of monitoring the shelter website for new cockers. Day in and day out, she never gives up. She was our volunteer that kept re-posting that Bosco video for us on Facebook. Caitlin and Holly, who have the hardest volunteer task ever . . . to come face to face with shelter dogs, spend time with them, taking their photos, videos, networking the animals and hope that somehow, their lives can be spared. It must be really awful to have spent time with animals that you find out are then put to sleep. You are also our heroes for not giving up and keeping at it, one shelter dog at a time. Congratulations to Bosco, now Tanner, for beating the odds and making it out of a shelter alive. We are so glad we got to meet you and we hope you have the life of your dreams!
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 03:46:59 +0000
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