The Pet Fiesta this weekend was fabulous! The weather was perfect, the turnout was awesome, and two of the dogs we had there got applications.

I didn’t get to take Theodore. When I got to the shelter on Saturday I found out he had been at the vet since the previous night. His neuter incision got infected and he was feeling bad. Poor boy. But I got to bring Turbo, who I loved, even after he puked in my car.

Turbo is a really good dog. He was fabulous with other dogs and he let little kids pet him and sucked up all that attention. This was amazing, especially since he was missing a bunch of hair.

He has large, ugly scars. Chemical burn scars. He was picked up as a stray but it was obvious that someone poured something all over him and it ate off his fur and skin in big patches. He’s completely healed but those patches will never grow hair again.

The Pet Fiesta got me motivated to jump back into the volunteer seat. I’ve been working on my Pibble presentation for the adoption committee. I’ve been gathering stories from people on my pit bull mailing list to read to the committee members to emphasize why it’s so important to follow the guidelines I’m going to lay out.

And then a mass email was sent out from the executive director. He sent us all his resignation.

This might not be too disturbing under normal circumstances. Rescue is hard. People burn out. But a couple months ago the president of the board of directors gave her resignation. Her successor has been appointed and, after connecting the dots, I have come to the conclusion that one of the negative volunteers he used to talk about in vague generalities is our new president.

Fabulous.

And then last night one of the members of the board followed right behind the director. His resignation letter cited his reason for leaving being “the changes that have been made so far” and “a small cliche of people who are resistant to change”.

The only change that’s been made so far? The new president. Unless there’s something going on behind the scenes that the rest of us don’t know about it’s the only reason I can see.

I emailed my “mentor”. She thinks these resignations are going to be good for the rescue. So now I’m wondering if she is one of the other volunteers who is resistant to change.

A few of us on the marketing committee exchanged some emails. I started that chain by expressing my concern for the animals. After I sent that initial email my in box was innundated with “reply to all” responses, all of which said pretty much the same thing I did.

So I’ve tabled my presentation for now. I could still work on it and then figure out a way to present my information to the public. Education is desperately needed but today I just can’t get into it. This rescue has been around for 30 years. That’s a HUGE accomplishment. So many rescues open and close within a couple of years…it’s expensive, it’s hard to find volunteers, and the burn out rate is really, really high.

One day I would like to start my own rescue. I know what all is involved. I know the business end of it, the marketing end. Those are not my strong suits. Maybe one day when I’ve been at my job and I’m making more money, one day when I have a house with a yard I can build a small kennel and pull dogs from the shelters and rehome them. But I can’t do that now. Now all I can do is hope my rescue works through this.

I’m not comforted by the knowlege that this type of thing happens about every 10 years or so. Volunteers get so wrapped up in politics it’s disgusting. There are a bunch of new volunteers who would like to figure out who these toxic people are that are jeopardizing our organization. We want to figure out how to get around them so the rescue can achieve more than it’s achieving now. This group does amazing things. The facility is by far the best I’ve seen. It’s got to keep moving forward.

I haven’t been able to integrate myself with the core group of volunteers. I did it once before but this group is a little harder to penetrate. I’m motivated though so it’ll happen. I will be a pest until these folks decide to put me to use. It’s sad that this is the way I’ll have to go about it but I am not going to watch this rescue crumble. There are too many animals counting on us.