How do you make your first blog post?  For readers, a glimpse at a new blog is akin to your first visit to a new restaurant - if the service isn't good.....you aren't going back. If you don't like this post - I know you aren't going to keep reading - but here's my best shot at it :)

I wanted to write a letter to our wonderful amazing dedicated fosters (and adopters! and donors! and volunteers!) at the start of the New Year.  The letter would have let them know that by working together, our small group saved over 100 dogs in 2009 <!> (and considering that the rescue only started back in June....that's quite a feat!) but like so many things on my 'to-do' list, it was pushed into my back pocket when we did two large pulls in early January.  Around the holidays, shelters are overloaded (because......I guess it's acceptable to dump your dog off to be part of a mass killing when you....have gifts to wrap?) so the dogs we saved in early January were very lucky and while I love all of our foster families, I do think that rescuing that group of dogs (like Jiggs and Goliath) was more important than writing a letter of thanks (and I hope they’ll agree with me on that).

Anyway - now you all have the news!  We saved 100 dogs! 

Well, to be exact, we had 104 successful adoptions in 2009 and at the turn of the decade, we also had about 70 other dogs in foster care (who I'd still count as being "saved" last year since, even though they hadn't yet found their permanent homes, they were still safe and loved!) and that doesn't even count all of the other dogs that we helped move into other rescues behind the scenes.


Does anyone else think this is amazing?  I can't even believe it!

Jay and I officially started Thunder's Angels in late May of last year.   We were hoping to save a few dogs each month.  I remember thinking back in the planning stages, "Well, if we can save about 15 before Christmas, that'd be GREAT!" And now....just 8 months later....we saved heaps of lives in less time than it takes for a woman to produce a baby!

Jay and I rung in 2010 at home with our recently rescued Bruno (adopted by us) and Angel (our foster at the time) and…..our laptops.  What were we doing at home while the rest of the city was popping champagne?  We were responding to hundreds of emails from caring people who had written to us that week because they were willing to save a life!  We worked diligently to secure foster homes for dogs in need and updated the website to reflect the best kind of update -- the word SAFE next to an urgent dog's name.  We were thrilled to be able to get everyone to safety that week.  We even had a few followers ‘watching’ us from their own laptops in their own homes, continually refreshing the website to see which dogs were being saved – their new year started as hopeful as ours did.

It was a good start to the year for sure.  But to be honest – running a dog rescue is hard.  Really hard.  It's so hard that they don't even have a font bold enough for me to emphasize how really hard it is.  And if you think I'm saying this lightly, you should ask my dear friend Jackie in North Carolina who recently suffered a stroke from the stress of it all.  (Our well wishes are with you Jackie!)

You see, people who rescue.....do it for the animals.  

But sometimes..... you get mean ones.  You get dogs whose souls have been broken by the people who were supposed to love them but instead left them at the end of a chain for years to fend for themselves; and dogs who are so scared from being hit on a regular basis that they now snap at whatever loving hand approaches them; and dogs who just can't overcome the heartbreak of being dumped by their previous family so they now suffer severe separation anxiety and injure themselves every time you leave the room.

And there aren't just mean dogs -- there are mean people too.  Like those who think you don't have a career independent of the rescue or a family of your own and that every free minute of your life is meant to be dedicated to the rescue; or those who think you are secretly hoarding a small fortune because you charge an adoption fee; or those who want to know why you aren't helping homeless children instead of dogs; or those who yell at you (and these people can really shout!) for random things that shouldn't really upset them -- like how we don't have a central location or that you didn't respond to the email they sent 1 day ago or that we don't provide a constant food source available for the dog's at Meet & Greet events (sorry Judy, I had to throw it in, haha!)

And the mean emails – they’re the worst.  I’m not referring to the ones sent by the mean people I just mentioned above – I mean the “death row” emails.  Hundreds of them.  Each day.  And each one contains a whole slew of dogs that are neglected, abused or abandoned (or worse, dogs who've suffered through all three).  And everyone wants you to help.  But you have limited time, limited money and limited space.  So you beg all of your friends to foster one of the many dogs you know are going to die tomorrow.  Then, when everyone declines, you beg for money to board the dogs.  When you get money to board the dogs, you beg your co-workers, your family, and even your dentist to foster before boarding funds run out.  And when you finally have foster homes and the dogs arrive, you beg vet hospitals for discounts.  And you beg businesses for donations of supplies.  And you beg people on Craigslist for free crates. And you beg your neighbors not to complain about the barking.  And you beg your boss for long lunch breaks so that you can answer more emails. 

You beg beg beg beg beg beg BEG.

And even with all of the begging.....sometimes it still doesn't work out.  

But the reason we continue going forward is that sometimes.......

Sometimes you don't have to beg at all.

Sometimes random people write and say they saw the videos on your website and they are aghast and they will do anything they can to help!  Sometimes you send out an email asking if anyone can make a whelping box for a pregnant dog that is about to get gassed and you get 4 people responding within minutes and volunteering to run home from work and make it right now so that the dog can be saved tonight!  Sometimes loving uncles remember how cute you were as a kid and send you huge donations through the mail to pay off the vet bills that have been keeping you awake at night.   Sometimes you have a broken dog that you don't think is placeable but then someone applies to adopt her because they think she's the most perfect dog that their family has ever met!  Sometimes after getting 10 emails full of bad news, you get one really good one – it’s from an adopter who took a dog that you fostered not long ago and it’s full of love and warm words of encouragement and thankfulness for the work you do and lots of little stories about a wonderful dog that truly deserves the second chance at life that Thunder’s Angels was able to give.

Sometimes when you come home from a long day of work and you check the mail you get 22 envelopes from the vet – and each of them is a bill – but the 23rd envelope is from a child.  A six year old who baked cookies with his mom and sent you his $42 in profits to help save the dogs. 

Sometimes just two people have a wonderful dog in their life and he inspires them enough to start a super small rescue that just grows and grows each day until it has over 200 volunteers and foster families.  And as it grows, more dogs get saved and more people understand the unconditional love that a rescue dog provides and the cycle builds upon itself.

We’ve grown so quickly that some days we can barely keep up.

But we’re still growing more. 

In 2010, we’re planning to expand to the point where hopefully we can continue pulling from gassing shelters but also pull from shelters that kill via heartstick. (If you don’t know what a ‘heartstick’ is, you can watch a video here http://companionanimalnetworktv.org/North%20Carolina.html and you’ll quickly understand why we’re diligently working to achieve that goal.) 

~ We will also begin taking in occasional dogs that are severe special needs cases (such as dogs that have lived their entire lives on chains or dogs who need to be rescued from households of domestic violence). 

~ We may also being saving cats/kittens from gassing shelters since that was an original goal of ours. 

~ We will also be getting our 501c3.  We don’t have much use for this since we are 100% volunteer and since we truly make no profit (spending all of our money on vet bills) we don’t have to pay taxes anyway, but it will likely give people more confidence in us as a rescue and may make us eligible for a few small grants throughout the year for emergency medical issues. 

~ We’ll hopefully expand our volunteer network to the point where we can hold fundraisers and social events (for public education) regularly. 

~ We’ll be updating this blog regularly to help people follow our rescue efforts.  It will have news (like Ariel’s babies which were born last night), updates for events (like when we do a big pull), pleas for help when we’re desperate, success stories, ways you can help (like when legislation is introduced to ban gassing or volunteer opportunities available as we expand), etc.  And we’ll try to keep it interesting the whole while.

~ And lastly, but certainly not least, we’ll be doing courtesy postings (just one at a time for now) for our city shelter for dogs they’ve had for too long in the hopes that we may get some suburban exposure and fenced yards to romp in.   Our first posting is for a sweetheart named Mario whose goofy ears stole my heart – you can view his info at: http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/15622239

 Thunder’s Angels used to be just me and Jay and our little townhouse.  Sometimes we were fostering 12 dogs at one time!  While tending to them we also had to be in charge of pulling more dogs, transporting them from the shelters, finding adopters, doing all of the application screening, traveling to all of the home visits, running fundraisers and maintaining the bank account, getting all of the dogs to their vet appointments, holding meet and greets, finalizing all adoptions, etc etc etc…..but the beginning was the hardest part.  Now we have super-foster-families that make real commitments to the dogs (and some who take multiple dogs even though they don’t get paid by the pound like they ought to!), volunteers who drive through the night to do transports for us even when they have to be at work the next day, folks who are willing to donate towards vet bills even when they’ve just found out they’re being laid off, screeners who will make calls at their work offices even on their busiest days, and the list goes on.  So, whatever the future holds for me, Jay, and this wonderful crew of compassionate volunteers….we can handle it.

We look forward to your continued support.  If you aren’t already part of our team, please join us!  Some call it a ‘little family’ and we’re happy to welcome you to it.