Raise your hand if you’re behind on house cleaning.

Raise your hand if you’re behind on your dictation work at your typing job.

Raise your hand if you totally need to fix up your chicken coop area give it some TLC and hard work.

Raise your hand if you haven’t ridden your own horse in almost three weeks.

Raise your hand if you signed up for Rally classes with your dog and have missed three in a row, which is pretty much the whole thing, because of last minute work and babysitting scheduling issues.

Raise your hand if you signed up to be a municipal liaison for NaNoWriMo.

Raise your hand if you really suck at that sort of stuff.

Raise your hand if you’ve committed to “winning” NaNoWriMo and are so behind on your word count it’s actually almost comical at this point.

Raise your hand if you have a bad habit of surfing  the Craigslist pet ads.

Raise your hand if your heart seized up inside of you when you saw this picture in the pet section last night – a picture of an elderly Jack Russell with bad hips, a poor old guy who was so skinny your jaw dropped:

Raise your hand if you read the plea – please rescue my friend’s pets.  My friend has agreed to let them go, my friend is gone too often, is not in a good place to have pets, and the animals are going hungry.  He’s agreed it’s for the best to rehome them.

Raise your hand if you realized that if you just ignored this plea then you’re kind of a hypocrite, because you do have the time and resources to help out a skinny dog, and if you followed through on your impulse to ignore the problem just because you’re feeling overwhelmed with an imaginary word count goal, then that’s kind of crappy of you’re kind of a crappy human being.  Raise your hand if you texted and offered to rescue the poor thing, thinking that at the very, very least you could bring it into the vet and feed the poor thing steak while they helped him be forever free of pain.

And then… and then the person texted back that someone had already stepped up for the Jack Russell but there was some kind of a small shepherd mix, female, younger, 35-40 pounds, thin… and would you consider giving her a home?

I think we can all see where this is going.

I don’t want this to be a post bashing the original owner – because, in my opinion…. the owner is doing the right thing.  It’s hard to admit when you’re in a bad place, but they had the strength to do so. I don’t know who they are, or what they are going through, but these animals are not being removed from the home, they’re being surrendered, and that takes a lot of strength.

And yes, animals shouldn’t get this thin, but…. but if we crucify every person who comes forward and admits defeat, then people are just gonna keep hiding their brokenness and the animals will be the ones who pay the price.

So, honestly?  I want to take a moment to say thank you to two people – thank you to the friend who convinced their friend to rehome the animals, and thank you to the struggling person for being strong enough to do right by their pets and let them find good homes.

Is it two people I’m thanking?  One person?  Who knows?  Those two people might very well be the very same person, but  I guess I kind of feel it’s none of my business, and I’d hate for them or anyone else like them to find this post and decide to just hide their problems next time.

So, I’m gonna go pick up this girl tonight:

They say she’s good with kids, and she lives with two other dogs and two cats.  Here’s hoping they’re right.  My goal is to throw some training into her and rehome – I’m not against a second dog, but I really don’t like female/female mixes, especially with little kids… but we’ll see.

What’s one more thing on my plate of responsibility, when it makes my heart feel happy because I know I’m doing the right thing?