Week 2, Day 5: Emotional Roller Coaster!

I cried twice at work today, once of sadness and once of happiness. If my job was an office job, that would probably be frowned upon, seen as something too emotional or inappropriate. But both times today, my tears were shared and understood by the people I worked with.

Rescue Village

I began my day with a shift in Rescue Village, which houses rabbits. All the rabbits in the yurts at Rescue Village came from one giant rescue mission from a hoarder in Reno, NV. They are not kidding when they say rabbits multiply quickly. I think when Best Friends got the call to help out, there were about 1,000 rabbits. By the time they got there, there were 1,600. The situation looked like this:

Rabbits carry a parasite called Encephalitozoon cuniculi (EC). For many rabbits, this will never become a problem, but for others, it causes neurological damage that often results in partial to full paralysis and many other degenerative conditions. So Rescue Village houses these rabbits, many of whom need special medical care.

I began my day walking around the yurt to which I had been assigned with a caregiver. We were feeding the rabbits as we went. Then we both saw it: one rabbit in the next run, lying on her side, not moving. The caregiver jumped into action as I gasped. Sure enough, she had passed away during the night. I've seen my fair share of dead animals (all you have to do is drive down a road and see all those hit by cars!) and I've seen many animals and people I've cared deeply about die too. So you may not think that the death of a rabbit who I didn't know would affect me, but it was an incredibly sad sight. Her name was Lissa. Rabbits bond for life. Lissa was bonded to two other rabbits in her run. It makes me so sad to think of what all of them went through that previous night as she died. The staff at Rescue Village were all wonderful and came to check on me to make sure I was okay and apologize for me having to see that. I was okay - it is part of the cycle of life. It's just hard to see.

I began cleaning the runs in that yurt, with the image of Lissa always in my mind. When I got to her run to clean it, I just broke down crying. There was vomit and urine near where she died and I just hope she didn't suffer much. As prey animals, rabbits hide illness and injury very well, so she was thought to be completely healthy until her death. I cleaned the run and cried the whole time. I replaced all the blankets with fresh ones and made it as nice as I could for the remaining two rabbits. Lissa, may you rest in peace.

I never came to Best Friends thinking I would focus any significant time in Bunny House or Rescue Village. Rabbits seemed cool, but I didn't have a huge interest in them except that they are cute and soft. But in my short time working here, I've learned so much about them and how amazingly complex they are. I love that they bond for life. They really need to have a companion to be happy. So, affected by the death of Lissa, and seeing some of the other rabbits at Rescue Village who had also lost their bonded partners, I decided to focus some of the remainder of my internship doing a little "matchmaking" and working on bonding pairs of rabbits. That may sound easy, but there are three species of mammals who will fight their own kind to the death: humans, dogs, and rabbits. I had no idea! They are very picky about who they are put with and will kill each other if it doesn't work out! But once they're bonded with the right rabbit, they will always have each other's backs. So today, I started bonding Benjamin and Fargo. These are Fargo's and Benjamin's current companions, respectively:

Clearly there's room for improvement! So we started the two rabbits together in a pen, highly supervised. Here they are:

Fargo is on the left and you may notice his back legs leaning off to the side. He is affected by EC and is mostly paralyzed in his lower body. Benjamin is on the right; EC has not affected him. Both have relatively recently lost their previous partners. The introduction went pretty well! I smooshed them together and pet them a lot to get each one's sent on the other one. I also rewarded them with carrots when they were being calm and not chasing or biting at each other:

By the end of my shift, I left them looking like this:

While I watched them, I made a special treat for the rabbits called Angel's Mush. I hope you're not eating as you read this because it looks disgusting:

But the rabbits adore it! It gets made into frozen treats. Here's the final product:

DogTown: The Clubhouse

For my afternoon shift, I worked in an area of DogTown called The Clubhouse. It houses a mix of all colors of dog collars, so there were few dogs that I could actually interact with. I worked in the small dog building. I cleaned every run (with the world's heaviest mop) and made sure all the bedding was fresh. All the dogs were kept outdoors while I worked on their indoor run. They looked very cozy by the time the dogs were allowed to come back in and get ready for dinner. There is usually a dog in the kitchen while the food is being prepared, but today I had a bonus and we got two kitchen dogs! I completely fell in love with one of them and wanted to take her home! She was so sweet! She had been hit by a car, so her back is broken and she has very limited use of her back legs. But she is a happy, sweet girl, full of kisses. And she loves to take walks, go to physical therapy, and just be a dog! Her name is Thumbelina:

The other little office dog was Isiah, who was a complete lap dog (and totally mischievous!):

So let me tell you about the second time I cried today. This time, my tears were out of happiness. I got to witness my first Best Friends dog go to his forever home. It was a small dog named Sammy and he was getting picked up by his eager new momma. She waited outside while the caregiver got him ready to leave. It was very bittersweet for the caregiver, who had grown very attached to this dog. I watched as he gave Sammy one last kiss on the head, told him he loved him, and handed him off to his new mom. She could hardly contain her excitement and Sammy started licking her chin immediately. It was so beautiful, I couldn't help but tear up! I wish Sammy the absolute best in his forever home! It's sad to see a dog you love leave, but it's so wonderful for that animal and it only makes room for us to rescue more animals!

After concluding our week with our weekly intern meeting, I left feeling like I'd had a pretty productive day. There can be a lot of sadness in animal rescue and a lot of cruelty and things you don't even want to imagine. But when the little victories happen, like when two very shy dogs who are terrified of humans ate their meals out of my hands today, it warms my heart like nothing else. And when the big victories happen, like an animal finally going to a forever home, it makes everything worth it. There's no better feeling in the world.