A Journey

Everyday I fall asleep thinking of a vast fenced area. Trees and green grass, all manner of animals playing or resting in their chosen spots. There’s a small building with a fully equipped animal ambulance parked outside it. Inside there’s a tiled operation theatre, a spacious examination room, white coated vet or two and a group of dedicated paravets and helpers all busy helping the vets perform surgeries, and tending to wounded and sick animals. 

But my reality is very different. I wake up and the first thing I do is pick up the poop from my living room floor. One or two or four puppies are always being fostered in my home, and until they get adopted or toilet trained this is my morning routine. After I feed and walk my 16 rescued dogs, I medicate or treat the sick and injured ones. Cooking, cleaning, grooming, training, managing the dogs and multiple cats takes up all day. Evenings are spent co ordinating adoptions, making posts about adoptable dogs, updates about the resident animals.

It’s night before I know it. And it’s easy to lose sight of my dream. But every walk, every rescue, every bath I give a dog with a terrible skin infection, is the journey I must make to realise my dream. Every kilometre I travel to drop a puppy on her journey to her forever home brings me closer to my dream. And so, ever so often, I stop to savour the journey. The extra care each dog needs. The picky eating of the cats makes me smile. Because the journey is just as, if not more important, than the destination. Because the journey is in the present. The destination may or may not arrive, but the journey is all anyone has.