Love Posts

"You post so much. They can't look at everything. It'd take hours," Simon said to me. "You're diluting the efficacy."

"I know, but I have to. It's something I need to do. The more exposure the better." I raised both arms in a way I believed was a 'What else can I do?" manner.

"It'll never be enough, no matter how much you do," he said.

"But that's no reason not to keep doing it," I reasoned.

"No," he agreed.

We looked at each other in our shared frustration.

"I wish people weren't so callous about it all."

I stood up and walked over to open the sliding door. Simon's dog, Hector more or less waddled past me, the tips of his ears brushing the carpet.

"He's smelling pretty good. Did you clean out his ears?"

Simon looked at his aged Bassett Hound and grinned, not attempting to hide his affection. "I did. Took nearly an entire pack of cotton pads."

"I can imagine," I smiled at Hector. "Just a 'good ol' boy', aren't you, handsome man?

"Thank you, Willie," Simon said. He waited.

"That was Waylon." Having corrected his error, I added, "You're slipping."

"You know I hate country music."

"Yeah, but you're a massive Willie fan," I reminded him, then pointed at the screen of the laptop he had situated precariously on his lap.

"Did you see there's a new organization just opened in Clifden?" I asked.

"I did. Do you know anything about it?” He looked at me over his glasses.

"Maybe it'll take over where TAIL-y HO!me left off when they had to close. That left a big hole."

"Where did all their clients go?" he asked. "Did the other organizations each take some in?"

"That I don't know, but I hope so." I nodded towards the computer "Can you refresh the page, please?"

The screen was immediately covered with photos of a large white dog, somewhat on the skinny side, lying amid several furry balls.

"O.M G.," Simon enthused, deliberately saying the letters instead of the actual phrase to annoy me. "When did this happen?"

"One of their posts yesterday said Moira was due any minute. They were bang on obviously," I said.

"Well done, Moira! I guess we can add this bunch to our roster. In a couple of months."

"The poor wee fellas." I felt tears beginning to well deep within me. 'Not now," I reminded myself. I had all the time in the world to cry about yet another homeless litter. "At least they have a shelter for the next few weeks, anyway," I finally managed.

I took the seat at the desk and hit 'Refresh' on the computer keyboard. "OK, I'm ready. You?"

"Yep."

We always divided the list between us, each tracking about 20 organizations on the Saturdays we got together to blitz through the Facebook posts. We had no such thing as an orderly system and just made our way through those rescues whose posts we received on our many Facebook accounts. Between us, we covered our cache of contacts throughout the country, reading and posting, taking note of updates and hoping for good news, though it was a rarity these days. The economy agitated against the likelihood that there would be much to celebrate. People were strapped for cash since the economic downturn had begun last year. They weren’t looking for more mouths to feed.

With our phones ready to wield beside our hands, my left, his right, we began doing what we had done every Saturday for more than a year. But it was a miniscule portion of what I insisted on doing daily. My Facebook pages were so packed with pictures and pleas and postings that the faint of heart might be overwhelmed. Saturdays together felt different. That was just what the two of us did and, when we shared our passion, it didn’t feel like such an insurmountable task. It was still every bit as hard, but the companionship helped to nurse the sadness neither of us could shake.

Weekend warriors. Simon had called us that once, given as he was to catch phrases. I had to agree. There was surely hubris in our self-appointed tasks but we were well-intentioned and it was those intentions that kept us going in what we both agreed was likely a futile pursuit. Still, there had been small victories and we prided ourselves on those. Not so much pride, maybe, as hope gilded with relief.

‘Baby steps’. I hated that expression, but it was fairly accurate in describing what we had managed in the past months since we’d combined efforts to tackle the difficult thing so close to both our hearts. This weekend endeavor was a small part of what I had been trying to do for a very long time. Over the past 10 years or more, I’d located what I hoped would be nearly every rescue organization at least in the province. Each day I’d scour my Facebook feed, then check in on every one of their accounts to see what fosters might be needed and where, and look longingly at all the newbies up for adoption. The 'LOVE' and 'SHARE' buttons were the weapons I wielded in my quest to find homes for dogs without families and, perhaps, get lost dogs back to their people.

It was a sad undertaking. There were just so many in need of saving. I tried to blank out the brutal stories of neglect and abuse, but they perched on my shoulder and whispered into my ear that all my efforts, multiplied by say - a million - would accomplish virtually nothing. Dogs would go unclaimed or lost, without a loving home or a person of their own no matter what I did. Long before I took it upon myself to coordinate in my head the work of the rescue organizations I had unearthed, I couldn’t bear to see the TV commercials and, now, the social media postings about animals in need. Each and every species. But it seemed to be dogs that first riveted me to the cause.

Every day, around noon, I’d plunk myself in front of my computer and begin the thankless review of all the rescue operations with which I’d made myself familiar. Then the seemingly endless posting would begin. I’d share every adoptable dog with the 'LOVE' icon, and any lost or found strays with the 'CARE' option. My Facebook account, in particular, was so full of postings that I feared my individual messages would become lost in the ever-increasing multitude I insisted on publicizing. Simon did the same, though not to the admittedly ridiculous extent I did. We didn’t dare guess at the odds of success, and slogged on trying to shroud our senses from the greater likelihood of failure.

I didn’t make any phone calls during the week but, emboldened by our companionship and camaraderie, on Saturdays we would speak with people at those rescue organizations where the phone was answered, to learn if there had been any adoptions or newcomers, not as yet posted on their sites. The number of newcomers always far exceeded that of adoptions. The disappointment far outweighed the rejoicing.

It was distressing work. And it was heartbreaking. And likely a waste of our time. Or was it?

“Look at this one,” Simon called over to me. I got up from my chair and walked to the couch where he was pointing at a bonded pair of senior dogs who had just been adopted by a newlywed couple that wanted to love them through their final years. “This makes it easier, doesn’t it?” he asked me.

The tears that welled within me every day as I made my way through the seemingly endless number of dogs who were in need of fostering, adopting or finding the way back home, trickled down my right cheek. It was such a small thing, this one adoption, a tiny drop in the ocean of wishes for happy endings.

But it was worth every moment of worry and anguish, every minute spent making my way through hundreds of postings every day then, with Simon, doing what we could to get the information out to where it may be seen, where it may just work.

Simon looked up at me. “Done,” he said. “You?”

I sighed, still reveling in this one happy thing. “Yep.”

“OK. Let’s start on the cats.”