I SEE YOU...Hope

Guest Writer
The PetStaurant

The Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation
Sherman Oaks, CA.
Founder, Marc Ching:  

 

                                                                Hope #10

                             

 

My name is Hope,

And I had been born into this world to be a lifeless soul. Born to wither away like I was a breath in the day. Like my existence had been a mistake.

I still remember what it was like to be trapped in that place. My heart a smear buried underneath the screams of those who could not be saved. I had only ever known pain. Only ever seen blood peel itself from walls.

Where I am from, there are worse things than dying. There is a darkness so deep that fear itself holds its breath daring not to whisper or speak.

When Marc saved me, he told me that I was the symbol of truth, and the reason why people risk their lives to pull from the Earth suffocated souls like me. He literally watched someone try to kill me. My small body a dying breath left imprinted on a cloud. Marc watched as I fell from the sky to the ground.

When I was dying, I could feel his breath will my heart to beat. When I was dying, I could feel his soul whisper to me.

I am an American now. And I cannot describe to you how life has changed for me. I cannot describe to you how Marc has used his hands to piece together a world around me.

I had never set foot on grass. I never had toys. I had never been held in someone's arms. And while I am happy where I am. While I love Marc's daughter Kyrsten more than anything, Marc told me my destiny is so much larger then his home and with his family. That I was meant to save someone from a similar fate. That my story, that it was meant to pull someone out from darkness.

Because even though people are free, even though in America people live without the fear of death - there is still so many whom are living that are walking around dying.

My name is Hope, and I am the heart of rescue. I am an Animal Hope and Wellness miracle. And I am up for adoption in Los Angeles.    ###Marc Ching

Marc Ching will go to the ends of the earth to rescue a victimized dog. He selflessly rescues as if he is the incarnate of St. Francis of Assisi. His torment, passion and empathy is palpable.  --R. B. STUART  

 

 

I SEE YOU...Boy

Guest Writer

BETTY BONADUCE

"Boy came in to my life just when I needed him most.  I’d lost my little Sophie, a tiny white poodle I’d named after Sophie Tucker because her howl reminded me very much of the former legendary star.

But she was a fragile little pup as a result of a sad, troubling life where she’d been used to produce puppies, and then discarded when she was no longer fruitful.

Boy, on the other hand is a sturdy dog, also a poodle, but not the little kind. What Boy is instead, is the nicest, friendliest dog you will ever meet. 

More importantly, he will love you if you give him half a chance because Boy loves the world. Unless of course, the world includes a dog that thinks it might be more Alpha than Boy himself.

Lest you think I exaggerate his wonderfulness, let me tell you he has a gift.  He makes everyone who comes to visit us feel that Boy remembers him/her with special
fondness---even if he hasn’t. Boy races down the hall to greet all comers. Kisses and hugs if encouraged---but insane amounts of tail wagging if preferred.

And the best part is, he seems to know in advance which kind of greeting each visitor prefers.

Admittedly, my motive for choosing Boy wasn’t altruistic. I really needed a reason to walk. I’ve never been athletic.  My idea of a lovely trip to the ski resorts is to stay in my room till everyone gets over the need for slalom downhill skiing. I’ve never understood the need to race down a snow covered mountain. However, I am really big on the après ski bar at the bottom of the hill.

But I am aging…irrefutably (at least it's not in dog years, then I'd be 450 and he'd be 70). And doctors keep insisting I must at least walk a half mile a day. Not going to happen without a really good reason.

Enter Boy.

He’s a dog.  He needs to be walked. Not just for the exercise but to give him a chance to behave properly by “doing his business” outdoors instead of in the house. Anyway, it was that mundane need that gave me the opportunity to meet, know and love Boy.

He was a rescue only in the sense that he needed to find a new human. The lady with whom he shared a home had died and the family couldn’t keep him because they already had a German Shepard that looked upon Boy as the night’s dinner.

A mutual friend told me about Boy, and Boy about me and a meeting was arranged. A happy/sad occasion. The lady who had to give Boy to me was so sad. 

She’d loved him the entire time he’d lived with her mother---and how could she not.

Boy was happy but melancholy because he loved her too, although I apparently looked  promising because he settled in quickly.

It’s been four years since that day and every one of them has been nicer because Boy is in it.  He is on my bed when I wake up… if I’m early enough, he’s sleeping peacefully at the foot of the bed, but if it’s after seven, he comes up and licks my face until I wake, get up, dress and hit the road.

We do that twice a day. We stop and smell the grass and whatever else dogs enjoy sniffing, and we say hello to lots of nice people who are out walking their own pets.

Boy has filled my home with joy-filled energy.  He’s a great listener. When no one else is around and I sound off on some of my favorite hates… he listens until he’s had enough then he curls up on my lap to calm me down. I pet him and hug him, forgetting all about the rant I was on.

There’s just no other way to say it…my life is better with Boy.  He’s love on four paws…and it just doesn’t get any better than that."

 ### Betty Bonaduce



                                                                 Boy #9

 

   

I SEE YOU...Wolf

In 2013 I came upon a Timber Wolf German Shepard on the outskirts of a park in the Valley. A homeless man had built a cardboard fortress with shopping carts, drop cloths and quilted moving blankets as a barrier from the outside world he found himself living in. Rustling in the dried leaves was a massive Shepard, who was clocking my every move from 50 yards away, a silver water bowl at his side. I walked past him gingerly with my diminutive Poodle, Sunday, who pranced as if he were a Budweiser Clydesdale.

I attempted to inconspicuously zone in on the dog without appearing aggressive avoiding my eyes locking with his. I was concerned if he was attached to a leash. My presence made him cagey enough to bring him to his feet and approach. I yelled out, "Is your dog on a leash?" In unison a cement block began to fishtail as he effortlessly dragged it across the grass as if it were made of Styrofoam. A bearded man leapt up and crawled out of his makeshift den jaunting over to quell my fears, "That's Wolf. He's harmless he's just curious," while looking back with a command to stay.

Not sure why this man was homeless, or for how long, but I sympathized for his plight, and felt compassion for his dog who didn't know he was homeless...he was just living the life given to him by his master. I'm certain it's stressful for any dog to be standing at attention, and to be on guard perpetually, while living exposed on the worlds stage.  

It saddened me to think this dog may have never known the warmth and comfort of a home, the glory of a romp through the fields, a steak bone in front of a fire, a soft bed of cotton, children fawning over him, a cool swim in the ocean with the waves clipping behind him, a howl to the moon, or be bathed and groomed and be the magnificent creature he is. Ever powerful and proud.

Over the years I dropped off treats for Wolf and food for Jonathan....and then one day found them camped on the grassy knoll by my apartment building. "The cops kicked us out of the park." Jonathan informed. Wolf lay on the damp winter soil, a sliver of sun etched out a section of his tired face. "Thousands of people see him everyday and think he's vicious...he's far from that," Jonathan remarked lowering his hand to swipe it across Wolf's head.

Their reckless unfortunate lives are observed by the public in dismay, as they transition from home to work occupied by commitments and cell phones. But the duo is hardly seen. They are mere remnants of the invisible homeless that echo's the American landscape.

Some of the neighbors donated food, water and small dog beds for the five and a half year old boy. While others were irate calling the police to have this vagabond and his dog removed from their neighborhood. They grilled him as to why he didn't find help from the government. Jonathan reasoned, "They won't accept me with a dog."

California, the most liberal, laid back state in the country, where pet advocates are as impassioned as The Bloods and The Crypts...can't seem to pass laws that include dogs in shelters, nor in 90% of apartment buildings. The dogs, in most instances, will be by their side more faithfully than the government aid. So who would you choose: your best friend or faux.

My heart sank for them both. Within two days they were gone.... Not sure where they moved to, but how could we as a people find disgust for a man and his best friend who lived in a manner that many of us couldn't fathom.

Jonathan always thanked you with a, "God Bless you." How do we know they weren't angels testing us, the human race, of its compassion and empathy. During this holiday season please be mindful that just maybe that homeless man and his dog was sent here for us. To teach us that love and understanding has no color, shape, race, gender, or economic status. It is generated from the heart. An open, accepting, seeing heart. ---R. B. STUART



                                                                 Wolf #8

I SEE YOU...Buddha

Guest Writer
The PetStaurant

The Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation
Sherman Oaks, CA.
Founder, Marc Ching:  
                                                                                         

                                                             Buddha #7

My name is Buddha,

And today God chose to give me a chance. Today - life chose to spare me. To align the stars and to pull from the sky my bleeding heart. And a soul that has crumbled to the ground in pieces. I am only six years old, but the chance I have of living a normal life, it has been stolen from me.

I am an animal cruelty case, and the skin I am living in has literally been diseased and torn. How a person can leave me in this state of suffering - I do not understand.

But I am alive. And now more than ever, I am questioning if life is even worth living. I am questioning if the suffering I endure daily, if the pain of having to live in my body, if it is even worth it.

Marc told me that he does not know the quality of life I will have after he rehabilitates me. He does not even know if I will survive. But he told me this - that he believes it's the suffering that makes it worth it. That having to endure intolerable pain and surviving it - that it makes whatever we have left more important.

To live and die, and to experience only misery. Marc told me if this is my life, then the life I lived was for nothing. To live and suffer, but then to find something extraordinary in the end. To have a family, to grow to know what love is. That this is something worth suffering for. That this is the reason to fill my lungs with breath, and to do my best to hold on.

I am currently at an emergency hospital fighting for my life. Fighting to stay alive. 

I want to know what love is...    ###Marc Ching



Be certain, Marc Ching will go to the ends of the earth to rescue an abused dog...---RBS

 

I SEE YOU...A Dogs Prayer

                                                      

                                                          A Dogs Prayer

Treat me kindly, my beloved friend, for no heart in all the world is more grateful for kindness than the loving heart of me.

 

Do not break my spirit with a stick, for though I should lick your hand between the blows, your patience and understanding will more quickly teach me the things you would have me learn.

 

Speak to me often, for your voice is the world's sweetest music, as you must know by the fierce wagging of my tail when your footsteps fall upon my waiting ear.


Please take me inside when it is cold and wet, for I am now a domesticated animal, no longer accustomed to bitter elements. I ask no greater glory than the privilege of sitting at your feet beside the hearth.

Keep my pan filled with fresh water, for I cannot tell you when I suffer thirst. Feed me clean food, that I may stay well, to romp and play and do your bidding, to walk by your side and stand ready, willing and able to protect you with my life, should your life be in danger.

And, my friend, when I am very old and no longer enjoy good health, hearing and sight, do not make heroic efforts to keep me going. I shall leave this earth knowing that with the last breath that I draw, that my fate was always safest in your hands...

I will always be your best friend.

                                                         --Unknown Author  


 

I SEE YOU....Snowy Girl

On Sunday, November 8th 2015 while I was writing post #5 about my dog Sunday and his mother Snowy, unknowingly 3,000 miles away my sister in New England was contemplating putting down her love, Snowy, a 15 year old snow white poodle---due to failing health. I wrote whilst my sister tried to abate the emotional and mental convulsions that attempted to possess her.

Snowy greeted everyone. Her stout body contorted with joy and happiness, her under bite smile sparkled with excitement, she was a doting mother and a fierce protector of my sister. At the age of three, Snowy brought four babies into the world, two would stake claim on the hearts of me and another sister down south. We spent the last 12 years watching Mama Snowy and Papa Buddy grow older, as their lineage continued to bring joy, love and comfort to others.

But Snowy's health at 15 became precarious. My sister observed her beloved girl struggle seeing, walking and remembering. And on Sunday November 8th 2015, Snowy would take her final compromised breath and leave this earth. Within moments my sister headed home in a cold, dark, empty car images of her girl swirling around her head. The still warm blanket permeated the car with her scent. But Snowy...she was bouncing her way off to Heaven where she skipped through the cottony clouds, her ears swaying with the breeze of freedom.

When she reached Heavens Gate she was greeted by a pack of dogs who eagerly awaited the bevy of stories from her fulfilling life on earth as Snowy Girl. The first to greet her were the dogs born into our family decades earlier; Lady, Sandy, Jackie, Smokey, Luv and Spookey. They listened intently as she reminisced. They showered her with approval and adoration for living such an exciting and courageous life, for loving unconditionally, forgiving, and being a great friend. They escorted her over to a thin, gentle bald man draped in a brown linen gown with a rope tied around his waist, St. Francis of Assisi, and waving an extended arm welcomed her to his flock.

Snowy was no longer handicapped by age, girth or failing eyes and heart. And as St. Francis stepped back, Snowy saw a garden of dogs of all shapes, sizes and colors with sheer white wings fluttering on their backs. They were immersed in ham bones, chocolate chips, chicken livers, greenies, sirloin tip and ice cream. Her body was young and pain free again, her eyes as clear as Tiffany goblets. Snowy skipped---then leapt over to Heavens feast where she found a home---with a new, immortal family. A pale pink satin ribbon cascaded from her chest, it scrolled down her legs and paws and drifted thousands of miles away. It is invisible to humans, but the other end is attached to my sisters heart, where they remain bound by love and devotion...until they meet again.
--R. B. STUART



       We'll see you soon girl...Thank you for spreading the love....Love Aunty   xoxoxo


                                                            Snowy Girl #6

                                                     Sunday & Mama Snowy

                                          
                                                 Mama Snowy & Papa Buddy

                             
                                                               Snowy Girl
                                        May You Howl at the Moon in Peace
                                       11 September 2000 ~ 8 November 2015
                                                            Bye Girl.... xoxo
  

I SEE YOU....Sunday

Since my childhood, I had always loved dogs but spent my adult years living in urban environments and believed a dog being a more natural creature needed the soil and grass under its feet in order to remain in balance. 

I knew many friends in New York City who had dogs on drugs because of anxiety disorders or depression. I felt it was because of the constant grind of the city, soulless cement under foot, the lack of nature being nurtured---twas the culprit of a variety of emotional and psychological turbulence in their pets, coupled with excessive vaccinations. 

Without the peaceful and whole vibration of Mother Earth penetrating their physical body and being---in which they are naturally tuned into as wild creatures, there is a propensity to sickness, illness and disease. 

If the city noises violently thrash us out of balance as humans, then it is magnified with an animal who can hear and vocalize of up to two miles away. As we absorb those echo's of unnatural environmental litter of audio disturbances.... then imagine its impact on an animal that's unable to diffuse them.

As the universe taketh away it also giveth such as the case in 2002 when my mother had her third stroke and was faced with a nursing home. 

It didn't take much reflection for me to abandon New York City, the mother of all cities to rescue my own in New England. I was aware I could always have NYC...but I wouldn't always have my mother. I anticipated to live with her for years and work on a book....except the cruel hand of fate had other ideas and took control by evaporating her auto-pilot of breath three weeks later.

I remained in the country where I mourned my mother while trying awkwardly to reinvent myself in the silence of a rural environment. 

My sister and her husband generously allowed me to move in and do just that. She wanted her Miniature Poodle, Snowy to have a litter and searched for a mate. A virile 8 month old handsome, apricot gentleman was up for adoption and Buddy became her beloved. 

Within months she was pregnant and on Easter Sunday 2003 gave birth to four dark, furry eggrolls; one female and three males.

I was attracted to the homeliest one with cauliflower ears, whom to me resembled 1940's tough guy, actor, Edward G. Robinson. 

For six months I wrestled with my inability to make an emotional commitment to the pup that I named Sunday. He mirrored my ambivalence and was standoffish, and rejected my need to cuddle. 

Finally I rescinded, and like the Grinch my heart grew five times the size, as I accepted him as my doggy; to protect, to heal, to love, to treat with respect, to nurture, to learn everything about his animal lineage. 

He became my partner, my friend, my trainer, my soft shoulder, my playmate, my daily dinner guest, my funny bone, my dancing partner, my driving companion, and traveling mate. He taught me patience, and acceptance.

And as he grew...he became the swan...the most handsome in the litter.

Now as he has become a senior citizen at age 12 [60 in human years], I couldn't live without him. And it is because of Sunday that I have stretched emotionally to understand the dog mind, body and spirit [influenced by the teachings of Cesar Millan], and it is my empathy and compassion that fuels this campaign to see one million dogs...in four hundred days.              ---R. B. STUART

                     
                         Sunday far left
                           
                  
                 
                      



            

                       Edward G. Robinson

                                                                                                                       

                                                                                        

                                                                   Sunday #2
                                                                                                                                          

I SEE YOU....Friday

In 2013 at the age of 3, a Jack Russell named Friday, had unknowingly become family-less and within months...homeless. His owner, a friend of mine, had died from Cancer and even though her family promised to take him....didn't. Her children adored him and wanted the little character---but their father didn't. I scoured websites, grilled local residents, placed rescue ads, asked her friends....no one wanted the active, muscular, happy-go-lucky, professor like Mr. Friday. Until friends of her neighbors said there may be a home on the West Coast with a family of two other Jack Russell's. I was hopeful, but his mistrust of men and lingering fears, might pose a wedge between him and the caring couple.

Friday was standoffish and was ready to show his boyish, awkward domination with a few humps...but it didn't deter them. They had another corner of love in their heart to give this misunderstood mighty boy with a water obsession. During a week of visits.... I severed my emotional bonds so they could birth new ones. And alas he was on the seat of a 747 en route to his new home....where they could guide him, teach him, train him and patiently learn to know and understand his quirks and foibles. In the interim Friday has nuzzled his way into the hearts and lives of a forever family and has begun living his second chapter.          ---R. B. STUART

                                                                      

                                                               Friday  #3 

  

 

I SEE YOU....Gucci

Our lives are so hectic that sometimes we forget to notice our four-legged friend who lives close to the floor. They stand, lay, shadow us from room to room, sit, hover,....their gaze fixated on the face of ours that they love and can't be without. Their eyes patiently waiting for that glimpse of hello...through a stroke of our hand. Their tail flapping low like a dowsing rod searching for our emotions or acknowledgment---suddenly pricks up and clocks side to side when we cast our eyes downward and with a sigh of delight....they've been seen.     ---R. B. STUART

                                                                   

Gucci   #5

 

 

 

 

I SEE YOU.....Lana

 

LANA   #4  

 LANA FOUND A FOSTER HOME

 

Thousands Apply to Adopt 'Saddest Dog in the World'  - ABC News - http://abcn.ws/1XP87wi via @ABC

  

I SEE YOU....Smokey

                                                               Smokey  #1

                                                                      

Smokey a German Shepard, my first love. Abandoned after my father died. Left alone on 35 acres of wooded property in 1967 waiting for us to return. He scrounged scraps of food from the neighbors until the day he died. I See You and I love you…    ---RBS


HELP "SEE" ONE MILLION DOGS IN 400 HUNDRED DAYS...SPREAD THE LOVE, SHARE THE LINK  

 

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