A Breath Of Fresh Air!!

This morning, I can FINALLY breathe a sigh of relief and gratitude!

Thanks to our new policy of not tolerating rude and entitled applicants, we saw the last of the RUDEST applicant yesterday. She still made demands despite her application being non-compliant and despite being told how much she had received from us over more than four years, but no more.

No more!!  No more!!  Ever!!!

Rude and entitled people – please don’t come to us.

Yes, Tabs. I can finally breathe now and not have to get all stressed out wondering when these rude, ungrateful and entitled people are going to contact us again. No more of dealing with them….EVER!!!

But back to more serious things…

We have “graduated” 27 applicants now and we wish them all the best in their caregiving work.

It took a wise friend to make me realise that we had inadvertently allowed a culture of dependency to fester because we did not limit the number of applications per person throughout the years. By doing so, some applicants just took it for granted that AnimalCare would be here “forever” and this is despite me always reminding them that AnimalCare will die with me.

In the first place, AnimalCare was supposed to be a “starter fund” to help small-time feeders stabilise their colonies by getting the animals neutered. Once that is done, the feeder ought to concentrate on looking after the neutered animals in his/her colony. Yes, there may be newcomers, but the feeder ought to be able to finance the neutering of the occasional newcomer as and when he/she enters the colony.

As we have always emphasised, “Please…always do within your means.” If you already know your resources are limited, then why must you keep expanding to other areas and end up in a stressful, frustrating and helpless situation where you blame everyone else for your inability to carry out whatever it is that you wish to do?

No charity organisation owes anyone anything. We are here to offer some help, but our resources are limited too. And we won’t be here forever.

CNRM is supposed to be a rewarding experience. If C=Care is practised and prioritised as the most important component of the whole process, then a CNRM-er must surely realise that he/she can only do so much. After the colony has been all neutered, comes the task of looking after every single animal – this includes feeding and medical treatment – for the rest of their lives and this could easily span more than a decade. It is a very challenging task but if one were to manage a small colony (within one’s financial means), then all in all, it should be a rewarding, meaningful and happy experience.

But granted, there are those who do not agree with the above and they want to do more – they want to do large-scale TNR. If that is the case, we respect your decision but we are unable to keep helping you on the long term. Our suggestion to these big-time TNR-ers would be to register a society with like-minded rescuers and start your own fundraising. Only then can any bigtime work be sustainable.

It is unwise to keep relying on charity to help you, or worse, moving from one charitable organisation to another, relying on handouts (forever). Everyone has to learn to be independent.

 

So come 2019, there will be no more culture of dependency in AnimalCare. We will help you for a limited period and after that, we will offer you suggestions on how you can become independent and be more self-reliant. But you must do the work yourself.

Zurik: Not like that orange-coloured fella….

Who?? Me?? 

Source: https://myanimalcare.org/2018/12/31/a-breath-of-fresh-air/

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