Best Friends

Kinder’s and I spent the last few days visiting and volunteering at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. We did not come home with a pet of our own despite several hundred requests… It was an awesome experience for the kids, meeting animals and learning about volunteering. The sanctuary is full of people with immense passion for animals and kindness spills out of every corner.

This dog called Abby was a favorite. She took the kids for a walk.

All of the animals have names. Most have stories, special needs and are up for adoption. We patted this horse. He was very soft. The kids hadn’t touched a horse before and were surprised how soft he was. Emma was always the first one in to pet. Wes hung back and watched. When he checked Emma hadn’t been eaten alive he would edge forward closer for a pat.

I was impressed with the kids at this fish pond. Mostly for not falling in. I recall as a kid when we were around ponds, me or one of my sisters invariable slipped in somehow. Mom would then make the dry ones donate clothes to the wet one and we would all continue on with a dry but embarrassingly incomplete set of clothes.

Emma is not afraid. Everywhere we went she should pipe up “can I hold it?”

This little guy was friendly.

We spent the afternoons working in the Cat dept. Our job was to be socializers so the cats ready for adoption are used to people. Really it meant we played with and stroked cats for a few hours.

Not such a hard task seeing as the kids are playing machines. Wes was calm and careful around the cats. I think they were a calming influence on him. He thought carefully about how his actions affected them. At the start of our visit we watched a volunteer orientation video that told us the animals react to our behaviour. He must have listened! He really has a sweet heart under his usual hypermatic energy output.

The cats live in these cool indoor/outdoor enclosures with all sorts of things to play with and climb around on. The scaredy cats sit in the rafters and watch what is going on. Some of them eventually came down.

Some of them have their own sofas and are too lazy to play.

We drove home through Zion and Dave buzzed on up on his brap bike to go hiking with us.

and play in the river

Zion has the most massive views you can ever collect in your eyeballs in one moment. Emma is more interested in the tiny things she can find with her magnifying glass. Her world is still really small in many aspects. Lucky her.

…but now I’m ready to go for a bike ride ;-)