Sarabi was a happy little dog who came to us after being surrendered by a family who said they no longer had the time to care for her. Within a few days, we noticed her little belly was getting rather large and hard. Sure enough, a couple weeks later, we had nine tiny babies born in a plastic pool at the rescue, one was stillborn. The staff fell in love with Sarabi even before she showed off her maternal skills. On a beautiful fall day, a couple staff members took the pregnant pooch on top of the Grand Mesa for a maternity shoot. Sarabi was a great little mama. One of the surviving puppies was a lot smaller than the rest of the litter; she had a tough time nursing and was run over by her siblings. A staff member took the runt, Kovu home to bottle feed and try to get her strength up. Despite her best efforts, at 2o’clock one morning, little Kovu passed away. The next day while Sarabi was under anesthesia getting spayed, Mama Sarabi lost her pulse and drifted away from us suddenly too. Rescue is hard.

We have slowly and painstakingly brought an emaciated dog back to a healthy weight only to find they are heartworm positive. We scramble to find the money to take care of the rescue animals. We hold puppies as they take their last breath. We watch as someone drops off the family dog they’ve had for six years only to turn around the same day and buy a puppy from a backyard breeder. We turn away dozens of pleas every week of animals waiting to be taken into rescue who are moments from euthanasia.

So how do we go on?

We have hope.

We have hope that one day there will be fewer and fewer, and ultimately no requests to save an animal from a horrendous situation or euthanasia. We have hope that we will raise enough funds to build a rescue where the community can come learn about how to help with our overpopulation issue. We have hope one day our staff can be on payroll where they can learn to manage the stresses of rescue life with paid time off and health- and self-care benefits. We have hope we can remain positive, focusing on all the lives we DO save and the good we are doing for the rescue animals while in our care. If we are able to focus more on the care of the animals and not about how to keep a roof over their heads, we would thrive.

Yes, this is an end-of-the-year plea for funding. We are so grateful for all of the donations we have received, whether it be food from community members or local businesses, monthly donations from our supporters, or items for us to sell. It stinks we have to ask for money but it is what we have to do. Until the world recognizes the efforts we make at our happy little rescue, we ask you help with our goal of raising $250,000 to build the rescue animals their own warm, comfortable space. If you are needing to make an end-of-the-year tax deductible contribution, we humbly ask you to support the Harmony animals and staff. We have hope our call will be answered.