Mandy Saile: Rescuing Lydia-Loo

Hi Everyone,

so it's way WAY over due for you all to 'meet' someone very extraordinary & special,

our newest family member and newest rescue

Lydia Loo

(We added 'Loo' in memory of our late Betty-Loo).

We rescued Lydia way back last summer on August 25 of 2018

Lydia's story was a stressful one for me and I think that's why I put off telling it for so long!

This photo (above) was us completely stressed out on our way to get her...

I had a bad migraine that day and all week prior, my honey had calls he couldn't miss all day long

but we were determined to get on the road and get her into our hands as soon as possible.

She was reported as an urgent neglect/abuse case by a fellow rabbit rescue place,

so once we knew we could extract her from her situation,

head-pain or work were not going to deter us that day no matter what.
It took us over two hours to drive to her, she was on the outskirts of some little country town and
we weren't sure if the woman would pull out of the agreement etc etc, so it was s-t-r-e-s-s-f-u-l!

But I am getting ahead of the story....

So, I was sitting there on my phone one summer afternoon, having my coffee,
looking at a rabbit rescues pages, which I do way more often than I really should!

A fellow Ontario place popped up, I never heard of them & I was over the moon to see that they
were only about 8 hours away from us, not really close but not impossibly far either.

So I was surfing their page to see what they do exactly etc,

They have no shelter or any actual building but operate on a foster care system,
which is great, they help a lot of rabbit this way and I really respect that.
So there amongst ALL the beautiful deserving buns waiting for homes was this little baby bunny....

there was something in her face that made me stop and stare (and keep going back to look at).

Unlike all of the others listed, she was at the time the only one listed as an URGENT case.

We were not whatsoever looking to bring another bunny home.

We were still heartbroken from loosing Betty-Loo so soon after adopting her from the THS shelter.

We didn't really have any free rooms or areas at the time

and I want to bring ALL the bunnies home, every single one, every day, enough is never enough!

We do this life with rescue rabbits all on our own, just us two, we don't get any help,
finacially, physcially or emotionally.
We never ever get a vacation and we don't ever get money or donations from anyone whatsoever,

soooo at the end of the day I have TRY to accept that we are doing ALL we can & that has to be that!

BUT!
this face on this little bunny, I couldn't let go, I couldn't forget...

I mentioned her to my honey....he immediately said 'no we just can't right now'.

A week later she was still constantly in my thoughts

and I just really deep in my bones felt like she was meant to come home to our little warren of wayward misfits....so I talked to my honey again, explaining my feelings to which he said

"Well if your gut and heart are feeling sooo strongly about it than okay let's do something about it"

(Yes, I know, I have the most amazing supportive guy...however there have been times in the past believe it or not when I was the one feeling unwilling to bring more home & he had to convince me!).

(I am going to make this long part of the story shorter!)

So in our house we take turns filling out adoptions forms because they can be lengthy (& annoying!)

and so it was my honey's turn. So he immediately contacted this rabbit rescue telling them we were interested in this urgent case bunny and they said great 'fill out the forms'....so we did...

and we were turned down! With no explanation at first just a 'sorry you didn't qualify, goodbye'!

What The Fuck!!!

After 24 years of caring for and making rabbits our #1 priority,

we were told we weren't a good enough home!

At this point I was feeling desperate (and definitely quite angry)

I felt so strongly about this little bunny being meant for us,

that I felt like my heart was going to disintegrate....

It didn't matter one single fig to this person at this place that we had years and years of experience.

That our vet himself wrote a glowing recommendation for us

saying we are one of thee best homes he's ever seen....

that the shelter we've been working with for years now wanted to write a letter on our behalf

or that a farm sanctuary we volunteer at also gave us such a glowing beautiful recommendation

Nope, this place was so stuck on policy they couldn't see past that to any of the good.

Policy is good, it definitely without a doubt has it's place, it's a necessity,

but when it's a special urgent situation there needs to be room for movement & discussion too,

especially when it involves the well-being of a defenseless animal in a bad situation.

But this place was not willing to communicate or budge whatsoever period.

Than it turned out that they listed this bunny on their page but she wasn't even in their care!

They just 'heard' about her, they didn't know where she was exactly! (or that's what they said).

And because this place operates solely on fosters, all of their foster people were full up,

so they apparently had no room for her at all and they were actually going to leave

this little bun in a bad situation that they themselves deemed an 'urgent abuse/neglect case'

just because they didn't like the way we filled out one section of their form!

Well we weren't at all okay with their
"she will sit there until a foster home opens up & no we don't know how long that could be"

So when we found out that they didn't know if or when a foster home would open up for this little being and that she was infact not even under their care whatsoever, we decided to try to step around this rabbit rescue which clearly had no respect for all of our rabbit experience & willingness to help!

We even had a friend who was willing to lie for us, to drive the 7-8 hours one way and all the way back to adopt her under their name, only to give to us but we didn't want to lie, it didn't feel right.

We even asked, since winter was fast approaching and this little one could not be left out there in winter waiting for a foster home to open up, if they could give us the contact info for this person who had her but they told us that they didn't have it & didn't even know how to get in touch etc. hmmm!

When we sent pictures of the room/area this bunny would have to herself in our home

(where there's a will there's a way and we figured out a great new area for a new bun after all)

They just wrote back 'oh cute room but everything's going to get chewed'....um okay!!

This rabbit rescue had no interest in working with us whatsoever, which truly made me really sad

and is a real shame because we should all be working together, not fighting each other to be the only rescue around, which really ended up being the feeling of ours and the feeling of others in fact after we chatted with some other people who know and how dealt with this place also.

Soooo anyhow, ha ha, we took a chance, copied this little sweeties photo from the rescue site

and we put an ad on the internet in the area we believed her to be and basically said
'We are looking for this bunny and anyone who has info about her please contact us".

We heard from someone within the hour!

The whole time this is happening my heart is racing and squeezing and I am so so stressed out.

I truly felt like I had a baby lost out there in the big mean world and I couldn't get to her!
I was truly feeling feral about it.

We talked to the lady who had her, we made arrangements to go rescue this little bunny,
we were hoping for not as bad a situation as we imagined,
we hoped it was really not a neglect abuse case but
what we saw and where she was was sadly absolutely a desperate situation for this bun to get out of.
The second I saw where this little babe was my heart rested instantly knowing
that we were doing the right thing & I am glad we took matters into our own hands.

She was in a tiny metal cage, the cage was on a sloped hill,
the cage was surrounded by dog shit and flies,
it was not on grass, it was on mud and moss
(and when it rained she would have had a river of mud running under her feet).
I noticed when my honey crawled into the cage which was difficult for him because it was so low, that there was inches of poop built up, there was no water, no hay, no pellets, no food whatsoever,
and when he opened the door to this awful cage, about 3 inches of moss scrapped away
that alone right there told me that that door had not been open for some time.
There was no shelter from the rain or the sun...it was without a doubt no kind of place for any living being and whiles I wanted to punch this woman in the face and tell her exactly what I thought of her for keeping this rabbit in such a situation, my job was to distract by listening to her talk on about all of her life's woes whiles my honey extracted the bunny and got her into the carrier.

When we got her in the carrier and into the Jeep, I just said to my honey
"Get us the fuck out of here"
I just wanted to be away from that woman and her awful place.
We drove down the street a ways and than pulled over and got Lydia out of the carrier
and just held her and told her "We found you baby, we found you"
and that we were her new mommy & daddy and we were taking her away
from that awful place forever and almost instantly she just melted against us.
I think she felt the love right away and I feel like she knew she was finally safe and loved.

I remember posting on Instagram "We Got Her. She's Safe Now. She's skin and bones and in a situation no animal ever should be kept in but we found her, we got her and we're coming home".

I wish people would just make the connection that animals are just like us.

That rabbits should not be kept outside in the heat and the cold and the rain,

they don't like it anymore than a person would like it.

If you can't give an animal what it deserves than don't take it on.

And as angry as I was at this woman,

I am also super super grateful that she was willing to part with and give Lydia to a better home.