Critters: My New Ones & Horse Rescue

I have gotten some new critters in my life.... again. Haha... like any of you regulars here are actually surprised. Yesterday I was given 2 beautiful Ringneck Doves. The people that gave them to me couldn't be 100% sure if they were a male and female pair, but thought they might be. So far, I think this is correct because it would appear that only one of them is making the cooing sound, and that would be the male. If this is the case, I will likely soon have more doves, haha. Mind you, they might not breed as they are in a fairly small cage. It's a budgie cage so while a fairly good sized cage for budgies, it is small for doves who are a fair bit larger than the budgie bird. It seems that, in many ways, the doves and pigeons are very similar to each other.

Also yesterday, I talked to a gal on the phone about her white rat that she wanted to find a good home for. Yes, I like rats, haha. I've had some before and often thought I should have kept the male (Ricky Rat). This one is a male named Kakashi... I'll likely just call him Kashi or Kash. Anyway, so this gal, Carol, and I got talking about stuff other than the rat. It turns out she's involved with the Vernon Horse Rescue, and they were having a meeting last night, so I went. These women certainly have passion for what they are trying to do, but unfortunately, need a lot of money and voluteer help to do it with. They also have other hurdles too. For example, most of the abused horses that they want to help are currently on the local First Nations (North American Indian) reservation, so not really affected by the same laws as everyone else... or at least the laws are not enforced so much out there. The BC SPCA has done very little if anything to help these starving and injured horses, from what I was told. Some time ago I did see something about these horses on the local TV news, and it really didn't sound to me like the SPCA was doing a lot. It sounds like this is, again, could be largely due to it being on the reservation. The Band should be doing something about it, policing their own people type thing, but they refuse to do anything about it... thereby condoning the abuse. This is very sad. The Vernon Horse Rescue has been able to purchase some of the horses from the owner, thereby saving their lives, but currently don't have the money to buy any more of the horses, or to feed more. They are desperately in need of donations.

Today Carol & her 2 daughters came out to deliver Kakashi to me, and for a visit. It seems that they enjoyed meeting my critters, and were glad to know Kakashi would have a good home. Carol said she had just given her Cockatoo and it's big cage away to a gal who does parrot rescue work, and she wishes she'd known me even a few days earlier and she would have given it to me. She also said she might ask the gal about getting the bird back and giving it to me. That would be cool. It sounds like a pretty nice pet.

By the way, it was through Freecycle that I got the doves & the rat, haha.