09/06/2026
THIS IS WHAT RESCUE FEELS LIKE.
People think the hardest part of rescue is the animals. Sometimes it is. But after doing this for as long as we have, I can tell you that sometimes the hardest part of rescue is the people.
Look at this picture. Every animal represents a phone call, a message, an email or somebody desperately asking us to help. Can you take this dog? Can you save this one? There’s nowhere else for them to go. Please help.
God, I wish we could say yes every single time. We can’t. There are only so many foster homes, so much space, so much money and so many hours in a day. But what people don’t see is what happens behind the scenes and what rescue has actually cost the people doing it.
So maybe it is time I told you.
Colin and I have sacrificed more for this rescue than most people will ever know. We have sold our principal residence twice in the last six years. Four years ago, Colin and I were homeless for approximately six months. And when I say homeless, I don’t mean we were casually between houses trying to decide where to live. We had no home. We had nowhere to go. We couldn’t afford another house and genuinely didn’t know what we were going to do. Thank God for a wonderful couple we met through rescue who opened their home to us and took us in. Without them, I honestly don’t know where we would have gone.
Our RRSPs aren’t “maybe” going to be affected by rescue. They are depleted. The money we worked for and saved for our future went into keeping this going. We live in a foreclosure. That’s not hypothetical either. We live in a tiny home with no backyard. And the financial sacrifices of rescue haven’t suddenly stopped. Even today, the reality is that the home and security we have managed to rebuild are not guaranteed. Those are very real conversations Colin and I are having again because of what we have sacrificed to keep doing this.
For more than 20 years, Colin and I shared one vehicle between the two of us. Today, for the first time in more than two decades, we have two vehicles, and that is thanks to Sponsor Energy and everyone who supported CB Rescue and helped us win Sparkles. That vehicle wasn’t something we went out and bought because suddenly life got easier. It was something extraordinary that happened for us after more than 20 years of making one vehicle work.
And then I hear people say, “If only I had a bigger house, I would foster,” or “If only I had a bigger backyard, I would have another dog.” I’m sorry, but I call BS.
You don’t need a perfect house. You don’t need five acres. You don’t need a giant backyard. You need commitment. You need to be willing to inconvenience yourself sometimes for something you say matters to you. Because that is exactly what Colin and I have done.
And please remember something else. We are volunteers. I volunteer thousands and thousands and thousands of hours. Colin has spent years helping me do this while also carrying his own responsibilities. There is no salary waiting for us at the end of the month. There is no pension being built because we rescued another dog. Quite the opposite. We have put our own money, our home, our time, our savings and our future into this.
Imagine walking up to your husband and saying, “By the way, I want to start a rescue. We might have 10, 15 or 18 dogs in our house at any given time. I’m going to spend thousands of hours training and caring for them. You’re going to help me while still doing everything else you have to do. We’re going to sell our homes. We’re going to burn through our retirement savings. At one point we might not even have somewhere to live. Our marriage is going to be tested beyond anything we could imagine. And after all of that, complete strangers who know absolutely nothing about what we have sacrificed might call us names, attack our character, say absolutely horrible things about us and even tell us to go kill ourselves.”
Think about that for a second. Telling two volunteers who have sacrificed their homes, their savings, their time and a huge part of their future trying to save animals that they should kill themselves. I won’t repeat some of the other things that have been said to us because frankly, they don’t deserve repeating. It is absolutely despicable.
How many people would sign up for that?
Because Colin did. And somehow, after all these years, we’re still standing beside each other doing it.
People see the adoption photos. They see the happy dog going home. They don’t see the cost behind that picture. They don’t see the sleepless nights, the vet bills, the driving, the training, the cleaning, the phone calls, the emergencies, the tears or the dogs we couldn’t save that stay in our heads long after everybody else has forgotten about them.
And this past month has shown us another ugly side of rescue. What happens when a person decides they didn’t get their way and makes it their mission to make an already difficult life even harder.
I will never understand it. I don’t understand how someone can look at people volunteering their lives trying to do something positive and decide they need to tear those people down.
That’s the part people don’t see when they look at CB Rescue. They see the dogs. They see the adoptions. They see me being passionate and sometimes uncompromising about something I have devoted my life to. They don’t see what Colin and I have given up behind the scenes to make it possible.
I don’t do anything half assed. I never have. If I’m going to do something, I give it 110 percent or I don’t do it at all. Maybe some people don’t like that. That’s okay. You don’t have to adopt from CB Rescue.
Go find another rescue that fits you better. Support them. Foster for them. Donate to them. Adopt one of their dogs. There are thousands of animals that need you.
What I want are people who love these animals as fiercely as we do. I want adopters who understand why we care so much. People who can look at me and say, “Belinda, I get it. I’m on board because I love animals as much as you do.” Those are my people.
You don’t have to agree with every decision I make. You don’t have to like my personality. You don’t even have to like me. But don’t mistake passion for something it isn’t. And don’t mistake volunteering for an invitation to abuse somebody.
Animal rescue is already heartbreaking enough without people deliberately making it harder for the people doing the work.
If you want to help animals, then help. Foster. Transport. Donate. Volunteer. Adopt. Share somebody’s post. Support another rescue. There are a thousand productive things you can do.
But before you sit behind a screen and tear apart somebody who is actually out there doing the work, ask yourself one question: What have I sacrificed to help?
Because Colin and I know our answer. Our homes. Our savings. Our time. A huge part of our future. Years of our lives. More tears than anybody will ever see.
And we would still do it again. Not for praise. Not for recognition. Not because everybody agrees with us.
For the dogs. That’s why we started. That’s why we’re still here. And after everything we have been through, that’s still why we get up and do it again tomorrow.
