On Wednesday’s We Wear Pink
Like so many other mothers of girls, I do not look forward to the teen years.
I can’t believe my girls are going to endure the really crappy teen nonsense and there is nothing I can do about it. I encourage all the camaraderie they have with their girlfriends now, especially M. She and her besties write each other love notes every night, with really sweet compliments that build each other up.
Girl Power
Here’s M and one of her “hype girls” at Field Day today. Look how dang cute they are. They love each other.
I know it won’t always be like this. In fact, I know it will change and change forever into a Regina George world. There are not a lot of venues where women celebrate other women succeeding. Life for women is really about moving from one area with nasty mean girls to another area with nastier mean girls. The teen years are soaked with nasty backstabbing girls. Early adulthood and launching into the professional world – also soaked with nasty backstabbing women.
I briefly worked for Calvin Klein (note, I said briefly) (note, I really mean it was a short period of time, this was not making a pun about Calvin Klein briefs) when I was in my 20’s. Several women would fly into the office each morning and park their broomstick in the corner with the others. They would proceed to make everyone’s day miserable while they nibbled on a carrot for lunch then proclaimed they were full. I would have gladly purchased all of them first class tickets to hell but we were already there.
Fast forward to present day. I’m still dealing with it.
Some of you may know that two years ago I started East Coast Corgi Rescue. It has tested my love of corgis in ways I could never have imagined. A good friend told me not to do it. She runs a rescue in Atlanta and said it is just so difficult and so much work. I didn’t listen though.
When I first started the rescue, I was welcomed by some corgi lovers and derided by some frosty nasty hags. As I worked to build the rescue by myself, I looked to many of these women for advice. Some were awesome. Some were assholes. Some were total trash.
When I shared my first shocking rescue story with my friend in Atlanta, she said, “Probably 85% of women in animal rescue have some sort of mental illness. Once you know that fact, everything else makes sense.”
Well, it does and doesn’t. The current board of East Coast Corgi Rescue is comprised of 5 women and 1 man. We all work in a very similar manner. We all have a similar viewpoint on most things. We’re all 30’s to 40’s, work in a professional capacity, and we all, most importantly, do not believe ourselves to be God.
In 2017, the first year of the rescue, I worked alone and saved 6 dogs that year.
In early 2018, it became obvious I needed help. Several people joined and formed a board. We had two board members who could not get along and they both quit in the early stages. The board that remained persevered and saved 61 dogs that year.
I’m incredibly proud of that accomplishment. We couldn’t save them all. We endured some very difficult tragedies with corgis because of some very negligent prior owners.
We removed stones from a bladder, removed a tumor from a rectum/prolapsed intestine, treated heartworms in several dogs, took a dog with diabetes which we have in hospice care and continue to spend a small fortune on, cleared up several extreme skin rash issues, treated hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, fixed an allegedly hermaphroditic dog with a habit for biting, picked up several from Amish puppy mills who lived outside in deplorable conditions, pulled 3 out of a meth house and showed several dogs how to trust again after the life they endured.
All in one year by the way. All in ONE. FUCKING. YEAR.
What do the nasty Regina George rescue hags have to say?
“Your rescue only takes easy dogs. You don’t take biters.”
Maybe three dogs of the 61 we took into rescue were easy. But none of the above medical issues were easy, nor were they inexpensive.
We have had several biters in the rescue. We have one now. We’ve tried taking them in but none of our adopters want a biter. And sometimes, biters cannot be rehabbed into not biting. This also doesn’t make us different than many other rescues who also have policies that they don’t take biters. But fine, guilty as charged. I have two young girls living at my house that I’m like, legally responsible for keeping safe, and two elderly dogs – one which has seizures. I’m not bringing a biter into my house. My older daughter has a huge scar on her foot from a dog that bit her, totally unprovoked. My kids are the priority and it’s my job to protect them. You caught me. I won’t bring a dog that bites into my house again with two little girls.
We have a sliding scale based on age for our adoption fees. This information is available in our FAQ’s which are pinned at the top of our Facebook page – where they have been pinned for a pretty long time.
What do the nasty Regina George rescue hags have to say?
“Your rescue charges $800 for dogs.”
Laughable. I’m not sure where that rumor started but I have a pretty good idea which Mama June started it. We’ve never charged $800 for a dog. Again, fees are on our FAQ. If we have a puppy, it’s $600 with $100 refunded at proof of spay/neuter since they are too young to do it prior to adoption. The scale slides down based on age. Easy info to find. Easy info to confirm. But I suppose it doesn’t make as good of a “story” does it? One of the Mama Junes charges $600 for her dogs, but yeah, it’s more fun to spread a lie about us than look in your own mirror I guess.
We had a dog early in our rescue days when we had no money, and the dog had a defect in her esophagus. I brought in all the corgi people I knew to ask what to do and to say that we would surrender her to anyone who could help. Corgi world’s version of a martyr Mama June appeared before me and said she would take care of the dog. We transferred her to that rescue.
What do the nasty Regina George rescue hags have to say?
Never to our faces of course… “I flipped out when I heard they were going to euthanize the puppy.”
That is a nice giant lie and we all had a good laugh at that one. Euthanizing the puppy was never on the table, and those parties know it because we were all included in the same message. Revisionist History is funny.
These lies and accusations continue, I have several more I could share but they’re losers, this gets boring, there’s that 85% mental illness figure looming. There’s really one theme to recognize here that you learned in junior high:
When women see other women become successful at something they are either doing but not as well, or that they wish they could do, they lash out in all sorts of ways. This is a lesson we learn early and often in our lives, and it will manifest itself over and over through the decades.
It’s pathetic that I have to prepare my girls for this but I’m ready with the lessons I have to teach them:
Downplay successes. Downplay your good grades. Downplay how sweet your boyfriend is, how much money you have, or how much you enjoy playing the lead in the school play. It only incites jealousy and then turns into a full assault and takedown. It’s easy when you’re a teenager to get distracted by this nonsense and that’s what “they” want.
I’m still learning, because I’m rabid about defending the reputation of an organization I founded. But there’s no point, because disproving the lie isn’t what Regina and her friends want. They want the fight. But karma, as I’ve learned, is incredibly efficient in handling these matters. Case in point, one of the biggest bullies we grew up with now wanders the aisles at stores, mumbling to herself like a crazy person.
It won’t be long before someone chokes on a hamburger served on that delicious dish of karma.
