The Power of Appreciation
It is mid-August! Hopefully there is light at the other end of the tunnel for most. During season we lay low. The last thing a wildlife rehabilitator needs in the middle of season is more stuff thrown at them. We understand.However, this year we were taking a trip to New Mexico for other reasons. Now, when we travel anywhere, for any reason, it usually becomes a WRMD trip as well. We contacted 4 organizations in New Mexico that have accounts with us to see if they were able to take time in July, yes July, to quickly "haha" meet with us.All 4 of the brave organizations agreed. So, in mid-July we visited:
Wildlife Rescue Inc, of New Mexico and Hawks Aloft joined our meeting with Wildlife Rescue Inc, as they work together a lot. We visited for a few hours and they had some really good questions as well as some very good suggestions, some of which will be implemented in the New Update (ETA in Oct.).
We also visited On a Wing and a Prayer, a small one woman operation working her tail off. Then we ended the trip visiting New Mexico Wildlife Center.
We would like to thank all these organizations and the people who welcomed us in and helped coordinate our visit (Cecilia, Jim, Mikal and Melissa), mid-season, for a chance to discuss what is working well with WRMD, what has been challenging, and where could we improve the user experience.This is how we operate. This is how we develop and grow. This is how we can keep our finger on the pulse of wildlife rehabilitation. It is exhausting and a lot of work. However, every time we travel and visit our users we are rewarded ten fold with new ideas, suggestions and even sometimes praise, which is very nice...I have to suggest to everybody, if you are a wildlife rehabilitator and you are traveling, find the organizations near you, call them up and try to visit. You will learn more then you can imagine and it continues to strengthen our community and the feeling that we are not doing this alone. We all do it a little different and we all do our best with what we have. Give appreciation to one another, we all are sacrificing parts of our lives to this crazy thing we do.