The album from Home for Life's Spring Gala with special Guest Rick Steves is here! Thank you to Katie Thering who has photographed every Home for Life gala since 2007! She always is so gracious and professional, and does a beautiful job capturing the ambiance of the evening! Gala event photos by Katie Thering on Smugmug.com.
Thank you to everyone who joined us Saturday evening for Home for Life's Spring Gala with special Guest Rick Steves. A special thanks goes out to our volunteers helping with the event: Christine, Bev, Jan, TJ, Valerie, and Wendy, and to our team Margaret, Katie, Lynn Dawn and Ryan as well as Katie who photographed the event.
Our choice to represent the animals of Home For Life Animal Sanctuary at the event was 2 legged dog, Nino, whose entire litter was slaughtered when he was just a baby, in Mexico. Nino himself had his back legs cut off with machetes by the gang members who killed his brothers and sisters but survived only because his mother grabbed him in her mouth and ran with him. She saved him but could not save the rest of her puppies. Read more in Nino's profile.
Nino has been part of Home for Life for many years now, and although he can use a cart, he doesn't like the restriction and prefers to walk on his two legs, like a few of our other 2 legged dogs Gina and Tiger. We considered prosthetics for him and talked to a number of companies, but they were not able to help: Nino's amputations were not exactly done with surgical precision and left him with his legs uneven. But Nino did use the cart for pictures with our guest.
Nino was nervous so shed some but was a trooper for the long evening. Amidst all the excitement and ALOT of dog hair, the event gave us the opportunity to reflect on the fact that the love of animals cuts across all divides human beings create for themselves, whether political, racial, or based on nationality, sexual identity or some other construct Animals are non-judgmental, and see with their hearts.
As the much-missed artist, Stephen Huneck wrote in his book The Dog Chapel, " Welcome: All Creeds, All Breeds, No Dogmas Allowed". You can read more about Stephen, who donated an artwork every year for our gala, before his tragic death, in our blog post about him.
Thank you again to everyone who made this night so special and a celebration of our Home for Life animals and of spring!
See you next year!
