I sometimes feel as if 1/3 of our time in rescue is spent repeating ourselves.
Today, for instance, only a repeat of something that happens hundreds of times a month, a week:
A response to an ad comes via email about Hershey on petfinder that reads:
— Hershey is an 10hh 5 years old Gelding.
He is truly a beautiful pony, and with training, he will be a lovely child’s mount.
He is broke to lead at this time.
$125 fee —–
The email reads:
“Interested in adopting Hershey. We own horses but are looking for a pony for our grandson.”
Our reply:
“Dan, thank you for the interest.
Hersey would need training to be suitable for a child. He is currently halter broke only. Would you still be interested?
The response received:
“Thank you but I’m looking for a kid safe horse.”
Now that took up about 15 minutes between reading and responding through the course of 24 hours. Sounds like no big deal until you realize that happen more times than I can possible explain.
We are just human, too. I get that. We make mistakes, over look all sorts of things and understand human error, but I cannot express the amount of time answering countless emails and messages and questions we’ve already answered in easy to find locations (usually in the very area the person is asking) uses up for volunteers each week in ALL rescue work. This is certainly never something isolated to just HOP volunteers.
But when volunteers spend tremendous amounts of time answering questions and giving information they have already put out to the public many times over, it helps to lead to burn out and an overall lack of enthusiasm when responding to sincere, well researched inquiries, and that hurts the overall rescue picture.
So when you are seeking information, we do not expect you to go digging around, but if the information to your question is on the very ad or post you are responding to, pause for a moment and re-read to be sure volunteers have not already answered many of the things you would ask.
And for those interested, Hershey is not broke to ride or a kid safe pony, yet, but if you want to put a bit of work into him, He will be something special!
