Interview by Michael Przysiezny, The Compassion Experiment
A couple weeks ago, we had in our living room, three big hearted individuals, Melissa McClelland, Janine Stoll and Lisa Winn, from Ladybird Animal Sanctuary.
The following is the transcription of the interview.
How did it all start?
“I’m an animal lover, and a full-time touring musician,” said McClellan. “And I think I just wanted part of my life to focus on my love for animals, because so much of my life is wrapped up being on the road. So I brought it up with these girls, and we all thought it was a great idea, so we’ve been talking about it for a few years now.”
“I had already been doing it small scale,” said Winn, “because I’ve worked at animal shelters, and had already been rescuing and fostering for a number of years.”
“I felt like the three of us come from different backgrounds, and we work so nicely together,” said McClelland. “Our personalities, we just click as friend. And Lisa has the background working with animals, and she knows the problem up close. Whereas Janine and I don’t so much, we’re learning as we go along.”
“But we have other skills to offer,” said Stoll. “I can be more administrative, and technical. And Melissa is an amazing ideas person. Everyone in this dynamic makes up for the shortcoming of the other people. My love of animals… I’ve been acquiring more and more over the years. They’ve become such an important part of my life, I can’t imagine my life without having little furry creatures around. To be a part of this is so cool, I just love it.”
In The Beginning…:
“It’s a big undertaking,” Melissa said,” and we’re realizing that as we go along. We had been talking about it for a couple years, and it got to the point where it was like: “Are we going to keep talking about it, or let’s just take that leap of faith”, and we did. And Janine created this beautiful website and we came with our ideas of what we wanted to do, and our goals. We started off with one animal, and launched in December.”
“Lisa picked up two beautiful cats from Hamilton Animal Control,” said Stoll, “and got them into foster care that same day, on Dec.31/2010, and that was the day that we officially launched the sanctuary. And ever since then, the outpouring of support has been really encouraging for us, because we weren’t really sure what kind of support we would have. And now that we kind of know what we can gauge it on, it feels like it’s going to keep building to make all of our dreams come true, in terms of what we really wanted from the sanctuary.
“It forced us into action too,” said Melissa. “Now people know about us, and they’re waiting, they’re like: “okay, go ahead, show us what you’re going to do.” So now we have to stop talking about it, and we have to actually do it. We have to spend time every day planning. We’re constantly sending emails back and forth figuring out what we have to do next. It’s a learning experience, we are figuring it out as we go along. And that’s the fun part of it, I’m really passionate about it, because I’ve been doing the same thing for a long time, and focusing on music, my whole life. And now suddenly, there’s this other focus. and I care about it deeply, so it’s a lot of fun for me, in a lot of ways, to challenge myself in another area of my life.
“And to be able to do it with two of your closest friends, it’s so awesome,” says Stoll. “It’s not like your working for some company that has a different vested interest. Everyone has the same wonderful interest in these animals, and being able to do a project like this together. It doesn’t feel like it could even fail, because we encourage each other. And it makes you work harder for the people that you love.
What Ladybird Animal Sanctuary Needs the most:
“The first thing we need, is people willing to take in foster animals,” says Stoll. “People are more then willing to part with their money, and donate for a good cause, it gives them the warm fuzzy feeling. Which is awesome, because without the money we wouldn’t be able to operate. But to actually have fosters or people willing to adopt the animals, that’s what we really need. To get animals permanent homes, or to get any number of animals out of a shelter and into a temporary care, so that we can get them permanent homes. That’s the big deal, finding that network of people.”
“That’s our focus now,” said McClelland. “Trying to find fosters. And working on our charitable status, because that’s a process, and we really have to be established to get it. We’re trying to become a well oiled machine, so we can get that status. That’s going to open a lot of doors for us.
“In two months, we’ve rescued five animals – which isn’t a small feat, because getting these animals really good vet care, and feeding them is not cheap, it costs a lot of money,” said Stoll. ” And we’ve adopted one out, so every victory, small or big, is a big victory us, especially knowing that without us, those animals wouldn’t have made it so far.”
In the future:
“We want to buy property and have a sanctuary where we can house animals,” said McClelland. “Right now, we’re just figuring out how to get to that point. Figuring out the fundraising, and how to best do that. And Education, getting the word out. Educating people so that we’re not just a band-aid, we’re actually solving some problems here. Because there is an issue here, there is an overabundance of cats, and we don’t want to just house these animals, we want to actually help solve the problem, so that there isn’t an overflow of animals, so that every animal has a home.”
“If we can save between 20-30 cats within six month from now, I think we’ll feel pretty good about that as a milestone,” said Stoll. “We’re focusing on that as a number, and from that point on, we’re hoping to have our charity status by then. Also for each of us to have developed more training in what our roles are in this organization. So, we’re really going to focus looking for mentorships within the community, and in different communities in Canada and the US where we can learn from people who have made this their life ambition.
“Taking on not just cats, but also dogs and farm animals that are in need,” said Winn. “And any animal that comes along, we want to be prepared for anything. And adoption options for different animals and people, and the sanctuary part, where if there is an animal that is considered not adoptable, but has quality of life still, and needs a place to go. The 15 year old cat that no one will adopt, because it’s 15, no one really wants to take on that responsibility. To be able to have a place for that animal to go, to have a space for them to go.”
“Our real goal as an organization, that we can agree on, is to try and help the animals that don’t really have any options,” said Stoll. “Our priority is to save the animals that might be facing the needle tomorrow. That’s what we want to do first and foremost. Not to say we don’t care about all animals, there are animals that are in more dire need.”
“You have to be realistic,” admits Winn. “As nice as it would be to be able to save them all, but you can’t save them all. We’ll do what we can, you have to be realistic, that’s the bottom line.
“You can only handle so much,” said McClelland. “We’ll take on what we can handle.”
“The big goal is education, and educating people,” said Stoll.”Anything we can do to get the word out.”
“We’ve put together a really talented board of people from all walks of life,” said Stoll. “Everyone has so many fantastic insights to offer, and…
“Experience that we don’t necessarily have,” interjects McClelland. “Business experience. People to keep us on track, to help us achieve our goals.”
“It doesn’t feel like work really, for the time that I put in. It just feels like doing crafts with my friends,” said Stoll.
“I feel so committed too,” said McClelland. “As soon as we made the decision to go ahead and do it. There are moments where you’re feeling like: “this a lot”, like what are we getting ourselves into.”
“There are victories,” said Stoll. “You find a foster home willing to take an animal. You get an animal adopted, you feel so good when that happens.”
“I’m so passionate about our goals, and about what we’ve set out to do,” said McClelland. “I feel so committed to the cause that it doesn’t feel like work.”
“Our hearts are all in the right place, and we know that about each other,” says McClelland. “That’s important too, no one has ulterior motives, there’s no other reason for us to be doing this.”
“If it was only one of us taking it on by ourselves, I don’t think we’d have the courage to do it,” admits Stoll. “If it was an idea I had by myself, I wouldn’t have done it. But because I know I can lean on these guys, it gives you more balls then I would have on our own.”
“We each bring different skills to it,” said Winn.
“We’ve only scratched the surface of what we’re capable of,” said Stoll. “When we think about what we do with our day-to-day lives and how busy we are, and we still make time for this. I know that given a little more time to be able to do this, we can make great things happen. We have a mandate to not squander the money that people give us, to be responsible with the way that we spend it. To not spend money on paper advertising, especially in this day of age of social networks. There are a lot of ways to curb those expenses. It may take a little extra time, but time, we’ve got.”
