When At First….

The stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.  – Bruce Lee

Sprinkles, our resident therapy bunny, shares her unique take on what has happened at Pals For Life over the past several years and how being flexible helped the organization move forward.

If there is one thing that we have learned over the past two and a half years is that being flexible is a good thing. During the early years of the pandemic when all of our in-person programs and events shut down, we had to reimagine how we could continue our mission “to bring pets to those that need them”.  So, we did events and visits by Zoom, sewed and sold face masks, produced reading videos with me for children and did walk abouts at some of our facilities.   It wasn’t the same by any means, but it was the best that we could do.

Last fall visits began to resume, and I reveled on being the center of attention again.  I even had my own event called “Bourbon With The Bunnies”. But then things changed again, and visits stopped in January due to a new COVID strain.   I had to become a media star again and did my own prognostication on 6 more weeks of winter and guess what I was right!  Now as the fall approaches our visits are back to normal and we are even doing in-person events again.

If all that stopping and starting to programs wasn’t enough, there was a big personnel change in the office.  Not only did I get a new “caretaker” but got a new friend too.  He is an awful big looking bunny, but he really is a dog.  I like them both but do enjoying playing the “Bad Bunny’ sometimes.

Now you may ask: “Sprinkles, do you have any tips on how to stay flexible?”  What helped the most was keeping in mind our mission and our commitment to our core values.  We were willing to try new things and kept an open mind to new and different ideas.  Many of these we would not have thought of trying before.  These new ideas brought opportunities to learn some new skills.  Volunteers sewed, we learned to how to produce videos and the new caretaker learned how to care for me. No matter what happened we tried to stay calm and positive. It is easy to want to return to the way things were before the pandemic.  But we do not know if they will ever be the same again.  All we can do is to think about possible opportunities and plan ahead for various scenarios.

In conclusion being flexible can be fun and can open up a whole new world.  I can’t wait to see what happens next!