Stay Inspired Over the last couple of days I had some interaction with a few people in the reptile hobby that have had a tough time as of late. In one case they had lost several snakes to respiratory infection as well as had a very highly anticipated clutch yield kinked babies. Then this morning I had a FaceBook message from someone in Australia that had a terrible string of events including losing a gravid Albino Carpet to over heating, losing all the eggs in her incubator due to a malfunction and finally having to euthanize a pet snake that had cancer. In both these cases and many more that I encountered there is the same theme, not only devastation from losing their beloved animals and the potential for producing their dream snakes, but the feeling of failure and not wanting to continue on. Working with reptiles for 25 years I can attest to the fact that there are so many ups and downs when dedicating your life to living creatures. For the most part people see your successes, things like proving out the Scaleless Ball Python or hitting insanely great odds on a special clutch. What people don’t see are all the failures, the let downs and the grind of working day after day caring for so many lives. Over the years I have had animals that meant so much to me die from various causes. Some were from things that I felt we could have prevented and others were just part of nature. I have had projects that I have invested tens of thousands of dollars and years of sweat only to see not prove out. I have and continue to have people that passionately hate what I do, or hate what I stand for and are happy to scream it at the top of their lungs to anyone that listens. Honestly it’s hard to hear anyone spew hatred towards you when you know in your heart that all you want is to promote the love of these animals. Saying all of this my point is, that it’s not easy to work with animals. It’s not all positive. There are many ups and downs and the majority of the time there is no glamour cleaning snake poop. The moments of triumph are surrounded by months of hard work with the only reward being your love for the animals. For whatever reason is seems like there are times when everything goes wrong at once. You find an animal you love dead for no reason, you have a power outage that causes loss of eggs in the incubator, your odds on an anticipated clutch are horrible, the list goes on and on. Why am I telling you all this.. Because whether you want to work with animals as a hobby or as a business, you have to stay inspired. You can not let things steal your passion for the animals. Trust me whatever you are going through, myself and every other bigger name breeder has went through many times over. As long as you are doing what is best for the animals and always putting them first then you can not give up. I would be lying if I said there has not been a thousand times I held my head in my hands and wanted to throw the towel in. When projects have failed after years of work, when theres a 20 page thread of people saying things about me that are so far from the truth that it makes me want to cry, when the people around you think you are waisting your life on animals. These things are the things we all have to overcome to follow our dreams. In the end I know that all I want to do is surround myself with wildlife and try my best to get others to love them as much as I do. But that comes at a price and we have to all realize it’s not easy, but it’s so worth it. You’re not alone in your failures and your suffering. But the joy that comes from spending time with these animals and helping change others opinions of them is so worth it. Please don’t give up. Please keep that passion. And remember no matter how bad you think things are going you’ll be so glad you kept going when you have success. Keep that passion for animals!
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 15:13:48 +0000
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