Thanks guys (and gals).
We had the funeral yesterday.
Now I have to get back and get the things that I put off this week taken care of.
She was a great woman and tried to help others. Even with animals, if we found an animal that needed help, she would stop and pick it up and we'd try to save it and let it go after it healed (wild animals: birds, rabbit).
One time when we were young, some kids in our neighborhood found a baby rabbit with an injured back leg. They brought it to us as they knew we tried to help animals.
Mom called around to get help. Most of the nature centers here said to kill it. Mom didn't want to kill him if we didn't have to. She finally called our vet and he said that he'd look at it (he worked on everything, including horses).
We took it to our vet, who x-rayed it and found it's leg was broken. He then set the leg and wrapped it in medical tape (no cast needed). He then told us to bring it back after it had time to heal.
Dad built a cage out of wood and chicken wire fencing for it and we kept it in our garage. We named him "Hoppy". The kids in the neighborhood would come by and we'd all feed him. After 6 weeks, we took Hoppy back to the vet, and the vet said that he was ok and removed the bandage. (BTW - the vet never charged us for helping wild animals)
We got all of the neighborhood kids together and took a picture of everyone letting Hoppy go behind our back fence. There was about a dozen of us.
We had two Dalmatians at the time. They were good at chasing rabbits in our yard, we used to find dead rabbits in our sandbox once in a while. We had two main gates on each side of our back yard. If there was a rabbit in our yard when we let the dogs out, the lead dog would bark at the "sidekick", and they would split up and cover each gate. That is where the rabbits would get in and out of our yard. The dogs would come from the gates and then converge on the rabbit in middle of the yard from each direction.
The dogs got to know Hoppy as a pet while we were taking care of him. My dad could tell when the dogs saw Hoppy if he was in the yard when we let the Dalmatians out. They would split up for the chase, then if the rabbit cocked his ears, they knew it was Hoppy, and wouldn't chase him. He was the only rabbit that they would not chase in our yard. As soon as he cocked his ears a certain way, they knew it was him and would not chase him (they considered him part of the family).
We were glad that we did not listen to the nature center and kill him. He stuck around for years after we let him go. When mom was determined to do something, she wouldn't quit until it was done, no matter how much opposition she had to face to complete it.
