To Thine Own
Self Be True...

William Shakespeare wrote in his play, "Hamlet", a lovely little diddy about a prince so haunted by the murder of his father, he treats the only woman who loves him as if she were nothing more than a temporary distraction, accidentally kills her father, causing her suicide, lives to exact revenge on the uncle who killed his father, for which he finally does right before he takes his own life, "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man."
William Shakespeare had the gift of forethought that over shadows HG Wells and George Orwell combined. Four-hundred years ago, Sir William regaled us with his tales of jealousy and madness, revenge and love that is disallowed, and how women are undone by loving men and men are undone by their own lack of strength.
The very best words of wisdom ever spoken are "To thine own self be true and you can then be true to others".
Truth.
I believe it is inherently necessary to be true to yourself. It is not always the easiest thing to do and neither is always being truthful to others, but it is necessary.
Dream. Believe. Intuit. Trust. Understand.
Never regret your honesty. If you love someone, tell them. Everyone should know when they are loved.
Don't ever let anyone else make you regret your honesty. If they do, walk away.
Be patient until it hurts. Once it begins to hurt, to thine own self be true.

-Deannalynn Arzola

Why Everyone Should Get Stung

Cathern Freeman was born November 17, 1913, on the Gulf of Mexico. She was my grandmother on my father’s side. Mrs Freeman defined the word patience for me through the absolute experience of it, instilling in me the knowledge I would need one day to recognize that the best things in life almost always require waiting for and the ability to see from the start who those things are. She is the first person to alter the direction of my life in a positive and affirming manner. She is the first fellow traveler on my arachnid filled dark desert highway and she sowed the seeds of understanding in me that I would need for all the other self-protective, regenerative tailed mysterious creatures to come.

Soon after my daughter was born, I met a gal from Montana. Let’s just refer to her this way. She can see this writing and she knows who she is and when I needed to change my life once again, she came in and scooped me up. She took me in, no questions asked. She loved my daughter as much as I did. We moved to California from Texas in my '77 Caddy. We lived on the beach. We loved and we laughed and we lived our lives to the fullest. I still carry with me two quite wise and eloquent things this beautiful woman three years my junior said to me; “Expect nothing, and you’ll never be disappointed” and “It’s only the things you have to work really hard for that are worth it, anyway”. Montana was born on November 5, 1968.

In the midst of this period of my life, the nomad in me had me living in San Antonio, wher upon starting a new gig as a bartender, a beautiful man with black hair pulled up a stool, and once again, my life was changed. The mysterious and exponentially charismatic Arley Banks taught me all about football fields and basketball courts and the lesson from him which I carry, still, is; “Never be late, it’s the rudest thing you can be”. He was so complete and deep and 100% of everything a girl could want her man to be. He was loved by all who knew him. He bought me the Sedan de Ville I drove to Cali in and he was the first man I ever loved. The passion was so intense, it brought tears to our eyes. My favorite birthday party ever was his, at a fabulous supper club on a cool Halloween night.

One of my most enjoyable things to remember is my time on the Gore-Lieberman campaign. I was the volunteer coordinator and one of our political consultants was a mirror-shade wearing man who rocked a pair of Levi’s better than anyone I had ever seen. Bruce Springsteen introduced us, well, via a vintage concert shirt anyway. Adrian and I became friends thru the typical channels along Scorpio Highway. Somedays are diamonds, some days are dust. We listened to Bruce on top of a hill overlooking the Vegas Valley at sunset. We went to the drive-inn. We went to over-the-top political parties hosted extravagantly by the DNC. We drank the best wine. For my 36yh birthday, he flew me first class to New York. We danced at the Stone Pony and dined at Sardi’s. I fought to the death of my marriage for this friendship, and thankful that I did, for it has outlasted the former. When making more changes to my life, he was there. He listened to me cry, advised me on how to deal and forced me to recognize that I had known since 2000 that I could not continue my life with my husband, so stop freaking crying. “This was your decision, and you’ve been making it for 8 years!!!”. When I needed his help to move forward, he offered before I could ask. This man, whom I stood up for as he walked his beloved bride down the aisle, is the only person I have ever truly trusted with every part of my life, my heart and my soul. He has been my best friend since 2000, and while it is not that easy to take the shades off the face of a Scorpio, once you do, you are forever lost in windows to their soul.

When the political breakdown known as “W” began to take shape, and our candidate was not the clear winner, nor was the other one, I called Adrian the day after the election to wish him a happy birthday. (November 2, 1971.)

Right about the time the finishing touches were being put on the end of my 17 year journey with my husband, my daughter called me at work one night. Not on my cell, but at my job. I heard the phone ring at the front desk across the lobby from my bar. Something made me look that direction and literally watch the agent transfer the call to me. “Mom...” I remember clearly seeing her saying she was pregnant, from across 1200 miles. It was April, 2007. She was 5 weeks along. Inside of her she was carrying the little Scorpio who would completly change my life in ways that had never been attempted. Joshua was born on my grandmother’s birthday and I was there. This little man brought me home. He sparkles with every movement. He gives my daughter the totally unabashed, unconditional love that every woman should experience. My grandson is a Scorpio not yet damaged by life. This is truly a sight to witness. It’s up there with Jesus turning water into wine and the beauty of an unwounded Scorpio is the purest loyalty, trust and love you will ever see. Joshua, at 5, sits alone in his room, preoccupied with his own mystical thought and reasoning, then appears out of nowhere and expresses the greatest depth of love and words of ardor than one could ever expect. I believe Scorpios are born this way. They are born quite comfortable with in their own solitude. They are born passionate and sweet and kind. It must be the way the planets were aligned at the time of their conception. When their souls were recirculated. Then they live. And all of that love that they so freely wish to share becomes a heavy cross to bear and they experience pain and it is internalized and oft used as a weapon when it is withdrawn. It is not a character flaw, just a characteristic of the depth of their capacity to care so much and love so fully.

I am considerably thankful for my Scorpios. They have, without neary a close second, each and every one of them made the most significant impact on my life. They are why I am able to sit here today, a strong woman, able to take a chance on life and know how to navigate the rough waters that sometimes rise up to greet me with anticipatory angst. They continue to change my life in such an almost immeasurable way. They are easy to spot across a crowded room, because they are the ones who you just know are going to make all the difference. They do this without plan or forethought. It is their nature and for the most part, they are so busy dealing with their own pain with absolute and total focus, they don’t even realize what an impact they have made. I’m blessed for my ability to recognize them and be drawn to them. I have been taught by the very best of them on how to deal with them and while that does not really minimize the the exhaustion they cause with their gated communication and guarded nature, it surely makes it all worthwhile when you can sit back, comfortably and wait. Knowing that they will strike when they are ready is the buffer we must surround ourselves with while they go through their process and believing in the end result is the joy wherein we dwell.

I left my home and came to a mystical place where I feel a little more intuitive and I am not afraid. I walked into a room shortly after moving here, and a man was standing there. Tall and confident. When he looked at me and asked me my name, there was a slight electrical current that sort of stunned me a little bit. After everything I had been trhrough in the past few years, it wasn’t a feeling I easily recognized, but for some reason, I did recognize him. At this time I was at the very bottom rung of the ladder of my current life. When I needed to discuss this with someone whom I needed to trust and be open with, I talked to him. He fixed it. Knowing where I needed to be to succeed and make this new life work, I shared it with him. He made sure I was where I needed to be that day and when he said; “You need to start this thing tomorrow. Tomorrow.”, I listened, and again, my life was altered in the most significant way. I had watched him for some time. I saw this man’s strength, depth, wisdom, and I saw his sweetness, passion, kindness. He is duplicitously cloaked in surreptitiousness. When the chance presents and the mirrored shades are removed, his eyes are his windows. I could not help but be drawn to him. I had seen the signs throughout most of my life. He is quintessentially Scorpio. Humorously, getting his birthday out of him took three tries, but I needed the confirmation, nonetheless. Notoriously evasive with words screaming to come out, there is too much space between us. It can be a little intimidating, this depth of soul, even for this Capricorn. Soulful. With all my education on the subject, I still cannot handle this energy. All the knowledge cannot prepare you for when you know what you’re about to get yourself into. That if you open this door, you’ll never be able to close it again. It’s forever and it’s a more concentrated type of love and emotion than anything you experience with all of the other people you know. Knowing what is on the other side of this dusty desert road is almost too much to wrap your head around. I had to share this with him, as well. I’m not really sure exactly what kind of response I was anticipating, in fact, I don’t think I cared. I guess I knew somewhere in the back of my mind exactly what would happen, and while it is almost too much to bear some days, I had to have known what the end result would be. The initial reaction was magical, as it always is with a Scorpio. It’s so good with a Scorpio that that one ripple in your sea of calm is enough to sustain you until the next little power infused nugget comes your way.

Everyday, on some level, he changes my life. He continues to advocate on my behalf. In these little ways that no one else really sees as anything more than the required status quo. A little secret. It’s beautiful. He is beautiful.

How can one quantify with math and logic the magic that brought us to this place? It seems magical that I would be drawn to Oregon, a tip from Adrian, by the way; “You belong in Oregon!”, and drawn to our place of meeting and to know him, to have him in my life. How lucky am I??? And can one really explain to me how it is that I knew in November of 2012 that my daughter would be carrying around another Scorpio inside of her this year??? Another beautiful blessing from the Gods who know that I have encountered more than my share of deeply disturbed people. They bless me with Scorpios, because when you strip away everything else, down to the heart and soul of a being, it is the Scorpio who is the best of the best and these are my beautiful rewards for surviving all the rest of the population.

You make me want to escape under a warm cloud of smokey oblivion.

You are that smokey oblivion...

by- Deannalynn Arzola

My Familiar

    -by Deannalynn Arzola

Familiar: A demon supposedly attending a witch, often said to assume the form of an animal. (noun)

This is how Webster's defines The Familiar. I have my own thoughts about Familiars and I am not alone.

French poet, Charles Baudelaire, wrote many a poem to his beloved cat, whom he believed to be his familiar.

Pierre A. Riffard, renown French philosopher and Professor defined the Familiar Spirit as the alter-ego of an individual and while it did not look like said individual, and had an independent life of it's own, it remained very closely linked to the individual and was oft in the form of an animal.

In the 17th century, those believed to be witches were hung, along with their beloved pets.

What I know about familiars I learned only after I had met mine...

Fourteen years ago today, a life changing event occurred inside on my home on Cove Landing, in Las Vegas, Nevada. My family's Labrador Retriever had a litter of pups. It was a typical hot, June, Las Vegas day. At about 7 in the morning, Cali started panting and walking circles in my walk-in closet. Prior to the blessed event, my husband, David, had constructed a whelping box for her in the third bedroom of our home, but Cali had plans of her own. She began to deliver her babies in slow succession, right there on the closet floor. Amidst a break in the delivery, David moved her and her pups to the whelping box. At about 7 that night, she had finally finished labor and before our eyes were eleven little miracles scrambling underneath her, to nurse. 

Now, please know, I have witnessed the miracle of birth first hand. It is amazing. But I read books and watched videos and was schooled by pediatricians, and when I arrived at the hospital, I was surrounded by nurses and doctors, and other than actually pushing my child out of me, they did all the work. When my daughter was delivered, a nurse quickly rushed her over to a table, where she assisted my daughter in drawing her very first breath. They cleaned her up, swathed her in a blanket and handed her to me and then showed me how to feed her.

Cali had none of these benefits, but somehow, she knew exactly what to do. She pushed out pup after pup, tenderly licking each of their faces to help them breathe. She cleaned them and did with their placentas what only animals do. She carried them with her teeth, softly enough not to hurt them, and placed them where they needed to be. She fed them and loved them and protected them with the veracity of a momma bear. She lit my soul flame. When you witness something like this, all three of you, as a family, well, it kinda takes your breath away.

About a week after the births, we began to allow the babies out of the whelping room, to explore their world on their own. My being the messy housewife I was at times, my Levi cutoffs were lying on the floor of our living room when one of the pups, having only two of his senses in tact at this point, smell and touch, found his way to them and decidedly curled up in a little ball of blonde fur and promptly went to sleep. I have this photograph sitting next to my bed. A couple weeks after that, I found myself alone in the whelping room with Cali and the babies. I walked over to the box and gently picked up one of them and returned to my seat under the soft glow of the lamp. I was holding up, in an almost exalted sort of way and looked into his eyes and began to cry. Right about this time, David walked in from work. "Momma, why are you sitting in the dark,  hold that puppy in the sky, tears streaming down your face? What's wrong?" "David", I replied, "Remember how I've been telling you for the past seven years that I have wanted a yellow Lab, you know, the one I've seen my whole life?" He's just standing there, in the door way, looking at me with this sweet, understanding face, and he says, "Yes..." "This is him, David. This is the one!"

David had actually bought Cali for me a year and a half earlier, for Christmas. He had a little purple ribbon tied around her neck, and everything. I didn't have the heart to tell him that Cali was NOT THAT LAB. When he saw me sitting there with Elvis in my hands that night, he knew.

I named my yellow lab Elvis for two reasons. Mr. Presley and I were both born on January 8, and it had taken me six weeks to come up with the perfect name. David and I were watching an old Elvis movie, as they were being shown around the anniversary of his death, and David and I just looked at each other and at the same time said, "Elvis".

Elvis was my best friend. He stood not beside me, but in front, as I weathered every storm. When I would visit my BFF in California without him, all I could think of was getting back home. He lived with me in three different states, traveling with me in my car every single mile. Surely he has logged as many miles on I-10 as I have. I'm gonna estimate, 5,000 of 'em.

He was with me when I left David. He made the very uncomfortable, heart breaking, gut wrenching drive with me from San Antonio back home to Vegas. A trip upon which I cried in agony for almost every single mile. He must have saved my life three times that year alone. He slept beside me, making the unenviable task of learning how to sleep alone again after 17 years a hell of alot easier. He protected our home and my grandson.

When he was getting older, and I could no longer handle the pain of divorce, we moved to the beach. And I do mean the beach. My rent was $1400 a month and I didn't have a job. I made David pay every penny of it!!!. Elvis swam in the Pacific Ocean almost every day and I slept with sandy sheets for the next year. He knew every sidewalk, stop sign and store in Ocean Beach and every vendor knew Elvis. 

One day, I was sitting on my deck watching him play when a green hummingbird came up to his nose and just hung there, flapping it's wings for what seemed minutes, and Elvis just stood there, face to face with it. A total Kodac moment, to say the least. He used to chase geckos in the morning glory bush outside my door. He brought me peace in the midst of my war. He taught me love in it's purest form.

He died in my arms on April 26, 2009. After the shock of his death wore off, I remember sitting on the wood floor of my apartment, alone, in the dark, without him and letting out the most primal scream from the deepest parts of my soul. My neighbors came running.

It was that day that I realized what true love really is. It is the kind of love you have for someone that is just as strong everyday after their death and for the rest of your life as it was the moment they entered your life.

Before I cremated my dog, I removed the charm from his collar, a charm we had bought together at a store called The Black on Newport in Ocean Beach and I put it on a silver chain and I still wear that charm. Hummingbirds, green ones, fly into my space and hang there for a while, as if to share a message. I miss him every single day. Even with his charm around my neck and his ashes beside my bed, but I know that he is with me all the time. I died a short time after his death. They brought me back from the brink and I was on life support for four days. It was as if he didn't want me to come to him yet. As if I still had things to do with my life, like see The Pacific Northwest, find love again, and spend Thanksgiving Dinners with my beautiful little family. It's as if he said, "Momma, don't be so selfish, and I won't be, either."

Today, my baby would be 14 years old. I wish him the happiest birthday because I know he hears my wishes.

He is my guardian angel and the love of my life. We found each other in this life and that is the greatest blessing there is.

He is my familiar, and it really doesn't matter whether you practice witchcraft or follow French philosophy, when you've had the magic of meeting your soulmate, you've experienced life at it's most beautiful.

Happy birthday, Bubby. Momma loves you so much!!!

Blessed be...  

  Intimate Connections

It is has been said for many and many a century that love is the purest form of expression there is. The rawest emotion we experience. The catalyst for life. And for many and many a poet, a muse.
As a child, I learned that there were different kinds of love. Parental love, love of God, love for friends. As an adult, I have come to see that the difference in love is not necessarily the specific way it can be categorized, but that it differs in a less abstract vernacular.  It is either love or it is not.
 As you go down your road, you gain a certain kind of wisdom, a second sight, or, perhaps a sixth sense, if you will. Things become clearer and more easily defined. All through my lengthy and exhausting marriage, I would often tell the story of how I remembered the very second when I realized I loved my subsequent husband. Oh, what a tale to tell, a great party favor, everyone gathered 'round to hear the eloquent narrative of my weakened knees in the wake of my so called destiny. When I look back on that day over twenty years ago, I sit here with absolute conviction that had I really loved him, I would have known it from the start, not realized it two months in. I also sit here with the acute awareness that what I felt for him was in fact, not love at all, an enlightening little verity, nonetheless. 
The awareness that real love has landed on our doorstep is absolutely terrifying. It isn't beautiful or sweet. It's uncomfortable and dirty. It does not offer any assurance, whatsoever. It complicates your life, distracts your thoughts, and renders even the most competent amongst us completely insane. It disrupts sleep, causes inflexible anxiety, and forces you to do things to yourself you never even realized you were capable of.
Over the past few weeks, I have been reverting to literature. My safe place. A beautifully told story can carry me away, allowing me a blessed respite from my own little private hell. However, sure enough, love walks in and there I am, reading Emily Dickinson's poems through tear stained eyes. I have to ask myself why writers through the years have placed such a creamy, soft centered value on love. From the moment I knew it had cursed me, and for real this time, I have been trying unsuccessfully to fight it off as if it were the flu. This appears to me to be a losing battle. Love has won at every turn. It has the strength of a thousand giants relentlessly determined to make me pay absolute attention to it, like some screaming two year old seeking the ardor of his mother. 
Love is not patient nor is it kind. I do believe Albert Ellis said it best when he stated, "The art of love is largely the art of persistence". Love is shocking and persuasive. And it is obvious. When it finds you, you recognize it. And it shocks you with the electrical current of a jellyfish. It stings you and scares you and you want to run away from it but it's translucent colors hypnotize you. Love has this magical ability to make you see past all of it's negative attributes and into the future. Honore de Balzac said, "A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea". And, yes, it is just that simple. It is either love or it is not. When it's the real thing, you will recognize it from the very first moment your eyes meet. And when you finally win the fight, or lose it, depending on how you look at it, and you let love in and get through all of the ugliness it has to offer, the rewards are surely exponential.
Love is not patient, nor is it kind. It is the lover who must be these things. As Ms. Dickinson so eloquently put it, "To love is so startling, it leaves little time for anything else". It takes away your concentration, your sleep, your control and all of your time, but when it comes to you, and you can see forever through the eyes of it, get in, sit down, fasten your seatbelt, and shut up. It's about to be one hell of a ride...

-Deannalynn Arzola

INFATUATION


Webster's defines infatuation as the deprivation of logic.
Hm...is this really true?
 Perhaps over the years society has chosen to switch this definition up a bit. I was thinking about this word recently while daydreaming about this really cute guy at work. Yup, isn't that where it always starts. A scarey thought if I allow myself to really think about the whole situation. Scarey because I met my husband at work. Ex-husband. We spent half our lives together by the time that crazy comet stopped soaring thru our atmosphere. 
   Anyway, I digress. I'm a lot older now. Too old for silly crushes, right? Does our biological clock ever really stop ticking. That funny feeling one gets in her stomach whenever he walks into the room,  that silly stumble that causes him to lose all that pent up confidence he normally walks around with.
While so-called sound judgement seems to escape our logic minds, we ponder this possible hook-up for hours on end. We spend every sneaking moment searching his profile on Google, Twitter and Facebook. We wait, we watch, we learn everything we possibly can about the object of our affection. Hell, we end up knowing that person better than they know themselves. We do this because we're trying to make sense of why that first glance in orientation caused such a cataclysmic supernova inside our soul. In other words, we're trying to make logic of it all.
But what about intuition. What if every road we've walked down led us to this place at the same time and we're actually able to recognize each other? What if all the crazy shit we've done in the past, we did because we somehow knew in the back of our logic minds where we were heading all along?
Saying that infatuation is somehow a lack of judgement is like saying an oxygen tank on a dive is just being hyper cautious or overly prepared. I don't think we can be too vigilant in matters of the heart. For the heart is a mighty organ, tough and sturdy, but as everyone knows, we can't live without it. So why not listen to our still, small voices. What can it hurt?
I don't know, I'm just a girl with an infatuation...

-Deannalynn Arzola

HOME SWEET HOME...

OMGoddess, it's been so long since I've been online while NOT at my job...new computer, yayyy!!!
To all my friends whom I feel like I've been away from for so long: I'm doing so great!!! La bella vita, ora!!!
I have a lived a very long life in my 47 years. I used to think; "Goddess, I am so tired, I just can't do this any more!!!" Then, I came to Oregon. This is a place of such great beauty and unimaginable positive energy that I have been able to stop running, stop, breathe. And now I realize the it is a full life I've led. I've lived in America's most fascinating cities, from all of which I have taken something I hold very near and dear to my heart...Chicago dogs, the Cubs...The very best basketball team EVER-my San Antonio Spurs...The Pacific Ocean, OB, the Padres, California, sunsets...24 hour liquor sales, the desert, 5000 room hotels, casinos, my son-in-law...Madame Marie, the Jersey Shore, my bff, Bruce Springsteen. I've been from Niagara Falls Canada to Mexico City, Los Angeles to Florida, Lake Tahoe, The Grand Canyon, Napa. I have seen America in the dark and in the light, I've swam in every sea that borders this American Land and walked almost every beat in between and it is Oregon that has captured my heart, sustained my soul and woke me up to an emotion I have in the past been so scared to lose, as it always seemed so fleeting. Happiness. While all the roads I've walked upon have infused me with incredible memories that are like the photographs of my mind, I realize they have all led me here. And I realize now, I can stop walking. Stop searching. Stop fearing that my happiness may be ripped from me by some proverbial thief in the night. I now see why I had to work so hard, cry so long and die at least once. Oregon is a blessing. A gift. It amazes me to no end how Oregonians duplicitously love their home and not realize how good they have it. But then again, that's Oregon. You simply cannot grasp that the rest of the world is not like this when you live here. The Gods have graced this place with such splendor, that we cannot, for a minute, imagine life any other way. At night, when darkness blankets Western Oregon, you can see the stars so clearly, it is as if The Gods hung them a little lower, just to illuminate the souls of those who choose to call this place home. Home. I have had a nomadic soul for all of my life. I never really ever felt like I was home. I am home.
There have been many people who have been responsible for my choice to call Oregon home. For many years I hated them. They hurt me. They changed the course of every turn I took in my life with their deeds. Well, I thank you all, now. I'm glad my father married the evil witch of the south. I'm glad my daughter's father beat me. I'm glad, in spite of absolute and total heartbreak that my beloved husband screwed around on me. I'm even glad my beautiful daughter uses her Sagittarius bow and arrow, for which I have always worn a tee shirt with a bullseye over my heart, to shoot me with her own brand of wisdom, because how else could we have ever let each other go. To some of you, "Ha, I did it. I survived your bullshit and oh my Goddess, have I been rewarded!!!" And to some of you, I love you. It is those of you that it has been the hardest to say good-bye to. For both of us. But we were able to see beyond our own ambition, wants, needs, and let each other continue on our respective paths. I miss you. Nich, Ade, Bubby. I think about you every day. But you must know, that the joy I carry inside of me, the pride I finally have for myself, the calm within my soul and the reparation of my heart is real. I'm happy.
There are, of course, new people who have so much to do with why I get up and walk to the bus, even in the pouring rain, to go to work and stay there for 10 hours a day. You make me want to be there. At first I thought Oregon was something I would have to earn every day, but as I continue to learn the job I love, I realize I already did all the work. I already earned this. You all are simply icing on the cake.
Thank you...
La bella vita, ora!!!Blessed be )0(

-by Deannalynn Arzola

Created by The Doris Day Animal League in 1995, WORLD SPAY DAY joined forces with Humane Society United States in 2006 in an effort to educate people around the globe about the overwhelming statistics attached to pet overpopulation.

Over 4 million dogs, cats, and other animals are needlessly killed in the United States alone due to the inability to place the unwanted (or lack of ability to care for the) animal. Here are some more staggering numbers:

• Cats can litter up to 18 kittens in a single year.
• Dogs can litter up to 20 pups.
• That number accounts for the birth of approximately 4,700,000 animals every year.
• In the first 15 years of WORLD SPAY DAY, our participants have provided permanent birth control to over 1,458,00 dogs, cats, and rabbits and thanks to their efforts, from 1995-2010, the lives of over 70 million domestic and sometimes feral animals have been spared an often painful life and needless death.

Officially taking place the last Tuesday in February, WORLD SPAY DAY is the first and only international day of action set aside specifically to promote the anti-overpopulation of pets in our society, bringing together veterinarians, their staff, animal welfare professionals, business owners and citizens, collectively educating the human population on the importance of pregnancy prevention in the pet population, exponentially decreasing the unfortunate necessity of euthanasia and saving the average taxpayer over $175, the typical cost to shelter an unwanted animal.

Please help us celebrate WORLD SPAY DAY by talking to your vet, your friends, your family. Spread the word. Educating people on the numbers doesn’t cost a thing. If you would like to donate, please visit HSUS’ website at humanesociety.org. Visit a shelter, adopt a shelter pet. You will be loved and appreciated every time you come home to your new best friend. Your new shelter pet will come home already spayed or neutered, as well. Donate to your favorite pet charity. Google WORLD SPAY DAY, learn about other ways you can help, and most importantly, spay and neuter your pets.

At Heaven Can Wait, it has always been our mission to prevent the horrible deaths of over 30,000 dogs and cats a year in Las Vegas by starting at the root of the problem, educating pet owners and sellers about the misery connected to the needless death of every beautiful animal, and business owners and volunteers about the need for funds to provide spay and neuter services at little or no cost to the many animal lovers and pet owners who simply cannot afford pregnancy prevention for their pets. While we have been in operation since 2000, and have several amazing programs to help pets find forever homes, we finally achieved our dream in 2009 when we opened our state of the art facility at Eastern and 95, providing low cost pregnancy prevention to Valley pet owners. Please visit our web site at hcws.org for more information. We also wish to thank our volunteers who work so tirelessly in support of our cause.

Help us celebrate WORLD SPAY DAY by sharing this knowledge with someone you know because someone you love will love you for it.