February 2008                        Carol Adrienne, Ph.D.


On December 22 last year, I received an email from a woman I had first met on an airplane about twelve years ago.  Her name is Palena Dorsey.  I had followed up our impromptu (and synchronistic) meeting with an interview with Palena, which appears in The Tenth Insight:  An Experiential Guide.  A friend of hers had just come across her story, and had asked Palena if she was the same person in the book.  Palena had emailed me just to say hi, but I was curious how her life had changed since we had first met.

At that time, Palena was working with troubled juveniles and fostering many children, as well as raising her own.  During our flight, I had become fascinated with her life as a foster mother to over one hundred children, many of whom had been abandoned and severely abused. Some of these children had even become prostitutes or addicted to drugs in their struggles to survive. Despite her busy corporate career, Palena still had found time to mother, provide a home, and heal all these children for over fifteen years. As she shared some of the stories that day, I had been particularly struck by her down-to-earth and utterly modest manner about running such a complex household—handling not only practical matters, but emotionally taxing ones. I considered her life quite extraordinary. In her eyes, she was doing nothing special, only doing what she could to alleviate suffering.

In her recent email I noticed her web site address-- www.sanctuaryanimalrefuge.org-- and wondered how she had changed directions.

Today Palena, who lives in south central Florida and is now fifty-six, has another mission of love.  In her words, however, she has simply shifted from caring for “two-legged kids to four-legged kids.”

Currently, Palena is mother to over one hundred and sixty animals at her Florida home.  She has also established an eleven-state-wide coalition of other rescues thanks to the help of Brenda Bratton and Kathy Rocha, who work alongside Palena to encourage rescues to unite and speak in one voice—all while maintaining a full-time job with a daily commute of 220 miles.  This woman definitely walks her talk. She said,

I believe we each have a purpose in life, and that higher powers give everyone gifts. I’m blessed that I have a way to communicate with children and animals. In communicating with humans and animals, I don’t try to change anyone.  I just try to understand them and what they need. Most people don’t try to understand children or animals; they try to change them so that it becomes more convenient for them. 

Palena continued fostering until the emotional strain of not being able to protect two little children from their abusive biologic parents became too much. She suffered a heart attack, and in1992, the doctors told her she had six months left to live. However, apparently she had other ideas about her life. She got married and moved to Florida and still lives in a migrant area.  Wanting to help local people take better care of their animals, she started a program called Work and Earn.

Poor kids come and bring their own animals.  They volunteer to wash dogs, rake out kennels, and help feed the animals.  They learn how an animal should be cared for through their own direct experience. I don’t have to push any philosophy on them.  They take an interest in the animals, and in turn, changes happen to them naturally.  At the end of the day, they take home a bag of food or some medicines for mange or fleas.  We also have clinics for animals, where they can get treatment for worms, free food, and shots. 

Despite such daunting events as her 220 mile daily commute to her job in a law firm, four hurricanes in a year and a half, the constant arrival of neglected and abused animals at her doorstep--and extremely little sleep--Palena feels blessed.

The law firm I work for in Ft Lauderdale raised a lot of supplies for the sanctuary, and during those hurricanes provided food and clothing for the community, even coming up here to help distribute it. I’ve been very grateful for their support.

I don’t think I’d be alive if I didn’t do what I do.

I also have a great Board of Directors who are very active in the daily activities of the Sanctuary and make it possible for me to have more time with the animals by answering the adoption calls and emails, fundraising, and running animals here and there. I don’t sleep much, and I’m tired, but knowing I have a purpose keeps me alive. 

For example, one of our dogs, Blessings, came to me with open sores.  She was so skinny she could barely walk.  I spent a year with that dog, and the number of people that were touched by her was amazing.  All over the world, people watched on the web site how life came back into her eyes.  You can’t imagine how that feels. 

We also work with Commercial Breeders to try and clean up the industry.  Traveling to Missouri many breeders release their dogs to someone in our coalition.  In this way they are placed into loving homes and not sent to auctions to be sold to other breeders that might not be as high quality as the breeders that release their animals to our groups.   We cannot stop the commercial breeding business--it’s a multi-billion-dollar-a-year enterprise, but we can work with them to clean it up.  Everyone has tried to stop it and it didn’t work, so we are trying a new effort to help with it in cleaning it up as best we can.  In the meantime, we are placing wonderful dogs in forever homes.

When you walk into my yard, you will be greeted by thirty dogs.  All kinds of different breeds are living together.  Chows, Akitas, Rotweilers, Huskies, Shar Peis, and pit bulls.  People can’t believe how well they get all along.  If they misbehave, I point a finger, and they stop.  With new dogs who might have a history of biting, I take them into my kitchen and we have a long talk.

People ask me how I do it.  I tell them, I don’t do anything, I just try to understand and love each one.  I know that animals respect life.  You just have to reach that level with them.  It’s there. We have so much we can learn from an animal, although we think humans know everything and that we are the top species.  I  often wonder if we are  We try to make everything like us and all one has to do is look at the world around us to know that is not working.. There is harmony in the animal world.  If you allow them to be animals instead of trying to make them be like a human, you find an animal that is content and truly amazing.
 
I’ve worked very hard in my life, and I give every ounce to what I’m doing.  I see healing and transformations every day.  For example, I have a pit bull with three bite records, but now he can baby-sit a little Maltese with no trouble.  He’s a very gentle dog now.

Last year, I walked into a kennel and I got badly bitten.  As soon as I walked between the dog and the gate, I knew I was going to get bitten.   But the next day, after I bandaged myself up and went back to the kennel, I realized what the problem was.  Another dog had entered her kennel, and it had made her afraid, and that’s when she bit me--out of fear not aggression.  This dog went on to be a great dog.

I think everything in life has a right to live, and that each animal can find the right path.  Everyone, every animal, always has a path to choose.  Even a brain-damaged dog can be a good companion.  We have a blind Akita  (generally Akitas are thought to be somewhat aggressive) but he will lay there and let children lay on his stomach.  His eyes had to be removed and he had been abused and neglected but he is the gentlest giant I have ever met, and with love has learned the beauty of life.

We have a little three-pound Maltese who was beaten so badly that she was blind, deaf in one ear, and brain-damaged.  When she came to me, she could only walk in circles.  People said, Why not put her down?  I wouldn’t do it.  She has a right to live.  I sing a lot to animals, so I made up a little song for her.  When I walked in the door, no matter where she was—even with her poor hearing--she would come running out to me. 

While Palena is at work, she has a staff of five to help care for the animals during the day. She supports her enterprise through a combination of her own resources, donations, and taking in normal dogs.   I asked about her daily routine, wondering how she got everything done in a mere twenty-four hours.  She replied:

I get home around seven pm and work with the animals until about midnight, when I go to bed.  Then I get up at two am  [author’s italics] to feed the cats, make my rounds, give out  medicine, take care of some of the special, brain-damaged or blind dogs, check on everyone, tell them all goodbye, and then leave for work at about five or five-thirty in the morning. I have some three-legged dogs, too, and I like to give some of them a massage, and talk and play a little bit. 

I couldn’t help wondering if Palena didn’t get sleepy on her long drives—with her routine of two-hour nightly “naps.” 

Sometimes I get sleepy driving home, but I wake right up when I get home to the dogs.  I know it sounds exhausting.  I should be exhausted but I’m not.  It seems to me that we are here on the planet such a small amount of time, that our time doesn’t mean much if we are just sitting around.  We can just float along and think only of ourselves, or we can leave an imprint of our energy behind wherever we go. 

If I can take every second of time and implant a part of myself into another being, it charges me up with energy.  I don’t want to live being a stagnant amount of energy.  I want to die knowing that the energy I was blessed with has been given out all over the place.  I’m not a super-human creature.  The energy I have inside of me is not going to die.  It’s going to be in that child or in that dog that I give my energy to.

I live a very Taoist lifestyle.  I don’t need anything for myself.  I live in a very modest home, and drive an old, beat-up car.  We have children in the world who can’t get an education or even anything to eat.  We have people thinking only of themselves.  I don’t want to die like that.  To me a simple lifestyle and a lot of giving make a very rich life.  If one forgets self and lives for something else its amazing the transition that happens in your heart and soul.

You can meet some of Palena Dorsey’s little three- or four-legged friends on her web site at www.sanctuaryanimalrefuge.org or email her at Pdorsey@sanctuaryanimalrefuge.org   

Have a Loving February,

Carol Adrienne


Carol Adrienne, Ph.D. is an intuitive counselor and life coach who has helped thousands of people work through doubt, procrastination, and obstacles to create the life they want to live. Private consultations and coaching available. Contact her at Carol22@sonic.net