Recovering from a Working Vacation

Last week, Coastal Pet Rescue had the grand opportunity to send six leadership team members to the HSUS Animal Care Expo in Orlando. (A big THANK YOU to Matt Cohen of The New South Cafe for sponsoring our registration costs.)

First let me say that while this was a big educational opportunity, it was also a small part vacation for me. Two days were planned for visiting the Disney parks before and after the workshops. It gave me a chance to get to know members of my leadership team better.

Before I go into a recount of our week, let me just say that please, for your own sanity, don't ever stay at the Coronado Springs Resort. HSUS has already booked it again in three years, and we're already looking for alternative places to stay. Our room and service was so bad, we got a big gift basket delivered to our room on the third day. I could write a novel of all the things that went wrong, but no need to bother. Just know that what you see and read on the website are not what we experienced during our stay. I also discovered that all the things I loved about Magic Kingdom as a kid and even in my early 20s were no longer the same... no characters walking about the park at random, you can only see Mickey at one spot if you wait in an hour plus line, and the more mature rides were all now G-rated. Even Epcot seemed less fantastic to me this go round... maybe it's because I'm older or just don't like so much change from happy childhood memories. I did, however LOVE Animal Kingdom. I could have stayed there longer and done more, but I wanted the chance to explore other parks.

So back to the conference... we spent the week attending various workshops on animal care, volunteer issues, fundraising, and long-term planning. I taught one workshop on website considerations for adopters, donors and volunteers. I was thrilled at the turnout; more than 200 people and folks were even sitting on the floor due to lack of seats. My Q&A session ran over and I'm still getting emails from people that attended. What a boost it is to see others benefit from my experience.

What I love most about the HSUS conferences is the opportunity to meet with other groups and exchange ideas. I'm hopeful that the rest of our team took away as much as I did so we become a stronger and more dedicated animal welfare organization.

But taking off for a week means coming back to quite a bit of work. Despite our having left auto responders on our email and an outgoing message on our voicemail that we were out of town until the 18th and messages would be returned on the 19th, people still yelled in their messages that we were not responsive to them. Just seems we can't make folks happy enough these days. It's not bad enough they want to dump their problem pets on us, now we have to take their problem attitudes as well. But so it goes in the world of animal rescue.