Many animal owners say they’d do anything to ensure the safety of their pets. But to what extent would you jeopardize your own for them?
That’s a question Kent, England resident Hillary Barrows, 57, had to ask herself after her work as an English teacher dried up and she found herself facing an ultimatum: Either give away her dogs and live in temporary housing, or keep her dogs and be forced to live out of her car. She didn’t have enough money to put her dogs in kennels, and she refused to give them up for her own benefit.
“I was at rock bottom. There were so many obstacles in the way,” Barrows tells Kent Online. No one should be forced to live in those types of extreme circumstances, but having to provide for three mouths instead of one when you’re without income or shelter presented Barrows with a tough situation. Barrows found herself homeless with few resources for help.
She had been living out her car for more than four months – aided only by an empathetic local McDonald’s employee and a Salvation Army — before an animal rescue shelter heard her story and stepped in to fund her a bungalow where both she and her dogs currently live together while she gets back on her feet.
“It’s as if I’ve woken up one morning and been given a hundred million pounds. That’s the feeling,” she tells Kent Online. “It’s not the monetary value it’s that sensation that your life changes in an instant.”
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