Top Dog Animal Hero of the Year award goes to … Linda!
Linda Scrace from Fora was recently awarded the Animal Talk Top Dog Animal of the Year award. And she deserves it.
Linda Scrace, from Friends of Rescued Animals (Fora), has not only a passion but also a deep love for every animal in her care.
It is this love that ensured that she received the Animaltalk magazine’s Top Dog Animal Hero of the Year Award recently.
She said that as a little girl she used to pick up animals and bring them home, and her dad used to joke that he would send her to the SPCA if she continued bringing sick and homeless pets home.
At the age of 15, she already knew she wanted to work with animals. After school she started working with horses and in 2003 she was working on a stud farm in the North West. She and the owner had an argument about the way he treated the animals and he eventually assaulted her so badly that he broke her neck. She was almost paralysed and had to have countless operations.
Many years later, in 2013, she was contacted by Fora’s new chairperson, who wanted her to manage the organisation for them. This is how she ended up at Fora.
When an animal comes in and the organisation has to decide whether it is going to invest in the animal, the decision rests on one question for Linda: “Can we improve the quality of that animal’s life? I know what it is like to live in pain and I don’t want that for my animals.”
She said she did not expect to get the award, and had to be nominated by someone, but for her, this is just her everyday job. She does not go out of her way to win awards, she does the work because she loves the animals.
The shelter was also nominated as Animaltalk’s charity of choice and received a R46 000 donation, which Linda said will be a great help.
The most challenging part of her job is when she has to tell people that the shelter is at full capacity and they don’t understand.
She explained that 98 per cent of the animals they take in are the result of irresponsible animal ownership. Most animals are not sterilised when they get to the shelter, and therein lies the biggest problem.
With all the bad Linda has seen over the years, the one thing that keeps her grounded is her sense of humour.
One thing she can attest to is that cats are unforgiving creatures. The marks on her arms are proof of this.
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