One by One Until There Are None

February 7, 2012

One day not too long ago, Marc Fink was approached by a colleague in the jewelry business who wanted to tell him about a cause that was close to her heart: animal rescue. Our Cause for Paws is a jewelry line that is now carried by Fink's, and a portion of each Cause for Paws purchase goes to your local animal shelter.  Read below about the story told by our Northlake Mall store manager, Ellen Freeman Kraatz, and see what makes this line so special to her!

 

These words grace the mural on the shelter wall at Carolina Poodle Rescue’s Dreamweaver Farms: “One by one until there are none.”  It’s the mantra that President Donna Ezzell says to keep her heart afloat amid the endless tide of homeless dogs.  This verse sustains her, the volunteers she inspires, and the fuzzy lives she saves.  Those lives aren’t exclusively poodle lives, by the way.  While Donna and her team focus on poodles in need, Dreamweaver Farms is actually a refuge for other wayward canines, felines, and even equines.  

There is an often-adapted, rarely-attributed story that demonstrates the power of Donna’s “One by one.”  The tale traces back to American anthropologist and writer Loren Eiseley.  While I am not sure that these are his exact words, the story goes: 

While wandering a deserted beach at dawn, stagnant in my work, I saw a man in the distance bending and throwing as he walked the endless stretch toward me. As he came near, I could see that he was throwing starfish, abandoned on the sand by the tide, back into the sea. When he was close enough I asked him why he was working so hard at this strange task. He said that the sun would dry the starfish and they would die. I said to him that I thought he was foolish. There were thousands of starfish on miles and miles of beach. One man alone could never make a difference. He smiled as he picked up the next starfish. Hurling it far into the sea he said, "It makes a difference for this one." I abandoned my writing and spent the morning throwing starfish.

There are just too many forsaken poodles – not to mention dogs – not to mention creatures.  There are many moments of defeat and discouragement that wrench my heart.  What redeems me is the thought of each starfish.  It only takes one toss back home into the sea to make a rescue.  We can start out small and still do so much.  Buy a bauble, rescue a resident of Dreamweaver Farms!