It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of homeless pets in Italy. I sometimes spend more than an hour just looking at page after page of poor dogs who need help and whose only hope is that someone will spot them on the internet.
Well, when I get too depressed, I think of the story of the starfish. Maybe you know it? A man is walking along a beach and comes across thousands and thousands of starfish that have been washed up on the shore and are dying.
A bit further on he sees an old man who is patiently collecting starfish and gently putting them back into the sea. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks the old man. ‘Surely there’s no point in trying to put them back? There are too many. It’s hopeless. What you’re doing can’t make any difference.’ The old man stopped and looked at him, then picked up another starfish and put it in the sea. ‘It made a difference to that one,’ he said.
Even one pet adoption is a happy ending, a beacon of hope for the rest. So don’t get overwhelmed. Welcome a stray into your home. It may not help all of them, but you can be sure it’s made a difference to that one.