My name is Chelsea Pinkham, and my life’s mission is to create a kinder world to animals through humane education. As someone with diverse experience and education in the animal welfare world, I believe that I hold a wide variety of resources, perspectives, and stories for those seeking to help animals in any way they can. I am currently working as an animal care technician at a small no-kill rescue shelter in Northern California and promoting my children’s book about a rescued dog, but my roots in animal advocacy trace back nearly as far as I can remember.
I began participating in animal advocacy as a small child, holding lemonade stands and hosting school blanket drives for my local animal shelter and placing scribbled paper signs around my neighborhood asking people to “be nice to your pets and wild animals”. In middle school this evolved into organizing larger fundraising events and small scale pet adoption events as well as giving presentations to the classrooms of whichever teachers, half amused and half annoyed, would allow me to do so. Discovering the ability to research animal welfare issues online quickly led to my becoming vegetarian in sixth grade- by seventh, I was vegan. It was then that I realized one of my most burning passions was the welfare of farmed animals; though they outnumber us by the billions, there is not a single federal law in the United States protecting their welfare during their lives on farms.
By high school I was volunteering with a number of organizations, including a horse rescue, a dog rescue, a rabbit rescue and a local animal shelter; when I turned sixteen and gained the ability to work in urban wildlife rehabilitation, specifically nursery care for orphaned baby animals, I again discovered a cause that ignited my soul.
Since then, I have gained connections with a wide animal rescue and advocacy community, as well as opportunities to participate hands-on in the rescue of animals I never dreamed I would get to meet in person. In total, I have rescued, fostered, transported, rehomed, placed, or assisted/observed in the rescue of nearly 500 animals, species ranging from alpacas to elephants, pythons to peacocks, opossums to raccoons to hamsters and more.
During these rescues I have witnessed many gut-wrenching scenes of animals being treated like objects, including witnessing farmed animals be beaten and shoved at low end auctions, cringing as a frustrated and likely underpaid worker snapped the leg of a chicken at an organic egg farm when he struggled to pull her from a transportation crate, watching chained elephants sway for hours at a tourist riding camp, and so much more. I have also witnessed countless happy scenes- from that auction came a sickly and unwanted newborn calf who was shown kindness and mercy, from that egg farm came birds who spread their wings for the first time upon reaching sanctuary after a lifetime in wire cages, and from that camp came an elephant whose eyes smiled as she bathed in mud and socialized with her own kind for the first time in forty years. Observing these scenes in person rather than simply in reading and research has provided me with deep insight to these issues.
I want to use this blog to educate and inform readers about all of the animal issues I have personal experience with, as well as tell the stories of some of the incredible animals I have had the pleasure of knowing and helping along the way. I hope you enjoy!
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