On June 26^th I published an article on Examiner.com in reference to my current feelings about animal rescue and my need to step back away from it all. It was only one of a handful of editorial type articles I have ever published there and I was just ready to chuck it all. 

As I hit the publish button I contemplated it being my last article to publish on Examiner, forever. I had been writing there since 2009, it was a great outlet to publish on, about animal news and welfare, and I had thousands of readers subscribed to my column. It was a real pip that I remained in the top most-read-column line up on the site for several years. I managed to make public a good deal of important information, publishing some things that other news groups refused to touch because of the emotionally charged nature of the material.

However, the articles were time consuming and took away from a lot of the things that I do; things that actually pay my bills. As much as I enjoyed writing on Examiner.com there was nothing financially beneficial about it. Even though I had a couple of pieces hit it big and go viral, that was not a constant and I was tickled when my earnings paid even the water bill. And for that reason, many times over the years, I have considered leaving Examiner. Each and every time I did, friends (many involved in rescue) convinced me to stay, to give voice to so much in the animal world that others won’t talk about.

And so I continued.

Well, life has a way of making decisions for you, and sometimes, whether we like it or not, we go along because we simply have no choice.

Just days after I published that last article, in the midst of all that contemplation, Examiner made the decision for me.

I received an email that stated, as of July 10, 2016, Examiner.com would shut down its feed, and Examiner would be no more. It was simple. The platform was changing to an entertainment driven crowd, there simply wasn’t any money in it for them to continue to operate a news site, and they were collapsing the whole thing, including all of its content. Journalist who wished to save their work had just days to do so or wait for it to all disappeared.  

I had seven years of articles on the Examiner.com and just days to save what I could or it would all be gone. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted save any of it. Was it worth the hours it would take to collect it all? Who was reading it anyway?

So I compromised. I saved some of it. I saved the articles that were popular in first publishing and still being read, some that had special meaning for me, and certainly some that more than a few people would like to see completely disappear from existence.  There was just some information I could not bear to see simply fade away.

I’ve had a couple of offers to write for other online publications but decided against it, for now. Instead, I intend to republish those saved articles from Examiner here in my own space. Anything I write in the future will be found here too.

As always, thanks for reading! I look forward to hearing from many of you.