Hollister
– An allergy to both cats and dogs never stopped Vivian Kennedy
from loving animals. In fact, she surrounds herself with them
constantly.
Hollister – An allergy to both cats and dogs never stopped Vivian Kennedy from loving animals. In fact, she surrounds herself with them constantly.
Kennedy volunteers with All Creatures Great and Small, an animal rescue organization which she herself created and devotes her time to.
On a Tuesday morning, the 61-year-old Hollister resident sat on the couch of her impeccably clean home, petting Daisy, the pit bull she adopted after no one else would take her. Next to Kennedy, one of her volunteers patiently bottle-fed a 5-day-old pit bull while a lhasa apso who is waiting to be adopted lay on the floor, occasionally rising to demand attention.
Even the decorations in Kennedy’s house reveal her love of four-legged creatures: Her walls are covered in photographs of the animals she’s owned, raised or rescued over the years.
While Kennedy has always been an animal lover, she now she devotes nearly all of her time to this passion. In 1999, she started the nonprofit animal rescue group All Creatures Great and Small. She started the group after volunteering for almost a decade with another animal rescue organization.
She named the organization for a hymn she’d recited when she was younger.
“As a child it was one of my favorite hymns: All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,” Kennedy said. The name reflects Kennedy’s advocacy for animal rights and belief they should be treated well and given loving homes.
Just like the name, Kennedy’s interest in animal rescue came from her childhood.
“It was a great love of animals that was instilled in me by my parents,” she said. “I grew up in a family where we were all allowed to do rescues. My parents taught us the true meaning of rescuing an animal.”
Her parents taught her that if she rescued an animal, it was her responsibility to take care of it and see that it was healthy and happy.
This belief carries over to the organization. Volunteers with All Creatures Great and Small foster pets from the animal shelter, making them more adoptable once they are old enough and healthy enough.
“My main aim is the animals: making sure they’re healthy, making sure they have everything they need – the love, the guidance – before we adopt them out,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy currently has around 10 volunteers, seven of whom foster animals. She has personally fostered more than 50 animals since she started the volunteer organization.
Anna Patterson, an animal control officer at the Hollister Animal Shelter ,said Kennedy provides a lot of aid to the shelter.
“She gets the dogs to other homes and finds them a place to go when we run out of space here at the shelter,” Patterson said.
Kennedy said she loves volunteering with her organization and never gets tired of the feeling fostering a young animal gives her. As she and one of her volunteers, Peggy Lairson, cooed over the pit bull pup, they discussed the benefits of fostering: Seeing it take its first steps, eat on its own, and eventually get a good home.
“It’s knowing that I’ve saved a life,” Kennedy said. “A precious life.”
Alice Joy covers education for the Free Lance. She can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 336 or at aj**@fr***********.com.
