Hello, Steemit!

Hi, Steemit! My name is Cherie. I’m new to the platform but I do have friends here who have promised to help me find my way around. In fact, I’m involved in a test project that pays SBD for real-world work. So, I hope you’ll follow my blog and see how this works out!

I live in Central Appalachia, in the same county as @rhondak, who posts often about the problems in our area. She runs a nonprofit animal rescue that I’ve worked with extensively. A group of animal lovers on Steemit and in The Writers’ Block have a plan to raise enough SBD every week to pay me a small hourly salary. I’m a single mother who works in the food service industry, and need part time work. At the same time, the rescue needs help. It would be a great arrangement if we could solve both of these problems through Steemit.

I’m not entirely familiar with cryptocurrency. I understand that it’s real and converts to USD so I can pay my bills with it. This makes me the ideal candidate for a project like this, because I represent the “average” demographic of new user coming to Steemit for the first time. If I can make this work, anyone can.

My goal at this time is to give the rescue nine hours of work a week. That’s three hours a day, three times a week. At $10 SBD an hour, this would work out to $90 SBD per week. I plan to make plenty of posts with photos and videos so people can see what their SBD is helping accomplish. The animals are real and their needs are real. Anything we can do as a community to improve the circumstances will be an investment in the future of Central Appalachia from a humanitarian standpoint as well as animal welfare.

I am going to show you some pictures of me and some of the animals who’s lives impacted mine through this rescue. In a couple of the photos of the dogs getting ready to leave on transport, you will see my tears. Rescue is not always easy. But it is always rewarding. The Happy Tail photos of these dogs in their new homes will say it all. A great example is this photo of Ruger, the dog with me in my header pic for this post, with his new owner in Vermont. It was hard to let Ruger go, but he has a great home now, and all the heartache was worth it. Ruger was a dog I had watched suffer for years on a short chain at a neighbor's house, without proper shelter from heat in summertime, or from the cold and ice in winter. It was such a relief when I could finally help him, and I knew then that rescue was definitely one of my higher callings.

One of the other things I find truly remarkable about rescue is that I can include my son Masyn. He loves animals, too, and with this, he can be hands-on involved, as well. Here is a photo of him with a dog named E.J. who came into rescue very unsocialized. Now, thanks to Masyn, we can say for sure that E.J. is great with kids!

My camera roll is filled with photos of Masyn and dogs. I love my son, and I love that he loves helping animals. Below is a pic of him and a dog named Jaxx, a very sweet but shy dog who finally found a home in New England. There's also a picture of me crying my eyes out as Jaxx boards the transport van north. He now lives with a wonderful family in New Hampshire.

Another dog my son and I met in rescue is Harvey. Harvey was found one Christmas Day chained to a signpost beside a busy road. The photo is blurry, but if you look closely, you can see that Harvey is tethered in such a way that he can run right out into the middle of traffic. The clip on his collar is visible even if the actual cable is not.

Here is Masyn on a car trip with Harvey. We found out Harvey likes to ride!

And here is Harvey at his new home in Maine. :-)

And here is me crying again, just before putting little Gillespie on transport to Vermont. Below that is a photo of Gillespie in his new Vermont home.