Dorle...

honestly i love this blip community for the positive vibe and support - sorry i've been on a downer the last few days - today at lunch (as in most work days when I get a break) I spent most of it watching bears and then tonight have agonised over which photo to choose to blip - despite its tough moments I am so lucky to be here and to be able to help these awesome creatures.....
anyways I had a brilliant shot of David and Arkte (sunbears) looking like they were roaring at each other (in play) - but I also had this lovely one of little Dorle and she has a good story to tell so I've chosen her :)
Dorle was smuggled across the border from Lao into Vietnam as a tiny cub in 2007 by a forest poacher - he and his wife kept the cub (to make money from the bile when she got older) but after she injured the wife a few times they sold her to a roadside restaurant where she was kept in a cage on a dusty roadside on a highway between two restaurants - to attract customers (and presumably to sell bile when she got big enough) - we rescued her late in 2010 - fixed up her badly fractured and infected canine teeth and introduced her to the other sunbears once she had finished quarantine....
Sunbears are probably the most stressy and neurotic of the bear species - to think of this little cub growing up like that just breaks my heart.... but look at her now... she's still essentially a loner within our little sunbear group except now and then she simply can't resist Davids charms and has to have a wrestle - she loves the quiet lunchtimes when everyone (but me) is gone and she can snooze on her favorite platform
PS i got rid of an older photo in my bear album on my blipfolio and put the David and Arkte one there