"I Wish I Worked at a Shelter"

After I read back over a few entries I think I need to make something clear. I don't work at our wonderful shelter - although I spend lots of time there. So often I hear from people, especially young volunteers, "Oooh, I would love to work at an animal shelter." I never try to discourage them but if they only knew....... Of course there is the petting and being around animals and cute puppies and kittens, but 365 days a year there are hours and hours of hard cleaning and a never ending supply of feces and urine that needs to be scooped, scrubbed and sprayed. Animals throw up, get sick, get filthy, and often stink. They bite and scratch even when the staff is trying their best to help them. There are far too many crabby, hostile, stupid and dishonest people to deal with. There are volunteers who know everything and customers who know absolutely nothing. The phone rings, everyone needs attention right now and there is still stacks of paperwork that needs to get done. And then there is the death. In recent years researchers have put a name on that burnout that affects caregivers of all sorts, such a nursing home workers, police, rescue workers, nurses and others including animal shelter workers. It's called compassion fatigue. It's when they just can't seem to care anymore about anything, including themselves and their families. And the literature often singles out animal shelter workers as unique even among this group since they are the only ones whose day-to-day job often involves killing the very creatures they love. Just today one of our shelter workers, a dedicated and compassionate animal lover, had to kill 16 cats and kittens. This time of year that's not so unusual. Working at an animal shelter takes very special people and I wish more people understood that.