Compassion Fatigue — maybe you’ve never heard of it, maybe you’ve never experienced it, but it’s very real. You see it in nurses and doctors, especially those who work in high risk specialties. You see it in CNA’s, nursing home caregivers, and yes, you see it in animal shelters.
At some point in time your heart just aches because every single day you see suffering, sometimes just a result of the normal aging process, sometimes a result of poor health, bad genes, improper care, but you’ve chosen a profession where you can share your God given gift of care giving, because you love people, or you love animals, and then you realize that for every successful recovery, there is a sad story of pain or despair.
Recently I was given a number of stories written by Luanne Tucker, our adoption counselor and kennel worker at the Houlton Humane Society animal shelter. Reading through them, I was touched by how many were stories of the brave fight of loving companion animals to recover from the abuse and neglect of their human care givers.
Often these animals are given up by families who are no longer in a position, financial or otherwise, to care for them, but it seems that more often it isn’t a family making this difficult decision, it’s an outside agency that has to come in and make that decision for them. Perhaps they are so attached to their pet that they don’t understand that someone else could take better care of them, perhaps they are so “close” to a situation that they don’t see the health issues that are right in front of them.
Sometimes families are so caught up in personal drama that they don’t notice that Fluffy is losing weight or Rover has so many fleas and ticks he’s becoming anemic. Perhaps they can’t afford a vet visit and don’t realize that parasites like tapeworm are robbing their pet of his health. It’s a slippery slope, from loving an animal and getting one “free to a good home” cat, not properly vetting that cat, ending up with five or six litters of kittens and before you know it, you have a two room trailer with 53 cats and all of them are sick. Few have any social skills, there is the smell of urine in the air and piles of excrement in the corners.
I’ve seen this myself. During my many years of animal welfare, I’ve been called in by the state to assist with cleaning up case after case of well-intentioned animal owners who got in over their heads, but were too close to it to see it was a problem. They were too used to the smell to know it was unhealthy, thinking that they “loved” all their pets too much to give them away, thinking that if they were taken from them their lives would be empty and shallow.
When you live with this reality day after day, your heart just starts to ache, and then the door to the shelter opens, someone walks in, you’ve got 60 cats in-house that are in great need of loving care and this individual makes a statement that she’s had this cat for six years and she’s just plain tired of it and wants to drop it off, and that’s when you struggle, you bite your tongue, you draw on every ounce of compassion left inside you, and you gently try to explain that right now there’s just no more room in the shelter to take even one more animal.
Your compassion fatigue has set in, your heart is aching for this kitty, but your heart is also broken for the dozens upon dozens more sitting in cages in the back room, just waiting to be adopted. You think about the morning spent providing medical attention to the 10 cats just brought in who were flea and lice infested, the space needed to quarantine these precious babies so they don’t infect the general population, the little meows coming from their hungry mouths, and you desperately want to help just one more but today, this day, isn’t that day.
This is the reality of shelter life, but in the end, it’s the successes that let you put a lid on the fatigue and pass it to the back burner. You have a family coming in, they saw Roscoe’s story on Facebook and want to adopt him. You have another family who thinks that they’d like to adopt a new kitty and you have dozens for them to choose from, you have to work with Sassy to get her bathed and ready for her new home, and you have to spend time with Sarah and her new babies, just giving her some love, touching her, extending a tender hand. There is so much to do – you just can’t let the exhaustion that is creeping through your bones take over.
Just one more kitty, just one more dog, one more home, day by day, making a difference in just one more life. For all shelter staff, volunteers, board members, dog walkers, veterinarians – all of you who make a difference in just one more life, Thank you for your dedication. And for you, my friend, who have adopted, or are ready to adopt, thank you for helping us save “just one more.
