His name was Sam. To know Sam was to know, intimately and sometimes unfortunately, the innermost workings of an animal rescue organization.
And then, there is Rocky. To know Rocky is to reawaken the hope, love, and passion that brought me into animal welfare.
In the fall of 2012, I began working as a canine caregiver for a small shelter in southern Vermont. From there, I continued my education through two other shelters, and I obtained my degree in canine training and behavior.
Three years later, I find myself wondering if gaining all of this training was a curse - if it would have been easier for me to simply remain unaware of how to read animal stress signals or their signs of emotional trauma. If I didn't know what to look for, would I have been able to avoid my emotional distress?
Maybe, and maybe not.
* * *
Rocky is a 2-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier. He was relinquished in New Jersey at approximately 9 months old, and transferred between three other shelters in New England. His unruly, and at times frightening, behavior made him a very specific adoption case, one which most walk-in adopters were not eligible for.
I found Rocky almost one year after he was initially relinquished. The first thing he did was grab hold of my sweatshirt and rip the sleeve clean off. He bullied me and was so unruly, I spoke with my supervisor about our “responsibility as a shelter.”
“How safe is this dog to the public?” I asked her. “He has seen three different audiences of adopters, and everyone was afraid of him. How can we justify adopting him out into the community?”
She knew what I was asking of her and what kind of decision I was pushing her to make.
But she asked me to work with Rocky. I found it infuriating at the time, but within the span of four weeks, I had fallen in love.
Rocky now lives with me on a small farm in southern New Hampshire, where he spends his days truly living his happily ever after. He proved me wrong, and every day I am reminded of how detrimental that decision I was pushing for would have been. He is the perfect example of why I chose that career path to begin with: to be inspired and experience that kind of love every day.
* * *
But along with the highs, I also experienced haunting lows.
Sam was a 3-year-old Jack Russell Terrier found as a stray in northern Vermont. He was put up for adoption despite damage to his trachea, an injury of which we could only speculate the cause.
On my first day at this particular shelter, he was adopted out through our open adoption program. Six months later, he was returned. And adopted out. And returned again.
True to his breed, Sam was insatiably energetic and prey-driven, making it nearly impossible to adopt him out in the urban community we were serving.
Sam's repeated returns to the shelter raised a very conflicting and difficult question, one that puzzles me to this day: What is their quality of life?
In my professional opinion, I believe Sam was doomed from the moment he entered through the doors. His breed is not one that complements kennel stress well; as happens with every dog within a shelter, he was limited in his exercise and extremely limited in training - something he desperately needed.
However, in my personal opinion, Sam was as much deserving of a home as any other dog we cared for.
It didn't matter how many resources we had to use or how long he stayed - I loved him so much that I forgot about his quality of life. I was selfishly fighting for him to stay, despite the slim chance of finding him a suitably educated home where he could truly live his “happily ever after.” Meanwhile, he was sitting in a cage losing his mind.
In the words of George Bernard Shaw, “Heartbreak is life educating us.” Ultimately, the decision was made to euthanize Sam, and it was in the wake of Sam's passing that I realized I could no longer play God.
* * *
The intimacy in which I worked with pets and their owners was so consuming that I lost sight of what I was fighting for - and who I was as a person.
I could no longer allow myself to approve adoptions; I was choosing the futures for these living creatures with barely any information, and I was providing the new pet owners with almost no education.
Ultimately, I could no longer watch decisions of euthanasia be made, either, and it was not because I don't stand behind the idea that sometimes making that decision is what is most humane. I do truly believe some animals' suffering (both emotional and physical) is too far beyond rehabilitation.
The problem lay in the fact that I could not find it within myself to justify that I was a part of an action that involved ending a life of a creature whose pain my fellow humans had caused - a creature whose misery came at the hands of a human. The consequence of such devastation was controlled by humans, too.
* * *
A few months ago, I choose to set aside my scrubs and choose a new path. It wasn't until that weight was lifted that I began to find myself again and, most surprisingly, my effortless ability to be happy - a trait that I had lost in the three years within the walls of those shelters.
The guilt of giving up on the cause, one I was so sure I'd dedicate my life to, still follows me. However, I also awakened a new sense of clarity and happiness within my life. It was never just a job for me. It was my world, my life, my every move. It was everything - and it was killing me.
I chose to step away, and I will always wonder if there was more I could have done in my time with each organization-if there was more I could have done for dogs like Sam.
And yet, at my feet sits Rocky. Each day he reminds me that if there was one thing I did right in those three years, it was waiting to find him. After a year within kennel doors, he still chose to forgive, forget, and love again - characteristics I believe we should put into practice more within our own lives.
I cannot change the world of animal welfare alone. It takes each of us losing a Sam to allow our shelter leaders to understand the emotional trauma in which they ask their animal-care workers to endure.
But more notably, it takes us all finding a Rocky to remind us that each animal is worthy of a good quality of life. Not just receiving the necessities - shelter, food, and water - but that rolling-around-in-the-mud kind of happiness Rocky gets every time it rains.
If there is any advice I could give, it'd be this: What you see of an animal when it's within its kennel walls is its worst side.
Imagine, just for a moment, how much happiness that animal could bring a person if it is a Rocky.