Best Friends workshop offers solutions to animal welfare burnout.

By Jennifer Hayes, Best Friends Staff

Working or volunteering in animal welfare has a tendency to take an emotional toll and those involved often experience burnout. Best Friends Animal Society realized this regrettable trend and has offered an annual retreat to counteract the negativity and offer the tools necessary to cope.

The Giving Heart was originally conceived years ago as the “Surviving Burnout” session, offered during the No More Homeless Pets conferences. Scheduled against hot topics such as fundraising, developers Dr. Linda Harper, Clinical Psychologist, and Faith Maloney, Co-Founder of Best Friends, initially felt the turnout would be minimal. However, they were surprised by the number of people interested in attending each workshop. When the conferences went on hiatus, the topic was further developed into a three-day retreat to be held annually at the Best Friends Animal Society Sanctuary.

“We recognized how great the need was for people who worked with animals to have an opportunity to share, to look at burnout and grief, and all of the things that accompany working with animals,” noted Maloney. Thus they began the development of the workshop, The Giving Heart Retreat: Replenishing the Animal Lover’s Soul.

Now in its third year, the retreat was filled to capacity shortly after registration was announced. Participants traveled from near and far to connect with others who have shared similar experiences by partaking in group exercises and enjoying the healing effect of the Sanctuary animals and canyon itself. Unlike other workshops, the pace is more leisurely and classes begin at 9:00 AM, to allow students to sleep in or visit the Sanctuary. Cell phones and crises are to be left behind.

“For a lot of people, saying ‘no’ is hard, taking care of themselves is hard, and so that is why we call it a retreat and not a workshop. It’s much more about the individual person,” noted Jill Simpson, Humane Education Manager. “It’s about self-care, and acknowledging your own needs and limitations on the basis that if you’re not taking care of yourself, it’s very hard to take care of other people or animals.”

Analyzing stress in cats and dogs
Recognizing stress in animals is one tool to identify stress in ourselves. As part of the retreat, participants were educated on anxiety in both cats and dogs by Best Friends personnel. Following each session, they had the opportunity to interact with Sanctuary animals.

Steve Lund, Certified Veterinary Technician, shared experiences that he has encountered with the resident cats. He explained that change causes stress, which can affect both the autonomic and sympathetic nervous systems, potentially lowering immunity, delaying healing, and escalating the tendency to contract an illness. As someone whose job it is to restore health to animals, it is in his best interest to keep any stress to a minimum, particularly when he is treating the cats. He noted that felines can sense stress in humans through subtle body language and that people too receive clues from the cats, via their eyes, ears, tail, and behavioral changes.

In an effort to reduce the cats’ stress, prior to entering a room Lund attempts to clear his mind of any anxiety. “I call it a quiet Zen if I can go into a run, work with the cats, am relaxed, and come from a real relaxed place; not expecting a positive outcome when I’m trying to do blood draws for instance. I don’t get stressed if it’s not going well, I can just relax and the cat’s going to relax around me and I have much more success.” He has found that affirmative thoughts, confident slow behavior, not zeroing in on a particular cat, and positive reinforcement allow him to perform the necessary checks, tests, or procedures with minimal disruption.

Following his lesson, the class visited with some of the cats in the Colonel’s Barracks to see their reaction to the crowd entering the room, to identify their signs of stress, and to note when those indications eased. They were then asked to compare the cats’ stressors to their own.

Pat Whitacre, Certified Dog Trainer, instructed the class on stress in dogs with the assistance of Timmy, a Hurricane Katrina rescue who came to Best Friends approximately seven months ago from another organization. Whitacre commented that stress can be caused by almost anything, and while change itself can be stressful, so can a lack of change, noting that sometimes stress is necessary. “It’s an indication that we are alive and it’s actually required for any sort of development and growth.” The Best Friends staff realizes that if Timmy were left alone, he would choose to not associate with people, and that it is important for trainers to remove him from his comfort zone, so that he can realize that people are okay.

“There is no formula to apply to every shy dog, just like you can’t apply a formula to every person. They really are individuals,” commented Whitacre. “You have to be willing to deal with a certain amount of stress to be able to help a dog change. If you’re totally protecting them from anything that might upset their routine, their routine will stay the same and that’s very, very hard for people.” Instead he said you need to provide an environment that is conducive to helping the animal develop, and knowing that each dog is different, individually tailored training is necessary. Even that does not guarantee linear results, as each dog will progress in his or her own way, not necessarily from A to B to C.

He also noted that dogs lack control in their lives; such as the time they are allowed to eat or when they are allowed to eliminate, so predictability is particularly important in their lives. To cope with stress and diffuse the situation that makes them uncomfortable, dogs often display behaviors such as yawning, licking, and panting. It is also important for people to observe their body language, including the position of their tail, body posture, and eye contact. Whitacre recommended the Diamonds in the Ruff website for good dog body language visuals and explanations.

Following his lesson, the class drove to the Fairway to visit with the dogs. Prior to entering the runs, Simpson called on everyone to participate in an exercise. After partnering, one person was leashed and was to act like a dog while the other would try to control his or her behavior. However, the catch was that they could talk, but only by utilizing specific words relating to an assigned category, such as trees, countries, fruit, etc. Imagine the frustration and stress experienced when each unsuccessfully tried to get their point across.

However, miscommunication happens every day with people trying to train dogs. Simpson noted, “We assume when we get a new puppy or dog that our new puppy read the handbook before they came to us and they know exactly what we want them to do.” Unfortunately, that is not the case and regardless of how many times you tell a dog to sit, changing the volume and command, the animal still does not understand, because the dog and person are each speaking a foreign language. Not knowing what is expected, the dog does not comply, often causing the person to become stressed or angry. This translates to the animal and further defeats the lesson.

Reflecting back on this experience, participants who are involved in dog adoptions were encouraged by Simpson to “Please make sure they [potential adopters] know what it’s like to be on the other end of the leash,” have realistic expectations in the amount of work involved in training an animal, and are provided the resources necessary to make a good match happen.

What the participants had to say
As each animal is an individual, so are the people who participated. Though many may have similar characteristics, experiences, and backgrounds, the reasons for attending were varied.

Michelle Sherrill and Opal Keen are not members of any animal welfare organization, but decided to attend as friends out of their love for animals. Sherrill noted, “I came because I’ve had animals; I have a 22 year old horse right now that I’ve had for 21 years and I have a huge open heart and love for animals. I was hoping to come and learn some coping mechanisms for dealing with the heartache from the abuse and neglect of animals. It’s more of an existential soul trip for me.” She has learned that “It is the way that it is, and that every individual needs to find their own way of dealing with the grief; to do your part, what you can do.”

Her friend Keen, on the other hand, has lost all three of her beloved pets in the last seven months; two dogs who had been declining in health and one cat whose passing was unexpected. “I came here to work on my healing process, to get my heart and mind ready if I’m supposed to have another animal in the future and get prepared for that. To determine if I am supposed to have another animal, right now or do I need to wait and heal more? Also [I’m here] to spend time around something furry, without expectations and without a commitment.”

Susan McGinnis volunteers for the Arizona Animal Welfare League and Best Friends. She explained, “I was doing an adoption event for Best Friends and I fostered Ben from Lebanon. He was such a great dog, but he didn’t perform well at the adoption. He was very stressed and he didn’t get adopted and I found myself crying for two days.” Her goal was to learn coping strategies so that she may continue to help animals, but in such a way that it did not affect her so negatively.

Elizabeth Caspian is a psychiatrist and works with people, though she has ten dogs of her own. She noted, “I’m feeling pretty tired in my work and needing to rejuvenate my giving heart hopefully.” She plans to utilize what she learned during the retreat in her own profession, working more with the human/animal bond. One day, she even hopes to be able to give her own Giving Heart retreats.

Larry Erdman of Little Orphan Angels Animal Rescue stated, “I started worrying that I was becoming emotionally detached.” When he first started in rescue, he was affected personally when the occasional animal passed away, but as the years went on he felt himself becoming disconnected. “Part of it is not just the death and suffering you deal with all the time, but it’s also the coldness that you start feeling towards people and that was really kind of scaring me.” He wanted help not only for himself, but to bring back advice to others in his organization who had begun to feel the same way. “We need some strategies to figure out how to not lose the care and compassion and not turn ourselves away from the goodness that we know is out there in some people.”

Individuals with differing backgrounds, yet the same love for animals, came together to share, learn, and grow. As the retreat progresses, people become more comfortable with one another and are able to reveal very personal feelings and it is common for participants to continue to stay in touch to form ongoing friendships. The retreat ends as they reflect on their past three days. One common response is “That feeling that they are not on their own,” stated Simpson. “There are other people out there that care as much as they do, that are fighting some of the same battles as they are, dealing with similar frustrations, and not on their own.”

“It’s an opportunity for people to share the emotions and experiences they have working with animals, positive and negative,” noted Maloney. “It’s helping to build and strengthen that network of people who are out there working with the animals. Of course one of the reasons we want to do this workshop is to give people an opportunity to work through some of their issues, and not just leave working with the animals. That’s the other alternative…people just pack it in. They just say, ‘I can’t handle this, I can’t take this, this is overwhelming, this is just too much,’ and so this is a way of helping people find a way through that. We hope they come out of the weekend with the experience of taking care of themselves, knowing that they are not alone, having resources to tap into (i.e. other people, other thoughts, other ways of looking at things). There’s a lot that really can transpire in those brief three days.”

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

1. Are you recognizing symptoms of stress and burnout in your own life? Please consider signing up for next year’s retreat. Watch the Best Friends Workshops Community for next year’s dates.

2. Although burnout will not be a topic this year, consider attending the upcoming No More Homeless Pets Conference in Las Vegas on October 24-26 to network with others and learn more about other important issues affecting animal welfare today. If interested, please register online today.

For more information:
• Best Friends Workshops Community
• No More Homeless Pets Forum: Burnout
• No More Homeless Pets Forum: How can you cope with the emotions we all experience as animal rescuers?
• No More Homeless Pets Forum: Anger, Guilt & Frustration: Dealing with Emotions

Photo credit: taken by Jennifer Hayes.