Where is the happy medium?
I don't know how many of you work in caretaking fields but I am trying to figure out decompression methods.
I was thinking about it on the subway this morning -- there is so much anger and hate in animal rights and so much Secondary Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/compassion fatigue in animal welfare (you're sort of forced to deal with housing the animals, decisions about euthanasia, trusting homeless animals to get farmed back out to the public and generally picking up the pieces by taking care of these tiny bodies, with whatever resources you can muster). Neither is a party.
It's hard to decompress - I've talked about it with shelter medicine vets here (who work on the anticruelty cases or who deal with hoarding shelters who risk the animals' well-being). And even in "regular media" and "average people lives" you just find so so much harm going on with regards to animals that it's difficult to get your mind to stop thinking about it. I can't tell you how many times I've picked up a book on punk or a biography or something to take my mind off this crap and instead get blindsided with like, (We Owe You Nothing) "Hey when Black Flag played like Poland the crowd beat up the cops and killed their German Shepherds". Uh, awesome.
It is so hard not to hate people when you see a good 5-10 cruelty cases written about in your media alerts every day. I force myself to skim them for any feral cat related stuff or any cruelty prosecutions in our area I can use in my arsenal.
I literally went home yesterday and hugged Ollie and said, "I'm sorry there are so many of you that you're so undervalued and available that you get tortured, killed and euthanized on a daily basis. You got lucky, kid." They think they're such hot stuff around the house. Me me me me. It kills me to think about them having to defend their little lives!
I was thinking about it on the subway this morning -- there is so much anger and hate in animal rights and so much Secondary Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/compassion fatigue in animal welfare (you're sort of forced to deal with housing the animals, decisions about euthanasia, trusting homeless animals to get farmed back out to the public and generally picking up the pieces by taking care of these tiny bodies, with whatever resources you can muster). Neither is a party.
It's hard to decompress - I've talked about it with shelter medicine vets here (who work on the anticruelty cases or who deal with hoarding shelters who risk the animals' well-being). And even in "regular media" and "average people lives" you just find so so much harm going on with regards to animals that it's difficult to get your mind to stop thinking about it. I can't tell you how many times I've picked up a book on punk or a biography or something to take my mind off this crap and instead get blindsided with like, (We Owe You Nothing) "Hey when Black Flag played like Poland the crowd beat up the cops and killed their German Shepherds". Uh, awesome.
It is so hard not to hate people when you see a good 5-10 cruelty cases written about in your media alerts every day. I force myself to skim them for any feral cat related stuff or any cruelty prosecutions in our area I can use in my arsenal.
I literally went home yesterday and hugged Ollie and said, "I'm sorry there are so many of you that you're so undervalued and available that you get tortured, killed and euthanized on a daily basis. You got lucky, kid." They think they're such hot stuff around the house. Me me me me. It kills me to think about them having to defend their little lives!