The payoff and pain of working with rescue animals taught me a lot about being human

At 26 years old, I’ve been volunteering with animals for half of my life. Spending hundreds of hours working with sick and beaten cats, dogs and rabbits changes the way you think about animals — and the people responsible for protecting them.

The first time I stepped foot on Animal Friends’ Ohio Township campus was for a field trip with my Girl Scout troop in 2010. Humane education programs like these, in which children and adults learn animal welfare basics such as handling techniques and health needs, foster empathy for animals through hands-on experience. In my case, I developed an even stronger affinity for four-legged beings and felt an urgency to help them. Once I was old enough, I trained as a volunteer along with my mom and started with cat handling.

What I didn’t realize at the time, when I was mostly just excited to hang out with kittens, is that working with animals is emotionally draining. I’ve gained so much knowledge, understanding and empathy in the past 13 years, but it hasn’t been without pain.

When I wasn’t busy with sports or school, I wanted to be at the shelter. It was only a 10-minute drive from my childhood home in Summer Hill, so my mom and I easily made the trip. We enjoyed spending time with one another while simultaneously helping animals in need. Volunteering never felt like a chore or a line on my resume, as it can sometimes be portrayed, because it’s something I truly love.

We spent a couple hours every week in the “cat condos” playing with cats, grooming them, letting them out of the cages where they spend 90% of their days. The more difficult cats — usually ones rescued from animal hoarding — wouldn’t come out of their cages at all. Animals in these situations suffer when their guardian has more animals than they can reasonably accommodate. Hoarding often leads to malnutrition, illness, under-socialization, overpopulation and sometimes death. When animals are rescued from these conditions, they often need extra support to adjust in the shelter.

As a teen, I pulled up a chair to cages with frightened cats, tried to pet them inside and entice them to come out and stretch their legs. Initially some would recoil and hiss, ears flat against their heads, pupils blown, tail between their legs — but I would remain calm. For those cats, a successful interaction meant they loosened up just a little and stayed near me without backing into a corner. They needed to learn to trust people again and it would be a lengthy process.

Soon, I became interested in fostering — to my parents’ dismay but to nobody’s surprise. Even though we had a cat at home and my parents weren’t keen on the idea, my teenage pestering must’ve worn them down. I brought home a cat named Pusheen. His shelter name was Snowball, but I thought he looked like the cartoon cat , so I renamed him accordingly. He was at the shelter for months and was completely shut down, stressed out and not making much progress. I didn’t know Pusheen’s background, but I speculated he came from a hoarding situation with little human interaction.

He lived in my bedroom, and for the first couple weeks he didn’t come out from underneath my bed. I spent hours in that room with him every day, in an effort to show him that humans weren’t always dangerous and if he wanted to come out, he could. Slowly but surely, I started to see more of him. His personality emerged: He liked to run, but very close to the ground, so you could hear loud thumping as he sped across the floor. He had long hair and finally let me brush him, which he not only needed but actually enjoyed. After living with him for several months, his behavior changed so drastically the shelter felt he was ready to return and go up for adoption again. I hated giving him back and cried in the parking lot, sure that he felt abandoned by me. I thought this would be a major setback for him, but I was wrong. Pusheen was adopted a few weeks later.

This taught me an invaluable lesson from a young age: It was important to help these animals, even when it hurt me. I could never adopt every animal I bonded with.

Pusheen was the first animal I had to learn to let go, but certainly not the last. I learned quickly that my job was to help these animals on their way to a better life; a life that I wouldn’t be a part of.

When I tell people I volunteer at a shelter, they always say they could never do it. It would be too hard for them not to adopt and they’d be too depressed, they tell me. I can’t say it isn’t. But who would be there for them if not for volunteers? Shelters are often underfunded and understaffed, so they rely on volunteers to help care for the animals. The heartbreak of leaving the animals at the end of the day never outweighs the joy of seeing their names on the adopted list. Who knows how many animals would never get on that list without the time and dedication of volunteers to bring animals like Pusheen out of their shells.

There have been times over the years when I’ve volunteered less. In 2016, I left Pittsburgh to attend college in Washington, D.C., so I could only go to the shelter when I was home for breaks. During the pandemic of 2020, the shelter altered operations and I wanted to protect the immunocompromised people in my life, so I didn’t volunteer.

But in the last few years, I’ve ramped up my efforts once more. I’ve trained to the highest level of dog handling and now work with some of the most difficult canine behaviors.

I never had dogs growing up, so for a while I was apprehensive around them. But through volunteering, I learned more about their behavior and body language, and gained the confidence to work with dogs of all backgrounds, temperaments, breeds and sizes. I particularly look forward to taking them on cage breaks, so they can leave the shelter for a few hours and decompress. Pitbulls, cattle dogs, Labradors and Great Danes hop in the front seat of my car, where they ride with their faces in the wind on the way to get pup cups and walks in the park. I tell anyone who will listen about my current favorites, their personality quirks, the funniest thing they did on their walk today and how they too should volunteer if they like what they hear.

It’s easy to feel jaded, seeing what people do to animals year after year. I wonder how a person can bear to abuse an animal, but then remember they do it to other humans, too. Still, even with all the trauma shelter animals go through, they show resilience and forgiveness, something that I’ve tried to model in my own life and in the way I relate to others.

My current favorite dog was rescued by the humane investigations team. I don’t know her story, but I see the puncture and laceration scars on her head, neck and forelimbs, and they paint a picture of her past in my mind. After a recent afternoon walk through wooded trails, I took her into an enrichment room, set up like a mock living room, with a small futon, a dog bed, a table lamp and throw pillows. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a place for the dogs to experience normalcy and calmness. Immediately as I sat on the futon, she jumped up and laid across my lap. After a while, she rested her head in my arms and slowly drifted off. Looking down at her, I felt sad and awestruck at the same time. She’s had a painful and unfair life — with people who didn’t care for her the way she deserved — but still somehow trusts me.

Like many of the animals, she cries when I leave her. It’s the worst feeling closing the cage door and walking away. I get to go home, not knowing when they ever will. I know one day she’ll have the happy ending she deserves, but during her time at the shelter, I want her to feel just a little bit more at home.

When she does find her forever home, I’ll deal with the sadness of knowing I’ll never see her again. But even though volunteering is emotionally taxing, the understanding that I’m making a difference and improving their quality of life outweighs the guilt and sadness.

Rachel Windsor is a volunteer animal caretaker at Animal Friends, 562 Camp Horne Road, in Ohio Township, kennel license #1042 , and can be reached at rachelwindsor14@gmail.com .

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