The Other Side of the Kennel Doors

As we wind down Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to use this space to talk about the people who work in animal welfare… and their mental health.

They’re fatigued.

Not tired of the animals. Never that. But tired in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. Tired in the way that comes from caring deeply about something every single day, in an environment that is emotionally and physically demanding by nature… and then carrying that home alongside a phone that never fully goes quiet. Fatigued.

Shelter work attracts a certain kind of person. People who feel things deeply. People who got into this because they love animals and believed they could make a difference. And they do make a difference. Every single day. But here’s the part we don’t talk about enough inside our own industry: this work can break you if you’re not paying attention.

Compassion fatigue is a form of secondary traumatic stress, and it hits people in caregiving professions with a particular kind of force. In animal sheltering, it shows up as emotional numbness, withdrawal, irritability, trouble sleeping, difficulty connecting with people outside of work. The very empathy that draws someone into this field becomes the thing that wears them down.

And it’s worth understanding how this is different from plain old burnout. Burnout can happen in any job. It’s the slow grind of being overworked and underappreciated (and shelter workers absolutely experience that too). But compassion fatigue is specific to people who are repeatedly exposed to the suffering of others. In our case, animals who can’t tell you what happened to them, can’t explain their fear, can’t advocate for themselves. That emotional weight doesn’t just clock out when you do.

The research on this is sobering. A study published in the Journal of Shelter Medicine and Community Animal Health surveyed more than 240 shelter workers across the country and found that over 90% scored in the high range for secondary traumatic stress. More than half reported high levels of burnout. And here’s the part that makes this more complicated than a simple doom-and-gloom story… nearly half of those same people also reported high compassion satisfaction. They love the work. They find meaning in it. They’re suffering and fulfilled at the same time, and that contradiction is exactly what makes compassion fatigue so hard to recognize and even harder to talk about.

The toll shows up in the numbers, too. According to the Association for Animal Welfare Advancement, the median annual employee turnover rate in animal shelters sits around 30%. One third. Meaning 1 of out 3 people who are here today won’t likely be here one year from today. And at some organizations, that number is far worse. HumanePro has reported shelter leaders seeing upward of 75% of their team leave within the first two years. That’s not a stat unique to any one shelter or any one role within a shelter. It’s an industry-wide reality, across departments and across the country, driven by the same forces we’re talking about here. Every departure means institutional knowledge walking out the door, heavier workloads for the people who stay, and weeks or months of recruiting and training before the team is whole again. It’s a cycle that feeds itself… the stress drives people out, and the vacancies create more stress for everyone still there.

But I don’t want to leave this picture incomplete, because the data only tells part of the story. This work is hard. But it’s also extraordinary. The people in this field get to watch a terrified stray learn to trust again. They get to hand a family the dog that’s going to change their lives. They get to be the reason an animal that had no options suddenly has a future. That matters. It matters on the worst days and it carries people through them. The same study that found all those high burnout scores also found that shelter workers report deep professional fulfillment… because when this work goes right, there’s nothing else like it.

But aside from the challenges and stress that exists within the walls of a shelter is a very real and very noisy conversation happening online. A shelter makes a difficult decision. Maybe it’s a behavioral euthanasia. Maybe it’s a medical case with no good options. And within hours, there’s a social media post from someone demanding recourse. Comment sections pile on. The race to point fingers and the online crusade begins. Last year, the Portland Press Herald ran a column about cyberbullying in animal welfare that put this in the starkest terms possible. And it has real consequences. The column referenced Mikayla Raines, the founder of the wildlife rescue SaveAFox, who died by suicide after sustained online targeting related to her rescue work.

The piece noted that engaging in public back-and-forth rarely helps the organization. The people doing the attacking face no such constraints. This is not an abstract problem. It’s not a PR problem. It’s a human health problem. And it lives in our industry every day.

So… where does that leave us?

I’ll be honest. I don’t have a five-step solution. I’m skeptical of anyone who does. But I know what matters, because I see it in our building every day. It matters that people feel safe saying “today was hard” without it being treated as weakness. It matters that leadership talks about this stuff openly instead of pretending the hard parts of this work don’t exist. It matters that we build teams where people genuinely look out for each other, not in a poster-on-the-breakroom-wall kind of way but in a “hey, I noticed you’ve been quiet, are you okay” kind of way.

Samara Alexander, our Director of People, is someone I consider one of the most important members of this team… and she rarely comes into contact with any animals (except when she needs a little furry pick-me-up herself). Samara is constantly thinking about how we can help people manage through these stresses. She has an open door, a cozy chair, and a ready ear. We talk regularly about how to provide real resources and genuinely support the health of the team, both physically and mentally.

It matters that we create real structural support. Access to counseling. Transparent processes around difficult decisions so no one person carries the weight alone.

And it matters that the community understands what they’re asking of the people inside these buildings. You can love animals and still recognize that the humans caring for them are not anonymous or oblivious. That their mental health is not a footnote. That a Facebook comment calling someone a killer has a cost that goes beyond the screen.

You don’t have to agree with every decision a shelter makes. But you can’t disagree with humanity.

This month, if you know someone who works in animal welfare… just check in. Not with advice. Not with a list of self-care tips from a wellness blog. Just check in. Ask how they’re doing and actually listen to the answer. Say thank you.

If you see something online you don’t understand, choose a question over an accusation. Think about what it takes to do this work daily, the type of person who would choose this life, and then think about whether that aligns with what you think you just saw online. And if you’ve ever said something about a shelter or the people who run one that you wouldn’t say to their face… it’s never too late to do it differently.

We’re all in this for the same reason.