Baby Harry
A story about coping with compassion fatigue, finding balance, and finding home.
Content warning: Descriptions of neglected animals, violence towards animals/people, topics related to COVID
At the end of May 2019, I started volunteering as a dog walker at an open admission* shelter in a major city. I had finished my undergraduate degree over a year prior, but I couldn’t find a job with said degree. Sleeping on my couch—all day, every day, being depressed and unemployed—was getting old. I desperately needed something to get me moving and out of the house. Volunteering at an animal shelter was something I had wanted to do since I was a kid, so I could go there and hang out with all the animals. I had no idea what it was really like there, behind the curtain, in the back rooms. Something felt dissonant about my excitement, I think I knew it wouldn’t be quite as fun as it seemed, but I ignored that. They told us in volunteer orientation how hard and upsetting it could be volunteering there, but I still thought it just seemed so exciting and fun... How could it not be? There are so many dogs! I’m going to hang out with them, I’m going to help them, and they’re all going to be adopted some day soon!
On my second or third volunteer shift, I walked three dogs from the healthy population and then headed back to the quarantine rooms for sick dogs. I tried to stay for at least an hour each time I came, with each walk being about fifteen minutes long, I would walk four dogs while there. I felt fatigued all the time from being so depressed and sedentary at home, so an hour was really all I could tolerate. We were told in volunteer orientation that we should always try to walk at least one sick dog when we come in, since they didn’t always get as much attention in the back hall. I was feeling super exhausted after three walks, but I headed to the back of the shelter where the sick dogs were kept anyway. I found a dog on the walking board who needed to go out. It was past noon and he hadn’t had his first walk yet.
Name: Harry.
Kennel #: 14.
I put on my PPE—gloves, booties, plastic gown—and went in to leash him. The only sign I remember reading on his kennel noted that his diet was “tech feed only.” I knew from volunteer orientation this meant I shouldn’t give him any of my treats, but I didn’t know exactly why a dog might be put on a “tech feed only” diet. He looked like a little puppy to me through the chain link cage front; he was tiny, cute, and so excited to see a person! All the barking from the other dogs was becoming overstimulating, so I leashed him and got out of there as fast as I could. The lighting wasn’t great in those back rooms, or in the back hallway, so I didn’t get a very good look at him until we got outside.
I took him out to the patchy grass, the area for walking sick dogs wasn’t very large. He wasn’t very interested in walking anyways, he just wanted to jump up on me… Actually, the only thing he did the entire time he was out of the kennel with me was try to get my attention. I started to pet him, but then I noticed the smell coming from him. I was wearing gloves so I decided I didn’t care and kept petting. Then, I started to take in how rough his physical condition was. He was really skinny, way too skinny. I’d never seen a dog that emaciated in real life before—he had lost enough fat and muscle for his hip bones to stick out. He had a lot of scabs, some missing fur, and his white fur was stained from sitting in his own urine and feces, which I then realized might also explain the smell. He wouldn’t stop trying to get my attention, jumping up on me, pawing at me, trying to climb into my lap, trying to lick me, crying, pawing me, licking, jumping, clawing at whatever part of me he could reach…
I hated the PPE. Everyone hated the PPE. In summer the plastic gown trapped heat and trapped all the moisture your body had made to cope with it. I wondered if that is why the dogs back here got less attention. Looking at him and touching him was starting to feel more difficult, I wasn’t sure why. Was it making me more depressed? It felt different than depression, but it felt tired, exhausted. Usually, coming here would get me moving and cheer me up a bit. I’d never felt worse mentally after coming to walk dogs at the shelter before. Even though seeing all the animals without homes was never easy, I enjoyed meeting the staff and other volunteers, I enjoyed getting off my couch, I enjoyed moving my body with a leash in hand. I got so uncomfortable that I ended his walk after seven minutes and brought him inside. I was usually very precise. Each walk was fifteen minutes. I’d walk four dogs. I’d be done at an hour. He wasn’t walking anyways, I thought, or going to the bathroom out there, he already went in his kennel. It didn’t matter. I needed to go home.
Making our way back inside, I wondered how a young puppy could end up in such poor health, I felt mournful that he had never had a chance yet. He was at the shelter so young. All he wanted was attention from a person, regardless of whatever he’d been through in his short, suffering life. After I put him back in the kennel, I stopped and actually looked at his paperwork. Then, I saw he wasn’t a puppy at all. He was around two years old, an adult pit bull mix, and he weighed less than 30 pounds. I went home.
I didn’t go back to the shelter to volunteer for several weeks. It felt too hard and I was growing scared of what else I might see there. I was also starting to realize that if I wanted to keep going back and helping the dogs there, I would need to learn how to deal with seeing dogs in that condition without letting it limit my ability to care for them. I felt horrible that I ended his walk early, all because it was too upsetting for me to interact with him. I was angry at myself and I felt like I had failed him. He’d probably only gotten two walks that day, if he was lucky, and I surely ruined one of them. I’d only been a volunteer for a month, but I knew something would need to shift around my ability to cope with what I might see if I went back there.
When I felt ready, I did go back and I walked more dogs. It was mid-July at that point and the skinny little puppy, who wasn’t actually a puppy, was already gone. He’d been adopted! I felt better, thinking that he was now in a loving forever home, eating two solid meals a day, plus plentiful snacks I’m sure, with all the toys and attention he deserved. I kept coming back to walk dogs more and more often, and in my job search I started applying for staff positions at the shelter too. In October, I got a call back from one of my applications to the shelter and was hired as a kennel technician.
A lot happened and changed in the world between October 2019 and the summer of 2020. I never stopped working when COVID shut most things down—except when I was forced to quarantine due to exposure—since we were essential employees at the city shelter. My hours were cut here and there, but never to zero. With COVID shut downs we quickly lost most of our volunteer support, then eventually volunteers weren’t even allowed in the building at all anymore. We were operating with limited staff, so kennel techs had become expected to provide the daily walks for all the dogs in their rooms. Two fifteen-minute walks per day, for fifteen to twenty dogs really adds up, in time and distance. So realistically, most walks would need to be cut very short. In June of 2020, a full year after I met Harry, I was coping with the realization that adopted dogs would be returned in increasing numbers as COVID took its toll on human health and finances. In July of 2020, I was walking twenty dogs per day in a heat wave, grateful for every day that I had been assigned to care for the healthy behavior dog room, instead of being sent to the humid PPE hell of the back halls.
While we had shaded trails to walk on, it was extremely hot outside and most of the dogs couldn’t tolerate the heat very long in a July heat wave. This made it easier to justify the ultra-brief potty breaks we were calling walks. Many things had changed for me personally in this year as well. Now I could cope a little better, I could justify to myself a little easier, I could carry on, and I could do the math. Two fifteen-minute walks per day, for twenty dogs, would be ten hours of walking, I have a very long list of other stuff to do, and I’m only here for eight hours per day. I don’t have the time to feel bad or call myself a failure if I cut a walk short, I know I’m doing everything I can. I know I am because I’m completely exhausted. It was getting easier to figure out how to prioritize using my time.
In July, shelter was suddenly overflowing with dogs and we were almost always out of open kennels, so the feeling of falling short was common and growing easier and easier to ignore. Rescue pleas were going out daily and there was a lot of frustration and confusion going around regarding our increasing intake numbers. Why were so many dogs coming in? We’d just almost completely emptied the shelter right as COVID started; everyone wanted to adopt a dog to hang out with while they were stuck at home. Why are so many showing back up?
One hot mid-morning in July I was out walking a dog, one who I’d probably already walked five or six times at this point, as he’d been in the behavior dog room for a few days. He was a pretty easy walk, I wasn’t sure why he was on a behavior hold. I didn’t always stop to read the notes on their kennels anymore, a good habit lost, one that I had worked to practice early on as a new volunteer. As we were almost back to the building I glanced down at him and stopped. He was staring up at me with a very direct, but gentle look, tail wagging. I wasn’t expecting that—and it briefly broke through the automated haze I had become used to operating under the past several weeks. Solid eye contact, a soft gaze, a wagging tail, that wasn’t the usual expression for most of these behavior dogs on walks. It’s like this dog thinks he knows me! I joked with myself. Though, he does look sort of familiar actually… have I met him before? Maybe he has been here recently? A lot of dogs look similar, and when you’ve met thousands of dogs in the past several months, they all kind of blend together. He probably looks like some other dog that was here last week, I thought. I returned him to his kennel, looking at the name written on his previously ignored paperwork.
“‘Harry.” I don’t remember a Harry recently. Wasn’t that the name of that skinny little puppy? Wait, not a puppy–wait, how do I remember that? I looked at him in the kennel. Obviously, that isn’t the same Harry I met before. This dog is gigantic, his coat looks sleek, he’s clean and healthy. Though, he does have a similar coloring from what I remember… and his name is also Harry? That is a weird coincidence, but still it is possibly just a coincidence, a lot of dogs look the same. Many of our returns were more recent adoptions; little baby Harry was not a dog I would expect to show back up now, over a year later.
When I found a few minutes to take a break, I snuck onto someone’s computer and looked Harry up. It was true. He’d been there before, June 2019. It was the same Harry! I found photos of his old underweight self saved with his file. It had really felt like he was looking at me with recognition when we were outside, but still I seriously doubted that he actually remembered me… Right? There’s no way. I guess I can’t know for sure, but I think that might just be who Harry is; he looks at anyone who cares for him quite lovingly, despite whatever he’s been through to end up here, again. He still just wanted some attention. Harry now weighs 63 pounds, more than double his previous weight. Maybe he was looking at me with recognition, not recognition of me, but recognition that he was somewhere safe again, with safe people.
I wasn’t sure what to think about Harry’s return, I started feeling kind of depressed again. I had believed that Harry was adopted out to a loving home—a forever home. That had helped me keep going when I first started as a volunteer, then as staff, and now he’s back. Maybe his home wasn’t so loving after all… but that didn’t quite make sense either, he had clearly been very loved and cared for. He looks so healthy now, his body condition is great, he’s well groomed, his nails are trimmed. Maybe his family had a change in circumstance due to COVID, and had to surrender him? I found out that wasn’t the case though—as I continued reading I saw that Harry had been found as a stray and after being picked up was transferred back to us from an Animal Control facility in a nearby county. I was starting to feel like I couldn’t win, maybe there was no winning, maybe everything is pointless.
I decided I didn’t want to know any more details about Harry’s story. He was a stray… Why was he a stray? Why didn’t they come looking for him? His forever family? Nobody answered or responded to the calls placed to the number his microchip was registered to. The more details I learned, the more it seemed too hard to hear, so I stopped reading. I knew my time with him was limited. Hopefully he’d be cleared of his behavior hold very soon, and adopted out to a true forever home this time. It seems sort of wrong to play favorites with the shelter animals, but spending time with Harry felt good for me, so I decided to indulge myself. I needed something to keep me going. We went on some extra long shaded trail walks and spent any extra minutes I had in the play yard together.
Harry was sent to a partnering rescue organization relatively quickly after his re-arrival, to be placed in a foster home and adopted out by them. He didn’t stay at the shelter long, I was happy about that, but I felt different about him ending up in a shelter this time around. When I met him as a “puppy” I felt rather shaken that he’d had such a hard life and ended up in a shelter. This time, I was also happy he came to us. He came back to a place where he was protected before, and cared for, and we made sure he had the potential for a positive outcome lined up once he left our doors. Not every outcome will be perfect, but we were here for him to try again. After he had been gone for a few weeks, I decided I did want to know the full details of Harry’s recent story. I opened his computer file again.
Harry was found tied up behind a hotel in a nearby county. A passerby had witnessed a man strangling Harry and punching him, then tying him to a pole and leaving him there, the witness stayed and called Animal Control. This didn’t make sense at all. Why would his adopter care for him so well, just to beat and abandon him? Maybe he wasn’t being treated so well, even if he was well fed, groomed, and healthy… I double checked the adopter’s information. Judging by the first name on file, Harry had been adopted out to a woman—not a man. I wondered if she had re-homed him to someone? Maybe Harry had been stolen, but if so, why wouldn’t she answer our calls? Or maybe she was waiting nearby in the car, ready to drive off with this man and leave Harry there?
Finally, I wondered if she had to flee without Harry, and he was left by himself with a man who took out his rage on the beloved pet of the woman who finally escaped his violence. That felt like the most plausible story somehow, it also made me feel better and worse at the same time. Harry likely did have a loving, caring owner of some kind when he left us, possibly up until very recently, one who was clearly feeding him well, and getting him medical care. Maybe she didn’t have the resources to get Harry back to us before fleeing, or maybe she had to flee suddenly and didn’t ever expect to leave him behind. Maybe there was no answer or returned calls because she had to change her phone number to finish finding safety.
I grew more relieved that Harry landed back with us again. While I feel horrible that he had to go through what he did, I admire him for continuing to look so lovingly at the humans he knows he can trust despite it all. Harry’s adoption story wasn’t perfect, but again it had helped me to keep going. Knowing that dogs like him always have a safe and loving home to come back to, brings me relief. I know it might sound weird to call a shelter a home, but I think it can be a temporary home when it needs to be. Home for animals should be a place with people who love and care for them, for some a shelter may be the first time they’ve experienced anything close to it. It’s a place where dogs like Harry can always come back for another chance at healing and a positive outcome.
*open admission = an animal shelter that takes in any animal in need, regardless of health, history, behavior issues, temperament, or age.
Open admission animal shelters provide essential services for their communities, but they often lack the needed resources in terms of funding, space, and staffing to address the volume of animals they take in.
