22 Things Animal Shelter Workers Will Never Tell You
Our job is 50% cleaning up poo and 10% getting bitten. But we love it. H/T Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home.
We get bitten a lot, especially while we're training.
It's an occupational hazard, especially when you're working with nervous dogs and doing something uncomfortable like cleaning their ears. But you get much better at reading signals and body language as time goes on, so you get bitten less often.
And cats can be even more dangerous than dogs.
Cat bites and scratches are more likely to become infected, as cats' sharp teeth penetrate really deeply, injecting bacteria into our skin. This is why we often have to roll them into a "purrito" to give them medication.
We hate it when people say, "I wish I got to play with animals all day."
Yeah, all we do is play with them. It's not like we also have to clean out dozens of kennels and cages, feed the animals, bathe them, give them medication, spend time socialising and training them, have meetings, or interview potential rehomers.
And we get really annoyed when people say things like "the poor dogs must be so miserable in kennels."
Or, even worse: "It's no life for them, they should just be put down." We spend as much time as possible training and playing with the dogs. Yes, they sleep in kennels, and sometimes they get a bit stressed, but they're not sad – they're loved.