As you’ve likely gleaned from our Guidelines and course offerings, SPA’s approach to playgroup, training, and enrichment focuses heavily on curating each individual animal’s experience.
What we don’t advertise as often is that we also take the experience of each human very seriously. Running a proper playgroup means that everyone – canine and human alike – is consenting to the interaction and having fun.
If we’ve had the pleasure of meeting you at one of our in-person workshops, you’ve experienced what an ethical playgroup feels like from the human perspective. Everyone is constantly communicating – before, during, and after the session. We work together as a team to create a positive experience for each dog. Importantly, everyone’s voice matters and if any one handler feels uncomfortable about the interaction at any time, we pause and discuss.
This model is ideal for the dogs in our care because it limits exposure to potentially aversive stimuli, teaches appropriate play behavior, and drastically reduces the risk of physical harm to everyone involved. It makes logical sense that these are good things for the animals, and there are concurrent benefits for the staff and volunteers running playgroups.
Put simply, it feels good to be nice to dogs and teach them life skills – it’s why many of us got into this field in the first place. In addition, avoiding violence and injury not only keeps everyone out of the emergency room – we take better care of our emotional health, too.
This isn’t just “the world according to SPA,” either. Lots of research exists on the secondary trauma, including compassion fatigue, burnout, moral stress, and perpetration-induced traumatic stress (PITS), that so many of us in the animal welfare world endure (Fournier & Mustful, 2019, for example). Compassion fatigue and burnout are likely familiar concepts for readers, but moral stress and PITS may not be.
Rollin (1986) first articulated the concept of “moral stress” – a type of internal conflict that arises when a person must perform a task that they have difficulty justifying on moral grounds. This concept most often appears in animal welfare-related research in the context of performing euthanasia. For me, personally, I have experienced more moral stress when I’ve been expected to handle an animal that was not consenting (e.g., putting a fearful dog back in his kennel when I had nowhere else to put him). I am grateful that most of my experience handling dogs has been positive, ethical, and safe. I don’t want to imagine the moral stress that a shelter worker with less agency or different responsibilities might be carrying.
Similar to moral stress, PITS pops up in animal welfare-related literature in the context of performing euthanasia. Consider a study by Bennett and Rohlf (2005) that examined the experiences of animal shelter, veterinary, and research staff who perform euthanasia procedures. Participating individuals self-reported that they struggled not only with grief, depression, and substance abuse but also physical health issues, such as high blood pressure. The study posited that performing euthanasia may contribute to PITS and likened its effects to that of military combat. Once again, I see myself and my colleagues in these findings, despite these findings being almost 20 years old, based on self-reported data, and narrowly focused on euthanasia-related work. I have handled a few animals for their euthanasia procedure, but I don’t carry the weight of PITS from those experiences because the procedure was humane and we were able to alleviate suffering for an animal whose quality of life had been deteriorating. The times that I’ve struggled with grief, anxiety spikes, sleep and mood disturbances, and physical health issues are more often connected to acute instances of trauma that were avoidable, nonconsensual, and resulted from a breakdown in trust and communication. To illustrate this point, I’ll share a personal story.
A few months ago, I had just finished rolling out a shelter-wide staff training program that included policies around the level of training needed in order to run a playgroup. We were still working out the snags in the implementation process, but I felt proud of the work I did to make my shelter a safer place. Until a call went out on the radio that a dog fight was going down. As I sprinted toward the yard, I remember feeling really confused, because there weren’t any staff in the building besides me who were cleared to lead a dog-dog introduction on that particular day. I arrived at the scene to find everything in total chaos, no apparent safety protocols in place, and every human involved in panic mode. As a trusted colleague and I quickly and humanely ended the incident, I was able to sort out what happened – two burned out and overworked colleagues were trying to do too many things at once, and didn’t stop to think through their approach. A totally avoidable tragedy, caused by a breakdown in communication by well-meaning people who were overwhelmed and stressed. We had the policies in place, but hadn’t built a strong enough relationship to communicate them effectively to staff.
PITS stays in your body. It took time, and the support of a mental health professional, to process all of the grief, frustration, anger, and anxiety that flowed through me as a result of that incident. I don’t think I took a deep breath for weeks – weeks that took me out of doing my best work and showing up fully for my colleagues and the animals in our care.
These animals need us to show up, be present, and give our best every day. We owe it to them to take care of ourselves. Not that it’s easy to do. Research on mental health for animal shelter workers is demoralizing, to say the least, and the available resources are rarely meaningful for actual shelter staff (Bennett & Rohlf, 2005; Anderson, Brandt, Lord & Miles, 2013). The compassion fatigue workshops I’ve attended have been well-meaning, but out of touch, and I know very few animal shelter workers who are able to prioritize and afford the services of a mental health professional.
What we DO have is each other, which brings me back to the benefits of running an ethical playgroup. When facilitating a playgroup, every human involved needs to be on the same page and fully confident in each other’s skills. If you don’t have trust, don’t run playgroups. It doesn’t hurt to be well-rested, hydrated, and fed, either. Investing in your relationship with your team and coming together to support each dog’s experience is a great way to push back against the ever-looming threat of burnout and compassion fatigue. After all, the flip side of compassion fatigue is compassion satisfaction – the pleasure that you can derive from helping others (Stamm, 2002). Check out this episode of Tails from a Vet Tech from our friend Tabitha Kucera for a great discussion about this!
The benefits of running a playgroup that you can feel good about will compound over time. Great teamwork and trust leads to safer interactions with relaxed and consenting dogs, leading to fewer instances of acute traumatic events. It’s a big, virtuous cycle. Ethical playgroups for the win, win, win!
References:
Anderson, K. A., Brandt, J. C., Lord, L. K., & Miles, E. A. (2013). Euthanasia in animal shelters: Management's perspective on staff reactions and support programs. Anthrozoös, 26(4), 569–578. https://doi.org/10.2752/175303713X13795775536057
Bennett, P., & Rohlf, V. (2005). Perpetration-induced traumatic stress in persons who euthanize nonhuman animals in surgeries, animal shelters, and laboratories. Society & Animals, 13(3), 201–220. https://doi.org/10.1163/1568530054927753
Fournier, A. K., & Mustful, B. (2019). Compassion fatigue: Presenting issues and practical applications for animal-caring professionals. Clinician’s Guide to Treating Companion Animal Issues, 511–534. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-812962-3.00027-7
Rollin, B. (1986). Euthanasia and Moral Stress. Loss Grief & Care, 115-126.
Stamm, B. H. (2002). Measuring compassion satisfaction as well as fatigue: Developmental history of the Compassion Satisfaction and Fatigue Test. In C. R. Figley (Ed.), Treating compassion fatigue (pp. 107–119). Brunner-Routledge.
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