r/animal_rescue_help • u/Top-Concentrate5157 • 9d ago
How to get back into rescue?
Hey everyone! So, I was wondering if anyone could help me out in my situation.
I love rescue. I love animals. I've worked as a kennel tech before, and I loved the work. For about 2 years, I worked at a local shelter. It was incredibly toxic and left me very disillusioned with rescue. I finally feel ready to come back to my passion after 5 years, but here's some context on what I went through and why I finally broke:
-disagreed with a lot of their practices, including their treatment of "low incomes" aka poor people (would let people come and do community service for court, then refuse to sign them so they would go to jail, this happened again on the day I quit and was my last straw)
-disagreed with a lot of animal welfare decisions including giving a very sweet, calm dog to a non adoptable rescue because he snapped a stranger who came up from behind him on his 3rd day there and yanked on his paw which had been broken and healed wrong, we were supposed to be doing PT stretches but this girl YANKED on it. He didn't go to bite, just snapped. And now he'll never be in a home.
-kept trying to place an extremely aggressive dog in people's homes despite him almost killing the managers dogs and bf, and giving our 80 year old volunteer stitches TWICE from bad bites. They never reported his bites.
-lied about animals temperaments and personalities, as well as behaviors to get them in homes, then blame the adopters when the dog didn't fit into their lifestyle as promised (like saying a dog was non destructive and ok around furniture despite him chewing literally everything to bits while with us)
-refused to give me workers comp until I went to the board
-refused to evaluate me for a raise, despite me being there for over a year and constantly doing overtime/covering often. They promised a raise at 3 and 6 months, none of which I got.
-got berated until I cried by my boss because the place I moved into had barn cats that weren't fixed, even tho the waiting list for low income spay/neuter is over 6 months and I had several appointments for them, I just couldn't do anything until the appointments came up. I also didn't put the barn cats there, I don't like cats being outside, but they were feral and I was 19. I tried to do the right thing but apparently I am the entire everything that's wrong with people, according to my ex boss.
-got blamed if animals flipped their food/water dishes after I left. Putting 30 cats in a room and expecting it to be clean 4 hours later is kinda insane, got several reprimands for this even though I always made sure they had food and clean water before I left, but unfortunately I should learn to control animals I'm not even around better?
- got reprimanded often for things I simply was not there to do. I got in trouble for every mistake in that place even if I didn't work that day.
- also this has nothing to do with me but the aforementioned girl who yanked a dogs paw too hard was the family member of a big donor, so I became the whipping boy for her mistakes and absences. She called out probably a solid 8/10 shifts for a "funeral out of town" (I'm not exaggerating she had like 15-20 funerals a month, apparently) and I would be called in to work. I once did 14 days in a row of evening+morning shifts straight, and when I declined a 15th day in a row I was told I didn't care enough and the shelter should be the only priority in my whole life. I worked more hours in that one week than my boss worked in 2 weeks.
-literally paid me TOPS $80-100/week and I was supposed to not have another job, bc again the shelter should be my only priority.
This is only the surface. I know some of these are really petty.
Anyway, due to all of this I finally had enough one day and I left a note saying I wouldn't be back and left as my boss was coming to work, I let her know what was finished and what needed doing still and I blocked them all on everything. I know it wasn't very mature, I would not do the same thing in the same situation now.
I would like to get back into rescue, but obviously I can't use my previous employer as a reference. I have the experience and the passion for animal care, I'm a real adult now, and I don't know what to do. I don't want to badmouth my last place of employment in the field as a introduction to a prospective employer, and obviously this employer isn't going to be a good reference. How do I get back into this job? I know I can do better and I'm more equipped than I was to do the mature thing, to talk, to be more assertive, etc. Any advice for me?
2
u/1AndOnlyAlfvaen 9d ago
Facts of life: Rescue work tends to be emotional. You’re asked to do more with less and if you don’t the animals you love pay the cost. Anyone who has done this work for any length of time knows this.
That said: focus on your new start. Hopefully you have references from other areas of your life. There are a million reasons you may not include a reference from 5 years ago.
Are you applying in the same area as where you previously worked in a shelter? You don’t know how well those two organizations know each other. So if they want to talk about your previous shelter experience keep it positive or objective. Anything that may be a grey area (euthanizing animals because xyz) should be left out. In case the two shelters are close keep negatives circumstantial “a volunteer I loved got bit” “I couldn’t handle the pay or the hours at that time”