The Daily Business of Running an Animal Rescue

This is the meat and potatoes. This is what you have to deal with, day in, day out. It is also part 8 of 13, that are all linked here.

Your daily business, whether or not you also have part-time or full-time employment, are these in a roughly chronological order.

1. Breakfast for beasties!
2. Pre-work cage/crate/room cleaning and housekeeping
3. Any supervised pet exercise (dog walking, rabbit-rodent “running,” giving the bird a flap around the apartment…)
4. The internet! Checking your emails, checking your adoption service stats to see who’s getting attention and may be coming up for adoption soon, and checking your communities on Facebook and other pet forums, and surveilling classified ads to stay on top of your own posts and to see if there are any situations that require intervention and rescue
5. During the day: any paperwork development (education or marketing materials), booking vet appointments, and coordinating the transport, fielding and placing phone calls regarding adoptions, fundraising, or other rescue situations, and, when there’s a pending adoption, checking references and facts on the application.
6. During the day or at your home: Maintain your accounting files by entering transactions in an online or computer application: Income under “Rescue income” and its subcategory (adoption fees, donations, sales, etc.), and under “Rescue expenses” the subcategories of vet bills, food, litter, housing supplies, cleaning supplies, transport costs, etc.
7. Returning home: picking up supplies at the petstore/grocery store, greeting the animals, giving out snacks and exercise, and more cage/crate/room cleaning and housekeeping.
8. Your own evening plans…
9. Before bed: Final exercise for the pets, their bedtime meal (this is a nice ritual to make them happy before lights out), and your own housekeeping.

You may notice how often I mention housekeeping. It is very important to you, your partner/family/roommate, your friends, and your adopters that you carry on a “normal” life in your own home, and the animals are just a quirky addition. If before you started animal rescue, you were a bit of a slob, stop that right now. You have a different standard to meet. The judgment of other people does affect your quality of life and opportunities, and they, who you will still want to feel welcome at your home, need to have as little fodder as possible to think that your pets are an impediment to your having a quality life.

Now there will always be people who can’t conceive of having a pet, or having more than one pet. People love their opinions, and that’s okay. But if anyone finds that you are living like a “crazy” person, you want that to reflect their issues with respect to animals, and not any objective criteria having to do with:

1. the smell when you walk in the door,
2. the cleanliness of the living areas of your home,
3. the state of organization of your home,
4. any over-capacity of pets (beyond a weekend or holiday petsitting or influx situation of a few days), and
5. how much you appear to be catering to the animals, or not.

Your home must represent a human home that contains pets, not a zoo in which a human has a bed. The first reason why, like it or not, is about being credible to others — not a sudden eccentric breed enthusiast/crazy cat lady — because they have to trust that you are a rational person to want to adopt or remain engaged with you. The second reason is because you, yourself, need limits to stay sane and have a good quality of life. You can have multiple pets if you want to, but you cannot afford to lose good life opportunities with others because you’ve overextended yourself in pet rescue, have a home that seems like a dirty secret, or have given grounds beyond a reasonable doubt that you have poor judgment about people and animals. Doing good work attests to you being a quality person, but too much of it makes you a martyr. If I sound preachy or judgey in this paragraph, it is due to social ramifications that I had to endure, and the observations I could make of peers, whilst running a rodent rescue. Each different kind of animal will have a similar trial for you to face.

This is why this particular issue belongs with the “Daily business” section, because you want your day-to-day life and business to be manageable and enjoyable, and any extra craziness equally as likely to come from overtime at your job, an extracurricular interest you have, or a holiday or celebration planned with friends and family, as from an urgent rescue situation.

Cleaning tips: Mix 5 mL bleach with 20 mL laundry detergent in 3–4 L of water in the mop bucket or a 1 L spray bottle, and use them right away (bleach solutions will denature when left to sit) to clean and sterilize the pet equipment and home areas. Use the dishwasher liberally for cleaning equipment; for pet laundry, put the laundry through a rinse cycle before putting it through a wash cycle, and include a small measure of bleach — either chlorine or peroxide — in the wash cycle as well. Peroxide cleaner for spots and stains is a lifesaver; vinegar dissolves any calcium that animals excrete in their urine, so should be the first choice in cleaning cages and spots on the floor. Do not mix bleach and vinegar, ever!

Go on to read more on The People Aspect of Animal Rescue.