Anyone else work in animal rescue?

[Falco]

Hello! I know there's lot of animal loves here. I started working at a local rescue for wild animals a few months ago, does anyone else volunteer/work at a place like that too? I'd love to discus with others about it!



Currently, HCAI (highly contagious avian influenza) has been a problem for us. Thankfully, none of our avians have tested positive and they're all in safe places. Because of this, we've had to shut down our hospital. We cant take any new animals in from the public until it dies down. It makes me sad for all the animals we cant help, but I'm glad our birds are safe

[Mycorrhizae]

I used to! We had to shut down because of HPAI too in spring, but the group has been able to reopen to avian patients. I think they have a separate area for flu patients now. I might look at volunteering with them in the future but kinda depends on where life takes me

[snakesinspace]

I haven't worked rescue but I've worked in other animal professions so I understand the stress of contagious diseases. I think inclusion body disorder is the worst because it's HIGHLY contagious and always fatal. Parvovirus is also super scary, but at least the puppies have a strong fighting chance with treatment.
I have so much respect for anyone who can cope with doing jobs like that. I couldn't handle losing animals, particularly dogs, I quit my last animal job a little over a year ago.

[ChunkyChad]

Hi I also work at a wildlife rescue^^ HPAI has been a huge problem for us, luckily we were able to create a quarantine area in our hospital to continue taking in animals. I have to say its an awful disease, I worked more so on the rescue side of things and some of the birds I've caught were just in awful shape from it. Seriously such a bad disease, hopefully it's not as prevalent next year

[Mycorrhizae]

I haven't worked rescue but I've worked in other animal professions so I understand the stress of contagious diseases. I think inclusion body disorder is the worst because it's HIGHLY contagious and always fatal. Parvovirus is also super scary, but at least the puppies have a strong fighting chance with treatment.
I have so much respect for anyone who can cope with doing jobs like that. I couldn't handle losing animals, particularly dogs, I quit my last animal job a little over a year ago.

It's definitely hard and not for everyone! It helps a little sometimes with wild animals. We don't spend time petting them and bonding with them or anything. In fact, we do the opposite where the animal should hate us. And then we just send 'em to to wild and hope to never see them again. So it sucks when they die, but I rarely got attached to a rehab patient.

[ChunkyChad]

I haven't worked rescue but I've worked in other animal professions so I understand the stress of contagious diseases. I think inclusion body disorder is the worst because it's HIGHLY contagious and always fatal. Parvovirus is also super scary, but at least the puppies have a strong fighting chance with treatment.
I have so much respect for anyone who can cope with doing jobs like that. I couldn't handle losing animals, particularly dogs, I quit my last animal job a little over a year ago.

It's definitely hard and not for everyone! It helps a little sometimes with wild animals. We don't spend time petting them and bonding with them or anything. In fact, we do the opposite where the animal should hate us. And then we just send 'em to to wild and hope to never see them again. So it sucks when they die, but I rarely got attached to a rehab patient.

Yeah I also think it's a bit different with wild animals cause like you said there is that lack of bonding. Though I will say in my experience sadly very few of the animals I've preformed rescues for maybe less than 20% actually made a recovery, so you do become very I guess wary when you get a new animal not to become attached which I feel also creates that detachment with wildlife rescuers/rehabers. I don't what the survival rates for companion animal rescues are but hopefully higher than that.

With that being said being part of any animal rescue is so tiring and taxing, in my experience the cases involving human causes just boil my blood so much, though are some of the worse cases to deal with, especially if you have to talk to the person that caused it bleh