Animal welfare is my life but it's also making me lose my mind.

Author: Jessica Kooistra

  • At The End.

    At The End.

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    Jessica Kooistra
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    You come home from work and your dog is excited to see you as if you left a year ago. You get home from vacation and your cat acts as if they thought you left them for good. Pets are part of our life, but to them we are their whole life. Humans have families.…

  • The Myth About No-Kill Shelters

    The Myth About No-Kill Shelters

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    Jessica Kooistra
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    You find a lost dog in your neighborhood and ask friends for advice on what to do next. One person tells you to bring it to the animal shelter, another tells you absolutely not, they ‘will just kill it’. You contact a local rescue that is known to take dogs and are told they are…

  • Adopt don’t Shop

    Adopt don’t Shop

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    Everyone has likely heard this phrase before. Everyone seems to have an opinion about this topic. A call has me checking on a property where the complainant claims the people are breeding dogs and believe it to be a puppy mill. Once making contact with the owner I find that he does in fact have…

  • When Change Changes You.

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    Change: verb change (verb) · changes (third person present) · changed (past tense) · changed (past participle) · changing (present participle) We all experience change. Some change is good. Some change is bad. Some change changes you. When I started working in the animal welfare field, I was a kennel attendant in the shelter building. The old shelter building we still worked in, while…

  • The Welfare Issue.

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    Case in point – the happy Golden Retriever mix. We received multiple calls on a dog kept in a kennel all day, every day. I made contact with the family and concluded that the dog has always been an outside dog for them. I went over some basics with them regarding proper shelter in Michigan…

  • Pause

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    Mentally shutting it all off. Recharging ones own battery by physically removing yourself from the daily grind, stress and demands of work and life for a while. A necessity in my opinion. Many see a vacation as a luxury. Taking a break as a missed opportunity to make money. We have been programmed to believe…

  • Living in Color

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    I’m walking up to a house where a complaint was made regarding an aggressive dog from this address seen loose often. I carry my catch pole in one hand and my notepad in the other as I make my way up to the front door. The house appears to be in disrepair. The driveway is…

  • Overload

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    It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. This post is the result of the many stresses that currently reside inside my brain, traveling into my neck and shoulders and making my muscles ache. The post will not be pretty, or grammatically correct. It is just a purge of thoughts and emotions that will hopefully still…

  • A Special Hell: Part 2

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    The scalpel cuts deep into the stomach lining making a perfectly straight line and splitting the organ wide open. Her gloved hands pry apart the stomach allowing us to peer inside. Rocks, leaves and undigested dirt make up the hollow cavern. It is Tuesday morning and I find myself kneeling on the floor of the…

  • A Special Hell: Part 1

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    Jessica Kooistra
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    *Disclaimer: this post will have some graphic stories and photos. I encourage you to read on anyway. It may not be what the general public sees on a daily basis, but it is my reality. My job. The most frustrating part of my profession is that people assume there is a black and white. An…