Do Companion Animals Get Compassion Fatigue?
Anna Blake
March 21
Lately, I’ve been worried about fluffy little lap dogs whose coat has gone oily and flat from excessive petting. Concerned about Golden Retrievers are being used as body pillows, both night and day. Anxious for horses who have pulled deep inside, barely breathing, as their owners press their foreheads on them, hoping for a healing. I’m not worried about cats, but more about them later.
Perhaps you’ve noticed I’m writing more about stress recently. Sadly, we are all its prey. I’m an affirmative trainer/amateur couples therapist, helping horses and humans find common ground. Stress is a survival mechanism, our internal warning system, that danger lurks. I define stress as the inevitable natural state of being alive.
Horses are honest about stress. Famous for spooking, being bigger than we are, and at least twice as aware. They can be dangerous, but don’t hold it against them. They are prey animals, like bunnies and squirrels. Their only defense is their stress response: flight, fight, or freeze. Flight is usually the first choice, reminding us they are never truly tame.
Dogs have a similar stress response, with similar body language, or Calming Signals, to communicate it. Like horses, they run away, put their ears back, yawn, lick lips. Dogs are different in that they carry a distant memory of hunting. They have been hanging out with humans at least ten thousand years longer than horses, so we know each other better. But dogs and horses have the advantage. They don’t worry about the future.
Human animals are more complicated. We have that similar flight, fight, freeze stress response. Survival means we look for the danger. Like other animals, we focus on the worst possibility. Born pessimists who must work to see the good side of life. We also have that pesky frontal cortex, so we can worry about our thoughts.
Of course, all animals have emotions. Science has proven it, but it’s also common sense. Who needs a stress response if they don’t have emotions? If you look at it that way, emotions are at the center of every conversation. It’s the very heart of the work I do with horses who often have emotional challenges and even psychological damage from the past. Like us, the kind of stress that can’t be cured with a carrot.
Sometimes it wears me down to see all the misunderstanding, misuse, and pain toward horses. Call it stress because depression is too depressing. Sometimes I’m inspired and lifted by the brilliant progress my clients are making, so thrilled that their horses can breathe again. Still emotions, but call this a prettier color of stress. It can be a ping-pong ricochet of feelings at the speed of a hand gallop. It has a name: compassion fatigue, but I take little comfort that it’s considered a psychological condition. You catch it from prolonged exposure to the suffering and trauma of others.
But it is also human to want to help. It was twenty years ago that my dog, Hero, and I began visiting nursing homes. Each time, it was like I didn’t know him. We were in the hospice rooms with very frail people. He behaved in unimaginable ways, different with each patient. Home again, he’d sleep for a full day without eating. I had such mixed feelings, seeing the joy he brought and also the cost he paid.
Do we ask too much? Do we take advantage of an animal’s ability to feel emotion? Not just in therapeutic service, but can animals get compassion fatigue just living with us? Surely you’ve seen the dog cower during an argument. The way they stay close when we’re sad. Are they mourning loss or do they wilt under our grief?
I don’t have to tell you these are prickly days. It’s all the usual stress: family, work, finances. Add on top of that normal roar, the all-caps stress: CHANGE, FEAR, PERIL, LOSS. Stress seeps out of our eyes. It muddies our boots and makes the elastic in our underwear sag. Stress makes us grunt and not eat our greens. When we blow our noses, emotions come out. We think we are stealth but we hide our emotions like a neon sign in a dark alley.
We joke about our dogs being our therapists, our horses being our escape. But it might not be a joke to them. I worry we are a damaged species who use other animals as bandaids. That might be fine, if they had no emotions of their own. If their lives were free of their own anxiety. If we can forget that they have full lives that don’t include us most of the time.
A partial list of the parts of my animal’s lives that don’t include me: My dog not enjoying being an only dog like he thought he would. The donkey’s feet hurting, but it’s almost spring, and he needs to wrestle his pony. His pony needs to bite the ankles of the draft horse, who is certain if he stands there long enough they will be friends. It’s been 12 years. The draft horse can’t shake the mare, who feels safe if she can tuck her head near his flank because she isn’t quite okay. The old bay gelding, whose arthritic back always hurts some, tries to intimidate the mare because he’s a gelding. Duh. They are herd. Pinning ears and arguing over hay and then walking out to nap together in the sun. They are both friend and foe, sharing drama and intrigue, not to mention the duck and coyote soap opera on the pond. Even in their pens, more free than I will ever be. Not a worry about the future. Not a place to dump my trash.
For the past and present offenses of humans against their betters, may we give more than we take. So, on the darkest days, I’ll stay away. Other times, I’ll crank up the music, go muck, and keep my hands to myself. Knowing I’m not fooling anyone, but not wanting to be a burden. Mostly, I’ll breathe.
That’s why I gave the big stress response lecture at the start. We all have an antidote to our stress response that’s even better than horses. It’s free. It’s science. It works every time, no matter who does it first. If the horse blows, we breathe right after, or vice versa. We just have to stop thinking breathing is a boring, bliss-ninny suggestion. Breathing is literally a message to our nervous system that releases, rather than exacerbates, stress. Deep, regular breathing is the best answer.
As for cats, well, they’re cats. Always a soft belly and never a tongue lolling about, panting in the air. Cats are the masters of breath. Good grief, they even purr.
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