3 Things I Realized in 2020
Today marks the ninth month (to the day) that we shut the adoption center down. Nine months. March 17 of this year will be a date I will remember for the rest of my life. Today is December 17, and as I was preparing for our Zoom staff holiday party at the adoption center, with two masks on and latex gloves, I started thinking about this year, my team, and the commitment to our mission.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jake and I’m the VP of Operations. Most of my job consists of managing and supporting the team that makes our entire little engine run; I also do a ton of boring stuff behind the scenes that trust me, no one really cares about.
Like so many of the thousands of people within the Wags community--alumni, fosters, volunteers, and even staff - most of my actual job drastically changed in March. Putting it all into perspective seemed somewhat serendipitous on a day that I was preparing goody bags for a very different version of our annual holiday party.
The first thing I realized that I probably hadn’t before is that the team at Wags & Walks should be classified as essential workers. A few days ago, we saved a dog Chris, who was sitting in a shelter for months, seized by Animal Control due to a dog fighting investigation. If you took one glance at his photo, you wouldn’t know the story or the fact that Chris refused to fight other dogs.
Imagine that: A dog that not only has a better understanding of right and wrong than so many people, but one that has the sensitivity to not act on awful directives. In dog speak, if this isn’t an incredible example of impulse control, I don’t know what is. Without our team working together around the clock, Chris’ future which will certainly have a happy ending, might not. People always tell me (admittedly I make fun of their cheesiness) that their rescue dog saved them, not the other way around. So, if Chris goes to a single person, we saved two lives. And if he goes to a family of five, we saved six.
If that doesn’t qualify my team as “essential” I don’t know what possibly could. Day in and day out they put their own health on the line so we can do the work that we do.
The second thing I realized is that while the world is a very different place now than it was in March and there will likely be long lasting implications to our lives as human beings, dogs do not know what Covid is.
Obviously dogs are, well… dogs. Our pets couldn’t possibly comprehend a global pandemic, nor should they. But it really put into perspective that what we do at Wags, unfortunately will never end. Of course, everyone wanted to add a dog to their home - our industry and the fitness industries were wildly popular in 2020. And while we received tens of thousands (literally) of applications to adopt a dog, and while everyone else’s jobs seemed to really change, I realized that maybe ours hadn’t.
I mean sure, we all wear masks now and we don’t get to do any of the silly fun stuff we used to, like Sip and Paint Night, or Pups and Yoga (even cuter than it sounds), the core function of our organization carried on pretty much like every other year.
Save dogs. Yesterday we rescued this adorable pitbull puppy named Jelly. I think we’ve had a few Jelly’s in my tenure at Wags, but she is definitely the cutest.
I mean who doesn’t love a puppy? At Wags, we love all dogs, especially pitties. Fast forward 24 hours later, and we get a new set of photos directly from the shelter where we saved her from, titled “Before.”
Imagine that. This puppy was starving to death, and if we weren’t essential workers, the incredible life Jelly is now destined to have, might have had a devastating alternative. In our industry, you never really know (nor do you want to) what the alternatives might be. And these are the situations that make you really zoom out of your own life, your own head, and realize that this situation, and this pandemic truly have nothing to do with one another.
Every year, nearly three million animals are in shelters throughout this country, and every year nearly half of them will be euthanized. This happened the year before the pandemic, this year, and will certainly happen next year. For all the wonderful people in our community, past, present, and future, the work truly is never ending.
And finally, the third thing I realized is that everyone responds to their surroundings in different ways, but everyone should be more receptive to how other living things are receptive to these same surroundings. I think I probably learned this both from our dogs and people.
2020 was a hard year for a lot of people. Small businesses and organizations had to face a daunting unprecedented challenge with little or no support. While I believe that we will come out of this better and stronger, it’s okay to publicize that these challenges weren’t as simple as a few meetings, a process change, or adjusting our organization to keep up with the millionth version of a stay at home order.
This year was mentally exhausting, for me at least. My priority has and always will be to care for our incredible staff. I view it this way, which I think is pretty simple: If the workers are taken care of, happy, and engaged, then we as an organization can have the most impact saving dogs. This year, I am humbled, and proud that we will have saved and adopted more dogs than we did in 2019.
So if you were bored and skipped to the synopsis, let me sum up my learnings in one sentence: Wags employees should be classified as essential workers, dogs do not understand what a pandemic is, and everyone responds to their environments differently, and that’s okay as long as you can be compassionate to both people and dogs.
As we look forward to 2021, in a lot of ways things will continue to be different, but so much of the Wags & Walks world will remain the same. After all, the work will never stop and that’s why we’re here.
Thank you for your support this year,
Jake & The Wags Team
