The Summary: Happy Friday VegNews Book Clubbers! We are at the end of October, meaning we are finished with another great book, Animal Camp by Kathy Stevens. Next week, we'll begin our discussion of My Year of Meats, a novel by Ruth L. Ozeki. I look forward to delving into some fiction with you guys!We are very lucky to have Animal Camp author Kathy Stevens answering readers' questions for us, and without further ado, here are the questions and Kathy's responses. Have a great weekend!
Geneveive Gates: How "easy" is it to get a sanctuary/rescue started? Do you need a lot of money behind you? What is the one thing someone should know?
Kathy: Geneveive, I get literally two to three requests a week from people wanting to start their own sanctuaries, and they're all looking for "the formula." I hope the following will help:
a. It's hard to start a sanctuary and hard to grow and sustain a successful one. Unless you have extraordinary energy, plenty of skills, and a keen awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, find another way to participate meaningfully in the lives of animals. Don't romanticize the life: It's a beautiful life, mind you, but it's a relentlessly challenging one. And like most businesses, most sanctuaries fail.
b. There is no formula! If you interview 10 sanctuary founders, you'll get 10 different responses to the question, "How did you get started?" Better to have an understanding of all the components of running a business and to know when you start that someone is responsible for each component. You don't need a lot of money to start if you've got a crackerjack volunteer fundraiser or PR person! Sanctuaries fail because their founders didn't do their homework—they simply started taking in animals and naively hoped, I guess, that the rest would magically fall into place. You have to have all the pieces accounted for from the get go: Who's going to feed and clean up after the animals? Who's going to determine their optimum diets? Who's going to stay up at night with the sick ones? Who's going to look for the best deals on supplies and develop relationships with businesses in order to get stuff donated? Who's going to raise the money? Who's going to recruit and train the volunteers? who's going to write the press releases and monitor the website and tweet out your news? Who's going to do the bookkeeping?
c. Be clear about your mission and stick to it, rather than trying to be all things to all animals. First of all, that's impossible. Second, if you don't have a clear identity it will be tough to garner support.
Nicole: Have you had any more “summer-camp”-like experiences since Animal Camp?
Kathy: If you mean, "have there been more wonderful connections between animals of different species?" then yes! The relationship between Rambo and Barbie described in "The Audacity of Love" is one. Our turkeys Ethel and Blue seem to love everyone, as they wander slowly through the barnyard, checking on the sheep, sometimes clustered with Barbie. It's wonderful to watch them standing guard when the farrier comes to trim the horses' hooves— they hover around him, all day long, seeming simply to want to be in the company of man and equine. It's lovely to witness.
Elizabeth: What relationship between two animals of different species surprised you most?
Kathy: Oh my word—absolutely the relationship between Rambo and Barbie the hen. She truly dotes on him, and Rambo, the most extraordinary animal I've ever met, at least tolerates, if not enjoys, all her overtures. Having watched Rambo for nine years now, I believe he's aware, somehow, of his power and his unique and important role in the barn. So many animals gravitate to him.
Riley: I once visited an exotic animal sanctuary, run by a very compassionate and committed couple. They loved their animals so much and had such deep connections to them, that when one was sick, they would let her sleep in their bed, including tigers and mountain lions! When one of the animals at Catskill Animal Sanctuary (CAS) is under the weather, what special treatment do they get?
Kathy: It depends on the animal. If it's a small animal, like a chicken, duck, or rabbit, the animal goes up to our animal care director Abbie's house to make round-the-clock care (if that's what's necessary) easier. If it's orphaned newborns who need bottle feedings every two hours, we set up shifts and various folks take turns. If it's a gravely ill horse who needs constant monitoring, we either stay up all night, setting a cot up in the barn, or again we take shifts. The situation always varies depending on the species and the nature of the illness, but essentially, one does what it takes to provide what an animal needs, even if it's at the expense of human sleep or comfort. And we do it joyfully: it comes with the turf.
Anonymous: How do you deal with all the losses of animals you come to love at CAS?
Kathy: You've probably read the chapter "Carpe the Diem" by now. Knowing when to let an animal go and sending him or her off with as much love as we can possibly muster is our final gift to those we've had the pleasure of caring for. The chapter about sweet Maxx will give you a glimpse into how we say goodbye. We've gotten really good at staying strong for our friends until they've taken their final breaths. After they're gone, that's when the sadness comes. But in some ways, it gets easier over time. If one is going to survive in this work and to be there for all the animals in her charge, it has to.
Leslie Lantz: I found the book so enjoyable I finished it in three evenings. How do you differentiate to the uninitiated the difference between a farm sanctuary and a petting zoo? In particular I was thinking about very young children who see both experiences as an exciting time to get close to farm animals. The animals at the sanctuary of course are being treated like royalty and “run the place” so to speak whereas the animals in a petting zoo are transported from one outdoor fair to another for about a year until they are no longer cute baby animals and then they are slaughtered because they no longer serve any purpose. How does the sanctuary caretaker diplomatically explain the differences between the two when the people who are participating in the one-on-one attention with the animals receive the same type of enjoyable feedback from the animals regardless of whether they are at a sanctuary or petting zoo?
Kathy: What a fabulous question! Our weekend tours are run by educators (or in my case, former educators!) who are superb at gauging the composition of a particular tour group and how much they can, or cannot, say. If there are lots of extremely young children in the group, then one says in her intro that there is a great deal she won't be able to say, but that the adults are encouraged to take plenty of literature from the Welcome Hut to help fill in the blanks. Another way we provide information is by displaying posters that depict the realities that most farm animals endure. We also try to have enough guides scheduled so that groups can be divided by age so that we maximize the opportunities for more people to ask tough questions and hear the truth. Finally, though, and this is key: I don't believe that it's our job to turn every visitor vegan the first time she sets foot on CAS grounds. Rather, I believe in assessing each guest's "state of readiness," and sharing as much as she's ready to hear. The animals so very often do the rest of the work for us! It's essential that all folks feel comfortable here, not just vegans. The more frequently folks come, the more they'll learn, the more they'll see the animals for who they are—that's how change happens.
Jill: How many of your volunteers are vegan?
Kathy: I'd guess about half, though we have so many volunteers that I don't know for sure. We encourage everyone to be vegan when they're on CAS grounds, and we watch all the time as folks fall in love with the chickens, pigs, cows, and all the rest, and then make the decision to go vegan because they now understand who these animals are. How many folks with standard diets have begun volunteering and then very quickly gone vegetarian and then very quickly gone vegan? Dozens. That feels good.
~VN Book Club Hostess Lyndsay Orwig
