My first time at an archery class: ‘There’s so much tension it’s like a romantic comedy’
I arrive at Sydney Olympic Park Archery Centre for my one-on-one lesson dressed according to instructions on its website: enclosed shoes, a long-sleeved shirt, sunglasses, a hat and with my long hair tied back. I feel like I’m undercover. Soon, though, I will be grateful to be literally under cover.
It begins to bucket down from the dark grey sky – real end-of-days vibes and oddly fitting for a sport that traces its history back to hunting and warfare, although perhaps that is too long a bow to draw.
The archery centre is a long pavilion with a corrugated roof, which means we can stand under cover to shoot at targets that are out on the lawn 20 metres away. (For professionals, the targets are 70 metres away.)
My instructor today is Virasha, who appreciates archery as a sport that can be quite calming. After a brief safety run-through covering arrows (sharp on both ends), bows (don’t “dry fire”: only pull a bow back if you intend to shoot, otherwise it might crack and explode) and shooting (only aim at the target, not at the sky or people), we begin.
I stand in line with the target and Virasha shows me how to line up the end of the arrow (the notch) so that it clicks on to the string of the bow.
I hold the bow with my left arm and place the three middle fingers of my right hand on the string. When I pull my right arm all the way back there’s a fair bit of resistance. There’s so much tension it’s like a romantic comedy! I aim. I release. And the arrow goes flying to the left of the target. Cupid I am not. “It’s OK,” says Virasha. “Sometimes it takes people a whole hour.”
I have six arrows left. The second also flies past the target. In the rain, I can’t see where it’s landed. Third time lucky: the arrow hits the blue ring and the sound of it striking the board is exhilarating. Somehow, the next three also land on the board, on black, red and yellow.
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To my surprise, retrieving the arrows requires more upper-body strength than I imagined. Stray arrows hit the ground with such force they end up quite deep in the soil. Arrows on the target are slippery from the rain and require both hands to yank out. Soon Virasha and I are drenched.
Next Virasha teaches me how to anchor my right hand to my face when I pull back the string and to look out of my right eye (as a right-handed person) instead of both eyes. I learn to inhale when pulling back the string and to exhale on release. When Virasha says: “If you want to hit the target, always aim lower,” I can’t help but laugh –and want to apply this wisdom to life and goal-setting.
The experience brings to mind the difference between beginner’s luck and how one’s perception of success might change with time. “A lot of people think that if they got one in the yellow, one in the blue, one in the black, they’re shooting amazingly,” says Virasha. “But you’re not showing consistency of technique. You want all your arrows to land together. Even if they all land in a clump in the black, it shows you’re shooting with technique, it’s just your aim is off.”
During my last round of seven shots, six hit the target and three manage to land in the same area of a blue ring. This has completely exceeded my expectations as a shortsighted person who usually only takes aim at things (metaphorically) on stage for laughs.
Briefly I entertain thoughts that my newfound skills might help me survive an end-of-days situation. Might I be able to make it as a hunter? Perhaps. If the target was 20 metres away, remained stationary and was the size of a monster truck tyre ... I might just have a shot.
• Group archery lessons for beginners at Sydney Olympic Park Archery Centre are $26 a session and suitable for people 10 years and over• Jennifer Wong’s new standup show, The Sweet and Sour of Power, is playing at Melbourne international comedy festival until 21 April, and then in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Canberra
childcare assistance, the student loan pause, the child tax credit and generous unemployment insurance benefits have come to an end, leaving people in financial precarity that hurts pets too. Far from a world where people treat animals as disposable, we are surrounded by people who love and desperately want to keep their pets, but can’t. •••
Shelter workers are at the frontlines of this crisis, providing daily care to cats and dogs in environments ranging from capacious, well-funded private rescues to crowded municipal shelters where dogs bark frenziedly through rusting fences and cats coil, terrified, in small metal cages.
They aren’t doing this work for the money. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, kennel attendants and animal care workers earn a median wage of $29,790, often with limited benefits. Fair market rent in Mendocino county for a two-bedroom like mine is $1,488 a month, per the US housing department. Pacific Gas & Electric just hiked everyone’s utility costs and the US agriculture department’s “thrifty plan”, a nearly impossible to accomplish, bottom-ofthe-barrel food budget, has a family of four spending nearly $1,000 a month on food.
But logistical issues such as trying to make their paychecks match living expenses is only part of what deeply affects shelter workers. The same stories that go viral on social media for being sad are also sad for the workers caring for those animals, many of whom grow deeply attached to their charges and experience empathy for even the briefest lives. A kitten so beloved by the staff that they carried him around in a sling is buried under a plum tree outside the shelter.
Those lives do not blur together. We remember all of them.
Our surrender waiting list is bulging at the seams; after a man threatened to “throw them against the wall”, we hastily made room for Kiwi, Raspberry and Strawberry, three clearly feral kittens who huddle, traumatized and hissing, in the back of their intake kennel, exploding like popcorn if you open the door. The staff member who handled the intake was shaken, her hands trembling as she recounted the story.
Animal care workers like her are confronting a form of moral injury, in which they may struggle with being asked to do things that go against their consciences, or circumstances expose them to feelings of helplessness or betrayal. In open admission shelters, some are coping with the caring-killing paradox, described in 2005 in a study exploring the heavy impact of euthanasia on shelter workers, who may play with a dog in the morning and euthanize it in the afternoon. Both phenomena are associated with issues such as anxiety, suicidal ideation and substance use disorder as people struggle to process traumatic events.
The public, however, doesn’t see Sierra’s face falling as one of our permanent shelter cats, Oscar, gets sicker and sicker until the sad Friday afternoon when we have to euthanize him. Nor do they see Michael speaking animatedly on behalf of a dog with behavior issues.
“I hear about stories where shelter staff or managers get death threats because they’re euthanizing animals,” says Dr Kathleen Cooney, director of education at the Companion Animal Euthanasia Training Academy. She’s speaking to negative public attitudes about shelter workers, sometimes stereotyped as callous for the hard, dirty parts of their jobs.
Meanwhile, they experience the incredible emotional strain of “seeing the worst of the worst, the worst side of humans, having to see pets suffering”, says Jerrica Owen, executive director of the National Animal Care and Control Association (Naca), which is working to develop consistent professional standards and training in the field.
“Animal control officers are first responders,” Owen says, but ACOs don’t have the hero status of firefighters and paramedics. Instead, they’re treated like glorified janitors, ignoring the catastrophic mental health issues in the field, with animal care workers more likely to die by suicide than the general population, and experiencing high rates of burnout and so-called “compassion fatigue” because of the secondary and primary trauma they face in their work.
This is, after all, a job that may require treating the animal victims of abuse, listening to harrowing stories of domestic violence, and caring for neglected animals such as the dog who came in like a walking skeleton, covered in sores, but still determined to wag his tail.
There’s no time to process these events: on to the next intake, the next area to clean, the next stock-taking. Sometimes the only thing we can offer is to save one life, take home one dog or cat in the face of a tidal wave of need.
“How do you help the shelter staff to override the negative aspects of the work? You try to reduce the demand that’s placed on them in the first place,” Cooney says.
That demand includes the emotional burden created by members of the public, who may not understand the tough daily decisions that happen in a shelter environment. It’s hard to work when people are posting cruel comments on social media or glaring when you pull up in an animal care and control truck.
It’s also important to reduce the number of animals entering shelters via a variety of diversion programs administered by state and local governments as well as non-profits like ours. These could include more expansive spay/neuter programs, assistance with veterinary costs, landlord education, eviction prevention, providing emergency foster placements and including animal welfare in the wraparound services extended to unhoused and lowincome people.
Some communities are already creatively embarking on projects such as offering dog training and embedding veterinary social workers at animal shelters and vet clinics to provide counseling for members of the public.
Those social workers don’t just work with the public, but also staff, including those struggling with mental health. Kelly Bremken, a veterinary social worker at Oregon Humane Society, says: “The thing I’m so passionate about is acknowledging it and talking about [mental health] out loud. Name it to tame it. If you can’t tell me what your feelings are, we can’t even tackle it.”
Reforming the way people view animal care workers also includes valuing their work as skilled labor and cultivating better working conditions. The notion that animal welfare jobs should come with good pay, benefits and the protections of union membership should not sound out of bounds.
“This framework is often used in non-profits,” says Jay Cunningham, a staffer at Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh, which is waiting on the outcome of a union election. “You shouldn’t ask for fair wages, shouldn’t ask for better working conditions, because you’re doing good. It’s so hypocritical. We can have good working conditions and still be doing good. If we are continuously showing empathy and compassion and care for all these animals, why are we not given the same? There’s nothing wrong with advocating for better.”
Cooney says: “Until the general public puts themselves in the shoes of shelter staff, they’re going to have a hard time understanding those complexities behind those closed doors,.”
•••
As I write, a text comes in from Judy: “Someone just brought us two adorable little chihuahua puppies in a paper bag,” she says, attaching an image of two puppies looking plaintively up at the camera.
I have ShelterLuv, the application we use to keep track of our population, open to pull statistics and scroll quickly through the population of incustody animals, checking off location after location in my head: no room in intake, no room in the vet clinic, all the kennels are full, the “family room” where we put overflow occupied by a Boston terrier someone dumped in our parking lot.
We make room for them somehow – we almost always do – and within a week, they’ve been whisked off to new homes, just in time for yet another chihuahua in need to come through the door.
• In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
These lives do not blur together. We remember all of them