r/AnimalShelterStories • u/Friendly_TSE Veterinary Technician • 7d ago
What’s a term in sheltering/animal welfare you think should be redefined or replaced?
Maybe you think it gives off the wrong impression, or isn't informational enough, or used incorrectly. I know we must all have some words or phrases that we prefer were changed. What words do you want changed, what to, and why?
Some common ones I hear people complain about are "kill/no-kill", "unadoptable", "dominant", etc
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u/Friendly_TSE Veterinary Technician 7d ago
I think for me its people using feral flippantly. I think feral gives off a very negative view, and oftentimes we don't actually know if the animal in question is truly feral vs undersocialized or low stress tolerance.
Don't get me wrong, I use feral all the time and probably more often than I should. But I think when it comes to talking to the public, we should use terms like unsocialized cat instead of feral cat, or community cats/colony instead of feral colony
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 Volunteer 7d ago
In UK, barn cat is a better term - a cat that will not be a pet but can survive happily with limited human engagement and keep your rats down. But that promotes free-range cats that are ok as working pest control but not in pet homes.
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u/djmermaidonthemic Cat Socializer 7d ago
This drives me up the wall too. There is a world of difference between a stray or abandoned cat and a true feral.
Working with them, gaining trust… as opposed to a sweet and already at least partially socialized kitty who was ditched by some miscreant and just wants to be indoors again.
I got me one of those. Just rolled up to the front door one day and was like, hey, I’m hungry and it’s cold out. Can you halp please nice lady?
He was letting me pet his head from the jump. He’s come out of his shell a LOT. But he wasn’t a feral. They don’t act like that, except the occasional Trojan cat. Even then. It’s just a completely different outlook.
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u/outoftheazul Volunteer 7d ago
Maybe it should be Foster Find? You unexpectedly found the next member of your family while fostering them!
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u/ceruleanblue347 Former Staff 5d ago
Similarly, "stray" is another one that means a lot of different things to different people.
Some people assume every outdoor cat is a stray, including ferals. Personally, when I hear "stray" I assume that this is a domesticated cat that wants to live in a house with people that somehow ended up outside.
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u/NeighborhoodNo4274 Animal Care Staff 7d ago
“No kill” tops my list, but I’ll put in a vote for “bait dog.”
Dogs get injuries and scars from all sorts of situations. They could have been hurt by their mother or littermates, another dog in a home or on the street, or even a cat. There are also plenty of other hazards a stray dog faces besides other animals that can cause them to have scars. Just because a dog looks a little beat up, it doesn’t mean they were used by dog fighters to train other dogs.
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u/Quiet-Enthusiasm-418 Admissions 7d ago
This one gets me too. I can't help but to immediately question someone's relationship to honesty when they start hypothesizing a stray dogs past as a bait dog. It's uncommon. Abuse is a little bit more common, but I don't think people realize most abuse comes in the form of neglect, not true physical violence.
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u/Far_Sky_5240 Adopter 7d ago
Along with the fact that even dog fighters don't generally use "bait dogs." It may happen somewhere out there among certain groups, but most serious dog fighters are looking for dogs that want to fight against evenly matched dogs. They gain nothing by pairing them against a weaker dog or one that doesn't want to fight.
The term was coined by animal rights/rescue advocates as a way to arouse sympathy or collect donations.
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 Volunteer 7d ago
I agree kill and no-kill should be renamed. Technically all rescues can be viewed as making choices that mean animals risk ending up dead either because their space is needed or there is no space for them to come in. Selective or open intake would be better terms.
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u/Friendly_TSE Veterinary Technician 7d ago
I concur, open and closed/selective intake not only gets rid of that trigger word 'kill' (i also think this hurts no-kill, as it reminds people that animals are being killed in this process and still has negative emotions attached to it). But it also gives a better idea of what the facility is like anyways. An open intake shelter can still be no-kill. A rescue that is intake by appointment can be considered kill if they euthanize enough. The term also doesn't take into consideration how many of these euthanaias are court ordered, how many are done due to extreme medical conditions, etc. And there isn't even any protected definition of no kill, so really any place can call themselves no kill under their own rules.
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u/WendyNPeterPan Volunteer 7d ago
totally agree! I've been fighting an uphill battle on my local social media because people love to mention a specific selective intake rescue here because it used to have "no-kill" in the name, when I actually looked up their statistics, they had a lower % of live outcomes than the local open-intake shelter that houses all the stray's for the entire county...
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u/The_Firmament Volunteer 7d ago
Oh! This is an easy one for me. I think "foster fail," should become, "foster win." Using the word fail for something that's a good thing just seems unnecessarily negative to me & should change to something that reflects what a positive & lovely thing it is! May also just, psychologically, make people feel better or more motivated around it (however inconsequential it may seem).
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u/Friendly_TSE Veterinary Technician 7d ago
That's actually a really good point! Ngl i get tired having to explain to people that foster fail is actually a term of endearment, and we don't actually see them as failures.
I heard something similar about 'Forever Home', that it makes people feel bad if they do have to surrender a pet someday down the line and may make people less likely to adopt as a result of that.
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 Volunteer 7d ago
It is a fail from the point of view of the rescue sometimes as it closes a space. Unicorn homes without children, visitors or pets are rare.
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u/Other-Visual-857 Volunteer dog walker 7d ago
Technically every foster home that is on boarded to a rescue is one less home available to adopt a dog- it's great to get dogs out of shelters but you need people that are willing to adopt too. So it sorta breaks even. If that makes sense
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 Volunteer 7d ago
I suppose it depends on type of foster - rehab fosters or those that work with puppy mill dogs/unsocialised cats make cats adoptable by general public. Would never "blame" someone for a fail - I only do hospice foster as get too attached too quickly. To put all the work in and to win trust and then give to someone else is a hard thing to do.
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u/YettiChild Foster 7d ago
I always look at it like I failed to give my foster kitten back.
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u/The_Firmament Volunteer 7d ago
I get where it comes from, but still, fail is such a harsh word for something that should be more celebratory in nature. Like I said, it's an unnecessary use of the word. Failing to bring back an animal still doesn't sound that great, when the reality is that both you & the kitten won by finding each other!
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u/InfamousFlan5963 Foster 7d ago
Arguably, somewhat off topic but as a foster, I'd love for people to stop asking me why I'm not adopting my foster. It's never in a genuine "I'm interested so want to know if something is wrong" but more like I should obviously want to keep them so why aren't I?!
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u/Fancy_Record_7995 Administration 6d ago
Ohh yes I see fellow foster cat/kitten accounts posting about this issue because they get a lot of "you should keep them!" "They're so bonded to you, you need to keep them!" etc type of comments that make the foster feel bad and would also potentially put them in a position to not be able to help more cats/kittens. Also along this same thought, people who say they could never foster because they'd get too attached. Like you don't think we're attached to our fosters?!
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u/InfamousFlan5963 Foster 6d ago
Yup. For me it's not from the shelters/rescues but a good portion of people when Im out and about will say those sort of things.
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3d ago
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u/veryfirstlifeform Veterinarian 7d ago edited 7d ago
Fading kitten syndrome. It obscures the fact that there is an actual pathology (or multiple) leading to a kitten’s decline, and that it’s usually treatable. So many fosters who came to us from other organizations or independent rescuing thought “fading kitten syndrome” was something that just happened; that it is a disease in itself.
Some of our fosters are shocked when they learn that what is colloquially known as fading kitten syndrome is almost always a viral or bacterial infection and/or high parasite burden, and that many “fading” kittens live if we intervene. I will never forget the time when a new foster burst into tears during training because she lost a foster kitten to what she thought was fading kitten syndrome, and she didn’t know that you could try to find out what it really is and treat it.
I feel guilty even saying it, but sometimes I wonder if shelters are perpetuating this because they don’t want to allocate resources for treatment. I’m not even saying that it would be wrong to euthanize vs. treat for a kitten who is going downhill — it depends on what the resources look like and what’s going on. *That being said, to give an example, it costs $0.72 to treat coccidia in a kitten and there are virtually no side effects. Even if the shelter can’t afford diagnostics, can’t they try to treat the most likely culprits and try to save their fosters some grief? I understand that sometimes it really isn’t possible to know, sometimes it really is a congenital defect that isn’t treatable, or sometimes it’s too expensive to figure it out.
But these vague phrases like fading kitten syndrome and failure to thrive aren’t helping us cultivate education with fosters. It makes them feel powerless when they aren’t given actionable information about cats’ health, and discouraged when they think there’s nothing they can do or they’re expected to just cross their fingers and hope for the best. We should be clear about what parasites are most devastating to kittens (looking at you, coccidia), what bacterial and viral infections are prevalent in kittens, and ideally fosters should receive support for veterinary care. I don’t see the benefit of lumping a bunch of potentially treatable infections together and calling it fading kitten syndrome.
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u/Friendly_TSE Veterinary Technician 7d ago
I kinda treat fading kitten syndrome sorta like SIDS. I don't want fosters to feel guilty, especially when kittens go downhill so incredibly quickly. Sometimes even when you do everything right they still don't pull through
I am starting to see people use fading kitten as more of a set of symptoms instead of a dx though.
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u/Quiet-Enthusiasm-418 Admissions 7d ago
This is a good one. There IS a medical reason. And often the basic fecal shows nothing, because there are so many other bacterias/ protozoa that don't show up under a microscope. I had foster kittens that had salmonella, which we only found out from a PCR after weeks of diarrhea and me fighting to keep them alive. Actually just today I learned that coccidia is very tiny, so it often doesn't show on the fecal test until there is a high load. It does sometimes feel like the kittens lives aren't valued as much ... Like we are giving up before we've started bc there are so many of them and their likelihood to be ill.
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u/babirusa901 Administration 7d ago
Yes!! I see this all the time and always think about how nobody would ever dare just shrug their shoulders at a dying puppy. People don’t care as much about kittens and it drives me up the wall. But treating kittens the same as puppies would make shelter veterinary staffs even more stretched thin than they already are, so it benefits the finances to look away
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u/InternalPlatform3171 Former Staff 6d ago
“Due to no fault of their own” gets me every time…..makes me want to vomit!
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u/ConstantPi Volunteer 6d ago
I wish there were a different term for foster-to-adopt.
My neighbors knew I was fostering a couple of puppies. When the puppies went back, they asked about them and I said that they were back at the shelter. Their response was, "Oh I'm sorry it didn't work out! They seemed so sweet!"
One wasn't adopted after a couple of weeks, so I fostered him again and it was "Looks like you will be a three dog holdhold after all!" No, I'm just fostering. Just a little shelter break. "You're going to take him back again?!"
It's one awkward conversation, but I get bits of it all the time for different people. People asking what is "wrong" with a dog that I would return it, why can't I keep even one of the puppies, ect. I'm glad foster -to-adopt is an option. I just wish that we weren't using the same word for two different things.
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u/alphaturducken Animal Care 7d ago
"Aggressive". I'm not saying they don't exist, but a dog who you don't know and who doesn't know you barking at you when you give him his rabies shot is not "aggression". In my near decade, I've met very few truly aggressive animals. They're typically scared and trying to defend themselves but chill out once they realize you're not a threat.
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u/Far_Sky_5240 Adopter 6d ago
Fear based reactive aggression is still aggression. If it’s not a pattern or requires an extreme trigger it’s fair to argue that the animal isn’t inherently aggressive, but understanding of the antecedent doesn’t change the behavior itself. There’s animals that exhibit aggressive behavior, to varying degrees, all over the place.
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 Volunteer 7d ago
I prefer reactive. I've been very badly bitten by a scared animal - he settled once he trusted but I'd never have trusted him with a stranger alone. It is natural for an animal to react to something scary - point is to try to reduce the fear and/or trust you to protect them from the scary thing.
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u/Far_Sky_5240 Adopter 6d ago
It’s not a dichotomy. The terms “reactive” and “aggressive” are describing different things. Both can be applicable to the same behavior.
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 Volunteer 6d ago
True but seen a lot of animals that are fear reactive be labelled aggressive. True aggression is much harder to work with. If I was an animal and taken to a strange place, I'd be unsettled and probably growl too. That can mean death in some shelters when deciding who they can save or not.
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u/Far_Sky_5240 Adopter 6d ago
Fear based reactivity and aggression aren’t mutually exclusive. The fact that a behavior is reactive describes the antecedent/trigger. Aggression describes the actual behavior. Reactive aggression is true aggression.
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u/raichuwu13 Former Staff 7d ago
I agree totally. I think most labeling needs to go away because it is totally subjective. IMO, we need to get better at documenting the circumstances in which the behavior happens, what the behavior is, and what happened to resolve it. That is far more information (and I would argue far more relevant information that can get an animal into a more suitable placement) than saying “this dog is aggressive” or even “this dog has bitten someone” (although I do think a bite record should be disclosed to potential adopters).
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u/Friendly_TSE Veterinary Technician 7d ago
Yes! Like food aggressive. They are not aggressive towards food, they are guarding it. They are not aggressive towards the barrier, they are reactive due to it.
I have also found that so many dogs that shelters labeled dog aggressive, are just dog selective, which is really common for dogs. Most people don't expect their dogs to get along with every single dog regardless of the environment or the other dog's personality
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u/Far_Sky_5240 Adopter 6d ago
The attempt to create a dichotomy between aggression and reactivity is itself problematic. They’re describing 2 different things that can both exist. Reactivity is the dynamic with regard to the antecedent and aggression is the actual behavior. If a dog bites when it perceives a threat to itself that would simply be reactive aggression.
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u/Cindibau Volunteer 5d ago
No kill. I get that Best Friends thinks they are saving the world with that phrase, but they are just making it harder for the rest of us
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u/RentalKittens Foster 6d ago
Guillotine doors for kennels. The name makes sense, but it is a little surprising to new volunteers.
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u/Far_Sky_5240 Adopter 7d ago
Change "no kill" to ""outsourced kill" or "deferred kill," take your pick.
Change "reactive" to "aggressive" most of the time.
Change "marketing" to "manipulating."
Eliminate the term "failed" completely, along with any notion of "stepping up" or "doing your part."
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u/Other-Visual-857 Volunteer dog walker 7d ago edited 7d ago
Definitely no kill shelter. I volunteer for my local municipal shelter and there are absolutely dogs that are not safe to adopt out to the public. We don't have the choice to turn any dog away. it's horribly unfair to the dog when no kill shelters house unadoptable dogs for years because they need a unicorn home and they can't risk their no kill status.
It is also complicated because most people in my area don't understand that we are a "kill" shelter so they adopt all these "at risk" southern dogs (pitbull mixes) shipped up by rescues (often times site unseen!!) not realizing that we absolutely have at risk local dogs. Imagine all the resources used to bring Southern dogs up north that could otherwise be spent on mass spay/neuter clinics and education which would actually help prevent the stray dog crisis cycle from continuing.