Taking Care of Yourself: Love Is Blind

Happy Thursday, Positive Animal Caregivers! ♡🐾

I work Fridays at a doggy daycare — a day that is usually louder, faster, a little more chaotic than the rest of the week. I enjoy it, the movement and the variety. But I didn’t mind the quiet of Good Friday, either, when many of my regulars stayed home. Fewer dogs. Slower pace. A different kind of day.

It made me wonder how rarely we get that kind of pause. How was your Easter weekend? Did you get a moment to step away, even briefly?

For the next few minutes, you can. This time is yours — not the animals’, not the clients’. Just yours.

Animal caregiving has a way of compressing everything — the good moments, the hard ones — into the same day. Before moving on, let’s pause and check in —

Add a note if you want (I read them all)

“He looks like he’s about to jump out of your camera and chomp at you.” Shane, my fellow shift volunteer at the shelter, was looking at my photo of Max. “No one’s going to adopt him like that.”

So I tried again. Different angles. Different backgrounds. Because he wasn’t wrong. A bad photo doesn’t just misrepresent a dog — it can quietly extend their stay. 

Working within the tight constraints of an 11-by-11-inch Instagram square, we do what we can. But it’s a strange exercise, trying to compress a living, breathing animal — their temperament, their quirks, their capacity for affection — into something so small and so still.

We say we care about personality. That it’s what really matters. But first impressions have a way of getting there first. 

There’s a reason the TV show Love Is Blind became such a phenomenon. The premise is simple enough: remove the visual, and see what’s left. In Sweden, Hundstallet tried something similar with dogs. For a week, they stripped their adoption listings of photos entirely.

Instead, they introduced dogs the way you might introduce a person in a carefully written dating profile. Dexter, two years old. Penny, six. Flora, one and a half. Energy levels, habits, preferences — the kinds of details that take longer to notice, and longer to care about.

By the end of the campaign, the dogs featured were no longer on the site. Adopted, presumably. The shelter reported that applications were more relevant and better matched. It’s a comforting idea, that love can really be blind. 

But there’s another kind of blindness — one that belongs to us.

My heart still sinks a little when I think about Pistachio.

I remember her first day. She had just arrived, still taking everything in. Her coat caught my eye immediately — black and white, almost like a Chinese ink painting. I remember thinking, with confidence: You will get adopted quickly.

For a while, that seemed true. Out of her kennel, she was friendly, moving from person to person, asking for attention with optimism. She brought her best poses for the camera. The sort of dog you don’t have to work to love.

And then, gradually, things shifted.

In her kennel, she’s unsettled, her howls cutting through the room at unpredictable intervals. She bit three times. Fosters hesitated. Adoptability in doubt. The room went silent when someone asked whether she would be a risk. Conversations took on a different tone — slower, heavier, without clear resolution.

There were discussions about what to do. What could be done.

“We can’t just give up on her,” one of my fellow shiftmates said. “She’s so pretty.”

It’s a curious argument. As if beauty still holds residual promise, even after everything else has become complicated. As if the first impression lingers, quietly insisting on its relevance.

I think about Max, and the effort to get his photo just right — to make him appear softer, more approachable, more adoptable than he might seem at first glance. And I think about Cannoli, whose first impression was, in some ways, too good.

As Shakespeare put it: “But love is blind and lovers cannot see / The pretty follies that themselves commit.” More often, it’s a negotiation between what we see, what we imagine, and what we’re willing to do once the picture changes.

That’s the decrease in median days of stay for shelter dogs when breed labels were removed.

Add a note if you want (I read them all)

Mark your calendars for these upcoming opportunities to connect with others:

Here are the ways to recharge this week. Pick ONE small thing that makes you smile. You’ve earned it. 

Listen: “Love is Blindness”, described by one commenter as “This is art, much more than entertainment.”

Watch: Kitchen Garden, a quiet short film, before David Attenborough’s upcoming series Secret Garden.

Write: A few lines in your gratitude journal. This week’s prompt: Love is Blind. 

Appreciate: A beautiful piece of art. This week’s artwork: Van Gogh’s Terrace of A Cafe At Night. Did you notice something special about this painting? 

Try: Donate blood, if you’re able. It’s a simple act, but not a small one. (And yes — animals can donate, too.)

Leave me a comment.

Know someone who'd like this? Refer a friend here.

Have wins, happenings, or want us to highlight a colleague? Reply to this email and I'm on it.

Want to help me keep this community going? Sponsor this newsletter by buying me a coffee.

Hit reply and let me know if you have any comments.

Thanks for spending part of your day with me and the rest of the Positive Animal Caregivers Club. Take care of yourself this week. Remember - even superheroes need naps. 

– Philip