Positive Animal Caregivers: Building While Flying

A couple of months ago, I was speaking to a colleague from another animal charity. 

“Over here, we are often building the plane while we try to fly it,” she said, before asking me, “How do you handle that situation?”

I hadn't thought much about the question. But my instinctive answer came quickly. Animal care doesn't have the luxury of simply stopping. The animals still need care tomorrow. 

“If I was flying a plane, I probably would not be making major changes at the same time,” I said. “Those changes deserve more room for discussion and planning.” 

That was my instinct. But this week, I found myself doubting it. 

I have been preparing a revamped operations dashboard for the Board of the shelter where I have worked for the past nine months. Looking at the data, I saw progress. Just not the kind I was looking for. 

Our longest-stay cat has found a new home. 

We have managed to grow our intake. 

The team is also on track to adopt out more animals this year than last. 

All worth celebrating. And yet, I still felt uneasy.

“I joined this organization with bigger ambitions,” I thought. “So why couldn't I see them in the dashboard?” 

I imagined a shelter that could do more than care for the animals inside its walls. A shelter working with schools and universities. Educating the community. Providing low-cost veterinary care. Helping prevent animals from needing us in the first place. 

But what would it actually take to make those changes happen? 

Working with schools and universities would require knocking on doors to discuss potential collaborations. Educating the community would require designing training curricula. A low-cost veterinary clinic would mean an entirely different level of investment, staffing, and operational complexity. Even “just a new program” requires time to plan and people to execute. 

None of these ideas were bad.

That was precisely the problem.

I wanted something I could point to and say: this is different because I was here. 

The irony was that the accomplishment I wanted might require exactly the kind of major change I had just said I would be cautious about making.

And that made me think about some of the organizations I have worked with.

I have worked with charities trying to do all of these things at once: rescue, shelter, sterilization, education, and advocacy. None of them were wrong. But I remember how quickly the priorities could shift.

A grant opportunity appears.

A government issue emerges.

A new program looks promising.

And then another animal needs rescuing.

I suspect this is familiar to anyone who has worked in animal welfare. You start the day with a plan, and then a dog needs rescuing. A cat needs fostering. Someone calls about an animal in crisis. A volunteer cancels. A grant deadline appears. 

Sometimes the people who care most deeply are also the ones most likely to keep saying yes. 

Before long, everyone is busy.

But busy doing what?

None of this means the plan was wrong. It is simply what happens when the work involves living beings who cannot wait. 

It is easy to lose sight of the destination when there is always something urgent demanding your attention. Or when we are distracted building the plane. Soon, we don’t even know where we are.

Instead, we should make room to take stock. 

How many animals are coming through our doors? How long are they staying? Where are we struggling? What keeps going wrong? What is actually getting better? 

For me, that was what the dashboard was starting to do.

It wasn't just a report for the Board. It was one of the instruments helping me understand where we were.

A number on a dashboard is not just a number. A longer length of stay means an animal waiting longer for a home. A crowded shelter means less attention for each animal. A faster adoption means a kennel becoming available for the next animal who needs us. 

This is why the numbers matter. They are not just measures of organizational performance. They describe what happens to animals. 

I had been looking at the dashboard to see how far we had come. Perhaps I should have been using it to understand where we were. And whether we were still on course.

I still want to build the plane. I still want to see the shelter become more effective, more sustainable, and more connected to the community.  But before we do that, we need to understand what is working and what isn't. 

So how do you build a plane while flying it?

I think I got only half of the answer right.

You can't always land. Animal welfare doesn't stop. But perhaps you can slow down enough to look at the instruments. To make sure you're still on course. And to create space for the bigger changes when they're truly needed. 

I'm still impatient to see change. I still want those cats in homes sooner. I still want to build better systems. And I still want to see the bigger vision for the shelter come to life. 

But perhaps this is something all of us in animal welfare can forget. 

We come to this work because we want to make a difference. So we look for the dramatic rescue, the new program, the big number, the thing we can point to at the end of the year. 

But perhaps there is another kind of progress:

making tomorrow a little better than today, for the animals and the people who care for them.

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Thanks for spending part of your day with me and the rest of the Positive Animal Caregivers Club. Take care of yourself this week.

– Philip