All In the Same Boat - A Hippo Essay

By Sue Alexander

March 29 2019

Another long one folks. Please read. Please read to the end.

We are all in the same boat. I picture that boat as a red canoe. It is a beautiful boat, and we can all go incredible places together, once we understand a little bit about the boat. Now, full disclosure here, I am VERY serious about how I paddle a canoe, and I will be the first to tell you that it is not always fun to paddle with me. I have "ways" that things need to be done and if you don't do them that way, I get annoyed. That is in fact why I am VERY discriminating on who I paddle with and where we go. Let me teach you a little bit about paddling the canoe, and I am going to share how that relates to Losing Lulu.

To begin with, we all have to face the same direction, and we all have to paddle in sync. That means that if some of us get out of sync, others of us are going to have to paddle much, much harder. The curious thing about paddling is that the weakest paddlers need to be in the front, and they need to set the pace. I am good with that. If you are a weaker paddler than I am, I want you in front, and I want you to set a pace you can maintain. If you are stroking too fast, I will give you a broader paddle so that you slow down a bit, and so that I, in the back can keep up. When we are paddling a war canoe, the people in the front set the pace, the people in the middle provide the power, and the people in the back steer. And when all of this happens, the boat moves in harmony. When there are just two of us, you cannot change sides to paddle on every other stroke; it makes it REALLY hard to steer and the boat gets really tippy.

The boat is the community here. And as much as I know that I am annoying to paddle with because I am super fussy about how I canoe, I know that when I take a beginner out who is just learning I need to help them understand all the parts of the boat, the paddles, all the safety equipment, all the rules, I need to be responsible for helping them to have a good time, which means that I need to make sure they understand the various roles that there are.

The situations that bring us here are analogous to the water I paddle in. I have paddled in some very bad storms. Some really dangerous storms. I don't take beginners out on the water when the storms are dangerous. Those storms impose some constraints on me when I paddle. I cannot paddle slightly into the wind and expect anything other than to be blown around. I cannot paddle across the wind and expect to have much control. I cannot paddle any direction other than directly into or out of the wind and expect to make any headway. but I know these things so I work within my constraints. I have two people in my life I would consider paddling with during a storm; my friend Pete, and my husband John. Especially my husband John, who has done the hours of work with me to find our joint rhythm. He paddles in front, and I steer, and when I tell him no, or draw, or stroke, he knows what I mean and knows when it is important enough that he just steps up and follows the directions. Likewise, when he sees something dangerous, when he sees a deadhead, or a rock I listen right away so that I can take evasive action and keep us safe.

So what does the journey on water in a canoe have to tell us about being a Lulu member? There are a lot of analogies to make, so sit down in this beautiful boat together and consider all of those of us here in the community. There are caregivers; family members, owners, fosters, "fur" parents. The people who are primarily connected to the hippo in trouble. These people are often the ones who relay the information about the hippo who died due to a behaviour problem. These people are the most obvious people who need and use this group. It is important to understand that these people are not alone though. Only very rarely are they paddling alone, often they have someone in the canoe with them, and often those folks are also hurting deeply and profoundly.

If you are a caregiver who lost a hippo, and you are here, we want you to know that the rest of us are paddling hard, to help keep you in the boat and to bring you to a place where you can find peace. Often as a caregiver, you may feel like the rest of the community that is touched by your hippo doesn't get it, but by sharing you are filling an important role in this canoe of helping everyone else understand your point of view. You are sharing the storms around you that inform the choices you have to make. The welfare of your dear hippo, the welfare of the other hippopotamus in your home and the safety of the hippos in your neighbourhood. You have the storms of the safety to the members of your human family, your human friends and neighbours and you have the stigma of living with a hippo who has flipped over a tour boat, yet again. You may even be facing hippo specific legislation and hippo rights extremists. Sharing this helps the rest of us in the canoe to better understand your point of view and that helps us to better understand how to help you.

Then you have members of the veterinary community. Vets and techs carry a huge role in caring for a troubled hippo. And they are constrained by a number of storms of their own. First and foremost, they are constrained by how well they know you and your hippo. If they have never met you or your hippo and the very first time they meet you, you ask them to euthanize your hippo they have some issues you may not have considered. Some of those issues are legal in nature. In Canada where I live, if your animal has landed a bite on someone there is a mandatory ten-day quarantine before you can euthanize that animal. This is a rabies prevention strategy, and it is the law. There is another option if the ten-day quarantine is not observed, and if you want to know what that is, you can read at the end where it says trigger warning in bold.

And what will happen to the vet should she not enforce the rabies laws in Canada? She will lose her licence and be prohibited from practicing. This is just one example of what can happen to a vet who doesn’t follow the laws. There are also financial penalties, professional sanctions and the risk that if the vet does not practice according to the law, she may end up on the media in a horrendous way. So if the first time you meet a vet, you disclose that your hippo has a behaviour problem and ask for euthanasia, you may find that the vet is not quite so willing to paddle along with you in the canoe.

The next thing to consider is that the vet has a responsibility to the animal to only administer euthanasia if it is the most humane and necessary option. So when you have come to the point where you have decided this is the best alternative, your best option is to have already worked with a vet along the way. This is not always possible, but in general if you have a difficult hippo, get him or her into the vet sooner rather than later. Explore your options. Explore training and behaviour consulting options WITH your vet. Explore medications and pain and diagnostic tests. Expect to spend at least four appointments looking for alternatives before you ask for euthanasia. It is fine to express to your vet that you are concerned that this is where things will end up in the long run, and that you have come to an understanding of that to start with, but it is unfair to the vet to show up, introduce yourself and your hippo and ask for her to euthanize your troubled friend.

We also need to consider that many vets have ethical stands on euthanasia informed by their own history. I once met a Buddhist vet who had never ever, not even in university euthanized an animal. He came from a culture where this was an unacceptable alternative, and demanding that this kind and gentle man would kill an animal would have been unthinkable to him. You never know where on the spectrum someone falls, and if you don’t know your vet well, walking in and asking for euthanasia can be outright cruel to the vet. Keep in mind that these people are paddling too. They want to help hippos; otherwise, they would not have gone into the field of hippo health care! Perhaps the cruelest blow to these people who give so much of themselves to help all of hippo-kind is that often they don’t get to make the actual choices; they have to give the caretakers options and the caretakers choose what action they must take.

Now, once in a while, there are no options left, and your own vet is unavailable. Maybe something catastrophic has occurred. And at that point it is fine to approach an emergency vet and say “I have no other alternative at this point other than to get this animal out of my house tonight. I need your help in getting him into some sort of a secure facility, a kennel, your hospital or anywhere other than home until I can get to my regular vet in the morning.” You are much more likely to have a positive interaction with the vet than if you walk in, introduce yourself and ask for the ultimate solution.

So, we have caregivers and vets paddling, but there are others paddling too. I am one such paddler. I am a Certified Dog Behaviour Consultant and have made my living for the past thirty years or so helping families to address the needs of their canine Lulus. Sometimes I just cannot help, and that is tough. It is hard for me when I cannot come up with a plan that the family can carry out to meet the needs of their hippo. It is hard when the caregiver may not understand the risks inherent in living with a Lulu. Like the vet, I have laws to follow (your dog cannot be at my training hall without a rabies vaccination for instance) and professional guidelines to keep in mind (I must keep good records for instance or I could lose my credentials!) and I have my own ethics to follow. I must advocate for the dog and for members of the family or society who might be at risk. Some of the time, I am the first one to discuss with clients the possibility of the end. And I have never ever suggested euthanasia for a dog and not cried over the fact. I struggle and remember all of the special dogs who have passed through my hands, and I struggle with the fact that I cannot help them all. I have been accused of being a murderer, of wanting all shelter dogs to die, of being cold hearted. And I hurt. I love dogs. I really, really do. And I hate to see them suffering. Some of the time, when I cannot help a dog, and the family is unwilling to consider euthanasia, I am forced into a corner I don’t want to be in. I am forced to say “I cannot help you and you cannot come back.” Then I have to put that into writing, and I usually copy that to the vet. Why do I have to do that? Because the liability of continuing to work with a dog who might hurt my staff, or bite a child when I am not there, along with a client who is not able to follow safety procedures to prevent that means that I could lose my business and the work I love. This is reality for many of the vets I know too. It is awful to write one of those letters and then go to bed that night and wonder how the family is coping. Being a Behaviour Consultant is really tough. We get to see so many special hippos and sometimes our dreams are populated by the sound of them splashing and having fun, and sometimes by the sound of a tour boat flipping over. It is hard to love some of these hippos and I think we all do.

Perhaps one of the more prominent groups on Losing Lulu are those who work in sheltering and rescue. These people are often called upon to care of the unwanted hippos. The troubled hippos whose people are hoping for a last chance. The hippos who are stray or who are shipped around the world. These people often see a higher-than-normal population of difficult hippos. Often these people are faced not with one euthanasia in a lifetime, as many of the caregivers are, but with many euthanasias each day. Often these people came to the field in the hopes of decreasing the number of dead hippos only to find out that they are the ones who are causing more and more dead hippos to be added to the pile. These people often have PTSD from the number of euthanasias they have experienced. They are often angry and hurt and they often have special hippos whose pictures sit on their phones, their computers and their walls, often without a name or a number; they are just a reminder of that special hippo that meant something to them, and who then died for whatever reason there might have been.

So let’s get back in the canoe. We have caregivers. Often caregivers don’t understand why a vet or behaviour consultant may have responded the way they did, and some of the time the caregiver is really angry about what happened. We have vets (and their techs) who love these hippos, often as much as the caregivers do, and sometimes they are angry at the caregivers, the behaviour consultants or the shelter workers, for whatever may have gone down with the hippo. We have behaviour consultants, and we are SOOOOO good at righteous indignation; we can be angry too, at the caregivers, the vets, the techs, and the shelters. And finally, we have the shelter workers. They get to be angry and frustrated too. And we are all in the canoe. Sometimes, the caregivers are paddling hard, and the vets are busily paddling in the other direction. Sometimes the shelter workers and the behaviour consultants paddle backwards. Together. So no one goes anywhere. Sometimes, the shelter works and the caregivers get together and start to paddle in sync and the canoe starts to head towards what looks like a destination, but the behaviour consultants are taking a lunch break and didn’t tell the vets how to steer. Sometimes one of the vets stands up and nearly capsizes the whole canoe. Sometimes it is chaos.

Yesterday, someone asked a really good question, but it was buried in a very unpleasant post. The post has been removed so it is gone and the unpleasantness that nearly capsized the canoe does not need to be repeated. The question was important though. The question was (and yes, I am paraphrasing!) “How do we all paddle in the same direction?” How do we help people to learn to talk about behavioural euthanasia? How do we get help for those hippos who need out? I am going to partially answer the question, and then I am throwing out the challenge to you all. How do we help make this work?

Part of the answer is to understand more about one another. If you want to share something that you wish that the other members of the canoe understood; please do that. We need to keep paddling in the same direction. Sometimes we set the pace. Sometimes we steer. Sometimes we provide the power. And often we are travelling through a heavy storm. We can only do our best, and remember to keep writing kindly and reading kindly.

TRIGGER WARNING; THE NEXT BIT IS UNPLEASANT; SKIP TO THE END OF THE PARAGRAPH IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO GRAPHIC DETAIL. In the event that the mandatory ten-day quarantine is not observed, the animal’s head must be removed, and sent to public health for examination because the ONLY way to confirm rabies is by looking at brain tissue. There is no blood test. So, if the vet agrees to euthanize, they know that shortly after you leave, they have to do a duty that is not only unpleasant, but for many of us, profane. I have been there twice when this occurred, and the first time, I went home and cried for two days. It was terrible to see the head of an animal I knew, removed from the body.

Today's image is of my canoe packed and ready to go, on a day when the water was particularly calm. Perfect conditions to paddle. I love this image because it reminds me of a quote from a Harrison Ford movie called Six days, Seven Nights. The quote goes something like this "It’s an island honey. If you didn't bring I it here, you won't find it here". The Canoe is a bit like this. Canoes have become the metaphor for how I want to live my life.