Culture, Part 1 - A Hippo Essay

By Sue Alexander CPDT-KSA CBCC-KA CDBC

February 19, 2019

Thanks to everyone who is working so hard both behind the scenes and on the list to make this a safe place to discuss behavioural euthanasia. Everyone is doing a terrific job so far, but we have had over 100 new members in the past week, so I want to take a moment to discuss the culture here; what it is, how it works, and what you can do to keep it as the terrific place that it had been.

The first thing is what I mean by culture. Culture is our shared behaviour; how we interact. More than following the rules, it is about following the spirit of the rules. Our rules are simple because we want to be clear, but we don't want to get tangled up in if something is against the rules or not. In short, we have set up rules to help us to keep this as a safe place to disclose the details we may not be safe disclosing to others.

To keep things safe, remember that when you are reading a case, it is never going to help someone to second guess; to say that you know categorically that you could have done something different. We are not trouble shooting a behaviour problem here. When we know what happened because we were the owner, we can choose to disclose or not, and the expectation is that our disclosure will be respected. If you disagree with the person who is disclosing it is fine to say "I hear your pain and wish you well" and move on. Saying you are wrong, no matter how wrong the other person might be...is hurtful! To that end, if someone were ever to say "my otherwise calm and laid-back hippopotamus lived in my back yard for ten years and then mauled me because he was hallucinating about pink polar bears taking over his bed on the back porch" the kind thing to say is "it really hurts to lose a beloved hippo, isn't it". The unkind thing to say is "why didn't you try CBD oil" or "well all hippos with green eye lashes are known to be dangerous". when in doubt, remember that once the animal is dead...we cannot change that and any second guessing is going to be hurtful.

Keep in mind that if you feel that someone is breaking a rule or just stepping on the toes of our joint supportive culture, report the post. That will get it to the moderation team the most efficiently. Reporting posts via pm depends on people reading their pm's. Not always a good bet with me! But also if you report to one moderator and not all of us then it depends on that one person being online. It is almost 1900 right now, and I am just getting onto my computer today. Yes, I monitor via my phone but I cannot do much on the phone, and I don't have messenger on my phone and don't want it there.

We are growing quickly and new people may not realize that from the get go the group has been committed to hitting the like, heart or sad emojis as soon as a post goes up so that the person posting knows they are not alone. I know many of you are sitting on the other side of the screen in tears because you are reliving the trauma that you have experienced, and the best thing you can do to help one another is to be supportive. Once you have hit the emoji, then please post something supportive. When everyone does this, then everyone is supported.

So far we are about a month old, and have about 850 members. And so far I have read 100% of the posts and about 80% of the comments. I won't be able to do that forever, so I am relying upon everyone to work together to bolster the dream I have that no one will sit alone on the other side of the screen while they are grieving. We are an amazing group. In almost 20 thousand posts we have had to take down less than a dozen posts or comments! Wow. I am so impressed with everyone, even when we DO have to moderate. And just today the moderation team was commenting to one another that when we DO have to moderate the response has almost always been "gosh, I am so sorry, I goofed!".

Well done everyone. You are all the best and I am honoured that you liked my idea for this group well enough to help me to build the kind of community that we have all needed. Please feel free to invite anyone you feel might benefit and please continue to help make this the best corner of Facebook bar none. I am pretty sure there isn't a large group of kind hearted people quite like us.