Addressing Internal Rescue Problems

Bluebonnet is always busy, but this time of year is normally especially busy. Our Bluebonnet Horse Expo is just two months away, and we're busy getting ready for it. We also have a lot of neglect reports coming in. That's normal for this time of year. The grass has burned up and the animals are starting to get thin.

We've also been dealing with a lot of burn out - both on our board of directors and in our general membership. The BOD at BEHS works hard. They manage fundraisers, manage the fostering program, manage the adoption program, maintain the website, guide the organization and so much more. And the work is never-ending, so sometimes they get burnt out.

Unfortunately I fear that the burnout has trickled down to the members this time. No one is going around screaming, "I'm burnt out, leave me alone!" (although some of us might like to). It is filtering down in smaller ways: taking too long to answer emails, ignoring emails, short/curt responses, unwillingness to help out at routine things like booths and more. And those things make the members feel we don't care. And then they start feeling burnt out, too. And that results in a nasty cycle which ends with everyone feeling burnt out, everyone getting short and snippy, and no one volunteering and too few horses getting helped.

That's not the point of being involved in rescue. The point is to help horses, but the burn out has to be healed before any horses get helped. And this isn't a topic rescue people like to talk about, either, so that makes it hard to deal with. I've heard that you shouldn't talk about burn out because it makes you appear weak. I've been told you cannot talk about burn out because it opens the door to more complaints and pressure to change how you operate.

But if we don't talk about it and address it, then it is never going to get better. For this reason, we held a meeting July 31-August 1st to talk about how we could improve the rescue. We all agreed that we couldn't add new programs - they would just add to the workload and burn out. We wanted ways to become more efficient and handle what we and do it well.

For me, one of the best parts of the meeting with the non-meeting time. That's the time where we sat around and chatted - about the rescue, our own horses, life and anything else we felt like. It gives us a chance to catch up with each other, get to know each other better, and become a better team. And that's important - we must be a good team or we cannot keep helping horses.

During the meeting, our biggest focus was on manpower. With more manpower, we can lighten workloads and do more. To that end, we've created a volunteer coordinator position and have found someone to fill it. And we're meeting again in September to compile and prioritize our list of volunteer positions in the rescue so we can start seeking to fill those spots.

I came home feeling great - I like the fact that we can sit down and address our problems and work towards solutions. We're going to be working on this for a while and will have several meetings as we fine-tune our volunteer program and address other issues with the rescue that arise.

Working on tough internal issues isn't always fun, but I like that I get to work with a great group of people who are truly passionate about helping horses. I'm proud to have their support, and I hope everyone involved in rescue finds the place where they fit and feel the camaraderie and support that I do.

Now, we can focus some more effort on helping those horses who need us.