Nobody prepared me for the fact that one day I would spend hours reading hatred in order to protect a community built on compassion.
When I first started working in animal welfare, I understood that there would be days I would never forget. I knew there would be dogs whose stories would stay with me long after I had switched off the computer. I accepted that because it comes with the territory. You cannot care deeply about animals without accepting that, sometimes, you will also carry the weight of their suffering.
What I never expected was that one of the heaviest parts of the job wouldn’t come from the dogs at all.
It came from the comments beneath the stories we tell.
Like every organisation that uses social media, we moderate our pages. That probably sounds like a routine administrative task, something that sits quietly on a list alongside answering emails or updating a website. In reality, it has become one of the most important things we do because our comments tell us what people are thinking. They reveal what people understand, what they don’t understand and, perhaps most importantly, where we still have work to do. Some of our most meaningful conversations have started because somebody asked a question that made us stop and think.
That is why I read every comment. If we stop listening, we stop learning.
This week I sat down intending to spend an hour or so working through notifications. Many came from people who were genuinely heartbroken by what they had seen. Others shared thoughtful opinions, asked difficult questions or challenged us in ways that made me think more deeply about our work. Those are the conversations that make social media worthwhile because they remind me that behind every profile picture is another human being trying to make sense of a world that can sometimes feel impossibly cruel.
But that wasn’t all I read.
Before I could reach the thoughtful comments, I had to read comments describing people as subhuman. I had to read comments claiming all Muslims hate dogs. I had to read comments attacking Turkish people rather than questioning Turkish policy. I had to read comments wishing entire countries would disappear, comments telling people they deserved to die and comments accusing us of profiting from suffering while knowing absolutely nothing about the work we do.
Every single one of those comments demanded my attention because I couldn’t simply delete them without understanding them first. I had to decide whether somebody was criticising legislation or condemning an entire nation. I had to work out whether a question came from genuine curiosity or from prejudice disguised as concern. I had to distinguish between grief, anger, misinformation and hatred because each one requires a different response.
It was somewhere in the middle of that process that I realised something I had never really thought about before.
Before I could remove the hatred from our community, I had to let it pass through my own mind.
That thought has stayed with me ever since because it explains something I had never been able to put into words. Animal welfare has changed. We still carry the stories of the dogs we couldn’t save, the dogs who suffered and the dogs whose photographs stay with us long after everyone else has moved on, but social media has added another layer that previous generations of rescuers never had to experience. Today we don’t just witness cruelty. We also absorb the world’s reaction to it.
Sometimes that reaction is extraordinary. It brings together strangers from different countries who want nothing more than to help. It raises money for emergency surgery, finds homes for forgotten dogs and creates conversations that genuinely change the way people think. Those moments are the reason we keep doing what we do.
Sometimes, however, the reaction is something very different. Compassion gives way to prejudice. Grief becomes hatred. People stop talking about the dogs altogether and begin attacking religions, countries and entire populations. Before anybody else sees those comments, somebody has to read them, understand them and decide whether they belong in a community that was created to improve the lives of animals.
That responsibility is invisible.
Nobody thanks you for the comments that never appear because they were removed before they caused harm. Nobody sees the abuse you quietly delete or the hatred that never reaches your supporters because you intercepted it first. They simply experience a page where conversations remain focused on the dogs, never realising how much work went into protecting that space.
I don’t write this because I resent that responsibility. In many ways it has become one of the most valuable parts of my work because reading the comments teaches me as much as writing the articles. It tells me where misunderstanding exists, where education is needed and where people are genuinely searching for answers. Without those comments, I would never have written some of the articles that have mattered most.
What I hadn’t appreciated until now was the emotional price of listening properly.
You cannot protect a compassionate community from hatred without exposing yourself to that hatred first. You cannot remove prejudice without reading it. You cannot challenge misinformation without first allowing it into your own thoughts long enough to understand it.
Perhaps that is one of the newest forms of emotional labour in animal welfare.
It doesn’t happen in a veterinary clinic or a rescue vehicle. It happens quietly, behind a computer screen, while the rest of the world scrolls past.
And somehow, despite being repeated every single day by people working across animal welfare, rescue and conservation, it is a part of the job that almost nobody ever talks about.