Jess Townsend | The Case for Pacing Yourself in Animal Welfare
Jess Townsend | The Case for Pacing Yourself in Animal Welfare
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Jess Townsend, Executive Director of Midcoast Humane, has spent 20 years in animal welfare, but her path into the field began with a Siamese cat and a realization that her work needed to matter. Today, she leads an organization serving 39 towns across Midcoast Maine through two shelters and a thrift store.
Maine’s geography creates unique challenges for animal welfare. Much of the state is rural, veterinary access can be limited, and families can face housing and employment insecurity. Townsend explains that sometimes the animal isn’t actually the root of the problem.
“The dog is a symptom.”
Midcoast Humane operates a pet food pantry and an intake diversion program, but Townsend points out that the underlying resources people need can themselves be stretched beyond capacity. Sometimes, despite every effort to help a family keep their pet, taking the animal into the shelter is still the kindest option available.
The challenges facing Maine have also changed. Owner surrenders have increased while stray intake has declined, and the organization’s ability to bring animals in from other states has decreased. COVID also contributed to a loss of veterinary capacity, particularly as rural veterinarians retired and high-volume spay/neuter services became less available.
Townsend believes the answer requires getting ahead of these problems rather than waiting until they become emergencies.
“I’m standing on the train tracks and I see the train coming from me. Hasn’t gotten here yet. Let’s step off the tracks before we get there.”
After two decades in the field, Townsend has also learned an important lesson about sustainability: animal welfare is a marathon, not a sprint.
Early in her career, she routinely worked extraordinarily long hours, including stretches where she worked 24 hours straight. Eventually, she realized that approach wasn’t sustainable.
“You can’t sprint a marathon, and this is a marathon.”
Today, that perspective influences how she leads. Townsend encourages her team to acknowledge difficult moments without allowing one setback to overshadow everything else that is going right.
If an animal is lost, it is appropriate to grieve. But there are still other animals waiting for help, adoptions that happened that day, and work that needs to continue.
“What is the big picture and what are we doing well and what are our successes and what are we celebrating?”
Townsend is also particularly conscious of how emotions spread within an animal shelter. Staff members are often highly empathetic, and negative emotions can quickly affect an entire workplace. She encourages people to be aware of their own emotional capacity and to respect the capacity of their coworkers.
That includes recognizing that sometimes someone simply isn’t in a place to take on another person’s difficult experience.
For Townsend, creating a healthy organizational culture is essential to keeping people in animal welfare for the long term.
Ultimately, her goal is straightforward:
“I just want to leave all of this better than we found it.”
For Midcoast Humane, that means building a shelter that serves its region well, where people trust the organization with their pets and employees are proud to work there. And for Townsend, it means making her corner of animal welfare stronger than it was when she arrived.
If you’re passionate about helping animals, join the Doobert community where volunteers, fosters, transporters, and organizations work together to save lives every day. Visit Doobert.com to get involved.
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Do you know any Top Dogs we should interview? We’re always looking for amazing people in animal welfare to feature on the podcast. Send us an email at tdp@doobert.com.
