Northern Tier Shelter Initiative Zoomies: Behavioral Euthanasia: Approaching Decisions with Care and Impacts with Compassion
About this Webinar
Conversations about euthanasia, including euthanasia decision-making, present special challenges within our roles in animal sheltering. It is important that we approach our euthanasia decision-making processes with care and respond to the impacts of those decisions with compassion. This presentation will focus on behavior-based euthanasia decisions within a collaborative, integrated care environment. Dr. Workman will present tools to guide those conversations and decisions that can provide space for both care and compassion - for sheltered animals, for shelter staff, for volunteers, and for the community. The impacts of behavior euthanasia include moral stress and injury, compassion fatigue, and burnout. Mitigating those impacts requires proactive, compassionate care and transparency. After this presentation, you will have more tools in your toolbox to confidently approach behavior euthanasia decisions with care and compassion for all.
Takeaways
- Learn an ethics guide to help facilitate difficult conversations about behavioral euthanasia.
- Gain tools to guide pathway planning and outcome decisions with a focus on behavior euthanasia decisions.
- Understand the unique impacts of behavioral euthanasia on shelter staff, volunteers, and your community.
- Access resources for mitigating compassion fatigue and moral injury, including the relationship between self-care and we-care.
Suited For
Animal welfare staff, veterinarians, technicians, and staff working in the Northern Tier (Alaska, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin), but all are welcome.
Dr. Miranda K. Workman
Ph.D., Shelter Behavior Training Liaison, ASPCA
Dr. Miranda K. Workman is the Behavioral Sciences Team Shelter Behavior Apprenticeship Liaison for the ASPCA. For over two decades, she has served animals and their humans as a certified animal behavior professional, shelter behavior professional, professor of animal behavior and anthrozoology, and a researcher. She shares her home with her husband, three dogs, three cats, a gecko, and a domestic mouse, all of whom contributed in their own way to her PhD research focused on multi-species families.