Sometimes love alone cannot heal the deepest of wounds. Jeannine Moga, today's guest blogger, has shared her life with many animals, some of whom came into her life with the tell-tale signs of suffering from trauma. Many of us who have rescued animals can relate to Jeannine's experiences and sentiment that sometimes love is not enough to help the animals who cross our paths.

When Love Is Not Enough
By Jeannine Moga

There was a time when I thought that love and effort could right any wrong, could heal any hurt, could mend that which was broken. That was before I welcomed a severely traumatized animal into my home. I learned the hard way that love is not enough.

Modern life is arguably traumatic. Humans subject one another to countless forms of horror and it seems that we are over-exposed, on a daily basis, to images that shock and violate our sense of security. Sometimes the images that are most horrifying are those involving innocent victims – children and animals – who cannot speak for themselves.

Recent memory provides me with far too many examples of traumatized victims, each one seared into my brain with excruciating detail. Animals and their people clinging to rooftops after Hurricane Katrina… dogs being hauled away after fighting rings are exposed… horses receiving emergency care after being shot by kids on a nasty “joy ride”…. With any luck, and hopefully some incredibly patient, devoted, and skilled human intervention, some of these victims will become resilient survivors who can go on to live full lives.

However, let us not lose sight of the fact that trauma changes those who experience it on a fundamental, cellular level. Healing the physical wounds is only half the battle – and with survivors who can’t talk, healing the emotional wounds is especially tricky.

Emotional wounds for animals, like with people, tend to play out behaviorally – and so many of use who rescue animals find ourselves working with complicated behavioral puzzles with no clear solutions. Be cautious of those who portend to have a fool-proof way of fixing an animal’s behavior problem, and run in the other direction when they tell you that _________ (insert chosen snake oil here) is the secret to healing a broken spirit.

Truth be told, it’s not love, or a particular training method, or a specific supplement, that resolves the experience of being abused, abandoned, or broken. As with humans, healing the hurt is a much more complicated job.

Sometimes our best hope is to help our animals learn how to live each day safer than the last, or to appreciate what it feels like to be touched by a kind and gentle human hand. And these gains, however small they may seem, are bigger and grander than the love that inspires them.

Read Jeannine's article, Do Pets Show Post-Traumatic Stress?

Jeannine Moga, MA, MSW, LICSW is a social worker and human-animal bond specialist at the University of Minnesota Veterinary Medical Center, and an editorial advisory board member for Star Tribune Pet Central. www.cvm.umn.edu/vmc/aboutvmc/clientsupport.html