Intentional Listening: Lessons from Community-Centered Pet Care

What does it really mean to listen and truly understand what a community needs? In this Q&A between Institute for Human-Animal Connection student Sarah Conners and veterinarian Sarah Reidenbach of Ruthless Kindness, Sarah Reidenbach shares how intentional listening and trust-building have shaped her organization's work expanding pet care access in Napa, California with a candid look at what community-centered care can look like in practice.

Listening. A concept so well-known and yet can be so misunderstood. Often, listening becomes a process of preparing our response instead of truly reflecting on what another individual is saying. Quick listening usually comes with a perspective of “I get it, I know what they need.” Alternatively, intentional listening comes with a perspective of “I want to explore this need together, to ensure we address it properly.” Intentional listening is where meaningful connection and trust can be created. However, what does intentional listening truly mean? What does it look like? How can it be a bridge to expanding access to pet care resources?

Intentional listening and building trust were the themes of the conversation I had with veterinarian Sarah Reidenbach from Ruthless Kindness in California. Since partnering with PetSmart Charities and the Institute for Human-Animal Connection (IHAC), Ruthless Kindness has evolved in its journey and understanding of intentional listening and connecting with its communities to expand access to pet care resources. 

It all began in 2019 when Ruthless Kindness started noticing a need for expanding access to pet care services and the challenges many community members were facing in gaining access to these services. In our conversation, Sarah discussed her personal experience upon co-founding Ruthless Kindness and how she and her team saw the gap in the services they provided for companion pets. Unfortunately, they also noticed how they would leave without acknowledging each family’s circumstances and the barriers those families might be facing in trying to provide for their companion pet. As Ruthless Kindness continued to explore this concept, they received requests to expand their resources. Luckily, that's when Ruthless Kindness came across the PetSmart Charities Incubator grant, in partnership with IHAC, and applied. 

As an Incubator grantee, Ruthless Kindness decided to focus their work in Napa, California, where many pet care resources were neither affordable nor accessible. They also found that no veterinary hospitals had Spanish-speaking staff, despite being in predominantly Spanish-speaking communities. As they began engaging with the community, Sarah described how Ruthless Kindness wanted to emphasize participation, patience, and showing up in the Napa community. Their goals stemmed from a place of intentionally connecting with community members to get to know each other and to never leave the community with empty promises. Sarah explained that this looked like consistently showing up to community events, slowing down to have meaningful conversations, and taking time to reflect on those conversations. Sarah explained the importance in this stage of trust building to “not assume what a community needs and how they need it delivered.”

The PetSmart Charities’ Incubator project utilizes Facilitating Power’s Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership as the foundational framework for each partner to assess, develop, and strengthen their community engagement efforts. The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership is broken down into five stages: ignore, inform, consult, involve, collaborate, and defer to. This tool gives animal welfare organizations the opportunity to assess and understand what stage they are at with their community engagement and identify ways in which they can learn from, collaborate, and eventually share ownership of the work with the community.

Where is Ruthless Kindness in their community engagement to ownership now? 

Sarah stated they are in the involve stage, with a “strong eye on the end.” At the involve stage of the spectrum, Ruthless Kindness is prioritizing community-identified needs and strengths as part of the planning process. To keep moving forward, Ruthless Kindness is working on increasing the number of community members actively part of the implementation of their programming. Sarah explained that the ultimate goal is to further develop programming and services that are built and run by the community. Ruthless Kindness still prioritizes engaging with the community by expanding partnerships and settling deeper into their trusting relationship with Napa. Sarah compared the noticeable shift in Ruthless Kindness’ process to intentional listening and growing trust with the Napa community to a snow globe: 

When we are moving through the motions of supplying resources too fast or when a snow globe is shaken, and snow is everywhere, we might miss what the true needs are when the snow has settled. 

What is Ruthless Kindness currently working on and what challenges have they been facing? 

First and foremost, Sarah explained that Ruthless Kindness is continuing to develop and expand their veterinary care services and crisis boarding. Their veterinary care services include providing vaccinations and check-ups for companion pets. Their crisis boarding includes providing safe spaces for companion pets during cases of domestic violence. Additionally, they are working on expanding their services to more places and continuing to move closer to deferring to community ownership. One of the challenges that Ruthless Kindness is facing is ensuring financial sustainability to continue to expand services. Sarah described how many grant applications will require criteria that do not align with what the community needs, or they require data that is uncomfortable to request from community members. Ruthless Kindness is strong in their values of not wanting to accept money that would lead to uncomfortable actions or break the trust and relationship to their communities. So, they prioritize the community first while working towards financial sustainability plans and growing with the needs of the community.

As Ruthless Kindness prioritizes community-centered values more, they have seen how that positively impacts community members. For example, students from a local high school in the Napa community have been inspired to explore their passions in pursuing veterinary care. Community members have received validation, support, and guidance on navigating their challenges and barriers to keeping their companion pets safe. The intentional actions of listening and building trust have created an environment of empowerment for community members and strengthened the relationships and partnerships Ruthless Kindness makes with the community. 

When asked what advice Sarah would like to give other organizations who are considering more community-centered veterinary work, Sarah replied, “always give before you get.” For example, she recommends giving out free pet supply resources first to work on building meaningful relationships, not transactional ones. She also emphasized the importance of not focusing on what data the organization needs, how many resources to get, or assuming what resources a community needs. 

Finally, I asked Sarah for one word to describe the beginning of their journey with PetSmart Charities and IHAC and one word for where the organization is now. Sarah’s word for the beginning is “small.” They not only had a smaller team, but also provided quick, small amounts of listening in their community engagement. However, Sarah says that her word for where Ruthless Kindness is now is “open.” She explains that the organization is flexible, open to everyone, and has a priority of community-centered approaches to expand access to care. 

These wonderful updates from Sarah demonstrate the power that comes from slowing down and being intentional about how to approach expanding access to pet care resources. A posture of intentional listening, as demonstrated in the Ruthless Kindness journey, resulted in more impactful and deeper relationships built on a foundation of trust. Meaningful change can be made to expand access to pet care resources, and hope grows within the spirit of taking a step to try, together.

This article was written by Sarah Conners, 

Institute for Human-Animal Connection graduate research assistant.