Chronicles of alienated labor by Aline Torterat, Occupational physician ----
Marie-Chantale, independent zootherapist[1] ---- I'm an autodidact. After CAP secretariat,
I started working 18 years as a veterinary assistant, "on the job". I discovered my
pleasure to take care of animals, especially dogs. After a few years, I started in dog
training with a companion. I then realized how much care taken in these animals could have
therapeutic virtues. First, taking young trainees facilities for children in difficulty.
That the metamorphosed to see and understand the attachment to their dog person. Their
behavior softened almost magically. And also because a man who had lost a child and who
had come to buy a puppy. The idea came to me at that time to use animals as mediators
emotional with people with Alzheimer's in nursing homes and children in the
medico-educational Institutes (IME). Of PFT, it is called! I materialized my project based
association, now recognized public interest, in which I was initially the only employee.
With the help of facilitators or aides, I run workshops in the afternoon, motor, memory,
each lasting one hour. For example to walk the dog on a leash to walk to the motor, throw
colored balloons for memory. Establishments were fifteen. I maintain all the animals home.
I currently have eight dogs at home, five cats and a rabbit. There are five dogs and three
cats that belong to me, the others are the property of the association. So I work all the
time and am paid for my interventions. Is not enough money. It uses "benefactors" such as
bridge clubs, Lions Clubs, etc.., Retirement homes also pay a little. It's heavy. And I
had personal problems, all at the same time: the disappearance of the aunt who raised me,
my husband who breaks a blade, my daughter does not fit the school system in a trailer
camp with five dogs and three cats, pending completion of work from home without counting
the animals to be fed and clean. It all alone all the time and free ...
My body dropped, I felt d?c?bl?e. I could not do anything, annihilated, inert. I had to
stop and stop my workshops. I need supervision told my psychologist. Ultimately, I am
completely chained myself. I just understand. Imagine mounting a professional "business"
which is based on the entanglement of charity, volunteering, wage labor, family life and
professional life without boundaries, to erase the labor relations of subordination.
Basically, reporting relationships, working in a split between those who prescribe and
those who toil to make it all possible, it can be cleared ideas and allows to set limits
... I'm asking too much.
[1] Only the name is changed, the rest is authentic.
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