How do I keep going when I love the work but it's draining me?

You do the hands-on work of saving animals, the holding, the soothing, the skilled and difficult tasks, for a fraction of the vet's pay and none of the title. For a long time the love of it refilled what the job drained. Now you are noticing that reserve running low. That is not you failing. That is a real limit, and it deserves honesty. Love is a powerful fuel, but it was never meant to be the only one. When the pay is thin and the recognition thinner, love ends up covering the whole gap, and eventually it cannot. Feeling depleted does not mean you have stopped caring about the animals. It means you have been asked to run on care alone for too long, and no one can do that forever. So stop asking your love to do all the work. Look honestly at what would actually refill you: better pay, a specialty credential, a clinic that treats techs as more than cheap hands, or simply firmer limits on what you give. Pick one concrete change and move toward it this month. Protecting yourself is not a betrayal of the animals. It is how you stay in a field that needs people like you to last.