Animal Shelters & Rescues
Veterinarian of Record Online Toolkit
Organized and wrote all content for Shelters United's first-of-its-kind online toolkit VetOfRecord.com, which empowers shelters and rescues to secure affordable, high-quality veterinary care through strategic partnerships with veterinary professionals. This innovative resource paves the way for a brighter future for pets awaiting adoption, offering a vital solution to one of the most pressing challenges in animal welfare today.
How Individuals Help Drive the No-Kill Movement
Best Friends has long championed the power of individual action in animal welfare. After all, the organization was founded by a group of passionate advocates who believed that even one person could make a difference. That philosophy propelled the organization to become a leader in the movement, working toward ending the killing of animals in shelters and achieving no-kill nationwide in 2025.
At their best, shelters are a resource in their communities for truly homeless pets. The public is an important part of the solution as well — from choosing adoption to supporting their local shelter and everything in between. Keeping pets out of shelters who don’t truly need those resources is critical too and something unsung heroes around the country do every day. Whether your passion is newborn kittens or senior dogs, there’s always a need for more helping hands.
The Power of One
Exploring Ways Shelters and Rescues Can Close Gaps to Accessing Care
Liz Finch: Last week we ended our interview just as we were getting to the good stuff: how shelters and rescues can work around the current challenges in veterinary care to make sure communities are getting the services they need. So where do you want to start?
Aimee St. Arnaud: I would start by saying we all have to be mindful that, as much as we are frustrated that we can’t get a pregnant cat in for a spay or that prices have doubled, clinic staff are just as frustrated by their circumstances. Many of these people live for spay/neuter and it’s really hard on them when they can’t meet the demand.
Is your messaging successfully communicating your organizations's DEI focus?
The year 2020 was pivotal in many ways. There was COVID, of course, with all its subsequent disruptions. And then there was what National Public Radio (NPR) dubbed "the Summer of Racial Reckoning,” when “George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery all became part of a rallying cry in cities and towns across the country, forcing the United States to confront the racism of its past and present.”
An interview with Sue Cosby, senior director of lifesaving centers
Across the country, animal shelters and rescue groups are facing difficulties accessing veterinary services, including spay and neuter. It’s a nearly universal struggle that is slowing the placement of animals as groups wait until spay or neuter surgeries are complete before sending an adopted animal to a home. I sat down with Best Friends senior director of lifesaving centers Sue Cosby, who has worked in animal sheltering since 2000, to hear her perspective on releasing intact animals to adoptive homes.
The paradox of adopting out unaltered animals
2022 National Dataset
Shows Mix of Ups and Downs
When Best Friends shared 2021’s national shelter data last year, it needed a bit of context. After all, that year’s data came on the heels of 2020’s unprecedented gains in lifesaving, which were inextricably linked to COVID’s surprisingly positive impact on both intake and outcomes. The data from 2021 was a course correction of sorts, a return to “normal” after an unusual year. This year’s dataset likewise needs a frame of reference. Although there are some results more in line with what we expect in year-over-year changes (minus COVID’s exception), there are some highs and lows to share from 2021 to 2022.
We all know spay/neuter is the key to humanely managing populations of animals and that the best place for a pet is in a loving home. What does it mean, then, when those principles are at odds and adopted animals remain in shelters waiting for an opening in severely backlogged surgery schedules? When does a lifesaving tool like spay/neuter become a barrier to saving lives?
Are spay/neuter requirements changing lives or standing in the way of lifesaving?
Making the jump from private practice to shelter medicine
Conference panelists share tips for attracting vet candidates to the field
We know all about the veterinary crisis that exists in multiple industries today. So, it was no surprise that a panel on “How to recruit, develop and support shelter vets” presented at the recent Best Friends National Conference drew a sizable and engaged audience. What was surprising, however, was that more than a few members of that audience weren’t aware of the level of competition there is to fill shelter vet positions today.
“When I mentioned at the conference how much competition there is for vets, people were startled,” says panel member Jennifer Federico, DVM, animal services director for Wake County Animal Center in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I don't think people realized how many shelter jobs are out there, much less how many private practice and corporate positions are available.”
Best Friends, Network partners take steps to increase the number of HQHVSN professionals
Everyone in animal welfare is feeling the pinch of not having enough vets around, especially those who rely on high-quality, high-volume spay/neuter (HQHVSN) personnel to crank out lots of surgeries in a short time. There was a shortage of such specialized vets and vet techs even before our industry began seeing such vet positions sit vacant for months or even years, but COVID only made it worse. In turn, the lack of adequate spay/neuter services continues to account for some of the increase in shelter intakes, but most particularly, the number of kittens swelling community cat colonies and swamping animal welfare organizations of all stripes.
Making More Vets
“Volunteers are a workforce, not a workload.”
That’s one of Sarah Sukhram’s favorite sayings, and as the volunteer and foster care coordinator at Pasco County Animal Services (PCAS) in Florida, she probably finds herself saying it often. After all, getting staff on board with welcoming volunteers into various roles can be challenging. But PCAS has found a way not just to get staff buy-in, but to get their buy-in when volunteers step into very non-traditional volunteer roles.
Volunteers prove they can do more than just walk dogs or play with cats
End-of-Year Fundraising Tips
2020 data shows donors continue
to support charitable needs
Best Friends has been addressing the financial impact of COVID-19 on animal shelters and rescues since the earliest days of the pandemic. We’ve used these pages to talk about the need for adjusting processes and funding models to stay solvent, share effective virtual fundraising ideas and most recently, remind us to lead with gratitude in all our asks.
Community Cat Programs:
Looking Back on Past Successes, Charting a New Future
It’s no secret that Best Friends is a huge proponent of community cat programs (CCPs) as the key to increasing cat lifesaving in shelters. Since 2012, our intensive approach of embedding CCP employees within shelters for three-year periods has helped more than a dozen municipal agencies drastically increase their lifesaving through a combination of targeted trap-neuter-vaccinate-return (TNVR), return-to-field (RTF) and complaint mitigation. During that time, we’ve also realized that the “formula” for CCP success works everywhere—no matter the size or geographic location of a shelter—that success could happen even faster than expected and by shortening the timeline, we could help more agencies.
Feral cats aren’t the only felines who deserve to remain in their neighborhood homes
How many of us have found a friendly stray cat hanging out on our front porch or chilling at the neighborhood park and thought, “Oh, no! I better save this poor abandoned kitty!”?
Back in the day, I probably rescued at least half a dozen cats off the street and took them to a shelter believing they would be adopted if their owners didn’t reclaim them. Now that I’ve spent more than 14 years working in animal welfare, I have a different perspective.
The Dilemma of the Friendly Outdoor Cat
ASV releases updated Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters
The Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV) just released the second edition of the Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters (“guidelines”). The guidelines were originally created in 2010 to provide a trustworthy resource for the housing, husbandry, medical, and behavioral care of animals living in animal shelters. Following an extensive review process, the guidelines have been updated to include expanded research and information in shelter veterinary medicine. ASV Executive Director Tom Van Winkle provided context for the changes upon release.
Last week, Best Friends’ CEO Julie Castle devoted her blog to the topic of systemic racism that exists within animal welfare. Looking around at those we work with every day, it is sobering to confirm that “the voices at our table are not the voices of all of America.”
The staff at Best Friends is ready for that to change. We understand that we must engage in the long overdue, difficult work of honest self-reflection and personal accountability.
Best Friends Staff Open Up about Their Experiences with Racism in Animal Welfare
The challenges in rural America are vastly different from what we see in many cities. The distance between people and services, or the complete lack of services, can be particularly challenging. The challenges faced by Indigenous peoples living on rural reservations are often similar to other rural areas, but in the Navajo Nation they are amplified.
One of the closest reservations to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Southern Utah, the vast and sprawling Navajo Nation (or Diné Bikéyah) spreads across roughly 27,000 square miles of land in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. For comparison, that’s slightly more than the state of West Virginia.
Building Bridges on the Navajo Nation
New Report Shows How Social Vulnerability Affects Lifesaving
After revealing that the primary reasons pets end up in shelters are due to human circumstances, it was apparent that a deeper understanding of those circumstances was required if we were going to understand the communities where pets were most vulnerable. We had suspected that in areas where the human population was more vulnerable, pets would be too, and this research confirmed it—though it might not be for all the same reasons we had thought.
Best Friends cat expert shares neonatal care tips for foster
Last week we talked about how you can use fosters to care for one of the toughest population groups in the shelter: ringworm kittens. This week, we’re here to take on another group that routinely strains resources and comprises a large percentage of animals losing their lives in both shelters and rescue groups: neonatal kittens.
Tricks of the Trade
Managing our mental health
For all the highs that come with helping animals, the work also comes with some pretty low lows. Animals come to us sick or gravely injured, we have highly charged interactions with people and we witness sometimes tragic situations where we can’t help. Daily. Those are heavy loads for anyone to bear, much less the idealistic, passionate kind of people who gravitate to animal welfare.
When rescuers need rescuing:
Getting a handle on viral outbreaks
in your dog populations
In a January 2023 editorial, Best Friends medical director Erin Katribe, DVM, talked about how to prevent and manage distemper, parvovirus, and canine influenza in shelter environments. She included a lot of vital information in the piece, and here is a summary of the high points followed by links to other resources to help your shelter or rescue keep dogs healthy while they are in your care.
First, it’s important to know the difference between these viruses – their symptoms, how they are spread, and how they respond to treatment:
Charting Progress and Challenges in the Fight Against Breed Restrictions
Our latest review of 2019 shelter data proves that things are looking up for dogs in shelters. In fact, last year saw a record save rate of 85.2% for our canine friends. Although this boon extends to all breeds, we are still fighting restrictions when it comes to specific breeds, oftentimes pit bulls.
Harnessing the Power of Story
to Benefit your Bottom Line
Stories are everywhere. Just in the first few hours of my day, I heard a story on National Public Radio about the state of the economy; saw a Facebook video about a tiny puppy trying to befriend adult dogs 10 times his size; and learned how the web tool Trello could help me get more organized thanks to experiences shared by my coworkers. I even told a friend the story of my experience volunteering as a Saturday tour guide for a wildlife sanctuary.
The first three instances are examples of how stories educate, entertain and help us to understand larger concepts through specific examples. The final instance taps into how story can help an organization gain vital supporters and funders.
