The Best Friends Podcast

If we’re going to meet the 2025 goal of ending the killing of pets in animal shelters, we need to redefine the relationship the community has with animal shelters. What is the best way to keep people and pets together and keep animals out of shelters unless they truly need to be there?  The community supported sheltering model invites community members to play a more prominent role in saving...

Strategic planning is a phrase that can strike boredom in the hearts of, well, a lot of us!  But over the last year, from the ongoing pandemic to the political division and civil unrest, we’ve seen how critical it is for us to react and do what is necessary to continue saving lives. A strategic plan can help you do just that. This week we look at how one organization has used strategic planni...

It’s hard to imagine animal welfare and sheltering without Maddie’s Fund. From the support of individual shelters and rescue organizations to national campaigns and the vast amount of resources and programs, online courses, and conferences, Maddie's fundamentally changed what we do and how we do it. Mary Ippoliti-Smith has been there since there very beginning and has been directly responsible for...

As we say goodbye to 2020, we are taking a moment to pause and reflect. While many are saying good riddance to 2020 (justified!), we are also trying to focus on the positive things that have come out of what is possibly the most stressful and challenging year in more than a generation. When the pandemic took hold, all of us were trying to figure out the best way to navigate through it personally a...

Spoiler Alert! We want to make sure we don’t ruin Amazon Prime’s new reality show The Pack for you, so if you are planning to watch the series wait to listen to this episode until you’ve seen them all! Mark LeBlanc and his dog Ace were one of twelve teams competing to win the around the world race that challenged the contestants - both two and four-legged - through a series of different tasks desi...

As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of our lives, it meant overcoming obstacles to every aspect of our work - including fundraising. The cancelation of in-person events, for example, required quick thinking to ensure the projected revenue from those annual events wasn’t lost. It’s also been a good reminder of how we must take advantage of every opportunity, and this year’s GivingTuesday is a perfec...

In 2010 a judge put an injunction in place that prevented the city shelters in Los Angeles from not only performing any trap, neuter, return (TNR) but also barred them from talking about it with the public. The injunction was a result of a lawsuit filed by a group of people who were concerned about the impact community cats were having on wildlife. Since TNR is the only humane method of effectivel...

Animal service officers historically have been trained to function as code enforcement officers, and in many communities that is still the case. While this training is integral, it is not always a holistic representation or acknowledgment of all the tools officers have to do their work. Continuing the discussion on moving from punishment to support, we look at changing the culture one officer at a...

Before he was known as the Cat Daddy, Jackson was a shelter employee, working for the Humane Society of Boulder Valley in Colorado. He worked in several roles, including the front desk supervisor, interfacing with the public who came in to surrender their pets. It was during that time that his knack for working with cats became clear and set him on the path that would make him a household name and...

A far cry from the days of being seen as the “dogcatchers,” today’s highly skilled animal care and control officers are on the front lines in our communities, helping animals in need. In the last few years, as sheltering has seen progress towards connecting lifesaving to public safety, there’s a need to restructure the role animal services has in helping the pets and pet owners in their communitie...

You see an outdoor cat. What do you do? There’s a good chance your instinct is to  save  the cat. An outdoor cat is a cat in need. Right? What if that isn't the case? Many cats will spend their entire lives outdoors. They often have people who care for them by providing food or outdoor shelter. Others prefer to fly solo, not looking to us for help. Regardless, healthy outdoor cats are ju...

Podcasting is more popular today than ever before, giving listeners their choice of more than 1.5 million podcasts. While there are plenty of shows to feed your true crime habit, there aren’t too many podcasts that focus on saving the lives of shelter pets. One of the best and longest-running is The Community Cats Podcast, hosted by Stacy LeBaron. Much more than a podcast, the mission is “to provi...

Thirteen years ago, dogs seized from dogfighting busts were considered by most organizations to be too dangerous, too damaged, too traumatized to be rehabilitated. So it was no surprise that the effort to save the dogs from the Michael Vick dogfighting case was controversial. Some in our line of work called it reckless, and others believe it to be a waste of resources. But it is the stories of tho...

A priority for Best Friends is building a nationwide, grassroots movement of advocates who are willing to work together, all driven by the belief that people and their pets deserve compassion. We need to connect with others who share the common goal of ending the killing of cats and dogs in our nation's shelters by the year 2025 - even when that means going beyond our comfort zones. As a teacher i...

Animal care and control services are redefining the community and embracing principles that promote safe, humane communities for people and pets. Keeping families together should be a primary goal of today’s field services operations. To do that, it is critical to understand the difference between cases of true cruelty, and when it is a case of neglect brought on by a lack of resources, knowledge,...

In 2018, Abilene Animal Services (AAS) had a 55% save rate. That put them at 27th on the list of shelters nationwide most in need of help. The community wanted the shelter to succeed and the city’s elected officials took action. In May of this year, Abilene’s City Council passed a resolution that approved Best Friends to take on the role of Animal Services Director. The City of Abilene officially...

Pets need food, water, veterinary care, adequate shelter, and love. But what happens when an owner can provide endless amounts of love but struggles to deliver the rest? The lack of access to care is a major contributor to pet owners surrendering their animals to shelters. There is so much more we, as animal welfare professionals, can do for our communities. We don’t have to be their last resort....

Right now we are getting hit with some of the worst wildfires and hurricanes in recorded history. There’s civil unrest nationwide, the economy is on the brink, and of course, the pandemic has turned our lives upside down. We must be prepared to respond to emergencies - meteorological or otherwise - so that we can help pets and the people who love them. Louisiana has been battered by storms ov...

In previous episodes of the podcast, we’ve covered the lack of diversity in our industry and how that has affected our ability to save lives. We discussed ways that we can work on breaking down our unconscious biases and how we can focus on meaningful approaches to diversity, equality, and inclusion. But we’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to understanding what we need to do to contin...

What do you get when you take 18 of the best and brightest lifesaving innovators, pair them up, put them on a Zoom call and hit record? You get magic! The Best Friends Professional Development Symposium is happening next week. The two-day, online event features short, fast-paced presentations designed to keep attendees engaged and excited. But every single presenter has so much more to share. That...

COVID-19 has turned the world upside down. In our lives, both professionally and personally, we’ve had to make big changes. From working at home to wearing masks to the operational changes we've had to make, life is a whole lot different than it was 6 months ago. And the restrictions on travel and gatherings meant animal welfare's "conference season" was over before it even started. The Best...

Georgia’s efforts to save pets have come a long way in the last few years. The 2019 lifesaving progress dataset showed that statewide, Georgia increased lifesaving by more than 30-percent over the previous year. Metro Atlanta is a sprawling area consisting of 29 counties and two of them, Fulton and Dekalb, have undergone a radical transformation over the last 7 years.   Rebecca Guinn fou...

Idaho may not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of animal welfare, but it should! Two years ago, a coalition was formed in an attempt to unite the shelters and organizations spread out over this vast, mostly rural state. The Idaho Shelter Coalition helped drive a 49.4% reduction in shelter killing in 2019, a result that has earned them the 2020 Best Friends Network Collective Im...

Fewer pets in shelters. More resources for people with pets. More animal-friendly communities. Healthier, happier animals with safe places to call home. These are our shared goals. But are we all doing as much as we can to achieve them? For example, what does your pet adoption process look like? Is it welcoming, conversation-based, and solution-oriented? Or is it full of roadblocks such as home vi...

Spay and neuter is the only way! We shouldn’t spend time or money doing anything else! Well, that’s not true at all, but there are still too many people who think that is the case. Widely available low-cost spay and neuter services are a critical part of the lifesaving program mix, but it is just one part of the recipe.  So how much of your available resources should go to spay and neuter ser...