These free communications kits will help you get word out about fostering, space crises, and more
This is a guest post written by Human Animal Support Services and HeARTs Speak. When you share your organization’s support for keeping people and pets together, it helps spread awareness of new kinds of safety net support available to members of your community—while also helping to redefine the role of animal services and reduce judgment of families in crisis. But getting the word out about community-focused sheltering isn’t always easy, especially for organizations with small (or even nonexistent) marketing and...
Animal Welfare Has a Cruelty to People Problem
These are real quotes taken from different animals organizations’ actual social media posts: “I told them never to get another dog again because they are shitty people.” “Shitty humans should never have dogs, cats, children or any other dependents.” “I would go live in my travel trailer hitched to my Jeep in the Walmart parking lot before I would dump my dogs anywhere let alone in a high kill shelter!” “Horrible people, pray they never get another animal.” “If you can’t afford...
Why Would Anyone Buy a Dog From a Backyard Breeder?
Why would anyone buy a dog from a “backyard breeder”? Why wouldn’t they come to a shelter instead? Something as simple as a shelter only being open on weekdays, when most people are at work, is one of the 11 barriers we’ve identified here that can make the difference between coming to a shelter, or acquiring a pet in another way like from a breeder. To be clear: we are not advocating for people to buy pets from breeders. Rather, we must recognize, and fix, the ways we are making it hard for good people to...
These Animal Service Officers Carry Bags of Fence-Fixing Gear, All Donated, in Their Trucks
Animal service officers with Cabot Animal Support Services carry bags of fence-mending tools around on their trucks. When a dog gets loose, or if they see a fence with a hole in it leaving the potential for a dog to get loose, the ASOs fix the fence. This is Cabot’s Fences for Fido program. It’s as simple as that. The reason this program exists is more complicated. Five years ago, CASS’s director Mike Wheeler wrote a citation for a man whose dog got out. The dog got out again. Mike wrote another citation. ...
6 Tips for Building a Barrier-Free, Inclusive Foster Base
The ASPCA LA Foster Program launched in 2017 in partnership with the County of Los Angeles Department of Animal Care and Control (LA DACC). The first step we took to creating our foster volunteer base was making kitten fostering accessible to anyone who wanted to help. We also dedicated our efforts to supporting a successful foster experience by focusing on 4–8-week-old kittens who were still at risk in the shelter and yet were an easy group of kittens for new fosters to care for. Within the first year of our program, foster...
These Innovators Are Working To Make Veterinary Care More Accessible To All
Veterinary care is expensive, and can be hard to access—leading to pets going without needed treatments, and being given up to shelters by their families, who believe this is the only way for a loved pet to get the care they need. The Open Door Veterinary Collective is working to change that. This nonprofit, founded in 2021, is developing a business model for nonprofit, for-profit, and government veterinary clinics that prioritizes access to care, and increased revenue. Open Door sees major upsides for shelters and the communities they...
This Shelter’s Bonded Pairs Program Has Gotten 218 Pairs of Pets Into Loving Homes
This story comes out of Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson, Arizona—stay tuned to our social media for more very inspiring, very HASS-y stories about how volunteers are integrated into community-focused animal organizations! And please reach out to let us know if you have a great story to share, about awesome volunteers or anything else! Some longtime volunteers at Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson, Arizona, kept having their hearts broken by pairs of pets who they knew came from the same home, but were separated once they arrived at the...
How This Officer Worked Differently to Keep a Cat Safe While His Owner Was Hospitalized
This National Animal Care & Control Appreciation Week, we’re sharing stories that show the absolutely critical role field services officers play in HASS’s community-focused model of animal services. This story comes out of Kitsap Humane Society in Silverdale, Washington—stay tuned for more very inspiring, very HASS-y field services stories on social media! And please reach out to let us know if you have a great story to share about the ways your organization is implementing the HASS model to keep people and pets together...
How One Shelter Recruited 2,000 Fosters in a Year and a Half
When we heard about how Cincinnati Animal CARE Humane Society, in Cincinnati, Ohio, went from having zero fosters, to nearly 2,000 fosters, in just a year and a half—we obviously had to find out more! We recently spoke with foster coordinator Amanda Graus about how in the world she did it, and lessons for other groups that want to build out their foster programs and become foster-centric organizations. The following Q&A has been edited for length because honestly we could have talked to Amanda about fostering all day. Because Peeka...
Pet Homelessness Shouldn’t Be Happening: Here’s How Companies and Individuals Can Help
Despite Americans’ overall affection for pets, the reality is that at any given time nearly 48 million cats and dogs don’t have a home in the U.S. For years, workers and volunteers at animal shelters have faced an uphill battle as they selflessly combat pet homelessness. At the forefront of this massive challenge is Dr. Ellen Jefferson, an animal welfare advocate, longtime pet shelter veterinarian, and president and CEO of the Texas animal shelter Austin Pets Alive. TriplePundit spoke with Dr. Jefferson from her office...
