How I Lost My Cat, and Found My Community (and Found My Cat)
Chappy got out of the house. It was a freak accident, on a Sunday morning in February. The wind blew the door open, while my husband Ray brought an Instacart order in from the front stoop. The noise scared our cat, our shy, happy, spoiled, fluffy, black-and-white prince, and he jumped through the open door. Chappy, who hadn’t spent a moment outdoors since he was picked up by a cat rescue group as a baby kitten, and hadn’t shown the slightest inclination to make a break for it in the six years we’d had him, tried...
It’s Raining Cats and Kittens: How to Save More Feline Lives This Kitten Season
[embedded content] It’s raining cats and…kittens. Kitten season is upon us and feline lifesaving is front of mind. We’ve convened a panel of experts to share their best kitten season tips, tools, and tricks to help you save lives this year—and prevent a seasonal population boom in years to come. Our Q&A-style panel includes Peter Wolf, Senior Strategist for Shelter and Community Research at Best Friends Animal Society; Monica Tarant, Chief Innovation Officer: Feline Lifesaving at Cincinnati Animal CARE with the...
Get Inspired With 5 Must-See Webinars!
We’ve been offering webinars galore in 2023. They’re on so many of the critical topics relating to the work at hand of keeping families together, and pets alive, while focusing on the humans who are at the very heart of animal welfare. Here are five you don’t want to miss—and stay tuned for more, more, more! We’ve got some incredible, super inspiring, and very actionable webinars planned for the coming months. Crisis Sheltering for Pets: Keeping People and Pets Together There are times when someone...
People, Pets, and Purpose: Derrick Garrett, Founder of Zoundz Music For Pets
[embedded content] Pets get stressed at the vet. They get upset in the car. Being home alone isn’t always a picnic. And of course animal shelters can be one of the most stressful environments for pets, with the noise, smells, and constant activity—and the stress can lead to behavior that makes it harder for pets to get adopted, and can even put their lives at risk. Enter Derrick Garrett. Derrick is a successful music producer and engineer who’s worked with Bobby Brown, the Spin Doctors, Chantay Savage, K-Ci & JoJo, and...
Crisis Sheltering for Pets: Keeping People and Pets Together
[embedded content] There are times when someone can’t take care of their pet on a temporary basis, because of a medical emergency, loss of housing, or another short-term crisis. The traditional sheltering response is to permanently separate the pet from their owner, but more and more organizations are providing crisis sheltering instead—boarding the pet at the shelter, or placing them in a foster home, for a limited amount of time. How does crisis sheltering work, and how can you get started? We’ve gathered experts from...
Letter From Vincent: A Dispatch From the Director of HASS
I’ve been thinking a lot about people. About the people we work with, and the people in the communities we serve. We don’t always talk about people in animal welfare, but we should, because we’ve discovered at HASS that you can’t aid in animal welfare without coming to the aid of people—or without people helping you. This week, I am joining more than 2,500 of my friends and colleagues at HSUS Animal Care Expo in New Orleans. I’ve known many of these committed animal welfare professionals for two and a...
Supporting Both Ends of the Leash: What Community Support Looks Like in a HASS Pilot Shelter
[embedded content] We know that people and pets need support to stay together through challenging times—but how can you identify the support your community needs and how your organization can facilitate it? That’s what this webinar is all about! Amanda Gatten, KC Pet Project’s Director of Community Programs, will share what a comprehensive, flexible, effective community support program looks like at a HASS pilot shelter, with ideas and tips for other organizations to steal. We will also hear from Eliza Torres, Education and...
Animal Advocates Need to Be Housing Advocates, Too
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there is not a single state in the country with enough affordable and available rental housing for extremely low-income families. In the context of affordable housing, low-income families are those making less than 80% of Area Median Income. And these numbers do not even consider pet-inclusive housing, which is even less likely to be readily available for low-income renters. It is no wonder that for years, housing issues have been cited as one of the top two reasons for pet...
A free editorial calendar template for your animal organization’s marketing efforts
Does your animal well-being organization use an editorial calendar to strategize and organize its marketing efforts? If not, or if you want some inspiration for your current plan, be sure to check out this toolkit from HeARTs Speak and Human Animal Support Services. Throughout the past year, the organizations have created a series of communications kits to help you talk to your constituents about the many ways that you are supporting people and pets (and how they can, too!). Now, they’ve created a way for you to use...
How to Start and Run a Pet Food Pantry
The little pug’s name was Miss Kitty. She belonged to a man who wanted to go into treatment, “but the one big barrier to him getting the support he needed was making sure that his dog was cared for,” says Shannon Glenn, executive director of My Pit Bull Is Family, which created the North Minneapolis Pet Resource Center, a pet pantry in Minnesota. Miss Kitty His mother, who Shannon calls J, wanted to help—she wanted her son to get well, and she wanted to help him do that by caring for Miss Kitty. She just wasn’t...
