What We Learned Visiting Shelters in North Carolina

What We Learned Visiting Shelters in North Carolina

After a week in North Carolina visiting 6 shelters, we learned a lot. Despite now visiting over 100 shelters, each visit teaches me something new about the challenges of saving dogs in the south and/or reminds me of some of the solutions. As exhausting as it can be, every single trip reinforces why we go…

Heading Into the New Year with Hope for Our Shelters
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Heading Into the New Year with Hope for Our Shelters

Who Will Let the Dogs Out started after Nancy and I began visiting southern shelters to learn where all the dogs were coming from and why. We didn’t know how to fix the problem, but we knew we wanted to help. So we used the only skills we had – writing and photography. As we…

A Tale of Two Shelters
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A Tale of Two Shelters

Private animal shelters often are built near public shelters to do the job that the tax-payer funded shelter is not. They literally rescue dogs from the public shelter. Why is more not expected from a government run shelter? Why do citizens pay for two shelters – one with their taxes and the other with their donations (and hearts)? And why, pray tell, do we allow this to go on?

Rescuing Pit Bulls in a State That Makes It Even Harder
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Rescuing Pit Bulls in a State That Makes It Even Harder

Polk County, Florida is ranked first in Florida and fourth in the nation for number of dogs ‘euthanized’ each year. The Polk County shelter killed 5000 dogs in 2020. Which is even more remarkable considering 2020 was the year so many shelters were emptied (momentarily). The only way a dog labeled a bully breed can…

Off We Go on Shelter Tour!
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Off We Go on Shelter Tour!

We leave for our shelter tour in two days. As always, I’m excited but nervous and slightly overwhelmed. There are so many details, so many new people, new places, and hundreds of miles to drive. Often when I reach out to a shelter director or Animal Control officer about a possible visit, they are skeptical….