NC/GA Shelter Tour Wrap Up
Every shelter tour is a little bit different. I am always inspired by the people we meet and while we can’t pull dogs, I do carry many of them home in my heart. I’m still thinking about the Rottie mix…
Advocacy
A Better Goal: Sustainable Animal Shelters that are Supported By and Serve Their Community
I’m tired of the No-kill debate. Yes, the tenets are great, and yes, they save lives. And yes, they have brought us sooooo far. But fixating on these words and the random 90% threshold for No-kill, is not moving us…
Saving (or Not Saving) Dogs at Memphis Animal Services Shelter
The challenges of saving (or not saving) dogs at Memphis Animal Services Shelter are vast. MAS is struggling for multiple reasons and is euthanizing for space every week. In fact, they euthanized dogs while we were visiting them in February…
We are Stronger Together
Last October, Nancy and I gathered with 75 animal shelter and rescue staff, volunteers, and advocates at a community center in Radcliff, Kentucky for the first Stronger Together Retreat . We listened as one person after another expressed how exhausted…
20 Ideas to Improve Your Foster Program
Fostering saves lives. Full stop. Cultivating a strong foster program is the one thing you can do right now that will impact the numbers in the shelter building and enable the shelter to save more lives. I’ve fostered over 300…
Book Excerpt and How You Can Help
Excerpt from Who Will Let the Dogs Out: Stories and Solutions for Shelters and Rescues No matter their economic status, the places where they were saving every healthy, adoptable dog and housing them humanely shared three elements in common: leadership,…
Is Keeping an Animal Alive the Same as Giving Them Life?
I have a question: Is keeping an animal alive the same as giving them life? At our 28 shelter visits this year, we met dogs who had spent months, even years at the shelter. We met others who had grown…
Our Shelters Are in Crisis: We Need New Ideas and Innovative Solutions
Our shelters are in crisis. More dogs have died in 2024 than died in 2023, and many more have spent too long in under-resourced shelters. And, critically, too many dogs have been turned away by intake policies and overwhelmed shelters.…
Positive Messages Save More Lives: Finding Miracles in the Mess
Walking this morning as the sun rose and the cows on either side of our dirt road watched me warily, I thought about attitude. How it can make or break a day, a situation, a life, really. Right now, things…
What Do We Do on Shelter Tour?
People ask me quite often what exactly Nancy and I do on shelter tour. I thought I’d give you an idea of a typical day. Most days we rise by six (although I am usually up before five and try…