Focus On: Dog Days of Summer – August 2025 Focus On: Dog Days of Summer –and Exciting Updates (by WWLDO co-founder Cara Achterberg) Summer might be winding down, although the temperature may not reflect that, but we at Who Will…
In June, we visited Franklin County Animal Shelter in Louisburg, North Carolina. (This is our third ‘Franklin County’ if you’re keeping score.) The shelter is in a period of transition with an interim director. Jerry Jones has lived his whole…
The most powerful way we can impact the shelter crisis in this country is to fund spay/neuter. It’s as simple as that. And yet, for too many shelters, finding that funding is not simple. Chasing grant money takes time and…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…