The Best Friends Podcast

The human-animal bond transcends all, regardless of where someone lives, their race, or how much they have in their bank account - pet ownership is for everyone. It’s a concept that is gaining more and more acceptance across animal welfare, and it has brought new approaches to keep people and pets together to the forefront.

There have been shifts in animal services (called animal control or field services, depending on where you are). Historically, animal services departments have primarily focused on code enforcement, often leading to punishment-based consequences. We know that disproportionately affects people of color and lower-income pet owners and may lead to pets being impounded, taken from their families when there are often solutions available to keep those pets where they belong - at home.

To learn more about how communities across the country are moving to more support-based animal services, we spoke with Ashley Anderson Mutch, the senior program manager of enforcement and policy reform with the Humane Society of the United States’s Pets for life program.

Resources from this episode:

• Punishment to Support: The Need to Align Animal Control Enforcement with the Human Social Justice Movement: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/10/1902
• Best Friends: Humane Animal Control Manual (PDF download): https://www.nacanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Best-Friends-Humane-Animal-Control-Manual.pdf
• Best Friends Town Hall: The Human Connection: save more lives by building stronger relationships in communities: https://network.bestfriends.org/tools-and-information/best-friends-town-halls/human-connection
• Best Friends Editorial: Field Services: Identifying Data Worth Collecting: https://network.bestfriends.org/tools-and-information/editorials/field-services-identifying-data-worth-collecting
• Best Friends: Animal Care and Control Resources: https://network.bestfriends.org/lifesaving-library/animal-care-control

Saving senior pets from shelters is expensive and challenging and another area of lifesaving where the need outweighs the amount of available help. Compared to the total number of rescue organizations coast-to-coast, only a fraction focus solely on saving this highly at-risk group of animals.

Senior animals often carry a stigma that they don’t make good pets. Some adopters may believe seniors are “broken” or have problems that can’t be fixed - why else would they be at the shelter in the first place?

This week we talk with Kristen Peralta, co-founder of Vintage Pet Rescue, a rescue organization driven by a mission of helping aging pets live their best lives — regardless of how much longer they may have left.

Launched in 2012, The NKLA (No-Kill Los Angeles) Coalition set out to do what many believed to be unattainable. Bring the combined save rate for Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) across the 90% threshold for a full calendar year.

With a 2020 save rate of 90.49%, it’s now official: Los Angeles is a no-kill community. L.A. is now the most populous, most racially and economically diverse, and largest community geographically to attain no-kill status.

This epic achievement results from ten years of blood, sweat, tears, and collaboration between LAAS, Best Friends, and more than 150 rescue organizations who together made up the coalition. In this episode, we celebrate this momentous occasion in the history of the no-kill movement and share some of the lessons learned in L.A., which can help every community in America still on their quest to achieve no-kill.

The progress towards a no-kill nation has been remarkable. From approximately 17-million animals killed in 1984 to 733,000 in 2019. Of course, one healthy or treatable pet killed is one too many.

Saying we need to end the killing of pets is great, but it takes a strategy to help the 5,000 shelters across the country get there. And a strategy is great, but it’s even better when you get specific with your goal and add the urgency that the animals deserve.

That’s No-Kill 2025. Working collaboratively, aligned around this common goal, together, we are ending the killing of pets in our nation’s shelters.

Every animal is an individual and their journeys are as unique as they are. Each of them has a story waiting to be told and these stories are how we connect our community to the work we do.

Writing effective adoption bios leads to higher adoption rates. Cutting through the increasing noise on social media requires captivating stories. Donors and volunteers need to feel invested in your mission before they will devote their time and money which will help you continue your work.

This week we look at ways you can inspire action and build awareness through the art of storytelling.