Saving senior pets with Vintage Pet Rescue

09/02/21 • 37 min

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.

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Saving senior pets with The Grey Muzzle Organization

Reliable data around what’s happening to senior pets in shelters are hard to come by, but we do know this. Older animals are a highly vulnerable segment of the shelter population that is more difficult to save, and more needs to be done to help them.

Older pets may have medical issues that landed them at the shelter in the first place - and animal shelters are often ill-equipped to handle costly medical problems. Add in other factors, like the average adopter not generally on the hunt for older pets, and you may begin to realize why there are so few organizations nationwide that focus solely on senior pets.

This week we spoke with Dr. Lisa Lunghofer from The Grey Muzzle Organization about the plight of senior pets in animal shelters. You will learn the myriad ways that The Grey Muzzle Organization supports animal shelters and rescue organizations to save more of these wonderful, deserving pets.

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Animal welfare feeling the effects of the nationwide staffing crisis

The United States is suffering from a severe labor shortage, and just about every industry is feeling it. From hospitality to healthcare, transportation, banking, agriculture — and yes, animal welfare is also finding it challenging to hire new staff and retain the staff they already have.

Best Friends recently surveyed our Network partners and nearly nine out of every ten organizations that responded said their staffing is below where it should be. They cited numerous reasons, but an inability to recruit and budget freezes were at the top.

This week, we hear from two people dealing with this crisis. One is a shelter director in the panhandle of Florida, and the other is the founder of a national recruiting firm that helps municipal governments and nonprofits recruit and retain talent.