The Best Friends Podcast

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Animal welfare feeling the effects of the nationwide staffing crisis Sep 09, 2021

Show notes

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.

Saving senior pets with Vintage Pet Rescue Sep 02, 2021

Show notes

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.

Saving senior pets with The Grey Muzzle Organization Aug 26, 2021

Show notes

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.

Increasing adoptions through effective marketing Aug 19, 2021

Show notes

If you're feeling more overwhelmed than usual, you are not alone. The year-to-date shelter data shows that intake is up - but not by much compared to the last "normal" year of 2019. Instead, it's mostly driven by a dramatic drop in adoptions which are down roughly 20% from 2019.

How are you communicating to the public at this time of great need, and what are you saying?

We spoke with Caitlin Quinn from HeARTs Speak to learn some quick and practical marketing tips and tricks that can help you break through the noise and get adoptable pets where they belong - in loving homes.

It’s not rescue if they already have a home Aug 12, 2021

Show notes

We all experience defining moments in our lives. Events such as marriage, kids, losing loved ones, career changes can all shape who we are, often on profound levels. This week's guest, Heather Owen, says her experience of watching heartbroken families surrender pets was a defining moment for her - when she realized she could offer assistance to keep those pets with their loving families.

Heather is the executive director of One Tail at a Time Dog Rescue in Chicago. They recently announced the launch of a new Pet Mutual Aid project. This growing collection of programs ranges from intake diversion to pet food pantries, no-cost vet care, all the way to offering a place to stay for those transitioning out of homelessness.

There are no invasive questions, no judgments. Just community-centered support for people and their pets with what they need, when they need it.

Helping Indigenous people and their pets on the Navajo Nation Jul 29, 2021

Show notes

Rural communities across the country struggle to access essential services such as healthcare, let alone easily accessible and affordable veterinary care for their pets. Few communities are as rural and resource-strapped as the Navajo Nation.

The Navajo Nation is a big area. It spans three different states, is larger than West Virginia, and is also the largest reservation population-wise. The issues facing people and pets are also vast. There are not enough veterinary services - and even when they are available, the distances required to connect people with those services often prove to be too much. The lack of spay/neuter resources has contributed to a free-roaming dog population that has become a public safety concern.

Achieving no-kill 2025 means every shelter in the United States hitting that 90% save rate benchmark. Every shelter, including the four that are part of the Navajo Nation. This week we take a look at the effort to overcome the immense challenges and help the people and pets of this nation within a nation.

It’s not back to business as usual for animal welfare Jul 22, 2021

Show notes

In an unprecedented year, 2020 brought about a lot of change and many new opportunities for lifesaving innovation. Many communities across the country implemented lifesaving programs such as managed intake or return-to-field programs for community cats. Some launched their first-ever foster program. These are programs that engage the community to be part of the solution. Programs that have proven time and time again to save lives.

As the world returns to “normal,” many shelters and rescue organizations across the nation are at capacity or getting very close. When this episode was published (July 2021), the year-to-date data showed that intake was still lower than in 2019, but adoptions were also down. Something to cover in a future episode, but the data further underscores the point that community-supported sheltering is needed now more than ever.

At the welcome session of this year’s Best Friends National Conference, we heard from three industry leaders who shared how they not only navigated the COVID-19 pandemic but created significant advancements at their shelters to save more lives. Valerie Richardson, Cassandra Heffington, and Alexis Pugh shared their experiences, “aha” moments, and the pearls of wisdom that they acquired during the pandemic.

You’ll also hear how the pandemic caused Best Friends to take a hard look at our programs and what Sue Cosby and her team have done to engage the public more than ever before. So get ready to be inspired to implement or grow these types of programs in your community.

Innovation and collaboration - lifesaving in El Paso, Texas Jul 15, 2021

Show notes

The journey for El Paso, Texas, towards becoming a no-kill community is a familiar one - mostly.

In 2013, only one in five pets that entered the shelter made it out alive. A public outcry led elected officials to support a plan to reform the city's animal services department. The municipality brought new leadership on board, and the mandate was clear; get El Paso to a 90% save rate.

Changes were made, such as implementing new shelter policies and procedures, and a shift in the city's organizational chart was approved, putting the animal services department under the fire department.

But, wait, did you say fire department? Unconventional? Yes. But it will make complete sense when you hear why.

That dynamic problem-solving has been a massive key to El Paso's success. Thanks to visionary leadership and a pet-loving community that won't rest until every life is saved, El Paso is quickly becoming known as one of the country's most innovative animal shelters.

Compassionate Badassery (rebroadcast) Jul 08, 2021

Show notes

This week’s episode begins with a simple question. How do you feel?

We hear the term “new normal” an awful lot right now as the world is continuing to ease COVID-related restrictions and reopen. Yet, at the same time, we learn more about the constantly evolving situation with the delta variant of the virus. So while we are longing for normalcy, it seems we have a ways to go before we can settle into the “post-COVID era.” As we grapple with these changes, we thought it would be a good idea to share the words and wisdom of Jessica Dolce, our guest on episode number seven.

Jessica is a certified compassion fatigue educator, and she talked to us about what she calls the practice of “compassionate badassery.”

Best Friends pet lifesaving dashboard Jul 01, 2021

Show notes

When Best Friends planted the stake in the ground and announced the no-kill 2025 goal in 2016, we realized that to achieve the goal, we needed to know much more about what was happening to animals in shelters across the country. But, unfortunately, the data available at that time was very minimal. So much so that no one even knew how many animal shelters there are in the United States.

As the annual data collection effort to support no-kill 2025 moved forward, we wondered. What if we turned the gathered data into an easy-to-understand visual representation of the lifesaving progress, and what if it were made available to the public? Doing so would put the most current lifesaving statistics for every shelter in the country at the fingertips of individual advocates, policymakers, animal shelters, and rescue organizations for the first time.

With the release of this year’s Best Friends 2020 national data set, the dashboard saw some significant upgrades - building on a tool that already earned recognition from Fast Company magazine, which announced its annual list of the world’s most innovative companies for 2021. How we collect, analyze and use data, including the development of the dashboard, put Best Friends in the top 10 in the data science category.

So what is the pet lifesaving dashboard, and how can it help in your lifesaving work? This week’s guest is one of the architects of the tool - chief missions officer for Best Friends, Holly Sizemore.

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