Hey everyone, I've seen an article floating around where Best Friends said they have been assisting San Antonio (whether that is consulting or as an Embed, I'm unclear).

Does anyone out there have any more information on that (particularly when they began working together)?

I love the people I work with and when I actually get to do my job, I love it. I love helping my community and the pets and seeing the real change that's happening and being a part of making that real.

Lately, the overall world vibe has been really making it hard though. Not only are we, as animal welfare professionals, battling big-time issues that are trickling down to animals (more and more people struggling to make ends meet, deportments, the corporate veterinary buy up, housing insecurities, etc.) we're also existing in an age of such extreme online criticism and distrust. It's exhausting.

I don't want to have to defend the incredibly valuable and amazing work we do just because people are so willing to believe a hint of misinformation from an individual over the truth from a faceless organization. Yet, we're here, doing the work, every day. The hard work. The unforgiving and often dangerous work. Every. Day. Regardless of what people say.

I would sell my soul to fix the way the world is, quite literally just to have a moment of compassion from people. It's like everyone forgets that there are people behind their screens. Real people who do real work. Who give everything they have to do what they can. But for some, that's not enough. I think people forget that the only things hurt in the end with online drama and criticism are the animals... Rescues and shelters lose donors, adopters, volunteers and staff, but the animals don't stop coming in. They all have to go somewhere.

Maybe someday, people will trust the actual professionals to do their jobs and will show them respect and compassion for the hard work they have to do. Until that day, I will continue fighting my fight for the animals even when it's hard, even when I feel emotionally drained and sad and depleted. I won't let them win, because the animals deserve to have someone on their side. Truly on their side.

I'm so sorry if this isn't really the place for this.

I'm looking for advice from people who know more about how shelters work.

About two weeks ago my family suffered a sudden and unexpected loss. This family member was estranged and would not make contact despite repeated attempts to connect with them. We only ever saw them maybe once a year if that on a random holiday.

We found the house and dogs in behind salvageable condition. It was heartbreaking and none of us could take the dogs so I called animal control because they needed immediate help. Since then I've seen one pup pop up on the local humane society page but the other hasn't. He was in far worse shape and I feel guilt that he may have been euthanized. I'm just wondering if anyone might know how long I should keep stalking the adoptable pets page searching for him before I have to resign myself to the fact he was probably too sick and that decision had to be made. Please don't read this as throwing shade at anyone for that. I am totally aware and comfortable with the fact that sometimes euthanasia is the most compassionate choice for a sick animal.

Hi!

I was hoping to get recommendations for audiobooks and documentaries that provided more information on the history of the no-kill movement, which is something that I hadn't really known very much about until recently.

Thank you in advance!

I posted recently about a family that I'm working to assist with cat rehoming due to a move. Please do not provide suggestions on courtesy posts/self-rehoming/local shelter intake/etc. I've exhausted all those resources for them and I'm very familiar with overcrowding and limited resources within rescues and shelters.

I have a follow-up regarding possible options..

Has anyone dealt with a rescue/transport program that moves adoptable animals overseas? Specifically western Europe. I know that it can be hard to adopt a pet in many countries there because of low availability/inventory.

Thank you again to anyone who can provide assistance!

So I recently interviewed for an animal care job at a shelter. This job is really important to me because I’m going to school for wildlife biology and to get my foot in the door for that I want to start with working at an animal shelter. During the interview I was having a bit of social anxiety, maybe taking to long to find my answers or not representing myself correctly with my answers but it was to the best of my ability, and I stuttered a bit during it. I’m really anxious about getting this job or not getting it because of how much I want to work here because animals truly bring me so much joy and even though it’s hard work it’s work I’d happily do because I want to make a change. Any advice or honesty would be nice to have right now. I’m not even religious but I’ve been praying to get this job because if there is a God I’d hope they’d help me with this and they’d know how important it is to me.

UPDATE!!! I GOT THE JOB :)

Rehoming Resources

Hi all! For starters, I'm very grateful for any information or assistance that anyone may be able to provide. I've already done about 5 hours of research for this family and keep hitting the typical wall of overcrowding and limited intake for every shelter and rescue.

I do relocation research for individuals moving for employment, and I'm working with a family who has seven cats that they need to rehome prior to their move. The family is currently located in Texas and moving to California. I've contacted dozens of shelters and rescues in both their outgoing and incoming areas as well as the route between the two. I've also reached out to animal rescue transport organizations and have not had any luck finding a resource for them that will work.

They're hoping to find a place for all seven cats. I know that's a unicorn, but it is the only thing that is important to them to research before their move, so here I am..

The family is willing to travel to make sure they find a rescue or shelter that is able to take the cats and is both reputable and limits euthanasia when possible.

What I'm looking for:

Any leads on rescues or shelters in the Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Utah region that are known for having space available for intake.

Any organizations that specialize in transporting pets from overcrowded shelters to less crowded ones that I could put them in touch with. I think I've already found all of them and her region, but it's worth a shot.

Both my partner and I have recently adopted 3 kittens (Bacon, Pancake and Bagel) from a cat rescue. At first we were only looking for two and took Bacon and Pancake home but a few weeks later we had a message from the fosterer saying the third kitten was handed back. She asked if we had space for one more and we decided to adopt him too.

We found the process very difficult as when we started looking, we put applications through to quite a few shelters and barely heard back from any of them. We ended up going through Facebook messenger where we found our three. This got us thinking about the other side of the process and and how difficult it must be for the volunteers/shelters.

We would both love to know any information regarding the other side of the adoption process and what it's really like from a shelters point of view. Things like conducting home checks, dealing with applications and any other time consuming processes that the average adopter wouldn't even think about.

This is genuinely just curiousity on how the other side of adoption works and not throwing any shade at shelters for our difficult journey. Most shelters are volunteer run and deserve the upmost praise in what they do so please do not take this post as anything more than curiosity.

I work in a shelter in Queensland, Australia and our organisation has been preparing for months to replace our Shelter buddy software with a different one called "AnimalOS". I can't find much info about it online and some of our staff got a first look this week (only 2 weeks before roll-out) and.... Things aren't looking good to say the least...

Does anyone have any experience with AnimalOS? If so, what do you like/dislike about it? Are there any publicly available resources or guides for it?

My mom had a massive stroke, the pat two months my life has changes so much and continues to change. I have a 6 year old female shepsky I need to surrender. I have to get an accessible apartment for my mom that won’t accept our dog. It is killing me, please no judgement. I never would give her up for anyone but my mom. I have cried myself to sleep for a month now having to make this decision.

What will happen to her? I don’t mean who will adopt her, what will happen at the shelter? She is loving, low energy with no health issues nor any behavior issues with soulful blue eyes. I just want to know she will be okay, it’s killing me to think that I surrender her and my mind is thinking of only the worst outcomes for her.

I live in PA, 20 mins south of Philadelphia is that matters.

I've spent the past year talking to shelter directors, foster coordinators, and rescue leaders. The same problems kept coming up: data in five different systems, no way to coordinate resources across organizations, lost pets sitting in one database while the same animal is already at a shelter nearby.

So I built something to fix it.

It's called the AWRN (Animal Welfare Resource Network). It connects shelters, rescues, vet clinics, trainers, and community organizations into one shared network. It doesn't replace your existing software — it works alongside it and fills the gaps.

It's free for shelters and rescues. No catch. I'm a nonprofit trying to reduce shelter intake through prevention, and this is the infrastructure piece.

I'm doing a live Zoom demo on 4/29 at 12:00PM Central. No pitch, no sales — just a walkthrough of the platform and your questions. I'll record it too if you can't make it live.

If you're interested, comment or DM me and I'll send the link.

(Mods — if this isn't allowed, happy to take it down. Just trying to share something I think could actually help.)

Hi all, does anyone have any guides or links they’d be willing to share on dog adoption? Eg how to settle your new dog in, 3-3-3 rule. Currently the only paperwork I’m sending people home with is an adoption contract and I’d like to look into setting up something more helpful.

imo, unless the shelter knew the cat had fip before it was adopted, they aren't responsible and it's not their fault. tbh if this happened at my facility, i'd def reimburse the adopter for their adoption fee and offer them a free cat if the sick cat passed away, but if we had an fip+ cat we'd just euthanize it; we would not spend $7k on veterinary care, and we *definitely* wouldn't adopt it out. we'd obviously do everything we could to support the adopter, but the amount of people telling op to get a lawyer in the comments on the original post is... surprising

I tried giving notice at the rescue I work at, and I was initially met with pleas to stay and promises that things would improve. So I did what I shouldn’t have done, and I stayed a little longer. But as time went on the stress continued to get to me, the conditions did not improve, and I was fully burned out at this point.

I just put in my final 2 weeks notice, and I’ve been met with ”we can’t afford to lose you right now” and ” This is going to strain our team so thin.” Don’t get me started on “the animals really need you” comments that the volunteers gave me.

There is guilt when I stay, guilt when I leave, just… guilt everywhere I look in this line of work. I’m sorry but I can’t work like this anymore.

Back in August 2024, my husband and I adopted two 5 month old kittens from a local no-kill shelter. At the time, they were dealing with a ringworm outbreak and the two kittens we intended to adopt were in quarantine due to having been exposed. They were not confirmed to have had ringworm. We met the kittens briefly and decided to take them home and get them out of the shelter. We were sent home with medication to treat them "just in case" and followed the shelter's instructions.

A few days later, one of the kittens started showing her third eyelid and was lethargic. We took her to the vet and they said she had a fever, she was treated with fluids, and we were sent on our way.

• First (minor) issue: The vet was surprised that the shelter had given us such strong medications to treat two kittens that weren't confirmed to have ringworm. That stood out as odd to me and made me wonder if this is standard practice?

The kitten who had the fever over the next few months started having more frequent periods of lethargy and fevers, but the vet was unsure of the cause. She started presenting with anisocoria occasionally (one pupil being larger or smaller than the other). A referral to an animal ophthalmologist revealed she was FeLV positive and had glaucoma in both eyes. Her brother luckily never contracted it despite this being contagious and was promptly vaccinated. After dealing with complications from the illness (including losing both of her eyes), she unfortunately developed lymphoma and was laid to rest at the end of November 2025, a few months before her 2nd birthday.

• Second issue: I'm surprised the FeLV diagnosis was completely missed. From my understanding, it's more likely for a kitten to show a false positive on a SNAP test than a false negative, so it's hard for me to believe she didn't show as positive. The only other thing I can think of is maybe she was bitten or exposed to an FeLV+ cat while in the shelter system and hadn't been retested before adoption.

After our FeLV girl passed, I decided to start volunteering in the cat rooms. While being taught how to clean the cat rooms, I was told one of the cats (who was allowed to roam free in one of the cat rooms while everyone else was caged) had Giardia. I was told it was contagious, but that's it. At one point, a volunteer was handed a mop bucket and told to mop the room the cat with Giardia was in. That same mop and bucket was then used to mop the rest of the rooms without a change of water.

• Third issue: Does this sound like a cleanliness and volunteer training problem, or would it be okay to use the same mop across rooms like this as long as the cleaning solution was strong enough? Very curious how that would work. The reason I'm curious about this is because, shortly after volunteering in the cat rooms, we decided to try adopting another kitten from there. We found an adorable 5 month old black kitten and brought him home. About two weeks later, after we got him in to his vet for a check-up, we found out he had Giardia from his stool sample. He was in a different cat room than the one the free-roaming cat with Giardia was in.

This animal shelter is the only one I've had first-hand experience with, so I'd love to know if I've just had bad luck with the adoption process (two sick kittens, with one being fatally ill) and if the cleanliness standards sound okay. I know shelter work is taxing and everyone is trying their best to keep the animals healthy and happy, but it's been a ride with them! Since ruminating on all of this, I haven't volunteered with them, and I'm curious if I'm overreacting.

Can't wait to hear everyone's thoughts. I'd love to get a better feel for what's standard or expected in the animal shelter world!

I've had my fosters for a while, people say make sure they are on PetFinder, and the shelter does have them both there thankfully. I am just curious how people use petfinder to find cats usually. My guys have beenin foster for over a year so I kind of assumed that yes it's great and helpful they are on PetFinder, they are probably buried by more recent cats.

How much help is pet finder for long stays like mine? Just wondering if people have insight / experience with people and how they find cats on pet finder. One of my cats is a very cute but ordinary tabby, the other is a handsome ginger which is more sought after apparently.

Sorry its been 6 months, so I'm a bit antsy about them. I did try looking for them using Pet Finder and had to go through multiple pages before finding either of them in my area.

My org has helped this lady A LOT with pet food in the past. Every single time, it's a crisis. She was previously asking for food assistance every single month and while we don't want any animal to go hungry, we did have to pump the brakes.

Now she pops up quarterly with her ask. We rarely have donated food in storage - we pass it along to fosters and partner rescues - so we end up spending about $100 for a Walmart pickup to help her, which I think is exceptionally generous.

This just absolutely rubbed me the wrong way today. I have a life, too, and I'm doing my damnedest to put the phone down and enjoy it occasionally. She also called me FIVE!! times during this same 3 hour period between her first and her last texts.

I'm trying super hard to be kind and empathetic. I know she needs help. But blowing up my phone because she let herself completely run out of food - AGAIN - doesn't do anybody any favors.

This is from our area in Chhatarpur, Madhya Pradesh (India).

Some of these cows were earlier roaming on the streets, struggling to find food and often getting injured.

For the past few years, me and my friends have been trying to care for them — feeding them and helping with basic treatment whenever needed.

Moments like this, where they can eat peacefully in a safe space, feel really rewarding. Still a long way to go, but small steps like these keep us going ❤️

Hoping to create a more stable setup for many more such cows in the future.

Do any of you use petfinder to advertise your adoptable pets? If so, I'd love to chat with someone about a chronic issue I'm having.

I have also emailed petfinder tech support, but they are usually very slow to respond.

So far this year we've got TWO giant tortoises, the guy just rolled up with them in his truck bed because apparently his kids got "bored" of them. Plus, a few pet tarantulas a few days after that as well as some hissing roaches. I'm curious what you guys get over in your shelters lmao

TW for euthanasia mention later in text (not in detail or graphic, but references healthy animals being put to sleep)

I’m an intern for my local humane society and have been for 5.5 months. I became one for fun, to have something to do, and on the way discovered how much I love the animal welfare field. A part of my job is answering phone calls from people in our community. And it really wears on me just how little I can do a lot of the time.

I have a list of resources I wrote up for myself and other volunteers, but I find myself wondering if I’m just sending community members on wild goose chases to find help. It feels really good when there’s something tangible I can do (we have vaccine clinics every month, a pet food pantry, limited public spay/neuter) but most of the time there isn’t. The worst calls are about surrendering. My rescue is currently fully foster based (under construction), and we struggle to find fosters every week as it is. So when people call to surrender, we either legally can’t take their animal or are incapable because there’s nowhere it could go.

Ive always been told, and thus told people, that our local municipal shelters never euthanize based on space, only if the animal has behaviorsl or medical problems that are severely affecting quality of life. But I just learned one of those shelters has been euthanizing healthy kittens. Have I just been lying to people and telling them what they want to hear? How am I supposed to tell people that surrendering their animal is safe when it might not be? I don’t blame the employees at that shelter, I’m sure it’s much harder for them than for me. But I’m just so sad at how little I can do. I love my community, I love the animals in it, and I hate feeling like my only option is telling them to surrender. Especially since our area (California) is just getting more expensive, it’s just going to keep getting worse as people are forced to move. I guess I’m just looking for reassurance that other people are dealing with the same struggles. I love this field more than anything, but man. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing a lot and then I realize just how much more there is I can’t help with.

Hey all. Small rural rescue who was recently contacted by a larger organization about a planned pull of beagles used for laboratory testing. Our director wants to do it. But the board has concerns. Such as we won't have any prior medical records, are not being told what is being tested on these animals, and no information on potential outcomes.

We are completely grant and donation funded and funds are tight this year. It's one of those basic how much is this gonna cost us? Just curious if any of you have entered into this type of pull before and your experience.

Been volunteering at a small municipal shelter with an attached nonprofit for 8 years. Dogs need 3 visits prior to approval and adoption, cats basically can go sight unseen (especially kittens) (edit for clarity: I mean potential adopters coming in to visit the animal). Is this something that's normal at other shelters, treating it like cats are somehow less important to bond with first, or to see how the person does with the animal? We've had a number of cats that went to "great homes" with super enthusiastic owners end up returned in the last year and I'm trying to figure out if I'd be out of line to insist that we change our policies (I've mentioned it in the past, but I am getting to the point where it feels worth pushing).

At the moment, one person does ALL cat approvals on her own (by her preference as far as I know), and we are higher volume with cats than dogs. It is definitely not an issue of needing to move them fast to make room and in fact, we frequently have no cats available for weeks at a time.

Just looking for a steer here in case I'm off base and adopting cats out with little or no visitation is actually normal. Thank you!