Animal control/field services
Animal control officers and humane investigators have a shared mission of helping animals and bringing abusers to justice, which takes flexibility, compassion and courage. Learn best practices, new tools and techniques, and how animal care and control leaders can promote our work through positive interactions and collaboration with their communities.
Cruelty + neglect
Neglect, a failure to provide basic needs for an animal, makes up the vast majority of cruelty cases that animal control officers respond to. Neglect often includes hoarding, lack of shelter or veterinary care, tethering and abandonment, as well as other forms of abuse. Direct abuse is, for example, someone beating or physically attacking an animal. Organized cruelty includes dogfighting, cockfighting, and often go hand in hand with other crimes.
Disaster prep + response
Hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, floods, large-scale hoarders—these are just some of the natural and man-made disasters that animal welfare groups have to deal with. If something happened, would your organization be prepared? We have resources to help you develop your disaster preparedness plan.
Fundraising/grants
The success of your shelter or rescue operation goes hand in hand with the success of your fundraising approach. Learn how animal care organizations raise the money needed for everything from basic necessities to ambitious, innovative programs through events, grants, donor care and more.
Shelter design
As you strive to create a state-of-the-art animal shelter, take time to assess your community’s growth rate as well as your shelter’s animal data and programs to help determine your future needs. Read stories from shelters that have maximized their space and begin plans for your own shelter facility, whether you're retrofitting to maximize your current capacity or starting from scratch.
Shelter medicine
Very often what we see as neglect from pet owners is actually the result of their inability to access veterinary services and other pet wellness resources. For example, there may be a free, local spay/neuter clinic but it’s on the other side of town and transportation is a problem. Or the $400 dental cleaning simply isn’t affordable. Identify what obstacles are preventing people in your community from providing wellness care for their pets and present ways to overcome them in order to make sure people can keep their pets happy, healthy and in their homes.
Staff/volunteer management
Volunteers are an essential part of nearly every animal protection organization. Well-run volunteer programs amplify our reach and increase our capacity to care for animals and the number of lives saved. Here, we offer managers of volunteers materials and resources to design and build the volunteer program that will best support the staff in meeting the organization’s mission, and provide them with opportunities for ongoing learning and professional development.
Transfer + transport
Improve and increase adoptions—discover new adoption marketing ideas, best practices in transfer, inspirational stories of unlikely adoptions, resources to improve the adoption process and more.
Shelter + Rescue Operations
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In this issue: The HSUS Pets for Life team shifts tactics but retains core beliefs during the COVID-19 pandemic; new science about cat allergies may prevent surrenders; an upstate New York shelter teams with local pizzerias to promote adoptable animals; VCA adds a nail in the coffin of elective declawing; an Idaho nonprofit helps ‘sweeten the pot’ for harder-to-place cats; and more.
In this issue: Facial recognition may be a new way to help locate lost pets; a Baltimore shelter finds “bad” pet portraits good for fundraising; why and how organizations can enlist volunteers with disabilities; veterinarians and trap-neuter-return experts share their perspectives on feral fosters; the growing trend of shelters mentoring shelters proves a win-win for the field; a dog rebounds from horrible injuries; and more.
In this issue: New study highlights the importance of targeted TNR; “Community hero” award winner pushes Pets for Life in Louisiana; Maryland shelter’s canine pool parties make a splash; rethinking the best response to rabies-vector species; shelters use transport partnerships to evacuate animals; and more.
Animal Sheltering magazine Summer 2020
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