Tricia Montgomery’s Post

The BISSELL Pet Foundation seems to be making the most progress with identifying shelters that are over capacity and transporting animals to shelters with space. If every organization could join forces, work together to keep track of shelters that are at capacity and shelters with space and work with transport partners to move pets, that would save so many more lives. Another example of progress seems to be the increase in use of foster incentives. These are either purchased gift cards or stipends by organizations or *donated* gift cards. Many organizations have had tremendous success in recruiting new fosters through this effort and saving more lives. Maddie’s has published a few articles on the topic. Bottom line is that new initiatives like these may be the solution to saving more lives. Large, established, well funded organizations should be looking at reducing the costs of conferences, print publications, etc and transferring that budget to programs that impact lives. Just my two cents.

I am putting together an issue brief on pet unfriendly rental housing policies. I wrote the original draft 10+ years ago but everyone continues to ignore the impact that pet deposits, pet fees (nonrefundable),and pet rents are having, especially on people with large dogs. I've also done a piece on the absolute need for regional (i.e., multicounty) lost and found online pet networks like trianglelostpets.org and centexlostpets.org. Also talked about pet food banks and support for seniors with pets. All of these items are online at Information Bank,my Substack site. Shelters also need to be aggressive on Nextdoor.com. And finally they need to stop having bankers hours! Be open 7 days a week ... Be open until 8 pm. Don't close on holidays except Christmas day, Thanksgiving, and Easter. I've done feral cat work for 22+ years. There are solutions here that the animal shelter community and local government officials refuse to consider.

Surely its something to do with all the dimlows who went and got dogs during Covid lockdown because they were bored and at home and then decided its too much hassle and work to look after them properly for the duration of their lives.

What about creating a national conference?

I wish the “trend” was actually mysterious - and so appreciate Kristen’s work.  Recognizing the reasons behind the decrease of veterinary professionals, lack of accessibility to sp/nt during COVID, inability to regulate puppy mills/designer dog trends and misunderstanding of why animal shelters were created in the first place would help to turn this trend around.  Accessible education for pet owners, increase in resources and changes to renter’s insurance around BSL would be a start to lowering this unfortunate situation.   There is much work to be done - finding the right people to do it will forever be the challenge.  

Tricia Montgomery I've tried to get LInners on board for a united "fight euthanasia lists" and people just weren't interested in DOING anything. Not even for just a few minutes each day. I don't know what it'll take to actually get people to move on this, and not just moan about how awful it all is.

Absolutely. There is some magic formula here....and the US is missing it....And as much as I appreciate the goal of Best Friends, I don't see how that will ever happen in just 12 months. :(

sharing

Shared!,

Well said !! 👏👏👏