The Humane State Program (HSP) provides training on disaster readiness, compassion fatigue, investigations and many other topics relevant to shelter, rescue and law enforcement
A new vision for sheltering is trending—and being tested—around the country
Recognizing that most animals do best in a home environment, shelters are testing the limits of high-volume foster care programs and teaching other shelters to ramp up their efforts to get more animals into foster homes. Could the future of sheltering be all around us?
With a small investment, shelters can empower everyday people to tackle the community cat challenge
If your shelter doesn’t have a trap-neuter-return program, you may think you have little to offer the people who call about unowned cats in their backyards and neighborhoods. But there are many ways shelters can facilitate today’s TNR and plant the seeds of tomorrow’s high-impact programs without spending a dime.
It’s still dark, the coming dawn a wash of paler blue in the inky sky over Namyangju, a small city outside of Seoul, when the line of vans turns off the main highway onto a gravel side road. The vans ascend the narrow drive up a brushy, frozen hillside, assembling above a cluster of ramshackle metal and tarp hangars.
About the Author
M. Carrie Allan is the senior editorial director at The Humane Society of the United States, served as editor of Animal Sheltering magazine for nearly a decade, and has focused on telling the stories of the animal protection movement for even longer. She holds a master’s degree in English and writing and has won awards for her journalism, fiction and poetry, including recognition from the Dog Writer’s Association of American, the Cat Writer’s Association, the Association of Food Journalists, and the James Beard Foundation (where she was a finalist for the work she does in her side-gig, writing about booze and cocktails for the Washington Post). If you think there’s a connection between her longtime commitment to animal welfare work and her interest in a good drink . . . well, aren’t you the smart one?
A couple of weeks ago, the Humane Society of the United States, along with our partner in pet transport, Humane Society of Tulsa, loaded 173 pets on a large cargo plane heading to our shelter and rescue partners in Oregon and Washington state from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The cost of the plane was just under $35,000. Did you ever think transports like this would become the norm? I sure didn’t. To figure out how we got here, we need to go back a bit in time.
At a time of life when most people are savoring a more leisurely pace, Harold Sims of Cullowhee, North Carolina, is busier than ever and has no intention of slowing down.
I came to the Humane Society of the United States in 2014 after a decade (more if you count those years I spent as a kid sitting in cat rooms and walking dogs way too big for me) overseeing operations at animal shelters. I wouldn’t say I was particularly excited about or motivated to fit policy into my daily workload of caring for homeless pets—until I worked for an animal shelter that was located in a city with breed-specific legislation, flawed policies that ban certain types of dogs based on their physical appearance.