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Best Friends Animal Society News & Blogs
Instantly update yourself on the latest animal welfare developments. Leading animal shelters and rescuers will share news and knowledge with you, consolidated through their blogs and social media pages.
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Pet Store Puppies Damaged By Puppy Mill Practices
14th May 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
Back in 2008, Best Friends launched our puppy mill initiatives after identifying puppy mills as one of the primary sources of animals entering our nation’s shelters.
A revealing Best Friends–led study, just published in the current issue of the “Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association,” adds more weight to that analysis. Led by Dr. Frank McMillan, director of well-being studies at Best Friends, in collaboration with a highly regarded research team, the study compa...
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Important Legislation In The Lone Star State
6th May 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
I am disappointed to announce that HB 2981 did not make it out of the Texas House Calendars Committee. Legislation that benefits animals is always hard to pass, but just to give you some perspective as to how tough it was to pass anything in Texas this session, consider this: With only 19 days to go in the session, of the 4,079 bills that have been introduced into the Texas legislature, only 15 have passed both the House and the Senate!
I want to express my personal gratitude to everyone who wo...
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Counting In Florida
3rd May 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
No, not the counting of ballots, chads, hanging chads or any rare species of chad! We’re talking shelter animals.
Florida recently passed a new law requiring all animal shelters in the state – public and private – to compile shelter statistics and keep them available for public requests for three years. All the data for intake and outcomes must be tracked, including “Released in field/Trapped, Neutered, Released (TNR).” Best Friends worked with the bill’s sponsors to get this TNR la...
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NBC Report Exposes AKC
2nd May 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
The battle to expose and shut down shoddy, large commercial breeding operations received a great piece of national exposure today when NBC Television’s “Today Show” ran a story about how the American Kennel Club (AKC), which registers purebred dogs, has gone to great lengths to oppose laws that limit breeders and continues to oppose legislation to bring inhumane breeding conditions to an end.
Here is the link to the report.
Of course, there was nothing new in this report that any forward-...
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Super Season
30th Apr 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
Best Friends New York–area Super Adoption wrapped up a three-day, feel-good celebration of homeless pets going to loving new homes yesterday afternoon with 360 pets out the door and dozens of additional adoption applications to sift through for more pet/people matchups in the days following the event. This weekend saw the first in a series of “supers” hosted by Best Friends that include Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, as well as St. George, Utah, which was held this past Friday and Saturday a...
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Volunteers: Where Would We Be Without Them?
25th Apr 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
This is National Volunteer Week, and we often hear it said that volunteers are the lifeblood of any effective animal organization. That seems to be a self-evident truth. Without volunteers, our work and our reach would be limited, events would be prohibitively expensive and impossible to stage, foster homes would dry up and blow away. Imagine a world without volunteers. I’d rather not, thank you very much!
For me and I believe for everyone at Best Friends, volunteers are much more than a means...
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Jaunty Jimmy
22nd Apr 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
We had to say goodbye to our little border collie mix, Jimmy, yesterday afternoon. He was getting on to about 15 years and had compound terminal issues. Jimmy was perfectly ordinary and wonderfully unique, just like countless rescued dogs. He was a stray who was never claimed and came to live with Silva and me. And as I like to say, rescued pets are like rigged slot machines – you get a dollar’s worth of payback for every dime’s worth of attention you give to them. There are Jimmys at ever...
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San Antonio: Courage, Creativity And A Community Commitment To No-Kill
16th Apr 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
San Antonio Animal Care Services (ACS) achieved an 83% live release rate (LRR) in March of 2013. Not only that, but for the first three months of calendar year 2013, ACS is averaging an LRR of over 80%! Not bad for a city that in 2011 was operating at about a 32% LRR. As a point of reference, the accepted threshold for a no-kill community is a 90% LRR of all animals entering a given community’s shelter system.
When Best Friends partnered with San Antonio Pets Alive (SAPA) in late 2011 to fund ...
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Francis Battista Introduces A Special Guest Blog From Kathleen Aubry
9th Apr 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
As you may have noticed, this page does not feature guest bloggers. However, on this occasion, I am pleased to give my slot to Kate Aubry. Why? Because in the past, we have featured posts about a topic that is much closer to Kate than to any of us here at Best Friends … her beagle, Juno, one the remarkable survivors of the Great Beagle Rescue. We thought it would be a great idea to share Kate’s personal experience with our readers.
—Francis Battista
As I sit here writing, I have a...
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Our Most Inspiring Speech Yet!
4th Apr 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
Every year in the fall, Best Friends hosts one of the largest animal welfare conferences in the country, the No More Homeless Pets National Conference.
Taking the show on the road to the East Coast!
This year, we’re excited to announce that we’ll be taking the conference to the East Coast. It will be held in Jacksonville, Florida, October 10–13, at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront. Early bird registration starts today, and you don’t want to miss your opportunity to join us … l...
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Audubon Disappoints: Position Reversal
29th Mar 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
In the digital world we live in today, gathering together for a cause we believe in is easier than ever before. Thousands can sign on immediately and say how they feel about a particular issue. That’s exactly what happened when we told you about a writer for the Audubon Magazine, Ted Williams.
Mr. Williams described an efficient way to poison cats. As you can imagine, we were pretty upset when we first saw it, and thought you might be too. So we put together an Action Alert that allowed all of...
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Florida Community Cat Act Clears First Hurdle In Style
27th Mar 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
The Florida State House of Representatives Agriculture and Community Affairs Subcommittee recently passed the Florida Community Cat Act (Florida House Bill 1121) out of committee by a unanimous 14-0 vote. The bill was authored by Best Friends’ cat initiatives legislative attorney Laura Nirenberg and is widely supported by other animal welfare organizations and the Florida Ag Subcommittee. FYI, state agricultural committees tend to be very conservative on animal issues as they are inclined to v...
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Five Reasons Not To Buy A Bunny For Easter
25th Mar 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
In the name of all the rabbits you have ever loved or admired, including Bugs, Peter, Br’er and Roger, not to mention Thumper and the Energizer Bunny, please think twice before getting or giving a bunny for Easter.
Real life bunnies are way cuter and cuddlier than their cartoon counterparts, and unlike make-believe rabbits, they are gentle living creatures who have a very different temperament and needs from dogs or cats. In short, they are not toys or holiday novelties, though sadly, many are...
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More Killing Is Never The Answer
20th Mar 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
In my previous blog, I commented on an op-ed piece by Audubon Magazine contributor Ted Williams in the Orlando Sentinel in which Mr. Williams advocates poisoning free-roaming cats and names a readily available over-the-counter human medication as his preferred option. I want to thank all of our readers who took the action recommended in that post and sent a message to the relevant folks. Our collective voice was heard.
To say that Mr. Williams “set the cat amongst the pigeons” is an irresist...
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Orlando Sentinel Publishes Instructions On How To Kill A Cat
16th Mar 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
Wanna know how to mercilessly kill a cat? Don’t worry about having to search the weirdo part of the Internet. The weirdos are now writing opinion pieces for the Orlando Sentinel!
This week, the Florida newspaper published an op-ed from Ted Williams, who was editor-at-large for Audubon Magazine when the article went live but has since seemingly been demoted to “independent journalist” (according to a newly revised byline). In the piece, Williams references the terribly flawed Smithsonia...
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Vicktory Dog Reunion
13th Mar 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
As most of the followers of our blog know, in 2008 Best Friends Animal Society took in 22 dogs rescued from Michael Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels.
Something very special took place yesterday, March 11, at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary when six of the 22 dogs, who have been adopted, returned to mark five years of freedom. We call them the Vicktory dogs. Cherry, Handsome Dan, Halle, Little Red, Mel, Oscar and their families gathered at Angels Landing at the Sanctuary with staff, volunteers and visitor...
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The Michael Vick Dogs
9th Mar 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to puppy class at your neighborhood pet store, photos surfaced of Michael Vick with his recently acquired Malinois, Angel, at dog training class at a New Jersey PetSmart. You just never know who you’re gonna meet!
I aired my thoughts on Mr. Vick’s acquisition of another dog in a previous blog, so I won’t rehash all that here. The unfortunate thing is that while the tabloids toss out images of Vick and Angel in hopes of generating gawp-and-ga...
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Single And Loving It!
7th Mar 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
The true north for Best Friends Animal Society, our core guiding principle, is that we can save them all — that all lives are worth saving and all lives have intrinsic value. Whether it be Michael Vick’s champion fighting dogs or Riley the horse who needs a prosthetic leg, we will push the boundaries to demonstrate a new norm for the term “adoptable.”
So it’s no surprise that the unwritten rule our adoption team lives by is the right home is out there for every animal in our care. That...
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Maryland Anti–pit Bull Ruling Could Be Overturned
23rd Feb 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
A new bill goes to the Maryland Senate as SB 160, and, if passed, will advance public safety and save the lives of thousands of well-behaved pit bulls. SB 160 and the House companion bill, HB 78, are in response to a misguided ruling by the Maryland Court of Appeals last April in the case of Tracey vs. Solesky, which stipulates that in addition to the dog’s owner, the landlord or anyone who has the right to control the pit bull’s presence on the subject property is liable for damages if a bi...
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Power Of Partnership
22nd Feb 2013, by Best Friends Animal Society
In 2011, only 58% of shelter pets were leaving the West Valley City (WVC) shelter alive. In June of 2012, WVC, the largest municipality in the Salt Lake Valley, committed to a no-kill goal and entered into a public/private partnership with Best Friends to put their community on a no-kill track. They were anxious to join a growing list of communities around the country that have declared that killing healthy, treatable shelter animals is no longer an option. At the same time, all across Utah, the...
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