Oct 1, 2026 · 35 min · 11 segments
**Description:**In this episode, host Cara Achterberg tackles the ongoing crisis in animal welfare and proposes a necessary shift in how we measure success in animal shelters. Moving away from the…
Cara AchterbergHost
If we want to finally tackle the animal crisis in this country, we need to create shelters that are truly serving their community.
We're gonna talk more about humane community in the coming weeks, but for today I really wanna focus on what is responsible sheltering.
Animal shelters do so much more than kill or not kill animals, so why is it that we evaluate their success based on only that metric? And you know, I know there are other ways that we are evaluating success, but the public's general understanding of whether a shelter is succeeding or not is whether or not they can claim a quote-unquote "no kill status".
And I really think we need to get away from that, 'cause right now the overpopulation problem in this country is just through the roof.
Every shelter I talk to is overwhelmed, not just with the animals in their building, but the animals that are being brought to them, the animals that need help, the animals that are on their streets.
So we have got to come up with a better system of evaluating shelters, and what we expect from those shelters.
So I would propose that what if instead we evaluated our shelters by whether they shelter responsibly and build a system that creates a humane community.
If we want to finally tackle the animal crisis in this country, we need to create shelters that are truly serving their community.
We're gonna talk more about humane community in the coming weeks, but for today I really wanna focus on what is responsible sheltering.
Animal shelters do so much more than kill or not kill animals, so why is it that we evaluate their success based on only that metric? And you know, I know there are other ways that we are evaluating success, but the public's general understanding of whether a shelter is succeeding or not is whether or not they can claim a quote-unquote "no kill status".
And I really think we need to get away from that, 'cause right now the overpopulation problem in this country is just through the roof.
Every shelter I talk to is overwhelmed, not just with the animals in their building, but the animals that are being brought to them, the animals that need help, the animals that are on their streets.
So we have got to come up with a better system of evaluating shelters, and what we expect from those shelters.
So I would propose that what if instead we evaluated our shelters by whether they shelter responsibly and build a system that creates a humane community.
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