Webinar replay: Responsible Sheltering for a Humane Community

So Nancy and I are part of who will let the dogs out.

And we travel to shelters and rescues.

And we have now made 227 visits in 18 states.

One of the things that we have realized over the last six years of doing this is that things are getting worse.

Well, they were getting better for the first couple of years, I should say.

But pretty much since the pandemic, things are worse.

And every time we go out, it's harder and harder.

And the situation is tougher and tougher.

And we're hearing from more and more, we're getting more and more requests for visits.

And what we've realized is that something has to change, that our shelters are failing.

And as I wrote in that original blog post that right now, currently our shelters are failing on nearly every level.

And that's sort of what made us decide that we needed to try another way to reach people and bring them into the conversation to start talking about that.

And it I'm going to tell you about the two people who are going to do most of the talking about that tonight in a minute, but I just want to hit on this in case you missed it, but I'm going to guess if you're here, this is all not news to you, but the number of animals being euthanized has been climbing yearly for the last few years, and I'm confident it's going to go up again this year, just in light of what we have seen.

Strait populations are growing exponentially across the country, not just in the South, everywhere.

We get calls from everywhere, and I'm kind of stunned by some of them.

They're places I never imagined.

Shelters are operating at capacity or beyond, and many are frequently closed to intake.

Rescues are overwhelmed.

And this one is so huge.

I see it on a personal level with the rescues local to me.

They are completely overwhelmed because dogs are staying so much longer.

Expenses are going up.

Insurance is becoming prohibitive for a lot of rescues.

And barriers to transport, which we saw when we traveled to New England last year, states are putting up big barriers to transport.

So relying on rescue is a dangerous thing.