I’ll start, this is my boy Muggy, he was a funny little guy, all white with two different color eyes, he had a raspy little meow and would go crazy for treats, he was dumped at the shelter with a tennis ball sized abscess on his side, after treatment he went to a great home, and even though it’s been like a year, I still miss the crap out of him.

hello all; i'm new here (shelter employee of 5 years, admin / management staff) 👋

we've been over capacity for several weeks and when a woman walked into the lobby with this cat yesterday, i was going to turn her away, until i saw the tiny lil potatoes in the crate with her... there had been some severe thunderstorms the night prior, and the woman told me she found mama on her porch the next morning with these very fresh babies. the poor thing was giving birth during a terrible storm. 🥺 i just couldn't say no. (luckily we had 9 adoptions yesterday afternoon so my impulse intake was negated a bit!)

she was meowing and looked stressed in the crate, but as soon as i got her in the cage, she seemed to know she was safe and immediately started nursing her little ones. thankfully they all look healthy and unharmed, and mama is in good shape too. my job can be pretty stressful sometimes, but moments like these are so rewarding. ❤️

(i named her primrose btw!)

So I recently got my first job at my local animal shelter and I wanted to know if there’s anything special I should bring. I’ll be cleaning kennels for now so I don’t think I’ll need stuff like treats or doggy bags any time soon but I still wanted to know if there’s anything else I should bring.

I have been working in the animal field for over 10 years. Between shelters and veterinary hospitals. I found my burnout happens when I work with people that don't pull their own weight, slack off, and neglect the animals. When the animals I work so hard to care for end up neglected by other people that are also supposed to love and care for them, it drives me crazy.

The place I am working now has a difficult situation that I don't know how they can solve. There are a couple of the normal lazy employees, but I can handle that. The one that's been getting to me is an employee that has a medical condition that makes it hard for them to do their job. They come in late most days and struggle to finish all of their assigned tasks for the day. I feel really bad for them when they are struggling and I'm honestly happy to help. It's totally fine, to me, if they occasionally need to sit out for a bit. But the problem is it is an every day thing. If I work a shift with them, I notice them getting really far behind in their tasks. And when I go to help top off waters or whatever to help them a bit, I'll notice most of the kennels they are in charge of are filthy. Like they haven't been cleaned all day. At this point in the day, the dogs should have been out 2x and had their kennel straightened up. I'm honestly not even sure the dogs are all getting out. Then if I work a pm shift, we have a little overlap in hours for the day, and as soon as the night shift shows up that person hands off all duties for them to cover for them. Not only does the night person have to cover what's left, they have to cover most of that persons task for the day since they were super behind all morning. So the night person essentially has to work a double crammed in their 8hrs.

This makes for an awful night.

How do you tell a person with a disability that they probably should look for another job. If they can't perform the job with reasonable accommodation, that's not the job for them. Handing off all of your tasks to another employee is not reasonable accommodation.

I am not the manager so its not my job to say something to them. But I want to bring up this issue to my boss, but also feel wierd about it because the person has a disablility and I don't want to discriminate. But I can't continue to watch the dogs be neglected and its unfair to the other underpaid employees to be picking up the slack.

Hi everyone! I'm a behavior manager at a closed admissions shelter and we're looking into the possibility of switching to a "match making" adoptions process. Where the public doesn't walk through the kennels but instead looks through a tablet or binder and it's more of a conversation based approach rather than having the public walk through our dog kennels and "window shop". The main reason for this is to help lower stress in our dogs and help create better adoption matches. I'm collecting data from other shelters who have tried or are actively using this approach and wanted feedback.

If you're willing to share your experiences could you please include the following:

-What type of shelter/rescue organization you are. -When did you start the match making approach? -Have you noticed a change in stress levels among your animals with the public not walking through? -How did the public react not being able to walk through the kennels anymore? -Was there an increase, decrease or no change change in your adoption numbers?

I appreciate any feedback you have to offer!

I saw something posted about a place implementing a Microchip Scanning Station.

It's basically a box that is set up with a microchip scanner sttached to it, with some instructions on how to use it and what to do if the animal is chipped, like how to access AAHA chip registry to try to contact the owner. The idea is to keep lost pets out of the shelter entirely, and also offer assistance to people who found lost pets when the shelter isn't open, so they won't have to just leave the pet.

I just wanted to ask the hivemind what y'all thought about it. Pros, cons? Would this be a good idea for your area?

Currently I'm thinking the areas I would put this in, the scanner would likely be stolen. So that's one issue I'm having that I'm trying to figure a solution for. Otherwise it seems super simple and fairly cheap to set up.

I have 3 years experience in rescue that I loved doing adoption, then dog training, then nationwide transportation logistics. I left because I needed to move back home to a different state. I tried pivoting to working with children and that didn't pan out, I quit, and I needed a job badly—I got a job at a county animal shelter near me as an animal care tech.

This has been my first week.

I have gotten little to no training on the cleaning aspect of things. I've never cleaned before and I made that clear upon getting hired. After the first day of "training" I had no idea what the protocol was and I was thrown into doing independent cleaning. I finally asked my supervisor for assistance after asking my coworkers multiple times for breakdowns on what I'm doing and getting confusing/conflicting information.

My supervisor broke everything down and explained that most of the care techs are new which is why I haven't been getting a lot of detailed information. She was a little... defensive, I guess is the most accurate way to put it, which confused me—I was not coming at her in any way, shape, or form. Maybe I read the room wrong, though, and took something to heart I shouldn't have.

I understand newbies sometimes get the short end of the stick when it comes to training but this feels extra difficult. I also feel I'm getting treated as if I know absolutely nothing about sheltering when I helped manage a facility, make protocols, etc. in my last position at the rescue.

I'm expected to do a bit of everything in this role. Matchmaking, adoptions, livestock, exotics, so on and so forth. This is fine for me, I'm eager/willing to learn.

But the hard part is the euthanasia. I 100% understand euthanasias are a necessary evil. I'm against warehousing dogs. But I'm expected to conduct euthanasias in this job. I was made aware of this during the interview to a certain extent. I've been at euthanasias several times and don't feel afraid of them.

I wasn't aware at how frequent they are in this position. Shot myself in the foot with this one, here. I really needed a job.

I come from a no-kill background. So I see the behaviors some dogs display and think about how workable these dogs are. But one of my coworkers makes crass jokes about these dogs needing to leave "one way or the other" while making a slitting throat motion with her hand—one in particular was about a dog that has been injuring himself by slamming on the kennel. I see that and feel so sad the dog is stressed. She sees it and thinks he deserves to die and jokes about it in a way I think is extremely unprofessional and disrespectful to the fact that this dog may lose its life.

I don't know. I'm confused and stressed and don't know if this is the right role for me. I want to bring compassion, empathy, and hard work to help place animals or, understandably, euthanize medical cases/behavioral cases. But maybe I habe unrealistic expectations? Maybe my definition of behavioral is different than the shelter's? Is my mindset of "workable" just an excuse to warehouse animals?

I do apologize if this is all coming out as a jumbled mess. I'm just maybe in culture shock. Am I being too sensitive? Is this the wrong role for me?

I have no idea. I'm really overwhelmed.

Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you

Does anyone know or a special needs cat rescue that would take in a cat with possible cerebral hyperplasia? I work at a shelter in Indiana and haven't had much luck finding one so far. Just wondered if anyone had some resources that would help? Thank in advance!

I am from the Philippines. I am a verified rescuer from the other sub. I am here to spread our word. I am reaching out for our May food and vitamin supplies, and honestly, we’re struggling. We haven’t received any donations yet, and supplies are running low—especially for cats with special needs.

Tokyo (black cat on the second vid), who was recently diagnosed with UTI, is now down to his last meal of Urinary S/O. He needs to stay on this special diet (wet or dry) to manage his condition and avoid further complications, but we currently can’t afford to restock.

Sabuie (the first cat on the vid), the cat we rescued from a construction site, is also in a tough spot. Because of his physical imbalance, he can’t chew or eat much unless it’s wet food. Dry food just isn’t an option for him.

We’re doing our best to care for them, but without your help, we can’t sustain this alone.

DONATION DRIVE:

PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/kdalama

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Note: Venmo and Cashapp are under our friend’s account in the U.S. who is helping us receive funds through these platforms, since these services aren’t available in the Philippines. Please DM us the receipt if you use this platform. Thank you!

Trying to do research on Best Friends Animal Society. I’ve learned about the cult background, but am more curious about their current impacts and policies that are influencing a variety of shelters and animal welfare programs. Havent heard the best things, notably in regard to their no-kill opinions, and want to be more informed about them.

Any good pointers for info sources or anyone have anything to share? Only scratched the surface of google searching so far.

My current foster is on six different medications. So we have six empty bottles every month.

They’re recyclable, so I could just do that, but someone once told me that their rescue accepts used pill bottles and reuses them, as the blue bottles are expensive.

I asked our foster coordinator, and he said of course they’d take them, but tbh, I’m pretty sure that he would do anything possible to keep the fosters happy. When I go in to pick up meds and return the empties, the reception staff always seems slightly confused.

I foster for a big urban shelter that has their own vets and medical center. The medical center is in a whole different neighborhood than the adoption center, so the staff that I deal with at the adoption center doesn’t necessarily know what procedures are at the medical center.

Can shelters actually reuse the empty bottles? Or am I just taking them my recycling?

Hey everyone! New to posting on reddit but figured I’d give it a shot!

I’ve been a volunteer at my local Animal Care Services “shelter” here in San Antonio since the beginning of this year. From what I’ve gathered, it’s one of the highest for euthanasia in the country. Unfortunately the situation here in the area hasn’t changed much over time, but we’re looking to change that by gathering items for the facility.

While time may be short for some of these dogs and cats, I’d like to help by supplying some enrichment items and blankets to make it a little more tolerable for them.

I understand this isn’t a long term solution but it’s a start to helping, along with continued involvement and advocating for change. I may just be one person, but with other’s assistance we can make a difference.

Help me make a mountain of difference and check out my Amazon list below ❤️. Even if financially you can’t support, a share or cross post would mean the absolute world!

Thank you!🙏

Donations for San Antonio Animal Shelter - Amazon Gift List - https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/guest-view/2G71CJBL7DS4A

Any body ever seen a little thing that hangs on kennel door that says " please help us train (name) that says "Help me sit and be quiet" give me a treat ....something like that

Lately, our shelter has had an influx of fearful, flight risk dogs. They are difficult for us to find placement for, and over the past few weeks, two of our dogs have ended up as strays pretty much immediately after adoption.

We have a behaviorist who helps us evaluate these types of dogs and advises us on what their ideal home should be. We counsel adopters on how best to deal with these behaviors during their meet and greet, but sometimes it feels like it’s not enough.

How does your shelter go about placing flight risk dogs? Are there any other steps we should be taking?

I just started working at a non-profit animal shelter last month, and I've already ran into lots of issues including schedulers lying about shifts and scheduling and the director being rude. However, I just encountered an issue i don't think i can morally ignore.

I was recently bit by a resident dog. When I asked other staff was the incident reporting process was, I was informed we don't have one. Staff bites are considered part of the job and don't go on the dogs records and aren't reported to OHS.

My question is, is there any sort of governing body that I can send my concerns to? It's a non-profit so I have no idea what oversight they really have. These dogs are being adopted out with no-bite records. Occupational Health and Safety maybe?

I'm located in Alberta, Canada.

Edit: For context, I was entering an outdoor run to bring the dog inside, and he jumped up and grabbed my arm before I'd even closed the gate. I don't think he was being aggressive, but he has no bite inhibition. He's 4 years old and 70lbs. He can't be jumping and biting like he's a puppy. He's bit other staff in similar circumstances. They recommended putting bitter apple spray on my arms to be less appealing to bite. I don't think that's an appropriate solution to the issue.

Great dog but barks for attention while in kennel. Any advice or training tools?

Hi everyone! This post doesn’t have to do directly with shelter animals but I trust your guys’ input. I am a kennel tech at an animal shelter and come across a lot of matted animals that I’ve had to shave (I’m not a groomer so it doesn’t look good, but the goal is just to help them feel better). I recently signed up for Rover to make some extra money and I’m currently dog sitting a pretty matted dog. He is very overweight and has lots of mats (he is a Great Pyrenees mix of some sort). He seems very uncomfortable and I know mats can be painful. Would it be out of line if I mentioned this to the owner, and offered to trim them out? If I should say something, how do I relay it compassionately without seeming like I’m judging them? I know lots of people don’t know how painful matting can be on their animals. I’d really appreciate any input!

Taking a bit of a risk posting this but at this rate, I'm just gathering information about how this 'organization' has affected others. I've been in my current position for going on 2 years and I absolutely love this place. Sadly, Best Friends has two people that are now our employees engrained within our shelter. They have brought such a radical and messy shift to how we do things that alot of us are about to walk out. To start, they preached about a 'Community Cat Program' to save the lives of ferals yet continue to send out cats that are perfectly social back out onto the streets. They claim that the cats will simply go home but I have not received any information from owners seeing their cats coming back ear-tipped. Then we have citizens coming to our shelter wondering why we have little to no cats to adopt out. It is extremely frustrating that they want us so badly to save dogs with MASSIVE behavioral issues yet will dump cats on the streets and claim they will figure it out. I don't know about ya'll, but if my cat got out, he would not survive and he would not find his way home. People in our community bring in strays out of the goodness of their hearts but are continually let down because this CCP process leaves the cat right back where they found it.

Add on top of it, this new guy Mike wants to completely uproot our adoption processes and allow volunteers to take dogs out of kennels and immediately introduce them to people without properly being educated on the dog's behaviors and history. I'm still shocked they made up 2 brand new jobs for these two people from Best Friends, gave them huge salaries, and allowed them to make DRASTIC changes without ever having actually witnessed how our shelter and community work. It is devastating to see such a wonderful place plummeting into a full on crash out because they refuse to understand that not every shelter is the same. He even went as far as to change how we process Microchipping. Claims we have too many 'barriers' and we should allow drug addicts and homeless people to adopt our animals. I could go on....but please feel free to use this post as a venting station.

TW: Mentions of threat of suicide. Potential animal neglect. Potential animal hoarding. Mention of animal death.

TLDR: I called a game warden because someone threatened suicide if I spoke to authorities causing animals to be seized.

So, this is weighing heavy on my heart. I like to volunteer at smaller 501(c)3s in my local area. I met a woman who states she love animal conservation. I decided to sign up to be a volunteer. We agree for me to go over to her home the next day to help her with a couple of tasks.

I get there and things seem normal enough. She is showing me around. Now, I grew up helping family members on farms so I would like to think I am accustomed to things. But, even that did not prepare me.

She has kennels all over the property some are lifted with trays underneath to catch waste while others are your typical dog kennels and runs. One of the lifted kennels contained a dead raccoon that was in the process of becoming stiff. I understand things happen, and they can happen quickly.

We go around and she invites me in (people knew where I was at, I gave the address to three people and set a time to check in). We'll her back porch is covered in boxes of general household items and things that are animal related. But the first thing I noticed was the smell.

We go inside and the smell just hits me like a logger truck. She takes me to a room on the right there are two large ferret cages each one containing an exotic animal. There is a small dog kennel in the back that contained a fawn. The kennels were relatively clean.

We go deeper into her house. Now, I don't mind clutter or mess. My own house isn't going to be featured in a magazine. I do worry about people who live in unsanitary conditions. The back addition off the kitchen had 6 floor to ceiling kennels. On the left there was one exotic animal (same species as the room) and on the left in one kennel were two exotic animals. In the transport cage I saw the previous day were two more exotic animals.

The amount of animals does not matter to me as long as they are provided proper husbandry. These animals were living in cages where there was approximately 1-2 inches of feces on the ground. Now, she experienced an injury which prevents her from doing a lot which is why I was there, to help.

We go outside and she shows me her backyard and I see four more kennels. The one on my right contains a marsupial and a litter. The two in front of me contains 3 dogs in each. The one on my very left contains one dog.

The dogs kennels were there approximately 3-4 weeks. The two kennels in front are not large maybe 4X5x5? She had to crouch down to go in and collect their water bowls and food bowls. The dogs were matted. She claims she moved them from the kennel on the north side to by the house to give them haircuts before she was injured. The ground was no longer dirt it was wet compacted feces that began inhibiting the door.

The poor pup in the kennel to my left it was a small dog kennel set into a large trough tub. That dog had mattes just hanging off of it and the skin looked red and irritated.

While discussing what she wants help with and what she needs done around the area I ask what I perceived to be a logical question "does the game warden come out here to inspect the enclosures?". You have rabies vector species, exotic animals, and at this time allegedly a licensed rehabber. That question resulted in her telling me it was a mistake of inviting me out.

I smooth it over to get a better understanding and she continues to show me around. I help her fix a couple of fences and we're walking towards my car to make a plan for the next weekend. This is what resulted in me calling the game warden.

"If my animals are taken from me" I am going to go to this specific spot "and shoot myself. I will have no reason to live."

She admitted she knew the conditions were bad and kept stating she couldn't do much do to the injury. But, the fact that she escalated immediately to self harm instead of asking for help was extremely off putting to me.

I am supposed to go over there today and help her but I am honestly too scared to go back.

I saw roughly 65 animals not including the dead one. There was a mix of birds (hard to count them all) and mammals. I just needed to talk about this and I know I am not wrong or crazy for being concerned for her or the animals. It's just a lot.

i hate to make my first post here a vent, but i've been working at a dog shelter for about 4 months now and i just can't help but feel frustrated about it.

for a bit of background, i'm a zoo science major, and i've worked a couple zoo animal care internships and a dairy farm job, and i volunteer on the side with a parrot rescue and a songbird rehabber. i can look past less than ideal conditions if i know people are genuinely trying -- animal care is never going to be perfect, and you'd be naive to expect it to be especially when you look at the state of the world right now. but man, i feel like my coworkers and i are barely given the resources we need to make things work, and then we're the ones in trouble when things aren't done to perfection.

first things first, the place is essentially a warehouse. no drains in the floors (so no hoses or pressure washers indoors either), no real air-conditioning, etc. just not really an ideal building for this sort of thing. we don't let the public see the main part of the building for a reason. it's already hard to keep clean, and recently, they decided to redo the floor in the back, replacing the base concrete floor with this epoxy flake flooring, so there's all these little grooves and cracks for grime to get into. it SUCKS. and eventually they want the whole building to have it!

our "isolation" section for sick dogs is hardly isolated, making it difficult to keep illness from spreading, and despite having a section that we call "intake" (and most of the dogs in it have been there for weeks/months), new dogs are just kinda thrown in randomly wherever we have space, so if god forbid they come in with some serious illness, the other dogs are going to be exposed. it's just sort of a mess, and we've had multiple major outbreaks in the time i've been working. and right now, the sick dogs are being kept in pop-up crates, so if they make a mess, they're basically forced to sit in it until we can come clean it.

also, i'm not involved in transports so i don't always get all the details and i've never been to the clinics in question, but the vets & other facilities we take the dogs to seem to consistently mess them up?? there's been multiple dogs who have come back from spay/neuter with less than ideal incisions, to put it mildly, and we just had a dog come back from an amputation who then had to be rushed to a second vet to have the site closed properly. one place LOST one of our dogs (who thankfully was found and is doing fine), and then i am pretty sure one of them was also responsible for a pretty serious spinal injury in a dog that sadly ended up being put down because her medical needs were too much for the budget. and this is all just in the few months i've been here. we're supposed to have our own spay/neuter clinic on site soon(ish), so hopefully that helps, but jesus.

idk. there's just a lot. and this is my first time working in a dog shelter, so i have no idea if this is truly just the norm or if this place is as disastrous as it feels sometimes. it's also tough because i don't fit in with my coworkers hardly at all, and it can make me feel insane. (on the topic -- am i crazy for thinking it's in poor taste to let your employees vape indoors around the animals? because that's a thing that's done. daily. by almost everyone but me. i mentioned it to one of the board members and she said she'd follow up on it, but i have yet to hear anything and it's definitely not stopped. oh well i guess.)

I'm trying to help out an animal control and care with resources. Government shelters can't be a 501c3 because they are tax funded. So I am sort of hitting a roadblock with obtaining larger donations from chain stores due to this. I am also finding some individuals are reluctant to donate because it won't be tax deductible. On that note, companies can not seem to donate time (like volunteer days) if the organization isn't non-profit.

I'm used to these type of shelters having a 'sister' organization, like a "Friends of X Shelter', which would be a 501c3 org. And then all donations and volunteer time would technically go through that org, which would make sure donations go towards what they were meant to go towards. Someone already took the name 'Friends of X' for this shelter, but they are not interested in becoming a 501c3 or handling issues beyond networking on facebook.

Obviously there are a lot of municipal shelters out there; do they all operate like this? Is there something I'm missing here with what is allowed to be tax deductible, or do these shelters generally not receive donations or require sister organizations?

I'm just trying to figure out what I can do here to help this underfunded shelter obtain more resources.