Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 21: Treating Animals and People as Individuals It wasn’t that long ago that the majority of dogs rescued from dogfighting operations were killed without any kind of behavior evaluation. It was widely accepted that the... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 20: Telling Great Stories to Save Lives Every animal is an individual and their journeys are as unique as they are. Each of them has a story waiting to be told and these stories are how we connect our community... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 19: The New Data is Here, The New Data is Here! Each year, a dedicated group of Best Friends staff and volunteers compile a colossal spreadsheet with 611,000 individual cells of data. This comprehensive dataset tracks ... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 18: What’s the deal with cats? America loves cats. There are conventions entirely devoted to felines and the people who love them. The internet helped spur the mania with worldwide sensations like Grum... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 17: Permission to Feel with Dr. Marc Brackett Caring for and protecting companion animals involves strong emotions. Understanding how we feel and harnessing our feelings for productive solutions, recognizing and resp... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 16: Leaning in and Listening - Diversity and Inclusion in Animal Welfare This episode we take the time to listen and try to understand how we can do better and be better moving forward in our lifesaving work. Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 15: Emotional Intelligence - Our Super Power! Think about the last time you were upset in your professional life. Maybe you were angry, or sad (or both). What did you do with that emotion? Did you allow it to affect ... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 14: Mission Possible - Lifesaving in the Florida Panhandle Thanks to the most accurate and detailed dataset in animal welfare history, it is possible to see the number of animals killed nationally and all the way down to your com... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 13: American Pets Alive! Piloting Social Services Model of Sheltering Our work has evolved rapidly the past several years as we all work to change an institutionalized sheltering system that was not designed to save lives. The operational c... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 10: Hannah Shaw - Kitten Lady Neonatal kittens are one of the most vulnerable populations in animal shelters. The resources necessary to save them haven’t always been available but that has changed ov... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 12: The Moonshot - No-Kill 2025 The progress towards a no-kill nation has been remarkable. From approximately 17-million animals killed in 1984, to 733,000 in 2019. Of course, one healthy or treatable p... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 11: Let's Spay Together We talked with leaders in three states about how they managed their clinic work during this time. And we talked with Aimee St. Arnaud, Director of National Veterinary Out... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 9: Cultivating Resilience Stress and adversity are part of life. How we deal with it is what matters most. How do we stay gritty, persevere, and show up as our best selves even amid a pandemic? Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 8: When the Budgets Get Tough, the Tough Get Going The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is becoming clearer for municipal governments, and the projected revenue shortfalls are causing across the board budget cuts.... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 7: Compassionate Badassery The work in animal welfare, municipal sheltering, and field services can be emotionally, mentally, and physically taxing. The emotional peaks and valleys affect us all di... Image
Podcast The Best Friends Podcast Ep. 6: Norfolk, Virginia - Your Time has Come Virginia is on the precipice of no-kill statewide but one of the cities that has not yet crossed the 90% threshold is the city of Norfolk, a coastal community in the Hamp... Image