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How you can help homeless pets in your community

Everyone deserves a home — and that includes pets in shelters. You can make a lifesaving difference for animals waiting for homes of their own.


Our best friends don’t belong in shelters; they belong at home. But in 2025 alone, just over 4.7 million homeless dogs and cats entered America’s shelters. And when animals don't have a home, they're at risk of being killed.

In fact, a dog or cat is killed in America’s shelters every 90 seconds just because they don’t have a safe place to call home. But there are so many ways you can help change that in your community and beyond.


 

Peanuts® characters featuring Snoopy and his siblings walking in a line

©2026 Peanuts Worldwide LLC 

Best Friends and Peanuts are teaming up to shine a light on adoptable dogs and cats across the country. Snoopy and his siblings are just like dogs and cats in shelters around the country. Each one is wonderfully unique, and each one is ready for a place to call home.

 


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New York City: Let’s save our dogs and cats

You can help dogs and cats in New York City by volunteering, adopting, or fostering today.
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No-kill is within reach, thanks to you

With your help — whether you adopt, give, volunteer, or use your voice to protect animals — we'll end the killing in America's animal shelters.

In just the first half of 2025, lifesaving for dogs and cats in U.S. shelters jumped 19% compared to the same time period last year as public support and momentum for no-kill shelter programs continues to grow across the country. This is a solvable issue, and you can be part of the solution.

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Adopt

When you adopt a pet from a rescue group or animal shelter instead of buying from a breeder or puppy mill, you’re providing a lifesaving second chance.
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Give

You can donate to honor someone for their birthday, sponsor an animal, and more. Your gift is going to work right away to help homeless pets needing a second chance at life.
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Win

Snoopy and his siblings are quite the collection of characters. And today, you can enter for a chance to win a set of your own — that is, an exclusive, limited-edition Peanuts plush set!
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©2026 Peanuts Worldwide LLC

Peanuts® characters featuring Snoopy and his Siblings with red doghouse on yellow background

Bring home your very own character

Snoopy and his siblings are quite the collection of characters.

The pets at your local shelter are real characters too, each with their individual charms and appeal, all deserving of a home. And by getting involved, you’re helping to help save their lives.
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Help save animals in your community

At Best Friends, our goal is to get more dogs and cats out of shelters and into homes and make every shelter in America no-kill.

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See how your community is doing

With your help we can save every at-risk pet in a shelter this year and secure a better future for our best friends.
More than 2 out of 3 U.S. shelters reached no-kill in 2025, and hundreds more are within reach of that goal. Working together, we can save the lives of homeless pets in communities like yours — and nationwide — ensuring that the places we call home are better for everyone, pets included.

Shelters and rescue groups in your community need caring people like you to adopt, foster, donate, volunteer, and advocate to help save the lives of pets. 

When you give us your email address, we'll send you a list of shelters where you live and share more about how you can help save the lives of homeless pets.

Your new BFF is in town!

These adorable, adoptable dogs and cats near you are looking for homes of their own:

More ways to help homeless pets today

Every action you take for homeless pets in your community and across the U.S. helps to save their lives and gets the country closer to no-kill; we’ll show you how.

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About Best Friends Animal Society

Best Friends is working to end the killing of dogs and cats in U.S. shelters in part by getting more pets out of shelters and into loving homes.

We’ve come a long way since the first known city reached no-kill in 1994, and now we’re closer than ever to making the entire country no-kill. Of the roughly 3,900 shelters operating in America today, 1,300 of them are not yet no-kill, but nearly half are close with 100 or fewer additional pets to be saved, and we know what to do to get them there.

Best Friends is committed to working with passionate people like you to save homeless pets through adoption, volunteering, fostering, and advocacy. In addition to our lifesaving centers around the U.S, we also founded and run the nation's largest no-kill sanctuary for companion animals.

Working together, we can save homeless pets in our communities and secure a better future for our best friends. Together, we will bring the whole country to no-kill.