Rising up for pets every day and when disaster strikes

In September 2024, Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm, made landfall in Florida. The storm devastated numerous states in the Southeast.

Best Friends quickly mobilized to help the people and pets impacted by Helene. Fortunately, many volunteers answered the call at a moment’s notice. Toni Dorsey was one of them, and it led to an experience that will stay with her always.

Toni moved to Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2020 after retiring from AAA. She wanted to meet new people and knew volunteering would allow that. She had already experienced a variety of volunteer opportunities — from helping out at food banks to making blankets for pets in shelters — through her former career. Her heart, though, belonged to the animals, which is why she decided to make them the focus of her volunteer work.

“I knew I could make a bigger impact in the animal world because I could provide one-on-one attention to animals,” says Toni, who shares her life with a cat and dog. “Plus, because animals can’t advocate for themselves, they need people to speak up for them.”

In the three years she’s been a volunteer at the Best Friends Pet Resource Center in Bentonville, Toni has become an invaluable member of the team. Showing up almost daily for several hours at a time, Toni tackles whatever needs to be done. “There’s nothing I haven’t done or won’t do,” she says.

Many of her tasks are ones commonly associated with taking care of animals, such as walking and bathing dogs, doing laundry, cleaning litter boxes, and preparing bags to go home with adopters. But Toni’s duties don’t stop there. She gets rooms ready for new animals, refills waste bag stations, picks up pet food and litter from storage, and drives animals to and from the center.

Driving pets and supplies, in fact, has taken her all over the country to places including Chicago and Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. Yet the most memorable trip may be the one she did after Hurricane Helene.

Best Friends’ goal is for all shelters to reach no-kill, and that means working together with other animal welfare organizations to save pets’ lives on a day-to-day basis and also in emergency situations. In the aftermath of Helene, Best Friends jumped in to offer relief to people and pets by moving displaced animals to safe locations; distributing items like food, water, and medical supplies; and organizing volunteers to relieve local shelter workers.

When Toni was asked about driving a van packed with supplies to Asheville, North Carolina, she didn’t hesitate.

With numerous roads closed due to the storm, getting there proved to be challenging, her route taking her north through West Virginia and Indiana. Yet once she arrived, the supplies she brought — “You name it, we had it in van,” she says — were quickly distributed.

[Best Friends' lifesaving work in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton]

For the next eight days, she shared a rented house with four other volunteers. “All of us who were volunteering found out what the current needs were and did whatever we could to help,” says Toni. She loaded and unloaded vans, set up pens in holding areas where people were bringing animals, drove supplies to some of the hardest hit areas, and traveled to Georgia to pick up displaced animals. On the way home, she even stopped in eastern Tennessee to help move pets out of shelters.

She also went on what she calls “scavenger hunts” to find various items, from cat litter to pig food. “I didn’t know anything about shopping for pig food,” she says. “Most people think of cats and dogs when a disaster hits, but it impacts all animals.”

Because of this experience, Toni now sees disasters through a different lens. “I see the devastation, but I also think about what resources people have and need, what kind of help the animals will need and how that’s going to provided, and what things I would pack with me if I were going in to help,” she says.

Two important things she learned? Head lamps are your best friend after a disaster, and you can never have enough wipes. She’s also gained a new appreciation for zip ties.

[Volunteers hit the road to help animals in need]

Until she started volunteering, Toni didn’t realize how many opportunities, both in person and remote, Best Friends offers for volunteers. It’s a message she now shares with new volunteers: “Try as many opportunities as you can and find what works best for you.”

That strategy has obviously worked well for Toni. By trying everything, she’s wound up becoming a Jill of all trades, if you will, with Best Friends, and she’s not slowing down anytime soon.

Our goal at Best Friends is to support all animal shelters in the U.S. in reaching no-kill. No-kill means saving every dog and cat in a shelter who can be saved, accounting for community safety and good quality of life for pets. 

Shelter staff can’t do it alone. Saving animals in shelters is everyone’s responsibility, and it takes support and participation from the community. No-kill is possible when we work together thoughtfully, honestly, and collaboratively.