National recognition for mentoring

National Recognition for Saving Lives

We’ve helped a rural Louisiana shelter go from 22% lives saved to 90% in just over a year – 72% by the end of 2021 then cresting to 90% this Spring. Our partner shelter, Tangipahoa Parish Animal Shelter, received the Transformational Change Award for the highest increase in lifesaving progress at last weekend’s Best Friends Animal Society National Conference.

David Owens, our Shelter Programs Manager who has been living in Louisiana and working at Tangi since December 2020, and Chip Fitz, Tangi’s Director, participated in a panel conversation with Holly Sizemore, Best Friends Chief Mission Officer, to share their learnings with all the conference attendees. The keys to the collaboration were described as communication, transparency, and operating hand-in-hand without judgment. Adam Lamb, our CEO and a member of the Best Friends No-Kill 2025 Steering Committee, also shared the project with that leadership group prior to the start of the conference.

Some of our achievements include:

• Completing a transport hub to relocate more at-risk pets

• Bringing in air and land transport partners to move those pets to shelters across the northeast and Midwest

• Helping 23 other Louisiana and Mississippi shelters save lives through the hub and transport partnerships

• Creating cat holding and ISO spaces and implementing TNR and RTF to increase cat lives saved

• Establishing in-house shelter veterinary resources

• Opening a low-cost spay/neuter clinic to help stem the tide of unwanted pets

• Holding free shot clinics that vaccinated more than 1,000 family pets

We’re grateful to Best Friends for the foundational support for this wonderful project, to the ASPCA for funding bi-weekly rescue flights and regular land transports, to Wings of Rescue for flying the air transports, and to Petco Love and BISSELL Pet Foundation for supporting the vaccine clinics. THIS is what happens when we all work together!