Animal Welfare Professionals

On Thursday, May 7, 2026, join Maddie's® Monthly Foster Connection at 12pm PT/3pm ET. Board Certified Veterinary Technician Specialist in Behavior Tabitha Kucera, CCBC, RVT, KPA-CTP, VTS, of Chirrups and Chatter, will be discussing strategies to reduce stress and fear for cat fosters. ... See More

On Thursday, April 2, 2026, join Maddie's® Monthly Foster Connection at 12pm PT/3pm ET. Jordana Moerbe, Director of Lifesaving Partnerships and Medical Care at Austin Pets Alive!, will be discussing how animal shelters can shift from a kennel-centric medical model to a foster-centric clinic ... See More

Genuine question for the field. Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in. We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet. We ... See More

Beverly, the dual microchip registration is smart. Owner as primary, rescue as secondary fallback. We hadn't built that into our process yet, but we will now. It solves the exact problem we keep running into with stale contact information when a pet gets scanned at a shelter three years later and the ... See More

Our rescue has a policy that a cat can be returned at any time during its lifetime. We started microchipping about three years ago. At adoption, we inform the new owner to register the chip in their name and leave our contact information as a secondary in case phone numbers change or the shelter can't ... See More

Beverly, you just described the exact loop that burns rescues out. You see the need, you want to help upstream, but the funding structure rewards intake volume and onsite capacity instead of prevention work. So the surrenders keep climbing and you keep catching what falls. Transportation is one of ... See More

I 100% agree. Being a rescue without an onsite vet prevents us from applying for those types of grants. We need to help our communities by providing an avenue for vet care and medications. Euthanisa is not the answer! Transportation is another hurdle. The local animal shelter has a twice a month pet ... See More

Sheila, thank you so much for the opportunity! ------------------------------ Namiko Ota-Noveskey Program Supervisor Kent County Animal Shelter Grand Rapids MI ------------------------------ See More

Thanks to our speaker, @Namiko Ota-Noveskey - and everyone who joined us today! We would love to hear from you in response to today's reflection: What makes you energized to return to help more people and animals? ------------------------------ Sheila Kouhkan Senior Education Specialist ... See More