Animal shelter advocate and founder of Who Will Let the Dogs Out Cara Achterberg shares insights from visits to 150+ shelters, discussing rising dog euthanasia rates and approaches used at successful facilities. Hear her perspective on “managed intake” and “community sheltering” concepts, plus practical ways to help homeless pets through fostering, volunteering, and advocacy. Whether you’re new to animal advocacy or experienced, discover strategies to support your local animal shelter and help reduce euthanasia rates in your community. #ShelterDogs #AnimalAdvocacy #PetAdoption
Episode Highlights:
- 00:00 Introduction
- 03:13 Cara’s Journey: Fostering Dogs to Advocate for Shelter Dogs and Their Heros
- 07:52 “Managed Intake and “Commuity Sheltering” (Differing definitions)
- 12:29 Rising Dog Euthanasia and Increase in Stray Population
- 14:30 Successful Animal Shelters’ Key Factors
- 16:41 Community Engagement in Animal Shelters
- 22:37 Community and Commitment in Rescue
- 25:32 Importance of Costs of Care laws
- 27:58 Effective Shelter Support Strategies
- 32:22 Summary
Resources Mentioned
Who Will Let the Dogs Out Book on Amazon
Transcript
Penny Ellison:
Welcome back to The Animal Advocate. Today, we’re trying something new, our first interview episode. I mentioned last time that we’d be talking with people doing remarkable work in this space, people whose stories might spark ideas for your own advocacy journey. I’m excited to introduce you to Cara Achterberg, cofounder of Who Will Let the Dogs Out, which is also the title of her new book. And what makes Cara’s work interesting isn’t that she runs a shelter or rescue. She doesn’t. Instead, she’s a witness and a storyteller. Who Will Let the Dogs Out visits shelters, more than 150 so far, to observe their reality firsthand – the physical spaces, the community context, the people doing the work, and the everyday challenges they face.
But here’s what really matters. Cara doesn’t just see these places. She helps others see them, too. Many animal lovers want to help shelter animals, but they’ve never stepped inside a shelter. They haven’t experienced the sights, sounds, and feelings of these spaces, and Cara bridges that gap. In our conversation, Cara introduces concepts that might be new to some listeners, like managed intake and community sheltering. These approaches were designed to move facilities closer to no kill status. What’s interesting is how these terms carry different meanings to different people, and sometimes implementation doesn’t deliver on the promised results.
She also talks about how shelter euthanasia rates for dogs are rising after decades of progress, highlighting why our advocacy work is so important right now. She’s based in Virginia and has focused primarily on Southern shelters where resources are often especially limited. Her organization’s purpose aligns perfectly with what we explore on this podcast, connecting animal lovers with the actual on the ground needs and empowering them to participate in meaningful change.
Welcome to The Animal Advocate, where we arm animal lovers with the information and inspiration you need to become effective advocates. I’m your host, Penny Ellison, and I’ve taught animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania since 02/2006. If you’ve ever thought someone should do something about that, I’m here to guide you on your journey to being that someone. You can find us on the web at animaladvocacyacademy.com. And that’s where you’ll find show notes and resources, and you can send us your comments on episodes and ideas for topics you’d like to hear on future shows.
So on to today’s topic. Welcome, Cara.
Cara Achterberg:
Thanks, Penny. I’m happy to be here.
Penny Ellison:
Can you tell me what inspired you to start Who Will Let the Dogs Out?
Cara Achterberg:
Yeah. I’ll try to do it succinctly because it’s kind of a long story. For many years, I was a writer, and I started fostering dogs after losing a heart dog and wrote about it because I’m a writer, wrote a blog about it, wrote a book about fostering, went out to promote that book, and went to the shelters in the South. And I went there because I was going down to do book signings anyway in these towns, and I was like, oh, my dogs all come from there. I think I want to go see them. I’ll take donations. And so I told everybody I knew, I was doing this, and I said, if you have stuff you want to send to the shelters, give it to me. So I had so much stuff, I had to rent a big truck and then draft a friend to go with me because I was nervous about driving it.
And she and I went off on this adventure that I thought was going to be so much fun. And then I went to my very first shelter in North Carolina, and I was stunned by the situation. I was stunned that, you know, you walked in and it just it the smell, not just of the animals and the disinfectant but almost like desperation. Just …it was just so hard. It was a small shelter. They had taken in 500 dogs that was it 500 or something? I’m trying to get my numbers right because it’s been so many years. But anyway and they had only adopted out a handful. And so doing the math on that and trying to figure out what else will you do, you know, and that that was a little bit of a shock for me. And the fact that the animals lived outside, the dogs lived outside in a very humid climate, eighty percent of the dogs were heartworm positive. They didn’t have anything.
And I I was, like, taken back. I was in shock that I’d fostered over a hundred dogs by then, and I had no idea.
Penny Ellison:
All from that shelter?
Cara Achterberg:
No. From all over the South, but some from that shelter, yes. And I was just sort of I was just ashamed that I didn’t know. How could I not know? I was all about this, you know, we’re all going to save all these dogs. And then I get down there, and they have nothing. They have, you know, a budget that barely covers food. They have no money really for spay and neuter. Obviously, no money for heartworm preventative.
Those were basics, and I was shocked. And from there, I went to 13 other shelters on that tour, some better, some worse, and came home furious that I didn’t you know, furious about the situation and that, how can this be going on in our country? How can there be dog pounds? How can that happen? So I started going and traveling back again and again. I took a photographer friend because too few people read. And I was writing my heart out, but not feeling like I was getting the message out. And so I took a photographer friend, and we did it. We traveled down two more times and finally said, you know, we need more than this. We need a bigger microphone. We need more people behind this. And so we started Who Will Let the Dogs Out with a mission to raise awareness and resources for homeless dogs and the heroes who fight for them. And it’s been, it’ll be six years this year. So it’s been a journey. Things have changed, some for the better and some for the worse in the shelters.
Penny Ellison:
Let’s talk about that. Because you’ve been trying to make a difference for six years. It’s been you know, the pandemic interfered, I’m sure. How do you see things changing since you’ve been involved in going to shelters?
Cara Achterberg:
You know, when we went down in 2019 and even very early 2020, you know, everybody seemed to be making some progress. You know, rescues were having a big impact. Transports were really changing things. Everybody was working really hard, and it felt like the numbers were getting a little bit better every year. The very first trip in 2020, I felt like things were getting better. And I heard I was at a shelter, in fact, one of my favorite shelters in South Carolina that’s headed by a vet who’s done a phenomenal job there. I wrote about her in my book. She used a term I hadn’t heard before. She said, manage our intake. I asked her, how did you bring your shelter from killing sixty percent of the dogs when she took the job to, you know, less than ten percent? You know, in six months, really.
Penny Ellison:
Wow. That’s an incredible turnaround.
Cara Achterberg:
It was an incredible turnaround. And when I asked her, how did you do that? She said, well, first off, we just stopped killing dogs. And that was really a powerful statement I’ve thought about for years now. And it really is a mindset. As she said, you when you take it off the table, you’ll find other options. And so she taught me a lot about being transparent with staff, with community, with everybody so we all are on the same page. We all know what’s happening. But she also talked about doing managed intake, and I was like, what’s that? I’ve never heard of this.
And at the time, managed intake meant scheduled intake, basically.
Penny Ellison:
But open intake shelter, they have to take surrenders?
Cara Achterberg:
But they have to make an appointment to do that. And then I heard again from another shelter director on that tour, animal control officer, and she said, well, we are an open intake shelter. But if you come in here and you’re bringing an aggressive dog that you can’t handle, we’re gonna say to you, take that dog to your vet and have it euthanized. That is the most humane thing you can do because we’re gonna euthanize it. Why would you bring your dog here, make it suffer, you know, if they have to hold it legally for a few days? I don’t know what the law was in that state, I don’t remember. This was Tennessee, and I have a feeling they could’ve euthanized on intake. But why put the dog through that? Why? If you love this animal, then you should do it. And that was another take on managed intake that I thought, that makes sense. I get that. So managed intake seemed like a good thing to me.
Okay. Fast forward, we get to the pandemic. We get 2021, I started hearing about not just managed intake, but community sheltering, which was this other idea about, you know, putting the burden back on the community. So when you find a pet, a lost animal, supposedly lost animal, instead of bringing it to the shelter, they advised you to either take it into your home and try to foster and find it at home or leave it where you found it because, you know, most dogs live within a mile from the place where they got lost, which all sounds lovely unless that animal was dumped.
Penny Ellison:
Yeah. Community sheltering sounded like a I thought you were going to say it’s making it a community resource center, but it means leave the animals in the community?
Cara Achterberg:
Yeah. If you Google community sheltering, it was first brought about by the Human Animal Support Services, HASS. And that’s what they advocate. If you go to their website that practices that, they’re going to say, don’t call us with your lost animal. Leave it where it is. Try to tell people in the neighborhood. And there’s different variations on it. And I’m really giving you the very worst interpretation of it because some places interpret it differently, and it can be successful.
Cara Achterberg:
But that is the interpretation that many shelters ran with. And so we started hearing about this. We got calls from people in Memphis about the stray population being out of control. And so when we started going back out again, we started seeing that. Not just that there was a lot of strays, it was just starting at that point. But the managed intake was also being interpreted differently. It wasn’t just you have to make an appointment. It was we’re not going to take your dog. Can’t even tell you how many shelters we walked through in in 2023, especially, and definitely in 2024, that had signs on their door that said we do not take owner surrenders. Closed to intake. They would have no drop offs. There would just be all these signs. And I and that was quote unquote managed intake.
Penny Ellison:
And those are shelters that are municipal shelters that are normally open intake. So it’s not that it’s an SPCA or humane society that would normally have selective intake.
Cara Achterberg:
Right. Exactly. Because prior to that, that’s the only place we ever saw that. And so I was always writing about it. I think I wrote a piece called Tale of Two Shelters about the municipal shelter and the nonprofit that were in the same town, you know, and what that means. And so that trying to explain to people what that means, because we’re all about raising awareness, giving you the information so that you can help. So it really was a surprise to me that that was being interpreted that way, but we saw it all over the place.
And a lot of it is just this pressure. Shelters feel like they have to be no kill. You know, they’re not quote unquote no kill. They don’t have that little plaque on the wall. It’s hard to get supporters. It’s hard to get people to come in your door. You get labeled the kill shelter. And so, you know, to be no kill, they want to get to that 90%, which is a really arbitrary number in my opinion. They just would not take in dogs if they didn’t have to.
Cara Achterberg:
Like, in Memphis, the way they got around it legally was a change of one word in the ordinance. The ordinance was animal control officers shall pick up dogs running at large. I can’t remember the exact words, but something to that effect.
Penny Ellison:
Don’t tell me, they changed it to “may”?
Cara Achterberg:
They changed it to “may.” May pick up dogs.. And that little one tiny word, which who’s going to notice that when we’re putting up a new ordinance? Who’s going to notice that one little tiny change? I mean, it changes everything.
Penny Ellison:
It sure does. It’s also it surprises me because picking up stray dogs is usually viewed as human safety. It’s human public safety is why you’re picking up stray dogs. You’re not picking up stray dogs for… by and large, the municipality is not picking up stray dogs to protect the dog. So I’m surprised that they would make a a decision in an ordinance not to pick up all stray dogs.
Cara Achterberg:
Yeah. And I have the same thought about community sheltering. Like, why would you tell people to keep dogs? And you know nothing about this dog. This could be a dog that was dumped because it attacked a child. This could be a dog that is infested with parasites. This could be a dog that’s pregnant. I mean, you don’t know. If you just tell a community to leave it there or bring it to your house, that’s dangerous.
That’s dangerous. And and not just for the people, but for the dog. I mean, who knows what those people are like? Whether they’re gonna care for that animal, whether they’re gonna you know, how do you know they’re not gonna just chain it up outside and, you know, they don’t even know to feed it? Who knows what they would do? You know? I just think the way it’s been interpreted is creating a change. And it’s just amazing to me to see the difference. You know? And everybody anybody who looks at the news can see that the numbers of dogs being euthanized has gone up three years in a row now, first time in two decades that that happened. So we’re euthanizing more animals. And to my mind, that number’s barely showing it because the stray population is so out of control. And you know because you’re involved with shelters, eighty percent of animals coming into a shelter are not spayed or neutered, at least in the South.
Cara Achterberg:
That’s the case. So if you are turning away all these animals and eighty percent of them are not spayed or neutered, they are coming back to you in You’re
Penny Ellison:
You’re making the problem worse. You’re magnifying the problem.
Cara Achterberg:
Yeah. So it’s like a snowball, and it’s been heart wrenching to me. I just feel like we’ve lost so much progress, and I watched this all. And you know what? It’s all done with good intentions. These organizations that are promoting this, and they want to make us all no kill, and we all want everyone to be no kill. It’s with great intentions. The problem is it’s been used wrong. People are so focused on that number, and they’re only counting the animals in the building.
Cara Achterberg:
They’re not counting the animals they didn’t let into the building and what’s become of them.
Penny Ellison:
So we talked a lot about what’s not going well, and certainly it’s a challenging time for all shelters everywhere in the country. And you’re right that the euthanasia numbers are going up. But you’ve been to over 150 shelters, and that gives you sort of a unique perspective about who’s doing things right. Who’s managed to figure out how to engage the community, how to do everything better? Can you give me some examples of what you’ve seen that really is moving the needle in a positive direction?
Cara Achterberg:
Yeah. Well, I can tell you what I’ve seen in terms of the shelters that are doing well. And I wrote extensively about this in my book, the fact that they have three things. They have leadership, leadership committed to saving the animals. And that leadership is usually an animal control officer or director, shelter manager or rescue director, whoever it is. I mean, in some parts of, like, Georgia and Mississippi and in Tennessee, there are no municipal shelters, and so they’re private nonprofit that steps into that gap. You have somebody who’s committed to this. And when they’re committed to this, they’re committed to involving everybody and every idea.
Cara Achterberg:
They’re not somebody who comes in with an agenda that we’re going to do it this way. The ones that we’ve seen that are successful are the ones that are, like, networking and working with other shelters and expanding their volunteer programs and building a rescue network, and they’re just .. they’re pulling our community together. The second thing is they have veterinary access, and that’s a critical one right now everywhere. It’s really hard.
Penny Ellison:
There’s a real shortage of veterinarians, and it’s hard to get them to work for shelters.
Cara Achterberg:
Right. Affordable veterinary access. And that has been a huge challenge. It’s more of a challenge now because of so many veterinary practices are being bought up by these private companies, and they generally put in policies that are not rescue friendly. And it’s driven the cost up and made it harder and harder for animals. And also, there’s just less money out there for spay and neuter.
Penny Ellison:
It’s the perfect storm, you know, it’s very expensive to hire veterinarians because of, you know, it’s a very hard job. And those private equity firms that have bought up a lot of the vet practices have driven up the price for the shelters that have in house veterinarians to be able to hire. But you’re also right that it also you don’t have as many community veterinarians that are willing to work with the shelter at reduced prices because it’s a it’s a larger business than that.
Cara Achterberg:
Yeah. So it’s been really hard. One of the things we have seen is shelters that are finding their work around their in house clinics, and they’re finding either retired vets or vets who you know, some veterinarians are happy to work at a shelter because they don’t have to deal with owners. And so, like, when I had inter I just interviewed a veterinarian on this last a shelter veterinarian on this last tour. And and I said to her, like, why did you leave private practice to do good? And she said, people. Yeah. And I totally got it. I totally understand that.
Cara Achterberg:
So so that you know, that’s one way they’re working around it. And I I know of a couple shelters that are actually, you know, funding a lot of their work by having a clinic that it does the shelter animals and also community animals. And so they’re able to do it at a little bit of a discount, but for them, that’s income. So that’s a really cool model. So those two things, leadership, veterinary access, but the most important piece is community engagement. You have to get your community in the door. And that’s hard when I talk to animal control officers who are so you know, they see the worst of the worst, you know, and they’re kinda suspicious of people. But the key to a shelter, you know, doing well, thriving, saving all their animals, and being able to operate on open admission, is getting the community in the door.
Cara Achterberg:
Like, get the volunteers in there. Have a foster network, have a rescue network. In my book, I wrote tons of ideas. Some I’ve seen
Penny Ellison:
in I’ve bought some of them, like a shelter that built a paw shaped dog park or dog trail. And so you can you can come and use our facility. This is obviously for shelters that have enough land to do this. But take one of our dogs for a walk on our trail or even walk your own dog on our trail. But it gets people on the property so they’re thinking about you.
Cara Achterberg:
Yeah. So happy people there. There’s a shelter in Roanoke, Virginia. They have a little free library right in the front of the shelter. Gets people to stop, you know, to go there.
Penny Ellison:
And that’s that community center idea that you were talking about, not community sheltering, but the shelter more of a community center. So there are activities for kids, there are activities for older people, and that it becomes, you know, like a library where people would just stop in.
Cara Achterberg:
Yeah. I think it should be a community resource. If if there’s anything happening with dogs, it should happen there. They should have obedience classes, agility classes. There’s so many dog sports that could happen there. You’ve already got these people with the skill set, you know? Use them. They know how to train basic obedience behavior. They know how to teach a dog to walk nicely on a leash.
Cara Achterberg:
They know how to do those kinds of things. But you can go beyond that. There’s so many things that you can do at a shelter that brings people there so that that’s their first thought, like, oh, that’s where the animals are. That’s where I should go if I need help. But if you’re a shelter who has, like, ten to two, you know, Monday to Thursday hours, you can’t get people in your in your building. You know? Children’s education is another really important piece of it. We promoted it a lot with Who Will Let the Dogs out. We have a free curriculum on our website for people just to teach how to safely meet a dog.
Cara Achterberg:
Because, you know, you know from being in shelters, a lot of dogs end up from they’re from biting a child. And then usually, nine times out of 10, it’s because that child did not know how to safely interact with the dog. It’s a life skill. Everybody should have this life skill, and I’d love to see it. There’s a place in North Carolina where they actually teach in the schools. They go into the schools. It’s a eight week curriculum. I think it’s in fourth grade, and it’s for all schools, parochial, private, public.
Cara Achterberg:
And they teach humane education. It’s a eight week curriculum once a week. They come in. It culminates in this big event at the end where they do a microchip clinic, and they you know, the kids can bring their dogs. This would be like a big dog festival in the park. And it’s so cool, and I’m excited to see how that carries out in Moore County, like, how that translates as those kids grow up because, you know, they’re learning about spay and neuter. They’re learning about that. So we’ve just gotta find ways to make this a a true community resource where people can go for help with their pets and people want to go with their pets.
Penny Ellison:
Yeah, and all the things you’re talking about is about creating advocates. Those kids hopefully are gonna you know, when they’re young, they’re gonna say, Our next dog, we should go we go to the shelter and adopt that next dog, but they also then become advocates and ambassadors for the shelter, and all of the activities that you were talking about to bring people into the shelter, like training classes or volunteer opportunities, it also prevents surrender. I mean, at the same time, if you’re teaching people how to best train their dogs so that they’re, you know, not jumping up and knocking over their kids, then hopefully you’re going to reduce the number of of dogs in the system from being surrendered.
Cara Achterberg:
Right. You know, you bring those people in too. If you have a foster program, which everyone should have a foster program, those fosters are going to be your best advocates. They’re going to be the ones advocating not just for the dog. Do you
Penny Ellison:
have any tips for recruiting fosters? I know you fostered over a hundred dogs yourself, so you must have talked a lot of people into fostering.
Cara Achterberg:
I do. I talk to people all the time. I tell them all the time. It’s so much fun. My kids loved it. And it was they always said it was like, we got a new dog every couple weeks. And and to them
Penny Ellison:
And how did they feel about giving them up? Because that’s everybody’s, everybody’s fear is, I won’t be able to let them go.
Cara Achterberg:
You know, I wrote a lot about this in my book, Another Good Dog. But I told my kids at the beginning, you know, these aren’t our dogs. We are just helping these dogs. We’re helping them get ready for their for their real home. And we always had that you know, when the dog came in the door, we knew that dog was leaving. And sometimes it was hard. Every time it was hard, I would say to them, well, if we keep this one, we can’t save another. And that they get that.
Cara Achterberg:
They totally get that.
Penny Ellison:
And they made that connection. Good.
Cara Achterberg:
And they totally get that. You know, and it’s true of all of us. You know, if you really care about something and you really want to make a difference, it might be painful. And that’s what it is. And to me, my little broken heart is nothing compared to the dogs that are dying in the shelters, you know. And seeing what’s happening there just makes me more and more fired up to you know, I just had it one leave that I wish I could’ve kept in a million ways and even thought about it, but I didn’t because it would have kept me from being able to foster more, so I let him go.
Penny Ellison:
And that leads me to start thinking about compassion fatigue because, you know, you have a great approach to it. It sounds like, you know, my broken heart is nothing compared to what all of those animals are going through. But, you know, you walked into a lot of shelters that were very painful to see and where you saw a lot of a lot of emotional and physical pain there in the animals. How do you deal with that emotionally? Because I think a lot of people are afraid to go into shelters. We’re going to be encouraging people to go to their local shelter and learn about it and find out what their needs are. How can you prepare for that emotionally?
Cara Achterberg:
You know, you can’t ever prepare because you don’t know for sure what you’re going to find there. But I think it’s the people that are there. Like, for me, when I go in and I meet them and I see how hard they’re working, how much they’re giving up, it inspires me more than anything else. There are definitely times where you need a break, where you need to, like, take off and get away from the animals for a little while. But it’s the other people that are there and the friendships you make and the commitments that everybody’s made to try to save more lives. And you have so many great moments too, and you’d have to keep focused on those. Like, for me as a foster, and I still foster, I have a Facebook group for my people who adopt, and I ask them to put pictures up in there, so I can follow. I can see them after they’ve been adopted.I can see what they’re looking like. And sometimes when I’m really bummed, I will post in there. Please, I need to see some happy endings. Can you guys post me some happy endings? And it just makes my day to see when somebody posts a dog that I fostered, you know, ten years ago. It’s pretty amazing to see that. So, you know, it can be hard, but there’s ways to tippy toe into it also. There’s a program at this one I’m I can’t remember what sheltered it, and I love the idea, and I want to promote it more. But they treat their dog their dogs are kind of like a dog library, I want to say. But people can go in and apply to be able to check out dogs, and they get all approved. And they can check a dog out for an hour just to take it for a walk. They can check it out to go for a pup cup. They can check it out for a sleepover.
Cara Achterberg:
They can check it out. And it’s kind of a way to tiptoe into fostering, and I love that idea. So you get to take it out. You know, you’re not committing. Because, you know, when you say, oh, I’m going to foster this dog. Well, if you have to return it, you feel terrible. Right? You feel terrible if you have to give it back. And everybody feels bad, and everyone thinks what’s wrong with that dog.
And it may have nothing to do with that dog. It may have to do with your cat or your kid or whatever is going on in your life. So this was such a cool idea. It’s like you were checking out dogs like library books. And it was so cool because I
Penny Ellison:
love that. Just the short commitment and You could walk in … Even if you never do anything else, you help that dog.
Cara Achterberg:
Yes. Exactly. You know, worst case is that dog got out of the shelter for an hour. That, you know, it can be life changing for a dog. It can save their lives literally.
Penny Ellison:
And maybe somebody saw him in an adopt me vest, and maybe you got a picture of him out at Starbucks that makes people think they could they could see him as their dog. There’s a lot of ways that it helps.
Cara Achterberg:
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I we need a clever name for it because I, like, check out I have to come up with a clever name because and I can’t and I, for the life of me, cannot remember which shelter we heard about that at. I want to say it was in Kentucky, but I’m not positive.
Penny Ellison:
I think we have some around here. It’s like, you know, doggy day outs or play dates or something like that.
So I come to animal sheltering as a lawyer and think about sort of law and policy and how we might use that to get better outcomes for animals. Are there any initiatives in the law and policy arena that appeal to you in terms of making change?
Cara Achterberg:
I’m sure these laws are already in place in New England. But where in the South, one of the laws that’s kind of getting momentum and starting to get passed everywhere is a cost of care act, which is a great thing because, you know, when dogs are seized in a court case and they’re the court hold dogs, they’re so isolated in a shelter. Generally, the public is not allowed to go near them in many shelters. They could sit there for months. I know of cases where they were there for a year, puppies that grew up in that shelter. And by the time that case was finally settled, they weren’t even adoptable anymore because they’d been in a shelter all that time. And so cost of care says that when your animals are seized because of this, you’re going to have to pay per day for that animal to stay, or you’re going to have to surrender it. And that’s the way the law is being written in Kentucky, and I believe it’s about to happen somewhere else.I want to say I should know because someone just messaged me about it. Maybe Georgia.
Penny Ellison:
I should know too. Because that that was actually the first thing that I worked on in terms of in Pennsylvania was the cost of care law, and we got it passed back in 2013 because a lot of the cruelty cases I mean, it’s terrible for the animals, but, also, sometimes the cruelty law doesn’t get enforced because it was so expensive for the shelters to enforce it.
In, say, a hoarding case where you have a 50 cats or something, you have to take custody of them and then care for them for the whole length of a criminal proceeding at your own expense.
Cara Achterberg:
Right. One shelter in Kentucky that we visited had just taken, they had 24 kennels. They’d taken in a hoarding case, and it was, like, 20 dogs. So they were going to have to and they were a shelter that euthanizes for space. Now they’re completely they’re stuck with these 20 dogs for and that’s partly, it’s terrible for the dog, but partly, it also limits the other animals that the shelter can help. And it means that other dogs are going to die. So it’s an important law, and it really needs to be passed everywhere. Hopefully it will.
Penny Ellison:
Okay. Great. Is there anything else that you want to share with our listeners about what they can do to get involved?
Cara Achterberg:
Yes. I believe so firmly that everybody can do something. I mean, you could do something as small as following your local shelter and on Facebook or wherever they are and liking and commenting and sharing and engaging so that it drives those posts to be shown in more feeds and helps. I mean, that’s so minor. That’s just a couple clicks on an daily basis. That can really help. Obviously, you can always donate. I always encourage people, if you’re going to help a municipal shelter, shop their Amazon wish list.
Cara Achterberg:
Getting involved in your own shelter and trying to find ways to help, to figure out what it is. When we go to visit a shelter, one of the questions I ask is, you know, how can people help? What do you need? And we try to get that put that message out. And so instead of just blindly, you know, sending a check, it’s sometimes better to contact them and find out, you know, how can how can we help? What can we do? We have volunteers all over the country that volunteer for us and our organization and their job. Many of them are shelter liaisons, and their job, they’re assigned usually about four shelters. I say to them, stalk online because they’re not anywhere near them. And they’re just doing that for us. They’re tracking what’s happening them. What’s happening in their shelter, they’re looking for really good ideas, really cool ideas, and they’ll share them with us.
Cara Achterberg:
And then we put them in our resource guide. On our website, there’s a resource guide. I think it’s under the shelters tab for shelters tab. And it has every idea we’ve seen for, like, adoption events or fundraising or grants or protocols or enrichment, all of that. Every time we see another cool idea, we put it in that resource guide so it’s in one place. So if you’re a shelter or rescue, when you’re looking for a new idea, a novel, something new to do for social media or for whatever, you can go through that guide and find a new idea that you maybe didn’t didn’t think of. So there’s stuff you can do right from your home. You know? I’m also going to be the first one to say foster.
Cara Achterberg:
Fostering is a right now, with the situation in our shelters, that is the one thing anybody can do to truly make a difference and save a life is to foster. Right? We need fosters more than anything else right now. Every shelter nearly every shelter in this country is at capacity or overcapacity. Fostering can give them some breathing room. You can provide some dogs some time. So it’s also super fun. I want to make a little plug for it. If you have tween age kids or teenage kids, fostering is a really fun thing that definitely brought our family together.
Cara Achterberg:
I mean, we had a lot of laughs and a lot of fun taking care of dogs, and we did a lot of puppies, which was super fun. My kids got to see puppies come into the world. They saw some hard stuff too because it doesn’t always have it’s not always a happy ending, but I think that was also important. They got to learn that sometimes, like, it doesn’t go the way you hoped it would go, but that doesn’t change the importance of doing this, you know, sometimes.
Penny Ellison:
That’s a great message. Life lessons for tweens and teens in in fostering, and that’s fantastic.
Penny Ellison:
I love the work you’re doing, and I love your idea of shelter liaisons, and I think that people can take that idea and even run with it in their own community and say that maybe I could be the shelter liaison for a shelter near me, and I could talk to them and find out what their needs are and share it with people in my community who might not wanna go to the shelter but could help them get the resources they need to be able to take care of the animals. So I appreciate all that you’re doing. People can find Cara and all of their work at whowillletthedogsout.org. Right? And is there a link there to buy your book of the same name?
Cara Achterberg:
There is. There’s a link there. It’s also on Amazon, of course, but you can definitely buy it there. We give this book away free to shelters and rescues. So anybody who is a shelter or rescue would like a copy, they just reach out to me, and we send that copy. And if you would like, you know, every purchase that is made helps pay for us to do that. So if you would like to send one to a shelter or rescue, you can also do that through our website. You can fill out the form.
Cara Achterberg:
You can tell us what shelter you want us to send it to, and you can buy them a book that way too.
Penny Ellison:
Wonderful. Or your local school, your local library. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Cara, and keep in touch because I really admire your work.
Cara Achterberg:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Penny Ellison:
You’re welcome.
Thanks for listening today. I hope Cara’s insights gave you some fresh perspective on shelter challenges and opportunities. You’ll find a link to who will let the dogs out in the show notes, and I’ve spent some time exploring their site, And it’s full of practical ideas for supporting your own local shelter. What I appreciate about Kara’s approach is how she connects observation directly to action, seeing what’s happening and finding specific ways to help. So take a moment this week to check out your local shelter’s website or social media. What are they asking for? What challenges are they facing? The most valuable support comes from understanding the actual needs rather than what we might assume they are.
Penny Ellison:
That’s it for today. The Animal Advocate podcast is brought to you by the Animal Advocacy Academy. You can find episodes and show notes at animaladvocacyacademy.com, along with a link to our Facebook and LinkedIn pages where we discuss our podcasts, and we’d love to discuss your thoughts and experiences there. If you’re interested in learning more about protecting animals, subscribe to the show so you get every episode when it comes out. If you have any questions on this or any other topic related to animal law, email them to podcast@animaladvocacyacademy.com, and we’ll make sure to get them answered. We’ll either email you back or feature them in a future episode or both. And remember, compassion is great, but compassionate action is infinitely better. Until next week, live with compassion.
