Accept Our ‘Help’ Or Else: Best Friends Animal Society Bullies Shelters
- Best Friends Animal Society pushes for policies that harm animals and endanger the public.
- Best Friends Animal Society has launched smear campaigns and harassed shelter employees and families when the shelters have refused to implement the group’s policies.
- Shelter employees and community members have spoken out about the group’s bullying tactics and harmful policies.
Best Friends Animal Society (Best Friends) issues ultimatums disguised as “offers of help.”
A growing number of shelters and cities are wisely refusing to implement the harmful policies that Best Friends pushes, declining its offers to “embed” its representatives and cutting ties with the group after experiencing the disastrous results of its policies firsthand. But Best Friends does not take “no thanks” for an answer.
Best Friends Animal Society has for years misled the public, promising Americans a “no-kill” nation by 2025.
A recent opinion piece by the organization’s CEO conceded that its position is that “keeping pets out of shelters should be a first-choice management protocol.” This philosophy, which Best Friends Animal Society has pressured shelters across the nation to embrace, has deprived countless animals and people who care about them of desperately needed help.
Using bullying tactics and personal attacks, including the frequent use of the divisive term “no kill” and referring to compassionate euthanasia in animal shelters as “killing,” Best Friends Animal Society has created a culture of hate and resentment toward individuals who dedicate their lives to helping homeless animals, including by alleviating their suffering when that is the most humane option.
Due to funding from well-meaning, caring people like you, who may have believed that “no kill” by 2025 was a genuine promise, the organization’s influence has been significant, and the group has spawned additional, similar if less well-known entities that push the same harmful policies, which lead to terrible animal suffering and even more death—though not painless or peaceful.
Animals left out of shelter statistics may not be counted, but they count.
Smear Campaigns and Harassment
Best Friends and similar groups have ruthlessly attacked animal shelters and shelter workers across the country for remaining open-admission and refusing to implement policies that aren’t in animals’ or the public’s best interests.
These policies include turning away owner-surrendered and stray animals (creating a liability for cities when animals who aren’t picked up cause public health and safety hazards), no longer rescuing animals from the streets or seizing victims of cruelty or neglect; warehousing animals for months or years—sometimes in crates, bathrooms, sheds, and other makeshift quarters; confining multiple animals who don’t know each other together in cramped cages and kennels designed only for temporary housing (which is inhumane and promotes disease transmission); and more.
When shelters have refused to implement these destructive policies, Best Friends—sparing no expense—has launched smear campaigns and harassed longtime dedicated shelter employees and their families.
‘A Line Has Been Crossed’
In Danville, Virginia, Paulette Dean, the longstanding executive director of the Danville Area Humane Society (DAHS) described some of the attacks on the city’s publicly funded animal shelter in an interview:
“The misinformation and outright lies astound me,” Dean said. “From what other shelters who have endured this type of campaign told us, we knew it would be brutal. As a message I received from a Best Friends rep said, ‘Paulette Dean needs to remember that Best Friends has more money to fight her than she has to fight Best Friends.’ The door-to-door campaign has concerned many people. One young, sweet kennel attendant was alone at home Tuesday afternoon and was terrified when a man approached her in her yard, walking past ‘no trespassing’ signs and called out her name. … The community events are carefully worded to appear they are being held to ‘help’ DAHS. No, perhaps that was the sincere reason for their original, yet misguided, offer. Now, it is a campaign to annihilate DAHS and assassinate the character of anyone who supports the organization. A line has been crossed.”
‘They Came After My Children’
After groups pushing Best Friends’ policies launched an attack against Houston’s publicly funded BARC Animal Shelter, the facility’s director said he had to delete his Facebook account: “They started messaging my wife, posting pictures of her and making horrible comments. … Then they came after my children. They said things like ‘I hope you know your father is a killer.’ Really at the end of the day, for a lot of these people, it’s not about what’s best for the animal.”
Finger-Pointing and Disrespect
In Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Best Friends had been bullying Fort Wayne Animal Care & Control, a city council member publicly backed the city’s animal shelter staff members. “I think to point a finger and say we’re not doing our job is a little bit disrespectful, and I want to put a shoutout to our animal care and control department and say how we’re going to continue to work with you,” he said.
Personal Attacks Against Shelter Employees
In Little Rock, Arkansas, a longtime volunteer with the publicly funded shelter Little Rock Animal Village spoke at a city Board of Directors meeting about the harms of Best Friends’ “no-kill” push. “Best Friends will stop at nothing to take over the Little Rock Animal Village,” she explained, “including personal attacks against the manager, and it’s unfair.” Watch her two-minute speech here:
A media report about the rejection of Best Friends’ offers of “free help” by Little Rockcity leaders notes, “Shelter volunteers say the decision boils down to a practice called ‘Manage[d] Intake.’ It’s a tool Best Friends has used in other local shelters which limits the number of animals coming in. ‘They’re left on the streets to reproduce, they are left on the streets to get sick, they are left on the streets to get hit by cars.’” Watch other area residents passionately urge city leaders to refuse any partnership with Best Friends below.
A ‘Tacky Campaign’ and Terrible Suffering
In what one local animal advocate called a “tacky campaign” in Weslaco, Texas, Best Friends representatives were “literally walking up and down the streets of Weslaco, going up to people” and providing them with misleading information about the community’s publicly funded animal shelter. She posted a video describing the bullying tactics and the terrible animal suffering that she’s seen as a result of Best Friends policies in the communities where she works (start video at the 2:43 mark):
Animal Shelters’ Vital Work Must Be Protected
Many municipal animal sheltering agencies are law-enforcement agencies. They house animals seized from people who have been found criminally abusing and neglecting them. These animals must be handled with extreme care and compassion and housed safely as evidence. Municipal shelters are also tasked with caring for lost animals who belong to residents and must be held humanely for their legal safekeeping in accordance with local and state laws. Additionally, animal control departments are tasked with protecting the public from the dangers posed by roaming and homeless animal populations, which include traffic hazards, animal attacks, and the spread of rabies and other contagious diseases.
Community leaders must protect these critical agencies from attacks by outside extremist “life at any cost” groups and infiltration schemes by those who have no stake in keeping their communities safe.
Read more about Best Friends’ bullying tactics and smear campaigns at the links below:
- “‘A Line Has Been Crossed’: Danville Area Humane Society Leader Responds to Recent Campaign”
- “‘We Can’t Back Down From What We Know Is Right’: DAHS Holds Annual Meeting”
- “To Kill or Not to Kill—That’s Not Really the Question”
- “Group Seeking Changes to Augusta Animal Services Evoke[s] Mixed Reactions From Around the Country”
- “Houston-Area Animal Shelters Are Bursting at the Seams. Are ‘No-Kill’ Policies to Blame?”
Learn more about how Best Friends’ policies endanger communities here.
These pages list examples of “no kill” gone wrong, often directly involving Best Friends Animal Society and sometimes other “no-kill” extremists.
