Best Friends Animal Society Opens First Pet Adoption Center in New York
The SoHo Center will Raise Awareness for the Nearly 5,500 Dogs and Cats Killed Every Day in U.S. Shelters
The State-of-the-Art Space is Part of Best Friends Effort to Make the Country No-Kill by 2025
NEW YORK, NY - Best Friends Animal Society has opened its first Pet Adoption Center in New York located at 307 W. Broadway in SoHo.
The national lifesaving concept space in New York City is designed to raise awareness for the nearly 5,500 dogs and cats killed every day in U.S. shelters and to engage people in the work Best Friends is doing to end the killing. The space is part of Best Friends effort to make the country no-kill* by 2025.
"Our new state-of-the-art Center in the heart of Manhattan will demonstrate to locals and visitors alike the problems and solutions facing our country's homeless pet population," said Gregory Castle, ceo and Co-Founder of Best Friends Animal Society. "We've planted a stake in the ground to take this country no-kill by 2025, but we can't do it alone. Our hope is that visitors leave the Center with a new best friend and feeling inspired and equipped with the knowledge needed to achieve our mission."
The Best Friends Pet Adoption Center will inspire and educate visitors from around the country via adoptable dogs and cats housed in a playful, gallery-style setting designed to help tell a story about the problems and solutions facing our country's homeless pet population. It will also feature a round-the-clock kitten nursery to bottle-feed the most vulnerable homeless pet population. Similar to a real nursery, the neonatal unit has strict protocols to ensure the health of kittens who have been separated from their mothers before they are old enough to survive without them. At any given time up to 30 animals will be housed in the Center.
This no-kill concept space introduces a "cause cooperative" model, in which the center will showcase adoptable dogs and cats from nine local and regional nonprofit organizations, and the New York City-run shelter, Animal Care Centers of NYC (ACC). Cooperation and coalition building is a core component for a community to achieve no-kill, and Best Friends is using the new center as a demonstration of collective impact.
Best Friends is launching the New York center in coordination with a new national initiative to lead the country to no-kill by the year 2025, which means that dogs and cats will no longer die in U.S. shelters due to an inability to find them homes. The center will serve as a physical demonstration of the huge progress and momentum underway to end the killing of dogs and cats in our nation's shelters, and will invite visitors to become part of the lifesaving work.
*"No kill" is commonly defined as a "save rate" of 90 percent of the dogs and cats entering shelters.
Best Friends Animal Society
Best Friends Animal Society is the only national animal welfare organization dedicated to ending the killing of dogs and cats in America's shelters. A leader in the no-kill movement, Best Friends runs lifesaving programs in partnership with more than 1,800 rescue groups and shelters across the country; regional centers in New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Salt Lake City; and the nation's largest no-kill sanctuary for companion animals. Founded in 1984, Best Friends has helped reduce the number of animals killed in shelters nationwide from 17 million per year to about two million. Best Friends is determined to get that number to zero by the year 2025. Best Friends and its nationwide network of members and partners are working to Save Them All.
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