Saving lives: Around the country

In March, thanks to you, we celebrated the grand opening of the Best Friends Pet Resource Center in Bentonville, Arkansas. As the first-of-its-kind, modernized animal shelter in the country, it’s showing communities around the nation what’s possible when people are invited to help drive lifesaving.

Here’s another reason to celebrate: In Northwest Arkansas, Best Friends placed 1,219 cats and dogs into adoptive homes in fiscal year 2023! 

And we’ve become more innovative across all our centers and programs to help dogs and cats find loving homes. We even got the animals in on the fun, testing out their creative skills and displaying their art to adopters.

Feline artists find homes

Cats have always loved keyboards, so for Adopt a Shelter Cat Month (June) we let them seize control of our laptops. Then, feline curiosity combined with the power of AI to introduce the world's first AI artwork generated by cats. 

Through their interaction with the keyboard, each cat entered a unique prompt for the AI and text-to-image generator.

The artists were showcased along with their masterpieces in an online gallery to catch the eyes of adopters. This was one of the promotions that made June such a great month for adoptions.

Self-cleaning litter box helps cats get adopted

When Best Friends welcomed Whisker to our corporate family this summer, its flagship product Litter-Robot®4 became our official litter box. To kick off the partnership, Whisker donated Litter-Robots to the Sanctuary and our lifesaving centers and covered kitten and cat adoption fees for the entire month of June. 

Combined with the AI art promo, 938 cats not only got a better litter box experience — they found new homes, too.

Breaking records

Collaborating with our shelter partners like Animal Care Centers of New York City to take in and place their pets in new homes is one of the ways Best Friends is working toward no-kill nationwide. This summer, New Yorkers came out in droves to support that effort. 

The Best Friends Lifesaving Center in New York City was bustling during the entire month of August. Many days, people were lined up before the doors opened, ready to meet and go home with a new pet. The Best Friends team worked to make the adoption process as easy possible. 

A volunteer was on hand to talk with people whose preferred language is Spanish. Adoption fees were waived. Staff and volunteers helped match people with the right pet for them. The community turned August into a record-breaking month for the center, with 284 dogs and cats finding new homes.

Rescued pup is boys’ best bud

Potato is a blocky-headed pooch with a huge personality and a gigantic smile. But his exuberance, plus the fact that he had heartworm disease, turned potential adopters away at a Houston shelter. So Potato came to Best Friends for a fresh start.

First, Potato went to a loving Best Friends foster home, where he was closely monitored and cared for during treatment and recovery from heartworms. Potato got well, but once he had his physical health back, he needed some help with his behavior. 

Besides having separation anxiety (which means he didn’t like being away from his people for any amount of time), he would also jump up on people in excitement and grab at their clothes or hands.

So the Best Friends team placed him with a trainer who found Potato’s winning combination: lots of physical activity combined with exercises that help him learn to control his impulses. 

Just when things started to look up for Potato, life threw him one more hurdle. He swallowed part of a dog toy, which led to an intestinal blockage and emergency surgery.

Fortunately, Potato sailed through the surgery. As soon as he recovered, he landed in a home with two young boys. Now, Potato puts his boundless energy to good use following the kids around.