How rescue groups and shelters save more pets together

It takes a village, and that’s an understatement when it comes to Best Friends’ goal to create a no-kill country. Perhaps more than ever before, rescue groups are a key part of that village. Rescue groups have been saving animals in their communities for decades, aiding shelters in various ways. But their relationships with shelters have evolved so much recently that rescue groups are now an integral part of the no-kill movement.

“The progress we’ve made in this country in terms of lifesaving is due in part to the increased partnership between rescue groups and shelters,” says Whitney Bollinger, Best Friends director of strategy and network operations. “Rescue groups play a critical role in the animal welfare ecosystem by transferring animals and facilitating adoptions, and often much more than that, saving countless lives and easing the burden on open-admission shelters.” Shelters and rescue groups go together like peanut butter and jelly: While they can certainly function alone, they’re better together.

Currently, nearly 2 out of 3 shelters in the U.S. are no-kill. While getting to that level takes an extraordinary amount of work, so does maintaining no-kill. “Shelters still need support and have to work hard to maintain that level,” says Holly Sizemore, Best Friends chief mission officer. Rescue groups provide a lot of that support. From breed-specific and all-breed groups to those that focus on older animals or animals with medical needs, they all play a role. Here’s how.

These days, shelters are facing an increasing number of animals coming in, with the hardest-hit ones being municipal shelters. “Municipal and open-admission shelters have finite time, space and resources — and have little control over the volume of animals entering their facilities daily, which creates an ongoing capacity challenge,” Whitney says. Some of that overcrowding can be eased with the help of rescue groups that take in animals from shelters to free up space for incoming animals.

Consider, for instance, the number of dogs that Muddy Paws Rescue in New York City takes in from shelters. Of the roughly 1,000 dogs Muddy Paws Rescue takes in every year, about 70% are from Bowling Green Warren County Humane Society in Kentucky. The rescue group also pulls pets from Animal Care Centers of NYC, taking in almost 170 dogs from those shelters in 2024, says Rachael Ziering, founding executive director of Muddy Paws Rescue.

Although pets can still be at risk when a shelter runs out of space, more animals would be killed if rescue groups weren’t involved. “Our Kentucky partner has told us it would have to start euthanizing perfectly healthy dogs (to make room for incoming pets) if it weren’t for rescue partners,” Rachael says.

Castle Valley Animal Rescue in Carbon County, Utah, focuses specifically on dogs who are hard to adopt out from rural shelters. “Because they’re in the middle of nowhere and lack the ability to market their dogs, rural shelters have a hard time getting dogs ad- opted,” says McKenzi Layton, Castle Valley’s executive director. “For these shelter dogs, rescue is the main way for them to get out.”

[Animal shelters embrace no-kill philosophy]

McKenzi says she is currently taking in about 5 dogs per month from area shelters and placing them in foster homes, which is often life-changing for the pups. “They become a brand-new dog who’s no longer hard to adopt out,” she explains, adding that the rescue group will soon be able to increase its work with shelters. With the help of a grant from Best Friends, Castle Valley Animal Rescue is in the process of building an adoption center that will allow the group to take in more dogs, and even cats, from shelters.

In many cases, animals coming into shelters can be placed directly with rescue groups. Muddy Paws Rescue recently took in a 16-year-old dog as a “diverted intake” from a shelter. “The shelter reached out to rescue partners to see if one of us could take her, so she wouldn’t have to go into the shelter system,” Rachael says. The dog was adopted in less than 3 weeks.

Many high-volume shelters refer people to rescue groups when they don’t have immediate space for pets surrendered by their families. “Rescue groups can fill in the gaps when our resources are stretched too thin,” says Lawrence Nicolas, CEO of Jacksonville Humane Society (JHS) in Florida. Every year, JHS takes in a high number of stray animals and pets from municipal shelters — 7,874 animals in 2023.

In situations like hoarding cases, shelters are often faced with taking in dozens, if not hundreds, of animals at once. It’s nearly impossible for a single shelter to accommodate all of the animals, so they often share the responsibility by working closely with partner shelters and rescue groups.

Even though many New York shelters have been no-kill for some time, Muddy Paws Rescue still receives hundreds of emails every week from them requesting transfer of dogs to the rescue group. One reason is that many pets who land in shelters are stressed after losing their homes, and even the nicest shelters can be scary or anxiety-provoking for pets. As a result, animals may not present well to adopters. A stressed animal might cling to the back of the kennel and be reluctant to interact with strangers.

Rescue groups, by contrast, are primarily foster based, so they can move scared, shutdown animals into foster homes, where they feel much more relaxed, often within days. Even cats who have been labeled “feral” in a shelter setting have been known to blossom into affectionate, confident pets when a rescue group puts them in foster care, Holly says. And when shelters are faced with animals who have special needs, whether behavioral or medical, they can call on their rescue partners. Rescue groups are often better equipped to handle those animals, which includes under-socialized pets, pregnant and nursing moms, and animals with complicated medical problems.

[A well-rounded approach to saving more dogs and cats]

In addition, many shelters don’t have the budget to cover costly surgeries and may not have staff or another entity raising funds for that shelter, especially if it’s a government-funded one. When animals require a lot of extra care, it can put shelters in a jam. “Medical care is a huge limitation for all of us, as it’s hard to devote the time and resources to specialized medical care,” Lawrence says.

Muddy Paws Rescue recently took in a dog from a New York City shelter who underwent hip surgery and required intensive recovery. “That’s not something you generally want to do in a shelter, especially because relaxation, which doesn’t come easy in a shelter, is so important,” Rachael says.

For relationships between shelters and rescue groups to succeed, though, certain factors must be in place. “Each side needs to enter the relationship asking how it can be mutually beneficial,” Lawrence says. “If they can dedicate themselves to doing that and commit to honest and open dialogue, then they can avoid having the animals get stuck in the middle.” For instance, shelters sometimes want rescue groups to take only their harder-to-adopt animals. On the flip side, some rescue groups want to cherry-pick the animals, taking the most adoptable ones and leaving the shelter with a larger percentage of pets who need additional care.

To strike the right balance in helping each other, shelters and rescue groups need to keep their shared goals in mind, Lawrence says. The rescue group might agree to take one of the shelter’s harder-to-adopt pets if the shelter agrees to let the rescue group take one of its more adoptable pets at the same time.

Efficiency also needs to be part of the process for both shelters and rescue groups. Whitney says, “A bottleneck at any point in the process can put the lives of animals in the wider community at risk.” Bottlenecks include shelters putting rescue groups through excessive red tape to pull animals; rescue groups requiring shelters to hold animals for days or weeks before they can pick them up; and delays in spaying or neutering pets, which means pets can’t be transferred to rescue groups as quickly. “When a shelter is full, a delay of a few hours, a day or a few days can have significant con- sequences,” Whitney says.

With the right teamwork, though, efficiency can prevail. For instance, if a shelter is having trouble getting a pet spayed before she goes to a rescue group but needs that kennel space now, the shelter could ask the rescue group to take the pet immediately and then bring her back when her surgery is scheduled. Whitney says, “That conversation could save a life.”

Certainly, a lot of hard work goes into creating and maintaining the relationships between shelters and rescue groups. Ultimately, though, it’s all worthwhile when so many more lives are saved — when a fearful dog is adopted after blossoming in a rescue group foster home, or when a cat with medical challenges is taken in by a rescue group and given the time to heal.

This article was originally published in the March/April 2025 issue of Best Friends magazine. Want more good news? Become a member and get stories like this six times a year.

Our goal at Best Friends is to support all animal shelters in the U.S. in reaching no-kill in 2025. No-kill means saving every dog and cat in a shelter who can be saved, accounting for community safety and good quality of life for pets. 

Shelter staff can’t do it alone. Saving animals in shelters is everyone’s responsibility, and it takes support and participation from the community. No-kill is possible when we work together thoughtfully, honestly, and collaboratively.