Maddie’s Fund Presents: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, animal shelter workers, volunteers and animal welfare leaders from across the country have been meeting every Monday morning – NEW TIME 8 AM PT/11 AM ET as of 9/23/20 – to discuss protocols, ideas, obstacles they’re facing and more.

Maddie’s Fund Presents: Maddie’s Fund, in concert with American Pets Alive!, hosts a weekly hour-long Zoom call for animal welfare leaders. While these calls started out as a response to COVID-19, it’s grown into so much more. These calls are a safe place to discuss uncomfortable topics, all while sharing a common goal of preserving the human-animal bond.

KSMP Presents: LA County had already begun discussing a strategic rollout of Managed Intake, but Covid came along and forced so many of our hands. Last spring, seemingly overnight, Managed Intake was launched countywide at all seven Animal Care Centers in LA County. While there wasn’t time for the communication or implementation runway they had hoped for, the team had already done their research, knew a streamlined process served more animals and people, and they were committed to their decision. Come hear about how they did it—the challenges, surprises, and the celebrations—and how they are going all-in on a larger plan for Managed Sheltering.

UW and UC Davis Shelter Medicine Programs Present: We will kick off 2021 rounds on Tuesday, January 26th from 3-4pm CST with a discussion on Heartworm Disease. Dr. Linda Jacobson and Dr. Karen Ward from Toronto Humane Society will start the discussion with a short presentation on their published work surrounding heartworm. We hope many of you can join for what should be a great presentation and discussion to follow!

KSMP Presents: You listed managed admissions/appointment-based services as the number one change you made in 2020 that you’d like to see carried forward in 2021. We heard you loud and clear, so this Thursday we’ll be carrying the conversation forward with three more of your fellow CASCARites sharing their journey to appointment-based admissions. Kelly Miott (Tri-City Animal Shelter), Tracy Mohr, (Chico Animal Shelter) and Teri Rockhold (Fresno Humane), we’re looking forward to hearing your stories Thursday morning!

KSMP Presents: This coming Thursday, in addition to the usual hellos and whatever is pressing on people’s minds, we will hear a quick update from Chris Mayer, the Commander of Field Operations for the Riverside County Dept. of Animal Services, on how the various changes of the past year have been integrated into the work of their field services team. I heard him speak on a recent Maddie’s Friday Leadership Call and asked him to give a reprise for us as the field service perspective is such an important one to include. We are eager to hear from you as well – field officers are on the front lines of communication, often on their own in the moment. What has worked well, what challenges have you run across in terms of supporting officers and bringing the whole shelter team along with new programs and policies?

KSMP Presents: This week we’ll continue the conversation we started on February 18: an oral history of the partnership between Long Beach Animal Services and Stray Cat Alliance to implement one of the early SNR/RTF/community cat programs in California. Kelly Miott (erstwhile with Long Beach Animal Care Services), Staycee Dains (current director of LBACS), and Anna Wong and Christi Metropole (Stray Cat Alliance) have agreed to join us. This is an experiment but hopefully will be fun and interesting and will inspire more sharing of the many great stories in California animal welfare and sheltering. 

UW and UC Davis Shelter Medicine Programs Present: Dr. Jeannine Berger, San Francisco SPCA, VP Rescue and Welfare, will be sharing “The POVBR Approach for Behavior Problems in Shelter Animals.” The Problem Oriented Veterinary Medical Record (POVMR) or problem-oriented approach is not new to the practitioner. However, in this lecture we will discuss how it is applied for behavioral health in the shelter environment. Cases will be discussed while the approach will be practiced.

KSMP Presents: On this week’s CASCAR call, Jace Huggins from the Front Street Shelter in Sacramento will be describing how they’ve partnered with their local public health department to get vaccine information out to the community (in five different languages!) where it is most needed, in conjunction with the team’s regular activities in the field.