Animal shelters are a predominant, largely unquestioned, feature of the landscape of animal welfare. Yet, their historical roots as a pound system haunt and shape the impacts of animal shelters on human staff, animals, the environment, and the broader community. Using a One Welfare lens, Nadine Dolby highlights the mounting evidence in multiple fields that the current approach is broken, and offers practical, hopeful solutions to changing how communities help pets and people.

This book opens questions about how the current system of animal sheltering operates in the United States through exploring its historical roots and contemporary challenges. The book then examines the terrain of community-centered animal sheltering and the emergent, creative, One Welfare-based practices of more than a dozen community organizations across the United States. Throughout, Nadine weaves in stories of her 12 years of volunteering at an animal shelter, and her current experience as founder and president of a local animal welfare organization whose mission is to keep pets out of animal shelters and with the families who love them.

This book is a crucial read for any professional working in animal sheltering and animal welfare, and researchers, academics, and students in the fields of animal welfare, human–animal studies, human–animal interactions, human–animal bond, social work, anthrozoology, shelter animal medicine, veterinary medicine, psychology, and community studies.

Nadine Dolby is Professor of Education at Purdue University, USA. Her research and scholarship focuses on the relationship between animals, culture, and society. Nadine is the author of more than 45 articles and 8 single author and edited books, including Learning Animals: Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Becoming a Veterinarian (CRC Press, 2022), and Rethinking Multicultural Education for the Next Generation: The New Empathy and Social Justice (Routledge, 2012). She is the founder and president of a local non-profit organization, Animal Advocates of Greater Lafayette, which works to help low-income families keep their pets.