After the conference ended for the day on Saturday, some fun and games took place near the conference area. Namely, staffers and attendees, one by one, took turns getting inside a "hamster wheel" for a race. Each one was timed. Best Friends co-founder and interim CEO Gregory Castle made a run inside the hamster ball. He came in with a respectable 22 seconds.

Attendee Curt Wood won the competition, and Best Friends' associate director Judah Battista came in second. 

Photo, of CEO Gregory Castle approaching the finish line, by Jennifer Hayes.

Back by popular demand, Karen Green with the Alliance for Contraception in Cats and Dogs, sang her "Feral" song a cappella at this year's conference. Here's her performance, from last year's conference), on YouTube. Enjoy!

You can make people fall in love with animals, so much so that they adopt them.

That was the theme of the part 2 of "Building a No-Kill Community" workshop, presented Sunday morning by Bonney Brown, executive director of the Nevada Humane Society.

She emphasized making it easy on the adopter by making it a pleasant experience. She also suggested that by lowering adoption fees, you can save more lives. Some rescue groups believe impulse adoptions aren't good things. She asked attendees, "How many of you have impulse rescued?" Nearly everyone in the room raised their hands. "Impulse adoptions aren't bad," she said. "Impulses can be noble and good."

I couldn't agree more. Ten years ago, I went to a PetsMart in Las Vegas to buy cat food. Instead, I went home with a puppy -- a Best Friends' puppy. I had no intentions of adopting, but I'm one of those people Bonney described who, on impulse, decide to adopt a pet when they aren't planning.

Great advice, Bonney. 

Bonney Brown, executive director of the Nevada Humane Society, offered advice to attendees at the 2009 No More Homeless Pets Conference.

For one, she told those attending her “Building a No-Kill Community” workshop on Saturday, “You need to hire people who really and truly love pets.”

For another, “No one does this alone. It’s a community-wide effort. We look for partnerships.”

Most of all, she points out, “Animal shelters should be a place of last resort, not first resort. Humans don’t line up to get into a shelter. We exhaust all alternatives to find housing, and we should do the same for animals.”

And Brown should know. In a few short years, she’s taken the Nevada Humane Society to record-high save rates. “The solution,” Bonney said, “is to increase the number of pets leaving area shelters alive. Reducing the number of pets going into area shelters is another thing to work on.” In 2007 alone, she increased the adoption rate for dogs by 53 percents and 84 percent for cats.

Besides adoptions, her Reno shelter also concentrates on getting good fosters homes and lots of volunteers. “In our work, where lives are at stake, it deserves earnest focus,” she said. “We try to come up with creative, even unconventional, solutions to saving lives.”

Customer service is paramount, as are spay-neuter programs. And, she said, they had to let some programs go, because the problem was certain programs didn’t have immediate life-saving impacts.

Another key move is to make a public declaration of no kill. “Putting it out there is scary,” she said. “At the same time, it’s incredibly powerful. When you tell people what you need, people will come forward and help you. For animal lovers, this is a dream come true. It inspires people to step forward and do a little bit more. You want to let them know it’s achievable and you can only do it with them.”

Enthusiasm catches on. “When you’re enthusiastic about it, others are going to capture that enthusiasm. It really is contagious.”

Finally, she emphasizes, “We tell the community all the time we need you to adopt a pet. They’re here at the shelter waiting for you to take them home.”

Brown did it, with a little help from her friends and neighbors.

Photo of Bonney Brown, speaking at the conference, by Sarah Ause

Bill Bruce and Jane Hoffman have a few things in common. Bruce is from Calgary, Canada, and Hoffman is from New York City. 

It is, indeed, a tail of two cities -- and a successful tale at that.

"They're both large cities with one common purpose," Bruce says, "and that's the goal of No More Homeless Pets."

Jane is with the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals, a coalition of nonprofit animal rescue groups, while Bruce is director of animal and bylaw services for the City of Calgary.

"If Calgary were in the U.S., we'd be the 11th largest," Bruce says. And that means large numbers of animals.

In New York City in 2002, 74 percent of cats and dogs in city shelters were euthanized. Out of those dire straits, the alliance was formed. 

Conversely, in Bruce's part of the world, "twenty-five years ago, Calgary had shameful numbers of animals who were being put down. We had high dog-fight rates. It was the bottom of the barrel," Bruce says.

 But that was then, and this is now. The two shared their respective successes at the No More Homess Pets Conference workshop titled, appropriately, "A Tail of Two Cities."

To change the tide, Bruce focused on building a community of responsible pet people, while Hoffman, as president of the alliance, has built partnerships and brought animal welfare groups together to help the problem of animal overpopulation.

"In my mind," Bruce told a packed auditorium, "pets are part of the community. The fair and humane treatment of animals is where it starts."

A cattle dogwho ended up at a shelter was frightened of people, so much so that his handlers nicknamed him“Swiffer,” like the floor mop, because he was always so low to the ground,practically crawling. There were some “oohs” and “ahhs” from Best Friends NoMore Homeless Pets Conference attendees watching the video. But as the days passed, the video showed, Swiffer improved.

Swiffer is an example of a dog who joined shelter play groups tosmooth out his fears. It’s the dogs, not people, who trained Swiffer not to beso fearful, said Aimee Sadler, behavior and training program director for LongmontHumane Society in Colorado. Sadler, who gave a “Playing for Life” workshop,recommends group play for behavior modification. Saddler's workshop was well attended with an over-flowing crowd standing at the back of the room.

“What am I doing?” she asked attendees watching a video ofdogs trying to interact with Swiffer as she stood near them and observed.“Nothing, right?” She didn’t need to do anything, she explained, because thedogs were bringing Swiffer out of his shell, showing him how to interactingwith her. After several play times with dogs and supervision by Sadler andother handlers in a play yard, Swiffer began wagging his tail and following thehandler around. The other dogs showed Swiffer that the handler wasn’t a threat,she said.

In another situation, also in a play group and shown in avideo, two dogs played well until one became pushy. “I stopped them inprogessive steps,” she said. She did that by touching a toy to the dog’s headin a gentle nudge. It ended the pushy behavior.

At the shelter, she see lots of behaviors, including dogswho bully other dogs. She showed video of a another dog, this one a terrier mix,acting like a bully. “In a few days, the terrier smoothed out and she was fine,”she said.

In all, Sadler points out, it shows the benefits of group play,with supervision, of course, as a useful tool to smoothing out the rough edgeswith dogs.

But, she warned, "You're better off not having any toys in the play area, because it can trigger trouble." 

A really moving morning session kicking off Best Friends’ NoMore Homeless Pets Conference. Gregory Castle, interim CEO and a co-founder ofBest Friends, had this to say:

The no-kill movement is a true movement,” he told thestanding-room only attendees. “It’s a driving force. By now, many o fyou fromrescues and shelters have joined us and beliee it’s possible to reach a timewhen there are no more homeless pets. More and more people are joining us inthis fight.”

“The writing is on the wall,” he continued, to applause. “It’sclear that great progress has been made and great progress can be made.”

 When Best Friends started 25 years ago, shelters werekilling between 15 and 20 million animals. Today, that number is around 5,000. “Wow,”Gregory said. “Look what we’ve achieved. We’re brave. We’re bold. We’recourageous.”

And that’s what this conference is all about, he told thegathering. “It’s about new ideas, about spreading ideas amongst us, networkingamongst us.”

Gregory ended the kick-off to the conference with these words: “Bebrave. Be bold be courageous. Step into unknown territory. You know and I knowit’s all for the animals. As we do this work we can all be proud that we’removing together toward the time we envision, toward the time when there will beno more homeless pets.”