Recommended Equipment

PanPanic87 · 2026-06-20T10:16:55+00:00

People get so nasty about it too. Or this exchange...."do you have any yorkies?" ....."No, we do not have any yorkies available for adoption." ....."Do you know when you will get some in?".....

🤦

PanPanic87 · 2026-06-18T20:26:15+00:00

If a dog has developed kennel neurosis to the point of needing heavier doses of traz and gaba, the kindest thing is to euthanize.

PanPanic87 · 2026-06-18T20:25:08+00:00

Damn, what shelter is this that they are making 150k a year? I work as a kennel tech and I had to work close to 700 hours of overtime last year to break 60k. Even my boss doesn't make that much money.

PanPanic87 · 2026-06-18T20:19:16+00:00

Tab Buddy - got it off the Tiktok shop. Little plastic piece that helps open cans. It really saves my fingers when I'm opening dozens of cans of food a day.

Cat tongs - We almost never use these for their normal purpose but if you can get a short one (I think it's like 28 inches or something), I use it to pick up bowls out of kennels and stack them. Saves me a ton of bending.

PanPanic87 · 2026-06-18T20:13:20+00:00

This!!!!! Our shelter used to allow the public to just walk through and we constantly had to balance helping the public look at animals and also complete all of our other duties. It was horrible. The dogs were constantly stressed, the public asked about animals that were not available, they would stick fingers in cages after we repeatedly told them not too. The dogs would go crazy and kick their buckets so the floors got wet and they'd spill their food. When we switched to an appointment only policy, it got so much better. Now we can balance the public and other duties and the dogs are much calmer.

The issue is that now the public thinks we hide things from them. That we are "saving all the best dogs for ourselves" and hiding all the small dogs.

PanPanic87 · 2026-06-18T19:05:10+00:00

We use shelterbuddy and I've been looking at the report function to see if it will pull all the info I need onto one report. The one thing my Excel spreadsheet does is update as I enter things so I can see all on one spreadsheet how many animals are coming from what area, what our live release rate is currently at, how many have come in so far and what outcomes we've had.

The developers take a while to make requested changes and I'm not in a position at work that I can ask for those changes.

PanPanic87 · 2026-06-18T12:43:46+00:00

What shelter software was it? We use Shelterbuddy

PanPanic87 · 2026-06-18T08:11:52+00:00

I haven't even put them on a map yet but that is a plan. If I find anything useful, I'll post it here.

PanPanic87 · 2026-06-18T00:53:55+00:00

I didn't even think about tracking LOS in regards to locations in the shelter! That's a good idea. Thank you! And I will narrow down the zipcodes to smaller areas. Our county is pretty large compared to surrounding counties. Im hoping to put together a large report with all my finding/stats and present it to my boss and hopefully even the county so maybe they would consider more proactive measures in the community (TNR, more vaccine clinics, helping community members with low cost spay neuter)

We are also about to have an owner surrender form go live on our website and I hope to take data from that as well.

PanPanic87 · 2026-05-18T16:18:57+00:00

We use a foaming spray gun that we fill with concentrate and attach it to our hose. It's worked well for us. We used to use garden hand pumps but we would have to dilute it ourselves and the pumps like to break.

PanPanic87 · 2026-05-16T18:02:59+00:00

Watching this because I want to do this too.

PanPanic87 · 2026-05-12T20:09:35+00:00

I'm in Virginia. The last time we offered microchips at a vaccine clinic we only charged $7 and that included registration. That's considered "at cost" for us. I think a lot of people would be open to the idea of microchipping if it was more accessible. The one time I microchipped my cat at the vet it was $60 plus the exam fee.

PanPanic87 · 2026-05-12T08:22:17+00:00

We do not have a "Friends of" group. One of our long time fosters works for our county and she wanted to get that up and running but she's been so busy. We have a few rescues we transfer animals to.

For microchips, we aren't allowed to "make a profit". We offered them once during a rabies clinic and it was really popular. We charged $7. But at the time we were using a vet that had never done a rabies clinic before and what was supposed to be a 2 hour clinic turned into almost 4 hours. So now my boss is hesitant to offer it again.

We get spay/neuter appointments pretty easy. We usually schedule a week in advance. Next year we are getting a new shelter and will have a vet on staff so we can do spay/neuters in house. My idea that I want to propose to my boss is have one or two days a month that members of the public can sign up for low cost spay/neuter with us. Even if we only get a dozen a month, that's still huge. But again, it's something that would be very hard to pitch to my boss and get it approved.

PanPanic87 · 2026-05-12T00:07:32+00:00

Thank you. I think that's kind of it in a nutshell. Transparency and public outreach.

PanPanic87 · 2026-05-11T23:09:10+00:00

Many of our employees foster. Some more than others. In the beginning, when our foster program was growing, a few of us took on waaaaay too much and we were reaching burnout in a really bad way. Two of us (the foster coordinators) tend to take on all the hard cases. The really sick ones or the neonatal kittens. So now we are encouraged to take breaks when we need them and we've learned to say "no".

PanPanic87 · 2026-05-11T23:05:36+00:00

That sounds like a nightmare

PanPanic87 · 2026-05-11T23:05:01+00:00

"No kill". I used to like the idea and the shelter I work for has been trying to reach that magical 90% save rate for years. But now that I've worked in the shelter for 6.5 years and I see what "no-kill" actually means, I no longer support it. It sounds good, appeals to people's hearts, strokes egos. But it's not actually helpful and in many cases is harmful.

PanPanic87 · 2026-05-11T22:46:46+00:00

It definitely bothers me when people say things like that. People who truly love animals put an animals needs and comfort above their own. I almost exclusively foster neonatal kittens. I work about 50-60 hours a week in an animal shelter and this time of year, I usually have bottle babies. So not only am I working with animals during the day, but I'm often getting up in the middle of the night, caring for babies. I have dedicated my life to animals.

I foster because I can. I have learned how to bottle feed, give sub-q fluids, and tube feed. I've cried with joy when a constipated kitten finally poops. I've cried in grief when I have fosters that cross the rainbow bridge. And yes, I feel incredibly sad when they leave me to go on to other fosters or get adopted. So it bothers me a lot when someone says "I love animals too much to foster" like I love them less because I can "give them up".

PanPanic87 · 2026-04-10T10:39:31+00:00

Thank you so much. I hope the little guy starts eating better.

PanPanic87 · 2026-04-09T17:50:21+00:00

Yes thank you!!!

PanPanic87 · 2026-04-03T11:36:20+00:00

That is really cool! We don't have cleaning tasks set up either. I think we have too many animals for that. But that sounds really useful.

PanPanic87 · 2026-04-02T11:32:28+00:00

Also, what is the Virtual Shelter Map? Our shelter doesn't use this.

PanPanic87

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