People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an American animal rights nonprofit organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president. PETA reports that PETA entities have more than 9 million members globally.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing animal cruelty. Based in New York City since its inception in 1866, the organization's mission is "to provide effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals throughout the United States."
Pet adoption is the process of transferring responsibility for a pet that was previously owned by another party such as a person, shelter, or rescue organization. Common sources for adoptable pets are animal shelters and rescue groups. Some organizations give adopters ownership of the pet, while others use a guardianship model wherein the organization retains some control over the animal's future use or care.
An animal shelter or pound is a place where stray, lost, abandoned or surrendered animals – mostly dogs and cats – are housed. The word "pound" has its origins in the animal pounds of agricultural communities, where stray livestock would be penned or impounded until they were claimed by their owners.
A puppy mill, also known as a puppy farm, is a commercial dog breeding facility characterized by quick breeding and poor conditions. Although no standardized legal definition for "puppy mill" exists, a definition was established in Avenson v. Zegart in 1984 as "a dog breeding operation in which the health of the mill’s dogs are disregarded to maintain a low overhead and maximize profits". They are cited as being a result of an increased demand for household pets, especially after WWII. The Veterinary Medical Association of the Humane Society of the United States defines the main characteristics of a puppy mill as "emphasis on quantity over quality, indiscriminate breeding, continuous confinement, lack of human contact and environmental enrichment, poor husbandry, and minimal to no veterinary care."
Ingleside is a suburb in Northern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Ingleside is located 28 kilometres north of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Northern Beaches Council. Ingleside is part of the Forest District region, about 2 kilometres from the coast at Mona Vale. Ingleside Heights and Tumbledown Dick are localities in the west of the suburb.
An animal rescue group or animal rescue organization is a group dedicated to pet adoption. These groups take unwanted, abandoned, abused, or stray pets and attempt to find suitable homes for them. Many rescue groups are created by and run by volunteers, who take animals into their homes and care for them — including training, playing, handling medical issues, and solving behaviour problems — until a suitable permanent home can be found.
A backyard breeder is an amateur animal breeder whose breeding is considered substandard, with little or misguided effort towards ethical, selective breeding. Unlike puppy mills and other animal mill operations, backyard breeders breed on a small scale, usually at home with their own pets, and may be motivated by things such as monetary profit, curiosity, to gain new pets and/or working animals, or to show children "the miracle of birth".
In some countries there is an overpopulation of pets such as cats, dogs, and exotic animals. In the United States, six to eight million animals are brought to shelters each year, of which an estimated three to four million are subsequently euthanized, including 2.7 million considered healthy and adoptable. Euthanasia numbers have declined since the 1970s, when U.S. shelters euthanized an estimated 12 to 20 million animals. Most humane societies, animal shelters and rescue groups urge animal caregivers to have their animals spayed or neutered to prevent the births of unwanted and accidental litters that could contribute to this dynamic.
A no-kill shelter is an animal shelter that does not euthanize healthy or treatable animals based on time limits or capacity, reserving euthanasia for terminally ill animals, animals suffering poor quality of life, or those considered dangerous to public safety. A no-kill shelter uses many strategies to promote shelter animals; to expanding its resources using volunteers, housing and medical protocols; and to work actively to lower the number of homeless animals entering the shelter system. Up to ten percent of animals could be killed in a no-kill shelter and still be considered a no-kill shelter.
Best Friends Animal Society, (BFAS) founded in its present form in 1993, is an American nonprofit 501(c)(3) animal welfare organization. BFAS does outreach nationwide with shelters, rescue groups and members to promote pet adoption, no-kill animal rescue, and spay-and-neuter practices. Best Friends has a 3-star 'Give With Confidence' rating from Charity Navigator.
Street dogs, known in scientific literature as free-ranging urban dogs, are unconfined dogs that live in cities. They live virtually everywhere cities exist and the local human population allows, especially in the developing world. Street dogs may be stray dogs, pets which have strayed from or are abandoned by their owners, or may be feral animals that have never been owned. Street dogs may be stray purebreds, true mixed-breed dogs, or unbred landraces such as the Indian pariah dog. Street dog overpopulation can cause problems for the societies in which they live, so campaigns to spay and neuter them are sometimes implemented. They tend to differ from rural free-ranging dogs in their skill sets, socialization, and ecological effects.
Abandoned pets are companion animals that are either inadvertently or deliberately abandoned by their owners, by either dumping the animals on the streets, leaving them alone in a vacant property, or relinquishing them at an animal shelter.
Shelter Dogs is a 2003 documentary film directed and produced by Cynthia Wade about animal welfare in the United States and the ethics of animal euthanasia. Following a particular Upstate New York animal shelter and its staff over a three-year time span, Wade gives her audience a complex, honest look at the situations that arise when it comes to homeless animals and some of the difficult, controversial decisions that must be made within them.
The Lost Dogs’ Home is an Australian organisation with shelters and pounds in Victoria. It was established in 1910 to provide a temporary home for Melbourne’s lost and starving dogs. Today The Lost Dogs’ Home cares for more than twenty-one thousand lost, stray, injured and abandoned dogs and cats every year and is Australia's largest animal shelter. They also host services and initiatives to promote animal welfare and responsible pet ownership. These people who work for this organisation want to take care of these poor animals to make them strong and ready for an owner to come adopt them.
Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities (AMRRIC) is an Australian organisation that works alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to coordinate and facilitate sustainable, culturally-sensitive, professional animal health programs. AMRRIC supports desexing and dog health programs to improve the situation for dogs, their owners and communities. By improving the health and welfare of companion animals, AMRRIC contributes to improved community health.
In Bucharest – the capital city of Romania – the problem of stray dogs has been acknowledged for decades. The number of stray dogs has been reduced drastically since 2014, following the death of a four-year-old child who was attacked by a dog. In 2015, the Bucharest City Hall stated that over 51,200 stray dogs were captured between October 2013 and January 2015, with more than half being euthanized, about 23,000 being adopted, and 2,000 still residing in the municipality's shelters. The issue has not only been a heated subject of debate in Bucharest, but also on a nationwide scale.
People For Animals is one of India’s largest animal welfare organisations, originally founded by Maneka Gandhi in 1992. Currently, the headquarters of this organisation is located in New Delhi, with over 100 regional units located around India.
Four Paws is a global animal welfare organisation based in Vienna, Austria. The organisation is focusing on gradually improving the living conditions of animals under direct human influence, by revealing suffering, rescuing animals in need and protecting them.
The Dog House is a Channel 4 observational television show, following staff at an animal shelter trying to find homes for dogs. Channel 4 describes it as "The dog dating show where people and dogs are matched and - hopefully - fall in love."
