Lynchburg Humane Society Blog

Next month I will have been working with the Lynchburg Humane Society and this community for six years.   I only recently moved to Lynchburg, having commuted for over four years, because after having my little girl, Lily, in 2010, I just had to get my family and work together in one place.   I promise this article isn’t about me, but I will say that because I was commuting, I had no idea how amazing this community was until I moved here.   I knew how fantastic it was working here, but there is something even more special about Lynchburg that you don’t know until you are interacting day in and day out with so many remarkable, kind, creative, smart, civic minded people.    In a wonderful small town/city environment filled with so much to do, it is one of the best places I have lived because of how connected everyone is in the community. In the animal welfare world, there are many national conferences where thousands in the field converge to learn the newest and the greatest

            We unveiled our new core values in a news article last month and also featured them on our blog.   To remind everyone of our core values, they are: Smile-Say Yes; See it, fix it, do it, own it; Speak; Be Generous; Play; Glitter; Have Goals and Smash Them; Be Authentic/Transparent; Be Worthy of High Esteem; Assume the Best.   To learn more about what each core value means, go on our website under “mission and vision” or our previous blog post.             Today I want to discuss the core value of Assume the Best.    This is a concept that is sometimes difficult for us, as in the shelter environment we see so many horrible cases of animal neglect and mistreatment.   We don’t share those stories too often publicly because we want to focus on the more prevalent positive situations that we see every day. However, the difficult situations do happen more frequently than we want to admit, and that means that sometimes it is challenging to approach situations from a place o