Lynchburg Humane Society Blog

     As some of you may know I was asked to represent Lynchburg at the Best Friends Animal Society’s National Conference this summer in Atlanta.   I spoke to a full house and was thrilled to see so many people eager to hear how we accomplished all we did here in our small city.        With most conferences, even if I am going to teach, I always learn something new.   We learned some new techniques and ideas on marketing and fundraising but the ideas and operational things we learned are where you will see the most change.        Our biggest change is with FIV cats. The new movement is to not test for FIV because the chances of spreading it to another cat is slim if they are living peacefully with other cats.   Many cats can co-habitat with one being FIV+ and the other cats will never get the virus if they live harmoniously.   The new movement at LHS is to let FIV+ cats into group rooms; as...

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...

            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 ...