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Dear Members and Friends,

Yesterday, the upscale Beverly Center Mall in Los Angeles announced it will terminate the lease of the Hollywood pet store institution, Pet Love. Since last July, Best Friends staff and members like you have been at the Beverly Center educating potential customers that those cute puppies at Pet Love really come from cruel puppy mills.

Mr. HappyThe goal of the Puppy-Store-Free-LA campaign is to convince stores to offer homeless pets for adoption rather than sell dogs from puppy mills. We’ve already seen two pets stores shut down, and now we have the biggest victory we could have hoped for. Pet Love, a store that sells to the Hollywood elite, is shutting its doors.

The iconic store has sold tens of thousands of unfixed dogs in the 15 years they have been in business, adding to the thousands of animals that clog area shelters and where many thousands die annually. But thanks to you, tireless efforts from countless volunteers, and the Best Friends Puppy Mill Campaign staff, the store will no longer be a part of the perpetual cycle of abuse.

This is only the beginning. The closing of such a giant in the pet store industry in LA, like Pet Love, is a huge victory, but we cannot stop now.

We need your help. Doubling our membership means we can take on more of these giants of the pet trade, ask them to stop selling puppies from mills, and put puppy mills out of business. Each of these victories gets us that much closer to a nation with No More Homeless Pets.

Please act now to ensure that we can continue with A-Puppy-Store-Free-America, so more pet stores get the message that obtaining their puppies through cruel commercial breeding operations simply for profit is not acceptable. We cannot do this without you.

Donate and share. By giving the gift of a Best Friends membership you will help us gain momentum as we press forward with this incredibly important campaign.

Thank you as always, for caring for the animals. Together, one day we can live in a nation of No More Homeless Pets.

Paul Berry

Paul Berry, CEO
Best Friends Animal Society

P.S. This one pet store closure is just a fraction of the amazing work taking place in our puppy mill campaign. Click Here to learn more about the progress being made every day.

A dozen dogs are now safe after a Best Friends rescue team pulled them from the storm-ravaged peninsula of Port Bolivar near Galveston Island. One young pit-bull mix enthusiastically greeted the team as they opened the back door to his house.
He was adorable, and he literally jumped up on me and licked me and gave me the doggie hug, says Rich Crook, who is leading the team on the ground where Hurricane Ike struck southeast Texas. He was so happy to see just anybody.
Also happy to see them were a Sheltie and a small mixed-breed dog inside the same home. A good chunk of that community was gone, but that house was still there and these little guys survived, Rich says.
At another house, three black dogs were trapped on a porch because the steps to the house had been torn away by the Category 3 hurricane. As the team approached, those dogs also greeted the team with wagging tails. The house was on stilts and the stairs were gone, Rich says. They couldn't go anywhere. They were stuck. Team members backed up Best Friend's panel truck to the porch and lifted the dogs into it.
Of the dozen dogs rescued on September 18, just one was skittish. He was what I would consider street-smart, Rich says. He ducked under a car and we got him out and put him inside an [animal control] truck. The others, he says, were clearly owned animals. We were pulling them from houses. The previous day, team members saved four dogs, one kitten and a warthog during their initial rescue operation.
All pets rescued by the Best Friends team are taken to the Galveston County Health District Animal Control Shelter in Texas City. Many are then cared for by Shelter Buddies, a local rescue group that is continuing the work they did before the storm: fostering, helping with medical care, reuniting pets with their families, and finding new homes for displaced dogs and cats.
A few cleanup workers were in the area, along with a handful of residents, even though locals hadn't yet been given the green light to return to the area. One nice thing about working in an area like the peninsula is the local communities all know each other, Rich says. They were giving us invaluable information. They know the dogs' owners.
The team plans to continue their rescue effort, working beside animal control officers with Galveston County, which invited Best Friends to help in the rescue and recovery effort.
We are going out again tomorrow, Rich says.
Written by Cathy Scott
Photo by Joe Winston
The shelter is in need of supplies such as pet food, flea treatment, de-wormer, disposable kitty litter pans and collapsible wire cages. The shelter's address is Galveston County Animal Shelter, 3412 Loop 197 North, Texas City, TX 77590.

Click here to donate to the Network Rescue Fund

For ongoing updates from the field, please visit the Rapid Response community on the Best Friends Network.

Check out more Best Friends news here

This article is courtesy of Best Friends Animal Society

The real estate market may be taking a dive right now for humans, but for feral cats in Randolph, Iowa, the market is definitely red-hot! Case in point: Feral cats Mother Trucker and her baby, Truckee, are living the high life in Sandra and Jim Gregory's spacious barn.

The cats' new digs features cathedral ceilings, rustic wood construction and wall-to-wall hay covering. Outside, Trucker and Truckee have hundreds of acres to roam and play. They were recently relocated from the more cramped surroundings of urban Randolph, a town of 260 people. Now they're out in the country with plenty of room to explore and plenty of other feral felines to befriend.

Mother Trucker and Truckee were living in town in Cindy and Frank Fritz's garage, where they competed for space with cars, gardening equipment and other cat-unfriendly objects. Thanks to Best Friends staff, Cindy and all the other Randolph residents had recently learned all about trap/neuter/return (TNR) and maintain for feral cats, so Cindy knew the best thing for the kitties would be to relocate them.

Six months ago, feral cats in Randolph had a $5 bounty on their heads. Feral cat overpopulation had become a problem and Mayor Vance Trively was looking for a solution. When Best Friends heard about the bounty, they offered to introduce the good people of Randolph to TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return), a much better way to deal with their feral population.

Best Friends' Feral Cat Program manager Shelly Kotter has visited the town four times over the past few months to work with the townspeople. She also presented a well-attended TNR workshop to the locals and people from neighboring communities.

Shelly notes, "Everyone in town came on board immediately. They just didn't know about TNR. It was simply a matter of giving them the tools and education they needed".

The Fritzes were among the most affected by the feral cat problem in town. "We had about 20 cats in our yard", Cindy explains. "They were eating all of my cat's food. I mean, my cat was nearly starving. And there'd be cat fights all day and all night long. It was really a problem".

But since Best Friends came on board, nearly 30 feral "inner city" cats have been relocated just outside of town to luxury living in large farming communities. When Cindy found the cats in her garage, she immediately asked the Gregorys if they'd take Trucker and Truckee.

"They were tickled to take more cats", says Cindy. "They help with their rodent problem but I think mostly they really like having them there". Cindy says Jim goes out to feed his ferals twice a day. "I know they're all really well cared for there and are living a good life", says Cindy.

Story by Amy Abern. Photos by Shannon Riddle. Above photo (clockwise from top left): Brandi Fritz (with cat), Bill and Shelly Kotter; Mayor Trively trapping at the Fritzes'; Truckee in trap: Truckee ouside; Mrs. gregory and Shelly; Shelly releasing Trucker and Truckee near Gregory barn. Video by Jason Watt, Best Friends video department.

Click here to visit the Best Friends Animal Society website