Jackie Schultz, founder of Ricki’s Rescue, tells me about her sanctuary for cats with special needs and for senior chihuahuas.

Rivky Blumberger is a hero for feral cats and the communities where they live. We talk about her work in trapping, neutering, and releasing—or sometimes finding homes for—feral, stray, and abandoned cats, including how you can help these animals.

Charissa Clark Howe is a friend I met through knitting many years ago who now has a therapy dog and a therapy cat. We started out talking about them, but we had some extra time and I asked her about her professional and academic work as a Presbyterian pastor and doctoral candidate.

Mary Hart, longtime volunteer with dogs at the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society; its current iteration, Humane Animal Rescue Pittsburgh (HARP); and Sable Kennel, is the first to step forward to talk with me about a controversial and important subject around here, and that is leadership and practices at HARP in the past and possibly today. In addition to the informational links I usually provide along with my interviews, I have also compiled some data from HARP and the other major local shelter, Animal Friends. I pulled the data from each organization’s latest annual reporting, which is 2019 for Animal Friends and 2020 for HARP. The data, both financial and intakes and outcomes, won’t be perfectly comparable for reasons I’ll share on the web page with the data, but some information is better than none. And, of course, as always, the first-person experiences of my guest give us a perspective we can’t get anywhere else.

I spoke with Andrew Marrangoni, longtime dog trainer and entrepreneur, about his businesses, training dogs, and learning. Contains one swear word.

Dog fosterer Candy Link talks with me about the importance of leaving information about your pet for the next person who cares for it, whether you are rehoming it, surrendering it to a shelter, or preparing for its future if you predecease it.

In which I talk with my friend and animal-welfare luminary Mary Kennedy Withrow about some of what she's done and the state of the animal-welfare world. She's always full of great info and ideas.

In which I talk with Rebecca Reid, one of a small group of volunteers in and around Pittsburgh trying to get help for some foxes suffering from mange.

A quick plea for resources for people in need of housing with pets. Moving and having a housing situation become pet-unfriendly are the two most common reasons people surrender their pets to shelters. If you know of help for people having to choose between housing and pets, please email me at [email protected] so we can spread the word and connect people with the help they need, keeping more pets in their homes.