Q&A with co-founder Gregory Castle

The Founders’ Corner allows a peek at Best Friends and the no-kill movement from the unique perspective of those special people who have been here since the beginning — the Best Friends founders. In this issue, we speak with Gregory Castle.

Q:

Last year marked the 35th anniversary of the founding of Best Friends. You have been involved in so much of that history, pioneering our statewide Utah program and then serving as CEO for almost nine years. Looking back, what recollections stand out as most significant?

A: It was a year or two before Best Friends began that the founders came to understand that healthy animals were being killed in the nation’s shelters because they lacked homes. The best estimate at the time was that about 17 million dogs and cats were suffering this fate every year. A number of us were living in Arizona, and we began taking animals from the local shelter and finding homes for them.

In the early days, we also found that animal welfare organizations, in communicating their needs to the public and appealing for support, were using very negative portrayals — pictures of suffering animals and piles of bodies, for example. As animal lovers, we were horrified.

These realizations presaged the first key moment in Best Friends’ history: the decision to create a special sanctuary that would be built on no-kill principles. In addition, our communications with the public broke new ground by highlighting the joy that our pets bring us and the intrinsic value they have.

A second time of great consequence for me personally and for Best Friends as a whole was starting the statewide program in Utah, which maximized lifesaving throughout the state by creating a coalition of animal rescue organizations. We began collecting statistics from nearly all the shelters and rescue groups in the state, in a mutual effort to make Utah no-kill. We organized and promoted joint adoption events that we called super adoptions, bringing together coalition member organizations for a weekend. Together, we would find homes for hundreds of cats and dogs in those few days.

Through a generous five-year grant from Maddie’s Fund, a foundation devoted solely to ending the killing in shelters, we were able to pass on funds to participating groups, which helped to increase their lifesaving capacity. We used a mobile clinic to travel throughout Utah, particularly to rural areas with no veterinarians close by, and spayed or neutered pets at discounted rates. And a high-volume, low-cost spay/neuter clinic in northern Utah added to the number of dogs and cats we were able to sterilize.

In pioneering collaboration with shelters and rescue groups, Best Friends proved the value of working together to save more lives. It’s a model we now follow throughout the nation.

In pioneering collaboration with shelters and rescue groups, Best Friends proved the value of working together to save more lives.

My third key moment in our history was the announcement by Best Friends in 2016 that we will lead the nation to no-kill by 2025. Our recent effort to collect nationwide shelter statistics and publish them in an online dashboard available to the public has been a big step forward for Best Friends, and for everyone who has an interest in helping to Save Them All. Although many individual communities have tracked and published their own data, it had never been done with rigor on a national scale. Using the dashboard, which you can find at bestfriends.org/2025, anyone can check local statistics and use them as an incentive to help bring their community to no-kill.

Knowing the scale of the issue with much greater precision enables us all to know where to devote our energies and resources most effectively. The data has shown us that the number of cats and dogs dying in shelters annually is now down to around 733,000. There’s plenty more work to do, but we’re getting closer.

Q:

What are you doing now? A: Since becoming CEO emeritus in 2018, I have stepped away from much of the day-today operations of Best Friends. I’ve been working on some special projects, and l Iike to stay in touch with our supporters around the country and the many organizations, including those in the Best Friends Network, that contribute so much to finding homes for animals at risk. I continue to help with Best Friends’ fundraising efforts, and our understanding of what works and what doesn’t in lifesaving around the country.

Q:

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the no-kill movement today?

A: Going forward, we must focus on areas where there is the greatest need. We are now dealing with what could be called the “high-hanging fruit.” Some examples are helping difficult-to-handle, mostly larger dogs to become adoptable; coping with the sheer number of community cats in some locations; counteracting legislation that prevents or limits our lifesaving work; and helping pets in low-income areas, which are often underserved by veterinarians and rescue organizations.

Collectively, though, we are moving in the right direction. The nationwide movement to make America no-kill by 2025 is on track.