Giacoppo: Honoring those who step up for shelter pets
I come from a long line of cops from around the Boston area. My family believed in duty and service. I was set to follow in their footsteps, but two weeks before I was supposed to enter the police academy, I made a different choice. I started a career in animal sheltering 35 years ago, and I never looked back.
What I didn’t realize then was that “serving and protecting” in this role would sometimes mean doing something that felt like the exact opposite. I had come from a world where protecting life was the job, and now I was being asked to end it.
Back then, we spent more time determining the most humane way to end an animal’s life than we did figuring out how to save them. Each morning, we were told how many had to die to make room for the next ones coming in.
“Five cats today,” my supervisor would say, and every day, five cats were killed. In summer, it might be 20, 30, even 40 animals in one day. We thought we were doing the right thing because we didn’t have other options, but ending the lives we were drawn to protect took a heavy toll on us.
We carried that weight questioning how compassion and duty had become at odds.
Years later, when I became the chief of animal control in Washington, D.C., I made it my mission to be part of change from within. In those early days, pit bull-type dogs were often walked straight from the front door to the “euthanasia room” — not because of anything they did, but because of their looks. Feral cats were automatically trapped and killed.
We worked to end those practices, building partnerships with rescue organizations and law enforcement, expanding adoptions, and creating community cat programs. Our team began to believe their work was about saving lives, not ending them.
When I first started, only 30% of the dogs and cats who entered the shelter made it out alive. It was devastating for us, but over time, with the dedication of shelter workers, animal control officers, veterinarians, and volunteers who refused to accept that loss as normal, we turned heartbreak into hope by saving the majority of the animals in our care.
When I began working at Best Friends Animal Society, a national organization leading the effort to make the country no-kill, it felt like the next natural step. Every experience has led me here to help shelters across the country discover that they don’t have to choose between compassion and practicality.
No-kill is about giving every pet in a shelter a fair chance and proving that with the right policies and practices in place, managing animal shelters doesn’t require killing dogs and cats simply to free up space.
That’s what National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week (Nov. 2–8) is about: honoring and recognizing the heroes who care for our communities’ pets every single day. They are first responders of a different kind; often working with meager resources, putting in long hours, and suffering through often overlooked emotional strain. They deserve a system that supports them.
As a nation, we’ve made remarkable progress. Two out of three shelters now save at least 90% of the pets who come through their doors. That’s millions of lives saved, but there are still people who love animals being forced to do the unthinkable simply because their organization hasn’t yet implemented modern lifesaving policies and programs.
We can change that.
We can make adoption simpler and more welcoming, expand foster programs, and empower animal control officers to serve as community educators and helpers. We can ensure local laws support keeping families and pets together through hardship. And we can stand beside the people who show up every day to do this work.
People enter this field because they care deeply about animals and no one’s job description should include killing our best friends.
National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week is our chance to recognize and support them and to commit to building shelters that are truly safe havens for pets and people alike.
*Scott Giacoppo is Director, National Shelter Support at Best Friends Animal Society.*
https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/11/08/giacoppo-honoring-those-who-step-up-for-shelter-pets/
You may also like
Leave a Reply