Best Friends Animal Sanctuary

One of our goals during our adventure was to visit Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, UT. We've been members for a few years and really admire this organization. The Sanctuary is about 3800 acres adjacent to another 30,000 leased acres of BLM land. At any given time the sanctuary has 1500 dogs, cats, & other animals. Once they're at the sanctuary, nothing bad will happen to them. Hopefully they'll be adopted by a family, but if not they have a home for a lifetime. This is the welcome center. Each year about 20,000 people visit the sanctuary and take a tour.

During the tour, we visited the many different areas devoted to the different animals that are currently at the facility. That includes Dogtown, and the new dog area, Dogtown Heights.

The buildings are designed specifically for the dogs and include exercise areas, and agility areas for training dogs for stairs, cars and other everyday obstacles. The areas that contain the dogs include an inside area with a bed and warm floors. There also an outside area that the dogs can access at any time through a doggy door. Each dog is evaluated and given a collar that defines their sociability. Green collars for very social dogs, purple collars for dogs that are sociable with adults, with other dogs at different levels.

There are other similar facilities for cats, birds, bunnies, horses, and wild animals that are being rehabilitated for release to the wild. They also have rescue operations during emergencies such as Katrina. Every weekend they have adoption events in nearby areas like Las Vegas & Phoenix. This is a large non profit organization with over 400 employees and many volunteers, which this week includes Linda! She plans to work for the week we're here to learn more about the Best Friends, and their mission.

If you would like to see all of the photos of Best Friends, please click on the following link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jchuber1/BestFriendsAnimalSanctuary

Thanks for reading our adventures!