A One Welfare Approach to Keep People and Pets Together Moving Beyond the Animal Shelter

1. Encountering the Animal Shelter: Beginnings

2. To Police, To Help, and To Stay in Business: The Conflicting Goals of the Animal Shelter Industry

3. Why Are Pets in Animal Shelters? Human Crises and Structural Barriers

4. The Multispecies Family: A New Paradigm for Helping People and Pets Together

5. One Welfare: The Importance of Pets for Humane Communities

6. One Welfare in Practice: Keeping Families Together Through Community- Centered Animal Sheltering

7. Modeling Change: Animal Advocates of Greater Lafayette

8. Innovating For the Next Chapter: Future Directions Beyond the Animal Shelter Using the One Welfare Approach

9. Leaving the Shelter Behind: Hope for Pets, People, and Humane Communities

Coda

References

Index

Biography

Nadine Dolby is Professor of Education at Purdue University, USA. Her research and scholarship focuses on the relationship between animals, culture, and society. Nadine is the author of more than 45 articles and 8 single author and edited books, including Learning Animals: Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Becoming a Veterinarian (CRC Press, 2022), and Rethinking Multicultural Education for the Next Generation: The New Empathy and Social Justice (Routledge, 2012). She is the founder and president of a local non-profit organization, Animal Advocates of Greater Lafayette, which works to help low-income families keep their pets.

“A compelling and deeply humane critique of modern animal sheltering, Nadine Dolby’s book exposes the structural inequities that separate people from their pets and challenges the myth of the “irresponsible owner.” Grounded in the One Welfare framework, it offers a clear, practical, and hopeful vision for keeping multispecies families together. Essential reading."

Jessica Pierce, bioethicist and writer, whose work focuses on human-animal relationships and interconnections between ecosystems and health.

“In this wide-ranging book, Dolby makes the case for a wholesale change in the way we rescue other animals. She argues that a new, community-based model of sheltering, one that recognises animals as part of a multispecies family helps both people and companion animals.  Moving deftly between the poignant, the personal and the political, Dolby has written an engaging and compelling book that will appeal widely to scholars and animal lovers alike.”

Nik Taylor, Professor, Human Services Programme, New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha/University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand

“This book is exactly the kind of honest, grounded rethinking of animal sheltering that the field needs. Drawing on more than a decade of day‑to‑day work in a shelter and the founding of Animal Advocates of Greater Lafayette, the author refuses to treat the traditional pound model as a given and instead shows, through careful research and lived experience, how One Welfare, multispecies families, and community-centered sheltering can keep animals with the people who love them. As a veterinary social worker and educator, I’m particularly moved by how fully this work acknowledges human grief, structural inequity, and the toll on shelter staff alongside animal welfare; it’s not just a critique, but a usable blueprint for building communities that recognize animals as part of our social fabric, not as disposable problems. This should be required reading for anyone in animal welfare, social work, public health, or community services.”

Katherine Compitus, Clinical Associate Professor and Director of the Veterinary Social Work Post-Masters Program at NYU Silver School of Social Work, USA

“Blending scholarship with practical advocacy, this is a timely book that argues for a paradigm shift in the animal shelter ‘industry’. Its emphasis on social context, grass roots action, empathy and compassion make it a valuable resource for all those working, teaching and researching at the sharp end of companion animal welfare. Highly recommended.”

Andrew Gardiner, Professor, Chair of Veterinary Medical Humanities, Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK

"This is an important book for anyone interested in multispecies wellbeing. Nadine Dolby demonstrates that the challenges faced by animals in contemporary societies are deeply entangled with the lives of the people and communities with whom they coexist. Using a One Welfare perspective to animal sheltering and community support, she offers a thoughtful critique of existing practices while opening up possibilities for more relational and inclusive approaches to care. The book skilfully combines scholarly insight with personal experience, drawing on the author's work as a volunteer to provide a nuanced and engaging account of the complexities of animal welfare in practice." 

Linda Tallberg, PhD, Senior Lecturer, University of Lapland

“As someone who does research on the human-animal bond and has worked in an animal shelter, I have seen firsthand how human crisis and systemic barriers to accessing care contribute to pets ending up in animal shelters as the default response. This book, with touching personal anecdotes and expert, thorough analysis of the multiplicity of factors contributing to the sheltering crisis, dismantles the myth that there are “bad pet owners,”  showing instead how our systems fail the multi-species family and offering alternative, community-centered responses that could address the root causes of the crisis.”

Kaleigh M. O’Reilly, MSW, Research Associate I, Institute for Human-Animal Connection, Graduate School of Social Work, University of Denver, USA