Help Me Spread My Shelter Hashtag: #WhenAShelterLovesPets

I write this blog mainly for myself and for a few readers who are my friends "in real life". I realize I don't have a huge audience, and that's ok. But if you have just happened along to my blog today, you might find the topic a little out of the ordinary. It's about hashtags. Usually I write about dogs, cats, horses, or bunnies. So this is a little strange, but I hope you will stick with me.

The idea for creating a hashtag specific to shelter practices came to me after moving to Chattanooga. It has taken me a while to get comfortable with my new hometown, figuring out my role here and what I want to do with regards to "my rescue stuff", as my family calls it, although it isn't all rescue, of course! It's volunteering at events, and cleaning up, and writing letters, and attending meetings, and figuring out new ways to talk to people about animal issues.

But anyway.  Back to the hashtag. The more time I would spend getting to know the practices at a shelter where pets were given every chance, the more I could tell this place was teaching me something about how it 'works'. The people who work at our city's shelter, McKamey Animal Center, and volunteer there are still under stress and pressure, of course, as any open intake shelter is, but the place offers little kindnesses to the pets that I had not seen in my previous experiences. Soft bedding donations, appeals to the public for treats and peanut butter and, most of all, their time, to take the pets on urban and woodsy adventures and read to them. These were new tactics to me and I really wanted to share them with my tribe of advocates who live for these kinds of tidbits, little tiny blessings to homeless pets.

So, I started using this hashtag on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, when I thought of something that I'd seen in action. Some of the future postings with it might be things I hope to see. Eventually maybe others will use it to share their hopeful visions also.

I'd like to ask you, especially if you are familiar with either a wonderful shelter or a terrible shelter, to create a post on your social media and use my new hashtag, #WhenAShelterLovesPets .

I spent years back home trying to understand why conditions were bad, sad, and unchanging. I helped form a non-profit there, Memphis Pets Alive!, and prior to that I had worked with another group whose focus was shelter reform, SOS Memphis. I've done tons of transports with groups from Arkansas to Connecticut. There's good rescue people all over, but there's also drama sometimes. This hashtag is just one tiny way of combating all of that and showing the good that can be accomplished #WhenAShelterLovesPets.

Think about it, look for it, and share when you can. I would love to read and reply to your comments below!

Mary Marr and shelter rescue Phoebe Marr.
Photo by Justin Fox.