To build trust with pet owners, this animal outreach team hits the road

To save Missy the cat, Alyssa Krieger had to gain the confidence of his owners. The tomcat had been spotted wandering with a wound on his chest. So Ms. Krieger went door to door in Missy’s Boston neighborhood until she found his home. The cat’s owners each worked 80 hours a week. They had been worried about Missy but didn’t have the money – or a car – to take their pet to a veterinarian. 

“I basically said, ‘Hey, why don’t I take him to do that for you? And then I will bring him back,’” Ms. Krieger recalls. “They did not know me at all, but they were like, ‘OK, I trust you.’”

Ms. Krieger heads a Boston-based team of seven outreach workers for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA). The team has a proactive response to the number of pets from disadvantaged areas ending up in shelters. Many owners have had bad experiences with the MSPCA. Its former adoption policies, such as requiring references or asking to see pictures of a prospective owner’s yard, upheld a system of class and racism, Ms. Krieger says. The MSPCA’s Boston community outreach team takes a nonjudgmental approach to building partnerships. 

“Trust goes both ways,” says Ms. Krieger. “We trust them to care for their pets.”

The team is careful not to admonish owners if they forgo spaying or neutering their pets. But it will happily support and facilitate those procedures, if asked. The MSPCA’s clinic also does microchipping, rabies vaccinations, and nail trims. And the outreach team’s pop-up pantries – blue vans stocked with pet food – have distributed more than 10 million meals since 2020. 

That visibility in the community is key. Ms. Krieger’s team members aren’t outsiders coming into the neighborhood. “Folks will flag down our van, or honk at us, or wave,” she says. “Everybody knows us.”