Working for Animal Welfare in
The Pacific Northwest

The PNW Animal Care & Control Conference – November 3 & 4

Two full days- a lifetime of opportunity!

All of us in the Pacific Northwest animal welfare community have been through a lot in the last two years. We’ve experienced difficult situations, had plenty of lessons learned, and we understand better than ever how important our friends and relationships are. We know we are stronger when we work together and because of this, the theme of our 2021 virtual conference is Collaboration – Connection and Commitment.

COVID-19 has prevented us from spending time together in person, but it hasn’t lessened our need to connect and collaborate and learn from each other. Each of us has coped with the pandemic in different ways, and have gained a wide range of lessons learned, and this conference will be a great way to spend virtual time with peers to reflect, to connect, and look forward to the post COVID landscape we now face.

The conference will feature two days full of new ideas and presentations from some of the leading lights from our own region and across the country, allowing us to explore the new priorities we must embrace here in our PNW animal protection community, such as working with our communities in a fair and equitable manner and applying the latest medical and behavioral techniques to save more animals.

We can achieve so much more by working together and this conference is going to be an exciting launch pad for how we go forward together in Washington State and beyond.

What to Expect at PNW 2021

Our conference will feature excellent speakers from University of Wisconsin, the Humane Society of the United States, and from across Washington and Idaho. To further our emphasis on collaboration, we will also include several panel discussions and sessions where you can make your voice heard on a number of vitally important topics like the future of adoptions, community cat issues, and many more.

Sessions like the one on building resilience and understanding compassion fatigue led by Hilary Anne Hager of HSUS (and the WA Federation President) will be accessible across the virtual platform for all attendees, an indicator of how important the topic is given all we’ve been through over the last two years. Other sessions will split into Field, Shelter and Shelter Medicine tracks and everyone can mix and match as they choose.

We'll have multiple sessions to explore all aspects of behavior programs in our shelters and foster care systems.  We will have several experts from across the behavioral spectrum.   

In the spirit of inclusivity there is going to be something for everyone at this conference and we have purposefully kept registration fees low to enable everyone to have access and to join us for an exciting and important conference for the Pacific Northwest animal welfare community.