Best Friends Animal Society’s Training Playbook: Lifesaving Field Services is a practical guide for animal-control and shelter teams that want to resolve community animal-welfare issues while protecting public safety and avoiding unnecessary shelter intake of healthy animals. Its central idea is to treat field services as a community-facing support function—not only an enforcement and call-clearing operation.
What the playbook covers
The document is Best Friends Animal Society’s Training Playbook: Lifesaving Field Services, Version 2, May 2022. It was first created in April 2019 and revised May 10, 2022. It is intended for animal-services leaders, supervisors, dispatchers, shelter staff, field officers, and community partners. The guide offers adaptable practices rather than a single required operating model; local ordinances, contractual response duties, staffing, and community priorities matter.
Here, “field services” means animal-control and shelter work conducted in the community. It does not refer to wilderness first aid, industrial rescue, or confined-space training. The playbook is available from Best Friends Animal Society.
Why community engagement belongs in field work
Field staff are often the most visible point of contact between residents and animal services. The playbook distinguishes outreach—connecting people with information and resources—from engagement, which involves conversation, relationships, and trust. As the guide puts it: “Engagement strategies, on the other hand, create conversations around community issues, build relationships and foster trust.”
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That distinction affects how a department approaches a call. A response may involve enforcement, but it may also involve explaining options, connecting a resident with supplies or services, or helping resolve a recurring problem. The aim is to support animal welfare and public safety while building consistent, respectful relationships with the community.
Decide what requires a response—and what response means
Departments should define which calls they are obligated to handle and specify what a response requires in each case. Some situations may require an officer’s physical presence; others may be resolved safely by dispatch over the phone. Those decisions should account for legal and contractual duties, animal welfare, public safety, staff capacity, and the time and funding available.
When choosing an approach to a call or program, assess whether it:
- Meets local legal and contractual obligations.
- Protects animal welfare and public safety.
- Addresses the underlying issue, rather than only its immediate symptom.
- Uses staff time and resources proportionately.
- Can safely return an animal to its owner or avoid shelter intake when appropriate.
- Can be evaluated with a measure that reflects the department’s mission.
Resolve recurring complaints by finding their cause
For repeated problems, the playbook recommends investigating why they occur and working with residents on a practical resolution. An escaping dog, for example, may need a fence repair rather than another impoundment. Staff might share spay/neuter information where relevant, or discuss deterrents and other complaint-mitigation options for outdoor-cat concerns.
These examples are not a blanket rule to avoid enforcement. Each case still needs to be assessed against applicable duties and safety concerns. The guide’s emphasis is on looking for a workable solution to the underlying problem instead of defaulting to a citation or impoundment when another safe option is available.
Support return-to-owner work in the field
Returning a found pet directly to its owner can avoid an unnecessary trip to the shelter. The playbook recommends equipping field staff with pet microchip scanners and a way to check shelter records—such as remote access from a tablet or computer—or providing dispatch support to look up owner details. It also encourages officers to make door-to-door efforts to reunite pets with their owners.
The right equipment and workflow depend on the department’s operations. A scanner is useful only when staff can act on the information it provides, so teams should coordinate field access to records or a reliable dispatch lookup process.
Make practical resources available to officers
Community-facing work may require modest supplies as well as communication skills. The playbook gives examples such as pet food, leashes and collars, materials for repairing animal enclosures, printed information about local resources, and treats for community events. For nuisance complaints, it also mentions options such as community-cat deterrents or leashes, collars, and runners, depending on the issue.
These are examples to adapt to local needs, not a universal equipment list. Departments should decide what to carry based on the problems they address, safe handling practices, and available community resources.
Coordinate teams and build staff skills
The guide calls for consistent understanding and messaging across animal-services staff, with coordination among shelter teams, dispatchers, city leadership, law enforcement, partner organizations, and community stakeholders. Field officers should be supported in attending community events and meetings while on duty, speaking with residents outside an enforcement interaction, and building relationships with a broad range of local people and organizations. Social media can also show community-facing work.
Training should include communication, mediation, and conflict de-escalation. Staff need to recognize when a complaint concerns an animal-control issue and when it is primarily a dispute between neighbors, so they can respond appropriately without treating every conflict as an animal-enforcement problem.
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Impoundment and citation counts alone do not show whether a field-services program is effective. The playbook suggests tracking measures such as shelter intake diversion, time spent engaging with the community, and successful resolution of repeated complaints. It cautions against making response time the dominant target: pressure to clear calls quickly can crowd out the time needed to understand and solve a problem.
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These are the playbook’s recommended measures, not independently validated findings. The document supplies no attributable outcome statistics or evaluation study with effect sizes, so it does not establish a quantified impact for the approach.
Adapt the guide to local conditions
Best Friends describes the playbook’s materials as guidelines and building blocks, noting that there is “no exact or perfect form of implementation.” Departments should shape their approach around local ordinances, contractual obligations, staffing, community needs, and existing partnerships. The playbook also points readers to the Best Friends Humane Animal Control Manual, Best Friends Community Cat Programs Handbook, and HSUS Pets for Life Community Outreach Toolkit as related resources.
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