Recently, Rocky Kanaka shared his frustration about a grooming van that refused to get off the ground in California. A faulty heater. A rusty propane tank. A repair bill climbing into the thousands.
And there I was, sitting on my sofa in Bali, wondering how I could help.
How did someone I have never met become someone I quietly root for?
When I lived in Toronto, I volunteered at my local shelter every week. I worked with the same people shift after shift. We cleaned litter boxes and socialized cats. We mopped kennels and fed dogs. We chatted, joked, and complained about the same small frustrations.
Nobody earned my trust through a single dramatic act. Trust accumulated almost accidentally.
Thursday after Thursday.
Cleaning kennels.
Walking dogs.
Showing up.
Looking back, something similar had happened with Rocky.
I watched him sit with anxious dogs week after week. I learned the dogs’ personalities through his narration. I recognized the recurring characters, the dry jokes, the familiar rhythm of his videos. And somewhere in that repetition, he stopped feeling like a stranger.
What surprised me wasn’t that I enjoyed the videos. It was that they seemed to create closeness in almost the same way volunteering at the shelter had. Not through dramatic rescues, but through the slow accumulation of ordinary moments.
That realization made me look at my phone differently.
It wasn’t just Rocky. My feed was full of people I felt oddly familiar with. I knew Lee Asher’s wedding updates. I followed Niall Harbison’s daily dog-feeding rounds in Thailand. I watched Dr. Scott Miller travel to Ukraine and Africa to help animals. Through hundreds of small glimpses into their lives, I had come to feel that I knew what these people represented.
And that, I think, is the real shift.
Growing up, I knew organizations. I couldn’t have named many individual animal rescuers beyond legendary figures like Jane Goodall. But I wouldn’t know what she was busy with. Today, I can tell you what Rocky Kanaka has been worrying about this week.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped subscribing to organizations and started subscribing to people.
That changes the structure of animal welfare.
A local shelter used to be the primary way most people encountered the movement. Now, animal welfare can also be experienced from afar, almost like a spectator sport. We follow recurring characters, celebrate victories, mourn setbacks, share inside jokes, buy merchandise, donate to causes, and plan pilgrimages to sanctuaries we’ve only ever seen on a screen.
Creators like Rocky, Lee, and Niall are no longer just internet personalities. They are educators, advocates, fundraisers, community builders, and trusted faces that people rally around directly.
The internet didn’t just make animal welfare global. It made animal welfare personal.
That creates extraordinary opportunities. A person in Canada can now support dogs in Thailand or a sanctuary in California with a few taps on a screen. But it also raises a harder question: what happens to organizations that are exceptional at caring for animals but less exceptional at turning that care into a story people will follow?
A few years ago, I would have walked into my local shelter and asked how I could help. The other evening, I found myself wondering how I could help a man I’d never met fix his grooming van in California.
Somewhere between those two moments, animal welfare stopped being something I experienced only through institutions. It became something I experienced through people. And I suspect that quiet shift has changed our movement more than we’ve yet realized.
If this newsletter has been useful to you, the best way to help it grow is to pass it to one person who'd connect with it — a colleague, a fellow volunteer, anyone doing this work who might want to feel less alone in it.
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Recognitions
Small acts of care often look ordinary until someone pauses long enough to notice them. This week, a few things worth noticing:
As wildfires continue to spread across Northern Ontario in Canada, thousands of families have been forced to evacuate with little warning. Alongside the evacuation efforts, animal welfare organizations across the province have come together to provide emergency housing for displaced pets, coordinating transfers so families don't have to choose between their own safety and the wellbeing of their animals.
Australia is trialling an artificial intelligence wildlife warning system that combines thermal and optical roadside cameras to detect animals approaching the road. When an animal is spotted, nearby electronic signs immediately warn motorists to slow down — a small technological intervention that could prevent countless collisions.
The Jane Goodall Institute has announced a partnership with FormationQ, a quantum computing research programme, to explore one of nature's oldest questions: why do some species engage in lethal conflict while others coexist peacefully with their neighbours? It is an ambitious reminder that understanding animals sometimes begins with asking better questions.
If you have a win worth sharing — your own or someone else’s — reply to this email. I’d love to hear about it.
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Happenings
Mark your calendars for these upcoming opportunities to connect with others:
Jul 23 - HASS Connect: Let's Talk Transport!
Jul 31 - Aug 3 - Taking Action for Animals
Before You Go
I'd love to know what's landing for you. Hit reply and let me know.
Thanks for spending part of your day with me and the rest of the Positive Animal Caregivers Club. Take care of yourself this week.
– Philip