FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT:
Laura Clark
843-893-2651
Best Friends Animal Society grant recognizes Colleton County Animal Services for helping 82 dogs and cats finds homes through Bring Love Home Challenge
Walterboro, SC, March 1, 2026─ Colleton County Animal Services has been awarded a $5,000 grant from Best Friends Animal Society, a leading national animal welfare organization working to save cats and dogs in America’s shelters.
The grant recognizes Colleton County Animal Services’s efforts to increase pet adoptions through successfully completing the Best Friends Bring Love Home Challenge — a nationwide initiative led by Best Friends to help more cats and dogs find homes this December.
The Bring Love Home Challenge ran from December 1-31, 2025. Nearly 300 organizations were selected to participate, with 219 reporting their results, leading to an extraordinary 15,279 pets finding homes in December — including 82 adopted in December from Colleton County Animal Services.
One of the lucky pets to be adopted was Sebastian, an adult Rottweiler who had been in the shelter for 375 days. Sebastian was declining mentally at the shelter, out of options to help him, a desperate plea was issued to our community which resulted in Sebastian going to a wonderful foster home with an “Adoption Ambassador”, the program we chose to pilot as part of the challenge. Sebastian’s foster dad did a remarkable job of using social media to share Sebastian’s loving face and personality and in December, Sebastian was adopted by a family who has experience with the breed from three states away!
“We spent all of December celebrating the cats and dogs who got to be in a home for the holidays thanks to our participation in the Bring Love Home Challenge,” said Laura Clark, Colleton County Animal Services Director. “Being awarded this grant from Best Friends means we can keep that incredible momentum going! This challenge, and grant, will have lasting effects for the pets in our care, and for our community.”
Participants in the Bring Love Home Challenge piloted data-backed best practices to make pet adoption and fostering more accessible and welcoming to their community— which included reducing adoption fees, shortening applications, eliminating home checks, offering multilingual adoption and foster support, and more.
“More pets being adopted and fostered means more lives saved. We’re proud to recognize Colleton County Animal Services for their commitment to lifesaving,” said Whitney Bollinger, Director of Strategy & Network Operations, Best Friends Animal Society. “Participating in the Bring Love Home Challenge got cats and dogs out of shelters and into homes in December, and we are excited to see this lifesaving continue with even more pets in Colleton County finding the loving homes they deserve!“
Learn more aboutColleton County Animal Services by visiting colletoncounty.org/animal-services and by following Colleton County Animal Services on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ColletonCountyAnimalServices and Instagram @colletoncountyanimalshelter. Make a lifesaving impact by volunteering , adopting , or fostering.
About Colleton County Animal Services
Colleton County Animal Services provides animal welfare and animal shelter services to the residents and businesses of Colleton County, a rural community in Southeastern South Carolina. We are a small but mighty shelter who, joined by our non-profit partner Friends of Colleton County Animal Shelter, assures that all domestic animals in our county are cared for responsibly. In addition to rehoming homeless pets, we provide affordable spay/neuter services, education and pet inclusive social gatherings for our community.
About Best Friends Animal Society
Best Friends Animal Society is a leading animal welfare organization dedicated to saving the lives of dogs and cats in America's shelters and making the entire country no-kill. Founded in 1984, Best Friends runs lifesaving facilities and programs nationwide in partnership with more than 5,500 shelters and rescue organizations. From our headquarters in Kanab, Utah, we also operate the nation's largest no-kill animal sanctuary — a destination that brings our mission to life for thousands of visitors each year. We maintain the most comprehensive animal sheltering data in the country and make it accessible to the public — empowering communities with critical insights into the needs of their local shelters and how they can help. We believe every dog and cat deserves a home. And we believe that, by working together, we can Save Them All®.