On today’s episode, I sit down with Sherri Franklin, founder of Muttville, a senior dog rescue based in San Francisco that has helped find homes for more than 14,000 older dogs.

Sherri didn’t start her career in animal welfare. She was a hairstylist who had previously owned several salons in San Francisco when she began volunteering at a local shelter in the 90s. After watching a dog she loved get euthanized simply because she was older and overlooked by adopters, Sherri decided she was going to build something that didn’t really exist at the time: a rescue focused entirely on senior dogs.

What started with Sherri fostering dogs in her own home and placing them with her hair clients eventually grew into a nonprofit with a full foster network, a dedicated adoption center, and a model that now rescues more than a thousand dogs every year.

In this conversation, we talk about what those earliest days actually looked like operationally, from paying vet bills out of pocket to learning how to structure a nonprofit and recruit a board.

We also get into the mechanics of running a large scale rescue today, including how foster networks function as the engine of the organization, how they think about adoption versus sanctuary care, and what it takes to consistently place senior dogs that most shelters have historically struggled to move.

This was a deeply personal conversation for me, as Muttville is truly my favorite nonprofit in the world. The rate at which they’re placing dogs is absolutely amazing, and I’m just so honored to be able to share the work they’re doing, and help get the word out in any way that I can.

I learned so much from Sherri during our conversation and I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.