Welcome to Travel Tuesday! After having lived at Please Save A Cat, you probbbbably know by now that I love and adore animals, so was I really going to just drive by an animal sanctuary this awesome and not go visit?!
Obviously not.
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary – Grand Sanctuary Tour
This was over at their visitor center in town! :]
Address: 5001 Angel Canyon Rd, Kanab, UT 84741
Parking: Lot available
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary is a non-profit organization that was started back in 1984. Their mission is to help end the killing in all animal shelters across the country (hopefully by 2025). (Back when they started 17 million animals died every year in animals shelters across the country. That number has now decreased to 733,000, which is still a lot, but definitely much, much better than before.)
They work with other programs, shelters, and rescue groups to implement spay/neuter and trap-neuter-return (TNR) programs to reduce the number of animals that end up in shelters. The sanctuary owns almost 3700 acres and leases another 17k acres of state and federal lands. At any given time, they are taking care of ~1600 animals at the rescue.
They’re also working on ending puppy mills, protecting community cats, ending breed discrimination, and of course, promoting adoption vs. buying.
The sanctuary offers a variety of tours (you can even volunteer there! <3!) — we ended up booking a Grand Sanctuary Tour, which is free and available every day of the week at 4 different times (8:30am, 10am, 1pm, 2:30pm). Just make sure you register for it as there is often a waiting list, and arrive 10 minutes prior to the tour!
The tour itself is 90 minutes long and you get to meet a number of the cats in Cat World as well as the dogs in Dogtown while you learn more about the sanctuary and everything they do. (I know most of my photos are cats but I promise you do get to meet the dogs!)
Their animal clinic is amazing. (Did you know I used to want to be a vet? *-*) They offer spay/neuter services (available to pets in the community as well!), special surgeries, ultrasound, labs, dental care/procedures, physical therapy…
There is a place called Angels Rest, which is for beloved pets who’ve crossed the Rainbow Bridge. On the last Thursday of each month, there is a blessing held to honor Sanctuary animals who’ve recently passed.
There are also special tours, including Horse Haven + Marshall’s Piggy Paradise, Horse Haven Horsemanship Demo, Parrot Garden, Bunny House, Wild Friends, and even a guided hike in Angel Canyon on a nearby trail in the sanctuary!
We unfortunately didn’t get there in time to try out the food from the Canyon Grill, but it sounds amazing! I’d love to go back someday to go on other tours, volunteer, adopt a dog, and try their food. :P
- Have you ever been to an animal sanctuary?
- Do you have any pets?
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I’ve been to a sea turtle rescue before and it was so fun and interesting to learn! I bet it was hard to go home without taking all those kitties with you!
Author
That sounds so cool—I’d love to check that out someday too! It was hard but my two rescue kitties at home would definitely stage a revolt if I did. 😅
I’m an animal lover, and this is my kind of place to visit! It’s wonderful to see these animals being cared for. I seek out animal sanctuaries on trips. I would love to visit this Grand Sanctuary!
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Author
Yay!! I do too—I think you’d love this place! :]
Aw this is such an adorable place to visit. I’ve only been to a deer rescue centre before and it was a lovely experience seeing them recover.
Author
That’s so cool! I’d love to visit and help out at more animal rescues! ❤️
Aaahhh I would not be able to visit this place and not leave with a cat (or several!) they look adorable! I’m a huge cat lover and have two rescue cats at home (they wouldn’t let us get any more though, they don’t like sharing their hoomans!) What a wonderful place to visit and what an incredible mission. It sounds like they’re doing great work!
Author
It helps somewhat to know they’re gonna have an amazing and loving home even if I can’t bring em home with me! I have two rescue kitties too and they’re barely fine with each other so I also definitely can’t add more to the mix either. :[ I love the work they do too! ❤️
This looks really adorable tour and it would be great to rescue such cute animals. Thanks for sharing amazing tour experience.
Author
Thanks! Definitely one of the cutest tours I’ve been on! :p I wanna adopt a dog from there someday!
Those statistics for the number of animals dying in shelters each year before the sanctuary started are scary! What an incredible achievement for the sanctuary to bring those numbers down!
Author
Agreed! I’m so glad that they exist! <3