Lucky Dog Star Brandon McMillan Visits Best Friends

Beginning September 28th Saturday morning will not only signal the start of the weekend, it will also celebrate the dawn of a new life for dogs who have been deemed unadoptable as CBS unleashes the new show Lucky Dog.

Each week Fido-loving TV fans can watch animal trainer Brandon McMillan as he rescues a hard to place pup from a shelter and corrects the canine’s behavioral issues at his Lucky Dog Ranch so his new barking buddy can find a forever home.

Helping to shine a spotlight on the option of adoption, Brandon McMillan recently paid a visit to the Best Friends Pet Adoption Center in Mission Hills, California, where he had the chance to meet the organization’s more than 200 resident Rovers, including a senior Chihuahua named Thomas (seen in the photos with McMillan).

During his stay at the center the Lucky Dog star also met with Marc Peralta, the executive director of Best Friends Animal Society – Los Angeles and NKLA (No Kill Los Angeles), to discuss Best Friends’ new national call to action “Save Them All”, which focuses on ending the euthanization of 9,000 pets a day in America’s shelters.

“That number is unfathomable when you meet dogs like Thomas and Kennedy. Each would make a perfect family pet,” McMillan said. “Best Friends Animal Society is doing an incredible job in L.A. and across the country to showcase these amazing pets and give people the tools to Save Them All.”

“What Brandon’s doing on ‘Lucky Dog’ to promote the adoption of shelter dogs will go a long way towards educating the public on just how great these dogs are,” Peralta said. “All animal lovers can play a huge role in helping us Save Them All by adopting their next pet, as well as by promoting spay/neuter of household and community pets.”

Since opening its doors in early 2012, the Best Friends Adoption Center has helped more than 4,000 pets find parents, and has provided more than 5,800 spay/neuter surgeries on-site to pet guardians in the Los Angeles area. Also, more than 130 canines and cats have become loving members of families since the newly opened NKLA Pet Adoption Center opened in August 2013. (Note: NKLA, or No Kill Los Angeles, is a coalition of animal welfare organizations, city shelters and people with a passion for compassion who have joined forces to end the euthanization of healthy and treatable pets in L.A.’s shelter system. Since its founding in 2012, shelter deaths in Los Angeles have decreased 12 months in a row, with 4,200 fewer companion animals losing their lives than in the year before.)

“Best Friends is leading the charge to make Los Angeles a no-kill city by 2017,” Peralta says. “Celebrities such as Brandon McMillan engage a wider audience that can help us Save Them All and we really appreciate that.”

Established in 1984, Best Friends– which operates the nation’s largest no-kill sanctuary for companion animals– has played a vital role in the drastic reduction of animals euthanized in shelters from 17 million each year to approximately 4 million.

For more information regarding Best Friends’ Save Them All™ campaign:

• visit www.bestfriends.org/save

Photo Credit: Best Friends Animal Society