We left Las Vegas early on Friday morning to get to Best Friends in time to meet with Freddi, the volunteer coordinator. She had us sign the required paperwork and gave us our volunteer badges, and we went outside to wait for the welcome video to start. As we were waiting, somebody with a gorgeous Siberian Husky arrived at the welcome center, and I couldn't help but walk up to her and ask to pet her.

Such a beautiful and friendly animal. I thought that was a great way to get our weekend started at Best Friends. We watched the introductory video, and then we piled into a van for our tour. We started off going south on a dirt road that circles Best Friends. We drove past some of the horse enclosures and stopped in front of Angels Rest, the pet cemetery.

Angels Rest is an amazing place. It sits across from a canyon, and there's a near-constant breeze that flows through, causing the dozens of wind chime trees to make their peaceful music. We all admired the wonderfully detailed entrance gate with the words "Angels Rest" on top of it, and then we were off to our first stop: Cat World!

Casa de Calmar

We pulled up in front of Casa de Calmar, named for the man who donated the building to Best Friends in memory of his wife, who loved cats and loved Best Friends. We all unloaded ourselves from the van and made our way into the building. We were shown an amazing room dedicated to the woman whose husband donated the room. It was full of cat memorabilia, and there were plenty of places for cats to hang out and relax, including a really cool basket sitting right in a window. It contained a cat, of course. Then we moved on to the area that housed the cats with Feline Leukemia. I lost a beloved cat to Feline Leukemia when I was younger, so I immediately had a soft spot in my heart for these guys.

They were amazing, so friendly and personable. It never fails to impress me when I see how loving and friendly animals can be despite having a deadly disease or being in pain. We all walked into the outdoor area where we saw a dozen or so cats doing everything from sleeping to hiding out in the rafters. As I was taking pictures of An petting some of the cats, another one jumped up on my leg and began purring into my chest. I gently stroked his fur, which he loved, and he was happy to stand there on my leg receiving affection. At that point I didn't want to leave. I just wanted to sit there petting the cats all day.

The Calmar room

We left the Leukemia area and got another look at the Calmar room, now occupied by at least three cats. A couple of them were playing on the cat tree and with various toys. These cats aren't just well taken care of, they're really pampered. It looked to me like they had everything they could ever want, except a family to call their own. We petted them again, then exited the building and climbed back into the van.

We left Cat World and made our way over to Angel Village. Angel Village houses the production studio for the Best Friends magazine as well as the vegetarian cafeteria that serves lunch every day from 12-1 PM. The tour continued as we drove past the bunny house, and a bit further down the road we went past Feathered Friends, stopping briefly outside the peacock habitat so we could look at them.

From there we made our way back to the main road and towards the most famous section of Best Friends, Dogtown. This is the "Dogtown Clinic" building shown on the "Dogtown" TV show on National Geographic. We didn't get out there, we just drove around back real quickly to get a look at Dogtown and how it was laid out. Behind the main Dogtown clinic building are what they refer to as "the lodges". These are the original runs for the dogs at Dogtown, and there are a lot of them, stretching about a quarter of a mile behind the clinic building.

Then we left Dogtown and headed towards the expansion of Dogtown called Dogtown Heights. Jennifer, our driver and tour guide, told us the story of how Dogtown Heights came to be, as we drove past the intricately sculpted iron entrance gate. At the time, Dogtown was running out of room. The lodges were full and Best Friends was expanding their efforts. They needed more room but didn't have the money. An extremely generous benefactor contacted Best Friends and said he would donate $500,000 for a new dog area on one condition: Best Friends would have to come up with an additional $500,000 on their own. It was a daunting task for a non profit organization, but they were eventually able to raise the money. With a cool million dollars to build an expansion to Dogtown, they got to work and Dogtown Heights (a gated community) was born.

Jennifer explained how the dog areas were set up. In Dogtown Heights, there are "neighborhoods" that usually consist of two octagonal shaped buildings that each have a number of fenced in dog runs extending out in a fan-like shape behind the building. We stopped at "The Garden", a neighborhood that consisted of two dog octagons. We went into the one called Jethro to see what these octagons were like on the inside.

An takes a picture of one of The Garden dogs

There is a short entryway, and then the main area has a table in the middle. It's surrounded by the doors to all the dog runs in a half circle around the table, and there is a picture and the name of each dog in a given run next to each corresponding door. As we walked in, the barking started. The dogs were excited to see a bunch of people in their home all at once, and there was much whining and tail wagging.

They explained that they liked to group dogs together like this, with adjoining (but not interconnected) runs for the social aspect. All the dogs are carefully chosen as far as placement goes so they don't try to fight each other through the fences. And if dogs get along with each other, they live in the same run together. Typically there were anywhere from one to three dogs in each run. Each gate inside the octagon leads into a decent sized room with food, water and beds for the dogs so they can sleep indoors if they like. Each room has a doggy door in the wall as well as a doggy door inside a regular door. The doors all lead outside to the run, which expands outwards like a pie wedge so the dogs actually have a significant amount of room to play in.

The caregiver let one of the dogs out of their run and into the main area, so he could mingle with us and soak up attention like a sponge. He was a black lab mix, and he was perfectly happy to wander around among us as the caregiver explained how their system works in the octagons.

After talking with the caregiver for a bit and petting the dog who was very friendly and loved the attention, we all said goodbye and got back into the van. From Dogtown Heights we got back onto the main road, going back towards the welcome center. On the way back we stopped outside Angel's Rest again to get another look at it. Then we got back to the welcome center, and we all got out and picked up our gift bags. An and I got back into the car and drove around to the back entrance to Best Friends, and went to Angel Village to grab some lunch.

The cafeteria deck at Angel Village

For $5 each, we got a vegetarian buffet that was really good. The best part about the cafeteria was that we could go outside onto a deck in the back, which looked out over a couple of horse enclosures and across a valley to some of the Utah hills. It was a spectacular view, and Best Friends were brilliant in deciding to put their restaurant there. We ate our lunch, and then we left to start our first volunteering shift in Dogtown.

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