Best Friends employee and my friend Don Bain passed away today. You can read a little about him and his interesting history in this article. Don was the first guy in Dogtown to remember me by name when I started volunteering. He took the time to show me a little about the desert and about the Indian artifacts I was walking by and over every day without even realizing it. When I was a volunteer, taking his puppy class was one of the highlights of my day.Don created that puppy class in response to a problem: puppies adopted from Best Friends were being returned at a high rate, so he created a class that would socialize them with people and help prepare them for the real world. Nearly every morning he could be found conducting the class, a favorite of volunteers. The return rate of puppies dropped like a rock. He would later oversee the expansion of the program after the Puppy Care Center building opened earlier this year.
Don was an extraordinarily good and kind man who loved animals and who loved people as well, which made him a wonderful teacher. I will miss him.
