In the grand scheme of Santa Barbara Humane’s century-long history, the nonprofit’s five-year presence in Santa Maria feels as fresh as a newborn pup.
The animal welfare agency’s paw prints on the area recently caught the attention of the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce, which picked Santa Barbara Humane as its nonprofit of the year.
The chamber will formally present the award during its annual gala on Sept. 27, from 4:30 to 9:30 p.m., at the Central Coast Jet Center.
“We have felt so embraced and supported by the goodness of Santa Maria residents,” Paige Van Tuyl, Santa Barbara Humane’s chief philanthropy officer, told the Sun. “We could not feel more grateful. … We only merged with Santa Maria in 2020, so this is a new relationship.”
Founded in 1887 as the Santa Barbara Humane Society, the nonprofit shortened its name after unifying with the Santa Maria Valley Humane Society during the spring of 2020. Having campuses in both Santa Barbara and Santa Maria has helped the nonprofit increase its accessibility to residents across the county, Van Tuyl said.
In July, the agency unveiled a new tool to expand its reach: a mobile veterinary unit.
“We are focusing that mobile unit on North County,” said Van Tuyl, who listed Lompoc and Buellton among the towns where the mobile unit sets up pop-up clinics.
One goal of the mobile unit is to serve communities that don’t currently “have the resources and the infrastructure” to facilitate certain kinds of animal welfare programs, she explained.
“We’re just trying to fill in the gaps, … we’re able to go out into the field and meet people where they are,” Van Tuyl said. “We are going out into areas that have large feral cat populations that need veterinary care. They need to be spayed and neutered. They need flea treatment and vaccines.”
Santa Barbara Humane often parks its mobile unit outside of the county’s Santa Maria animal shelter on Foster Road, she added.
“What is ending up happening is they have animals that they cannot adopt out because they have not been altered yet,” Van Tuyl said. “So we can come in and spay and neuter them so the pipeline is cleared where they can get adopted faster. That’s the main thing. We want animals to spend the least amount of time possible in any shelter.”
The nonprofit’s adoption-centered initiatives occasionally stretch beyond county lines. In January, Santa Barbara Humane dispatched a team of its staffers to Pasadena to assist the city’s humane society with its animal intake during the Eaton Fire.
More than a dozen dogs were transported from Pasadena to the nonprofit’s Santa Barbara and Santa Maria campuses where they became available for adoption.
Part of Santa Barbara Humane’s adoption program entails a “matchmaking” process, Van Tuyl said.
“We had a dog that came in that was an extreme abuse case,” she said as an example. “We were able to spend time to help this dog decompress and heal emotionally and medically through our medical team and behavior team, and that dog was matched with a family who had just lost [one of their] two dogs.”
Van Tuyl emphasized the importance of the matchmaking—among many “moving parts” tied to the nonprofit’s adoption services, she said—in this case because it involved an “intro” between the dog up for adoption and the family’s surviving dog before a decision was made.
“It was moving on so many levels,” said Van Tuyl, who described the two dogs as fast friends. “Not only was the dog able to enter the family to help heal the humans, she really came in and helped heal the other dog who was lonely.”
Highlight
• This fall, the Lompoc Public Library plans to debut a new youth program for teens interested in learning about the ins and outs of babysitting. The four-week course, titled Babysitting 101, will cover the basics of “starting a babysitting business, tips on interacting with clients, and activity ideas,” according to the library. Designed for ages 13 through 18, the series will hold classes on Oct. 14, 21, and 28 and Nov. 4, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. each evening.
Reach Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 2, 2025.