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This paper will document how the French Society for Protection of Animals (SPA) actively participates in the redefining of human-animal relationships. Rather than focusing on the legislative and media fights of the SPA, the emphasis here is on the everyday activities of protection. Thus, we will show that, although these activities appear to be routine work, disconnected from the ideal of animal protection, their impact is eminently political. Through an ethnographical account of an SPA animal shelter, we will analyze this space as a requalification apparatus, in which animals are transformed into singular beings, fit for integration into human society. The shelter will be seen as a matrix, shaping the beings the most capable of enacting pacified human-animal relationships. We will describe the various subspaces that compose the shelter, the relational dynamics that can be observed there, and the test procedures used to manage the “flow”? of animals. We shall also see how the shelter helps to solve tensions between the contradictory aspects of animal protection.