Championing Animal Rescue from Shelter Volunteer to Rescue Advocate: Listen to Connor's Story

Hello, my friends and fellow animal lovers. I'm so happy to have you here for another episode of the story of my pet podcast. I'm your host, julie Marty Pearson. I'm very excited for this guest for you guys to hear this podcast. It's a lot of important information about animal rescue and what you can do to help animals in your community. Many of you have listened to a prior episode where I interviewed Melissa Brunson, the executive director of Marley's Mutts dog rescue, and in this episode you're going to hear from Connor Long, who also works for Marley's Mutts, and we'll talk a little bit about his experience prior to that working in one of the animal shelters here in Coon County, where I live. He had front seat experience to what it's really like working in an animal shelter, how busy it is, how overcrowded it is and a lot of the very, very difficult decisions he faced in his job. So it's a really important conversation that we have and how his experience there really shaped him and moved him into working in rescue now with Marley's Mutts, and we'll also give lots of great examples for things you can do to help the animals in your community and help dog rescues like Marley's Mutts. I'm really excited for you guys to hear this and please share it for and why so many people need to hear this important information. I am so excited to have another member of the Mutts militia here with me on the podcast. I am welcoming today, connor from Marley's Mutts. Hi, connor, thank you so much for being here. Hi, thank you for having me. So, as many of my listeners will remember, I had Melissa, the director of Marley's Mutts, on the podcast a few episodes ago and we had a really great conversation about her journey to be coming involved with Marley's, and so I'm excited to have Connor here and we can talk a little bit about his experience with animal rescue, animal shelters and really get into the talk about why everyone needs to know the reality of what's going on now and how they can help. So, connor, have you always been an animal lover?

Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in a family where all of us loved animals. From saving a rabbit off the street Every time we found a stray dog trying to reunite it with its owners back before microchips were a thing, our lives have always centered around animals, always been a big part of my life.

Okay, you actually have your degree in animal sciences. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, so I actually just this year completed my bachelor's degree in animal health and behavior. For me it was a really neat degree program to go with because it addressed a little bit of everything, so we can talk about physiology and anatomy and common companion animal diseases and things that really fascinate me, mixed with the behavior of dogs and how they all tie in together. I don't know about animals in general, but I of course, tried to apply everything to the dogs Right, and so it was just a really unique degree that I felt like would give me a lot to use in this career of working with dogs and being able to look at a behavior and maybe see an underlying medical condition that we can get looked into, or vice versa, seeing a health condition that could be like the symptoms or the clinical signs of the health condition and then being able to relate that to behavior and just seeing how that all ties in with the dogs. There's a lot of fun for me and I do feel I've already been able to utilize a lot of that here.

That's really great. I love that. My education background is in psychology and I love when I got to take classes around animal behavior and really understanding that the way animal is behaving isn't necessarily who they are in that moment. And so, previous to Marley, you worked at Bakersfield City.

Animal Care, the shelter for the city.

How did you end up working there?

I was actually working on getting certified as a dog obedience trainer, and part of that school program required that we do a certain amount of volunteer hours with a rescue or shelter. At that time I was fairly new to Bakersfield and I didn't really know a lot of the rescues around, and so I looked up a shelter first, and the city shelter was right down the street from me, so I walked in one day and found out when the next orientation was and didn't know I'd spend the next three years of my life working there.

So you started off as a volunteer and then you actually ended up working there as staff.

Yeah, I was a volunteer with the city shelter for just over a year and then I worked with them for just over two years.

Can you talk a little bit about what your experience was like as a staff? What was your role, what did you do and, most importantly, what did you learn by being there firsthand?

So I was the animal behaviors. It was basically my job to look at all the incoming dogs, assess their behavior, kind of root out the guys that are offensively aggressive, the ones that either came in on a bite hold or came in just as a stray but are actively trying to bite people. One of the difficult things that I had to do was try to figure out is this dog just really scared and that's why he's trying to bite me, or is he going to be problematic, or she going to be problematic no matter what, and then be able to say I think this dog would be safe in a family. I think this dog's going to have to be an only dog. This dog's great around other dogs and can go anywhere and really try to take the behaviors that I was assessing and try to set them up with good, successful adoptions. Unfortunately, what that ended up feeling like was that I was just picking dogs to die. When you have such a high volume of dogs coming in and out of the shelter and adoptions are low, return to owners are low, rescues are doing everything they can to pull. You have to pick dogs to kill three or four times a week. So it was kind of a balancing act of. Well, I know this guy's really shut down and that's why he's trying to bite me, but he's not gonna improve in this environment. Right, I don't have an adopter who's gonna be willing to come in and work with this dog before taking him home, or take him home under this condition. So I'm gonna go ahead and put that one on the put to sleep list. If I had, a quarter of my population is black pitties, then I'm looking at my black pitties and going, okay, which ones of you can I root out so that your guys stand a better chance? Huskies, shepherds, I mean, it was the same thing. So you're trying to weigh the behaviors, but you're also looking at what can I actually get adopted? What are rescues actually gonna pull from me? Then it was really hard. I started out thinking I'm gonna make it so we don't have to euthanize so many dogs, and it ended up really just feeling like I was looking for the smallest little flaw to be okay. That's why you have to be put to sleep and this one's gonna live maybe another week.

I can't even imagine being responsible for that sort of thing, and I'm sure just so many of us that want to help, whether we're volunteering or working, we're like we're gonna be the one that's gonna help them and get them out. But when you're drowning in dogs and there's nowhere for them to go, ultimately somebody has to make that hard decision. Yeah.

Yeah, it's one of those things that's really hard. You'll come into work knowing every kennel is full and an hour into the day you get a call from animal control that they just stumbled onto a hoarding case and you've got to make room for 40 dogs and there's not a lot that can be done at that point because even if you're calling rescues, normally don't have the means to throw together a massive transport to get outside your shelter that day in the next hour. So a lot of situations like that that the shelters have to fly by the seat of their pants and it makes working in a shelter really difficult. I learned a lot about people. I learned a lot about the system and generally kind of where the flaws are and what makes it hard to make progress in a situation like what we've got in Kern County. There's definite overpopulation but we talk about mandatory span neuter laws and then if you go and you talk to the SNP bus who's doing amazing work in Kern County and actually other counties as well but really amazing work in Kern County, Absolutely they go a SNP bus to the public and within 45 minutes to an hour it's full. So there are a lot of people in the community who want to span neuter their animals but they don't have the resources to do it. Vets are backlog two or three months. The low cost span neuter clinics are backlog two or three months. So there's all those kinds of things that if I'd never worked at the shelter, I never would have understand how complex the issue really is, and that there's not just an easy answer of, hey, span, neuter your animals. In very plain terms yes, that's right, Span, neuter your animals, but they have to have the opportunity to span neuter their animals. And so that you start to see how many moving pieces are involved and that it's going to take everyone helping if we want to get this under control.

Absolutely yes. I would say preach because it's so true and my own experiences from having started this podcast a little over a year ago, I've learned so much. I was always an advocate for adoption and fostering and spay and neuter, but I had no idea what that meant. I had no idea, like you said, the complexities of it, and it's really easy for someone to sit behind a phone or a computer on social media and comment why aren't you spay and neutering your pets? Why doesn't your county have more spay and neuter clinics? The truth of the matter is there's a myriad of reasons why our overpopulation here is so bad that even clinics every week are catching up, and there's also the idea that a dog is in the shelter because it's a bad dog, because it has behavior issues, but that is so not true. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, conception.

Absolutely so. That is a huge misconception and working at the shelter, I heard that so many times and I will say if you want to talk about a dog that hasn't been taught to do anything, it hasn't been taught where it's supposed to go to the bathroom, what's sure you can say the dog, the shelter is full of behavior case dogs. Unfortunately, when the average person hears behavior case dog, they're thinking a dog that's biting, a dog that's trying to hurt other animals or hurt people, and those are definitely behavior issues and those are definitely alarming. When people talk about all dogs in shelters aren't bad dogs, they're talking about the six month old puppy who chewed up their shoe. Is they never had time to teach the puppy? That's not a toy. So really taking the time to talk to people about these are good dogs who have been failed by people. They need somebody to step up and to show them this is a toy. This isn't this is where you go potty. This isn't this is where you sleep. They learn quickly, especially if you're talking about a puppy, but every dog is capable of learning and 90% of the time what we're having come into the shelter is somebody saw a really cute puppy and thought it'd be a great idea to go grab it. They didn't do any research on the breed. Their house was not at all puppy proofed. It's just like baby proofing. It's a real thing. Yes, our anti-crate crates are bad. Crates are mean. I'm never going to have a crate in my home and that's why the dog ate your couch. So we see a lot of that and it's a lot of just trying to talk to people about. Crates are good. Crates create boundaries. Crates can help manage the environment. Upies are going to go through chewing phases as they're teething, so make sure they've got a bone that they're actually allowed to chew on. That's safe. Don't go out and buy a cattle dog if you have a two year old toddler running around the house, because the cattle dog is going to herd your kid.

Don't get peppered if you don't want somebody to guard your home and it's we love Don't get all of those dogs if you don't have time to exercise them or take them on walks or have a yard for them to run around and get their energy out with. Yes, I think the breed specific issues can are a big part of the problem, especially because we have breeds like shepherds and huskies and pits that are so overwhelming in our shelters. But that's not all. That's in the shelter, and every dog needs certain things. They have to be set up to succeed and so many dogs aren't. Yeah.

Well, and then, if you do just want a couch potato that's going to sit there and not do anything, adopt one of the seniors, because they often get forgotten about in a shelter. But that's kind of the perfect dog for somebody who really doesn't want to put work in.

Right yeah, and I think I learned so much having volunteered and worked in a shelter in the last year. You realize every dog has their own needs, just like a person. And even we talk a lot about breed specific needs. But even with interbreed, every individual dog is different. They have their own personality, their own needs, their own behaviors. Sometimes that's been shaped by their experience and what kind of house or home they've had before, living on the street or whatever that may be. But just like people, all dogs given the chance can learn new behaviors, can learn new ways of reacting to things. But I think a big part of the problem is people don't give them the time.

Yeah Well, a lot of what we also saw in the shelter, and we've even seen it here in the rescue, is that people want to take a dog home and the dog just fits Right and we'll see dogs get turned back into us. 48 hours later, 24 hours later, you didn't even give this dog a chance to figure out that it's in a home now, right. And this dog has no idea what's going on. It went from the place it knew into a car with people it didn't know, into a home, and you haven't even given it a second to catch its breath and process what's going on. We always tell people it's the rule of three, so you have three days to decompress, three weeks to feel like they're getting a hang of the schedule and three months to really feel like they're at home, right, and that they're safe. Yeah, if you are not giving the dog that chance, you're not doing any favors for the doc. We need people who are willing to commit to at least three weeks. If you don't want to wait the three months, that's a different conversation. But if you're trying to run with a dog, you should be hanging on to that dog for at least three weeks.

Absolutely. Yeah, I saw this so much running offside adoption events on the weekends and we'd had these dogs that we had been advocating for. We loved them, we'd had them out with us for hours and we knew them and we were like we found a home and we all celebrate and we told everybody in the shelter and then a day or two later, oh they're back. What, what do you mean? We're back. Oh, I didn't like their cat or it didn't do this. I'm like you didn't even give them a day.

I mean that's honestly. That is part of the root problem of why we're seeing the dogs come into the shelters in the first place. Somebody got a dog and they didn't want to be responsible, they didn't want to take the time, they didn't want to put any effort in it. So that's new up to dogs. That's why the dogs end up in the shelter in the first place. A big one that we're hearing right now is I'm moving, I'm leaving tomorrow and I can't take my dog. You didn't know that. A month ago, how long did you look for a home that would allow you to bring your dog? I in the military, I wasn't even a dog I wanted. Somebody dumped a broken puppy on my doorstep and it was a pity, and I lived on base. I wasn't allowed to have a pity on base. I moved out of base housing into another home just so I could keep a dog that wasn't even mine. And the six that followed that I moved again and again and again just to make sure that I could keep her. So it is possible. It's not convenient, but it's possible Absolutely. I'm just so tired of hearing well, yeah, I couldn't find a place that would let me keep it. My life changed.

Right, let's just be honest. There are people who are on hard times. They don't have money for their own groceries, let alone feeding their pets or whatever it may be, and we are not talking about them. We totally understand that. There are people who are at their wits end of how they keep their pet because of whatever is happening in their life, but that's a very small percentage of the people who are dumping or leaving their animals behind when they move or taking them to the shelter or whatever it may be. That's a small percentage. A lot of people are choosing the convenient route. Like you said, it takes effort to figure out how to make it work with pets. I know we've had hard times myself. We're like how are we going to buy the insulin for our cat? I don't know how we're going to do it, but we've done it because we love that cat and we rescued him as a baby and he's now 14 and we're not giving up on him. But it's not easy.

Yeah, I know, working here at Marley's, but also when I worked at the shelter, I would much rather somebody come in and say I need your help, I can't feed my dog. Do you have a resource you can send me to? I don't have money to buy the insulin for my cat. Can you help me? I would much rather hear that than I don't want it anymore. I can't have it anymore. There's the Bakersfield Pet Food Pantry. That is all they do is work on making sure that they have food in stock that they can share with community members who need the resources. Again, there's low cost Spain neuter clinics. I definitely don't think we have any actual low cost vet care and I think that's a huge problem and there should be some state funded, like city, state, county funding for actual affordable vet care, because the cost of vet care has skyrocketed and I don't blame anyone for not being able to afford a $600 spay on a 40 pound dog. It's ridiculous.

Okay, so let's talk about you were working at the shelter and then now you're at Marley's. How did that happen?

So I was really struggling with my mental health at the shelter. If I can impart any knowledge to anybody listening right now, it's going to be nice to the shelter workers. Nobody there wants to kill a dog. Nobody was there wants to turn you away. They really struggle. It is hard, it is really heartbreaking and mentally and emotionally taxing the work at a shelter. I was really struggling. I was coming home angry all the time and my wife finally looked at me and said you need to figure something else out. Right about that time we had some really sick dogs coming in and out of the shelter. It was the first wave of distemper parvo we saw after COVID, when all the dogs who normally would have been getting vaccinated weren't. We had a huge amount of dogs coming in off the street already sick with distemper and parvo. And so then, if you didn't catch it because it wasn't showing symptoms yet, then it just spread and me and one other staff member had to euthanize 34 puppies and having to go from puppy kennel to puppy kennel, killing these puppies. And again I will preface this by saying it had to be done. These dogs were sick.

Right.

But that completely broke me and after doing that I just I couldn't anymore. And I knew some people who were working out here at the ranch and so I gave them a call and said hey, I've got some medical experience under my belt and I know you guys are struggling with medical stuff out at the ranch, why don't I come out there and see what happens? And so I came out for an interview and they offered me the job and so I moved over at the end of 2021.

I think that's a really important thing that you talked about. I saw it for a second. I even felt it for the little bit of time I worked part time. People don't understand how hard it is to work in a shelter. And the thing is they'll say they're so rude or they blew me off. Yeah, but you don't understand that people that are in the shelter are the biggest animal advocates. You have to be able to do what they're doing day in and day out. They see the worst of humans, the worst of what humans can do to animals, and they are advocating for those dogs and those cats as much as they possibly can, and it's exhausting mentally and physically, and so I think it's really important you talk about that because it is hard. So, now that you're at Marley's, what is your role there and what are you seeing from that perspective in terms of being at a rescue now versus a shelter.

So I am now the operations manager here. So I help facilitate all of our different programs. So I'm coordinating positive change, which is our prison program. I am working on our mutt movers program, which is rescue by relocation. So we're taking dogs out of the shelter, putting them on a transport bus and shipping them out of the area. I make sure that the ranch itself is running smoothly every day. We're staying staffed. We know what's going on with the dogs. Marley's has a really amazing platform in that Zach has had this going for 19 years. The social media following that Marley's Mutts has allows us to have a platform to reach so many more people. When you're looking at and not just in Kern County but city and county shelters, again you're understaffed. You don't have enough funding. So to have somebody dedicated to social media is out of the question and these days that's what you need. The foot traffic of the family who just decides to go to the shelter is minimal. Your networking your dogs through social media, through having the connection to get on the news, get the reporter to come down and show that every single kennel has six dogs in it. You guys are drowning when you don't have the staff to really dedicate somebody to that specifically, you can't really grow, and so Marley's Mutts. There's a huge platform here where we have those followers a lot of them in California, a lot of them in Kern County, but all over the place and it's given us the opportunity to make connections with people who can help. We just talked about a husky puppy that was confiscated from a person who was swinging it around by its back leg, broke its leg. That person was arrested and then nothing happened. Well, we talked about that on social media and we actually had somebody who just recently reached out to us and said I don't have jurisdiction in Bakersfield, but I'll be more than happy to come and start asking some questions and put some pressure on the people who do have jurisdiction, because that absolutely is a clear cut case of animal abuse and it absolutely should be followed up on. So again, even if the shelter had posted that on their social media, what would it come of it? But because of the really great opportunity that we have, I feel like we're getting the chance to advocate for our shelters and help them advocate for their animals.

Absolutely. The power of social media is huge and thank God, right now we have it with the crisis we're in and the shelters. They try and I know a lot of them have tried to do more and more with social media. But again, you can only grow so much and Marley's, luckily, has been around so long. The following is there and people know Zach and trust him and know you guys, and you can get people from all over the country, other countries that are willing to support, to share. I don't think people realize the power of sharing on social media. I've seen so many dogs just at the county shelter alone who have been saved with 24 hours left, whether it be fostering or adoption, just because someone shared, another person share and it got to someone who said you know what? I can help.

Well, understand that we're not just asking people to support us. Right, we're trying to get people to support the shelters themselves. Fosters If you don't want to foster from Marley's, that's fine. If you're not in Kern County, that's fine. Go find a local rescue shelter and foster, foster, foster, foster. And so just being able to share stuff like that and to be able to say there's 300 dogs at the shelter at the moment and we need fosters, to step up and to be able to see the community respond to that. And again, on our platform, we do get the oh man, I wish I could, but I'm in Illinois. Okay, go to an Illinois shelter because I guarantee you there are dogs that could be used fostering there too. Right, you may not be directly supporting us, but you're supporting our mission, just the same.

Absolutely. I think that's where the advocating and educating comes in, because not everybody is bad as Kern County, but I know from everybody I follow it's really bad. A lot of places all over the California, all over the country, and there are so many rescues and shelters that are small and don't have staff and even if they're not at the level that we are in Kern County, they still need help in every life. Every dog, every cat, every whatever animal it may be, for that group matters and one home opens up another space to save another animal, absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about mutt movers, okay.

So the easiest way to break it down is we'll take Marley's mutts as an example. I can house safely, depending on how many puppies I have versus adult dogs, anywhere from 50 to 70 dogs on site Bosters. Obviously then we can save more. On average, every dog we pull stays about three months.

That's a long time.

Yeah. So when you think about it in that way, I'm moving end of 15 dogs a month via adoption On a good month, good month. We have plenty of months where we're lucky if we get two adoptions. So that means that me by myself, well Marley's month can only save 10 dogs a month, which is nothing when you're having 700, 800 dogs come in a month. 10 dogs a month that I can pull, even if you have 10 rescues, that's 100 dogs a month is nowhere near what's coming into the shelter. And you're looking at shelter adoptions. Again, they're lucky if they're getting 10% of what comes in adopted in a month. They're lucky if adoptions and return to owners are 10% of what's coming in a month. So we have to do more. We have to find a way to try to move as many dogs out of a shelter as are coming in to break even. So right now and it's we've been pretty consistent all year long we're doing about two transports a month and those transports right now are comprised of 20 to 25 dogs on average each one. So we're able, on top of our adoptions, we're moving 50 to 60 dogs a month out of the area. So now also, the other component to that is, it's not a dog leaving the shelter but going right back into the community. It's completely out of Kern County now and so far this year I think we've moved $220 through our month-movers program. We would love to see this program grow because I have a visitor I'd like to share with you Hi, nice sweetie. We would love to see this program grow because I think all of us agree this is gonna be the way that we make the most impact in the short term. Now I do wanna put out there that this is not a long-term answer, because if that's all we're concerned about is moving one dog from here to here, we're gonna oversaturate other areas, like right now we're already in the Pacific Northwest. Everybody and their mom in California and Texas is moving dogs from those oversaturated areas into Washington and Oregon. Well, now you're getting more and more rescues in Washington and Oregon who are saying I can't Now my dogs aren't getting adopted, and so we're starting to oversaturate those areas already. So one of the things that we're trying to do is find a way where we can start moving dogs further away. You think about moving a dog to Kansas, and a lot more resources and time are involved. So one of the things that we would really like to do is we'd really like to be able to expand so where we are moving east, and that entails trying to set up halfway points where we can meet somebody and stop for the night and get dogs off to the bus and give our drivers a rest, and maybe even just stop there and have a team from the east coast come and meet at that same location and transfer dogs to do relay systems. So our drivers stop but you still take our vehicle and we have a second set of drivers that do this leg and really grow partnerships across the country so that we can move more dogs into unsaturated areas and save as many lives as we possibly can, but at the same time focusing here at home on stopping the flow of incoming dogs. This is a temporary fix while we figure out what we need to do to change the legislation, to change attitude and really work with Kern County on. You need to. Dogs and cats actually have to have value to you and you can't see them as a commodity. So this is a mom with eight puppies that I have in my office right now that we just pulled yesterday. I know a lot of people in the community are struggling financially and they go well, I'll breed my dog because that's how I can pay my aggression bill in three months. That can't be the answer. We have to attack that and provide education and provide awareness and provide resources to stop that attitude. The guy who is breeding litter after litter because he thinks they look cool and he thinks his dog is special we have to be able to reach him and say you're not helping your dog, you're hurting.

It's a huge mindset shift for a lot of people that think reputable breeders that are breeding dogs for reasons service dogs, therapy dogs, all the reasons that there are good reasons for breeding dogs but the everyday person shouldn't be breeding a dog Right, there's absolutely no reason. Because there's so many dogs available, you have no reason to be adding to it because in the end, because there's already so many available, you're not gonna make any money.

Right, and that's why we're now starting to see full litters of puppies getting dumped at the shelter because you can't get rid of them, you can't sell them anymore. But I do wanna know it's a touchy subject and a lot of people get worked up about it. I am not anti-breeding. I think breeding has its place, especially the degree I have is a lot of times used in conservation of wildlife, where you talk about captive breeding programs that you have to have. It's important to understanding genetics and understanding molding genetics to fit a certain thing so that golden retrievers make great service dogs. It's important, right, 100%. Don't disagree with breeding at all. I think it has its place. I think a lot of good can be done by reputable readers. But one thing I do wanna just say, and it is my personal opinion when you live in a county that is facing the crisis that it is facing, there is no such thing as responsible breeding.

Absolutely.

You are not breeding responsibly right now. If you are breeding knowing what's going on, take a two year break. Help us figure out how to handle the situation at hand and then go for breeding. But it's and I know that's not going to sit right with a lot of people and again, this is my personal. This is not a Marley's mud stance. I don't feel it is responsible for anyone to be breeding right now when you have I think it's averaging between seven and 10 dogs dying a day in shelters. That's an entire litter of dogs dying every day in shelters and when you combine shelters so Kern County, 20 to 30 dogs a day are being killed in shelters. Here. There's no reason to breed, not right now. Help us make sure that you're not competing against backyard breeders. Help us get rid of the irresponsible person who's not health checking, who's not following any of the standards that we have for reputable breeders. They don't have the permit. They're not claiming income. They're, again, not making sure mom and dad are genetically sound. They're not making sure that the puppies are healthy after they're born. They're not sending the puppies out with vaccines under their belt. They're not making sure that the puppies are being spayed and neutered when they're old enough. Help us with those guys out, and then the floor is yours.

Absolutely. I think there's a power in reputable breeders that they could help the situation and in no way take away from what their purposes and what they do, because I think it's a huge piece of education. But it's also at the shelter. You know, when a dog's been dumped that is pregnant or has a litter, it's like it's because that dog was never being taken care of. It was only about the money or the prospect of money. They were seen as an object to get them further, and that's a big mindset shift we have to have. Is it's a living, breathing animal that you are causing pain in some way? Because, first of all, it's not easy for female dogs to get pregnant, stay pregnant and have healthy litters. There's a lot of trauma involved in that, and imagine doing that in a home where they're not being taken care of properly or they're stuck outside or they're dumped on the street.

And again, I've talked with Nick at County, I've talked with Matt over at the city shelter, we've talked with other rescues. There's a few people in the community who've been going to the meetings to talk about legislation and we've sat down with all of them. So we've taken bits and pieces from so many of the people that we've talked to. And this isn't everybody problem. You know, unless we have everyone buy in, we're not going to be able to make headway on it. One of the biggest frustrations is we do go to a county meeting and we say, hey, we want to talk about legislation, and the AKC shows up and says, no, well, I know, you haven't even heard what we have to say.

Right. I've heard that from several people who run rescues that it's like they just show up and say, no, you can't make us stop, and it's, but we're not trying to make you stop, trying to make them stop. Yeah, there has to be a bridge and understanding and communication and an efforts that understands that no one's trying to make someone else's job go away or livelihood go away when it's reputable. But there has to be a way that all of in this community we have amazing rescues, like you guys, but so many, even small ones, where there's running them out of their house. They're doing the best they can, but we can only do so much as individuals or small groups of people.

Yeah, but again we're bailing water. Right now that's all we're doing. We haven't fixed the underlying problem and eventually we're going to get tired. And I think we've seen, at the beginning of this year, a lot of rescues close their doors, a lot of rescues not able to do it anymore because they burned up all their resources and they just don't have it in them. They're not getting the support, they don't have fosters, they don't have adopters and so they have to close their doors. And that should be a red flag to everybody in this community that we are burning them out. We haven't come anywhere near fixing the problem and we're already having the people who can help be a part of the solution drop.

Right, so let's put aside adoption and foster. We know not everybody can do that right now financially. What would you tell people are the top two things they could do right now, today, listening to this podcast that could help the overcrowding in our community, their community, wherever they may be?

Help spread awareness. So, whether that's sharing posts on social media, sharing this podcast, whatever that may be, spread that awareness. Share it with everybody, because you might be in a community that's not watching Facebook or that is Facebook, but they didn't even know that the shelter had a page. So share it. Spread it everywhere, tell everybody about it. But then, second, volunteer, and especially when it comes to shelters. I can't tell you how many times I can't do that. It break my heart. Those dogs are going to die if they don't have somebody helping them. You might not see it, but they're still going to die. So let your heart hurt, because all of ours does. But go and advocate, be a voice for that dog, take that dog on a walk, because you taking that dog on a walk or you taking that dog out to the play yard to play for five minutes might make the difference for the person who comes in after you. That dog is now finally calm and goes. I'm going to adopt that dog. You didn't walk it. He was going crazy in his kennel and he got ignored again. You can literally save their lives. If all you did was go to a shelter and walk one dog per day, you can help save their life. I know it's loud and it's heartbreaking when you walk into a shelter. I get it.

It's not easy, but imagine how it feels for the dogs. Yeah, no, I think that's so important. People don't realize how, an hour or two volunteering in a shelter, cleaning cages, walking dogs, you have to realize there's not enough staff. Those dogs don't get walked, so only if the volunteers are there. And when you see two or three dogs in about half, run together in a loud shelter with hundreds of dogs, how is that ever going to get adoptive? Someone walks by in season because they're pent up energy, they have nowhere to run, they have nowhere to play. They need that and I think that is really powerful, what you said, that one thing could save one life, and that's one life has been saved. That the next one can be saved.

Yeah, Well, like for us. Obviously we have more staff here, we can take care of our population, but I have dogs coming out of everything. I have puppies everywhere. What I don't have time for here is to do simple things like getting a three month old puppy used to wearing a leash.

Yeah, that's actually something. I visited Marley's ranch a couple months ago and that's what I did. You had a litter of maybe 12 or 16 week old shepherd puppies that all they'd ever been was together, and I took each one of them out individually. Some of them did better than others on the little leash. But you don't realize, even at rescues are doing their best, there's still puppies that need to learn socialization, need to learn what it means to be a dog, to walk on a leash, to play, to interact with humans without the rest of their siblings right there with them. So even if rescues look like they're doing great they're doing such great work that doesn't mean they still don't need the help.

Yeah, we still need help always and it can be fun stuff. If you don't have the heart to walk into a shelter because it's going to mess you up mentally and I can, I get it. Come to the rescue. We don't euthanize anything here. Come sit with the puppy, put a leash on and don't walk anywhere. Just get them used to having a leash on. Taste them to take treats nicely from your hand because they don't have to fight their eight siblings for it. That's all stuff we could use help with and that's much more uplifting. That's in a much more comfortable environment than at the shelter. But you've got a ton of rescues that are working with small puppies right now that could use the extra set of hands.

Absolutely, it's do whatever works for you, just do it and take a video of that puppy while you're holding it and then help spread the awareness.

Absolutely.

Well, connor, I want to thank you so much for taking your time. I know how busy you guys are Just pulled more dogs yesterday. All of that. I appreciate you being here and really talking about your experience, what you've been through, and helping people understand what the problem is and how they can help. I really appreciate your time.

Thank you. Thank you for what you do. Again, I feel like it's all a team effort and if we're not talking about it and we're not sharing it, then we can't expect the community to do better. So what you're doing is a huge part of the solution and I really appreciate that you're doing it. Thank you, I appreciate that.

Wasn't that a great episode? I know there's a lot of information to take in during my conversation with Connor, but I hope that it helped you guys get some perspective on what's really going on in animal shelters and animal rescue here in Curtin County in California and, ultimately, all over the United States. I really hope that you can take some tangible steps that you could make to help animals, even if you're not able to adopt right now, or even foster, volunteering your time supporting shelters and rescues by buying supplies and, most importantly, following them on social media and re-sharing all of their posts. The power of social media is huge and I've seen it save the lives of dogs and cats. So please do what you can and, most importantly, share this episode with friends and family. Let them know that this is important information they need to hear and share with others. To make sure you get all the information whenever new episodes drop, make sure you have subscribed to this podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts and follow us on Instagram at the story of my pet podcast. Really appreciate you all being here and listening and I can't wait to bring you another incredible episode soon. For now, goodbye, my friends. Much love to you and your pets.