From War Zones to Forever Homes: Extraordinary Animal Rescue Missions with SPCA International

Hello, my friends and fellow animal lovers, welcome to another new episode of the story of my pet podcast. I am your host, as always, julie Marty Pearson, and I am happy to have you back for a new episode. That is part two of my interview with Lori Kayla from SPCA International. We talked a lot about Patriot pets and dogs and cats that are rescued by military while on deployment and bringing them to the US to be reunited with the servicemen and women who rescued them and the really incredible stories that Lori shared in the last episode. So if you haven't heard that, go back in episode and please listen. In this episode today we're going to talk about the Apollo's aid program that SPCA International has. There's several parts to it that do different things from helping cover moving costs for military either in the United States or abroad so that they're able to bring their pets with them. They have grant programs for that as well as for helping to support them when there are vet bills or there's medical that the pets need and the servicemen and women aren't able to cover. That program is able to help. But we also talk a lot about helping animals in war and torn areas. We specifically talk about some experience Lori has had with those programs, as well as what happened and continues to happen in Ukraine, and I think this is also a very timely episode considering what's currently happening in Israel and Palestine. Obviously, it's devastating to see and hear what's happening to the people in those places, but I also know what I know that there's also probably animals at risk and being hurt and dying in the areas, places where there is violence. So I think this information is even more important. I appreciate you all being here to listen, remember, follow, rate and review wherever you are listening to the podcast. Help spread the word so more people can see the podcast, listen and learn about all the important programs that we talked about on the episodes. Now listen to part two of my interview with Lori Kayla from SPCA International, another program called Apollo's Aid. Can you talk a little bit about?

that? Yeah, thank you for asking about that. It's a relatively new program and it encompasses three different parts. One of them is called Apollo's Aid PCS and that is for soldiers who are not necessarily one deployment but are being relocated with their families and their pets. And what we've seen over the years is that in US bases and other bases, us military bases that are around the world, we've seen that because it costs so much money to bring your dog or cat with you and the military didn't help with any funding for animals at the time that is shifting in January I might say that a lot of the dogs or cats ended up in shelters around the bases, and so we saw such an increase in numbers that we started a program where it's another grant-driven program for service members who are PCS and who can't afford the high cost transporting their dogs or cats with them. So that's one part, one aspect of the program. Another one which we just started this year is called the Apollo's Aid Refugee Portion Program, and this was inspired after last year, spca International, a number of other organizations collectively came together to bring in 286 dogs and cats on a Russian military aircraft right before the Russian war started from Afghanistan, after NATO and the US military took out in August of 2021. So what happened then was just I think we're still looking back on this and still see all the effects but one of the most devastating times in US history and world history, and a lot of people lost their lives, a lot of animals lost their lives and a lot were left behind. So we had an organization that we worked with that stayed there, stayed open and kept their doors open and rescued as many dogs and cats as they possibly could that were left behind, and we tried to get them out during the crisis, during the initial pull-out of NATO and US military, but unfortunately it didn't come out. It didn't happen and a lot of the dogs died because of it. They were brought to the airport and there was no way to get them out and they were released onto the tarmac, and so we made it into our mission to save and wring home all those that we could and we had access to, and it was a huge world effort. I would say it's called Mission Possible, and so many people from around the world keep together to hold pants to make this possible, and a lot of the dogs and cats belong to US embassy workers or foreign embassy workers or refugee families that were able to flee Afghanistan and so far get out. And there was one particular family of her name and I'm allowed to tell the name because there's many stories about her. Her name is Fretchda Siddiqi. She lives in the banks of the river, you see right now, and she had a dog named Lucky that she saved from the streets. It was getting beaten up by children and she saved the dog, and she also saved a cat named Wooyah, and the night before our plane was about to leave, she dropped off her cat and dog, not knowing if she was ever going to see them again, and she had to go into hiding because the new government that came in, the Taliban, was after her family, because she is a woman's rights activist and her father was a prominent figure in the community and she lost family members and Lucky the dog. She taught him how to open doors, unlock doors, and so they went from home to home all the time and he would alert the family if the Taliban was coming, and they left this dog all the time, and so we knew that what we would do would ever return to one day reunite them. And it took over a year, because she was stepping in other countries for a long while. Of course, she got her Romanian residency and in October of last year we got to reunite Lucky and Fretchda together and it was absolutely overwhelming and so incredible and so we thought there's going to be a lot of more people like this, especially with the Ukraine war happening, and so we developed the refugee portion of this program and he was actively helping other refugee families as well now in Sudan and in Ukraine. And the last aspect of it which is not the last it's a wonderful program as well it's the medical portion of it. So we felt quite high costs for emergency situations especially or if there is cancer and something that could be helped and needs open to the melancholy and veterans and if they can't afford it. It's another grant-giving program where we thought was up to 50% of the costs.

That's really wonderful because I think that's a huge piece of the current overcrowding shelter problem is when people try everything they can but they can't afford the pet, especially medical costs, and I'm sure that's even more difficult for veterans to have to deal with. That program makes a really important impact, not just for their family but for not those animals not ending up in the shelter that are already overcrowded.

Yeah, or use the Nines because they can't help them with their medical problem.

You talked about the refugee program sounds really important and critical. I actually had a friend of a friend on the podcast last year who she knew her locally because she had been a foreign exchange student here a few years ago and she's in Ukraine and she's in the middle of the war and she spoke a lot about what her and her family were doing to not only protect their pets but saving pets that had been left behind when people left or they were found injured from. There were points at which the war was literally in her town and she was finding dogs that had been shot and things like that. So I can imagine the importance of your refugee portion of that program because obviously that's still ongoing, as well as other places too that they need help because people can't do it. They have to save themselves and they can't always save their pets and they're left behind in situations where they're not cared for or they could be injured.

I know a pal of her name that's searched. Right now People are thinking like I would never leave my dog or cat or pet behind, and nobody wanted to do that Right, and a lot of people who were evacuated thought that they can come back for their dogs or pets or other animals. And so we work with organizations on the ground and we're talking about Ukraine. We have partners there. We actually just partnered up with Worldwide Vets and the Street Dog Coalition and we repurposed an old trailer unit to be a mobile veterinary clinic and they're partially funding this mobile clinic for a year to go around and help all the dogs and cats and horses and cows that have been injured through the war and a lot of the time too, or that ripple effect where they find this dog and there's a microchip and they know that it has an odor and they can be brought to a shelter or whatnot. Find a way to bring them back together. But yeah, to be in a situation where you have maybe 10 minutes to not even 10 minutes, a few minutes to pack up all of your life's belongings and know that you can't bring your beloved pet with you is just catastrophic.

Yeah, it's something I can't even imagine, and we often want to blame people and there are a lot of people to blame, unfortunately, in terms of animals that end up at shelters, but there are so many that we don't know the story of what the decision they had to come to. Or in a situation like that, or even like what we've seen with the fire in Maui more recently, people literally had split seconds, minutes to make the decision of how to leave and a lot of them were evacuated from their workplace or they couldn't even go home to get to their pets, and those are situations where we want to do anything we can to reunite that, but it obviously takes its own army to do that type of reunification. It sounds like that's really what you all have built with the Apollo's aid programs in various capacities.

Yeah, and the only way. I think you're the only way that we're able to do this, and that's what the mandate of SBC International is to build relationships, trusting relationships with other people around the world. We're a very tiny team, you know. We have the eye acronym at the end of the international portion, but the way that we're able to do our work and help more people and help animals is by forming relationships and partnerships around the world. So we're all in it together.

And someone listening to this podcast is very inspired by one of the many programs doing incredible work that you've mentioned. They say what would make the most impact for them to get involved to help you. What would you say to them?

I would have to say because we are a gone profit. In order to do the work that we do, we need to continue to raise funds, and we have an amazing fundraising team who work around the clock to be able to continue to keep our programs alive. Donations, of course. They're always needed. If you can't donate, you know that we're coming into our own economic crisis right now. Sharing, like we talked about on social media, talking about being a voice, volunteering in your local shoppers Our Patriot programs is often looking for flight volunteers, flight experts for doffs and cats in parts of the world, but let me just put a little bit of an asterisk on that. These are parts of the world where you don't tell your parents about until you get home. So there's that, and it's just being a voice and being able to talk about it and share in an intelligence and caring way.

So important. So if you're listening and you're inspired by this, please share the podcast with other people so that they will listen to and also be creating a blog post, so hopefully that will generate more traffic for people to read about it and want to learn more about your programs in the way that they can support. So we've talked a lot about SPCA International and you talked a little bit about your own experience with animals in the beginning, but I know you currently have three rescue dogs that you've rescued from various places around the world, so I'm sure that everyone listening would love to hear a little bit about your own stories and the dogs that are in your life and important You've just asked me to speak upon my favorite topic in the world.

I do have three dogs. They're all from different parts of the world. I would say that we generally don't adopt dogs and bring them back, or cats and bring them back, because we manage our own overpopulation in North America.

I have one dog who's from a high-kill shelter in California, so I call that not imposing on Canada because we're neighbors and a lot of the animals in our high-kill shelters do end up in Canada, because you don't have the overpopulation issues we have, which is what's great when we have rescue partners who transport North for us. So I can't really get that.

We mentioned Marley's Muts and we teamed up with Marley's Muts through Pet Rescue Pilots and at the beginning of COVID we had people looking and looking for rescue dogs and we didn't have enough. So we had a program where we were bringing dogs and cats from high-kill shelters in California, bringing them to Victoria BC where we had our partners here at Grinkels Dog Rescue Society, and finding them loving homes and in Calvary as well. Yes, there is that need. Fortunately, things have shifted post-COVID. Yes, we've got my dog, that's Todd, he's from California, and I have another dog. His name is Duffy. And see, I was working in Romania with our partners back in 2015 and with Dog Rescue Romania. They have over $2,000 in their care and we were supporting their Span Nudur efforts and working with the local government people to change the ideology about controlling the overpopulation. And my colleague and I were driving it's a funny story and we were driving and I pulled over in the rental car at a gas station just to get some water and somebody there was kicking a little puppy that was just shivering, and so we picked up the puppy. We spoke to the gas station attendant and she said take this away, or there is somebody's going to do something bad to it. And so we did. And then, while we were getting the car ready, in the field right behind the gas station there was like a flash of white and this dog barking and barking, which I'm sure everybody heard before earlier on in the podcast. His chasing was squirrel. He probably read our jackets that. We just jumped right into our car and he was leading out of his eyes. He was attacked by something and he just looked at me and said let's go. So we brought him home. I brought both dogs home with me here and I was going to find both of them at home. I found the puppy at home, but I guess I found Duffy at home too.

That's amazing, and it's always amazing to me how Our pets find us oh yes. The pets we're supposed to have find us. Whatever that connection is, Sometimes it's just seeing a video of them on social media and I think that's my dog or they literally show up for us.

Absolutely. And that's how my third dog came to be. His name is Bojangles and he's from Afghanistan Mission and we built a temporary shelter at the South Terminal Airport in Bank of the Hrpc and I was basically living there and not at the shelter, but I had both of my dogs in the office and this one dog, big Anatolian shepherd, next to him Softest eyes in the world kept looking by at the office at my two dogs sleeping, and then eventually he just rolled on his back and put his paw up at the window and I'm like, oh, shay, come on in. And she came in. My dogs didn't even raise their heads. He went next to them, fell asleep. I'm like, okay, that's the huge thing too.

I love that. Yeah, they really do choose us. My most recent have three cats right now and she was one of six that I fostered in the fall and there was something about her, from the moment I brought those six home, that she was just like I see you and she's now ours. She is our pumpkin and I could have easily kept all of them. I bottle fed them for six weeks so I was very connected to them and loved them and in the end I almost kept two of my husbands come on. Luckily at the time there weren't a lot of kids. They all found amazing homes. But there's a connection that we make with the animals we're supposed to be with, who are supposed to be a part of our lives, and we're supposed to be a part of their lives, no matter how long or how short that may be. And I know even when I was working doing the offsite adoption event, there were dogs that we would take out multiple times because we were trying our hardest and I would be very connected to them and it was very difficult to watch them get adopted and returned or not get adopted. And we try and try because you really just see the incredible soul that is within them, and so I'm sure that so much too. When you're actually in these other countries on the front line seeing the animals being rescued, that must be also very difficult too, because you want to save them all and that doesn't always work, but you're making a big impact. So talk a little bit about what is maybe the hardest part for the work that you do to make it people understand a little bit of what's going on in the world and how difficult the animal welfare arena really is.

Yeah, thank you, and I just want to say thank you to you for fostering. It's another aspect of how you can help too, and I didn't mention that before when you pose that question is fostering. Fostering opens up another cage and already overpopulated shelter, and we're in a crisis mode right now in North America Well, I'm going to speak to one in the United States especially but the euthanasia rate has dramatically increased for healthy dogs, for friendly dogs, for healthy cats or friendly cats, and it's absolutely tremendous what's happening right now. And so fostering saved my life. It opens up another space to be able to bring another animal in. So touching upon that, to know I think that's one question that I used to be asked when I first started at SBCM International is how do you do it? How do you look at all these animals that need homes? For that you need to look after or help, whether it's metaphor, wise, or finding them a home or even vaccinating them, and you know that you can't save them all, and I think at the beginning, if you can finally curl up underneath my desk in a little ball, just wailing because not to be able to help every single animal is just, is still absolutely hurt rating. But you push through and you have to be able to. You can't stop, because I would say that's once we can never not know and you save as many lives as you can. And that's why it's so important to keep spreading the awareness and what's happening in the world. I spoke a lot about what's happening external of the United States, but in our own backyard this is happening. This aside from all the cruelty and abandonment on the streets I know that you walk into a shelter. It must be absolutely heartbreaking to know that animal has been there over a certain amount of time. Their fate is not a good one, and rescuers is the most rewarding thing that you can do, not for just for the animal, but for yourself as well. And One of the pieces of how he can do this recipe work is education, Because I've been approached over the years that people want to go to readers. I know that there's a lot of reputable readers, but at this time, I feel that until we can solve and manage the overpopulation crisis, we have to be able to manage the amount of animals coming in, because the amount of animals coming in is the ratio going out to homes. It's dramatically different.

It is. It's unfortunately, where I live in California and Kern County. It's awful and not getting any better, unfortunately, and every time I'm on social media I see video after video of especially large dogs in shelters, sweet dogs, even young dogs, puppies, pregnant dogs just over and need a foster and need a rescue adoption. I know for myself. I actually had to take a step back after I had done adoption events for about six months, because it is overwhelming, because every day you get two out and you show up and there's six kennels full with new ones. Or you hear oh, we just got 30 in from another issue, which it doesn't stop, but if we don't help then it's just going to get you to get worse and every animal we save makes a difference. And that's just what I've always had to tell myself. And it isn't easy and compassion fatigue is real and from every aspect, from volunteers, from the shelter staff, the rescue staff to the veterinarians all of them people working in nonprofit organizations like you, whether they're on the front lines or not you see it day after day and it doesn't end. But it can only get better with more people helping, with more education and more people speaking out and saying I can help just by sharing, just by volunteering one day a week, whatever it may be.

Absolutely, or by fostering, like you said. That is one of the key informants when I know a very similar response to my non-inferno challenge and it's awful. One of the things is that I know in social media it works in the animal's favor and the overpopulation of not particular county or shelter but the rest of the organizations that come in are also just so overwhelmed and I think people are always saying take this one more, and having to say no is traumatic Absolutely.

Heartbreaking. I know that all of that every know they've had to say, for whatever reason, stays with them and people don't realize that you realize you've saved some but the ones you couldn't or didn't even see, that's always going to stay with them and I know it motivates a lot of people but it also makes it what's hard for people to keep going. More, absolutely, and I've seen some smaller rescues locally have to step back and not do it for a little while just because there are no foresters or there are no adopters, but just by everybody listening to this and sharing and hearing your stories. Hopefully it will inspire someone to take action. That will have a ripple effect and that's what we all want.

My favorite terminology for that is we need to continue to hold hands across the world, and there are many ways that we can step into, how we can all be part of it. I'll be part of the team. It could be the people who are on the front line or who work for an organization, who volunteer. Everybody can help. Everybody can be at voice.

Absolutely. I think that's a great place to end, that we can all do our part, whatever that part may be for us. Where we live, what we have access to, there is a part for us all to play in order to make it better. I just want to thank you, lori, so much for being here. It was a pleasure to meet you, to learn about your work, how you and your own life and where you've come from and how you were inspired into animal rescue and welfare, but also to learn more specifically about the work that SPCA International is doing and how important it is and how we all need to support it, because we're going to need it even more as we keep moving forward in this crazy world we're living in.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your thoughtful questions and the opportunity to speak with you about this also creates the awareness, so hopefully everybody is still listening by this time and I hope they can share this podcast, and I just really appreciate the opportunity to be able to meet with you at SCC International.

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed the second part of our conversation, hearing more about the incredible programs that SPCA International has and how they support our military women and men, both here and abroad, as well as help those in embattled areas where active war and other types of violence are happening, and they're helping to keep animal safe and be able to be reunited with their family. I think there is so much important information to be heard in this episode, as well as in the previous. I hope you've learned some new things. If you want to follow the podcast, you can follow SPCA International and keep up on the different programs that are going on here and abroad. You can do your part, whether it's by sharing or donating, volunteering your own time in your local community. Remember, fostering and adoption are needed so much right now, so please help to advocate and educate others in those areas. Keep sharing the podcast. Wherever you are listening to this right now, please follow so you don't miss an episode rate and review so that the podcast gets pushed out to more people and can hear this important information. As always, I appreciate you all so much my listeners, my friends and my fellow animal lovers for listening, supporting, sharing and being here on this journey to help, to advocate and educate as many as possible and, ultimately, to help as many animals in our own local community and around the world that we can. Until next time, my friends, thank you again for being here. Thank you.