The Deal With Animals with Marika S. Bell
Humans interact with animals every day of our lives: diet, wildlife, clothes and even medicines, are all intersections we often don’t think about.
This is a podcast about the interactions and connections between humans and non-human animals.
Our mission is to make research more accessible to the public while sharing the voices and lived experience of our human connection with animals.
The Deal With Animals with Marika S. Bell
72: 7 Misunderstood Beliefs in Animal Welfare: Myth Busting with Scott Giacoppo (S8)
Episode 1 of Series 8: The World of Animal Sheltering
Transcript
Ever thought about the misconceptions that surround nuisance wildlife management or how those misconceptions might be affecting policies and attitudes? Join us for a compelling discussion with Scott Giacoppo, Director of National Shelter Outreach for Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.
"when you are talking about killing animals for population management, it has proven not to work, right? It doesn't work. It never has, and it never will. And if it did work, we wouldn't have to repeat it every single year." - Scott Giacoppo
Listen as we bust 7 myths and underscore the need for shelters to build relationships with adopters, and discuss proactive ways to support existing pet owners. Through it all, Scott challenges us to reconsider our obligations to animals, the biases that might be clouding our judgment, and how we can all strive towards a more sustainable model of animal care. You don't want to miss this conversation, packed with thought-provoking insights and stories that will inspire you to redefine your relationship with the animal kingdom.
Book Recommendation: Switch: How to Make Change When Change Is Hard- by Dan Heath and Chip Heath
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable- by Patrick Lencioni
Other Links:
Pets For Life
Bear Releases in DC/MD
If you liked this episode try...
E28: Animal Care Deserts, Accessibility and Love with CARE CEO, James Evans
E29: Your Wild Neighbors with Alyssa Ellison
E11: How to Be a Humane Gardener with Nancy Lawson, The Humane Gardener
E18: Breaking Stereotypes and Talking About Cats with The TrapKing, Sterling Davis
Read the Blog! (Guest profiles, book recommendations, trailers and more!)
What to start your own podcast in he Animal Advocacy or Animal Welfare Space? Check out my Podcast Mentoring Services!
There's been a lot of myths over the years that made me question my beliefs and when this happened, it really made me question, like, everything that I believe, right, that I've been taught, and not so much to say, well, I'm wrong it was. It made me take a real critical look at everything that I stand by and swear to.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the deal with animals.
Speaker 2:I'm Marika Bell answer zoologist, cpdt certified dog trainer and an animal myself. This is a podcast about the connection and interaction between humans and other animals. In this first episode of series eight, we'll be talking to an old friend of mine. Scott Giacopo is the director of National Shelter Outreach for Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, leading the development of lifesaving efficacy and sustainability for animal welfare partners nationwide. With a background as chief of animal field services for the district of Columbia, he's a seasoned advocate for animal protection and welfare. Scott's collaborative approach to partnership emphasizes tailored support for each organization and its unique community needs. Throughout his career, he has established successful community based programs, secured critical animal protection legislation and significantly contributed to reducing stray cat fatalities. With a wealth experience dating back to 1989, scott's dedication to animal welfare remains unwavering and impactful.
Speaker 2:In today's episode, scott and I are going to do a little myth busting. First, we're going to chat for a little while about nuisance wildlife management. From there, we'll have six more myths that we're going to be busting today. This is a lengthy episode and one I think you're going to really enjoy, so let's get right into it. Thank you for joining me as we ask the question what's the deal with animals? Welcome to the deal with animals. Would you please introduce yourself and share your pronouns.
Speaker 1:Sure, my name is Scott Gicoppo. I use he or him.
Speaker 2:Great and thank you so much for coming on today. Let's get into our first question so that people can kind of get to know you a little bit, which is if you would share your earliest or childhood formative memory of your connection with animals.
Speaker 1:Growing up we always had their cats and dogs in the house and we were a pet family. But I think for me, the first time I was born, I was born in a city environment. The first time I had something that really impacted me with animals was we grew up. I grew up in the city and a city environment just outside of Austin, and we used to go up to the woods, so to speak, in the wind I had in the summers, and I had a cottage and I remember being out back and I had never really been exposed to snakes and wildlife, so to speak, living in the city.
Speaker 1:And I remember I was I clearly remember outside playing with my hot wheels and my tonka trucks and all that, and a snake had crawled up into one of my trucks and had no idea what that, what was going on and what to do and all that. And I sat there and I watched him and I think he was watching me too and we just like I, just watched him and wondered in just an awe, of this mystical creature that I had never seen before. And it was just a small little garden snake and by the time he he must have panicked or something. He crawled away and I followed him and I was following him and for some reason, at that point I just became fascinated with wildlife. I mean, I had my dog and my cat at the house and all that and I loved them, played with them and all that. But that snake just brought me into a different world of animals that I didn't really know existed outside of TV.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that wildlife moment's always an impressionable one. I feel like I was always fascinated by animals too. Of course, I think all of us in this industry tend to have been and still are. But that time, the first time you see like a really wild animal and have that wildlife connection, it is different from having the connection with your companion animals, because it's unexpected and kind of magical.
Speaker 1:It is, and you know, we growing up, we used to have we used to have the alley cats, as they were called back then right, and I used to go out and feed them and my mom always told me to stay away from them and I had a couple of negative interactions with them. I actually got scratched in the face and but yeah.
Speaker 1:I tried to give them a kiss and I didn't work out too well. So, yeah, I had that your normal cat and dog and I got to interact with some alley cats and things like that, and I saw we had a pigeon. I rehabbed the pigeon with a broken wing, my dog had caught a pigeon and I I'm not sure which came first, the snake or the pigeon, right, I don't recall. I'm pretty sure it was the snake, but I remember having that pigeon and yeah and so. So I think my connection with wildlife really grew deep when I was young and I think it. I just assumed, like I just accepted cats and dogs as part of the family, right, so I didn't look at them. As you know, when we talk about the interactions with the animals, they were family members, right, but wildlife, and whether that's a pigeon or a snake, fascinated me in a way that my the cats and dogs never did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember when I was about four I went out to the backyard and we had this little kiddie pool and there was a crow floating in the kiddie pool and my mom tells the story because she thought it was hilarious at the time. I just remember seeing this crow and thinking oh my god, crows don't swim, it must be dead. But I could see that it clearly was not dead, it was just it was in the pool.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was very much alive. So we needed help. I assumed. And I ran and saw and I said mom, there's a dead crow in the pool and it's still alive. And, like I said, to this day she still tells the story and thinks it's the funniest thing ever.
Speaker 2:And of course we all went outside and she brought the crow in and it was a you know, it was a young crow, because a lot of them people maybe don't know this, but after fledging they they're on the ground for quite a little while and their parents kind of watch over them from the trees above, which is why sometimes you get like molested by crows when you're walking through the park.
Speaker 2:They don't dive bomb you to keep you away from the babies on the ground. But she collected him from the pool and put him in a little jury rigged contraption to make sure that he got all healthy again and once he was feeling better and fluffed up in the warm, she let him go again and his parents were still there waiting for him. It was, it was a nice sort of first experience with wildlife. Well, I mean, we first got to know each other through Washington Humane Society and you worked with wildlife there as well, why don't you talk just a little bit initially about what you did there, because that obviously brought you into the wildlife area, and then we'll go into what we're here to talk about today.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, when I was asked to join Washington Humane Society, it was so.
Speaker 1:It was based off of my animal cruelty investigations, history from the most part field operations, and I had a long history of doing that and working in shelters and so forth, and Lisa LaFontana invited me to, you know, join her in working with transforming Washington Humane Society I usually refer to it as WHS. So so when I went down there I realized really quickly as head of animal control that we were operating under some pretty archaic wildlife laws. So in most places there's a department of Fish and Wildlife that a lot of agencies concern to. There wasn't that in DC, and the Department of Health actually oversaw the contract that Washington Humane Society had for decades for animal control and they were. They at the time. They really ruled with an iron fist and one of their rules were at any point in time that we came in contact with a what's called a rabies vector species, we were required to euthanize. And even if that was a young raccoon and this is where the story goes a young raccoon was trapped in under a porch and we went out and we rescued him there was no human contact. There was no indication that the animal had any exposure to people. It was not sick, it was just a young raccoon that got himself into a predicament and got trapped and we went and rescued him and the and it wasn't a law, there wasn't a requirement in the District of Columbia for us to do this. It was a policy set by the Department of Health to euthanize that raccoon.
Speaker 1:And I remember I found out about this particular story because one of the animal control officer who had rescued him was a big, tough guy. He was typical when he grew up in the city and he was a big bodybuilder type, manly man, right Without people, without going too far down. But he had tears in his eyes and I walked in and I said what's going on and he told me he said they make us euthanize these animals and it's not right. He's like this. I don't want to. I don't want to rescue these animals anymore because I'm not rescuing them, I'm killing them. And it affected me so much that I launched a huge battle with the Department of Health and I realized that it was not under. And this is where I really got my.
Speaker 1:I do a lot now working with contracts for Humane Societies, that contract with municipal governments, reading ordinances and so forth. But I tore through every law in DC, every regulation and our contract, and there was nothing in there, there was nothing in writing that required us to do it. So I went head to head and they could not give me any indication that the CDC rec even recommends euthanasia. There was no indication that this should have happened and in short time we were able to reverse that policy and release on site. Now, granted, if there was exposure or if they were the animal that was giving any indication that there was an illness, we would take them in and evaluate them to the term of what's going on, and oftentimes that did result in euthanasia, which is I mean, that's part of animal control jobs. Sometimes this is a rabies vector species that has had contact exposure with humans. Unfortunately that's often the result.
Speaker 1:But we were able to start working on our wildlife policies and really changing the way we looked at wildlife. And prior to coming to WHS, I was at the Massachusetts PCA for a number of years and I did run a program called Living with Wildlife and it's really where I got my education, so to speak, on how to mainly coexist with wildlife. And I still say to this day and I know like the Humane Society of the United States has a fantastic wildlife problem, they're probably one of the top in the country, but in my heart the MSPCA's wildlife program is always going to be above that and I say that just because I love that's my roots. But you know, we worked really closely with agencies like the Humane Society of the United States and they have some people over there, john Heddy and John Griffin, dave Pauli, that just I mean they changed the landscape for how wildlife is, nuisance wildlife, that they just change the landscape and how it's how they're viewed and how they handle. So when I came to WHS with that background and already coaching people on how to coexist, offering tips and techniques on how to deter animals from coming into your home and property and so forth, it really gave me a leg up when I started focusing on the program that we implemented in DC and it got to a point where we actually were able to get into the contract an officer that dealt specifically with wildlife. So we had a wildlife specialist. That was an animal control officer that only dealt with I shouldn't say that she also dealt with emergencies and big. It wasn't the only thing she did, but her primary focus was helping people deal and live and coexist with wildlife in the community.
Speaker 1:A lot of people don't picture DC as a place where there's a lot of urban wildlife, but this Rock Creek Park. That comes right down the middle and we used to go out. All the time we would get nuisance complaints on whether it's a raccoon or whatever, and we had a lot of situations where deer were hit by car or deer were getting at the gardens and all of that. And, oh my gosh, coyotes right, I mean coyotes were seen in DC. We actually had a black bear come down from Maryland and start wandering around Upper Northeast right and we had to tranquilize them. And I worked with the Department of Natural Resources in Maryland and we returned them.
Speaker 1:We brought him back up because I was not going to tranquilize him until we had a live outcome planned for him, because DC police were running around with their firearms and the general consensus was he's got to be put down, he's got to be killed.
Speaker 1:And I was not having that and I was in a. I feel I feel very fortunate that I was in a position. I was in one, I had the full support of Lisa LaFontaine to do what needed to be done, so to speak, and she trusted my judgment at all times. So I stood, I stood my ground on a lot of things that a lot of people in today's world that work from municipality might not feel secure enough in their position to do because they don't have the support of their higher ups, which is a problem that I run into almost daily.
Speaker 1:So so I had that and I told the Metropolitan Police Department, right like with, I know, in certain terms we are not killing this animal, I will find a live outcome for it or we will tranquilize it and just bring it back to the woods, because there's nothing in any law, any regulation, any nothing tells me that I have to do this and I'm not going to. And luckily I reached out. It was close enough to Merrill. I was able to reach out to the Department of Natural Resources and they actually said we have been tracking a bear, a young black bear, coming down through Bethesda, through, and they believe that this was the bear. And they authorized me to meet their officers at the Merrill and Blind and they escorted us up further up into the state and we released them. The video clip is still on on YouTube for a WHS.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, oh, I'll have to link that in the episode show notes. So it turns out that there has been more than one bear released by Humane Rescue Alliance. The most recent one was about a month ago, which was when Scott and I were recording this June 2023. So I have linked the videos to that from YouTube in the show notes. There was another situation I was remembering too, with Deer, where you were trying to work out like a deer program where Rock Creek Park and all of that. There were a lot of deer in the area and there was something going on where there was a big culling that was going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the city felt, because of the nuisance complaints and so forth, that they wanted to do a culling where they would allow a certain number of people to go in and hunt in Rock Creek Park, and that's something that we were and we personally am opposed to. And just for the record, I am not opposed. I'm not talking about hunting for sustenance when I say this. That's a completely different topic, right, and I don't want to get on that pathway on ethics and vegetarianism and all that. But when you are talking about killing animals for population management, it has proven not to work, right, it doesn't work. It never has in it, it never will. And if it did work, we wouldn't have to repeat it every single year. Right, and I took that attitude when we also implemented the community cat program, because it's the same concept.
Speaker 1:For decades and decades people, neighborhoods, communities have been trying to deal with the cat population by removing them and killing them. It doesn't work. If it did, we wouldn't be where we are today. If I could go into Rock Creek Park and take all of the breeding animals out, right, and it wouldn't happen again, that'd be a different story. But every year they have to go back and come, right, and so we actually lost that battle and the city won, and I think to me we went public with it. We tried to launch a campaign and get the public on our side, and what the city did was they used some tactics that I felt were not good, so to speak. They made it all about the meat from the deer was all going to go to homeless shelters and food pantries and soup kitchens, and so what they did was they flipped the narrative to say that we didn't care about people as much as we care about the animals, and in my opinion, that was their tactic that they used to win that panel.
Speaker 2:Even though there are plenty of other ways to feed the homeless. This was just a use for that meat that wouldn't have been there. I remember that being a big thing when I was there and one of the thoughts was to actually do some sort of program where we could I don't know, would you call it Spain when it's a deer Some sort of yeah, I actually participated in the city of Fairfax Virginia.
Speaker 1:I don't think they continued it, but there was an organization that they hired to command and they needed assistance. So Dr McAndrew, our then medical director, and I and a couple of our animal control officers went out one night to in Fairfax Virginia and me and the guys went out and we tranquilized all of these deer, transported them back to a mobile spay area that was set up at the local I think it was a local police department garage and Dr McAndrew worked with some veterinarians and I think we did over 20 deer that night. We sterilized them. But again, when you're talking about things like that, who funds it? And I think it was the city, the taxpayers, you know is at the taxpayers expense. So it becomes controversial, right, and we lose sight of a lot of different things, including the moral aspect of it. It's like these animals are just trying to survive and we provide them with resources, right, and we talk about a carrying capacity of an area and a carrying capacity will nature, will mandate like, will allow a certain number of animals. But when humans get involved, we expand that natural carrying capacity by having gardens and not protecting them from deer, and that was one of the biggest things in DC.
Speaker 1:A lot of people that were living along the Rockley Park border had some beautiful gardens and they didn't do anything to protect those gardens from deer. And so here is a well, just say, a mama deer and her babies I know that's not the technical term for them, right, but you know the mama deer and their babies wandering through Rockley Park and they're just looking for food to survive and they see this beautiful garden. There's no fence, there's no deterrence, there's nothing there, and they're going to eat it. They're going to eat, right, they don't know that. They just see a free buffet.
Speaker 1:Right Now it becomes a nuisance that needs to be dealt with, and historically the solution to that has been lethal means, and so that in and of itself is wrong. Just to say that this animal is trying to survive and we're giving it food and it's taking it, so let's kill it. But we also know that, like I had mentioned earlier about using lethal means as a population tool, has proven again and again not to work. So it's just like, well, it's the only tool in our tool belt that we approve of, right, so let's just, let's just keep doing it and we do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
Speaker 2:Well, it's cheaper in the moment, isn't?
Speaker 1:it the. Moment.
Speaker 2:Probably more expensive long term because you're having to do it over and over again, many years and everything. They just keep coming back.
Speaker 2:But, in the moment it's cheaper and it's like it's the solution that works immediately and that's what people care the most about in that moment when their beautiful garden has been eaten. I mean, I think a lot of people, though, don't they don't think it through when they make a complaint like that either? Right, they think they'll relocate the animals versus killing them. I mean, some maybe don't care that they've been killed, but I think a lot of people think animals will just be relocated. I live up on a mountain right now and we have coyote and we have bear and we have deer all very regularly, plus a hodgepodge of other bobcats and that sort of thing, and we have a bear that is regularly in our neighborhood, and how many of our neighbors freak out? None, none of us freak out. We live on a frigging mountain.
Speaker 1:There's gonna be bears.
Speaker 2:It's cool, we're responsible and we're respectful of the bear and we let each other know when the bear's in the neighborhood so that we can all kind of like, okay, let's not play outside right now, because the bear might be wandering through in the next 45 minutes. And the bear doesn't do anything overly aggressive either, right, she doesn't want anything to do with us, she's just gonna go around us. If she sees us, she's gonna take off. She sees a car. So none of us are particularly worried.
Speaker 2:But that bear goes I don't know a mile to the west of us and there is gonna be a massive freak out, right, if that bear gets over there, where the city's been built up a little bit more, there's definitely gonna be people called in. And it happens with coyotes too, and luckily I mean the local coyote, the local people for the coyotes literally just tell people it's a coyote, it's not gonna be a problem, Like don't let your pets outside for a little while, like it's fine, coyotes are not gonna attack you. So yeah, it's just kind of a funny. It's a very funny sort of dynamic, depending on where you live and who your neighbors are, how it all sort of pans out. But I do think most people don't really realize that when they complain about a bear, they complain about a coyote or they complain about deer. It's not that those deer are going to be tranquilized typically and then moved somewhere else, and even if they did, they'd probably just come back again.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:Unless you do something to prevent them, to deter them from coming in your yard. Like, yeah, and I have a funny story. I was working with this agency in Florida, down in the Panhandle, and we were teaching them community cat conflict mitigation and we use a lot of de-escalation because when someone calls and they complaining about an animal, they're usually upset, they're usually frustrated, right, and in order to get them to understand how to really deal long term with the solution, with the problem, you need to de-escalate them right, especially when they find out you're not gonna come and just take the animal away, right. So now they're angry, right, because their garden has been torn up or their car has been scratched or they've been spraying around the house and they've tried everything and they want this stop now. They want this animal gone now, which has historically been the response. And another one comes back.
Speaker 1:So I was down in Florida working with this agency and we went out on a site visit with this gentleman who his mother loved to garden and these cats were. There were a lot of cats and no one was doing sterilization, tnr dropped out of return and there were a lot of cats and kittens and all that. I was working with them to try and identify some people to do the TNR program. So the goal of us going down to this house was to deter the cats from coming on to this guy's property because he had already brought in 20 plus cats for you to the shelter, for you the nasal services they said they weren't going to be doing that anymore. He was screaming, he was going to shoot them. He was just going to start shooting them. So they brought me down there. I de-escalated the situation, I talked to the guy and we sent up a motion activated sprinkler in his yard and so I got his contact information. We did one of the one of the devices we did was we sent up a motion activated sprinkler in his yard so that when the cats came in, it triggered it. It triggered it and they would get lightly sprayed with water and they would be frightened off, and they would. It would condition those cats not to go into that yard. They would associate going into that yard with getting sprayed by this device, which costs about $40 at most. So I called the guy back and this is where it's relevant to what we were just talking about.
Speaker 1:I called the guy back a couple of weeks later and when I asked him how it was going, it was like I think I was like what's going on and he was so happy. He said not only am I not seeing a cat and the garden is fine, but I had. And he didn't talk to me about this when we were there. He said I had a black bear that kept coming into my yard and tipping over my garbage can and the State Department official wildlife told me I could not shoot him and they weren't going to do anything about it. They told me to get better trash cans. A bear kept coming into his yard and tipping over. He said since you put the sprinkler in, the bear stopped. So not only did it deter the can, but every time the bear walked in the yard he got sprayed by the hose, scabied and ran away.
Speaker 2:That is so funny. I've been going spending a lot of time at the beach at the moment and it's this little peninsula that juts out in Washington state called Ocean Shores, and it has deer everywhere because there's a policy that you can't shoot animals within city limits and the city limits is a peninsula, so the deer have wandered in. The deer have wandered in and they just breed and they are. I mean, if you could domesticate a deer. These deers are like in people's backyards, hanging out. The moms will walk right past with their babies, they'll walk up to you.
Speaker 2:Like I had a deer follow my dad and I while we were walking the dog, because the deer was like, hey, I see you're walking a dog there, do you want some help? I don't know why, but he kept following us and every time we turned around he'd stare at us like are you gonna offer me something? Like no, could you please go away? We're walking the dog right now. And they were freaking the dog out Like no, I'll just follow you some more. And I mean the deer are everywhere. If you are driving your car, the deer will literally just wander across the road and when they stop in front of your car, they're not at all afraid of cars. If you like, honk your horn or flash your lights, they just stare at you like what? Yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah.
Speaker 2:This is my home, so deer, everywhere occasionally, bears We've had this bear that's wandered onto the peninsula as well. A couple of bears perhaps and we see it ours and our ring camera fairly regularly go past our house and so that's upsetting people because now there's this bear as well on this peninsula of land that's not a huge peninsula of land and so he's sighted very regularly and there's been all the talk about moving him or shooting him or all of the things that we talk about. I'll just recommend everybody get these sprinklers. It seems like a great idea.
Speaker 1:Oh, they're fantastic.
Speaker 2:In the wilder areas and avoid everybody's gardens, he said. I don't think he's threatened anyone. It's really just been a matter of knocking over trash cans and giving people, freaking people out a little bit. But yeah, it's interesting, though there are easy solutions.
Speaker 1:There are and in the long term it actually saves money, right Like when I worked for WHS. I lived outside the city. I lived in Maryland, rockville, maryland, right on Rock Creek Park, and I never had a problem with the deer. The deer would come up into our neighborhood and look for food and my neighbors, their plants and their flowers did get eaten. Those deer never came near my rose bushes.
Speaker 1:And because I used a thing called liquid fence and you spray it on the flowers it's not for vegetables, I don't believe it is, but I never used it on my vegetables but you spray it on there and for the first, I don't know a couple of hours. It's kind of has a note or two it. But from that point on the deer avoid it and you apply it every 30 days or after a big rainstorm and you don't have to worry about it. And to me, even if we know that when those animals, whether it's a deer, a coyote or a cat, when those animals are removed from the population, more will come. So no matter what you do by removing those animals, you are always going to have that damage to deal with.
Speaker 1:There will always be a new cat coming into your garden, getting up on top of your car. Right, and I deal with this almost on a daily basis, dealing with the animal control, helping animal control agencies across the country talk to residents about this problem. So if you have a cat that's getting up and scratching your car or digging in your garden and using it as a litter box and you remove that cat which is the natural instinct and the traditional method of response and you're like, ok, now I don't have to deal with that, but another one's going to come and you remove it and another one's going to come and cause that damage again. So, even though you continuously get rid of those cats, I've had people say I don't care, every cat that comes in my yard I'm going to trap. But that makes no sense because the damage that the cats are causing are going to happen before you trap that cat. That's how you're going to know he's in your yard. So why don't you just spend $40 today and be done with it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is great. We've already done one myth-busting that population management, culling doesn't work, and there are much better options for population management of problem animals or animals perceived as problems. So that's great. That's great, we've already got one done. Why don't we jump into a few others also? Because I know there was one in particular that I thought was really interesting, and that is the myth of dogfight dogs, dogs that have been trained or used in dogfighting, and this idea that once a dog has been used in dogfighting or trained in that way, they can't be adopted anymore. Let's go into that, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that holds a personal place in my heart. Before I joined WHS, I was with the Massachusetts SPCA and I spent about 17 years as a special state police and all cruelty investigator and I dealt with a lot of dogfighting cases and to a point where I was actually with, I worked. I was requested by HSUS to go out on the road and help teach courses on investigating animal fighting and all of this. So I was really immersed in that world and we did have that belief and I can't even begin to imagine the number of animals that I have seized from people and euthanized right out of the gate or as soon as the case was over. Our belief was they have to go and that was a longstanding belief until Michael Vick and the Michael Vick case. When the Michael Vick case broke in, the judge ordered the relinquishment of those animals and best friends. As a matter of fact, we were designated as a receiving agency of a lot of those dogs and they placed them into halls and it's ironic that I actually worked for the agency, that I wrote a position statement against when that all broke.
Speaker 1:There was a lot of controversy and I did my part as one of the recognized investigator and I did my part. I wrote a statement saying that they shouldn't be adopted out. They should all be euthanized because they're going to pose a threat to public safety, and best friends was obviously the largest one. There were others bad wrapping in California. There were a few agencies, but best friends.
Speaker 1:When we placed them into homes, it proved us wrong and I don't want to get on the rabbit hole of another myth buster, but there's been a lot of myths over the years that made me question my beliefs and when this happened it really made me question everything that I believe that I've been taught, and not so much to say well, I'm wrong, it was. It made me take a real critical look at everything that I stand by and swear to. One of my favorite examples was when I worked in the shelter at the MSPCA and this was a national thing back in the day, so to speak. We used to shut down cat adoptions on October 27th through November 1st because we believed that the Satanists were going to be coming into the shelter to adopt cats to sacrifice to Satan. I say that now and it sounds so ridiculous, like it's absolutely ridiculous, but we believed it as an industry.
Speaker 2:We believed it.
Speaker 1:And I can't imagine the number of animals that died because of that. And then the other one was adopting out animals as gifts. We would never in a million years adopt an animal to someone whose intent was to give it to someone else as a gift. That was like we would probably put you on a do not adopt ever again list if we found out. And then studies show that the retention rate of animals as gifts are equal or greater than the retention rate of animals when people pick them out themselves. So it's like, and it's things like that, and the dog fighting cases obviously a lot of animals died.
Speaker 1:A lot of animals died as a result of all of those myths, but I think dog fighting cases in particular, they never even get the chance. It was just automatic If this animal is involved in fighting, it has to die, and I'm so glad that's gone. So the result is I look at everything I do today through that lens. What do I say and do and believe today that in 10, 15, 20 years I'm going to say can you believe we actually felt that way? I'm saying that now, 30 years later, can you actually believe that we thought, saintness, we're going to come into the shelter and adopt cats to sacrifice.
Speaker 2:Right, because who has the time for that? I've been trying to adopt a dog now for like six months and the whole process is so many hoops to jump through that I can't imagine any Saintness would have the patience.
Speaker 1:Frankly, and you just brought up another myth right that we need to bust, that the adoption process needs to be jumping through hoops.
Speaker 1:And there's still a lot of agencies that go to the umph degree to prove that.
Speaker 1:You have to prove that you are the best pet owner in the world to get an animal from them.
Speaker 1:And what we know about that is that most people, when they get fed up when there's too many barriers to adoption, they just go and get an animal from somewhere else and then they tell their friends and family how bad that shelter is.
Speaker 1:We know, if we build relationships with people, that we're in a better position, if they run into trouble, to call us and have a conversation like, hey, I'm struggling financially and I don't want to give my animal up. We have pet food, pantry or whatever social services, so to speak, that we can offer to these pet owners, which is becoming more and more the norm now. But there's still so many agencies out there that you can't adopt a dog until they go on Google Earth and make sure that you have a fenced in yard and you have to prove that you're a homeowner by showing them your mortgage statement or your landlord. You need to call the landlord. The shelter needs to call the landlord to verify that you can have a pet or here's my favorite one If the majority of shelters out there will not adopt out an animal unsterilized right and a lot of times that's the state law and a lot of places that's the law.
Speaker 1:They can't adopt that animal out on sterile. But if you have an animal at home that's unsterilized, that disqualifies you as an adopter because that means you're irresponsible and it's like we're giving them a sterilized animal so they can't breed. And why don't we just give them the sterilized animal and resources to get their other animals sterilized?
Speaker 1:So, it's things like that, I think in my case, and when I have staff and I talk to my staff about this, those are the types of things that we look at and try to guess and stay conscious of the things that we are doing today. That might be ridiculous in 20 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was really surprised, frankly, going into this whole process of looking to get in a new dog, how much of that was still there. My impression, based on the organizations I've worked for and worked with, was that a lot of that was gone. There's a lot of open adoptions now, where you have a conversation with somebody and they help you match to a dog that might work with your household and that sort of thing, and it's really more of a conversation than not an application and I didn't realize. I mean, there was one application for one organization that took me like two hours to fill out. I had to go around taking pictures of every side of my house and my fence line and, frankly, I am not like, if you look at my resume, I'm gonna be a pretty good dog owner, right, like, I have a good history of dog ownership, plus I work with animal shelters and I'm a dog trainer.
Speaker 2:Like you would think that people would be jumping to give me one of their dogs, right, there was one organization that, like I couldn't even get them to get back to me, like it would be silence every time I connected with them silence for like a week and a half and totally understanding like Like, a lot of these are volunteer led organizations, so you got to give people time and work all that out, but the communication was so bad, in the end they ended up adopting this dog. I was interested into somebody else without even telling me. Like I even had like an appointment lined up to to meet this dog, and then on the day that we were supposed to meet with them or the day before, they're like oh, we actually adopted the dog out a couple of days ago. Like I had an appointment to meet this dog and then that was last I heard from them. They weren't like oh, we have all of these other dogs that you might want to adopt. Like, I still don't have a dog.
Speaker 1:It makes no sense.
Speaker 2:It makes no sense yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I wonder if you looked at those people like, what are there, what's their current reality in their house? And I say that because I remember when open adoptions right Was new right, it was like this new concept and I was actually at conference and there was a Workshop being done on it and the the presenter asked everybody to close their eyes and Start raising their hands and she said how many of you have a cat at home? Every hand, and it's a humane society animal. Could you made society with conference? How many of you have a dog at home? How many of you have fully vaccinated up to date? All of your animals are currently up to date and vaccinated. Not every hand went up. How many of you have ever lied to a landlord about having a pet Right? I actually lived in a place I had. I had two gray cats, an orange cat and a black cat, and I actually told my landlord that I only had two cats Because that's all he would allow.
Speaker 2:That's what I did too, yeah. How often are they gonna be looking through my windows and all three cats are actually gonna be in the window at the same time. Right there, remember, have three different colored cats, even like they're not gonna remember that Exactly.
Speaker 1:It'll be fine and and two of my cats came. Folk. Well, actually, no, I'm sorry. Three of my cats I can barely even bring to a vet because they're they were born in the street and they are, they're very timid. Do I bring them in every single year for their vaccines? No, I Don't right.
Speaker 1:So and then now with the other question was how many of you, how many of your dogs, are licensed in your community? And Bailey, any hand, went up in the room Right and we're supposed to be setting the example. Now, when I was, you know, when I was head of animal control, yes, I got you know, I made sure my dogs were licensed and when, all that. But wow, and these are people who are making decisions on other people being able To adopt the animals when, if you were in that seat, you would be declined based on your own policies. It's just not right. It's just not right.
Speaker 1:It's not about. It's not about that. It's about whether or not this person is gonna have a good relationship and love that animal and that animals gonna love them back. Looks like. I don't know. I don't know if you were at WHS when we adopted out June or Jade. Jade, sorry, jade was a white pit bull who had been returned a couple of times for separation anxiety and Pretty bad separation anxiety where they wish. He was destructive in the home and we ended up giving her to a homeless person.
Speaker 2:I Was not there for that.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating and well, there was, there was this guy. You know, it's fun. I could remember the dog's name, but I don't remember the guy, the guy's name. I remember the dog and we got a lot of flackle about me, in particular from the staff, and it was you know. And then I said, and I remember, I remember at a staff meeting. I remember saying you all have dogs at home, ask your dog, if you could ask your dog this question, what would they rather have their life that they have now, where you're at work 10 hours a day, you walk them in the morning and feed them and you they're All alone for 10 hours eight to 10 hours and you come home You've maybe taken for a walk, play with them a little bit, given dinner and then you sit on the couch watching TV.
Speaker 1:Or would your dog rather be with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, walking around the city, meeting people, and you have to sleep in a tent under the bridge? You think your dog's gonna care. That dog doesn't want to leave you aside and it was a perfect, perfect thing. Now, two, three years later, we would see Jade and his person, her person, in the streets of DC. Jade was a chubby little thing because everyone cared about Jade and then the guy Guy had a good relationship. If he ever needed food or if there was ever an injury to the animal, he could call us and we would help him. But he never needed. Why take that animal?
Speaker 2:whole series on animals and people who are living homeless, because that's just a fascinating. The whole idea is fascinating because, okay, here's another myth, the myth of the era of the animal, the myth of the irresponsible owner, and I think a lot of people feel that unhoused people belong in this category. If they have a pet, right, you, it's not responsible to have a pet. If you're unhoused and you should all you should definitely give up that pet. But even to what we were talking about earlier, the idea of the irresponsible owner is the one who whose animals have never Accidentally gotten out of the house. They have never. They've always been vaccinated, they've always been. There's never been any accidents in terms of accidental litters, for instance.
Speaker 2:Basically, my growing up checked all of those boxes like, yeah, we had so many pets and we loved them a lot and they didn't. We didn't always have the money for things like Progressive or preventative medical care in our, in my family growing up and we had. We had a great relationship with our pets and maybe I Don't know what are your thoughts around this idea of irresponsible owners, because I feel like a lot of Shelters have in the past at least talked about the reason why they'd rather hold on to an animal, then accidentally give that animal to an irresponsible owner. I'm using quotes here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we all, I mean everyone has a different definition of responsible pet owner, right, and I mean it and I was there.
Speaker 1:I was there, I was one of them. I used to do adoptions and I would look for reasons to say no, because I knew, for whatever reason, you didn't deserve this particular animal and my job as being working in a shelter was to make sure that this animal got the best possible home right and and that's a myth the best possible home is a man right. Because you look at definitions, you look at resources that people have and there's so much. There's so much bias and judgment, judgmental Behavior. It's ridiculous to think that because someone doesn't make the lives paycheck to paycheck, shouldn't have a pet. Our old adoption form actually had a chart that we were supposed to work with the adoption, the adopter, to calculate how much money it was going to cost them and Legitimately ask them if they felt they could afford that. That was part of our adoption process.
Speaker 2:It Then now great, that's in the 90s right, I think it is still in a lot of.
Speaker 1:But it's still. A lot of people feel that way and I'll tell you I have worked in some marginalized communities that People live hand to mouth and those people love those animals more so than half the richie rich people I've worked with, I mean as an animal cruelty investigator right now. Now I want to put that out on. I spent many years as a cruelty investigator and I have seen people who live, who have all the money that they could possibly imagine and they have a dog as a status. Right, yeah, that dog might get all the vet care it needs and all the food and all that, but it lives, are lonely, it can leave a little lonely existence. But I'll never forget when we were doing pets for life in in DC. We and if you don't know pets for life, you might worry if you could put it in that, in that, in show notes or whatever it's a fantastic program in my eyes. It was actually a game changer to the way shelters interacted with marginalized communities.
Speaker 1:So we were doing in DC and we were going. We were going door-to-door To identify pet owners and what kind of resources that we could give to them, and I used to always carry a bag of cat toys and well, a bag of catnip with cat toys in it, because I'm a cat guy, I love, I love cats, mama, cat guy, right, I love dogs too, but I'm a cat guy. So I remember going to this one house and it was an elderly gentleman and it was in Southeast DC very really Arginalized community, say at least and I asked me you know you open the door all weary. And then they said can I help you? And I said yes, sir, I'm Scott from the New Main Society. We're giving free resources out to pets, people who are pets. I was wondering if you have any pets, if you would buy, I could give you cat food or whatever, whatever you want. He said well, I do have a cat. He said come on inside and I stepped inside. Just in the front hallway he had a folding table and a folding chair as his dining room table. That was the only furniture in this dining room.
Speaker 1:Right lived in a pretty small place and there was this cat that just was like peeking around the corner and I asked him. I said do you mind if I give him a toy? And I took a cat in a mouse that had been soaking, a cat in a Maranaving catnip and I tossed it to him and that cat started grabbing it and rolling around and this guy Looked at that cat and he was telling me about oh, you should see him with real mice, and he was just so proud of this cat, he'll love this cat so much. Right, and he didn't have. He didn't I mean I don't know what he was living off of, social Security or whatever. He didn't have. He didn't have much in his life, but he had that cat and that cat meant everything to him and I'm guaranteed that cat met him.
Speaker 1:He met everything that cat, right, and it was just such an amazing, amazing experience for me from that perspective. Right, and I came home and I looked at my old cats and like I gave him hugs and, well, tried to him, but this guy loved that cat and that's all that matters. Right, he would do anything for that cat and I was able to get them sterilized, vaccinated, a health check. I left him a big old bag of food and a lot of toys, right, and I don't look at it as like, oh, you need my handouts, right, did I? Didn't look at it like that. It was just one pet owner who's helping out another pet owner and we're working together and it was just. That was an experience. There's been two Experiences that have impacted me that I will never forget. That was one of them. The other one was, if I, if we have time, I'd love to share this absolutely, that I'm not on a time limit.
Speaker 1:So when I was an officer in Boston, I got a call from a neighbor saying that there was a dog out with bad shelter in the rain. And I went to this neighborhood and this was back in the mid 90s when I was actually assigned to the Boston Police Gang Unit, the anti-gang unit. We were doing a lot of anti-gang activity in the neighborhoods and this call was in one of those neighborhoods where there's a lot of gang activity. And I showed up and there was this piece of plywood Leaning against a fence, a chain link fence, and I could see a chain Chain to the fence going under the piece of plywood. And as I approached, a Rotweiler came out from under that piece of plywood. It wasn't a younger puppy, two or three years old, if I recall correctly, and he didn't growl, he looked at me and he did the roddy wiggle like hey friend. So I went over to the door and this woman came to the door and she's like that's my son's dog and I'm sick of it, he's not allowed in the house and he pees and poops in the house and blah, blah, blah. He, I'm not allowed, but I can't have him, can't have him in the house. And I and I said well, cold is your son? She said he's 15. I think it was 50, 14 or 15. And I said, well, technically, ma'am, under the law, at your dog, and she's like, just take up, just take up. And this kid came and he was in tears and and talking to the kid. He wasn't one of the, he wasn't a gang member, he was living in a bad neighborhood but he was a good kid and I saw him run over to that dog and hug him and it was just. It broke my heart to think that this woman was making me take the dog and I and I told her I said, listen, if we can make, if we can get him to complete being Compliance with the law and maybe get him some training, help to learn how to be, to housebreak them and so forth, is that something you would allow me to do with your son? And she was like I don't care, it's his dog, he can do what he wants, but I don't want any trouble. And blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:So I went around the corner. I on the way in. This was an area where I knew the area Well. I knew there was some construction going on around around the corner, down the street and I went around. I went to a construction site. I went to the construction guys and I asked them if I could have some spare wood because I couldn't leave the dog there. Right, it was inadequate shelter I can't leave up. I can't leave like that. I know the kids not going to be able to fix it on his own, and so I decided I'm gonna take the time, I'm gonna get some spare wood and build something that can, that will work. And when I told the guys what I wanted, they were like oh dude, we got this. And About four or five guys grab some wood, grab their tools, went down to the house, went back to the job site to get everything. They built this kid, an amazing dog house for this dog.
Speaker 1:And For me that was like that was a real eye-opening experience. It was like we can't and we should Be helping people who don't have either the knowledge or the resources to to give their animals what they can have right and what they I when I say I, I'm trying to be careful with wording because I don't want to say what they deserve. They're not getting what they deserve, and but all of those negative Connotations that that come along with that that lead to that irresponsible pet owner label, right. But here's a 14, 15 year old kid who wants nothing more than to keep his dog and who loves his dog we took. If we had taken that dog away from him, who knows if he had ended up down the street with the local gang and involved in dog fighting and all that. Here's this super friendly Rottweiler, right, that this kid loves, and. And why can't we just do it? Why can't we just help this happen?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. That is such a great story and it really just speaks to this idea that everybody who wants a pet I mean, no, it's not a human right, but it is part of the human experience to share that experience with another animal and I think especially people who live in cities don't get that opportunity as much do they, because they aren't seeing wildlife and they're not seeing and they don't necessarily have the resources to have a pet and they don't even get one to start with, even when they do want one. And it's such a loss, I think, for people to have that lost or missed connection, especially when they're kids. I mean, I know not every family is set up to have pets and that's fine, but if they can and they really want to, it's or they even already have a pet like taking that animal away that would. That's devastating. Just the thought of somebody doing that when I was a kid would have been heartbreaking and it honestly did happen to me. But yeah, it's heartbreaking, yeah.
Speaker 1:I actually. I was actually attacked by a juvenile when I was an officer. His father, while he was in school, had surrendered his dog and he went about it the wrong way. I'm not going to deny that. The kid came down to the shelter, demanded his dog back. The shelter said look, talk to your father. Your father surrendered him and the shelter tried to talk to him and he started tearing the place up like just throwing a fit.
Speaker 1:I happened to be walking through the shelter at the time and I saw what was happening and as an officer, I was fully, in full uniform and I tried to calm him down. He took a swing at me, punched me and I was like I had no alternative but to to do him. I had to rustle into the ground and handcuff him and it, when I found out, it was like wouldn't that happen? I had no idea what was going on, right when I walked into it and when I found out, rather than book him or bring him down to the, bring him down to the police station or call for a transport or anything like that, brought him home and I tried to talk to the father. The father would not have anything to do. Like he's like no, there's no way I want that dog back in this house. Blah, blah, blah. And it broke my heart that, yes, he wouldn't have bought it all the wrong way. But this kid, like fought a police officer to get his dog back. And I'll tell you this kid, if you let me rephrase, that most people were walking down the street and he was standing on the corner. They would cross the street because of the way he dressed, the way he looked, where he came from and he loved his dog. His dog wasn't a bad dog and he wasn't a bad kid where he goes.
Speaker 1:Sorry, but bringing it all back to the responsible pet ownership, right, and that our definition, it's not only how we treat the animals, who we are as individuals that are judged. You know, we see young, young African American males dressed in I hate to, yeah, I hope this isn't a bad term but, like you know, dressed like thugs and with a lot of people, especially if you think about, like those rescue groups, a lot of shelters they are. There's a lot of older white females and they look at those individuals and as soon as they see them, they have a negative perception, they have a negative judgment, that bias on them. And when people come in to adopt an animal, we go to that right, we go to that judgment, we go to that bias. And that's, I think, one of the biggest problems in sheltering today, right, whether it's a rescue group or a municipal brick and mortar animal shelter, we have that bias, that judgment. As soon as we see someone, we automatically judge them as what we believe they're going to be as a pet owner, and I think it's costing so many animals lives across the country, right, and I get like Washington state and the northern part of the country are not experiencing the same problems that the southern part of the state the country is experiencing. But I go to places in Louisiana, alabama, arkansas, texas, california, parts of California, where it's no different than what we were dealing with early in WA Jessel, what I was dealing with in the 90s, those same barriers to adoption, those same.
Speaker 1:You know another myth If animal welfare wants to help animals, we have to take them in. That's a myth, right, we shouldn't be taking them in. A shelter is no place for an animal and it's a last resort. We say that when we talk to people, but we don't a lot of places. Don't mean that they don't understand what it means when they say well, you should be using us as a last resort because there are so many other alternatives for that animal coming in.
Speaker 1:And the agencies across the country are doing some really amazing work at keeping animals out of the shelter and getting them out into good homes, into homes that that, where they're loved, where otherwise back in the day they would have been denied adoption. Everyone I'm a little bit anything any person up denied in adoption have ended up with an animal within the next week or two. Somebody else, they got it off Facebook or Craigslist or Freedom Good Home ads or whatever. They got the animal and now they just hate us and the animal might not be sterilized, might not be vaccinated, might run into a behavior problem that they don't feel comfortable calling us about to see if we can help them and it just so. I think that's still. We still see so many of those problems in animal shelters and the end of the day, it's costing lives. It's costing a lot of lives because of our biases and our judgments and how we just look at someone and automatically think whether or not they're going to be what kind of pedal and they're going to be.
Speaker 2:Well I think we can also talk about. This moves the conversation into what is no kill, because no kill is a term that is really fraught in the animal welfare community, between animal welfare people as well. Because if you're not no kill, what are you? Right? Are you a kill shelter? Because that's something that is a term that is used at kill shelter and that's no, that's not. You don't want to working at a shelter. That's a kill shelter, right? So if you're not no kill, what are you? And then, if you are no kill, what does that actually mean? Like a lot of your lay people are going to think that no kill means you don't kill animals. Like you, you keep them and you have endless resources to take care of these animals until they find homes, or until they're medically approved, or until they've had the behavior issues sorted out. And they always find homes because you're no kill. But that's not the case in I. None of neither of those definitions is actually the case.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just for the record, best friends doesn't use the phrase kill, shelter Right. No, best friends doesn't.
Speaker 2:I think it's something that just arises, though, doesn't it? Because people again your regular person thinks if a shelter is no kill, then the other shelters are kill shelters, and they will refer to them that way in a really like casual context. Well, I took my animal from a kill shelter. I wouldn't go to a kill shelter without really understanding what the context of that shelter really is, and so this label is put on them when that's not really what's. It's not a fair label.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and best friends is the largest no kill advocacy. We, that's what we are all about. We're all about ending the killing of animals and shelters. Right, and our definition is that I hate to use the phrase healthy, adoptable animals right, because that's subjective as well. So let's put that to the side. But we know statistically that about 10% of the animals coming into any animal shelters nationwide are would fall into the category of unadoptable. Whether they're sick and you, there's no resources to save that animal and or they're dangerous and they pose a threat to public safety. Right, and so that 10% is where real euthanasia is acceptable Right, and when, that's when that that 10% is what we refer to as the 90% of the animals that don't fall into that category, is the 90% benchmark, right.
Speaker 1:We say to Ben, we say it's a benchmark because you can have 95, you can get I know shelters that are municipal city and I hate, I really hate the phrase. The word pound right, but it's still being used. But a municipal animal services shelter a large, large ones are can actually achieve 90% and plus, oh, save rate.
Speaker 2:So where did that 90 or that 10% come from? Just to give the listeners here a little bit of context, because it seems like maybe that's just a number pulled out of thin air.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of people think that we gather statistical data from shelters across the country, thousands of shelters across the country. We get the data from and in a lot of cases where we would actually even file a freedom of information request from government agencies, and we work with shelters to get their data to analyze, help them analyze their data I mean that's something that my team and I do fairly regular is we're a shelter will give us their data and we can identify their largest at risk animal Right. So, like, if we look and we see that stray cats coming in, adult stray cats or neonates coming in, we can, then we can help them programmatically to address their biggest at risk species Right. And so we compile, we compile all of that data and we analyze it like crazy. And if any of the listeners go to our website, we have a, we have a national data, the data center dashboard that you can go in and look at your own community to see you know where they are and how you can help them achieve more success. We don't want it to be seen as something that, oh, I might. My shelter isn't a no kill shelter. That means it's a kill shelter, so we're going to go get them. You know what I mean. We don't want it to be like that. We want to give people the opportunity to work in partnership with their local shelters, because shelters have always felt it's our problem and we have to deal with this ourselves. Right, when it's a community issue. Right and we learned this in WHS is bringing the community in to help us solve for the problems that we were facing through adoption, foster, volunteer donations, both financial and material donations, also working with the community to prevent animals from coming in the first place, so that that's a shift in momentum, right. So so those are things that are actually happening nationwide and working with low cost sterilization and access to vet care and so forth.
Speaker 1:So, when we look at that data set getting back to the, getting back to the question when we look at that national data that we we get, we believe that 10%. We have seen that. Not, we believe let me rephrase that we've seen, based on data, that 10% of the animals coming in fall into that category. Right, because if you look at, if you look at things when I say healthy, right, and this is where it gets subjective, healthy and adoptable, a very subjective when and we dealt with this at WHS very cool. I remember when we used to euthanize for ringworm, right, ringworm was deemed unhealthy, unadoptable, right, that's not the case anymore. Right, we developed the resources and the knowledge to deal with it and to communicate that with the community. So so we moved our level at WHS of healthy, adoptable to that next level, right.
Speaker 1:And I remember when I worked in the shelter back in the late 80s, early 90s, if you saw a cat sneeze, you believed that animal had upper respiratory infection and was going to infect the rest of the population. So you euthanized, even if that cat was coming out of the litter box and the litter dust going up into his nose and he sneezed. If a cat sneezed it was a death sentence. If you had a dog that had parvo, right. And I've come into, I've come into shelters and it still happens where a dog you come in the morning and there's one or two dogs that are down with parvo, which is a highly contagious, highly deadly disease. You depopulate, you kill everybody in the shelter Because they were exposed and there's not really much you can do about it. That's back in the day. Now you come in and you find a dog with symptoms of parvo. The support of care that you will give them, a shelter can give them and they recover. So it's not an automatic death sentence.
Speaker 1:And that's what we talk about when we work with shelters. When my team and I, best friends goes out to work with shelters, we want to give them the resources to get to that next level. I've seen us get to. I've seen WHS go from point A to point B to point C to point D right, and we know that if we just went in and said stop stop killing anything, right, don't euthanize anything right, it's going to overwhelm the staff, it's going to be, it's going to be chaos. You have to have the programmatic pieces in place to get to that situation and that's what best friends are all about. Best friends is providing, is working to provide those resources, whether they're training, material, material resources and even legislative. We have a fantastic legislative team that goes out and works to works with local communities to change ordinances to allow for certain certain things to happen and not that, and breed specific legislation.
Speaker 1:Try and get rid of it, because that results in every people coming into the shelter dying. Ordinances against community cat programming right, someone and we talked about this earlier someone has a cat digging in the yard or whatever they trap it, bring it to the shelter. Oftentimes shelters are left with no alternative but to kill that animal and that is not euthanasia. It's not right. That animal doesn't need to die today, or at all right. It was trying to survive. It was doing something that could have been prevented. It's healthy. It doesn't need to be in a shelter. All you have to do is sterilize it, vaccinate it and put it back and work with the property owner to condition that cat not to come back into the yard.
Speaker 1:Right, and we see we see shelters all over the country that when we look at those gaps that that's what we refer to them as the gaps to 90, right, where's their biggest at risk animal, stray, adult cats, you know and their save rate for straighter adult cats are like 50, 40%. Like every single adult cat that comes in dies. Now, the result of that too, the unintended result of that, is also they don't have any cage space. So when a cat, when an animal comes in that needs to be there for whatever reason. I was just talking to a local shelter the other day and they had an elderly woman who had passed away no family, but she had a 12 year old cat.
Speaker 1:That cat came into the shelter and shut down and stopped eating, right, I don't blame them, right. But when you're dealing with every single stray cat in the community coming in and you're running around like crazy, you don't have time to work with that cat to make that cat feel safe and secure and get that cat rehomed right. So my job when I went in was to work with them on showing them how they could work with that cat so that they can rehome that cat, because that cat doesn't need to die but it would get the unadoptable label because he shut down in the shelter. He's just sitting in the back of the cage trembling. He's unadoptable, boom. So that's where when I say healthy, adoptable, it's so subjective.
Speaker 2:That bar moves depending on how much, how many resources that particular shelter has and the training that staff has and all of the little things that go into it.
Speaker 1:Exactly exactly, and that's why I'm really proud of the work that we did in Washington DC and it was a growing experience for all of us who were there, because we saw that lever move. From when we first went in there, I think we were saving about 28%, our save rate was about 28% and within a few years we were in the 80s. And it's easy. I work with Shelter Thio. Well, let me say this it's simple but not easy. But it's just a matter of deciding we're going to do this and then getting the resources and the programs in place to make it happen. And that's what we did in WHS and that's what I help shelters do. And best friends I don't want to just take all the credit here right, best Friends is a giant organization and what made up our programs division is in every area of this country with some fantastic people that are doing that, that are working with shelters right now.
Speaker 2:If a shelter is interested in getting help from Best Friends, what do they do? Who do they reach out to, or is there a path that they follow?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first thing would be to identify who your regional specialist is a strategist. So we have the country broken up into three regions East, central and West and within that there are different. There are staff that are assigned to basically every state and then there's the national team. I'm on the national, I do national programming, so my team goes anywhere in the country. We focus primarily on municipalities. Being in a municipality does carry certain challenges and differences from a legacy humane society, as you know from being at WHS. There are contracts and political pressure and all that. So my team specializes in municipalities and we have a program that partners our shelter collaborative program.
Speaker 1:Where we have a shelter that's doing great and it's nearby a shelter that is struggling. We'll partner them up and we'll do some funding so they can actually see how it's done by one of their another shelter and their colleagues. We have a program called our in bed program where shelters that are struggling and they really want the help. We actually will take staff members Best Friends staff members move them to that community for up to a year about a year. They'll actually live in that community and work at the shelter every day.
Speaker 1:So yeah, if anyone's interested, just you go on our website and identify who your local person is and start that process down the road. We have a website it's our network website, it's networkbestfriendsorg and it's designed for shelters and people in the industry to be to be website and we have training materials. We have, I mean, so much information on there and, getting back to what I was saying is like now there is so much opportunity, so many opportunities for shelters to do what can be done it should be done to save lives that it's getting to a point where there's no excuse anymore. There's really not, there's no excuse for you not to embrace some of these new. They don't even have them on. Even new Like TNR isn't new right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been around for a long time now Right and we know it works.
Speaker 1:It's it's proven to work, and so everything we talk about it's not just some wild idea that best friends came up with right. We're sharing proven strategies that have been implemented across the country and are resulting in thousands and thousands of lives being saved right. So our most recent data set that's going to be coming out soon shows that 52% of the shelters in this country are already at that. 90% of already no kill, 52% of them. And that's not the little shelters. In some community that's only cherry picking and picking only taking in certain amount of animals.
Speaker 1:We're talking large municipalities. We're talking big shelters that have thousands of animals coming in every, not every day, because we want to do managed intake. Maybe they are coming in every day, but we want to do managed intake and manage the flow of animals coming in and get them out and get them out. Get them out without barriers or restrictions and all this crap that we used to, that used to force us to bring animals down the hall, right, and while they're there, keep them happy, keep them healthy, keep them adoptable, work with them. They have a. They have like that cat that's shut down. There's no reason at all why they can't spend a couple of days working with that cat, making that cat feel safe and secure, and get that cat out. There's no reason at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a lot of different, as I said, we've kind of talked about a little bit without saying it or addressing it directly, which is there are a lot of different shelters and shelter models that can work with this. You don't have to have just one shelter model for this sort of thing to work. You can be a privately run shelter, you can be a municipality, you can be a big shelter, you can be a small shelter and everything in between. Volunteer run. Only all of those things. It is possible with any of them to implement a lot or all of these techniques that help keep animals alive, and out of the shelter system preferably, but when they're in the shelter system, to get out of that alive and to find their home where somebody will love them and they will love them back. So that's, it's a good, optimistic story.
Speaker 1:It is and it's a reality and it's hard, like the my team and I and I want to folks from best friends. We tend to only deal with the shelters and are struggling the most right and a lot of them, like they, have excused after excuse as to why they aren't implementing some of these programs that we were funding, where we're in the building, working with them and all that and it's confusing at times as to why, but we believe and we know it can happen and it will happen.
Speaker 2:I mean we're already in every area, right Like there's not one area in the United States where it hasn't happened. I mean, I know there are a lot of issues in the southeast and the southwest where a lot of animals are still coming up to northern shelters because they are so overcrowded down in the south and I talked to some of them this year's Animal Care Expo where they're still really struggling. But there have been shelters in municipalities correct me if I'm wrong down there that have implemented these and have seen huge improvements.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, oh yeah, I mean it's not I don't want to say anything south of the, you know, south of the Mississippi, you know the Bible Belt or whatever is bad. That's not the case. There are a lot of really great examples in every state across the country and particularly down south. I work with some gray ones.
Speaker 1:I do a lot of work in Louisiana and man, I got a couple of shelters in Louisiana that are just amazing and they are municipal shelters St Tammany, parish, lafayette, large shelter, lafayette. Louisiana has been, has succeeded and has maintained, sustained that level of success for a few years now, several years now, and there's just I mean those are just two of my favorites that I have personal relationships with. But you know, you look at Louisiana, you look at the desert Pima County, arizona, and a lot of up in your neck of the woods and like, if you look up in the northeast, we have complete states that have gone, that are no kill. We just added from Mont, I think. Well, new Hampshire, from Mont is no kill, delaware is no kill, I think.
Speaker 1:Rhode Island, I think we can get Rhode Island's like right there. You know what I mean. And Maine, the same thing when I know like across the country it's happening, it's happening. Like I said, 52% of the shelters across this country are already no kill and we're not talking about those little ones. These are brick and mortar shelters that actually serve communities.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Well, Scott, let's, yeah. Let's move on to our two final questions, and the first one is if there was a book that you could give to all of our wonderful, beautiful listeners, what would that book be? Just one, I would have to say Well, I mean, people do kind of flinch this question sometimes, but it can be your favorite book, or it can be a book that's related to this. It doesn't have to be, though, yeah it is related and it's not related.
Speaker 1:It's, I would say, switch by Dan and Chip Heath how to make change when change is hard, and for me, I use that as my, I call it my Bible. When I hire new staff, we talk about it and I buy them a copy and I want them to read it. It's just, yeah, it's an amazing book and it talks about really making permanent change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's not directly about animal sheltering at all. I read that one. It was given out at Animal Care Expo, I think 2012, when I went with you that very first time. A bunch of the staff from WHS went and they just gave that book out and they had one of the authors one of the authors are both Talk as a keynote and it was an excellent book because it really did just give you that foundation for understanding why it is sometimes so hard to get people to change. And you know, a good follow up to that book too and I know this one has been recommended is Crucial Conversations, have you?
Speaker 2:I feel like that's a really good follow up, because it then now you know how to do it Now. Then you can learn about how to actually talk to people about these things too.
Speaker 1:Yep, Yep, yeah. And another one of my favorite oh, I'm going to say my favorite. One of my favorite authors is Patrick Lencioni. He did the five dysfunctions of a team. He's done numerous books that are just like from an internal business perspective. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2:I mean, his work is just I was trying to remember the name of that one the other day. With five dysfunctions, it's such a good one.
Speaker 1:We used to use it at WHS for yeah everyone got it, really perspective changing. Yep, yep, exactly so.
Speaker 2:All right, Scott. What is the deal with animals?
Speaker 1:The deal with animals, in my opinion, is that they are part of our everyday life and I think we have an obligation to treat them the way we would treat each other. I don't want to say like, I don't want to say like I, a kitten is on the same level as a baby, because that's going to open up all these. You know all these controversial topics and all that, but they're sentient beings and why do we feel we have Dominion over them? To quote another pretty darn good book Dominion. I think we're stewards and we have the opportunity to coexist and to enjoy life together.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't know, but I think that we as a species, we humans, lose sight sometimes and we have the social scale like an ant is down here, a bee is up here, a fly is up here, and then it goes cat, dog, blah, blah, blah, blah and all that. I don't get it. I don't get it. I look at these animals and I look at these animals stuck in cages and they just crying for help and they don't deserve to be there. They didn't do anything, they. We have an obligation to not take their lives because of convenience for us or what we believe to be the only option? Yeah, because it's not the only option anymore. It never really was, but we accepted it as what that's what it was, but now there are so many options out there that we don't have to do it anymore.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for that and thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it and it's been great to check in with you and have a bit of a chat. That was Scott Giacopo, director of National Shelter Outreach for Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. You can find out more about Scott on the bio page at thedealwithanimalscom and, of course, in the show notes I've linked to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary along with many of the other topics we've discussed today. If you have other myths you think should be busted about animal welfare and animal sheltering, send me a message on Facebook or directly at thedealwithanimalscom, or join Patreon and ask me there. Send me a message and we'll try to bust those myths. Throughout the series.
Speaker 2:I'm your host, marika Bell. I'd like to thank Kai Strascoff for the theme music and Natasha Matzart for all her help in editing, putting together the newsletter and sharing her fantastic knowledge to help grow the podcast. You can see links to the guest book recommendations, as well as their websites and affiliated organizations, in the show notes and at thedealwithanimalscom. This podcast was produced on both historical tribal land of the Snoqualmie and Quinoa Indian nations. The Deal with Animals is part of the Iroar Animal Podcast Network. Thank you for joining me as we continue to ask the question what's the deal with animals? Now, what do you think is the deal with animals?
