Fostering, Adoption, and Volunteerism at Local Animal Shelters

In episode 12, I welcome my guest Berkeley Hanley. Born and raised in Bakersfield, CA Berkeley has always loved animals. She grew up with parents who were both high school biology teachers and her dad's 100+ animals in his classroom. She adopted her first rescue, Mickey, at the age of ten. Berkeley fell in love with animal shelter work during her senior year of high school and has been working in various positions at local animal shelters for the past 15 years. Currently, she is the Community Engagement Coordinator at Kern County Animal Services, where her focus is rebuilding the volunteer program after the pandemic. Animals have always been a part of her life, and she loves working with them and to help make their lives better. Berkeley strongly believes that there is always something that you can do to help animals in your community, even if you think you can't. We also discuss the high turnover rate at animal shelters and the importance of fostering and adoption, as well as the ways you can support animal shelters through volunteerism. Berkeley currently lives in Bakersfield with her boyfriend, who also works at the animal services, and their 3 dogs and 5 ducks.

Kern County Animal Services is in Bakersfield, CA at 3951 Fruitvale Ave. You can learn more about the shelter, including the current Clear the Shelters event, during which all adoption fees are waived for the month of August on their website and social media accounts listed below.

https://www.kerncountyanimalservices.org

https://www.facebook.com/KernCountyAnimalServices/

https://www.instagram.com/kern_county_animal_services/

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Transcript

Transcript

Episode 12: The Importance of Fostering, Adoption, and Volunteerism at Local Animal Shelters

Host: Julie Marty-Pearson

Guest: Berkeley Hanley

[00:00:00]
Hello. Hello, my friends and fellow animal lovers. Welcome to another episode of the Story of my Pet podcast. I'm so excited to bring you another episode with a very exciting guest for me. I can't wait for you to meet her day.

[00:00:15]
I am joined by Berkeley Hanley. Hello, Berkeley. Hi, Julie. Good morning. Good morning.

[00:00:22]
So we're going to talk all things shelter, animals, and rescue today. But first, I'm going to give you a little bio for Berkeley to get to know her. She like me. Your host was born and raised in Bakersfield. She has one sister, and both of her parents were high school biology teachers.

[00:00:40]
Her dad had over 100 animals of all different kinds that lived in this classroom throughout his time teaching. Actually, we just talked about kind of a legend in Bakersfield area. I went to the high school he taught at. Berkeley adopted her first rescue dog at the age of ten, a chiweenie named Mickey and who was her constant companion for 17 years. That's amazing.

[00:01:03]
So she still lives in Bakersfield with her boyfriend, who also works at an animal shelter, and they have three dogs and five ducks. That's an interesting combo. Berkeley fell in love with animal shelter work during her senior year of high school through the Roc Animal Care Program, and she spent the last 15 years volunteering and working at local animal shelters in various positions. Currently, she is the community engagement coordinator at the Kern County Animal Services, where her current focus is rebuilding the volunteer program after the pandemic. All right, Berkeley.

[00:01:37]
Welcome again. I'm so excited to talk to you about your work and your love of animals and all that fun stuff. Me too. Thank you for having me. Yes, I just realized there's animals on your shirt, too.

[00:01:49]
Of course, yes. It's all the different Disney dogs.

[00:01:55]
I think I see pongo on her shirt. Yes, it's all the Disney dogs. I'm a big Disney fanatic. I love it. I have a Disney shirt that says cataholic, but I also need to get the dogaholic one, so I'm a huge Disney fan also.

[00:02:12]
That's great. Okay, so to get started, let's kind of go back to childhood. I mentioned a few things, but what really started your love of animals when you were young? We always had them. As you said, my dad had a lot of animals in his classroom growing up.

[00:02:29]
We always had dogs and cats in the home, of course, too, but he brought home every imaginable thing. We had a parent. We still have the parent. It's older than me. It's probably almost 40 at this point.

[00:02:42]
She was a rescue. My dad got she hadn't been treated very well by her fee, this owner. So her feet have some issues, but she's a sweet little bird, and he just brought home every imaginable animal. Like I said, having both my teachers as both my parents sorry. As biology teachers really instilled in me a love of both animals and the environment and all that sort of stuff.

[00:03:01]
So they just were a part of my world from day one. When I meet people at the shelter who are adopting their first animal or didn't grow up with them, it's such like an alien concept to me because they were just always around. Yeah, I totally get it. I often think, what do you mean you to have never had an animal before? Where are you from?

[00:03:22]
But yeah, when you grow up with that you're just so used to it. So I can imagine with you with all the different kinds, you just thought that was normal. So talk to me about your first rescue dog. So Mickey we got when I was ten, just a couple of months before our previous dog and Dachshund had passed away and I really wanted a new dog. And so my mom took me to the shelter.

[00:03:46]
She tried to steer me towards an old very fat Chihuahua, which as an adult would probably be the one I picked now. Honestly, old fat couch dogs are my preference now. But there was a cute little chuiny puppy and I had to have him. So we went back the day he was available and there were a couple of other people showed up. There was a nice young girl, probably in her 20s who just was like, well, I'm not going to take a dog away from a little kid, you can have it.

[00:04:09]
And then another man showed up, but thankfully we had already started the paperwork, so he was a little bit in demand, but he was only about two months and he was adorable. After we took him home, our vet recommended quarantining him and we didn't. And our other Chihuahua that we had at the time was pregnant because I was too young to make sure my mom didn't know better. And she bred our Chihuahua when I was a kid. But you know, you live and you learn.

[00:04:31]
So anyway, she had the puppies not long after I brought him home and he had a very mild case of mange that wasn't really affecting him and is usually not contagious, but because puppies don't have an immune system, all the puppies lost all their hair so we had to treat them. But I mean, they were fine. And the one thing I will say is we did always pretty much sell or give away our puppies to family members and friends. So it's not like you're making a big profit. But yeah, now that I'm an adult, I would never let a family member breed dogs, especially Chihuahuas or the things we have a lot of in the shelter.

[00:05:00]
Right. He was my baby, especially through my teen years. That's a very dramatic hormonal time for everybody and you're crying about boys. He was my baby. He was my space heater in the winter.

[00:05:12]
He always slept with me. That's amazing. Yeah, he lived to 17, like I said, and my niece was born when he was up there in age, and she was really little, like three or four. And I didn't know how he was going to be because he'd never been around very small children, and older dogs can be a grumpy, but actually, in the last few years of his life, he just let her do anything. She would wrap up in a blanket.

[00:05:36]
She would pretend to play doctor and give him fake injections and listen to his heart, and he just sat there. He was just the perfect dog. That's so sweet. I love that I'm imagining that. I got a puppy myself when I was about the same age, and yeah, we got it out of the paper.

[00:05:54]
They don't do that anymore. I got to pick out a puppy for $5. Things have changed a lot since we. Were it's not exactly legal to get them out of the paper, but they're still there. Yeah, they are, but it's not like it was when we were young.

[00:06:07]
No, it's normal. Yeah. So we always advocate on this show about not breeding and all of that. We'll talk more about rescue, but it was the same way. He was really my companion through teenage angst.

[00:06:22]
They're so amazing for that. In high school, you were part of the animal care program. Yeah. So Roc Regional Occupational Center is a part of the high school district. It's actually next to what is now the Bakersfield Animal Care Center, but was the current county animal services back then.

[00:06:41]
And they have all kinds of different vocational classes, primarily for high school juniors and seniors. But if they have the space, adults can just take it for continuing education as well. Yeah, they have automotive classes and welding and banking, all kinds of stuff. So I did the animal care class, of course, because that was my passion. And through that program, I got to intern at the shelter for my senior year, and that really kind of changed my life.

[00:07:08]
Before that, I had always wanted to be a vet, but just in general. And then I realized that that was really going to be my passion. Animal welfare and shelter work, it was exhausting and depressing, but just incredibly fulfilling. That's amazing because I always knew about Roc, but I never knew about the animal care program. And the fact that you got to intern at the shelter and really see all aspects of it at a young age, I'm sure was eye opening.

[00:07:35]
Yeah, absolutely. And it's really come full circle, too. This last year, this last spring semester, I had my first batch of Roc students that I oversaw at the shelter. That's amazing. Yeah.

[00:07:47]
What is that, almost 15 years later? Because I was there 2006, 2007, and now it's 2022, so yeah, I had my first bachelor's student. Those kind of full circle moments are always amazing, but also kind of like, okay, I really am where I'm supposed to be. Yeah. And ironic, too, because all of my family are teachers, both my parents, my sisters and my grandparents.

[00:08:08]
I'm the one black sheep that didn't ever want to go into teaching, and I had some, basically, students. So life was what it was. Exactly. Yeah. I think sometimes the more we say we don't want to be like our parents, we end up like them even more.

[00:08:23]
Oh, yeah. Okay, so when you were a part of that in high school, that was when the city and the county were still a part of the same shelter, correct? Yeah. Okay. Yes.

[00:08:37]
I don't know the whole history, but the city and the county were together for, I think, at least 30 years. The city owned the building, and they held their own animal control officers, and they paid us a certain amount of money for whatever animal came in from the speed of jurisdiction, and the county ran the shelter, was in charge of all the employees. I was a county employee, obviously, and the shelter was called the Kern County Animal Services, but it serviced everybody in Kern County, in Bakersfield, etc. E. And then in 2013, I believe, the city and the county had been fighting for many years.

[00:09:06]
They had talked about separating a lot of times, and all of the shelter workers always said, we'll believe it when we see it. But then it did happen. Okay, we can't come to an agreement anymore. They kicked us out. We found the location that we're at now, and we had a month to build it.

[00:09:20]
That's crazy. Yeah. It used to be a break factory, in fact. That's interesting. Yes.

[00:09:26]
Our current location was a break factory, and when we first moved in, the kennels were in, but the drains weren't, and they did that in sections. So we pooper, scooped, and mopped the kennels for a little while, which, as you can imagine, it wasn't the funniest thing ever. I can imagine, especially in one big room like that. I've been to the shelter recently for the volunteer orientation, and that makes sense, what it used to be, based on how the buildings are, where they are and everything. But yeah, if you go back into the second building, it's called Queue, if anyone's ever been there.

[00:09:59]
If you look up on the wall to the right, there's actually a big, huge break sign. Huge one. You can see it's still there. How funny. Yeah.

[00:10:07]
No, I think that is important for all of our local listeners here in Bakersfield, Central Valley, California, is that there are two shelters here in Bakersfield now. There's one that is run by the city and one that is run by the county. And the only difference between it is if you find a lost dog or trying to surrender a pet, you have to go to the one based on where you live. If you're a city resident, or a county resident. Other than that, you can adopt from either.

[00:10:37]
You can volunteer either. Of course, we're going to mainly be talking about the Curtain County Animal Service because that's where Berkeley works. If you don't know, we're happy to look up. It just goes by your address. We can look it up for you.

[00:10:50]
And additionally, it's the same in most of the outline communities. Delano City has their own small shelter, so just Shafter City. So it's wasko City. Tap City. Okay, well, that's good to know.

[00:11:00]
Thank you. Okay, so when did you start working with the animal care services? So I came back in spring of 2012. I started volunteering with the medical staff for about six months, and then I got hired on that fall. And that's kind of where, I mean, I just never left, basically.

[00:11:25]
Right. So what did you start in terms of your position? What were your job duties just until this last fall? My job title was animal Care worker, and that just basically encompasses everything at the shelter. I was with the medical staff a lot, doing daily treatments, but I also did what everyone else was doing, cleaning kennels every day, doing intakes on new animals.

[00:11:47]
And of course, unfortunately, euthanizing is a big part of the job as well. Yeah. And then after a few years, I became a big part of the cat foster program of cat foster coordinator for quite a few years. My coworker Diana is just the queen of cat foster. She's incredible.

[00:12:03]
And so I've been helping her for quite a few years. And that's pretty stressful, too. Yeah. I can imagine a lot of late. Night phone calls for bathing kittens.

[00:12:12]
Oh, gosh. And especially in our community, there is a huge feral population, and thus, whether a cat is feral or not, there's a lot of kittens being born out in neighborhoods and in areas where kittens season is crazy around here. Yeah. And I've overseen our trap neutral release of feral cats on and off, too, which sometimes feels like a drop in the bucket. But we have fixed definitely over 13,000 cats in the last wow, seven or eight years ish yeah.

[00:12:45]
That's amazing. Yeah. I think that's an important number because people oh, I just see one or two. No. Yeah.

[00:12:53]
It's like what they say about what? Cockroaches. If you see one. It's probably a lot more than that. Yeah.

[00:13:00]
And really, anywhere you go, I find a bakersfield, even shopping areas, restaurants. Absolutely. You almost always see one or more cats in the parking lot or coming out of bushes and things like that. So 13,000 is amazing. You really have done a little bit of everything there.

[00:13:20]
That's amazing. You really understand the importance of all the different programs and aspects of the shelter. Before we get into your current position in talking about volunteering, what are some of the things you want people to know most about how the shelter works? And why it's so important to foster and adopt from a local shelter like that. Well, something I've been talking to people a lot lately that I think people don't realize is how high turnover is and how short time can be in the shelter.

[00:13:51]
People will call about a dog they saw two weeks ago that they were kind of interested in, and two weeks is a really long time in shelter time. We have probably gotten over 100 dogs in that two week period, if not more. The dog you liked has probably left one way or another. A few years ago, before covet, our turnover rate was about a week. The average amount of time and animals in the shelter was only a week.

[00:14:12]
Now, it's probably a little bit longer than that, but still, shelter time is a lot shorter than people think. So if there's something you're interested in or you're looking for your last one, come, like, now, don't wait a week, because the animal is a good chance, won't be there anymore. And the other thing is just that there's always something that you can do for animals in your community, even if you think you can't. If you can't adopt because of wherever you live, you might be able to foster. Fostering legitimately, really saves lives.

[00:14:40]
If you can't do either of those, you might be able to do streets of bakersfield, which is our program, where you can take a dog out just for the day and get in a puppuccino, go on a hike, get really cute pictures, write a report card, and then we can use that to market the animal. Because that's stuff we don't have time to do with every animal. If you can't do that, you can volunteer. Obviously, we have a million different roles for volunteers. If you can't do that, you can donate either money or treats or toys.

[00:15:03]
And even if you can't do any of those things, you can share our posts so that people see our animals. You'd be surprised. We've had dogs that sat there for a long time. Staff got attached. We featured them to try to get them adopted, and then the owner finally sees it because somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody shared it, and they finally saw their dog.

[00:15:19]
So there's a million different things you can do to help the animals in your community, whether you think you can or you can't. Absolutely. I think that's really important. And the power of social media today is a huge piece of the puzzle, I think, because it's a way for people to post when they've lost an animal or trying to find one or whatever it may be. And I noticed the summer.

[00:15:41]
There were several different people I've connected with on instagram. Some of the fosters that work with you guys. As well as some individuals who are taking their kids to take out a dog for the day and do what you said and interact with them and get to write about them and I saw several of them and I helped repost and things where they were adopted. Because of that, people saw amazing jobs they were. I even heard somebody came from La to adopt one and they were already adopted, so then they took a different dog.

[00:16:12]
I actually get a lot of adopters from out of town, for good or for bad, because a lot of other places have less stray dogs than we do, places that have more progressive span, neuter laws, that kind of thing. We get a lot of people from the central coast, the slow area, that don't have maintenance from La. Too. One of our favorite fosters that we were this close to adopting, which we really didn't need another dog, but we adored this foster. A really amazing couple from La came and got him and Facebook stock them and they take them on hikes and go on adventures, so it makes us feel better.

[00:16:41]
And that dog actually started out living with a homeless man on top of a mountain in Lake Isabella, and he was basically feral when he came in and then we took him home and he was the best dog in the world, absolutely adorable. And he's living his best life in La. Now, which is great. That's amazing. I love hearing that anyone in California knows our unhoused population is really out of control, and even more so, we see them everywhere here in town and a lot of times you see that they have a dog or more than one.

[00:17:11]
And so there's a lot of ways that we can help support the animals that are in need in our community. Talk a little bit about the importance of fostering. So we're always very full and you'd be surprised how much difference it makes just to get an animal out of the shelter for a week or so even. It gives us a tiny bit of breathing room. And in addition to that, when we're as full as we are and as short staff as we always are as a government agency, we don't get to spend a lot of time with most of the animals.

[00:17:40]
So we don't know a lot of things about their personality and definitely how they would act in a home that adopters want. So foster can get us that information about how they are with kids, how they if they're potty trained, if they're pre trained, how they are with their other animals. It's really invaluable information for potential adopters. And then of course, if you're talking about cat foster, as you said, every year kittens uses in. Starting in about March and getting real crazy.

[00:18:02]
In about May, we start getting a flood of kittens. People are surprised that kittens season is a real thing when I say that, but it is. Our foster program, generally speaking, in the winter months has about 25 to 50 kittens in foster so not that many. They still reproduce all year, but it's less. And then in peak and summer, usually have somewhere in the 300 of foster kittens.

[00:18:25]
And that's a rotating door. It's not like the same 300 all summer, obviously, as they age out, which are out, and then we get new ones and we continue to get new kittens all summer. But intake definitely peak between like May and July. And those kittens, that's literally saving a life, because by law, anything under eight weeks isn't supposed to stay in the shelter. And anything under four weeks literally can't survive in the shelter because we're not staffed overnight.

[00:18:46]
And they generally don't eat on their own. They need to be bottle fed or gruel fed. So, yeah, it's literally like saving a life, sponsoring. Absolutely. At one point I had four cats.

[00:18:56]
We have two still now, and the two we still have were both bottle babies. We found that one in our yard and one in my parents yard and about two weeks or less old, and we bottle fed and brought them up into amazing, healthy cats. But you don't realize that a lot of people don't realize, oh, well, they'll be with their mom. Well, a lot of times they're not with their mom. Yeah, I know.

[00:19:21]
With both of ours, we think mama cat was moving the litter and they got stuck or left behind or whatever, and that happens a lot. And that kitten cannot survive on their own, like you said, and they can't eat on their own. We do always recommend, though, if you find a litter by itself, give it a few hours or even 24 hours if they seem stable, maybe put them in a box with a blanket very near where you found them. You can put a ring of flower or baby powder around them because the moms are generally feral and they're scared of you. So if you come back after a few hours and the flower has been disturbed, obviously that means the mom's coming back to feed them.

[00:19:53]
If it hasn't, you may want to take them in to be fostered by you or hopefully someone you know, because we're always short on bottle fosters because people don't like to leave them out there. But if the mom is coming back, you can bottle feed as best you can, but you're not a cat, is what I always tell people. Mom being with them is always the best option. Yes. And I will tell you we did not take them right away.

[00:20:16]
No. Luckily, I've learned enough about that process. My youngest friend, she is eight now. We've seen her mom in our yard for a while. We were the only house on the street without a dog, so they tended to hang it out in our yard.

[00:20:35]
So we knew we saw her getting better and then had the litter and we knew they were in there. And then at one point we hadn't seen her a while. We keep hearing this one crying, and we waited overnight, and then that's when we brought her inside. But that is very important because kittens do do the best with their mom. So, like many animals, you want to keep them together, but like you said, really keep an eye.

[00:21:02]
And especially, I would say, if there's only one or two and you don't. See a chat around, yeah, they may walk them in the moving process like you were saying. Yeah, they got spooked or they got hurt or something. There's a lot of different things going on. But yes, bottle baby fosters are huge.

[00:21:22]
You don't realize what an impact you can make. I think myself having brought up to is really amazing. You're like, wow, I really kept this animal alive and helped them survive, and now they're flourishing. It's incredible how much because kittens obviously mature a lot faster than humans, you really see them mature day over day in front of you, and it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's really amazing.

[00:21:46]
So let's talk more about your current position as community engagement coordinator. What is that role, and what are your main kind of focus? So, it encompasses a lot of roles, and our director, nickel, and he told me when he gave me the job that he wanted it to be kind of an ever changing role, encompassing a lot of different things. First focus was the volunteer program because we were basically starting over from scratch with volunteering. Our previous volunteer coordinator had actually passed away just before COVID.

[00:22:16]
And then, of course, COVID shut everything down just a couple of months after he passed. And the county wouldn't let us even have volunteers for about six months. And then when they would let us have volunteers again, there wasn't anybody to manage them. And even the people who were calling them, I think we had from about 100 ish regular volunteers. We got down like six that came back, who I'm incredibly thankful for, but that's not a lot.

[00:22:40]
Shelter our size a lot, often have a lot more volunteers than that. And unfortunately, we didn't have basically any of his documents or anything that was all lost. So I basically started entirely from scratch. But you know what? I also wanted to do things very differently anyway.

[00:22:55]
We previously had a lot of people had to jump through a lot of probationary periods and background checks and that sort of thing, and I kind of scrapped a lot of that. I want people to just be able to jump in and start helping as soon as they want to. But in addition to volunteering stuff, I do a lot of social media. We share social media duties at the shelter, but I do a lot of that. I go out into the community to community events and job fairs, any kind of pop up, and I will recruit volunteers.

[00:23:21]
I can take animals for adoption. Basically, community engagement in the title, getting. The community more aware of what the shelter does and what kind of support you can provide it. I'm sure you're out and about all the time. I think that's so important.

[00:23:38]
It actually shocked me how often I still hear people say they didn't know we were there, but we've been there eight years. But Bakersfield is a big community, right? It happens. Well, and I also think I probably made this mistake myself, because where the city shelter is now used to be both for me growing up, that was quote unquote the panel or the shelter. And so there wasn't another one.

[00:24:08]
And I adopted my first cat, Jack in 2002 from that shelter. And so even though a lot of that was in the news, people aren't as aware as maybe they could be. Yeah, and then the flip side of that is a lot of times people think that shelter is closed because we moved over to the current one. People like, oh, that shelter is still there. Yeah.

[00:24:27]
So people think that one closed, or they get us confused with SPCA a lot as well. The one on Gibson behind the Costco, they're a little smaller private shelter. People get us confused with them a lot. In fact, people get confused them so much when the sheriff's department picked up a bulldog and we had it one time, they reported on the news that it was at the SPCA, it was with us and the sheriff's department, same thing as us. They're both the counties.

[00:24:53]
Not even everyone in the county knows exactly what's going on. Right. And so that's what's so important. Social media, things like this. I'm sure all of your events is getting people to understand all of us around Bakersfield and the importance of each and what you guys do specifically.

[00:25:10]
Yeah, I'm incredibly passionate about educating the community about the services that we offer and what we do the shelter. Right. So in terms of your work, recruiting volunteers and building the program back up, what is really the need that you see for your shelter that people might be able to help out with? I know you kind of listed all the different things, but in terms of actual volunteers.

[00:25:35]
Anything that you do, you might be able to do for us. I still need people to help clean and care for the animals every morning, but I also need social media help. I'm really trying to get to the point where volunteers can do a lot of clerical stuff for us. You'll see comments on our social media a lot from people saying that they've called and called and can't get through. And that's because our lobby is so busy and those ladies are on the same one that answer the phone and if there's someone in front of them, that's what they're going to prioritize.

[00:26:00]
But that moves at a government pace. I've been waiting for phone since February, but you. Know what, the people were there this week putting in the phone line, oh, great, I should finally be able to get volunteers started answering phones. But yeah, there's basically everything we could use help with walking the dogs. A lot of people don't know, people think that childhood dogs get out once or twice a day.

[00:26:19]
They don't. Most of the dogs are not getting walked for however many weeks they are there. But I have volunteers, a few starting to come and walk dogs. Just the dogs can get out of there six by six, kennel for a few minutes. I have a huge need for that as well.

[00:26:35]
I was thinking that alone. People don't realize that the dogs aren't getting any exercise and that little bit of time that they're walked out to the green space and back, not only are they getting the exercise, they're getting to be outside, they're getting to interact with a different person. And the person walking them gets to see a little bit of their personality that's going to be different than them sitting in the cage. And so, yeah, it's really important for their mental health and for us to have information on marketing them. Everything you guys do is important.

[00:27:10]
Like you said, from the people cleaning the cages, feeding the animals. I know you have a new one. We're handing out frozen treats to the dogs because for those people that don't know, it is hot. As you know what here in Biggersfield, we've been on a stretch of I don't know how many weeks? Over 100.

[00:27:29]
Yeah. And it's coming up on 106 this week. So imagine those dogs, that the little thing of them getting one frozen treat a day. Yeah, it cools them down and also gives them their frozen so it takes them longer to eat than if you give them like a Milk Bone. So you can engage their mind for at least a few minutes too, which is nice.

[00:27:47]
I really think of the volunteer program as a collaborative thing. I don't want to feel like I'm in charge. I want us to be a team. So if people I may not have thought of something, honestly, me being really new to this role and not having worked at the shelter for many years and being a volunteer myself when I started, I am new to the idea of coordinating volunteer programs. So there are things I may not have thought of.

[00:28:08]
If you can think of something that you can do as a volunteer, that didn't occur to me. Great. Let me know and we will make that a volunteer task for you to do. I had a lady come recently who is an animal aromatherapist, and she wants to come see what she can do with aromatherapy to maybe help with the dog's catalyst, which I never would have thought. Well, I mean, it is kind of an enrichment thing that people talk about, but someone doing that as volunteer role, maybe not something that would have occurred to me.

[00:28:31]
Yeah, I mean, that's just one thing I know. Even with cats, they have diffusers now that they put off different variables that help relax and deal with anxiety. And I can't even imagine the level of anxiety that the dogs and the cats have in those kennels. Yeah, that's an amazing new idea that I love to hear right now is August. Yes.

[00:28:54]
And so you guys have a month long event called Clear the Shelters. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. Clear the Shelter is a national event that is actually sponsored by NBC nationally. And I think they collaborate with Side Side as well, which is where we get all of our dog food for the dogs in the shelter.

[00:29:12]
And basically their part of it is they let you kind of decide how low you want your doctor prices to be or how long you want them to be free or whatever. We decided to have them be free the whole month or fee waive, as we like to say. There's this misconception in the public, in the animal welfare world, that if you give away animals for free, you'll get more people abusing them, maybe, or neglecting them. And we haven't found that to be true. And we don't want to distrust the public in that way.

[00:29:39]
Just because someone got animals free doesn't mean they're going to love it any more than if they paid our full price, which is like $85 if we're never out, we're always on special. But it does often get promoted really well. So you posted their feed, more people share it, and it gets more people down there. So that's really important. And especially because the summer, not just for cats, is actually the busy season for even dogs, too.

[00:30:00]
All the fireworks scare them out of the house. It sounds bad because when people go on vacation and just leave them behind somewhere or leave them with a friend or relative saying they're going to come back and they never do. The summer is the busy season in all areas of the shelter, so it's really important for the adoption and foster to be up when the intake is up, basically. Right? No, I can imagine there's a lot more outdoor activities.

[00:30:27]
Maybe dogs are outside more than usual. They make it out. They make it out or something more. And especially in the stress of the heat, any animal that's lost or abandoned, that's even more important for them to get saved, but that just has more impact on the shelter. Yeah.

[00:30:44]
And unfortunately, in the time that I've been there, we've made a lot of progress on things like adoption and rescue and foster, but we never seem to really be able to boost the redemption numbers, the return to home to people. It's always less than 10% of the animals go home to their original owners. It fluctuates between about seven and 10%, and we've never really been able to get that up much, which is sad. Obviously, new adopters is great, but I'd love for the animals to go back to their original home. I don't know what that is.

[00:31:15]
I think partly people not knowing that we're there as a factor. Also people afraid that it's going to cost them a lot of money to get their animal back. And there are certainly fees, but we don't want your animal. We want you to have your animals. So we'll work with you.

[00:31:27]
If you end up being a county resident and your animals there, we can give it back to you for free as long as you're willing to get it fixed. That's a partnership we have with best friends. They've given us a grant. So as long as people are willing to get it fixed, we can give it back to them for free, which is great. But even if you're not interested in that or you aren't county or city, say, for example, we can usually do half down in payments, or we can work with you in some way because a lot of these fees are set by the government, so we don't always have wiggle room, but we'll figure something out because we really want you to have your own, not us.

[00:31:58]
Right? No. I think that's an important point to make for adoption and for finding your lost animals, that the money piece is just a part of it, that you guys really want them to go back to the home that they know and that they're used to. Yeah, as long as, of course, it's the safe and happy. Of course, yeah.

[00:32:18]
But I think that's important, especially here. And I'm sure any area where you live, if you have lost a pet, it's the immediate contact you need to make with shelters and all the shelters and calling one day doesn't mean they're not going to end up there that night or the next day. And you can get a microchip at the shelter any day for $15. It doesn't matter what jurisdiction you are, you can come by and get a microchip for your animal anytime. We can do it.

[00:32:43]
I mean, depending on how busy lobby is, we can do it in a few minutes. It's a very easy procedure. People may not know, but you just use a syringe to put in a microchip. It's very doesn't take any longer than vaccinating. And if your animal is already microchipped, you've got to make sure you keep it updated with your correct phone number and address.

[00:32:59]
I can't tell you how many dogs we have in the shelter just right now that came in with microchips, and the information isn't current. And so we can't get a hold of people. We call and email if we have it and send certified letters, but if your stuff isn't current, you're not going to get that. I think that's a huge thing because technology in that way is so helpful. But you also have to keep up with technology.

[00:33:20]
It works until it doesn't. Right. That's amazing that anybody can come and get a chip for $15. I think that especially for dogs, it has to be a requirement for owners to have that, because that's just the security for yourself, to be able to have your animals down. Yeah, any animal that we adopt out or return to its owner goes home with one automatically.

[00:33:43]
But if you've got it from somewhere else, just come down and we'll make sure you have it. Like I said, we want you to get your animal back. Especially quite often if we can get a hold of you, a lot of times we won't log into the system. Someone just hold at the front desk. If you can get here in like, half an hour, we'll just give it back to you.

[00:33:59]
Okay. No, that's good to know, especially if. They'Re already fixed or licensed. Like I keep saying, we really don't want your animals. When people are understandably upset, they accuse us of stealing their animals, but we don't want them.

[00:34:14]
We want you to protect them. That's the whole goal of the shelter, is to protect them until you can get them. Or the whole point of you guys want are the animals to have safe and loving homes. And if they already have one and they're just lost, that's where you want them to get back to. So I'm going to just give some information out.

[00:34:33]
So Berkeley works with the kern county animal services. You can visit them kerncountyanimalservices.org. They're also on Facebook and on Instagram at those, and all of those accounts will be linked in the show notes for easy access for you. Talk about your location for those locally, about where you are, the shelters located at 3951 Fruitvale Ave, Bakersfield, CA 93308 just right between Olive and Rosedale, if you're familiar with the Rosedale part of town.

[00:35:06]
And we've got a big sign so you can see it when you're coming down the road. I don't know why, but people always say, are you next to the poor house, which is a bar, which, yes, we are. How funny is between Mr. Fast, the gas station, and the poor house, which. Is the bar, the local old time landmark, people know what are your hours of operation.

[00:35:28]
So we're open Monday to Saturday. We are closed Sundays, Monday to Saturday. Our office is open eight to five, and our kennels are open for walkthrough to view the dogs from ten to four. A lot of times people think because so many other places I still have some cover restrictions or whatever, that you have to make an appointment or that you can't get into view the animals. You can.

[00:35:47]
We were literally only closed for that for like, two months in 2020. The whole time we've been open, come by and see us anytime between ten and four. If you want to see what we have, except Wednesdays. Wednesdays are late days, so the kennels are open two to seven. So if you work until five, Wednesdays is good because we're there until seven.

[00:36:03]
That's great. Yeah. And Clear, the shelter is going all the way until the end of August, so adoption fees are waived. And like you said, all animals adopted through you are automatically given a microchip, so you don't have to worry about that. Adoption also includes them getting spade or neutered that's included in the adoption.

[00:36:21]
Unfortunately, we've gotten a little bit backed up, so sometimes that can take a month or so, but usually we just send the dog home with you and then we give you a surgery date for you to bring it back to get fixed. And it includes a microchip. And if you are a Kern County resident, not Bakersfield City or one of the other cities, it does include the license as well. Oh, that's great. I'm always surprised by how many people don't know that California state laws that you have to have your animal rabies vaccinated and licensed your dogs.

[00:36:47]
Not cats. Cats. It's not yes, it's legally, you're supposed to have a dog license. We get a lot of people that move in from other states where that's not the law, and they're like, what do you mean you have to have a dog license? Like, yeah, it's like your car registration.

[00:36:58]
Yes, that is a California thing and we must have that. And honestly, in the end, it's also a way for your dog to be protected to know that they have an owner because they're registered, too. Yeah, and we just in the last six to seven months have partnered with Docupets. So you do all of your licensing online now, and you can actually finally get one that is your license as well as your name and phone number, et cetera, tag together in one, which people wanted for a really long time and now they can do, which is great. So you don't have to have a name tag analysis.

[00:37:29]
You can get it done in one. They'll put it together for you, which is nice. That's really cool. Well, Berkeley, I thank you so much for being here with me. I'm so glad that we were able to do this and put out all of this very important information, not just locally, but for people to understand about shelters in general and how they work and the needs they have and how you can help.

[00:37:52]
So, again, all of Berkeley's contact and the contact for Kern County Animal Services will be linked in the show notes, and I will be linking them and posting them on my social media as well. Follow me on the story of my pet podcast on Instagram. And just thank you for the work you do. You really are dedicating your life to this cause people don't realize what you and all the other shelter employees go through day to day. It is it's my life.

[00:38:21]
I don't have a foster right a second, but I had three in a row for six weeks. I always have fosters. I'm there practically done to desk most of the time, I'm sure. Well, from my perspective as an animal lover and animal advocate, I just thank you for what you guys do, and I just hope that this reaches people and it gives you guys some support in whatever way possible. And if you're thinking about a new dog or cat, now's the time to do it.

[00:38:50]
Clear the shelters is happening throughout the United States. So even if you're not in California, a local shelter has a deal for you to adopt a pet right now. It's a great time to do it. Get those animals out of the shelter and make room for others and I mean, find your new family member. I can't imagine not having my fur babies, and they're amazing in so many ways.

[00:39:14]
Well, again, thank you so much. It was great to have you. Thank you for having me, Julie. I appreciate it. Yes.

[00:39:21]
And Listers, we will be back soon with another episode. Thank you.