Life is Life!

#044: The True Cost of Caring for a Pet

May 15, 2020 Felipe Arevalo, Chase Peckham, Katie Utterback, Joshua Prater Season 2 Episode 18
Life is Life!
#044: The True Cost of Caring for a Pet
Show Notes Transcript

Are you planning on adopting a dog or puppy? What exactly does it take to be a successful puppy parent ie how much exactly is this going to cost me each year? Month? Week?

Maybe you already have a pet and are not entirely sure how much money you're spending on your four-legged friend each month? Or are recently struggling to afford dog food or medical bills during the coronavirus stay-at-home orders.

Joshua Prater is the Medical Director and co-founder of Baja Dog Rescue. He joins us to share how to realistically set a budget for your puppy, the benefits of health insurance for dogs, budget-friendly meals you can buy or make-at-home, and more!

Donations for Baja Dog Rescue:
•PayPal – info@bajadogrescue.org
•Donate Button at the top of our page orFacebook.com/Bajadogrescue.org or at the bottom of this post.
•Online –Baja Dog Rescue
•Venmo –@bajadogrescue.org
•Zelle – info@bajadogrescue.org
•Mail – Baja Dog Rescue P.O. Box 437920, San Ysidro, California 92173

About Baja Dog Rescue
Baja Dog Rescue is a 501c(3) non-profit organization that is run by a group of dedicated volunteers that rescue and rehabilitate unwanted, abandoned and neglected dogs and find them loving happy homes. We are a No-Kill animal rescue and we literally give them a second chance at life. Each one of our dogs is socialized, spay/neutered, vaccinated, and treated for any medical or behavioral conditions.

About The Show
To learn more about DebtWave Credit Counseling, visit our website or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

To learn more about the San Diego Financial Literacy Center, visit our website or connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Support the show

Intro:   0:09
Welcome to Talk Wealth to Me, a safe space podcast where we chat about anything and everything related to personal finance.  

Felipe Arevalo:   0:19
The information contained in this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute as accounting, legal, tax or other professional advice.  

Chase Peckham:   0:33
Hello and welcome to talk wealth to me. The upside I guess if there is one to this pandemic that we're all going through as we have seen, how humanity can come together and through dark times come light times. And we have seen this in many, many different ways, including the amount of dogs that have been rescued, animals that have been rescued and adopted. We talked to Joshua Prater, who is the medical director of Baja Dog Rescue, right down across the border here from San Diego, California. And we discussed many things regarding adoption of animals, including the costs, the things that people need to think about and really just the responsibility that comes with rescuing and adopting animals.  

Joshua Prater:   1:28
I'm glad it's early in the morning that way I'm more alert. The afternoon would not be a good time. So unless that's type is perfect for me, perfect way.  

Felipe Arevalo:   1:40
We try and plan it around my kids' nap time. Unfortunately,

Joshua Prater:   1:43
that's a good thing. Yeah, we just fed the dogs and usually once they're fed, they they don't bark a lot. So it should be quiet in the background,

Felipe Arevalo:   1:52
just like my kids.

Joshua Prater:   1:54
Actually, the dogs are actually Children. That's what you need to treat them. Strangely, it doesn't matter what age they are, but there are. They always act like Children.

Felipe Arevalo:   2:04
Yeah, so thanks for joining us. We really appreciate you. Ah ah, joining us. And we know a little bit about your organization because Katie kind of it brought it to light and introduced us to your organization with a while back. Tell us a little bit about Baja Dog Rescue.

Joshua Prater:   2:23
We've been around for roughly around 14 years or so. We've been a nonprofit for about 10 years. Were actually one of the largest rescue facilities along the Tijuana San Diego border area. The facility is about 50,000 square feet. We have a nameplate capacity of about 350 dogs. Currently, we have a little bit more than 100 dogs on site we're rather unique because we actually have a hospital on-site. but it's not a huge hospital, but it's about 1400 square feet. It's fully equipped so we could do blood transfusions. We can do cancer work From the standpoint of doing biopsies and determining what sort of cancer is, we also do cancer treatment here. Uh, when they're shortages of cancer drugs, we can actually synthesize them on-site so Like right now, there's a shortage of certain cancer drugs, like benchristine, so we could actually make those ourselves on site here. So if the dog does have cancer, we don't have to worry that we can't treat argument. The dog has to be put to sleep because there's a lack of chemo agents available s. So far to date, we've helped over 10,000 dogs, usually on an annual basis, were being about 700 plus dogs externally of the facility. So people bring their dogs to us from San Diego or a Tijuana Rosarito. Uh, and then we do the work of dogs because we also have machines on site. So we do blood work. So if we take blood from a dog, we can go and have analysis done in about 10 minutes or so, which is really quick. Ah, we can also do bacterial testing to find out if the bacteria is like gram positive or gram-negative. And we also checked for parasites so we could see what sort of parasites are in the dog and actually treat for parasites. And then the other part of our equations. We actually do adoptions. Adoptions aren't a big thing for us, but we adopt out roughly around 400 so dogs a year. We actually have a lot of people that really want our dogs because we do such intensive medical on the dogs before we adopt him out so people won't have a problem where they've adopted a dog. And then a week later or two weeks later, the dog comes down with, like, parvo or some other serious sort of disease or something like that. And then we also offer people that adopt, most medical care for the future. They don't have to come to us. They can go to whatever but they want. But if there's a situation where economically, they can't afford the treatment because there is a problem with something called economical euthanasia, where essentially you can't afford to take care of your dog on its only option that you have is to actually put the dog to sleep because you can't pay for medical care. So we also offer that service where you've gone to a vet and the vets telling you its final $3000 or five or six or whatever thousands of amount of money, Uh, and you can come back to us and we'll do it usually for about 10% or 15% of whatever the vet's air charging you in the US Um, that's your main thing. We also have about eight full-time employees that are here seven days a week because of the size of the facility on, we have medical staff on site all the time for the dogs.

Felipe Arevalo:   5:23
Wow, that's awesome and here I thought I knew all about the organization, we learned a whole lot, that's very impressive.

Joshua Prater:   5:29
Yeah, but we've been doing it for a long time, and our goal is to help as many dogs as possible. So a lot of people look at things on the financial basis what sort of income comes in? We actually based our success based about how many dogs we actually help on an annual basis. So we also help other people that do rescue. They'll get dogs and they don't have the medical capability that we have. Eso they could bring the dogs assembled do treatment on the dog's low cost also before they adopt out to people.

Chase Peckham:   5:56
Wow, that's phenomenal. I have first hand experience with dog cancers and illnesses and all that kind of stuff. So what you guys are doing tugs at my heartstrings right now. I can tell you that

Joshua Prater:   6:11
cancer is not a good thing. So the other thing that I'm working on right now is trying to prevent cancers like the dogs that we have. We have a lot of senior dogs here, so we have a lot of dogs that unfortunately, will never find host houses in a 1,000,000 years, or they have chronic diseases. They'll have cancer, or Addison's disease, or like a colon disease. And so the goal here is to try to keep them alive as long as possible. And with the older dogs that we have here, we're doing a lot of treatments with them. It's not really treatment so much, but different, um, different chemicals or herbs and stuff like that that will actually hopefully help them live. Well, I like to say forever, but as well. It's not realistic. But if we want to push the can down the road as far as possible, and so far we've been pretty good on longevity. Most of the older dogs they're here will actually live to be about 17 18 years of age, which is pretty good. But we also feed the dog special diets. But the dogs that are leaving the facility in the dog's air here on hopefully, that's helping them be healthier for the future.

Felipe Arevalo:   7:13
Let's talk about dogs There's been a lot of reports recently, or a few reports on Ah, the news and things that with the stay at home orders a lot of dog. Ah, shelters have been having great success with placing animals and have finding them forever homes or foster homes. And you know that that allows them extra space. to, take extra good care of the ones that are left behind. But, um, how busy have had you're gonna They should be been. Have you seen the adoptions pick up?

Joshua Prater:   7:43
Oh, yeah. I mean, right now we cannot, um we have a massive demand for dogs right now, literally. I think if we had 100 dogs available a day, we could do 100  adoptions a day with us. That's not realistic. But like I said, we sit on the dogs for at least 30 days before we'll send them out. But yes, right now, if you have any sort of dog that's available, the public is really hot and heavy to adopt the dog or foster the dog. The only thing that I'm concerned about is when the Coronavirus thing is over with, whether it's a day or a week or a month or whatever. I'm very concerned about the amount of people that when they go back to work, they're not gonna foster any longer. They're gonna not have time to take care of the dogs that they've adopted and that there's going to be a massive return rate. So that's a big concern that we have someone we do adoptions. We actually have a five-page questionnaire. Plus we do two interviews with two different people in our organization to kind of make sure that this is a marriage and not just a date with the dogs

Felipe Arevalo:   8:46
That's a great way to look at. Um, and I I can tell you just from sitting in on my kids class zoom meetings that they do. How many of his classmates have adopted a puppy and I'm sitting there listening? And my kids, like see three of my friends got one while I can I go get one. Ah, so I get a lot of That's what I keep telling them that Incredible.

Joshua Prater:   9:10
I mean, the thing is, is we adopt both adults and puppies. Generally speaking, people prefer puppies for a variety of reasons. Like I said, I've been doing this for a long time, so I've heard all the reasons. The thing is, if you get a puppy, it's a lot to deal with. I mean, personally for me. I have about 15 dogs itself, and every single dog is an adult dog, and they're between the ages of Well, I've had something for a while, so but they're between the ages of, like five years, up to 16 years right now, Um, and I prefer adult dogs, two puppies, But people want puppies, but people need a lot of training and puppies. You need to look at them like they're a six-month-old baby. That's what you're dealing with. Uh, and if you have the time to take care of them, Fantastic. Um, but it's a lot of work, and it also should be something that's well thought of ahead of time. And not just something an impulse item where you saw it in the store and you're like that look nice in my house, because the thing is, you can't put them in a closet and kind of close the door. You got to take care of him 24 7 and it's a lot of work.

Felipe Arevalo:   10:09
Yeah, I agree. I've put a requirement on my kid. I've told him that when we do decide to adopt a dog and someday we will, he has to go. On the 30 days leading up to it, he has to go on daily walks with me to prove that he can handle the daily walks with the dogs. Gonna need.

Joshua Prater:   10:26
I mean, the other thing is, it's kind of funny because I've seen down here. Some of the younger people want to have Children a little bit early, and so the school actually gives them dolls, and they have to take too tall for a week, bring it to school, take it home, that type of thing so they could see what the responsibility is. It's a lot of responsibility. Um, you know, some people can handle and some people can, But like I said, you want O make sure it's a long term situation. Uh, when you get a dog, whether it's about being an adult,

Chase Peckham:   10:56
yeah, I mean, there's so many things that you have to think about and take into consideration when owning a dog or any pet for that matter, but especially dogs, because they need it. Most dogs need so much attention. But can you talk a little bit about when people are thinking about this and beyond the attention, the cost of having a dog? How many people really take into consideration what the costs of having that puppy or that that dog full time?

Joshua Prater:   11:21
Actually, I'm glad you asked that. On our application. We actually put a questionnaire. How much do you think the dog is gonna cost you an annual basis and will actually either, except to reject some of the applications that the numbers are not realistic on. It's not a question with your rich or poor. It's just do you put it number down and you're like, Well, I think it's gonna cost me $20 a year. That's not realistic. It's going to cost you a lot more than that. So you gotta look at dog food. Dog food is a big thing. Um, I push everybody to get insurance. I mean, they don't have to with us. We don't force it upon them. But realistically, insurances. If I was in San Diego or anywhere in the United States, if I got a dog, whether it's a popular adult, the first thing I would do get insurance. Because if there's really almost nothing wrong with the dog and has a minor little thing, that's wrong with it and you go to  the vet, you're looking at at least $1000 plus for something like that and insurance. There's a lot of different insurance companies out there, and you need to evaluate each one very carefully. Generally speaking, it's based upon the age of the dog. You're looking at about $40 a month just for insurance, which I think is the best insurance in the world for you to buy because of something major happens like the dog breaks a leg or something like that. You're looking at, like $15,000 to take care of that. And a lot of people you don't have the creditability or the financial ability to take care of something like that. And that's where insurance kicks. And, uh, food is really not too expensive for the dog. I mean, you can go to Costco. I mean people, Walmart or whatever. Ah, and you can get a 50-pound bag of dog food for probably a good quality one, probably for about $30 or so. So, food-wise, you're probably looking at anywhere from 30 to $60 a month. Obviously, there's more expensive dog food out there, so it costs more money, water, but waters and expensive. You need to make sure the bulls were clean and stuff like that. They need to get a bath, maybe once a month, so you gotta buy shampoos. For something like that, the warming is a big thing. They need to be on some sort of deforming schedule, whether it's 30 60 or 90 days vaccines. When we adopt out. We try to make sure the dogs were completely vaccine and up to date, but that doesn't mean they're protected for the rest of our lives. So you need to go to vet at least once a year on redo a variety of vaccines such as Rabies. Ah, and then also the core vaccines, which are the parvo distemper parainfluenza. And then, of course, the dental virus. And those vaccines you need either do every single year every other year. Uh, many do fecal checks. Which aren't too expensive. It really depends what that you go to. Ah, and then, of course, there's three medication. If you're an area where there's a lot of fleas, then you need to look at the right medication. For that. You can either Dukan, Ford, us or try effects is I kind of prefer traffic sis because it actually has. He did warming aging, and they're also so when you go on, give the flea medication, you're also de worming at the same time. If you're in an area where there's a lot of tics besides fleas, conformance and Trifectas don't work at all, so you'd have to jump over to something like a next start over a vector. There's still pretty reasonably priced. You're probably looking at something around $20 or so months for those types of things. So that's additional cost. You're looking at roughly around $240 a year for that type of medication. Um, so that's the big things. We have to look at it. And if there's any diseases that pop up, such as renal failure, aerobatic issues or they get kennel cough or something like that, those air additional things can go wrong. Then there's also intestinal issues such as Girardi is. If you go to Dog Park, you take the risk of getting something like that and you got to go toe that new treatments for that, that there's treatments for everything. But it's a cause that's the cost involved to that. And people need to realize that it's kind of like us, like I have health insurance. And while I think I'm the healthiest person in the world, I still have health insurance if something goes wrong.

Chase Peckham:   15:05
I am so glad you said that because we had We got health insurance right when we've got our Golden Doodle puppy and he, You know, we literally five years went by and beyond are you know, the normal. Like you just mentioned the D warming and then the different vaccines and all that kind of stuff. Um, we didn't really pay a penny except for his yearly checkup. And we're like, Gosh, do we really need this? We're paying $40 a month for it, which is exactly. And then, I mean, it wasn't two weeks after we had this discussion, which we didn't get rid of it, by the way, and all of a sudden, I'm feeling a big lump under his right arm in his armpit. Yeah, and he's 5.5 years, five years old at the time, 5.5 years old. And sure enough, I couldn't figure out what it waas. But now it's He was finally diagnosed with T cell, uh, lymphoma.

Joshua Prater:   15:57
That lymphoma is the big thing on dogs. Um, it's the thing, that strange thing, that lymphomas, we actually I treat it all the time s so there's a lot of stuff you could do for lymphoma, but again, if you're going to American vets and and this is not an attack on them. I mean, we're a nonprofit organization. We're not a business, and so we try to do things cheaply. And if you go to  a vet you know, you expect a qualified person and they need to be paid well. Plus, that's when they go to school. They got to go to school for a long time, and they accumulate roughly around $250,000 worth of debt. They have to pay, Um, and so they need to charge for what? They you know what they do, Um, but yeah, that's the big thing that the cancer comes out. It really depends upon the cancer. There's some cancers that I hate to say. This are good cancers, and I only say that good cancers, because they're easy to get rid of, like there's one cancer called TVT, which is super easy to get rid of. Lymphoma is a bad one. Uh, there's one that's even worse called Comanches Sarcoma. That's a real disaster. That's a cancer. You never want to hear you. Never. You don't want to hear that word. It's a really bad one. Lymphomas cool in a certain way because there's a lot of stuff you could do for There's a ton of treatment protocols out there. Uh, but then again, you don't want any cancer whatsoever.

Chase Peckham:   17:12
Right? And he is our dog. He just had his last cancer treatment yesterday. He did a chop. Our doctors have done a phenomenal super great with us. Nice. They and in you know, they were very honest with us up front. Like 95% of dogs, the cancer is gonna come back. Um,

Joshua Prater:   17:31
yeah. I mean, the thing is, with the chopper recall, it was that particular program, by the way, I'm sure they know this already, but you can modify that protocol. There's a vaccine out there. That thing is what you did will fail. And I'm not trying to depress you. And that on the positive side, there's a whole bunch of stuff they can do. They can go back in there and they could redo the chop, protocol it all over again. They can pick out some of the items that are in there, like, maybe not do the pregnant zone that's in there. Maybe not. Do they've been Christine. That's in there. There's another protocol that you could talk him about called Medtronic therapy and essentially what that is it's rather interesting is that you actually give chemotherapy on a daily basis. But you don't do that. Your vet, you're that would actually give you pills. And you would give the pills every day or every other day. Eso It's kind of like getting it might be in the hospital right now. You don't need it because the dog is most likely in remission right now. The problem is with the remission. You have no idea how long that remission is gonna last. It could be cured if I mean, it could be that cancer will never come back. Kind of unlikely. Uh uh. What you're after is remission on these things. That's the big goal. If you can get, like, a year, year and 1/2 permission, you're doing really well. Uh, realistically, events have no idea, including myself. How long the revelations gonna last?

Chase Peckham:   18:46
That's you know, that's what they've been very, very, very upfront about that the whole time. And they were saying that a lot of even dogs through the 20 weeks of this of this treatment that it would and you know, a lot of times it starts to creep back even during the treatment towards the end. And so far, so good. Knock on wood. It hasn't. And but he will go in for maintenance. Um, and, ah, but on the cost side of things, if we hadn't have had the insurance way, we're talking $20,000 from the time that it was found, and then all the, you know, the different tests they had to do to And then that was even before you know. Then there was even before we were $8000 in before they even started the treatment. Um, because it took forever for them to really figure out what this was. It wasn't a normal. It was a weird They had a hard time just really identifying it at first. So she said, you know, 

Joshua Prater:   19:46
Really? You just do. The thing is, you do biopsies on the thing, and then the thing is, if it's I mean, I do the biopsies here myself and I do the actual cytology on the answers. So if you if you have a question, so you But if I have problems actually defining what sort of cancer is it has happened with me. I'm pretty good about it that say, probably 95% of the time I'm good to picking out with the cancer is, but sometimes it's just I can't figure it out. So what you would do is something called a history O gram, and it's a very specialized form of seeing if the dog has cancer, essentially do a biopsy pon China, which is not a big deal. You send the sample out. It actually takes two weeks to get an answer on it, and it's because they do different staining different. But it actually gives you a definitive answer on exactly what the cancer is after two, roughly around two weeks.

Chase Peckham:   20:35
That's really funny. You say that because that word stain, um, they did so many of those they knew it was cancer they just couldn't figure out exactly. They narrowed it down to two different specific cancers. It was either lymphoma because that's where it was or I forget what the other one was. But it was, um okay, So what starts? Yes, that was it.

Joshua Prater:   20:58
Mass-cell those massive does a type of cancer. Like I said, there's just degrees of bad and mass cell isn't that bad of a cancer mass. L actually is one of those good cancers that this was mascot Massa. You do surgical removal on it and see me get clean margins on it. You're done with it. You don't have to worry about if you get dirty margins. You know it's gonna come back and you do surgery all over again. Lymphoma is one of those things where you can't do surgical removal on it uh, you just have to go into treated with chemo. But But on the lymphoma, Uh, some of the chemo agents are cheap on it, like the prednezone Sounds pretty cheap. Have been. Christine's pretty cheap on that, Uh, some of the other stuff, like the Doxy rube, is, um, it's inexpensive. But the problem is, is when you're actually treating the dog with those different chemo agents, they can have very bad reactions to the stuff. The interesting is not too bad, but the doctor Iverson is super bad. So they got to do a lot of prep on it before they give it to a dog because it effects their heart badly. And actually on the doxy Robinson, it's cardio toxic, so you can only do around five dosages on it.

Chase Peckham:   21:58
Yeah, he just finished his last one yesterday.

Felipe Arevalo:   22:00
On top of the emotional, obviously the emotional, you know, difficulties with it. There's all those every time. It's a new financial, uh, implications that go along with it. And I seen it. If we've seen on social Media that you guys were actually helping out during this time, obviously, you know, we're all going to do some unprecedented financial times. But, um, you're able to help out some of those who maybe aren't able to afford their, ah, their pet food during this time. So, um, you know, and you mentioned foods earlier and how you can go to Costco. And how do you What's a good way to figure out what the best food is for your? Well,

Joshua Prater:   22:39
I mean, the thing is, I have a preference. McConnell, like Costco's has their own brand match pretty good food. That food is based upon the dog's gut bacteria, and whoever formulated that food was their emphasis was making of the dogs got was healthy, and if the dog got with healthy, the dog itself would be healthy. There's a lot of different brands out there that are available. I'm not just concentrating on. We use pedigree roasted chicken flavor, but the dogs like the flavoring on it. The only problem with that is that's a very basic dog food. So we actually have to supplement that food with vegetables and other stuff that kind of make it more wholesome. There's also Purina, one which I like a lot. It's not super expensive. It's kind of the middle of the road on. I kind of like bad foods. Typically, what you want to look for in a label is there's a few things that I don't like to see stuff. I look at a bag of dog food and I see the word bruise Rice, Uh, immediately. I would reject that immediately. His bruise races is white rice. There's nothing special about it. If I see a food that actually has, like oatmeal, innit? Beans, beans really nice? Um, the vitamins that Aaron of the minerals that are in there. I look at the minerals to see what sort of derivative of the minerals they are if they're the lower price minerals or better quality minerals, which are more by available. That's really important to me. If they put bacteria in the food for good health. That's really important to me. If they put like public acid in there, that's a positive, uh, look at the form of vitamin C that they put in there if it's his vitamin C than I don't like that. But if they put a derivative of vitamin C, which is more shelf stable, that's more positive. Me, I look at the fat that's in there. Are they using chicken fat or the using like canola oil or olive oil? If they're using soybean oil, that's me as a negative. I went by that dog food, Um, but I also look at the descending order of the ingredients center in there. The first ingredient, obviously, is the most abundant. That's in the dog food. So you want to see what that first thing is. If it's meat byproducts, obviously, that's a no no. If it's corm, that's a no no to me also. So I'm looking for more grains like they, but borrowing in there, that's a positive vote. Meals, a positive me beans is a positive things like that. If there's vegetables that would, with the cold vegetable promise in there which is essentially dried vegetables. If that goes on the dog for that, I like that a lot. But it also depends about where those ingredients are listed on the agreeing label if they're at the very end of the ingredient label, and obviously they put nothing in there. But if it's close to the beginning, they put a lot in there, so that would be a positive. If they put coconut fat in there, that's a real positive to me. Also, they call a coconut fat or the other term they use is M C T oil, which is medium chain triglycerides. So the thing is, they found for cognitive health and dogs. If you give them M C T. That helps a lot. It also helps them for skin health. Ah, the other thing I'm looking for is they put fish oil in there. So if you see e p. A R D h a in the dog food, that's a real positive to me also,

Felipe Arevalo:   25:36
And you mentioned with, well, um subsidizing with some like vegetables. Are there any budget friendly recipes that people can use to make their own dog food or treats? Yeah,

Joshua Prater:   25:47
I mean I can't tell you what we do, Actually, I mean, we make something up. I think it's pretty inexpensive. I try not to buy too much in the way of fresh vegetables is usually they're gonna go bad on us. So I buy frozen vegetables. So I go to various grocery stores and they and the dollar well, even buy vegetables that are dollar a bag. And so I buy dollar bag vegetables. So we're buying kale for the dogs. Spinach of the big thing that you can do. They have mixed vegetables where they have carrots, peas and corn corn. I'm not a big fan of, so I kind of want to stay away from that. Broccoli is the big thing. So what I do is I'll buy some pork low cost port Ah Grillet just for like, a few minutes just to get a roast flavor on it. Then, after that, I'll stick in the microwave and blasted for probably about five minutes or so. So I take some pork, I get broccoli, I put we make beans up for him. We put kale in their carrots, and then I put in a Cuisinart blending machine, and we grind it up into a mush on. And then what I do is I put supplements and they're such as vitamins and minerals on. And then we use that as an adjunct food to the dogs here, and they seem to love it. I also use cabbage to green cabbage that I cook in the microwave for probably about five minutes or so. Grind it up on They seem to love cabbage. Oh, and sweet potato, that's nothing. My greatest newest discovery of sweet potato right now. So bye. Sweet potatoes peal. Um, uh Hedeman slice. Put him in a bowl. Put in the microwave for about eight minutes or so. Let it cool down to room temperature because you never want to give your dog something hot. Ah, and then as a treat, I use that the sweet potatoes a treat to them They seem to love it. I used built on the adult dogs and also the poppies. Uh, and even if they're sick and they don't feel like eating, they seem to love that stuff. So sweet potato would be a big thing.

Felipe Arevalo:   27:26
No, I see. Ah, sweet potato in Chase and Katie's shopping list in the near future.

Chase Peckham:   27:31
It's funny, he That's one of the few things Jackson really, really likes. If, like because, Well, I will eat sweet potatoes and then any leftovers that we have will give him. And he eats that right up. And he's a relatively I don't want to say a finicky dog, but like it's interesting if we if, like, for instance, we don't eat Doritos a lot. Or but if they fall on the ground, a lot of dogs would just snatch that up. He won't touch chips he won't touch. Really unusual. He won't touch french fries, which is even crazier to me. But you put this

Joshua Prater:   28:00
brand. I have French fries. I mean, they'll literally bite my hand off trying to get the french fries. French fries are not good for you, not for them, either, but well, I like french fries. I try and I beat him too often, but that sweet potato thing. It's something I figured out like about a month ago, but it was more about fluke thing. It wasn't something I thought out or anything like that. And I'm like and it seems out there, maybe we'll see if they if they eat it all by more, if not well. It was a bad idea, and they seem to be just crazy over that stuff. We have older dogs that are super finicky, and even though there's two, profanity will literally eat £5 of sweet. But I mean, if I let him leave my pounds of sweet potato, so it's bazaars. Three. Potato has some sort of magical thing in it. I'm not sure what, but they seem to like a lot. Plus, it's really healthy for them.

Chase Peckham:   28:46
One thing I do know talking with a lot of friends, and we go back and forth people that have dogs, and we're constantly asking each other about dog treats and those kinds of things that you know, where you helped train the dog and all that stuff. But there's so many different kinds and some that are just awful for them. What? Where do you recommend along those lines? As Faras treats?

Joshua Prater:   29:08
I mean we. Strangely enough, we got a lot of donation of dog treats, mainly because people buy dog treats. It is a work on their dogs, so they elected donate them to us on the dog treats, and I mean literally I'd have to be in a store with you two. Look at each label and kind of tell you what's good or bad. It just varies tremendously for us on treats. Would I buy and I don't know, people are gonna like this too much, but I buy packages of hot dogs. Um and I put him in the microwave for about 10 seconds or so to warm him up a little bit, and we cut it up in little pieces. We use that his treats. Ah, and the sweet potatoes are newer street. The other thing is, we want dogs don't brush their teeth as we all know. So I try to buy them dental bones impossible. Or the hard bones that you see in the store on those I would recommend as a treat to the dogs. You got to be really careful with dogs on the streets is that they make him to smaller, too hard, or they may come at a pork skin or something. I've seen a lot of choking issues happen with those types of things eso treats. I'm usually really scared of them. Uh, the only thing I saw there was a treat out there. It's like of artificial bacon they form. It's like it looks like bacon. Uh, that seems to be okay, because it's soft. I haven't seen any choking it on, and that would be a good treat. I don't remember the brand name on it, but you'd see it in the store. It's like bacon treat or something like that. The label is really colors. Yeah, that begin Bacon treats. That's it. That's the thing. So that one I would actually recommend. And the only reason I recommend it is, uh, not to say it's great for your dogs, but it's not a choking hazard. It's got a lot of flavor in it on as a treat. I think that's acceptable is like I said, the big thing. I'm worried about this choking hazards.

Chase Peckham:   30:48
Okay, can you kind of go through that? Can you kind of go through the line is we're talking about adoption and is going through so quickly. What should people really prepare for the most as they're going

Joshua Prater:   30:58
when they show up? I mean, I actually do a lot of the adoptions myself, so some people show up with a checklist, which is fine. The checklist that they actually wrote the checklist out themselves. I think that's an outstanding idea. But if it's something they just went on, the Internet have found someone else's checklist. I think that's a really bad idea because people show up with an Internet-based checklist and they're asking the questions from that checklist, and they don't really understand why they're asking those questions. And would you give them the answer? They don't really understand what the answer is to that question, how it affects them. It's something that the day before, a few days before they should make a list up, because usually people are adopting. They get very emotional and excited about getting the dog. It's something new on. They can't think of everything that they want to ask. So if they could make a checklist that that's really nice for them to do, we supply ah, harness and leash. Uh, but if you're not obviously not adopting from us, you should get a harness. leash, get a collar. But the collar is not for the leash. That's a choking hazard on them. It's just for the I D tag. You should always have a harness on your dog for walking. Um, when you do show up, you need to take a look at the dog. Make sure the dog is healthy. Big thing you need to look for is medical records. Uh, make sure that whoever you're adopting from where there is a public agency or private party, that they actually have real medical records. And I've actually done the vaccines. Uh, the other thing is, when you see the dog, don't just adopt the dog right then and there That exact second going spent 10 15 20 minutes or 30 minutes. When we do adoption events, we actually set up a little corrals for people. So when you show up to look at the dog that you made an appointment for, we'll stick you in a corral with a volunteer, and you spend as much time as you want with the dog to kind of interphase and kind of see what the personality is, healthwise that the dog should be active. It's real sleepy, uh, or seems real tired to you not moving around a lot. You need to be really careful. Meeting people in a parking lot has a really bad idea. You should really check the reputation of whoever you're getting the dog from, Whether it's I mean, the government, you don't need to check the reputation, but you know them. But if it's from an individual, you need to be a little bit more cautious. If it's a rash, you organization organization, it's really easy to check them out to see what's going on. See if they have a Facebook page, see what they advertise, see what they dio on, then also see what the refund policy is. If you adopt the dog and you call back the next day and you want to return the dog, will they accept the dog back? The other thing is, when you initially contact them, see how responsibly are two responding to you. If they don't really respond that well when you're enquiring, what's gonna happen a week later? If the dog is sick and you need to get in contact with him? Um, and then the most important thing we talked about this before is have an insurance policy lined up right away.

Chase Peckham:   33:48
How much do people take into consideration their living situation and conditions and what type of dog they're thinking about adopting And how important is that when you think about costs as well? I mean, if if if you're living in, if you have a big dog in the dog needs to be run all the time. You know what should you take into consideration? Is living situations

Joshua Prater:   34:08
on living situation? A lot of people from what I've seen are basing getting dogs based more part looks than anything else, which I think is a big mistake. Ah, a big dog is not a problem. So as an example, if I had a big hug and I lived in a one bedroom apartment, but I was active, you know, I was on the beach or hiking or whatever a big dogs find. They don't really need a lot of space, but a lot of people come to us and they tell me they've got 5000 acres or 1,000,000,000 acres of land, and the dog really doesn't care about that too much. The dog wants to spend time with you, so if you're living in a broom closet, that's one for the dog. The dog doesn't really care The big thing. I think you need be concerned about his activity level of the dog. But the problem is you spent time of the dark to see the activity level. If the dog is really active and you're not home all the time, or you're more of an office person versus outdoors Person, that's going to be a problem. You need to kind of find a dog that's gonna work with your living situation from the standpoint, your real active, you need an active dog. I like to sit in front the TV all day and watch TV. You need a dog that's going to sit in front of TV on watch TV with you all day. Um, people, from what I've seen, people do not take that in consideration all. It's more based upon the breed of the dog that thereafter, um, and the looks of the dog. So I mean, like, a lot of people like Huskies Huskies are very easy to adopt is or super cute when they're puppies. The problem is, is when they hit six months or a year, they have a lot of activity. People don't really plan on it that well, and unfortunately, a lot of times they turn those over to the county government to take care of, uh, and they should take that in consideration when they're getting him. Not just based upon looks initially.

Felipe Arevalo:   35:45
Yeah, I think that that's phenomenal advice. I think that heads funny my hair. I keep telling my kids, Were you researching dogs? Yeah, I sure am. Are we getting one tomorrow? No, I'm just researching for at some point down the road, we got some ways we had a ways to go. But when it is time, I want to have read hours and hours worth of information. Um, now, sometimes I research things to a fault. But for those who might be listening, who perhaps want to either adopt a dog from from your organization or maybe even make a donation or help out with your efforts to provide medical care food for dogs? How can they get in contact with you? How can they learn more? How

Joshua Prater:   36:24
perfect. Okay, well, let's mentioned when we were talking about the virus thing. Right now, one of the problems that we're experiencing right now is we used to get monthly donations from people via PayPal and because a lot of people are unemployed right now or kind of living on government help. Right now, we've had a tremendous amount of cancellations, so we'd appreciate any help, but it doesn't have to be get pay, pal. But Paypal does have a monthly donation set up. If they'd be interested in donating via PayPal, it's the papal address is info at baja dog rescue dot org's again Baja Dog Info it Baja Dog Rescue dot org. We also have a Venmo account, which is at Baja Dash Dog Rescue Um, contact information for us. If they're interested in finding out how to help us more make donations are actually getting a dog from us. Our phone number is 6194079372 and then our email address is info at a baja dog rescue dot org's. Org Uh, and we'd really appreciate how we're having a lot of problems with dog food right now. Getting donations on it. Newspapers. Strangely enough, we're having a horrific time and getting newspapers right now, because people don't really read newspapers that much. And because people are at home, they can't did not able to leave and then unable to donate us. So we actually have an Amazon wish list on that wish list. Strangely enough, it has newspapers is one of the things we're looking for. Canned food would be nice. That's also on our Amazon wish list on, and they can easily buy stuff off of Amazon. They could also list us as their charity of choice. So when they do shop on Amazon, Amazon will donate a certain percentage of the purchase that they make to us. And I think they do the donation on a monthly basis, or every couple of months on that. We appreciate a lot. We have a lot of people coming here with their dogs that are sick. They don't really have any money. And we need to kind of subsidize the medical care for those dogs. And we need the public's help you can do to doing something like that.

Felipe Arevalo:   38:27
Well, thank you. We really appreciate. Honestly, I learned a whole lot is very timely because now I get to next time they ask for a puppy.  there's Spotify. Go jump on there and listen to the last episode of the podcast.

Felipe Arevalo:   38:38
Yeah. There you go. I love the idea. Perfect. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it, you know? And hopefully this is able to help. And we definitely learned a lot. And hopefully our listeners be able to educated. A dog. Adoption choices.  

Joshua Prater:   38:59
Excellent. Thank you so much for contacting us.  

Chase Peckham:   39:01
Thank you. All right.