0211: Best Friends Animal Society with Brent Toellner

Best Friends Animal Society’s Senior Director of National Programs and KC Pet Project co-founder Brent Toellner discusses the goal of no more homeless pets and having no-kill shelters nationwide.

The Best Friends Network comprises public and private shelters, rescue groups, spay/neuter organizations and other animal welfare groups across all 50 states. To learn more about the professional tools and resources they have available and to become a member, visit Network.BestFriends.org.

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Interviews referenced in this episode:
0121: Breed Specific Legislation with Katie and Anthony Barnett
0127: Socio Economic Underpinnings of Breed Specific Legislation with Anthony Barnett
0207: Kansas City Animal Services with April Moore

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Transcript

BRENT  0:02 
Kansas City, Missouri, shelter 2007 their policy was that if a pit bull came in the shelter that they would never make an attempt adopt it out. If it was a pit bull with a broken leg it had to whammies against and it's like there was zero chance she was going to make it out alive.

PHIL   0:16 
I'm Phil Hatterman and this is Dog Words presented by Rosie Fund. Today, Best Friends Animal Society's Senior Director of National Programs and KC Pet Project co-founder Brent Toellner discusses the goal of no more homeless pets and having no-kill shelters nationwide.

If you're new to this podcast, in each episode we explore the world of dog care and companionship. "We save each other" is the motto of Rosie Fund, which simply means the more we do for dogs, the more they do for us. And they already do a lot.

If you love dogs, you'll love Dog Words. We welcome your comments, questions and suggestions. Go to the podcast page at RosieFund.org to share your thoughts. We welcome suggestions for topics and guests. The only way we know which ones you like is if you tell us. Then we'll try to deliver more of that. Please download, follow, rate, and, most importantly, share Dog Words.

Every year Kansas City Magazine gives readers the chance to celebrate their local favorites by voting in the Readers Choice Poll. Write-in nominations are now open for this year's Best of KC Readers Poll, which will run until April 23. Use the links in this episode's description to nominate Rosie Fund for best animal nonprofit and Dog Words for best local podcast. You may nominate once per category per day. If you are using a podcast service that does not allow links in the description, go to the podcast page at RosieFund.org for functioning links. Five finalists in each category will advance to the final round of voting from May 13 through June 17. If we make the cut in either category, we'll update you on how to vote.

Celebrate five years of Rosie Fund by supporting our campaign to sponsor 50 dogs. You can donate on our website or Facebook page. You can also contribute by making a purchase from the store on our website or buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com. Links are in the description.

Please follow Rosie Fund on social media. Subscribe to the free Rosie Fund YouTube channel that offers great videos of Rosie, Peaches, and shelter dogs, including some exclusive content. Your donations help fund the Rosie Life Starter Kits that make sure these senior and harder-to-adopt dogs have some of the items they'll need in their forever home.

Next time on Dog Words, attorney Tricia Lincoln covers the hows and whys of making sure our beloved pets are taken care of if something should happen to us.

The mission of Rosie Fund is to provide humans with the resources and education they need to give senior and harder-to-adopt dogs a better life. Thank you for joining our mission.

Today on Dog Words, our guest is Brent Toellner, Senior Director National Programs for Best Friends Animal Society. Welcome to the show, Brent.

BRENT  2:59 
Thanks for having me on.

PHIL   3:02 
You were referred to us by another guest who said that you were a great resource for pet awareness, wellness, advocacy. So the pressure's on you have to live up to the reputation that's been laid out before you,

BRENT  3:20 
Oh, I'll do my best. Hopefully I can it can live up to that.

PHIL   3:24 
Well, I hope you carry the load and it doesn't rely on me just editing together something that makes you sound credible and competent. But I'm confident that that you'll be up to the task. First of all, you are obviously an animal advocate, a dog person, have you always been an animal person, a dog person?

BRENT  3:45 
You know, like I've always liked pets. I've always wanted a pet in my life but I never would have considered myself an advocate until my wife and I 15, 16 years ago, now  adopted our first pet from a shelter. And he happened to be a dog that a lot of people would have described as being a pit bull type dog. We didn't think much of it at the time until, you know, maybe about six months later, there was a significant incident in the Kansas City area and some cities started talking about banning pit bulls in their communities. And so is about that time that I instantly went from just a pet owner minding my own business to one that was advocating for my very pet that people were saying was aggressive even though I knew with 100% accuracy that he was not. And so that was sort of my foray into this and it grew into something that I never would have imagined being a career but has become a bit of a career in animal welfare as it's as it's turned out.

PHIL   4:45 
We've talked about breed specific legislation with Katie and Anthony Barnett — we actually had Anthony on a couple times - and it's real easy to say, "This kind of dog attacked someone so we're going to fix the problem by banning that dog" without really thinking about, well, what is the behavior? Was it an owner? Or was it even the dog's fault? And the breed specific legislation has this history tied into things like profiling and redlining and goes way beyond discrimination against dogs, which sounds, I don't know, maybe tone deaf to say, "Discrimination against dogs. Their dogs!" It's more deep than that. It's anyways, discrimination against the people who own the dogs who are typically associated with those dogs. But regardless, you should be held accountable for your behavior, whether you're a dog owner, whether you're a dog, and not just labeled because of the way you look, as a person or as a dog. And have that prejudgment, that prejudice.

BRENT  5:53 
Yeah, I think I think one of the things with breed specific legislation that — you hit on a lot there — but it's both over inclusive and under inclusive. So like, it's over inclusive in that if you ban a certain type of dog, you also like, you gather a whole bunch of like really friendly dogs, that were never going to be a problem to anyone, and now all of a sudden made them bad dogs and banned and the certain community. It's also under inclusive because by targeting a specific breed of dog you don't come anywhere near hitting every potentially aggressive dog in the community. And so, like it fails, just on the face of it, but the discrimination piece ends up becoming a real issue. You know, if I had a dollar for every time that a city council person has said, "Well, we need to do something to keep those types of people out of our community." And it's like, "What do you mean those types of people?"

PHIL   6:39 
Yeah! Please clarify!

BRENT  6:39 
You mean people like me? Because I'm pretty sure they're not talking about people like me but they have a perception of the types of people who own those types of dogs. And, first of all, that is both over and under inclusive. And then there's, you know, the whole bias thing that comes into it that is substantially problematic.

PHIL   6:56 
Yeah, the people making the rules don't look like the people who are being impacted by the rules or at least who are intended to be impacted. And that naivete that you're casting a broader net than you really should. And you make a great point, that broad net you're casting doesn't even cover the problem you're trying to solve because you don't understand the problem.

BRENT  7:23 
Exactly!

PHIL   7:23 
The problem isn't pit bulls or those people. The problem is dog owners who are not properly training or socializing their dogs. And those dog owners are of every strata of society, every type of person. Sometimes it's willful negligence. Sometimes it's just ignorance. But regardless, the problem isn't solved by casting a broad net in the wrong direction.

BRENT  7:51 
But it becomes an easy solution. I use that in air quotes because managing how people manage their pets and control their pets and that sort of thing is becomes a lot harder, than, at least in theory than saying those types of dogs are not there. And so becomes an easy solution to just pretend that we've done something about the problem without actually addressing the problem. And as you are well aware, even the act of banning a certain breed of dog is super problematic as you try to determine what type of dogs these mixed breed dogs are. Like it becomes a rabbit hole of not really being able to tell at all. And we're really not that good at determining breed identification as a human group, even as advocates were not.

PHIL   8:33 
Right. And many advocates push back against even the term "pit bull" because it has a stigma. And it's not a definition, that if you go to the American Kennel Club, and say, "Tell us about pit bulls." They'll be appalled that your ignorance.

BRENT  8:53 
Exactly. Yeah, it becomes a catch all is you know, it's like, it would be the same as like, "We want to ban retrievers," which is a whole big grouping of dogs, or "We want to ban hounds or terriers." It becomes a really big grouping catch all that, again, it becomes really problematic because everything starts fitting that description when it becomes that general.

PHIL   9:13 
Well, if someone dies, drag racing on public streets, and we decide we're going to ban muscle cars, this person died in a muscle car. And if we just get all the muscle cars off the street, this problem will be gone. Well, what's a muscle car? Is that a powerful car? Is it a stock car or one that's been modified? And if you ban muscle cars, does that mean the situation that transpired that led to someone's death would be addressed by this? Or would someone still illegally race muscle cars? Would it just go underground? And there's all these things that well, we can't just take cars off the streets that are more than 150 horsepower.

BRENT  9:52 
Exactly.

PHIL   9:53 
Well, what about cars that are very heavy and have to be over 150 horsepower? It's like okay, well, we have to look at horsepower to weight ratio. And like, well, why don't we look about educating people about driver safety and getting people into driver education programs and teaching teens about the safe — and that's really where the focus is. We have the cars on prom night that are smashed up and put out in front of the prom venue to remind kids, "Hey, let's be safe tonight." And really focusing on the problem instead of this knee jerk reaction. And here's the band aid, we fixed it.

BRENT  10:28 
Or deal with the 10 people who are doing it illegally in the first place.

PHIL   10:32 
Yes.

BRENT  10:32 
As opposed to going out and then like banning the cars that are owned by some 10,000 people in the Kansas City area.

PHIL   10:39 
So that landlords can evict anybody with a muscle car when they want to.

BRENT  10:42 
Exactly.

PHIL   10:43 
It's like, "You're following all the rules, and you're paying your rent, but I just don't like the way you look. So you're out of here because you have a muscle car in your parking space."

BRENT  10:51 
Exactly. Yeah.

PHIL   10:54 
So I think we've done a good job with that analogy, Brent. So back to what...

BRENT  10:59 
We took it about as far as we could go, I think.

PHIL   11:01 
Yes, I am. I'm very proud of that. I think we did a great job. The incident that you were referring to earlier that led to local municipalities in the Kansas City area banning pit bulls prompted you to take action because you had a an illegal dog now.

BRENT  11:18 
Yeah. Well, not at the time, but he was being threatened to be illegal. Yes. And so you know, we got involved and had been involved in local politics enough that we knew some of the key players and we just started going around and talking to people and educating folks. And the heart of that was like my own education. Like I had to go out and be like, "Okay, well, what information is out there? What do we need to know?" And so, you know, I did a deep dive. And what I found at the time is — 2006? 2005 2006. And there wasn't a great just collection of information that was available at the time. There's so much more available now that you can go out and research and find. But it was really sporadic. And there were a lot of things out that there were very general, "Studies say that it's not effective." But I never found a single one of those studies. And so I started doing my own. And whenever a city would institute some type of breed specific policy, I started documenting what the real impact of it was. Like, how did it change in the number of bites? But then also how many animals to do cause to be unnecessarily killed at the shelter that were being rounded up and pulled in? And so it kind of caused me to start just writing out and sharing out everything that I had learned. I wrote a blog for a number of years that really I just highlighted as I learned things, whereas new research came out, I was just sharing it to try to, you know, create an assortment of the information and data that was available as we found it and as we as we built it.

PHIL   12:47 
You were, way back then, following the science. Not just anecdotal examples of here's how things are safer or here is how these rules are misguided. What was the response you got from sharing the science that you were following?

BRENT  13:06 
You know, I think it was overwhelmingly positive. People were really hungry for the information because they were dealing with similar types of discrimination in their own community. And so they were like, really excited for the most part of the information that we are sharing and making it easy for people to read and understand and interpret some of it. Some of it can get a little scientific jargony. Some of it can be very research and statistical driven. And so some of my background's in research and statistics, because I was an advertising before all this and was doing a lot of advertising and marketing research type projects. And so I was able to do some good interpretation, I think of that. And so I think it was generally well received. There are obviously a few folks who had a different agenda that wasn't science based that wrote some pretty mean and hateful things about me over the years, but...

PHIL   13:53 
Pretty much the definition of a hot button topic.

BRENT  13:56 
Exactly! But you know, it was all fine. The, you know, the majority of the — it was good and and well received.

PHIL   14:03 
What was the next step, then?

BRENT  14:07 
You know, it became one of those things as, you know, as animal welfare goes, it's like an onion, and you have this outer layer that we all start somewhere on that outer layer. It's different for each of us. But then as you peel it back, it becomes a lot more challenging. There becomes a lot of different levels of it. And so, you know, through some of the advocacy that we were seeing on pit bulls, we also were seeing a lot of the same issues as regarding community cats. And so we became interested in community cat issue. We also found out that it's more than just laws. So there are certain policies that are in play that aren't really written anywhere. It's just things that people do and follow. So for instance, at the time, well, maybe two years later, there was another dog that had been hit by a car and was on the side of the road and a friend of mine called me up and said "Hey, like, there's this dog. And she's been hit by a car is on the side of the road. She's a pitbull, and I know that you liked pit bulls. Would you be willing to help her?" And I was like, "Well, why don't you take her to the shelter? And maybe they'll be able to help her out." And this is probably 2007. And she's like, "Oh, I can't take 'em there. Like, she'll be euthanized, instantly there." And I was like, "Well, what do you mean? Why would the shelter not help her." And so I became aware of the fact that number one, like the shelter at the time, like in the Kansas City, Missouri, shelter 2007, their policy was that if a pit bull came in the shelter that they would never make an attempt to adopt it out. If it was a pit bull with a broken leg, it had to whammies against it. And it's like, there was zero chance she was going to make it out alive. And so we rehabbed her. She's still with us as a 15 year old pup now.

PHIL   15:49 
It's amazing.

BRENT  15:41 
So like, she's like the last part of like, my tie to those old days on it. But I became aware through all of that of like the challenges that shelters had and shelters weren't what I thought an animal shelter was, or at least not all of them were. And so I became more aware of the challenges that municipal shelters were dealing with and how many of them — Kansas City, Missouri at the time was very much so — reluctant to changing how they would go about fixing their animal control problem and fixing their sheltering problem. And you know, that the common motto was that there weren't enough people that wanted to adopt pets. And so they had no choice other than to kill the animals that were coming in there. And I didn't think that was true. And so it...

PHIL   16:23 
It goes back to you're looking at the data.

BRENT  16:26 
Yes.

PHIL   16:27 
So anecdotally, they are saying, "Yeah, we don't have people coming in to adopt." And I can attest to, at that time, it would almost be like, do you want to go buy a jacket at Target? Or do you want to go to the scariest, most rundown flea market you've ever seen?

Yeah.

And then the people running a flea market say, "Yeah, people don't want to buy jackets. Nobody wants a jacket."

BRENT  16:58 
Well, and remember, so my background's in marketing and advertising. And so my thing was like, "Well, what are you doing to tell people that they need to come to adopt, like, what marketing things you're you're doing to attract people?" And, and the answer was at the time, "Nothing." Like, they would, you know, you could barely find the shelter location tucked back behind the Sports Complex. They weren't doing any marketing and advertising. You never heard anything about it. And when you did, it was about how terrible things were.

PHIL   17:22 
They lacked the will and the resources.

BRENT  17:24 
Yeah. And so it just became one of those things that's like, "Well, okay, there are a lot of challenges and barriers, like, let's fix those things." And so there were a lot of conversations with different city council members and a lot of folks at the shelter and, you know, the folks that were running the shelter 2007 2008, which was still the city, didn't have a lot of desire to — there were a few of them there that had a desire to fix things, but not really the resources and they weren't really empowered to fix things. And so it's like, "So how do we fix this?" Like, I didn't want to live in a city that as a matter of policy killed every pit bull that came into it without any effort to try to adopt it out if like if Missouri Pit Bull Rescue didn't pull the dog out of the shelter, that it didn't have a chance. And that didn't seem like the type of city that I wanted to live in. And so I looked for ways to fixing that.

PHIL   17:52 
And fix it you did. KC Pet Project — which you are a co-founder of — is a shining example of what can be done with the will and with the resources. That to stick with, we're just going to exhaust, every analogy we come up with, we're gonna run it into the ground. I would think any manager of a Target store would be proud of the KC Pet Project Animal Campus. That they would walk into it and say, "This is how I would want to run my Target. People would come here to buy their jackets and whatever else you might buy at Target." And that was a long road because for a long time, even after we had KC Pet Project, they were still in the facility you described behind the Sports Complex, with some annex sites like what they have it Zona Rosa, which was a very nice space. But you don't get to the space they have now without taking a lot of steps on the way. You don't just one day wake up and go, "We're gonna have this big, beautiful campus with clean kennels, and comfortable lighting, and a nice retail area and state of the art veterinary facility." That doesn't happen overnight.

BRENT  19:24 
No. And so and to  tell you just how much it doesn't happen overnight. So most people aren't aware that there was a proposal on the table back in 2009 to build a new animal shelter back in 2009. And I was attending a city council meeting where they were talking about spending the money to do this. And I'm glad they didn't because it was going to be basically a larger version of the same crappy design that the old one was because that's what 2009 shelters look like.

PHIL   19:51 
And to interject, the shelter they have now is so rare that...

BRENT  19:56 
Yes.

PHIL   19:58 
...the team that helped design it really was starting from scratch because so many animal shelters are repurposed buildings.

BRENT  20:08 
Yep.

PHIL   20:09 
And even if they're the first tenant of it, it's based on, "Well, there's this prefab we can do. Or there's this architectural blueprint we can use that is a barn or a big shed or a Quonset that we can use for an animal shelter," without any regard for what is going to make these animals most presentable. What's going to make it easy to clean and what's going to offer the least amount of stress for cats, dogs and other animals that might be housed in this facility. And so even if you have the money, you still have to figure out the best way to spend it. And if you're not there yet, let's hold on to the money.

BRENT  20:47 
Yeah. And so, first and foremost, like shelters in the old model were designed around housing animals for the shortest amount of time before they eventually ended up being euthanized in the back room. And that model's thankfully changed and we're now putting more emphasis in shelter design around the visitor experience and the adopter experience and making that a more enjoyable thing. And a pleasantry as opposed to something that people like would have to like hold the nose before they walked in the room of how things smelled and whatever. But in 2009, even when they were talking about doing that, like, one the city council people was, 'Why do we need to do this? They're just going to kill them all anyway." And like, that was like, one of those things, it hurts you to your core. Because I couldn't say, "No, you're wrong." Like that was absolutely true at the time. And so a lot of things needed to be fixed so that people can believe in what was possible. And so...

PHIL   21:39 
And the mindset did not exist at that time to say, "Well, wait a minute. That's a problem, too. Why don't we fix that problem?"

BRENT  21:48 
Yes. And so like to then you start having to get people to believe in what's possible and what could be this different than than what currently is. And so there were many of us that worked with city councils over the years to then try to like, "Okay, well, if the city is not going to fund this and fund a well run operation, and they're not going to dedicate the resources to it, and they're not going to hire better management for it. Like, let's look into the option of privatizing this." And I was really naive at the time. I thought if this were to become privatized that the large not-for-profit groups that existed at the time would jump at the opportunity to save these animals' lives. But the reality was even for them, they were looking at a very low budget, a very crappy building, and a lot of animals that were coming into it that you didn't control who came in and who didn't. And they were like, this doesn't even feel solvable for them. And so...

PHIL   22:43 
It's just throwing good money after bad. We're just going to operate here at the margins where we can see some results. But the big issue, that ship has sailed, there's nothing we can do.

BRENT  22:53 
Exactly. And so, you know, after one failed — shouldn't say failed, it was better. At one attempt at privatizing that went for a couple of years that was rocky but it was an improvement, they decided to do another RFP for another contractor to run the shelter. And at that point, there were no bids on the second go around of it. So the city extended it for three weeks to try to solicit some bids. And it was at that point in time that my wife and I were like, "We can't let this go back to the city, this may be our last chance of this ever getting resolved." And we were looking for somebody who might do this. And everybody we talked to is like, "Well, why don't you all do it?" And I was like, "Well, I don't know what I'm doing." And so...

PHIL   23:37 
Which you didn't, but what was in your favor is there was no one else who knew what they were doing, either. You were and it's not like, "I don't want to reinvent the wheel." Well, the wheel doesn't exist, someone has to invent the wheel.

BRENT  23:51 
And we also have the advantage of like, we didn't really have a reputation. Like some of the other existing organizations had a reputation that could be spoiled. I didn't have a reputation.

PHIL   23:59 
Yeah. Nothin' to lose.

BRENT  24:00 
And and so my wife and I and a couple other people basically ended up submitting the bid for it, to form KC Pet Project to take over the shelter operations. And I'll be honest, like, if it weren't for her, it never would have happened. I was just like, "What are we doing? We're crazy." And, and my wife's like, "You know, we can't do worse." And I we and she's like, ""What we don't know, we'll figure out." And so that's what we went in with the mindset of what we don't know, we'll figure out in the process of it. And we'll just work our way to a successful thing. And, you know, we hired really good people along the way and some people with some different backgrounds that were able to lead to a lot of the success there. But it was definitely a challenge and one that I'm probably not sure I would ever want to do again but I'm glad that we did it. Because KC Pet Project started in January 1, 2012. And now that we're nine years removed from that starting I think a lot of people forget about what it used to be like. And I think that's a good thing to a degree because I don't want people to ever think that that was ever acceptable what was going on before we were saving lives there. But I think it's also easy to take for granted. Because there are a lot of cities that aren't that lucky, even still.

PHIL   25:12 
One would hope that people who are interacting with KC Pet Project in Kansas City, who take it for granted, when they go to another municipality, as a child, they grow up and move to somewhere else in the country, or they relocate and see someplace that operates with that old model. You'll realize it doesn't have to be this way. Kansas City figured it out. Austin figured it out. We can figure it out here in fill in the blank.

BRENT  25:43 
Exactly. And I think that's starting to happen. I think now that more and more communities have done that. And Kansas City was really pretty far ahead in this movement of changing things, you know, a decade ago. You know, because at the time, like the places that were successful were places like Austin and places like Portland, which are these really progressive cities. And people were like, "Well, it's not like that here." And Kansas City I think people looked at was like, "This is kind of an every man city." Like it's not this ultra liberal place with a lot of money and a lot of resources is just kind of like an everywhere part of the country. And they're like, "If they can deal with it, we can." And so I think we inspired a lot of people to improve and do better. And so we're starting to see that on a national basis. And just like there are a lot of people that are coming along.There's still some laggards. But there are a lot of people that are coming along. And we've seen a lot of improvement in the last, you know, just even five years.

PHIL   26:35 
I can't tell you how grateful I am for the work you've done with KC Pet Project and Dog Words is presented by Rosie Fund and Rosie was the inspiration for Rosie Fund. Were it not for KC Pet Project, not only would we have not had her, neither would anyone else. That she was a senior, heart worm positive, anti-social pit bull. So...

BRENT  26:59 
Yep. And that was a big part of like, in my heart of hearts. Like one of the reasons like I, I have a passion for dogs like Rosie and I remember meeting Rosie down at the shelter...

PHIL   27:02 
Oh, bless you.

BRENT  27:07 
...when she was there. And, and so...

PHIL   27:14 
She was a staff favorite, because she was awful in the shelter. You knew she was going to be challenged for getting adopted. But, but every person who took her for a walk, fell in love with her.

BRENT  27:26 
Yep.

PHIL   27:26 
Once you got outside of the building.

BRENT  27:29 
And those are the types of dogs I felt like I wanted to give a chance. And that we wanted to give a chance to everything. And so it was because of that and just knowing that when dogs like Rosie get a chance that they are able to thrive in a lot of cases. And they not only is it thriving for them, but their families get a lot of that benefit and enrichment of that love, too, from I swear that the dogs that the have the hardest go at it before they get into a shelter end up returning that love back when they end up in the home and what so many cases...

PHIL   27:59 
Oh, she absolutely made our lives better.

BRENT  28:02 
That's awesome. Yeah.

PHIL   28:04 
You're with Best Friends Animal Society. And your motto is similar to ours. Ours is "We save each other" and yours is "Save them all." And if we save them all, the benefit of that, obviously is those dogs get saved. But what is not to be overlooked is the lives of so many people that is improved, is saved, is manifested in such a positive way by having that pet, not just dogs, but whatever pet is saved in their lives.

BRENT  28:40 
And it's not just the adopters. Like, we instantly go to adopters, too, but through the time at Best Friends, like, we work with a lot of shelters and there are a lot of compassionate people that work in the shelters that just are stuck for whatever reason. And so either they don't have the resources. They don't truly understand the programs that will help them save lives. They don't have the community support for the programs. They don't have leadership support for the programs. But they're there every day because they want to help animals. They want to save animals lives. And so it's heartbreaking for them to be in shelter environments where a lot of the animals don't make it out alive. And it's helping those people, too, because then how do they get that work fulfillment when they're in such a heartbreaking place? And so you're like you're saving those people as well.

PHIL   29:24 
Yeah, I tip my hat to everyone who is either a volunteer or a staff member at these shelters. Because the time we spend volunteering in the shelter, you fall in love with every dog. And we're there for a couple hours a week.

BRENT  29:40 
Yeah.

PHIL   29:41 
And if you're there for 20 hours part time staff or 40 or more as full time staff and you're seeing a dog that you know would thrive in the right home that just sits there day after day because it's just not what people are looking for. Or someone who is looking for it just isn't seeing it or they're not coming to your shelter. To have the patience to stick with it.

BRENT  30:08 
Yeah.

PHIL   30:09 
It's ultimately rewarding when you see that dog go out the door.

BRENT  30:13 
Yeah, it totally it is. And, you know, one of the things that happened with, you know, just how I got involved with Best Friends on this is, through some of the work that we've done at KC Pet Project, Best Friends has a national conference and they're always looking for new and emerging leaders to present it that and so we presented for several years at the Best Friends Conference on the work that was going on in Kansas City because they wanted other people to learn and be inspired by the work that we're doing. But in 2016, Best Friends at their national conference that now CEO Julie Castle put her stake in the ground and said that Best Friends is going to work with every shelter in the country to get every shelter and every community in the country to no-kill by 2025. And I was sitting in the crowd that day not working for best Friends. Still on the board of directors with KC Pet Project. I was like, "That's crazy." Like, I don't know how they plan — Like, it just seems so far away four years ago of what they were doing.

PHIL   31:10 
You were the same people who are sitting in the city council meeting, when you are presenting...

BRENT  31:15 
Yeah.

PHIL   31:16 
saying, "This guy is crazy!"

BRENT  31:18 
Exactly.

PHIL   31:19 
"That's not possible!"

BRENT  31:21 
And I was like, "Why are you putting your reputation on the line for this? Like, how do you expect to do this?" And so I asked her in the follow up of like, "How do you plan to do this?" And she's like, "We're not sure. But we know it needs to happen." And so she and I started talking, and it's like, through the time at KC Pet Project, and people hearing our story and seeing what we're doing, seeing us at conferences, like I literally get at least one phone call, and sometimes two or three a week, from shelter directors, that are like, "My community's telling us we need to do better, but I don't know how. How did you do it? And help us out." And so it was becoming one of those things where it's almost a full time job of just helping other people out because you want to help them because they have their hearts in the right place without the ability and bandwidth to be able to do it. And so through the course of my conversation with Julie it was like, that's really what I feel like the need is, is like there are plenty of people out there telling shelter directors they should be doing better. No one helping them do better. And so I thought if Best Friends could put themselves in a situation that was helping shelters do better than that would be their track record to success. And six months later, I signed up to be one of the first people to join the team that was going to be able to do that. Because it was like, that's really what I felt the need was and really helping people was, I felt like the next step for me. And it was really exciting just to see that as a national movement take place so that just like the people who like felt like it was hopeless in Kansas City 12 years ago when we were fighting that good fight, there's still people that feel that hopelessness now. And it's like if you can give them hope and give them direction so they can drive that forward. It's such a rewarding and powerful experience. And we're making so much progress on the national level doing it that way.

PHIL   33:05 
A theme that seems consistent in what you've shared about KC Pet Project founding, and with this step that's being taken by Best Friends Animal Society — and that has come up with many of our guests who've started organizations — is that people have a very real connection with the problem, which was not the case with pit bull ban. The people who were instituting the bands, making those rules, didn't have a real connection with the problem. They just had someone come to them and say, "We gotta do something." And so, "We'll, we're gonna pass a law."

BRENT  33:42 
Uh huh.

PHIL   33:43 
Whereas yourself, other people on the board of Best Friends Animal Society, they had first hand experience with the problem. So it's interesting to me that the people who don't have the first hand experience with the problem immediately come up with a solution. And it's a bad one. People have the first hand experience with the problem have no idea what the solution is. Because they know the realities of the problem and know that it doesn't have a simple solution. That you can't get pass a law and fix it. Yet, they still take a step toward finding a solution. This should be the motto of pretty much every advocacy group, which is what you said earlier, "We couldn't do worse."

BRENT  34:30 
Yeah, and...

PHIL   34:30 
And then take that first step. It's like, "We can't do worse." So let's let's figure something out. Let's try. Maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't. But even if it doesn't, then we'll know what doesn't work. And we can try something else.

BRENT  34:42 
Yeah, it's really starting with that problem and working to finding a solution and you don't get it right the first time. And I think being okay with the fact that sometimes you're gonna make mistakes. That's all right. That's just another part of the learning curve is like, let's not do it that way again, and you can continue to move forward, but I think it's that dedication toward solving a very real problem that allows us to get to a part where you can have meaningful solutions to things.

PHIL   35:07 
I've given credit where credit is due to Kansas City and other municipalities that have taken the right step. And I don't mean to diminish the efforts of people who've made those attempts in other cities and failed, because that fits with what we're talking about is someone's going to fail. But if you have enough people trying, someone's going to find something that works that we can use as a model elsewhere. But if you just have one person try and it doesn't work, well, then we're sunk. You have to have enough people trying that somebody hits on a workable solution. And then you have something you can replicate.

BRENT  35:44 
Well, and I think that hits on one of the core things that what we're finding in our national work on this. So you know, we are working with shelters from around the country to help them get to no-kill or a 90% save rate for again, every shelter, every community in the entire country. And so we're working with communities of all sizes. And I think the one thing that can be a hurdle for people is they try to solve the problem on their own. So they they see that the fact that I don't know, we'll make this up basically are saying that 50% of animals that are coming into the shelter are dying. And people don't want to be honest about that because they're ashamed of that information. And so they're trying to solve it but they're not telling the community that there's a problem because they're afraid that community will turn on them. And what we're really trying to work with people to do, and it's one of the things that I felt like we did very well in the early days of Kansas City pet project was like, we were very open about what the problem was. We told everybody like, "Here's the problem. This is what we're wanting to do. We need your help, like, we need you to come out here and adopt some animals, we need you to come volunteer. And oh, by the way, like our city funding is about a quarter of what we really need to do the work and so some money would be great, too." So what happened with KC Pet Project was more than just a handful of people who are really dedicated to solving the problem that we were able to bring on board. It was also bringing in community members like yourself who were able to come in and be part of the solution through their volunteer work and through their adoption of a challenged dog. And that part of it I think is often missing is shelters get really scared of their community. And it's like it really does need to be the community that's a part of solving this problem. And KC Pet Project would not have been successful if the community hadn't supported them. No shelter out there would have been successful if the community hadn't supported them. And so that part of it, I think, is really, really important of getting more people to the table because a lot of hands make light work.

PHIL   37:39 
A couple weeks ago, we had April Moore, who is the director of Animal Services for Kansas City, Missouri. She came from Austin, and she was an animal control officer before they were a no kill city. And she freely admits that she wasn't there on her path yet, when she started. It's not like, "I'm becoming an animal control officer to fix what's wrong with this system." It was, "I want to work with animals. I'm an animal control officer. And this is what we do." And it wasn't until their leadership and the community worked together to open people's minds to the possibility that there's a better way to do this. And the community worked together, and their people inside and outside of the department to make that transformational, profoundly transformational change. Now she's part of that in Kansas City leading what was once an animal control municipality as an animal services municipality. How can we keep an animal with its owner when the owner wants to keep it, wants to care for it but perhaps doesn't know the rules? Or doesn't have the resources they need? Well, how can we get them the education they need? How can we get them the resources they need rather than just take an animal away or writing a citation?

BRENT  38:54 
For a long time, shelters and shelter leadership were in the situation where because they were on their own, they were at their shelters and they were seeing the volume of animals coming in and it was really easy to be like, "None of these animals would be here if the public were more responsible and able to take care of those animals." And it created this divide between communities and animal sheltering organizations, animal control organizations, to where there was kind of this friction part of it. And I think one of the things that has happened as we started embracing more of members of the public to adopt and to volunteer, we see how much support there are for animals in the community. And it makes it easier for us to understand that even if somebody isn't doing everything 100% the way we would love them to from a care for their animals perspective, most people really do mean well and there is this other barrier, whether it be finances or knowledge or information, or access to information that's keeping them from getting there. And I think as we started approaching the field services and animal control that way is really having an impact of how that bond between the people and their pets is being observed and maintained out in the community versus like, "Oh, you're not caring for your pet, we'll take it and bring it into the shelter." Where also, by the way, we traditionally weren't caring for those pets very well, either. And so when we care for the pets in our shelters it gives us more credibility for the fact that we can also be a resource to you and the community to how to better care for your pet. Because we are approaching this situation as a, we hope. And we'll start with an understanding that you probably want what's best for your pet. And let's help you bridge whatever gaps that you have. And so it's really exciting to see Kansas City as a community start moving that direction from a field services perspective as well. That's been a long time coming.

PHIL   40:48 
And that is highlighted by the story you shared earlier of the acquaintance who saw the dog by the side of the road. "I'm not taking it to animal control, they're gonna kill it."

BRENT  41:00 
Exactly.

PHIL   41:01 
That's the pet owner who recognizes perhaps that, "I need help caring for this animal. It's injured. Or it's behaving in an anti-social way and I don't know how to train it. Or I can't afford a fence so I'm just going to chain it in my backyard." They're not going to seek help. If they're afraid, you're probably going to take this dog away from me and then you're probably going to kill it.

BRENT  41:23 
And you're probably going to make me pay.

PHIL   41:25 
Yeah.

BRENT  41:25 
And issue a citation for the opportunity for you to do that.

PHIL   41:27 
Yeah. I'm gonna have to spend a couple $100 for you to take my dog away and kill it. I'll just keep limping along with neglect of my dog, but doing the best I can, rather than that option.

BRENT  41:40 
A hundred percent. I think we, for too long expected everybody in the community to know everything there was to know about keeping their pets. And the reality is like, "No, we're the professionals in animal welfare in our community. It is our job to help them. If they're not there yet, what do we need to do to help them get there?" And so that mindset of this shift from this positive help and support for people as opposed to the punitive, "Let's see how many tickets we can write. How many animals we can seize and bring to the shelters." is a really positive step, both in Kansas City and across the country.

PHIL   42:14 
So what is next for Best Friends Animal Society? How are they progressing towards that stake in the ground?

BRENT  42:21 
Yeah, so when we first started like, and this is what's crazy, is in 2016, we really were kind of guessing at how many animals were even dying in shelters that were needing to be saved. And so the first project we did was start grabbing as much data as we possibly can to figure out like, what was the size of the gap, and at that time, it was about 1.7 million animals that were unnecessarily dying in shelters. So that was the gap between where we were in every shelter in the country having a 90% save rate. Through the course of the last four years — So I don't have 2020 data. And we're going to be finalizing that and releasing that in June. I'll have access to it probably in mid-May. But from where we were in 2019, it was 625,000. Which is still a lot but it's like we solved 58% of that gap in the first four years of information. Last year will be even better. A lot of shelters were closed down to to COVID. We know that intake was down probably about 20% nationwide with some pretty significant regional variations on that. And so we expect a pretty sizable drop on that 625,000 number for 2020. And so you know, it's it's moving the right direction. It's moving really quickly. And I think the exciting part for us is not only are more people continuing to raise their hands and say like, "You know what? Help me now. I'm ready." People who were resistant, even three, four years ago to getting that help and support or municipal leadership saying, "You know, like we're seeing that we're falling behind." And so they're raising their hands for help. We're also seeing a lot more organizations out there that are saying, "Well, we've solved the problem in our community, or at least we solved a big chunk of the problem in our community. How can we help?" And so where there weren't very many organizations in 2012 that were really in a great situation to help Kansas City Pet Project, there are a lot more organizations like KC Pet Project that can help others now. And we're starting to see that and so we're starting to see this kind of like a snowball rolling down the mountain and picking up steam as it goes and picking up more snow. That it's really heading the right direction. So a lot of work to do. 625,000 animals is still a lot of animals that are dying every day in shelters that are saveable. But it's definitely trending in a positive direction. It's trending there quickly.

PHIL   44:36 
No one can deny proof of concept, certainly. And also that any place that has instituted a no-kill policy is not just some one off that is a unicorn. "Well, things are unique here. They were able to do something we can't do." No. It's being done in enough places that there's a template for every situation, whether it's high population densities like, "No, we have too many animals." Or, "No, it's low population density. We're too spread out." There's all kinds of reasons that people can get from this is why it won't work here. None of those hold water anymore.

BRENT  45:11 
No, and they don't. And we're seeing that across the country. Like, there's still some regional challenges. I'm not gonna lie. Particularly down in the south, I think you have a lot of high intake per capita type numbers. And so those shelters need a lot more support in a lot of cases. But even a lot of those like the city of El Paso is added like an 88% save rate right now. And you know, El Paso is a huge metropolitan city with a lot of people that are socially vulnerable, and yet, and they have a really high intake per capita, and they're still able to get it done by embracing their community and making that progress forward. Yes, a big uphill climb for them. Think about they're taking in 30,000 animals a year. So it's a big uphill climb, but...

PHIL   45:52 
Which is about three times what Kansas City does.

BRENT  45:54 
Yes, about three times what Kansas City does. That's a huge shelter system. But even just last week, we officially announced that the city of Los Angeles achieved a 90% save rate last year, and that's the second largest shelter system in the country. Was taking in 54,000 animals a year in that shelter system and they're right there. The city of Dallas took in 40,000 animals in 2019. And they're at like 90% save rate. So it can happen in these huge, huge places where the volume of animals is almost hard to get your arms around, and they're still making it happen. So it's really cool.

PHIL   46:29 
Is Best Friends Animal Society an organization that people can participate in in any way? Or are you just a advocacy group that is not seeking funding or support? I'd like to know more about that.

BRENT  46:46 
Yeah, so Best Friends, we have a staff of about 700 employees across the nation. So we're a really large national organization. We operate the largest no kill sanctuary in the country in southern Utah in Kanab, Utah, where we have about 1200 animals that are hanging out at the sanctuary out there in a just beautiful environment. But then we also run life saving centers in Los Angeles, in Salt Lake City, in Atlanta, Houston, Northwest Arkansas, and New York. So we have those things going on. And then we have our team of folks who are out working on legislative policy to help make policies that are better for people and pets. Breed discrimination is a huge one for us, is something that we work to fight against. And then we also have the teams that are working day in day out with shelters that are trying to help them out. And so we do have volunteers, particularly in all of our centers. But also we have a national volunteers program. We also rely very heavily on revenue from donations. But one of the best things people can do if that all feels unattainable for them or too large to get their hands around, we also recommend people get involved in their local shelters and become a part of that life saving solution in their own community if their community hasn't solved it, yet. Because it's going to take people in those communities to support those folks, as well, that are trying to get there. And so it's, "Help us or help someone!" is what we always try to get people to do and if it makes more sense to be on the ground and then be on the ground and help your local shelter.

PHIL   48:17 
Yes, keep moving forward. As most animal lovers probably have watched Finding Nemo, just keep swimming, keep swimming, keep swimming. I will have links to lots of things in the description for this episode. Certainly the interviews that we've referenced in our discussion. I will have a link to KC Pet Project, of course, I will have a link to Best Friends, Animal Society and also your social media. I got distracted there because I was looking at what social media do you have and you've got pretty much everything. So Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube.

BRENT  48:54 
LinkedIn.

PHIL   48:54 
LinkedIn, as I remind people almost every week, we love donations, whether it's Rosie Fund or Best Friends. But it's also very valuable if you follow an organization. So if you want to write a check to Best Friends, and that's your budget, and you can't write a check to Rosie Fund, we understand. But you can follow Best Friends. You can follow Rosie Fund. You can follow KC Pet Project. Lucky 13 Rescue and all the other wonderful groups that we've had on. Moxie's Mission. And that costs you nothing. But it is of great value to the organization because then we can demonstrate to other groups, to corporate sponsors, that we have this following. We have this number of downloads. We have this number of likes. So like, share, download, friend, all the different nomenclature for participating in all the different social networks, that has value. We appreciate it so much when you do.

BRENT  49:57 
And, and share. You know, I think especially in the pet space it's easy to see all the pets that are available for adoption at a shelter, like, share them out to your friends. Or if you see one that you think somebody might be interested in, share it out. That ability for individuals to amplify the voice is really key in a lot of cases.

PHIL   50:15 
It happens more often than not that the dogs that are featured by Rosie Fund don't get adopted by anybody following us. They get adopted by somebody who had a friend send them the link to the YouTube video because they knew they're looking for a dog like that.

BRENT  50:31 
Exactly.

PHIL   50:32 
So share, share, share. Which again, costs you nothing.

BRENT  50:37 
Yep, exactly. It's an easy way to help support.

PHIL   50:42 
Brent Toellner of Best Friends Animal Society, thank you so much for being generous with your time not only in doing this interview but in the work you've done over the years, and especially with KC Pet Project and for continuing to do that work. I don't know if my microphone is picking this up but Peaches is in the next room, sharing her thoughts on someone who's taking their dog for a walk. So I guess maybe it's time for me to do the same for Peaches, even though she's already had one today. Brent, thank you again.

BRENT  51:14 
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity to chat a little bit about the work that we're doing.

PHIL   51:22 
I'm Phil Hatterman and you've been listening to Dog Words presented by Rosie Fund.

Thank you to Brent Toellner, Senior Director of National Programs at Best Friends Animal Society for joining us today. The description has links for Best Friends and their network that provides tools and resources for animal welfare organizations across the country, including public and private shelters, rescue groups, and spay/neuter organizations. Please follow Best friends on social media to help increase their exposure. And of course, do the same for Rosie Fund and the many guests we've featured on Dog Words. There are also links to the Dog Words episodes we referenced in today's interview. If you find an old episode you like, be sure to share it with your friends.

It's not too late to enroll in classes taught by animal behaviorist, researcher, and Dog Words guest Dr. Ellen Furlong. Links to both her credit classes at Illinois Wesleyan University and community education class at Heartland Community College are linked in the description. I'm already signed up for the latter which only costs $45. It took just a couple of minutes to create an account with the college and get registered.

Next time on Dog Words, attorney Tricia Lincoln covers the hows and whys of making sure our beloved pets are taken care of if something happens to us.

A big thank you to alternative string dual The Wires featuring cellist Sascha Groshang and violinist Laurel Morgan Parks for playing the wonderful music you've heard on today's and previous episodes of Dog Words. Supporting The Wires supports our mission. Learn more about The Wires at TheWires.info and download their music on iTunes. Check out FiddleLife.com and learn to play fiddle and cello-fiddle online from Laurel and Sasha even if you've never played before.

Celebrate five years of Rosie Fund by supporting our campaign to sponsor 50 dogs. You can donate on our website, our Facebook page, or by buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com. Links are in the description. As always, please download, follow, rate, and share Dog Words. This helps us with sponsorships then Rosie Fund can help more dogs. Support Rosie Fund by following us on social media and please subscribe to the free Rosie Fund YouTube channel. Send us your comments, questions and suggestions at Rosie fund.org. And let us know if you would like to be a sponsor of the Dog Words podcast.

Thank you for listening and remember, we save each other.

DISCLAIMER: This document is a transcription obtained through a third party. There is no claim to accuracy on the content provided in this document and divergence from the audio file is to be expected. Some content may be omitted, particularly when there is crosstalk.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai