0231: Dr. Kelly Diehl from the Morris Animal Foundation

Senior Director of Science & Communications Dr. Kelly Diehl joins us from the Morris Animal Foundation to talk about funding animal health research.

Contribute to the Denali Double Dog Dare Challenge for National Dog Day.

Morris Animal Foundation online:
MorrisAnimalFoundation.org
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Instagram

From the Dog Words archives:
0130: Harrowing Tale of Parvovirus with Jesse Shroyer
0119: Dogs and Drug Development with Dr. Laura Treml

Celebrate 5 years of Rosie Fund by supporting our campaign to sponsor 50 dogs. You can donate at RosieFund.org or through our Facebook page. You can contribute by making a purchase from the store on our website or buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com. Also check out our page on BarkYours, the online mall with gifts for people who love their dogs.

Music for this episode is provided by alternative string duo, The Wires. Visit them at TheWires.info. Learn fiddle and cello-fiddle online — even if you've never played before — from Laurel Morgan Parks and Sascha Groshang at FiddleLife.com. Join The Wires as they explore new music on their show Sound Currents.

The transcript for this episode is available on the Dog Words Buzzsprout page: Buzzsprout.com/840565.

Make a donation at RosieFund.org or through our Facebook page. You can contribute by making a purchase from the store on our website or buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com. Also check out our page on BarkYours, the online mall with gifts for people who love their dogs.

Rosie Fund online:
RosieFund.org
Facebook.com/rosiefund
Instagram.com/rosiefund
YouTube.com/rosiefund

Transcript

DR. DIEHL  0:03 
Dogs are living longer, and then you have all these other sorts of diseases. So we got a good grip, I think, on the infectious diseases that used to kill a lot of dogs like distemper and rabies and Parvovirus.

PHIL   0:19 
I'm Phil Hatterman and this is Dog Words presented by Rosie Fund.

Today, Senior Director of Science and Communications. Dr. Kelly Diehl joins us from the Morris Animal Foundation to talk about funding animal health research and where that research is focused as our domestic animals are living longer.

If you're new to Dog Words, 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. Please download, follow, rate, and most importantly, share Dog Words.

Thank you to everyone who voted in the Best of KC poll and helped Dog Words become a runner up for Best Local Podcast. And congratulations to Things I Learned Last Night from Jaron Meyers and Tim Stone for winning Best Local Podcast.

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, buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com, or buying our notecards and shirts on BarkYours.com. Links are in the description. Your donations and purchases 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. 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 like the sweet KC Pet Project dog featured in our latest post.

Next time on Dog Words, Deidre Darling joins us from Pinups for Pitbulls to tell us how she combined two passions to help rescue dogs.

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. You thank you for joining our mission.

We welcome Dr. Kelly Diehl to Dog Words, Senior Director of science and communications with Morris Animal Foundation. Dr. Diehl, welcome to Dog Words.

DR. DIEHL  2:34 
Thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

PHIL   2:37 
Rosie Fund helps senior and harder-to-adopt dogs find their forever home. So we like to think we're making a difference in the lives of animals and their humans. So I think that is perfectly aligned with Morris Animal Foundation, because your tagline on your website says, "Make a difference in the lives of animals." So that's what we're trying to do. Obviously, that's what Morris Animal Foundation is trying to do. So tell us a little bit about Morris Animal Foundation.

DR. DIEHL  3:06 
Absolutely. Well, we're based here in Denver, Colorado, and we've been around — we're starting our 74th year, which is hard to believe. And we were started by a veterinarian who wanted to raise funds to support research to advance animal health.

PHIL   3:24 
Your role as Director of Science and Communication sounds like you have your plate full, that you're doing science and you're doing communication. So what is your primary responsibility with Morris Animal Foundation?

DR. DIEHL  3:36 
I'm a little jack-of-all-trades here. I think for those listeners who work in nonprofits or know anything about the nonprofit world, we wear a lot of different hats. By training I'm a veterinarian and I practiced here in the Denver area for just under 25 years before I joined Morris Animal Foundation. And I am actually a Morris Animal Foundation grant recipient, so I knew them really well. And I also when I was in practice, they were one of the go to organizations I used to make a donation for example, if a patient passed away of mine, so I knew them very well. And here at the organization now I do everything from like podcasts like this one, to writing for our quarterly newsletters to providing content for our website.

PHIL   4:26 
I'm glad you found time to do the interview. You're obviously very busy. So how does Morris Animal Foundation make a difference in animals lives?

DR. DIEHL  4:36 
Our mission statement says something about bridging resources and science and to kind of unpack that a bit. What we do is raise money. So most of our money comes from donors, individual donors, and we then solicit grant requests from people, seriously, all over the world in a variety of different funding buckets. And then we evaluate the grants for scientific rigor and innovation, and then award money to these grantees. Most of our grants come out of vetinary institutions, to be honest with you. So we do an awful lot of funding at vet schools around the world. But we've also we're giving grants to, for example, San Diego Zoo. We've worked with the Smithsonian. We've worked with the New England Aquarium. So we have other organizations that we also give grants to. And we have several different funding areas. We started with our first grant for canine health, actually. Went to feline. Then a few years later we added equine to the portfolio. Then wildlife. And then llamas and alpacas. So we have just a super broad portfolio of studies. And right now we have about 200, almost, running that we're working with individuals, again, around the world.

PHIL   5:57 
Could you give an example of some of the studies that either over the long history of Morris Foundation would be something to highlight or even something that's going on right now? Or maybe both?

DR. DIEHL  6:08 
Yeah, maybe both. One that I think for your listeners as dog lovers, is some work we did very early on when the first Parvovirus outbreak occurred in 1978. And for those of us I hate to say it, who remember when that happened, it was particularly devastating. Dogs were dying very quickly. No one knew why. It was a global, seriously, pandemic. We know that word only too well now. And we provided some of the early funding to Cornell University, who did a lot of the work in identifying, "Hey, this is a virus. Hey, this is a Parvovirus." And then went on to help develop the vaccine. And we were especially proud of being kind of there really early into that particular problem.

PHIL   6:56 
We had a guest on several months ago, Jesse Shroyer who's been on a couple of times, talking about a puppy that she was fostering that got Parvovirus and thankfully survived. But as you said, anyone who's had any experience with Parvovirus knows how devastating it could be. It's just mind boggling to me what that would have been like in 1978, when you don't know what it is. Because now when a puppy gets diagnosed with Parvovirus it's all hands on deck. Here's the protocol. Here's what we do. And you hope and pray that you can save that puppy. And that's knowing what you're dealing with. So in 1978, probably was pretty much a death sentence for any dog that got it.

DR. DIEHL  7:45 
Right, exactly. I think we all know now we have some rapid diagnostic tests that help us identify these puppies very quickly when they come in. We also have the advantage of several years knowledge in perfecting our treatment of these puppies versus back when this first happened. I mean, certainly people knew about and used IV fluid support. But I think all the things we have now, advanced antibiotics, blood products that we sometimes use with these pups, the precautions we take to keep the infection, right, from spreading.

PHIL   8:21 
Yes, just knowing how virulent the spread is of Parvovirus remaining in the soil and everywhere that dog has been. Knowing that now to help mitigate the spread of it.

DR. DIEHL  8:33 
Absolutely. I think not that, again, people didn't understand that at the time. But I think we didn't know right away how easy you could just carry it to another dog, right? And so the protocols we have now are much better. And it's still a big deal. Let's face it, we're still perfecting our treatment of this disease we've known about for a long time.

PHIL   8:57 
Everyone who has a dog should be grateful for that progress, because it could have wiped out the majority of the dog population had we not gotten a handle on it. So thank you for whatever contribution Morris Animal Foundation's made. Any other study you like to highlight?

DR. DIEHL  9:12 
I think what I would love to talk about is our latest gigantic study, which is the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. This is a project we started, hard to believe, 2012 we enrolled our first dogs but it was a few years even before that, that the concept was first developed. And what we're doing is following 3000 Golden Retrievers, hopefully through their entire lifetime. We're entering our 10th year, which is crazy. And we're looking primarily at the development of certain cancers. Because for those of us who know about Golden Retrievers, we know that they're a breed of dog that unfortunately has a very high incidence of cancer development. And about 60% of Golden's by some statistics I've seen, will actually die of cancer, that's what eventually they succumb to. And what we wanted to do is look very carefully at the entire lifetime of the dogs to see if we could tease out some potential risk factors, for example, for the development of cancer later in life. We're looking at the genetics of these dogs. We do everything from collect biologic samples to data points. And we estimate we'll have roughly 5 million points, whether that's a blood sample in a tube versus an answer to a question, by the time that the study is done.

PHIL   10:51 
It's one of the sort of challenges of owning a dog, loving a dog that they don't live as long as we do. But one of the theories is because it doesn't take them as long to become perfect. They don't need to spend as much time on this earth. But it does allow you to do a longitudinal study on a creature whose lifespan is 10 to 15 years.

DR. DIEHL  11:16 
Right. There are a bunch of advantages and both for the dog and perhaps for people, too. Right? Dogs are not rodents. They're actually a better model 'cause they go out and they live their lives and they naturally develop many of the diseases that people do without us artificially creating those diseases, which sometimes we have to do in rodent models. They also share our environment with us. They share our exposures much more than a laboratory animal. So they're a very good model, too, for certain cancers. Some cancers are really unique to dogs, or are much more common in dogs, but others are shared with us. And we have four main cancers, to be honest, that we're looking at with the Golden's. One is lymphoma, which is like non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in people. So that's a cancer that has some analogy to people. It's also the most common cancer of cats. So maybe what we learn here will also help kitties and other dog breeds. We're looking at hemangiosarcoma, which we know is a really horrible cancer. For dogs, it comes fast. It's almost universally fatal. Very few dogs survive it. It doesn't have a great human analogue. But of course, it's a very important disease of dogs. We're looking at osteosarcoma, which is bone cancer in dogs. Another very important and particularly deadly cancer of dogs. This particular cancer does have a analogy in people. And it's very similar to the type of bone cancers that adolescents get. So as they're getting big bones, this is the kids that are running down the soccer field, they're 15 years old, and they break a leg because they've got a bone tumor. And they're bad in kids, but they're very similar to what dogs have. So again, dogs, good models for kids. And the fourth cancer of interest is high grade mast cell tumors. Mast cell tumors are really common in dogs. They're the most common, probably the most common skin cancer and they come in low grade and high grade varieties and high grade are really bad, and spread very rapidly and again, are more of a dog concern. But we picked those four cancers because they're predominantly cancers that affect lots of different breeds of dogs. And you know, if we get some information that might help cats and people and other animals, good for us.

PHIL   13:47 
One of our first guests on Dog Words was Dr. Laura Treml. We discussed drug development in not only dogs, but just animals in general. And one of the topics we touched on is that this research often goes two ways. That you can be researching something for humans and either it works the same way in dogs or other animals or in the testing they stumble upon, "Well, this doesn't do anything for humans, but hey, here's what it does for dogs." And then the other direction is researching things in dogs. — and here's what you're talking about — that also has benefits for humans. I'm thrilled that we're helping dogs. But I'm just as thrilled that this does offer insight in treatments for people.

DR. DIEHL  14:31 
Right. And I think it's going to be an interesting study. As you mentioned, it's a longitudinal study. Those can take a long time. We know that in people, right, they had the Framingham Heart Study, which is what this one is based on, has been going on now for, holy cow, four, five generations in Framingham, Massachusetts. So since 1948. And they're definitely getting some answers. But we're hopeful that we can compress that time, right, with dogs. And especially if we can find some risk factors for cancer development. Boy, that would be a game changer.

PHIL   15:13 
You identified Golden Retrievers as being a breed that is known to be prone to cancer issues. Is there also an advantage in studying Golden Retrievers, or any specific breed in that it eliminates some of the variables that we know this about Golden Retrievers, as opposed to a population of dogs that are mutts, mixed breeds, and a variety of breeds and Chihuahuas to Great Danes? Does this help you sort of isolate variables?

DR. DIEHL  15:43 
Yeah, that's actually a very good point. And it's a benefit and sometimes a detriment to the study. It's a benefit because when we look at the genetics, right, we're going to be looking at a homogeneous population. They're all Golden Retrievers. So they're gonna share a lot of the same genetic background. So if we find something, "Hmm. This is a little different in this sub population over here," we're cutting out a lot of the background variability that we might see if we used a mixed breed population. That's the same criticism that people have, which is, "Okay, well, if yo u find this, is it going to be unique to Goldens? And that'll be a...

Yeah, and how does that help my Weimaraner.

Right, exactly. And that's a fair criticism. One thing that it allows us to do in the giant world of genetics is we know that our genetic background is enormous. It's billions, right, of base pairs and DNA. And if we find something in one breed, or even species, sometimes that helps us comb down for other breeds, right? 'Cause dogs, they're gonna have a lot of homology even between breeds and mixed breeds. So if we can cone down and say, "You know what, this area over here on chromosome two, go look at that in other breeds." That would save us some time. And sometimes that's how people worked before the costs went down of genetic analysis, to be honest with you. A lot of times what we learned in one breed or species, we just go, "Okay, well, let's go look over in the same space in this other species, and see if we can cone down on the time it'll take." But...

PHIL   17:22 
Yeah, just helping narrow down where to look.

DR. DIEHL  17:24 
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

PHIL   17:26 
That saves time. That saves money.

DR. DIEHL  17:28 
Right, exactly. So we're lucky right now, we are actually getting the entire genome. So that's the entire sequence of DNA done on all of our dogs through a grant from the V Foundation, if that sounds familiar it's a human Cancer Foundation.

PHIL   17:45 
Yes, Jimmy V.

DR. DIEHL  17:46 
And yeah, and they, oh, gosh, I guess it was summer of 2019. They always have a theme, and their theme that year was comparative oncology. So they were interested in helping fund studies using animals for cancer studies. And boy, we slipped right in there and said, "Hey, how about us?" And so they are graciously helping fund this huge project to get all the DNA. Once we've got that we're gonna share that information freely with researchers. So they will already have the sequences and then they can do all the fancy bioinformatic computational stuff, you know what I mean, to kind of cone down and we have all the data, of course, on, "Did this dog develop cancer? No, yes. How long did it live? Is it male? Is it female? Was it spayed? When was it spayed?" You know, we can provide that information. And then they can take it and run with it.

PHIL   18:40 
There's information or connections, a network of information, I guess, with Morris Animal Foundation going a variety of directions. That you have people wanting money, people giving money, volunteers who need subjects for studies, need people to do studies. Let's talk about applying for grants first. How do grant seekers find you?

DR. DIEHL  19:05 
This is an area that I think a lot of people who are in the academic world know all about us very well, 'cause we're one of the few sources of funding for veterinarians. And we put out calls on a routine basis every year, and we say, "Hey, we'll take all comers." Sometimes we'll kind of cone down and have an area of interest. For example, we did Australian bushfires a few years ago, and we had a special call, "Hey, we're interested in some studies, we've got this little pot of money and you know, apply for it." This year our wildlife call is going to be only coastal wetlands and any kind of problems that people want to solve coastal wetlands. But the bottom line is we put a call out through our networks, so veterinary schools and all kinds of organizations and through past research we kind of do the old fashioned email pass it along, too. And we then get all these proposals in. And typically, we average, let's say 200 per call, which is a lot. We sift through them. And then we convene an outside panel of experts that come together for a couple days. And they basically hash out all these proposals. They read them, they scrutinize them, and then they advise us via a ranking system. "Here's what we think you guys should fund." Part of the reason we do that is to have an outside objective viewpoint. So it's not always like, "Oh, this sounds cool to us." And we can't be experts in everything.

PHIL   20:46 
Or, "I went to grad school with her."

DR. DIEHL  20:48 
Right, exactly. So we have these outside people who come in and rank them for us. And then we try to put the puzzle together. How much money can we give out? Sometimes we have donors who are interested in a particular area. And we'll be like, "Oh, here's a grant they may be interested in." And we'll turn it over to them and say, "Would you like to sponsor this?" So we have individual donors, if they have enough money will sponsor. We fund most of it through me and my mom, and you know, average folks out there who send us money. That's how we can get most of our money.

PHIL   21:22 
That adds up.

DR. DIEHL  21:23 
And then we fund it. And we fund about anywhere between $500-750,000 a year per funding bucket. So that's cats, dogs, wildlife. So it's a typically $2-3 million that goes out the door every year that we commit to funding studies. And that's separate from the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, which costs us about $2 million a year to run. And we have to raise funds for that, too.

PHIL   21:48 
You just mentioned it's you, your friends and family making donations. What are the ways to give for our listeners who like what Morris Animal Foundation is doing?

DR. DIEHL  21:59 
Right. Well, we have a whole bunch of different ways. You can just send us a donation. And we have campaigns throughout the year. And those are probably our biggest sort of funding times. We have one going on right now for those of us who are sweltering in the heat, you know, it's the dog days of summer, and national Dog Day is August 26.

PHIL   22:19 
Perfect timing.

DR. DIEHL  22:20 
Right! So in the month of August, I think this is our fifth year, we have our National Dog Day campaign. We have the Denali Double Dog Dare Challenge this year, 'cause we have some folks from Alaska who have donated 75,000, they'll match up to 75,000. So we've got a nifty little match this year for our National Dog Day Campaign. But we also have monthly donors. We have people who have left us in their estate plans. We have folks who are very passionate maybe about a particular disease, and they can have what's called a donor inspired study. And they'll come to us and they'll say, "Look, I really — " We just did one on Newfoundlands. And the Newfoundland actually, national club, breed club came to us and said, "Can you help us find a good study?" And we put all that mechanism I just said in place, and we put the call out for them. We assembled the experts for them. They sit in. They hear the discussion. And then we help them pick a study. And we've done that for the American Heartworm Society. We've done it for the American German Shepherd Charitable Trust. So sometimes people come to us for our help. And we've also done it for individual people. We had one one time recently that they lost a dog to insulinoma, which is a really rare type of cancer. And they came to us and said, "Hey, can you help us find someone who might do research on this in memory of our dog." And it was called the Sherlock Study. So again, you can see there's a whole bunch of different ways, all of which you can find on our website.

PHIL   24:02 
that website, MorrisAnimalFoundation.org will be linked in the description of this episode. I've mentioned this countless times on Dog Words. It's not a competition when I ask for people to help support Rosie Fund, and then I have a guest on who also needs support, whether it's a rescue group or something like Morris Animal Foundation. You can donate to them. You can donate to us. You could donate to both. But just helping out with whatever support you can give is appreciated. And if it means that no one donates to Rosie Fund, because you're giving all your money to some other great cause that's fine with us. But I think a particular appeal of something like Morris Animal Foundation is just what you described, Dr. Diehl. Someone had an experience with what happened to their beloved pet and Rosie Fund's mission to help senior and harder-to-adopt dogs really doesn't resonate with them. If you have the resources to fund a study or to make a major contribution to a study, and it's something very specific, maybe it's something Morris Animal Foundation can start from scratch, like with the Newfies, or a study that's already underway. Don't waste your time on the internet trying to find that perfect study or rescue group. Go to Morris Animal Foundation. And they may already know that there's this study already being done.

DR. DIEHL  25:32 
Right, exactly. And I think, you know, putting funds into the system, as I see it, kind of raises all boats when people talk about that. And it's just one option among many. And I really applaud you for reminding people about that. It's just really important to support animal health. Because the funds don't come from anyplace else. It's really tight for people to find money to do all kinds of things to help animals.

PHIL   26:06 
So many dogs end up in shelters because of health issues. Families can't take care of them or give up on taking care of them. And senior and harder-to-adopt dogs, harder-to-adopt dogs, a lot of those are dogs with health issues. So if we can identify those health issues and ultimately keep those dogs from leaving their family.

DR. DIEHL  26:27 
Right, exactly. And we're doing this next year, I mentioned that sometimes we have a little theme or we're looking at particular focused areas, is we'll be looking at some senior dog issues, our golden retriever lifetime study, we have a nested study. So a study within the study, right? A little study that is looking at people, they're doing some extra work, the folks who are in the study on osteoarthritis, and canine cognitive dysfunction. So things that affect older dogs. And these folks have agreed to participate and do a little bit extra work with collecting some samples and answering some questions. And we're also going to be holding a blue ribbon panel looking at canine cognitive dysfunction. So again, sort of senior dog. I've heard people say doggy Alzheimer's. It's not quite like that. But it is like doggie dementia. And we're probably going to have a special call for studies focused just around that issue for our researchers to apply for next year.

PHIL   27:38 
It's a paradox with dog care, pet care that we're getting so much better at taking care of our animals, that they live long enough to get cancer and dementia.

DR. DIEHL  27:49 
Right, exactly. And osteoarthritis, which we know can really slow dogs down. And I in my practice career, I saw a huge shift over time, just as you mentioned, that dogs were living longer. And then you have all these other sort of diseases. So we got a good grip, I think, on the infectious diseases that used to kill a lot of dogs like distemper, and rabies, and Parvovirus and a whole bunch of others and then...

PHIL   28:20 
Yeah, growing up on a farm, our dogs died of — our dogs didn't die of rabies — but there's a risk of your dog dying of rabies. But other than that, dogs rarely experienced the old age diseases. Dementia. Cancer. Osteoarthritis. Because they live such a hard life.

DR. DIEHL  28:40 
Right?

PHIL   28:40 
They didn't get old enough to experience that. Right now, again, we take better care of our dogs. But so many people have dogs that live a life that there's very little risk of them getting kicked by a cow.

Right.

Or encountering coyotes.

DR. DIEHL  28:55 
Right. Or run over. Which was something I can unfortunately attest to as having cats when I was growing up. And whoever kept their cat in the house all the time? Like we just didn't do that. They were indoor outdoor cats, of course. And we've done, as you mentioned, such a great job that I think now people are seeing, right, the effects. And I also think a lot more people are willing to treat their elderly pets where the options may have been limited before or people were like, "Well, they're just old. We're not going to continue with them anymore." And that's not the case. People really want to try to work with their older pets.

PHIL   29:39 
Yeah. Our beloved Peaches, who we talk about frequently on the show, had a large mass removed recently, a malignant tumor. She's 14. I'm pretty sure that when I was a kid, there would not have been a conversation even about how to treat this.

DR. DIEHL  29:58 
Right.

PHIL   29:59 
First of all, no dog would have lived to 14. But second of all, the vet's gonna come out and we're going to have to put her down.

DR. DIEHL  30:08 
Right.

PHIL   30:08 
But I doubt that the 70s and 80s, when I was a kid, that the vet would've even given the option of, "Here are the different treatments. And I have the name of a veterinary oncologist that I can refer you to." And even what we did with Peaches, the clinic we go to that has multiple veterinarians, the veterinarian that we were talking to said, "I've done this surgery before. I can do it. But we have another surgeon who's done this same surgery 1000 times. And it would cost more. But she's more experienced at this." And to have options of multiple veterinarians to do the surgery, when 20-30 years ago, it wouldn't even have been a conversation.

DR. DIEHL  30:50 
Right. And I can remember, as a kid, we had a cat who had a little bladder stone, which I now know, we could have dissolved with diet. But the prescription diets that were very limited at the time. And they told us that what I would now consider a piece of cake, which is a cystotomy in a cat. They thought our cat might not even wake up because the anesthetics weren't that great then, right? And she lived to be 19. So there's a happy ending to the story. But at the time, I remember this was a huge deal. It was a huge scary thing to do something now that A) we could dissolve B) we could even maybe use a laparoscope to get it out now, or it would have been a no-brainer for a general practitioner to do. And kudos to our vet for attempting what was thought to be a hard surgery in 1974. And, again, she lived to be much older than that. So it was well worth it. But I think our options are so advanced now than they used to be.

PHIL   31:58 
I'm sure many people take it for granted or even see it as a burden, having to choose between options, or even just having options, when we should be grateful that science, technology, medicine and the generosity of donors has gotten us to the point where we have options. We should be very grateful for that. And I'm grateful for the work that Morris Animal Foundation is doing and that you're doing Dr. Diehl any special campaigns or anything we need to let our listeners know about before we go or just tell them go to the website and give?

DR. DIEHL  32:30 
Definitely check out the National Dog Day Campaign, which we're gonna start. And we've got a theme this year where we're going to travel around — virtually — the country. And we're going to visit different locations where we have some cool studies going on. So when we start in Colorado, of course with the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. And then we're going to go to California, then Texas A&M, then Florida, then Ohio State. And I think we end in Massachusetts. So join us on our little travels as we stop by and look out at some very cool studies that are going on at all those different institutions. And, of course, we have the — I gotta get this right — the Denali Double Dog Dare Challenge. And that's because we have some folks in Alaska who donated the money for the match. So we'll match up to $75,000. And I appreciate people just checking out the website and seeing what we got there.

PHIL   33:26 
And I would be remiss if I didn't mention on the website that there is a tab for news and stories. And there's just many fascinating stories. It talks more about the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study that you referenced, but just the wetland ecosystems and just scrolling through it you're gonna find something interesting, you're gonna go down a rabbit hole in a good way. That whether it's cats, equine, whatever you're interested in. Grabbing a random headline here, Close Encounters of the Slithering Kind Snake Bites in Companion Animals. So if you live anywhere that there is a risk of snake bite, you should read this article. You'll find something interesting to read. And I encourage our listeners to do that instead of getting trapped on social media. And the latest outrage in any direction is probably not as good for your mental health as learning about the progress we're making, some positive messages on our stewardship of the animal kingdom.

DR. DIEHL  34:33 
Yeah, that is so well said. There is a lot there to get definitely down the road. I even know it's there and I go down the rabbit hole and find stuff.

PHIL   34:43 
Oh, this looks interesting. Oh, this looks even more interesting. I'll read this — I'll just read one more article.

DR. DIEHL  34:48 
Right, right, exactly. So it's fun.

PHIL   34:52 
Well, thank you again for taking time out of your very busy day to share the story of the Morris Animal Foundation with our listeners. Again, links will be provided for not only the Morris Animal Foundation, but I will link directly to all of your social media. Your Facebook, your Twitter, your YouTube, Instagram, all on our website in the description for this episode. Thank you again, Dr. Diehl for the work that you're doing and for being our guest.

DR. DIEHL  35:25 
Thanks so much for having me on. This was fun.

PHIL   35:35 
I'm Phil Hatterman and you've been listening to Dog Words presented by Rosie Fund.

Thank you to Morris Animal Foundation Senior Director of Science and Communications, Dr. Kelly Diehl for joining us today. There's a link to their website, their social media, and the Denali Double Dog Dare Challenge in the description. There are also links to the Dog Words episodes we referenced in today's interview. If you find an old episode you'd like, be sure to share it with your friends.

Next time on Dog Words join us for a fun chat with Deirdre Darling from Pinups for Pitbulls.

A big thank you to alternative string duo 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. Now you can join Laurel and Sascha as they explore new music and delve into the inspiration behind each work as hosts of Sound Currents on 91.9 Classical KC. Click on the Sound Currents link in the description for more information. 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 or Facebook page. You can also contribute by making a purchase from the website store, buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com, or putting some of our merch in your cart when you shop at BarkYours. Links are in the description. 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.

As always, please download, follow, rate, and share Dog Words. This helps us with sponsorships and 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. Our latest post features a sweet KC Pet Project dog looking for a forever home. Send us your comments, questions and suggestions at Rosie fund.org. And let us know if you would like to be a sponsor or guests 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