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If you're a pet parent, you know it is tough enough to find care for your pets when you go on vacation.
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But imagine if you were a military service member or first responder and you were being deployed at the last minute, or you were going on temporary duty for a year or more and you had to find someone to care for your pets while you're gone.
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On today's episode, we dive into the inspiring story behind Dogs on Deployment, a remarkable organization dedicated to ensuring that no pet is left behind from our nation's heroes.
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Join us as we talk with Alisa Sieber-Johnson, the visionary co-founder who turned her personal challenge into a nationwide movement.
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Discover how Dogs on Deployment provides critical support to our nation's heroes, offering a network of pet foster homes and financial assistance to keep beloved pets safe and cared for during their service commitments.
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You won't want to miss this heartwarming episode about the powerful bond between our nation's service members and their pets.
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Tune in to learn more about DogsOnDeploymentcom.
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Here we go.
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You're listening to Starlight Pet Talk, a podcast for pet parents who want the best pet care advice from cat experts, dog trainers, veterinarians and other top pet professionals who will help you live your very best life with your pets.
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Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk, I'm your host, amy Castro, and on today's episode we are joined by Alisa Sieber-Johnson, president and co-founder of Dogs on Deployment.
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Alisa's journey began with a personal need to find care for her own dog while she and her husband fulfilled their military duties, which led to a creation of a national nonprofit that provides crucial support for military pet owners.
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Her leadership has turned Dogs on Deployment into a lifeline for military families, offering a network of pet fostering and financial assistance.
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Elisa served in the US Marine Corps as a badass C-130 pilot, but she also served as a sexual assault response coordinator during her time in the Marines.
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She has a passion for those in the military and for helping others, and she continues to advocate for military pet owner rights and responsible pet ownership.
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So, elisa, thank you so much for being here with us today.
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Thank you.
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I'm excited to share the story of dogs on deployment with you and your listeners.
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Yes, I know, because at first I was thinking dogs on deployment or dogs deploying.
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But yeah, I was fascinated by your story.
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So why don't you tell us how this all got started?
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Because it's shocking to me not only how a person can be so motivated to make something happen, but at such a young age when you started this organization.
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So tell us more, yeah it's funny because I truly do feel like I'm in that next phase of my life where I look back and I look into my 20s and I realize what I'm accomplished at that time and the legacy that it's led, and at times it's very humbling to know that I carry that history with me because of the profound impacts that the organization has made on so many service members throughout the years.
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So my name is Elisa Johnson.
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I founded Dogs Unemployment in 2011.
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I was a newly commissioned Marine Corps officer and I had scheduled to go to the basic school, which is an infantry-centric six-month training in Quantico, virginia, and my husband at the same time was scheduled to deploy.
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We had a dog, jd, and nobody was able to watch our dog while we went on our dual service commitments, and it got us into this real big predicament where we were looking at professional boarding and kenneling, but we were talking thousands of dollars for six months.
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On top of that, my dog had horrible separation anxiety and so it really didn't feel like a kennel was a feasible option.
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My family lived in Hawaii, so they were not an option, and our other relatives were not in a position to take a dog, and so we just didn't know what to do, and we were extremely lucky that we had a distant relative that heard about our story.
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They were also veterans, and so they were willing to take my dog, and the best part about it is that they lived in Virginia.
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So while everybody else on the weekends was going out partying in the basic school, I was going over to their house hanging out with my dog.
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You know and I think that really just sums up honestly most of my personality is I always choose my dog, and you know, it was on our drive, as we were moving myself from California to Virginia we're driving across the country that we started thinking about this problem.
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And then, at the same time, we were looking to adopt a second dog and I had just been denied an adoption application from a rescue group.
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It made me feel extremely saddened because, you know, I knew that there was this problem with pet relinquishment.
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I had already come from the animal rescue community and then here I am with a dual you know officers as well.
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So we had the financial means right, like we could have taken care of ourselves.
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But you know, as leaders you're thinking okay, if I had this problem, well, what about the Marines under me?
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What are they doing when they're having problems with their pets?
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And suddenly I just I realized that this was a real problem and I bought an HTML for dummies book from the Barnes and Noble in Alexandria, virginia, and that weekend, while I was waiting to check in, when I had my Xbox and my laptop, and I coded the first website for dogs in employment, and the rest is history.
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You're a motivated woman, for sure, the Marine.
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Corps would agree, I guess.
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Yes, I was married to Marines, so I know that personality.
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Who is the program open to when it comes to that need for finding someone to take care of my dog?
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The organization is open to the pets of all companion animals belonging to our eligible pet parents.
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So we've had several cats, but also parrots, ferrets, a chicken, a snake, guinea pigs, so we've had everything.
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If you have a pet and it's legal, we allow it onto our website application.
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So to answer your question, though, about who are those eligible pet parents, so yeah, when I started the organization, I was very focused on the junior enlisted population of the services, because those are the ones that we continue to help the most of.
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However, they are not uniquely the only ones that need our services.
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So as we started to find more and more volunteers and we started to pick up momentum throughout the years, we started to expand our program.
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So we always helped active duty, we always helped preserve us, We've always helped honorably discharged veterans, but throughout the years, then, we were able to expand to saying we can also help first responders.
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So, for example, we've had a few firemen use our services that have had to move from Southern California to Northern California, for example, we've had police.
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If they're having to go to academy or training or God forbid, they have anything that happens to them while they're in the line of duty that they need our assistance for and we also helped a few nurses and medical personnel during the COVID pandemic.
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We had one civilian, for example, that went on to one of our hospital ships that we were able to assist and we also help just general service employees of the United States government or government contractors that are deploying in support of a military operation.
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So essentially, if you're doing something for the benefit of the United States military that requires you to take yourself away from your pet ownership and you're in need, we look at your application.
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That's great and I like what you said about focusing on the junior enlisted because, as an officer, I mean you know what you said about focusing on the junior enlisted because, as you know, as an officer, I mean I've actually gone back recently because I'm getting closer to retirement and I'm looking at what I made when I was in the Air Force but it's like I still made way more than you know, than the enlisted folks, and you had these young people that were serving their country and they got deployed to Iraq or they got deployed to Afghanistan and it's like nobody can afford that.
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I mean it's hard enough to afford boarding at all, let alone for six months on a sergeant's pay or, you know, airman's pay, whatever it might be.
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It's just it's pretty much impossible.
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Yes, Our military deserves our support wherever we can give them Definitely, definitely.
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So when you started the organization and obviously you were on active duty trying to start the organization at the same time what were some of the challenges that you faced, that you had to overcome getting the whole program rolling?
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Oh, they were endless, I'm sure.
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And, honestly, the biggest challenge was the military itself.
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It was a huge conflict of interest.
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So myself, as a flight student and as a young, new Marine Corps officer, I was doing something that was extremely frowned upon because it was like a conflict of interest to my duties, to my duties, and so I had a lot of uphill battles just in starting the organization to begin with, where my leadership highly encouraged me not to pursue representing myself in conjunction with a nonprofit, because there's actually restrictions against active duty service members being able to endorse or represent a nonprofit organization.
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So I always had to toe the line.
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So for me personally, that was probably the hugest challenge was just the support of my actual professional career and the conflict that I constantly felt.
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Where, you know, I was a part of this organization, the Marine Corps that I had put my life, you know, my soul into.
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I joined when I was 17 years old, so going to college and becoming an officer was a surprise.
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Let's just say that.
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You know that was not the route that I was originally going to take or had available to me to take, that I thought that I was going to be able to take, and so when I found myself in this leadership role, suddenly I felt a huge drive to provide the services that I was going to be able to take.
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And so, when I found myself in this leadership role, suddenly I felt a huge drive to provide the services that I was creating for military members.
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I would have people calling me in tears because they were at the shelter or they had just talked to a shelter, or they'd be sending me an email with this long-winded explanation of why they couldn't pay for their dog to get boarding and how they didn't know what to do with themselves and their pet.
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And here I am, a new lieutenant that's supposed to be concentrated on my flight school studies.
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But then I had these messages in my inbox of people that really needed help, and I joined the Marine Corps to be a leader, to be of service and to have my life be of a greater purpose.
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And so I felt myself in this huge conflict of a position where I tended to lean towards helping those people.
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It fulfilled me, but, like I said, that fulfillment came at a cost to my professional reputation like I said, that fulfillment came at a cost to my professional reputation.
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Yeah, and that's.
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You know, it's that higher, that higher calling sometimes that wins out in those, in those situations, and it's a challenge to to juggle two aspects of your life that are so different and then, you know, also in conflict.
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The intersection is huge, but they're also like completely opposite.
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You know, of the Venn diagram, the intersection was very small.
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Yeah, and I hope people who are listening to this hear that you know, when you think about the animals that are in shelters you know oftentimes we think about, you know animals that are picked up at strays or you know people that don't care about their pets and, quote unquote, dump them in shelters.
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And I know that.
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You know, in my personal community we don't have a big military population so, having volunteered in shelters, it's not like we saw lots of service people in.
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But I think it's pretty sad when you get to a point where somebody has given up their life to serve their country and then they have to give up their pet and basically leave it at a shelter because there's.
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You know, prior to your organization existing, there were a few options If you didn't have friends or family that wanted to take your dog for a year, which is a long time, or for an undetermined amount of time, that was, that's basically your option and that's really, really sad and it's it's awesome that you've been able to fill that gap.
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I know we talked about this in our pre-recording the whole idea of fosters how does the process work?
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And then, at that same time, I'm curious how do you get as many fosters, as you've been able to get, and all around the country.
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Well, first, how do we get as many fosters?
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It's by doing interviews like this.
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I mean, we blew up because in 2013, we were on the Queen Latifah show and Queen Latifah if you ever think of us again, I mean honestly, it was getting that national exposure and suddenly everybody was like, oh, this exists.
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And we ended up in People Magazine several times after that and several other national news publications that allowed the organization to gain a name.
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But with that momentum also, you need to have the organizational capacity to be able to build upon that momentum.
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Unfortunately, as a volunteer organization that then went through the pandemic, it's very difficult to keep that momentum driven.
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So we are now at that point of time where, at one point of time, we had a huge amount of fosters in our system and I felt very confident that, you know, anybody that came to our organization that needed a free boarding home for their pet while they were on a service commitment would be able to find one.
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Times have changed.
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Now I don't have that mobilized volunteer force that I used to have, that mobilized volunteer force that I used to, and we're looking to regain that because we need it.
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So what is a foster?
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Well, you kind of come up from it.
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I think we can look at this from the rescue community.
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Is that a foster?
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Somebody that takes in a pet that needs a temporary home?
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Now, the difference between a rescue foster and dogs in employment we don't actually use the word foster, we use the word boarding because we think of our volunteers more as boarders than fosters.
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The pets that go into your home have an owner, they have some place to return to, and so the relationship there with the pet is also different.
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But when you become a boarder to our organization, the process is as simple as signing up.
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You complete a profile that lists your home details who's in your house, what kind of pets do you have, are you an active family?
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Do you live in an apartment?
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Do you have a house with a yard the details that somebody looking for a home for their pet would want to know and then you're basically just listed.
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Now it's up to the boarder to decide how active or proactive they're going to be with our organization.
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So some of our boarders just list themselves, and if you don't log back in, we will eventually remove you from our system, because we want people to be interacting and responding to messages.
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So when you log in, you have your choice of either not doing anything or searching for pets in need, and when you find a pet that you're like, oh, I think I might be able to help that service member, you just send them a message and that's how you start the communication.
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So it's really important for our boarders to realize that when you create an account and you're listed, and if you leave, that's going to be the end of your experience because our organization does not contact you to put a dog or something into your home.
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It's up to you, as the boarder, to contact pet owners that you think you can help, and then vice versa, when a pet owner is approved and able to use our application system and our network, they're able to send direct messages to boarders.
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So if you receive a message as a boarder, we want you to log in, check that message and respond to it.
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Either yes, I can help you or yes, I want to talk more, or no, it's not the right fit for me at this time.
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Okay.
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So basically you're providing a platform and then also some pretty extensive, I know, because I do want to talk about the application process, but you know the platform and then the screening process to put these people in a room together, so to speak, and give them the opportunity to make those connections.
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But both parties need to work it.
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If I'm a service member looking for somebody for my pet, can I go and look for people as well and reach out to those people?
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Or is it only the other way around?
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Exactly, they can connect with another.
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Remember, I started this organization in 2011.
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So this is pre-Rover or pre-Carecom.
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It was the very early days of the Airbnb model, and so I actually based my site off of Matchcom.
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Okay said it was a matchcom for military and, to be fair, too, we did have a pet owner that they used a border and they fell in love with the border's roommate and got married.
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It was a real thing.
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So we do have one matchcom success.
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That's hysterical.
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Yeah, that's funny.
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Well, yeah, you know people who like dogs or pets.
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It's kind of a you already have that in common.
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So that's Right, I mean, we do have primarily single military on our website as our primary demographic.
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Not saying anything, I'm just.
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These are the facts because they don't have other people able to help them and they are the ones that are most at risk.
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They're the ones that we have to help the most because they don't have people to rely on.
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Yeah, it's definitely just such a such a great option.
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And is there a cost involved to the military member, or how does how does that work?
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As far as you know, if I'm going to keep somebody's pet for a year, am I getting paid for it?
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Am I getting reimbursed for expenses?
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How does that work?
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That is a fantastic question and probably the one that we try to emphasize the most is that dog's unemployment is free to use for the service member, meaning that you cannot sign up to be a boarder on our website and then ask a service member for a boarding fee.
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You can't say, hey, I'll watch your dog, but pay me $10 a day.
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That is not allowed.
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What is required by the pet owner is that before they give their dog to the border or their pet to the border, that they have had an agreement in place and we try to help them.
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We try to provide some resources on our website through what we call a boarding and care plan.
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That is essentially a long instructional document for the boarder of what the pet owner's expectations are for the care of their pet when it comes to their feeding, their food, their exercise, their health, etc.
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But part of that being the expenses, and the pet owner is required to remain financially responsible for the care of their pet during their service commitment.
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While in boarding Meaning, if the pet has to have grooming done, they need to be sending money to the boarder to either reimburse or they need to be paying the groomer directly If the pet needs to have something done at the veterinarian's office while the service member is overseas.
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We actually recommend that before they deploy, they leave a credit card authorization with their veterinarian prior to leaving so that way, if anything happens, that they can just bill the pet owner directly at the time of the incident and not worry about reimbursement to a boarder that has to put it on their card.
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So everything is centered around it being a system designed for people to help people, but you still have to remain that responsible pet owner in that financial sense.
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Right, because one of the concerns that I had expressed to you when we had talked previously and I feel sort of guilty about it now but we have, as a rescue, had people, you know, maybe twice in the years that we've had the rescue open where somebody has reached out and says my sister's in the military and she has two cats or she has three cats or whatever it is, and she's getting deployed and you know, can you take the cats?
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And you know, and they use the term foster them until she gets back.
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And I've always been very hesitant because it's like what are the odds they're going to take that pet back and how you know, like you said, the financial responsibility or just making decisions for somebody else's pet over a year long period.
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But it sounds like you guys have obviously thought of all that and at least have those structures in place so that as the two parties go into this arrangement, that they go in with their eyes wide open or as wide open as we can be.
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Obviously there's going to be things that happen in life that are not always predictable, but it sounds like you've thought about a lot of the caveats or contingencies that could happen.
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Yeah, and I love that you mentioned that about a service member coming to you as a rescue and what do you do in that situation?
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So, first of all, dogs in Employment does have a program called Operation Shelter Partners, and right now we're focusing our attention on brick and mortar facilities.
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But making sure that your facility whether you're a foster only based organization or brick and mortar you have a process in place for pet adoption and for pet relinquishment.
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That asks the question are you military or a veteran?
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And if yes, have a separate set of procedures for that person, meaning if they're being an adopter.
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Give them a flyer from Dogs Unemployment.
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You can get rat cards from us for free.
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You can literally come to our website.
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There's a thing that says distribute info and we will send you free rat cards If you're doing a relinquishment process and they come to you instead of just taking the pet from them, tell them about our organization, send them to us.
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Rescues are not set up or designed to handle what dogs in employment handles.
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It stresses your capacity and it puts you at liability risk because, to your point, you don't have agreements in place with those pet owners that they remain financially liable, that they are the legal pet owner that dogs in employment is not taking any sort of possession of this animal owner that dogs in employment is not taking any sort of possession of this animal.
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So you know I throw it out there to anybody in the rescue community that if you have a service member or a veteran, come to you for help, please contact dogs in employment.
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And even if you've never had a service member contact you for help, please connect with dogsemployment and just know that we are a tool that helps ensure your capacity doesn't get fulfilled by something that shouldn't be your responsibility to take care of.
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We've got that.
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Yeah, and how easy is it to just add a question you know, are you currently serving in the military, or reserves, or a first responder, or you know it could be like a just check the box, if any of these apply, because to your point, and what happened to you as a service member and being denied adoption?
00:23:29.607 --> 00:23:42.835
I mean, we have adopted out to several service members, but generally it's families, and so it's like there's a thing in the back of your head that says, well, at least if the spouse isn't in the military, then the odds are the spouse will be able to take care of the pet.
00:23:42.835 --> 00:23:54.871
But you've even mentioned that there's scenarios like I think you mentioned one about you know the service members deployed and then the spouse is pregnant and ends up hospitalized, you know, and so it's like they could still need assistance.
00:23:56.696 --> 00:24:20.579
Yes, yes, several, several situations where you know the one spouse is deployed, the other spouse is home happily taking care of the dog and something tragic happens to them, and there's nothing worse than being by yourself in those hard moments, you know, and the last thing you want to worry about is like what am I going to do with my dog?
00:24:20.579 --> 00:24:33.660
You know, when you think of military families too and it's really hard, for if you've never been connected to the military, it's really hard to conceptualize how difficult being a military family is.
00:24:33.660 --> 00:24:42.200
And I think when I was in the service I was very blinded to it myself because I was so ingrained with it and I was just used to the distance myself because I was so ingrained with it and I was just used to the distance.
00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:48.189
I mean, in my own life I was with my husband for 10 years, the co-founder of Dogs.
00:24:48.189 --> 00:24:54.055
Unemployment no-transcript.
00:24:54.730 --> 00:25:01.401
And that was our early romance and for a family.
00:25:01.401 --> 00:25:19.961
This is the situation that we often see Service member departs, spouse is home taking care of the kids, taking care of the home front, taking care of the dog, and either they have an emergency that requires hospitalization, or their parent has emergency and suddenly they have to leave.
00:25:19.961 --> 00:25:36.931
Or another situation is like maybe they don't have kids but they're keeping a house that is draining them financially that they don't need because that service member is deployed and that spouse can go live with their parents or live someplace else, but they can't take their pet with them.
00:25:36.931 --> 00:25:45.383
And it's like you really have to look at all of these individual situations and say, okay, do we have the capacity to help?
00:25:45.383 --> 00:25:47.134
Do those people need help?
00:25:47.674 --> 00:25:58.384
Are we making a positive benefit for the service members' peace of mind, which is in our first few words of our mission statement, is to provide peace of mind.
00:25:58.384 --> 00:26:03.255
First few words of our mission statement is to provide peace of mind.
00:26:03.255 --> 00:26:04.881
Then yes, if we have the ability to assist, we will do all that we can.
00:26:04.881 --> 00:26:22.278
With that said, we do have a very strict eligibility process because we also want to make sure that the people using our website are in fact in need and we're not getting people that are just, hey, I'm going on vacation or I don't want to take care of my pet because I'm just an irresponsible pet owner.
00:26:22.278 --> 00:26:23.882
Those people do exist.
00:26:23.882 --> 00:26:43.103
We cannot be naive to that, and so that is where our screening process and our executive director does a fantastic job of making sure that every single service member that comes to our organization for assistance is being looked at on an individual, case-by-case basis.
00:26:44.230 --> 00:26:44.692
That's great.
00:26:44.932 --> 00:26:52.358
I think it shows the level of commitment obviously of your organization but to the service member that they're going through this process.
00:26:52.720 --> 00:26:58.657
You know, because I've recently had an opportunity and I'm still kind of deciding whether I'm going to pursue it or not.
00:26:58.657 --> 00:27:04.346
But it's like once I saw the list of requirements to take advantage of the opportunity and I'm still kind of deciding whether I'm going to pursue it or not.
00:27:04.346 --> 00:27:09.972
But it's like once I saw the list of requirements to take advantage of the opportunity, I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing all that, you know.
00:27:09.972 --> 00:27:24.290
And so for somebody to say, oh, I am dedicated enough to my pet to take all of these steps and to fill out these forms and to go through the screening process, I think it's you know it, it shows a dedication to that pet and I think would make me feel better as a boarder that that person truly is committed to coming back to their pet.
00:27:24.290 --> 00:27:33.036
And I remember I had I had asked you like how many cases have you had where somebody basically didn't come back for their pet?
00:27:33.036 --> 00:27:35.342
And it was so small I can't remember the exact number.
00:27:35.390 --> 00:27:39.517
I mean not necessarily the exact number but it was like a handful compared to thousands.
00:27:40.238 --> 00:27:46.031
Yeah, it really is very small and we don't have an exact number.
00:27:46.031 --> 00:27:59.765
The reason for that is because when people come to our website, they either find somebody or they don't, and in the cases that they don't, a lot of times that's oh, my deployment got canceled or I ended up.
00:27:59.765 --> 00:28:07.974
You know, you were my backup plan, my family did end up taking my pet, or you know, I found a girlfriend or a boyfriend and they're watching my pet now.
00:28:07.974 --> 00:28:20.615
Whatever the case may be, but I can't think of a time off the top of my head when we had somebody approved and actively able to use our website and then still turn their pet into a shelter.
00:28:21.317 --> 00:28:49.997
Right, and I could see that there would be scenarios where somebody, maybe they got deployed, like your example of separation anxiety, and it's like you know, I get deployed and then I have an opportunity to extend because it's going to be good for my career, or I have to extend, and now it's longer than I originally said, that, yeah, it might get to a point where it's like I thought I was going to be able to navigate this and then come back to my pet, but maybe the best thing for my pet is to, you know, to find a more stable permanent home.
00:28:50.498 --> 00:28:54.892
We have had that happen before and you know when it does happen it's really hard.
00:28:54.892 --> 00:29:09.672
But every single time it has happened it has been like a conversation where the executive director is talking to the boarder, that's talking to the pet owner, and I'm talking to our ED and we're making a decision of like, okay, how are we going to approach this?
00:29:09.672 --> 00:29:12.843
And in some cases we've had boarders adopt the pet.
00:29:12.843 --> 00:29:14.710
In other cases, dogs.
00:29:14.710 --> 00:29:19.285
Unemployment has contacted and worked with rescues to rehome the pet.
00:29:19.285 --> 00:29:23.476
So we're not going to leave somebody that's in our network abandoned.
00:29:23.476 --> 00:29:39.054
We intervene if there's an issue, but that does not mean that we don't want to be connected with our boarders so that if somebody is actively boarding a pet, we love getting updates, we love seeing pictures, we love getting stories, we love it when people tag us on social media.
00:29:39.054 --> 00:29:47.415
Those are the things that not only are great to share and showcase what this organization is about, but truly they keep us going.
00:29:47.836 --> 00:29:57.115
There are times with my team that we feel so down in the dumps because something bad has happened in our community and we're trying to reel from it.
00:29:57.115 --> 00:30:07.832
For example, over the summer we had a really hard time dealing with the changes to the CDC importation guidelines for pets from overseas.
00:30:07.832 --> 00:30:39.098
So in the last you know, really in the sense, the pandemic, but really in the last six months there's actually been a lot of changes in pet travel internationally and it's caused a huge problem for our organization because one, in addition to fostering, we also provide financial assistance grants and one of our programs is to help provide grants to ship pets from overseas duty stations back to the United States and vice versa, since that's something that majority comes out of the service member's pocket.
00:30:39.098 --> 00:31:05.561
However, because of airline costs going up tremendously since the pandemic for shipping, but also new regulations are putting pets out of the passenger holds and into cargo, which means you have to ship them in a separate system, which is much more expensive, and we have also new quarantine requirements.
00:31:05.561 --> 00:31:17.135
So there's a lot of problems going on and the impact to us is an overwhelming request for support in terms of financial assistance that we absolutely cannot meet.
00:31:17.135 --> 00:31:18.619
I wish we could.
00:31:18.619 --> 00:31:22.874
I think it was in the last year.
00:31:22.993 --> 00:31:42.059
We had nearly like $700,000 total requested from service members and pet shipping, because each service member, for the cost to ship one pet from one duty station to the other anywhere in the world is probably somewhere between $3,000 to $7,000.
00:31:42.059 --> 00:31:44.307
We've had grants come in for $10,000.
00:31:44.307 --> 00:31:52.541
We had a service member that shipped their Great Dane from the West Coast to Japan for $10,000.
00:31:52.541 --> 00:31:53.924
They paid for it.
00:31:53.924 --> 00:32:05.059
They got there, they had an emergency, very sad tragedy that required them to come back to the United States and then they had to pay another $10,000.
00:32:05.461 --> 00:32:09.319
And you're just thinking this is such a broken system.
00:32:09.319 --> 00:32:10.765
Why is this so expensive?
00:32:10.765 --> 00:32:11.807
Why is this so hard?
00:32:11.807 --> 00:32:18.721
We're having pets that are being forced to be kept overseas and we're trying to figure out.
00:32:18.721 --> 00:32:23.517
Can we stand up an international chapter to support those pets?
00:32:23.517 --> 00:32:24.178
If needed?
00:32:24.178 --> 00:32:26.241
Can we operate in that regard?
00:32:26.241 --> 00:32:34.163
Can we do something to work with the international pet travel agency agents that we work with?
00:32:34.163 --> 00:32:36.753
So we have several partners in pet travel agencies.
00:32:36.753 --> 00:32:47.982
Can we work with them to help bring more awareness to these problems and how changes in the CDC are not just impacting all pet travel but specifically military families that weren't expecting it?
00:32:47.982 --> 00:33:11.035
So we're just constantly reacting to hardships and so when we get those stories back from our borders that say, look at this dog, like having such a great time while a service member is deployed, or the best is the reunion, and it keeps us going and it keeps us motivated and reminds us like oh yeah, this is what this organization is really about.
00:33:12.219 --> 00:33:42.218
Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that from the standpoint of you know, because when I, of course, when I was in the air I was only in the air force for four years and the you know, the place I really, really, really really wanted to get stationed was either, you know, germany or England, and you know England has such strict quarantine that you know it would have been kind of pointless to to bring a dog, but like so I guess in my mind, if somebody was going to PCS overseas, that they just wouldn't take their pets, and it's like I never even thought, like I can't even imagine sending a dog to Japan.
00:33:42.218 --> 00:33:44.305
I mean, it's just that floors me.
00:33:44.305 --> 00:33:48.400
That was out of my realm of understanding or thinking.
00:33:49.041 --> 00:33:55.540
Yeah, and then the alternative to that is being away from your pet, from two years, yeah, or four, or whatever it might be.
00:33:57.511 --> 00:33:57.652
Right.
00:33:57.652 --> 00:34:22.257
So there's a real balance that you have to play and there is no perfect solution and you can't just put a blanket over everybody's scenario and say it's a one size fits all solution, like our organization has to look at every single person case by case and just understand that what we're trying to do is bridge the gap between understanding, between civilian and military populations.
00:34:22.257 --> 00:34:24.581
Right, this goes beyond the pet ownership.
00:34:24.581 --> 00:34:36.240
This goes into making somebody that has never met a service member or doesn't have anybody in their family that's ever served and doesn't have any connection to it and maybe doesn't care, but they love animals.
