Transcript
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Have you ever wondered what a day in a life was like for a rescue dog?
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Well, in this episode, we are going to take you on a journey from the time an animal comes into a rescue to the time they find their forever home, so you can see what it's like not only for them, but what it's like for the people involved in that process.
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You'll also learn how rescues are different from shelters and how different rescues take different approaches and philosophies to finding pets homes.
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So this is a great episode You're not going to want to miss.
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Stay tuned.
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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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We also share inspiring rescue and adoption stories from people who've taken their love of pets to the next level by getting involved in animal welfare.
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My name is Amy Castro and I'm the founder and president of Starlight Outreach and Rescue and a columnist for Pet Age Magazine.
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I've rescued thousands of animals and help people just like you find the right pet for their family.
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My mission is to help pet parents learn all the ways that they can care for, live with and even have fun with their pets, so they can live their very best lives and their pets can too.
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Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk.
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I'm your host, amy Castro.
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Today is going to be a really interesting episode because we're going to take you through a day in the life of a dog in rescue, and I hope that through this episode we'll be able to clarify what rescue life might be like, the fact that rescue life in different rescues is different, and also maybe shine a little bit of a light on the difference between shelter and rescue life for pets.
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So to help me do all of this and accomplish this today in this episode I have with me Donna Ball, and Donna is a member of the board of directors for an organization called Rangers Reach.
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I'm going to have her tell you a little bit about that.
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But not only is she a board member because those of us in rescue we wear a lot of hats, and so not only is she a board member, she's also on the medical board of Rangers Reach Rescue, and she also fosters the pets for Rangers Reach, and so she's very, very involved in the process.
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So I think she's probably more than amply qualified to let us know what a day in the life for a dog at Rangers Reach is.
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So, donna, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with me today.
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I'm glad to be here.
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This is exciting for me to go through this process and to educate people on what it's like to be in the rescue business.
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I started 5 years ago and our first 2 dogs that we took in were 2 puppies, and so my daughter and I got started in this and we ended up foster failing Gus and Peggy.
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That happened so much when you first start.
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Yeah, but what got us started was just the need of people to be able to take the dogs into their homes so that they would not end up in a shelter, so that when we have them with us they learn a routine of what's like what it's like in a home, instead of being in the shelter.
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They learn to socialize.
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We get to test them to see if they're food aggressive, if they like children, do they like cats?
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So we have that opportunity that they're not going to receive in a shelter.
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We take care of their medical needs, we post on shelter, love and pet finder so that people have an idea of where they are and then we can match them up with the adopters.
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We have to be real specific, because they may not do well with cats, they may not do well with small children.
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So it just gives us an opportunity with them to know what it's going to be like when they get into a home.
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And I think it's so important that you said that, because there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that adopters and the public don't necessarily see.
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And I want to stress a couple of things that you said.
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First of all, a lot of times people don't realize that rescues are not generally.
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I mean, some rescues have facilities that you can come and go and visit animals and adopt as you please, but a lot of us myself included in rescue, at least a chunk of our process is foster based, which basically means that we have pets in homes around our community with various volunteer fosters, and so sometimes there's a process of getting a chance to visit a pet and how that works.
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But the key to that foster life is exactly what you said is that it gives us a chance to see what the animal is really like, and that's something that's oftentimes quite different from a shelter pet, although in a shelter the staff can get to know the pets a little bit, but they don't necessarily always get to know the depth of information that we get about those pets and how they interact in their environment with other people, with other pets, like you said.
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So the foster process is a really good one, but it's labor intensive.
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There's only so many dogs people can have in their house and we won't talk about we don't want to go to jail, right, but we don't want to talk about how many animals we sometimes have in our houses as fosters.
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But that's because there's not enough of us that are doing the fostering.
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I did want to ask you so it's always interesting to me the names that rescues get and why they're called that.
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So your rescue is called Ranger's Reach and I know there's a story behind it.
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Can you tell us, like the Readers Digest version of, why is it called Ranger's Reach?
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Our coordinator, jolana.
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Her first foster that she took in his name was Ranger, and he went in for surgery for heartworm treatment, where they're going to remove the heartworms out of the heart, which is very, very risky.
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And he did not make it, and so she decided I'm going to start this rescue in its Ranger and its Ranger's Reach, because she wanted to educate people on the importance of heartworm treatment and taking care of your dogs, and so it began as going to be an outreach and has now turned into rescuing many dogs.
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Okay, great, like I said, it's always so interesting to me to hear those stories and what motivates those of us who do this.
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And for people who don't realize this, statistically the vast majority of people involved in rescue are women, which I don't know if it's because our nurturing side or what it is, but the vast majority of rescuers are women, and even with our podcast audience I know there's guys out there listening and we love you and keep listening, but probably 90% of the people that are listening are also women.
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So that's maybe something in our DNA that draws us to take care of all kinds of things that can't take care of the micelles.
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So that's an interesting story about how you guys get started.
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So, as far as because, like I said, all rescues are different and many of the things that you've mentioned so far are things that most of us do fairly standardly and, like I said, people don't realize how much goes on behind the scenes and how much expense feeds into all of that.
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But as far as the process, so we want to talk about the day in the life.
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So a single dog comes to your attention how and then let's walk through what happens to that dog from the time that you become aware of him to the time that hopefully it gets adopted.
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And people also need to realize that sometimes these animals stay in foster for months and some organizations years, and that's a whole another topic for another time.
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As to you know how long is too long, how long is too short?
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Are we shipping them off too fast, that kind of thing.
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But we'll do another episode on that.
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But if you could walk us through that, I think that would be super interesting.
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I'd love to learn what you guys do.
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Well, there's a couple of different ways.
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One is we have a couple of shelters that call us from time to time and we'll say you know, we have this mom and litter of puppies, can you take them?
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And some shelters will only let rescues tag the litter of puppies.
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Sometimes we have some dogs that need medical help and so they will call us.
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I have one shelter that calls me on a regular basis that you know a dog tested positive for Parvo.
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I work in a Parvo center, so they call and if we can find a rescue to take them in, we will take them.
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We also have people that will just call us and say, hey, I found some puppies that were dumped.
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We had some puppies that have just been in the center that had been dumped, and so we pick them up and of course, you know they had some medical issues that we had to tend to, their you know, digestion, because they've just been eating junk.
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We also have people will want to sell a dog.
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They'll post it like in the green sheet, or they'll post it different places.
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You know, I want to sell this dog.
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We just picked one up recently in Galveston.
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Somebody couldn't keep the dog so they had a rehoming fee for $75.
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And this was a registered Frenchie, I believe, and the people just couldn't take care of it.
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When it's a personal dog, we have to have them sign an owner surrender, which means you're giving us the dog and you no longer have any strings attached.
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We also, when people call and say I found this dog, first of all we check for a microchip, and we have found dogs that have been owned and we got them reunited with their families, so microchipping is extremely important.
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Anyway, when the dogs come in, we check them, see if they need to be seen by vet, and then every dog that we take in has our microchip in them, and we have.
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We do have some pregnant moms that we take on that have been out on the streets.
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We have street feeders that go out and feed dogs and they'll call us.
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We have one dog in particular, beau.
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He was found out on the streets.
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He was a lab pit and weighed 35 pounds and he was in bad shape, and so we took him in and he had been in boarding for a while.
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He was first foster couldn't keep him, so he ended up in boarding.
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So our coordinator called and said Donna, can you go pick up this dog out of boarding and he's going to be a hospice dog.
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Long story short, beau got treated for his heartworms, he got neutered, we had his anemia and all that taken care of and he was here almost a year and we got him adopted and he left my house weighing 70 pounds.
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So those are cases you know that we'll take on.
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Wow and I think that's interesting for people to know is that rescues?
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You know they have animals coming at them from all different directions.
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Like you said, you've got you start forming alliances and relationships with your area, municipal shelters and this is something to understand the difference between a rescue and a shelter Municipal shelters Many times they're required to pick up anything in their community that's on the street and there.
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You know, there's only so much space in the world.
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I always tell people I could stack dogs to the ceiling in my house and there'd still need more dogs that need to to be rescued.
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And so shelters will often reach out.
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You know, instead of just waiting for the public to adopt, they'll reach out to rescues to use and we call the.
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You know we use the term pull to pull animals from the, from the shelter, so that they don't have to be euthanized, because very often, especially in Texas, dogs get euthanized every single day because the shelter runs out of space and needs to make space for something new that's new, that's coming in.
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So you've got shelters reaching out.
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You know, help us, please take these animals.
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You've got owners who have sometimes legit reasons and sometimes ridiculous BS reasons for giving up their pets and they want us to help.
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And then you've got the you know the random animal and then you send a huge animal problem with stray pets on the streets and so you know we're finding animals ourselves and I think that's awesome that you guys have a feeding program.
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That's a whole nother.
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A whole nother.
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Thing to manage as a rescue is to be out there in the community providing food to basically animals on the street.
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But you know, pulling animals off the street, no matter how big or how small your rescue is, it's a constant barrage of help me, help me, help me, help me, and it's it's really hard because there's only so much help we can provide.
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So and you also had mentioned and people I wanted to draw attention to that You'd mentioned an animal being in boarding.
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That's one.
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That's something that is different across different rescues as well.
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Like we at Starlight Outreach and Rescue have not boarded, we will sometimes board something at our vet.
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We have a good relationship with a, with a couple vets, but this one in particular, but it might be one dog.
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There are rescues that pay hundreds and thousands of dollars a month for, you know, a private boarding facility.
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So somebody's got a business boarding dogs for people that go on vacation and they're literally paying those people to hold those dogs because they've got no place else to put them.
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So it's, it's very interesting to see how these animals are living.
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You know, sometimes they're in a foster home, sometimes they're living at a vet, sometimes they're living at a boarding facility until we can get them homes, or or, as you mentioned, in instances of animals that have medical issues, which is a whole another ball of wax.
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It's not as simple as I get a dog, I turn it around and in three days I've got an adopter for it.
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You know, sometimes we get lucky, but oftentimes it is oftentimes it's animals staying with us for months, and some in some organizations, years, before it is even, you know, physically, emotionally, mentally, capable of being adopted, and sometimes they're not at all.
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And then we end up hanging on to them and I know that you have some dogs, donna, that are kind of they're just going to live out their time with you, as at your, at the foster home or at the boarding kennel or wherever it might be, because they're just not adoptable for one reason or another.
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So I just wanted to make sure, because that's a, you know it's, it's a lot of information and we take it for granted because this is our life.
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But I want to make sure people are really seeing this, you know, understanding how this, how this process can work and how it can easily become overwhelming.
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Okay, so you've got.
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You've got the animals.
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They're, you know, they're in foster, they're boarding, they're, you know, waiting to be adopted.
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Let's just, let's take it from the position of an animal.
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You get a dog that comes in and you know it's now healthy and it's ready to go.
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As we say, what's the?
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What happens then?
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What goes, what's the process from there?
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Well, we have.
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We post dogs on sheltered love and pet finder and people from up north because there's a shortage of dogs there.
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They go through and they'll shop for a dog and they will call us or they send us an email and say you know, I would like to, I'm interested in this dog.
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We require them to do an application first and then we go through and look at their application and see if they're going to be a fit for this dog.
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Some people want them for emotional support dogs and we have to have that certificate.
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And so once we go through all of that process, sometimes we will do FaceTime with them so they can actually see the dog and their temperament and how tall they are and everything.
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And once that goes through and they say, yes, I want the dog, then we have to have them pay a deposit, a hundred dollar deposit, so that once they get spayed and neutered they will get that refunded.
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But by the state of Texas we have to do that.
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That was a question that I had for you yesterday on the whole spay and neuter thing.
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So you're charging the deposit on animals that are too young, like somebody's adopting a puppy and you're not going to.
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You know you don't really want a neuter, ideally a two month old puppy or a three month old puppy.
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You know there's an appropriate age that we would want to neuter pets, based on their breed and size and things.
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So so you're charging that deposit to ensure that they actually get it done at their vet because you're not able to do it beforehand.
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Is that?
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Am I understanding that correctly?
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Correct, correct.
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And then we discuss adoption fees and if they agree to that, then we have to set up transport and we set it up with the adopters and then we put the dog on transport and some of the transports have a website that we go to and they'll update us, you know, as they go, because sometimes it's a two day trip, and then we get pictures once the dog gets there and we try to stay in touch with the adopters and we are available to them if they ever have any questions or something you know isn't going right.
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So we are there also to support them if they need that, because we want it to be successful.
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We don't want an adopter to fail and we want this puppy to be, you know, in a home and to stay there, because they've already been moved so much.
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We don't want them to have an attachment disorder.
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So we want them, we want it to be successful and we do everything we can to get them to be where they're at.
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I just I want to, I want to add a little piece in, just so people understand, about the whole transport process is because you said it could take, you know, two days is that the dogs are not staying on a truck for two days and, you know, living in crates, they are the people that are transporting it.
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You said you use a company that has a nice young couple that basically turned this into their business transporting pets and so the dogs get, you know, they stop, they let them out, they let them go potty things like that along the way.
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So it's labor intensive and that's probably why it costs so much.
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I also think people need to realize with, and especially with rescues that do transport animals, because all rescues have different pricing structures on what they charge for adoption fees.
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They have different philosophies about.
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Like we were having a meeting yesterday and talking about the fact that our particular adoption fees, by the time you add up just the basic care and we're not transporting at Starlight, outreach and Rescue but by the time you add up the basic care, our adoption fees are about half of what we actually spend just to take in an animal.
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And so you know we're reassessing that because basically every animal that we help, we're losing money on, which means we can't help as many animals.
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And so I just want to make it clear to people who are in other parts of the country because we've got listeners from around the country and around the world is that when you're getting an animal that you're adopting from another state and the adoption fee is, you know, let's say it's $500, $700, whatever it might be Think about what goes into that.
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I mean alone it costs.
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It's costing these organizations $350 just to get the animal to you.
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And then I know that, like our numbers when we added them up yesterday, you know average costs that we spend for a local adoption just to bring the animal up to you, know vaccines and get them spayed and neutered and microchip them and test them for this, and that it's about $300 and that's a discounted rate.
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So now you take the $350 to transport.
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The $300 it costs just for a and that's a healthy animal, not one that needed any surgery or anything.
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It's a lot of expense.
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So I think people need to realize what they're getting for the money too.
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You know there's a, there's a value that you're getting for that adoption fee, whatever it might be, that if you try to do any of that on your own, you know you want to do all that vetting on your own and you want to pay to have somebody drive your dog from Texas to Wisconsin or wherever you are.
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You're going to pay way more than that.
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So I just want to kind of get on my soapbox a little bit on that.
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One is that these, these fees are not just rescues trying to make money.
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We're nonprofits.
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We're not trying to make money, we're just trying to keep the boat afloat and help as many animals as we can.
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And sometimes we have, like our older dogs, that we're having a hard time getting adopted.
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We do have sponsors that will sponsor that adoption fee, so that then you just pay transport.
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So there are different ways that we go and we drop our prices sometimes, but you know just the expense alone.
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I go through a 45 pound bag of dog food.
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That's $60 in about five days, especially when they're growing puppies that you know are hungry and and some of these dogs don't know when to stop eating because they haven't had food and so they're just going to eat until they think they're full.
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So we have to limit to sometimes on these dogs that you know you're not going to overeat yourself and then end up with another issue.
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And you know I want to stress too that you know the adopt you mentioned, the follow up after the fact is that you know I feel like we do that pretty well too is that I can't say we call all our, all our adopters, but we do check in on certain animals, especially if they had certain issues, and we're always there for them when it comes to, you know, questions, problems, concerns, whatever it might be.
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So you know that's something for people to know about when they do adopt from a rescue, which you know may not a shelter, may not be able to provide the same kind of support or ongoing support as a rescue can.
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So definitely at least reach out and ask, you know, if you need some help or you're having some problems, to your local rescue.
00:22:46.184 --> 00:22:50.635
So anything else as far as that, that process, yeah, go ahead.
00:22:51.665 --> 00:22:56.636
One of the things that we do is we are transparent.
00:22:56.636 --> 00:23:03.414
We we tell it all everything that we know about this dog.
00:23:03.414 --> 00:23:11.849
We're going to tell you so that there's not any surprises Once you get the dog Well, did you know that this dog would?
00:23:11.849 --> 00:23:23.981
And if there is something that arises after you get the dog, please let us know, because we're willing to help you if we can, for whatever's going on.
00:23:23.981 --> 00:23:36.376
And we have also sent, in some states and in some areas, a list of vets that will stay in Newt are so that it's cheaper for you.
00:23:36.376 --> 00:23:41.041
So we're going to help in any way that we can.
00:23:41.041 --> 00:23:46.362
So reach out to us and we're we're going to help you with that.
00:23:48.066 --> 00:23:49.528
All right, yeah, that's that's.
00:23:49.528 --> 00:24:11.590
That's good advice, I know, for us at Starlight we give a lifetime return guarantee and the reason we call it outreach and that's why I liked when you explained why it's the rangers reach piece, because we don't just call it Starlight Rescue, we call it outreach and rescue because we do a lot of outreach.
00:24:11.590 --> 00:24:15.719
We want to help owners without taking their pets away from them, especially if they're good people.
00:24:15.719 --> 00:24:19.209
We want to help shelters so that they don't have to euthanize pets.
00:24:19.209 --> 00:24:26.920
So we're not just, you know, not just about picking up animals off the street, but kind of like, like Donna said, we get animals from all sources.
00:24:26.920 --> 00:24:30.710
So there's a lot of similarity in our rescues in that way.
00:24:30.710 --> 00:24:36.439
You know, the intake process, the medical evaluations, the testing and all of that are basically the same.
00:24:37.325 --> 00:24:40.450
One of the differences, I would say, is that you guys focus on dogs.
00:24:40.450 --> 00:24:46.920
We have focused in the past mostly on cats because we really struggle to get dog fosters.
00:24:46.920 --> 00:24:52.219
Right now I have two and for the most part they can't do it all the time.
00:24:52.219 --> 00:24:57.472
One can only do it in the summer times because she's a teacher and the other one, you know it's going to be limited on her schedule.
00:24:57.472 --> 00:24:58.936
She's got kids, things like that.
00:24:58.936 --> 00:25:09.224
So we really, for whatever reason, we struggle to find dog fosters, so we focused a lot more on cats, but we do have dogs that come through our programs and, like I said, the process is similar.
00:25:09.224 --> 00:25:14.173
They end up fostering here at my house for the most part, or at a foster home.
00:25:14.173 --> 00:25:30.018
Other differences we don't do transport currently although it's something that we have thought about and are investigating but we do pretty much local adoptions only that way that we can more easily follow up if we need to provide further support after adoption.
00:25:30.018 --> 00:25:38.613
You know we can still send people to our local veterinarian because we get a discount there and if you take it to your vet and you want us to help, you pay for some aftercare.
00:25:38.613 --> 00:25:41.919
You know it's going to cost us a lot more money if we do it that way.
00:25:41.919 --> 00:25:46.310
So I think for the most part the process is very similar.
00:25:46.310 --> 00:25:56.224
We don't do boarding of animals because we generally, for dogs, just don't take in more than what I can have at my house and what I can have in those two foster homes.
00:25:56.224 --> 00:26:12.368
Now that is changing for us and I'm super excited about it this year and it's been going on for a while it's been a bit of a longer term project because you know we're doing it as money is available my own personal money, because I have to pay for part of it, but also, you know, rescue money as well.
00:26:12.409 --> 00:26:17.159
As we are building on my property here we refer to my property as the rescue ranch.
00:26:17.159 --> 00:26:29.938
So we've got a seven acre piece of property in Alvin, texas, and we have currently have an outbuilding I'm looking at it out my window over here and it's a 10 by 20 converted shed.
00:26:29.938 --> 00:26:32.020
That is our isolation building.
00:26:32.020 --> 00:26:36.671
So if we have something that can't be with other animals, that would go in the isolation building.
00:26:36.671 --> 00:26:40.455
And then I converted my garage into a cat room.
00:26:40.455 --> 00:26:43.619
So that's where the cats live, because we do dogs and cats.
00:26:43.619 --> 00:26:52.659
But we're also building a dog building, so exclusively for dogs with dog runs that go in and out, it's got a fenced yard and that is in process.
00:26:52.659 --> 00:26:56.250
So we're probably about three quarters of the way to finishing that.
00:26:56.250 --> 00:27:13.830
But once we get that done, you know we're still going to be smaller on the dog side than you guys, you know, unless we get more dog fosters, because any building can only hold so many dogs and I can only clean up after so many and trying to run the rescue and a business, but it will increase our ability to help more dogs by about 400%.
00:27:13.830 --> 00:27:17.557
So we're super excited about getting that that building done.
00:27:17.557 --> 00:27:27.756
Our goal is getting getting pets into the right home, the right fit home, so that you know which and I'm glad you said that to Donna.
00:27:27.756 --> 00:27:39.251
About the education piece and really being super transparent with people about what this animal is about and that's why it's good for us to have them for a while to get to know them, to really see the ins and outs.
00:27:39.332 --> 00:27:52.269
And one thing I would say to people who are listening to this if you are thinking about adopting a pet from a rescue and you're reading the description and the description has parameters Well like no children under the age of 12.
00:27:52.269 --> 00:27:54.432
Don't call us.
00:27:54.432 --> 00:28:03.204
I mean I'm sorry to sound rude, but if you've got a three year old and a five year old, don't call about that dog because there's a reason we put that on there.
00:28:03.204 --> 00:28:06.051
It could be the dog is too rambunctious.
00:28:06.051 --> 00:28:11.224
A dog has not been properly socialized around small children and it's not a good situation for you or your family.
00:28:12.346 --> 00:28:15.571
If we say it's not good with cats, I mean we've had this happen.
00:28:15.592 --> 00:28:22.782
We've got a dog that was just returned because it's a bull terrier and there are certain breeds that have you know either.
00:28:22.803 --> 00:28:24.224
You know sometimes it's just the personality of the dog.
00:28:24.806 --> 00:28:31.175
A lot of times it's the breed and the prey drive that they have that, no matter what you try to do, it's not going to be good with a cat.
00:28:31.536 --> 00:28:35.487
So don't ask for my dog If you've got a cat.
00:28:35.607 --> 00:28:40.396
You're wasting my time and you're wasting your time and don't get a cat and this is why this dog got returned.
00:28:40.396 --> 00:28:51.367
Don't get a cat after we've already very clearly told you this dog is not safe with cats, because you're going to have a problem and the cat got injured and so now you want to return the dog.
00:28:51.367 --> 00:29:07.453
So we don't just put those parameters or that guidance and information about that pet into these descriptions on pet finder or, you know, shelter, love or these other places when we promote animals and we don't just put it for our health.
00:29:07.453 --> 00:29:12.224
We put it out there so that people who don't fit those parameters don't try to apply for this animal.
00:29:12.224 --> 00:29:14.167
Like I said, because it's a.
00:29:14.167 --> 00:29:27.224
You know it's a waste of time for us in processing that and it's a waste of time for you because you know a good rescue who understands that animal is not going to adopt out an animal to you just because you say you want it if we know it's not a good fit.
00:29:27.224 --> 00:29:30.413
So that's my soapbox on that subject.
00:29:32.247 --> 00:29:32.547
Right.
00:29:32.547 --> 00:29:41.564
Well, that's like when we get healers in and and somebody will call and say you know the dogs nipping my child.
00:29:41.564 --> 00:29:42.144
Okay, they're a healer.
00:29:42.144 --> 00:29:44.028
A healer is a dog.
00:29:44.028 --> 00:29:47.673
That's a working dog to herd cattle or to herd sheep.
00:29:47.673 --> 00:29:50.858
So if your children are not behaving, they're going to nip them.
00:29:51.807 --> 00:29:53.049
Yeah, that is huge.
00:29:53.049 --> 00:29:55.678
I think it's worth probably talking a little bit about.
00:29:55.678 --> 00:30:04.144
You know, rescue life compared with shelter life, so I'll kind of kick it off and then and then see what you've experienced, if it's different, the same, that kind of thing.
00:30:04.144 --> 00:30:16.224
So prior to starting Starlight Outreach and Rescue, I and even actually concurrent with running Starlight Outreach and Rescue I volunteered at a local animal shelter, municipal animal shelter.
