Transcript
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Hey there, pet lovers.
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Welcome back to another episode of Starlight Pet Talk.
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I'm your host, amy Castro, and today we're doing something very different but very special for you.
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So imagine this a 1,672-mile road trip, a rescue dog named Bonnie and a mission to find her the perfect, forever home all the way from Texas to New York.
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Sounds like a wild ride, right?
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Well, it certainly was.
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And the best part, I wasn't alone.
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I had my amazing best friend, bev by my side, who, by the way, flew all the way from Boston to Texas just to join me on this little road trip adventure.
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But, as with anything that I'm involved in, it was not all smooth sailing From a hurricane messing with Bev's flight plans to car trouble multiple times along the way, a super sketchy hotel in Virginia and some historical detours.
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We've got stories for days.
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And let's not forget the most important part making sure Bonnie's new home was just right.
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And we did that with a little help from our friend Dr Linda Atkins of the Valley Cottage Animal Hospital.
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So whether you're just curious about how pet adoption websites can connect a dog from Texas with a family in New York, or you just love a good road trip story, this episode is packed with all the twists, turns and tail wags you could want.
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So buckle up and join us for this unforgettable journey with Bonnie, bev and me.
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Let's get started.
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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, and I'm your host, amy Castro.
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And today we're talking about road tripping with our friend Bonnie, a rescue adventure across 1,672 miles across this beautiful United States of ours.
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And with me on this journey, as I mentioned in the teaser for this episode, was my best friend Bev.
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Say hi Bev, hi Bev.
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And she's been on the show before.
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You all have met Bev before.
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So I couldn't think about doing a road trip like this, because I was basically contemplating let's just say I was contemplating bad thoughts of trying to do this trip by myself.
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But Bev decided she would hop on a plane, fly all the way to Houston from Boston and then turn around, get back in the car and head right back to where she came from the very next day, and so that's kind of how our road trip began.
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First of all, I have to say that the pre-planning process of this whole trip was pretty interesting.
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It was all very planned out but at the same time very last minute I think, bev you got your ticket, what like two days before we were supposed to be taking off.
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I think, bev, you got your ticket what like two days before we were supposed to be taking off.
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Well, I think we had gotten the plane ticket earlier than that.
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And then here comes Hurricane Beryl, oh yeah.
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And I start looking and I'm like you know, you know how, like airports, they shut down, they slow down and it kind of has a domino effect, like a storm in Colorado could affect a flight to Chicago or whatever.
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So I started thinking about it and yes, two days before the trip, I'm like can we lay over somewhere other than Atlanta?
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And there's just no way to get into the smaller of the two.
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Houston airports.
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So we booked a whole nother flight, yeah, so already I'm agitated because I missed this whole chain of text messages that apparently I was not involved in.
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And so the only text message I saw from Bev is can't we take a more westerly route on my flight?
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And I'm thinking have you lost your freaking mind?
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It is like two days before I don't, why do you need to go west?
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It made like I just was losing my mind and then I went back and scrolled back and it's like oh yeah, that makes sense, because basically our drive well her flight was going against Beryl and then our drive was kind of going in the direction of Beryl.
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But luckily in the end it all worked out well because we didn't hit any bad weather the whole trip, which was kind of nice?
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We really didn't.
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It was beautiful the whole time it was great, yeah, and the only thing that got slightly messed up is I had the pickup of the rental car because I was a little concerned about my car, even though it's not that old, but I was concerned about its ability to make that trip, especially because periodically the air conditioner likes to kick off and nobody needs that in the middle of summer.
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So we decided to rent a car and that way if we had any problems along the way it would be somebody else's problem.
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Little did I know it would also be our problem, but we'll get to that shortly.
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But anyway, I had it all really planned out that Bev was going to be flying into Hobby Airport in Houston.
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I was going to pick up the rental car, zip her back over to the rental car place, we would sign out the car, get her on as a driver, because I did not want to do all the driving and then, when we changed the flights, didn't even think about the fact that the car was going to be at one airport and Bev was going to be at another airport.
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Oh, I didn't think about that either until you said it just now.
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Yeah, oh my God, it was not a big deal, but I had to go pick up the car at Hobby Airport and then drive to Bush Airport to pick up Bev.
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But it all worked out and we got home.
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So this was all on.
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What was that Thursday night, right?
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So we're going to give you kind of a timeline of this trip and how it played out, because it took longer than it should have, but we also took our time to a certain degree.
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So, anyway, we get home, we get up.
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The next morning Did not get off to an early start, I'm not even sure why.
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I don't think go ahead.
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It was intentional because we weren't sure.
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We weren't sure how we were going to do, I wasn't sure how you were going to do, and we certainly didn't know how Bonnie was going to do.
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So we just taken our time and see how far we would get that particular day, and no reason to rush.
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That's true.
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Yeah, I mean we had an agenda from the standpoint of what day we needed to be in New York, but we had more than enough time in between when Bev got in and actually the arrival that we were supposed to be handing her off to not Bev not handing Bev off to the adopter, but handing Bonnie off to the adopter along the way, but anyway.
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So I think we got on the road about 9.30 and we will not give you an exact moment by moment timeline, but this is sort of pivotal because we got on the road, we get the dog in the car and then we have to go find an Avis location to add Bev to the car, because nobody wanted to mess around with that.
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At eight o'clock at night the night before transaction at the Avis office in Pearland Thank you very much.
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And off we went with a final destination in mind but no idea where we were going to stop.
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Along the way I dragged Bev into a risky trip of not planning one of the stops along the way.
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I had no hotel reservations, nothing planned along the way, just a pseudo route.
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But, like Bev said, it was all about seeing how long we lasted in the car and stopping at what seemed like a logical point.
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It just means we weren't restricted in where we can go and it was loosey-goosey, we could spend all the time.
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It's not like we had to catch a flight, you know, we could just make the day as long or as short as we wanted to.
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It was fine.
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It was totally fine.
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And, as mentioned, we didn't really know how Bonnie was going to do.
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The longest ride I've ever had with her in the car has probably been about an hour an hour and 10 minutes, not 24 hours.
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So turns out she was very good in the car, thank goodness, along the way.
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But some of you may be wondering why is it that we went through this trouble?
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Because several people asked us if we were crazy about taking this dog on this road trip.
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Why, why New York?
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Why didn't we find anybody around here, which is Houston?
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And then also, why were we jumping in the car ourselves?
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Because there are ways that you can transport a dog, like sticking them in a crate on a plane, sticking them on a truck with a transport to get them delivered to the East Coast.
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But there was a method to the madness, wouldn't you say Bev.
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I would say that she's precious cargo and you've poured a year of your life, blood, sweat and tears into her.
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It's precious cargo.
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You wouldn't just hand it off.
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Luggage gets lost.
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You want to make sure it gets there.
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Yeah, yeah, we definitely wanted to make sure she got there, felt a very vested interest in her future, because this, to be perfectly honest, this adoption was kind of her last chance um other than living with me forever or you know, or worse, because, um, bonnie one one of her biggest drawbacks, even though to me she's kind of a picture perfect dog with with one very major flaw, and that is she's a cat killer.
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Let's just put it that way.
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Oh, she said it.
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She has.
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I know I did say it.
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Well, first of all we got her from somebody as a puppy, as an older puppy, and had her for a while.
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I thought we would get an adopter sooner.
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Cute bull terrier, unusual looking, good personality.
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And I won't get into all the back and forth about why it took us so long to get her out to that first adopter, but she was out to her first adopter for a couple of months and then she got out the front door and killed a kitty cat and so Bonnie got returned.
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So yeah, and some dogs are like that, you know, some dogs have a very strong prey drive and I don't know that it would have mattered if it was a cat or a bunny or a mouse or a possum or whatever it would be.
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But she definitely liked to go after things, although we didn't flat out say in her description that she was a cat killer, because that just sounds a bit harsh, doesn't it, bev?
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I still don't know why an adopter more locally to where you are could not be found.
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Like, is it that difficult to look past that?
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Like, if you live alone and don't have a cat, what's the problem?
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Is it the neighbor has a cat and you're concerned about her getting out?
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I mean, it was just very difficult to understand why she was completely unadoptable.
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For what was it a year that you had her?
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Yeah, it was over a year.
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Over a year we got her and she was probably, let's say she was eight months, seven, eight months, and she's two and a half now.
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So we had her a long time in our program and part of that time she was at a professional trainers and so we lost time in there with working with just getting her basic training and things taken care of, and she spent a lot of time boarding there as well, because we didn't have any place to put her at the time.
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So we did, I think she lost a little bit of time on the adoption market.
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Yeah, I think the whole local adoption thing.
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Well, first, like I said, first of all, we did not say that she was a cat killer, but we did make it super duper clear in our advertisement of her that you know that, no cats.
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And we got initially people that either had a cat or whatever the case may be, and it's like no, when I say no cats, I don't mean eh, it's, you know, she, she doesn't prefer to share space with cats.
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It's like she's going to, she's going to harm the cat and so that might be part of it.
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But yeah, I, I think we ran into a lot of people at various adoption events who didn't have cats and yet still we didn't find any adopters.
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So I'm not really sure what that was all about.
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I mean, you had a good theory at one point.
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You said to me something like well, maybe people would read that no cats thing and then read into well, if she can't be around cats, can she be around kids?
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Can she be around this, can she be around that?
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And maybe that was part of it too.
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But yeah, the bottom line was, after, after a certain amount of time, I just got to a desperation point of how long can this dog live in a kennel at the vet?
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Or I had her at my house for a long time, but trying to juggle my cats and her, yeah, that was crazy Closing doors and opening doors and where's, where's this cat, where's that?
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No, you can't live that way.
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It was terrible, yeah.
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Yeah, it went on for a couple of months and actually she did get another cat.
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While she was here she got one of our barn cats.
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Unfortunately Not actually, I'll be, if I have to be really honest.
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Not only did she get one, but she got two.
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She didn't kill the second one, but she definitely caused enough damage to the first one that it did pass away from its injuries and so you know, I was actually, to be perfectly honest, contemplating whether this dog needed to be adopted at all, and it really brought up to me a lot of questions in rescue about how far do we let certain behaviors go before you say that dog's not safe.
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And I think with Bonnie, because she was good around dogs, good around kids I mean my four pound Chihuahua she never you know never had any problem with her.
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It was just prey drive and prey drives not an unnatural thing for dogs, a lot of dogs have that, and so I I kind of felt like it was something that, with the right adopter, could be managed.
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You know, maybe, maybe I'm wrong, you know, but uh.
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I think you even said too if she's on the leash, it was not an issue.
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Yeah, yeah, it's really just when she's not in control of a person.
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Um, because she actually listened quite well, she didn't.
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I mean, I would get out of my car on a regular basis with cats all over there because we've got lots of barn cats and it's not like she pulled or barked or anything like that.
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But I know if I'd clicked that leash off she'd have been off like a rocket after those cats.
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So anyway, that's a whole nother.
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We probably need to do a whole nother story episode about.
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You know, at what point do you decide an animal's not appropriate for adoption?
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But we made the command decision that Bonnie deserved at least one other chance, and so and this is kind of an interesting thing that people may not realize when you go out on websites like Adopt-A-Pet and Pet Finder, I mean you can search the entire country for pets, but generally what people do is they put in their zip code and they search a certain radius from themselves.
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And so I thought to myself okay, how can I expand the reach of people seeing this dog, you know, especially to parts of the country that maybe have fewer animals up for adoption?
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I think that's another challenge is in Houston there's so many dogs available, whereas other parts of the country people are on waiting lists to get a dog.
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That's very true, yeah, parts of the country people are on waiting lists to get a dog.
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That's very true, yeah.
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So anyway, I decided I didn't even ask my brother about this, but I put his address in as a secondary transport location for Starlight Outreach and Rescue, and it's not like it showed that to the public or anything, but it made her picture and her information viewable by people in that area and, interestingly enough, the person who Bonnie ended up getting adopted to and I'm not going to name the town or name the person's name, but was literally within a few minutes, you know, to a half an hour from, let's say, from my brother's house, so really, really close.
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And that's what opened up the possibility of taking Bonnie to New York, which I still look back and say that was just nuts.
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I can't believe we did that.
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I don't know.
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I sometimes I think that too, but all in all it really wasn't that unreasonable.
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People do this all the time.
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Yeah yeah.
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And we didn't go just like willy-nilly, like I talked to some crazy guy on the phone and then decided to drive a dog to him.
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You know, there was obviously our normal adoption vetting process, background check that we do on potential adopters, a Facebook and other social media stalking that we usually do.
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And then I kind of figured, okay, I don't want to get all the way up there and find that I see something in this person's home, their yard where they live, their family members.
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That is not going to work.
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And so I enlisted the help of my friend Linda Atkins, who is Dr Linda Atkins at the Valley Cottage.
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Yes, she is so at the Valley Cottage Animal Hospital in Valley Cottage, new York, and it just so happens that I used to work there as a kid, through high school and college, and Bev worked there too, right?
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Yeah, I did, I'm not going to name years, but I did it through high school and college.
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I want to say high school for me too.
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I honestly I don't remember when that was, when it was over in the shopping plaza, before they had the freestanding hospital that they have now.
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Yeah, now they've got their big old building and a second building and everything else anyway.
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So I thought, okay, who can I find that's back in New York that would be willing to drive and go and check this person out?
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So thank goodness Linda volunteered.
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She went over there with one of her veterinary technicians and put this guy through the ringer.
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I sent her like three pages of interview questions.
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Oh my God, well, she asked me for them.
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I'm like I don't know, I'm not sure what to ask.
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Oh wow, well, we don't normally do home visits, you know, we kind of visit with the person, but as far as, like checking out the person's fence, checking out where the dog's going to sleep, right, I thought one of the things was super interesting is that there are some rescues that will go to like Google Images or Google Maps and look at your property and not only looking for whether you actually do have a fence or not, but looking for things like is there a ring around a tree that shows that a dog?
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has been tied.
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Yeah, has tied and worn a path into the ground kind of thing, or evidence of dog houses that might indicate, you know, that the dog doesn't spend all its time indoors.
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Anyway, it was an interesting education for me to work up these questions.
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So I sent her all these questions.
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She went over, I crossed my fingers and, sure enough, she came back and said the guy's great, his kid's great, I think it's going to be great.
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And so.
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So then we started really finalizing plans at that point.
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And even if, even if it didn't work out with the adopter, you still had a network of people myself Linda included that could.
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We could figure it out and get her back back to where you are at your rescue ranch and start again, or try another one there was still a safety net for her Right.
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Yeah, and that's something that I think we pride ourselves on is that you know and I tell adopters this all the time is that we will always take an animal back, you know, if it doesn't work, cause you don't know what's going to happen.
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Right, do other, do other rescues, do that too.
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Take animals back.
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A lot of them do, I'm sure not all of them do.
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You know, I think the trickiest part, especially for bigger rescues, you know we're a relatively small rescue.
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We do 300 and something animals a year and there are rescues that do 600, 700 a month kind of thing.
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Oh my Lord.
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My guess would be, if you do that level of volume, that you probably can't make that kind of guarantee.
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But I would guess they probably try, and one would hope that if you and this is for those who adopt if something doesn't work out, even if it's well down the road after you adopted your pet, don't assume that the rescue either won't take the animal back or won't at least help you rehome the animal you know.
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So it's at least worth reaching out to them before you put the animal on Craigslist or Facebook or, you know, let some rando adopt the animal, because the rescues have resources to do things like background checks and home visits and whatnot.
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So at least ask them if they're willing to help you out, so anyway.
00:18:46.731 --> 00:18:47.213
So that was.
00:18:47.213 --> 00:18:50.223
That was kind of all of the pre-trip.
00:18:50.223 --> 00:18:55.404
This is what went into it before I realized wow, this is, we're really going to do this.
00:18:55.404 --> 00:18:57.692
This is just like I said, this is just crazy.
00:18:57.692 --> 00:19:04.924
So anyway, um Bev, how did I sucker you into coming with me?
00:19:06.090 --> 00:19:12.676
You know, in hindsight I offered cause you were kind of you were kind of floundering on the phone and like what are we going to do?
00:19:12.676 --> 00:19:17.982
And maybe not floundering, but uh, and it just kind of it was the natural progression of things.
00:19:17.982 --> 00:19:20.499
Like why don't I just fly down there and drive with you?
00:19:20.499 --> 00:19:27.761
I think cause you're mostly concerned about you driving all that time by yourself and rental car, your car, whatever.
00:19:27.761 --> 00:19:29.525
So it's always better with a wingman.
00:19:29.525 --> 00:19:37.814
Turns out you're the best wingman ever because you can operate cell phones and maps and compute the GPS in the car.
00:19:37.814 --> 00:19:40.520
And grandma, here is just like, just what button do I push?
00:19:40.520 --> 00:19:42.755
Just tell me what button to push, whatever.
00:19:42.755 --> 00:19:44.760
Now you're an awesome wingman.
00:19:45.470 --> 00:19:46.152
Thank you, thank you.
00:19:46.152 --> 00:19:48.538
Yeah, the Air Force taught me to be a navigator.
00:19:48.618 --> 00:19:54.199
No, not really, but no, it was just a natural progression, like why not make a trip out of it?
00:19:54.199 --> 00:19:54.869
You know we'll have fun.
00:19:54.869 --> 00:19:58.113
And then at that point it became very selfish on my part.
00:19:58.113 --> 00:20:03.698
I'm like, yeah, we're going on a road trip, we're going to knock some, check off some boxes of states that I hadn't been to yet.
00:20:03.698 --> 00:20:08.021
When we drove through Arkansas, I'm like I'm in Arkansas, I'm in Arkansas, I'm in Arkansas.
00:20:08.021 --> 00:20:09.242
I haven't been in Arkansas before.
00:20:09.262 --> 00:20:14.247
I didn't feel such enthusiasm about that, but that's okay.
00:20:18.630 --> 00:20:19.030
Check those boxes.
00:20:19.050 --> 00:20:19.551
Check those boxes.
00:20:19.551 --> 00:20:23.301
So, yeah, it was like a road trip with Amy Hell, yeah, yeah, all right, so let's talk about Arkansas, shall we?
00:20:23.301 --> 00:20:29.417
There's nothing there, yeah Well, yeah, it's definitely the route that we were taking.
00:20:29.417 --> 00:20:33.009
There was not a whole lot going on between Houston and Arkansas.
00:20:33.009 --> 00:20:50.248
But, like I said, the weather was great, and so this is our strategy when Bev and I road trip, which we do fairly frequently, like when we went to England and Scotland and Ireland now there, we were at least smart and we kind of picked out major like London.
00:20:50.288 --> 00:20:51.252
You're not going to just wing it.
00:20:51.252 --> 00:20:53.542
You probably could have In my old age.
00:20:53.542 --> 00:21:01.604
I probably would wing it now if I went back again, but I didn't feel comfortable winging it and not having some place in a major city.
00:21:01.604 --> 00:21:05.988
So we had major cities book like Edinburgh, London and Dublin.
00:21:05.988 --> 00:21:08.354
But other than that, anything we did in between.
00:21:08.354 --> 00:21:13.144
Our strategy is thus First you got to set the hotel on fire.
00:21:13.430 --> 00:21:16.497
No, I'm just kidding, Actually, I'm not kidding.
00:21:16.497 --> 00:21:19.343
Yeah, that might have happened at one point.
00:21:19.343 --> 00:21:24.397
It wasn't an actual fire, but we'll tell that story another time.
00:21:24.397 --> 00:21:31.901
But anyway, first you've got to, uh, you get up, you have your breakfast, you hit the road early, Cause we're kind of on the same sleeping, wake up schedule which works out well.
00:21:31.901 --> 00:21:35.380
It's never good to road trip with somebody that wants to sleep till 10.
00:21:35.380 --> 00:21:38.920
If you're up at 645, it just would drive me, drive me nuts.
00:21:44.650 --> 00:21:45.432
So we'd hit the road and we drive, drive.
00:21:45.432 --> 00:21:54.500
We'd stop for lunch or not, or just picnic or whatever, and then, somewhere between 12 and two, get on TripAdvisor, my favorite website, and start looking for pet-friendly hotels.
00:21:54.500 --> 00:22:02.214
Well, obviously, when we were in England we didn't have to look for pet-friendly hotels, but that actually added another caveat, and I know you wanted to talk about that.
00:22:02.214 --> 00:22:06.950
But basically look for hotels that are within whatever X amount of distance.
00:22:06.950 --> 00:22:14.183
So you kind of gauge the pet how's she doing in the car, gauge the driver, gauge the passenger and say okay, it's 2 o'clock.
00:22:14.183 --> 00:22:16.679
How much further do we want to go before we stop?
00:22:16.679 --> 00:22:19.378
And then I start scouting out on TripAdvisor hotels.
00:22:19.378 --> 00:22:25.923
So our first hotel was the beautiful Holiday Inn outside Little Rock Airport, and it was fine.
00:22:25.923 --> 00:22:31.238
There wasn't a whole lot going on around it, though, so did we ever have dinner that night?
00:22:31.238 --> 00:22:32.315
Whatever happened with dinner?
00:22:32.315 --> 00:22:35.019
We weren't looking for dinner and we were not successful.
00:22:37.012 --> 00:22:40.721
We drove all around and ended up ordering from the restaurant in the hotel.
00:22:43.651 --> 00:22:44.473
Yeah, that's right.
