Welcome to Animal Posse, the podcast dedicated to the people and rescues, making a difference in the lives of animals. Today's guest is Jessica with ARNO. Hi, Jessica, thanks for joining me today.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Sure. To start, could you tell our listeners a bit about yourself and your role with Animal Rescue New Orleans or Arno?

Yeah. So my name is Jessica Vaccaro and I'm the shelter manager of Animal Rescue New Orleans, or Arno for short. I oversee our day-to-day operations, help shape long-term strategy, manage our team of staffing volunteers. And stay pretty involved with, the rehabilitation and medical of the animals within our organization. No two days is ever the same at Arno.

And what inspired you to get involved in animal rescue?

I grew up surrounded by animals. My grandparents showed boxers, so I grew up in the show world. And then when I was 18, I joined the Army active duty as an animal care specialist. And so I worked with the military working dogs and also with the clinics and shelters on bases. So just from an early age, started working with them, fell in love with the work, and when I got out of the army, I, continued on this path.

How did you get involved with doing the animal care specialist to begin with? I've never heard of that before.

Yeah, it's very small MOS, and they actually only have it in the army the DOD executive, that position, and we cover all branches. And I just was lucky that one of those was open. I had not heard of it either. I was 19, and I didn't even really understood everything I would be doing. But it just, worked out because I loved it.

I knew they had animals, but I've never heard of anybody say they were an animal care specialist in the army. So that's pretty cool.

Yeah, it was really cool. Besides people who I know from serving with, I have never, randomly met another veteran who had this job either it's very small. So yeah, it was just very lucky. It was definitely kismet.

And thank you for serving too.

Oh, thank you.

What makes Arno's mission important to you?

We have a couple of things. Arno is really multifaceted in the work that we do. So we take in, behavior cases, medical cases, we work closely with. open intake shelters in the area. We also have a community assistance program that helps us, provide food and veterinary services for low cost individuals, to help keep animals in homes. And we also assist on natural disaster and neglect cases. I like that. Arno, to me, really encompasses what rescue is about, which is helping our community in a lot of different ways that are impacted, in the animal rescue field.

I was always familiar with Arno, 'cause I'm of course from New Orleans, so after Katrina they were really big and involved in rescuing animals here. So for those that are unfamiliar, can you give us an overview of the organization's history and also the primary goals?

Absolutely. So ARNO was born in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It was started by animal lovers who saw the thousands of animals who were left behind in the city, and they started doing triage work here in the city. They just all came together. They had a passion to, help these animals and that passion never faded. And it turned into this kind of grassroots organization that still is going on. And actually, August, we'll make our 20 year anniversary from where it all started. Yeah, it's a really neat kind of origin story. And our still core goals are to, rescue, rehabilitate and rehome animals, especially those who are sick, injured, and overlooked. And we do all of this without any sort of government funding and we do this, mainly volunteer driven.

How many volunteers does your organization have?

I think that's a really hard number to encapsulate just because we have, a turnover of volunteers, but long term dedicated volunteers who do, higher end task for us or who have been with us for a long time. At least 50 to 75 individuals. But, for the people who come and help with animal care on those shifts each day and all the other things, likely we have, a hundred to 150 volunteers at any, one in a month's time.

You said, you do have a quick turnover of volunteers. What do you think the cause for that is?

A lot of people just come for different types of service hours, so for schooling, for different programs. So a lot of people are just coming for a set amount of hours to volunteer. We get fortunate that, we do get people who come for limited time who do end up sticking around, but it's just the nature, especially, we have a lot of college students that come. Who, don't stay in the city when they finish their degrees and stuff. So I just like those kinds of girls we see high turnover in.

'Cause I know a lot of other organizations, they always say they have a hard time getting volunteers, so that's why I asked the question. I didn't know if it was something where, people show up and they think they're gonna play with puppies or kitties all day and then they actually find out they have to do some cleaning.

I'm quite sure that is definitely part of it as well. It is really hard work. And we certainly do get volunteers who thinks it's gonna be just hanging out with the animals and they don't realize, that it's walking the dogs, cleaning the kennels, doing dishes, doing laundry. Also that kind of work, the kind of behind the scenes stuff that a lot of people don't see and don't always realize that, that's part of it.

Are you doing the rescue work only in New Orleans or do you go out to other areas as well?

We go out to other areas as well. We pull a lot from our community. So we pull a lot from Orleans Parish and Jefferson Parish. We also pull a lot from Terrebonne. From St. John. We will help wherever we can, we used to go up to St. Landry quite a bit, so wherever we can accommodate, shelters that need help, we try and help, but we do, try and maintain Jefferson Parish and Orleans Parish as kind of some of our top priorities just because they are our community.

How many resident animals do you have?

We can house and shelter 45 dogs and probably about 50 cats. And then in foster we typically have about 75 animals. In summer kitten season, that number can certainly go up in Foster. Usually we have about, between Foster and in shelter, about 150 to 200 animals in our care.

How old is the oldest resident or how long has the oldest resident been in your care?

Our oldest resident is Carol and we have had her for unfortunately five years now.

And is she a cat or a dog?

She is a dog. She is a beautiful little squatty body pit bull. She needs to be an only child. And it takes her a minute to warm up to people which has been what's made it difficult placing her. But she does warm up to people pretty quickly. And she has a lot of friends and a lot of new friends who are always working with volunteers, getting her intro to more people, so she just has more walkers and people on her team.

And has she gone to any like trial homes and it just didn't work out?

No. She has had a couple, like handful of people apply to adopt her, come meet her, and just. haven't followed through, she has not gotten even a chance at a trial adoption. She's been in foster, like short term foster with some of our volunteers. And she did well. Like they didn't report any issues. They just weren't in positions where they could keep her long term.

That's sad. But I'm glad she's with y'all because at least she's okay.

Yeah.. And we're so lucky for the volunteers we have because we just have so many truly amazing humans who go above and beyond for our animals. And Carol, is one that tugs at all of our heartstrings, she gets multiple car rides every week, pupccinos, lots of like special outings and trips. Just because so many of our volunteers do, love her so much. So we do try and do the best we can for her.

And what about CAT resident? What is the oldest CAT resident that you have?

Oh goodness. Nowhere near that I don't even think right now we have any cats that they've even been with us for a year. We don't have any like very long term cats right now, honestly. Our cat adoptions have been wonderful.

That's great.

Our cat adoption team who are all volunteers are amazing. And they've been really successful in helping to place like a lot of our kitties with, medical or behavioral issues. Yeah, I think like maybe six to eight months, maybe one of our long term kind of ongoing medical cases right now. But that's it. And that's baby He has just actually had an abdominal ultrasound today. 'cause we're trying to figure out some issues that have been ongoing with him.

Yeah, that, that's wonderful though that you're doing so well with the cats. 'cause usually it's the cats are little harder to adopt out.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, knock on wood, they've been doing a great job.

Do you do any transports?

We do not do transport from our shelter. There, honestly, we just have never really had a need to do it. Typically, transport's kind of come into us so yeah, that's just not really part of our mission.

And I do understand y'all have a new facility.

We do. It is amazing. It was a labor of love for sure and many years in the making. We spent years fundraising and checking properties out until we were able to purchase a. Property. And then we spent, a few more years fundraising and campaigning to do all of the construction and to, get all the equipment and everything we need. So we just moved in this year, the second week of February. And we will actually be having our grand opening on June 28th from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM and that will be open to the public for us to do tours and show everyone our new space.

After the grand opening, are you open to the public if somebody wants to go in, or do they have to make an appointment with you?

People from the public have to make an appointment with us. Our adoption team is all completely volunteer, so we do everything with an appointment.

You mentioned some of the programs that you're involved with. You said that you do disasters, neglect cases, and you help out individuals to keep their pets. And you mentioned the low cost program. So what are the qualifications for the low cost program that help people keep their pets?

Yeah, so our community assistance program is income based. So we have a vetting process that is done by one of my directors. But typically it's just based off of income is how we do that. And that helps to provide food preventatives and then necessary medical care for these animals. And. We are always taking in, new people into this program. So if there's anybody you know that needs assistance or wants to see if they qualify, they can contact us at info at animal rescue new orleans.org that will connect them with our director who oversees this program and she can get the process started for them.

Is that like a long term or a short term program?

Either or. It depends on the needs of the individual. So we have some people that we help long term. We have some people that just need help, for a short amount of time. We do both just dependent on the needs of the individual

For the neglect, cases that you work, do you house the animals for the authorities or how does that work exactly?

Yeah typically it's with national groups when they ask us to assist with any cases that they're working on or situations. Most recently we just assisted Animal Rescue Corps this past Friday in Bienville Parish for a criminal. case, which was a cruelty case involving over 30 animals in a home that was running itself like a rescue. And we've worked on several cases like that with the Animal Rescue Corps, with Bissell Foundation, and with Best Friends and other organizations. As situations have arisen in our community or in the area.

Do you physically go out to the property to help or do you just take in the animals?

Yeah, so we physically go out to help. We usually go out to help with handling, extraction behavior, assessing if just because everybody has to be vetted, before being transported. And then in certain situations we take animals, if that's what they're asking for, help with the case on Friday. They had placement for all the animals with them. So they all were all transported back to their facility in Tennessee. But we worked other cases where we've taken animals from the site it's probably more typical that we're there working support during the case and that we typically will also pull and leave with the animals.

Can I ask how the national groups get involved with that? Cause I, usually here, it's like a local authority that would go in and take care of that or like a local shelter.

A lot of times it's that. Either the police department or the shelters are reaching out to them. Typically it's because it's something outside of like the capacity of what that local shelter can handle. For this case on this past Friday, I believe one of the shelter managers in the area is who contacted the group that came down. And connected them with the sheriff's department for them to take over the case or to take the animals from the case.

I'd like to talk a little bit about natural disasters too. What are the more recent disasters that you have worked?

Hurricane Ida was really the last kind of big thing in this area.

For disasters, do you typically just stay in Louisiana then?

Typically we shelter in place for our animals here. We've provided support. We've driven out supplies and different things out to and there's been other hurricanes outside of New Orleans. But yeah, when it's here in New Orleans, we typically will shelter in place and take care of the animals at our shelter and help deal with. Strays and found animals which is very frequent during these situations, especially when there's extended power water outage like there was with Ida. I think we were at 12 days in our area with out. So yeah, we just help as we can within our ability with that kind of stuff. We also, had people black water certified with the parish. So we'll work on call or with LSART if needed for like water rescue and state response as well. That is all really based on just like personnel though, sometimes we have times where. we have enough personnel, that we can help, other times we don't have enough and we just have to focus, on our own shelter and our own needs.

And what certification was that? I've never heard of that.

Black Water Rescue. It's a type of water rescue, specifically for animal rescue responders, so for animal water rescue.

Hurricanes, of course, you just touched on this a little bit, that we have power outages do you have a backup generator for the shelter, or how do you combat these power outages with all these animals that you're sheltering?

Yeah, so we do now, which is so exciting. We have a natural gas generator at our new shelter. That was one of our big, non-negotiables when we moved in. Like we're designing, this new shelter. But before that we had gas run generators, and we typically had five to six to run the whole shelter. Whenever anything weather related, that we had notice on, we would always put out like a lot of posts and emails to try and move as many of our animals into foster as possible just to try and keep. The amount of animals in the shelter as low as possible, which has also been our saving grace with some of these more extreme weather conditions.

Can you tell people what should they have for hurricane season coming up for their own pets? Can you go over what, a good disaster kit would be to have, or a hurricane kit?

Yeah, absolutely. What I keep for my personal animals every year is I always make copies, updated copies of their vaccine records. I put those in. Ziploc bags. I also take a picture of those. So I have it on my phone as well. Easily accessible. I make sure I have about a week's worth of food for each of my animals, a month's worth of any medications for 'em, and then a week's worth of water. I also keep on hand some over the counter, calming supplements for 'em. And then, of course, I always keep marked collars on my dogs because those are the anti-slip collars and leashes. I also keep a roll of dog bags in their go bags, and I also keep popup water bowl and food bowls for them both as well. So I have a little. Go bag for my animals for disaster stuff and I repack that, every year usually at the start of June.

That's great. And why do you do the copies of the vaccine records?

Yeah, just in case anything ends up being more catastrophic than we realize. And we have to evacuate or if I need to go stay with a family member out of state, I just wanna make sure that I have, proof of their vaccines, their rabies vaccine and their microchip on hand and ready to go, especially if I'm moving them over state lines.

Yeah, that's definitely a great thing to have. Everybody should have that.

Absolutely.

And everybody should have some kind of go bag, like you said, ready to go that you can just grab and take. And get out the door if you have to.

Yeah. I do like my own, disaster kit for my animals every year in June. And I just find too, I it just gives you a peace of mind when things happen. You don't have to scramble, you don't need to be stressed because you know you're prepared. And that way, you can focus on other things. And I'm sure that's kinda like the military in me. I'm a big, planner, being prepared is very important to me. Yeah, I highly recommend to everybody out there.

Yep. And hurricane season is coming up, so

Yes. It is

not fun.

No, especially not with animals. It definitely adds on some more layers there when you have animals or kids, just when you have any sort of dependent, right?

Yeah. And it, it's stressful, especially for me 'cause I have cats, so like it's different with cats and dogs too.

Yeah. It's tough.

I try to keep 'em in their kennels. I don't take 'em out of their kennels until we get to the destination and then I'll have these bigger popup things that they can go in.

Nice. And do you use the the feliaway spray at all?

I will for the ones I have that get a little bit stressed out, luckily most of mine are, okay. They might meow for maybe 15, 20 minutes and then they calm down.

Okay. So they're like, we've been through this before.

They're not too bad. But I know there's people that have to sedate their cats,

oh, yeah.

What strategies have proven to be the most effective in terms of successful animal rescues

I would say probably, building trust with people in the community, with other organizations, with the shelters we're pulling throughout from I think, fostering community building those relationships within our community is key to anything that we do in animal rescue because when. People know that they can trust you when they know that you're gonna do the right thing. When they know that you're, you will offer, support. I think it just makes everything easier because other open intake shelters know that you're resource that they can contact when they need help with certain animals. Members of the community, know that they can reach out for help. When they need it. And, even other rescues, know that if they, need help in a situation or, maybe there's an animal that needs help and they don't have space at the moment. They know that we're a resource that they can call. So I think yeah, that's probably been one of the biggest, parts of our success. Helped us to, stay successful doing rescue is just fostering those relationships and, building trust like within the community.

And on the flip side, have there been any approaches to rescue that haven't worked as well as anticipated?

I think a lot of things are trial and error just in general. Like with anything. Maybe the things that are the least successful for us is when we overextend ourselves. Just in general, being mainly volunteer driven. Having enough people to do all the things we wanna do and to do all the things we wanna do well can be challenging. Maybe overcommitting ourselves, to events and different exposure things, which, ideally would be a great thing, but when you don't have enough volunteers to, man the event, bring animals to the event or, to the, these things, then they ultimately are not successful. So I think that would be probably the biggest thing is just over extension.

Could you discuss your process for screening potential adopters to ensure animals go to safe and loving homes?

Yeah, absolutely. So it starts off with our application which is on our website. Once an application is filled in, that's gonna go over to one of our volunteer adoption team members. They are gonna read through that, which the application really just covers lifestyle experience and kind of the person's expectations for pet ownership. Then we're gonna do a virtual home check. This is mainly we're, checking the yards for, issues with fencing, poisonous plants, that kind of thing. And then if the person has owned a pet before, we are going to, call the vet just to verify, that. Vaccines were done, preventatives were done, that kind of thing. And then lastly, if they rent, we do always call the landlord to ensure that, the tenant has spoken to them and gotten approval for the animal. We do try and make our process more kind of a conversation as opposed to a checklist. And one of the things I think is really neat about our adoption process is that you get paired with an adoption counselor and their whole job is just to help find you, the perfect pet for you. And they really go above and beyond, in doing that, which I think is really special and really cool.

And are people open to that? When you help them find the pet for them as opposed to just picking out the one that they want.

Yeah, certainly. Some people they see a picture, a video, or they meet an animal at an event and they fall in love and that's totally fine. We have other people that, maybe the animal they chose or have an adoption application and goes home, or, maybe the animal they chose after they meet them isn't the right fit. And in that case we have, our staff who our staff does playgroups every weekday at the shelter. So the majority of all of our dogs in shelter are playgroups every day with them. So that team really knows the behavior for the dogs. Best. So they'll work with dog adopters. We have these questions we go through with them about what they're looking for, their lifestyle, this, that, size, any of those preferences. And then our slate group team will help pair 'em with they'll make a short list of dogs that they think match what they're looking for and will do meets. And then we do the same thing on the cat side with. Our cat leads who will we don't play here for the cats, but we have, cats in our cat condos who are, co housed with other cats and some different things that'll help us determine best fit for people.

What about first time adopters? If they've never had a vet,

We just usually ask for a professional reference. Or typically we'll ask them to call a vet and just get an estimate for some of the basic services for the year, just so they have an understanding of what they're looking to pay out of pocket with pet ownership.

Do you offer any kind of post-adoption support or resources?

Oh yes. We do a ton. So we always check in and we provide a lot of resources and we always make ourselves available. We will help with, training. We'll follow up if there's any medical issues and help with that. If there's any supplies that we think, will help the animal adjust better, help cope with any issues, we'll supply those. So we really always wanna make sure that our adopters feel very supported and they don't feel like they just got stuck. And if something doesn't work out,, we always take our animals back. No judgment. Whether it's been a week or a year or five years since adoption, and that is part of our contract that if it doesn't work out, our animals always come back to us.

Do you have any successful adoption stories that you could share?

Yeah. A ton. I will I'll talk about one that's. Close to my heart. And that is about our black lab in a wheelchair named Titan. He was found when he was about 10 weeks old, dragging himself down the side of the road out in Lafourche. They didn't know if he was, truly paralyzed or if there was just inflammation that was causing like a temporary paralysis in his back legs. We ended up taking him, not knowing what his future was gonna look like, but we just knew that we had to try. So we took him, put him through, physical therapy around the clock here. He needed multiple surgeries. And now he's doing great. He is thriving, zooming around in his wheelchair goes to a dog park multiple times a week is out and about all the time. And why it's close to my heart is because I'm the one that adopted him after I fostered him for a year. Yeah. So I wasn't looking for another dog, but he was just, the right one. So I have. Two kind of special needs dogs at my house. My other one is also an ARNO alum. And her name is Brynn. She's nine now. I adopted her eight years ago. She was found, dumped in a plastic crate with her mom in the middle of the night. And she was about 11 months old. She had really bad neuropathy, which is like a nerve disorder and semi feral. So it was actually when I first started at ARNO and she just hugged up my heartstrings and I started working with her. And once I built up, her trust, I took her home to foster her and I just fell in love. So those are my two foster fails.

I think everybody in rescue has some of those, and I always say I have the reject cats.

Oh yeah.

I mean they're not really it's like the ones that nobody else wants. Like I have one, she doesn't have any eyes, so she was born completely blind, no eyes. And then of course we have a tripod. And he doesn't know that he's missing an arm and she doesn't know she's missing eyes.

It's amazing how they adjust so quickly, like they're animals are just so resilient. It's just truly amazes me,

It does. And it's a shame that the special need ones are overlooked because I think the special need ones, they're absolutely amazing when you spend time with them.

I agree. Yeah I agree wholeheartedly and I think they just make your life so much richer. I know, my two over here I couldn't imagine my life without Now. If you'd asked me, five years ago if I thought I would have a dog in a wheelchair, I'd probably be like. What, so it's funny, with doing this work does make us I think, more amenable too to giving these special guys a chance,

Yeah. They're amazing. Absolutely amazing. The things that they can do. I think everybody should see it. It really is amazing.

Yes, I agree. My one's staring at me right now. Yes, we're talking about you.

So how does Arno engage with the local community to raise awareness about animal welfare and promote adoptions?

So it is a lot of, social media these days. We post a lot on our Instagram, our TikTok, and our Facebook. We try to post the kind of work we're doing, the kind of things we're seeing, the things we need help with. What I enjoy about the way that we do this is that, we don't do a lot of angry or shaming posts, I think we do a pretty good job about, staying like upbeat and honest and letting people know and like the ways that we need help. And we also do, a lot of events as well where we're out in the community, showcasing ARNO and the animals and talking about the work that we do. We also have, our needs out on like volunteer match with kind of the help that we need to for, this. And yeah, I think that probably, encapsulates it of what we do the majority of for that.

What message would you like to share with our listeners about the importance of animal rescue and animal welfare?

Ooh, so rescue ultimately is about second chances. And not always, just for the animals. Adopting and fostering and volunteering I think can be transformative for the people as well. Doing something that matters, caring for those who can't care for themselves is. Really special and important. And I think it, changes something within us making the world a better place. So yeah, I think it's, really special all around for us and for the animals,

For those who wanna support Arno, what are the most impactful ways they can contribute?

Yeah. Volunteering. Volunteering giving your time is always the best way to help ARNO. There are so many ways you can help by coming, helping with animal care events, volunteering or fostering. We have other volunteer positions like administration ones as well. And then of course, if you're able to donate, especially monthly support really helps us plan out and respond quickly. Every little bit helps us truly. And then, helping to promote us. If you see one of our posts, on social media, please share it. Please like it, please interact with it. That helps us, if you have a friend or family member looking to adopt or volunteer send of our way. So those are probably some of the most impactful ways that people can help support us.

And what is your website too?

It is www.animalrescueneworleans.org.

Thank you. And before we end the call, is there anything else you would like to add?

Oh, for anybody in the immediate area, we would love to see you come out for our grand opening. That is going to be on Saturday, June 28th from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM we will have a lot going on, including we'll be giving tours. And if you do come by, please come meet me. Again, my name's Jessica and I'd be happy to give anybody who comes a tour of the new facility and talk to you about Arno more in depth.

That sounds like fun and congratulations on the grand opening too. It's very exciting to have that in the area.

Yeah. Thank you so much.

All right. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. I appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.