Welcome to Animal Posse, the podcast dedicated to the people and rescues making a difference in the lives of animals.

today I am speaking with Kristie and Jeremy from Sav-an-Angel before we get started, if I could get each of you to introduce yourselves and tell me what you do for Sav-an-Angel. Kristie, I'll let you go first. Hello, I'm Kristie Sullens. I am the co-founder of Sav-an-Angel, and for. 10 years or so or more. I did Sav-an-Angel full time and then when I had my second child and moved from New Orleans Sav-an-Angel, merged with another organization that was run by Jeremy Parks, who was also our very first volunteer at Sav-an-Angel when he was 12 or 13, I think. 13, 13. 13 years old. Yeah. And then he went off to college and did everything and then he came back and now he is our director. We merged our organizations and then he took over as director and he's been in that position ever since. Go ahead Jeremy. Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Jeremy Parks and Kristie said, I'm the executive Director of Sav-an-Angel. We're a 5 0 1 C3 organization based out of Bastrop, Texas now, and I've been with the organization since I was 13, about 15 years ago, and I transitioned into a staff member on the leadership team in 2018, and then I transitioned into the executive director role in 2019. That's pretty cool. And I love to hear that you started when you were that young because I'm noticing that a new trend is that it's very difficult to get young people involved with animal rescue now. It is. Absolutely. I know Sav-an-Angel has an interesting origin story, so can you share that origin story, Kristie? Yes. So when Angel was five years old, we found a lump in her abdomen when we were just petting her belly and we noticed that she was acting funny. And so we took her to the doctor and the doctor told us that she had lymphoma, and that when dogs have lymphoma, that they can't. Cure them. They can only treat the symptoms that they can't give them chemotherapy like a human because they take an oath to do no harm. And that the only options we had were chemotherapy and radiation. And then, my husband was Johnny, the co-founder said we can cure humans of lymphoma. Why can't we cure dogs? And our vet Dr. Garra went down the rabbit hole and she ended up finding a vet in North Carolina, but they were doing bone marrow transplants with machines that had been donated by the Mayo Clinic. And then we found out that a hundred percent of transplants performed on humans were tested on dogs first. And so we were like, okay, how much does it cost? We said it's $16,000. And back then that was. It's like just an unreal amount of money for us. 'cause we didn't have any money really. We were very young and so we went out, we set out to raise the money, and along the way we met all kinds of people in the community. And then we started to see the need and we were just so grateful that everyone was helping us to save Angel and we just wanted to give back. And then that kind of led into rescue and everything else. But ultimately angel was, I believe maybe like the 23rd dog to get a bone marrow transplant at North Carolina State University. And she was cured of her lymphoma and she lived to be very old lady. She was about 13 when she passed away. Old lady warm in her bed. Now Sav-an-Angels living on through Jeremy and hopefully will live on past us. And that was ultimately the goal was that I would just continue to serve the community that had given back to us. What is the group, Jeremy, that you have, that you merged with sav-an-Angel. Yeah, so I co-founded Bastrop Animal Rescue, which was a foster based animal rescue organization here in Texas. And the stars aligned at the right time for both Kristie and I. And everything just fell into place for us to really be able to consolidate the resources for both entities to create and even. More impactful and powerful entity. And by consolidating all of that under Sav-an-Angel and that the victory of Sav-an-Angel really sparked the movement that introduced all of us to the wider animal welfare community. And that kind of became the foundation of Sav-an-Angel and who we are. In our early years, we operated as a rescue. We pulled animals from shelters, we placed them into foster homes. Rehabilitated them medically if they needed that. And we found them loving forever homes. But no matter how many lives we saved, the kennels just filled up again at the local shelter the very next day. And so we realized that while rescue was essential, it was still reactive. And to create real lasting change, we had to shift upstream and address the root causes. And so today we operate as a proactive, community centered nonprofit, really focused on prevention and affordable access to care. Programs that we build hand in hand with the people we serve. Our mission has evolved a lot over the years and, we went from saving one dog angel to building a sustainable solution that really keeps pets healthy and families together and makes our entire community stronger. I would like to hear more about the proactive measures that you're taking because I'm noticing the same thing. It just seems that people. Who don't necessarily need what we would consider rescue, try to always get rescues to take their animals. And it always seems to overload the system. Because people don't wanna say no. So what are some of these measures that you are doing to combat that problem? Yeah, absolutely. Really for us it's helping pets, means helping people too. That's really at the core of our mission. And when we talk about solving animal welfare at its root, we have to start with access to care and cost. And that's really the number one issues that we see that families face. And the market sector of the veterinary world is able to service, greater than about 50, maybe 60% of the community. But that other 40, maybe 50% of people truly with the economy, the way that it is creates a struggle. And a lot of folks have to choose between, providing food on the table for their children. Or getting access to care and veterinary care for their pet. And for us, we really wanted to bridge that gap and access to not just spay and neuter, which reduces pet overpopulation and ends that cycle of breeding. But just the most basic of vaccinations and dewormer. Heartworm testing and preventative care and things like that. And what we see a lot of is very basic health issues that could be addressed early on, like an ear infection or a skin condition. They're left untreated and it becomes a chronic, painful, expensive case that turns into an emergency sometimes. And at that point it becomes a life or death decision for the pet parent because they don't have the means to. Treat the issue the chronic condition that's developed. And so for us, we want to be a part of that pet's life, its entire life. We want to be available as a resource for its annual visits, it's vaccinations, it's dewormer, it's prevention every month. And we're able to help families along the way. Currently we don't offer emergency care. But it is something that we're able to connect with folks on a case by case basis and really give them the resources that we might not necessarily have available but connecting them with another entity or an organization that has those resources available to prevent them from having to either euthanize the pet or surrender it to a local shelter. And what qualifications do you have for people to use your program? So we actually, we don't qualify anyone ultimately if a pet parent feels that they need that resource we're available to anyone and everyone who might need us. And so we currently do about 4,000 spay neuter surgeries a year. And we do about 9,000 wellness appointments a year out of our clinic. We have one clinic location here in Bastrop, Texas, and then we run a mobile program which brings access to care and free vaccines and veterinary care out into the communities who need it most. And so we really do try to target the communities that we know whether it's the highest intake stray numbers through data from the local animal shelter. Or it's just case by case that we just are aware of situations in the community that might need us more than others. We try to target those individuals and those communities the most to really empower them with the tools and resources that they need. But at the end of the day if you have a pet and you need, access to care, we're here for you. Can you walk us through how you actually got this clinic up and running? Yeah, absolutely. It was a monumental effort. And it was a very much a situation where we had a partnership with the local animal shelter and they had a situation where they had a building that was destroyed and a storm, and they were able to leverage the insurance money that they received from that building to create and build a brand new building. Part of that building was a medical suite and they knew that they were only gonna be able to utilize that suite one or two days a week for shelter animals, which left the building unoccupied five other days of the week. And so we, with the shelter director at the time who was very passionate about, really being progressive and proactive in outreach asked us if we would be interested in partnering with her to really create that solution. We had identified it but we struggled to really implement. And so with those two forces combined, we were able to just get this clinic off the ground. We piloted it in December of 2019 and we operated about once a month, and then in May of 2020. We open the clinic full time and so today, we now offer operate four or five days every single week. That's quite an accomplishment. How did you go about finding veterinarians who would work with you with this? So we started with volunteer veterinarians just veterinarians that we had connected with in the local community. And they volunteered. Some of them we paid to come in on like a contract or relief basis just to get the clinic started. And then by, once we had piloted the program, we knew that it worked. We knew that it was gonna be successful. We opened a full-time veterinarian position and we were able to hire a veterinarian that has about 30 years of experience. And so she's done high volumes spay and neuter for the last 10 years and we were able to get her on board and she's now our full-time medical director and does the vast majority of the surgeries that we offer. Can you walk us through all the programs that you have today? Sure. Absolutely. So we are, the core of what we offer is low cost and free veterinary care. Addition to that is our mobile outreach team. So we go out into the community, we provide pet parents with anything that they might need, whether that's education, that's tools, that's resource. We have a pet food pantry callers, leashes ID tags. Anything that on a case by case basis, that one individual family may need to be able to better care for their pet. We're there and we're available as a resource to, to get them what they need. And outreach and education are really one of the. The core pillars of how we operate. For us early on doing rescue we found ourselves telling people like, oh, you need to get your pet spayed and neutered. You need to get your pets spayed a neutered. But then we realized that there was no resource available to connect them with, to get their pet spayed and neutered. And so that's what really motivated us to create our own model and our own clinic to be able to say, Hey. You need to get your pet spayed and neutered and we can do it for you and we can help you. And costs should never be a factor. And so we operate with a low cost model. But really it, it is a pay what you can model. And so we have a base rate of what we charge in an ideal world to be able to sustain the clinic. But we know that a lot of pet parents don't necessarily have the means to even afford the low cost fees. So we are able to work with them on that individual basis and say, Hey, what can you afford? And if that's 30 bucks, we'll work with them, we'll get them subsidized to a voucher program. And then we get their pet spayed anyway so if they feel that they couldn't afford anything, then you would just go ahead and offer them the free care at that point. Yep, absolutely. So about 65 to 70% of our costs to operate. Our clinic is covered by the fees that we are able to collect. The other 30 to 35% is what we subsidize through fundraising and donations and grants. And so we're very active in going out and not just outreach to the community who needs us, but reaching out to the community to. Garner larger amounts of support to be able to never say no. That's always our goal is we don't ever want to turn a pet parent away because we don't have the means or the resources to do it. We'll go above and beyond every single time to try and really gather the resources that we need to be able to always say yes. That's amazing. With your spay and neuter clinic why was that a crucial addition to the central Texas area? Spay and neuter. At the end of the day, we believe is the solution to pet overpopulation. And so it really comes back to that kind of preaching of we really and truly believe that is one of the most powerful ways to end pet over population. And encouraging and. Really advocating for pet parents to get their pets fixed. We needed to be able to connect them with that resource to know that they were getting their pets fixed. And the only way that we found to be able to do that in our community, we're about 45 miles east of Austin, Texas. They have a large, not on nonprofit there that provides access in three low cost spay and neuter. And it's an amazing organization in Austin. But what we found is there wasn't enough resources available for the rural communities on the outskirts of town. And for us, it, it was just the need and identifying the problem, creating the solution and we had a clinic. Do you also do the cats with the TNR program? We do, we partner with a local organization called Bastrop Cats. And we do several hundred surgeries for them throughout the year. They work with a network of several clinics and we're one of those clinics that provides them at a subsidized rate to get pets to get cats community and free roaming cats to come in and get them fixed in ear tip to vaccinated and return back to their trapped location. And has that had any kind of effect on the pet overpopulation in that area? It has the organization that we work with is Bastrop Cats. They've been around for many years now. And we were actually just looking at some of that data the other day and we're able to see a noticeable difference in stray animal intake from the areas that they have really worked hard in t and r and every cat. Possibly trap and we're able to see the first few years it was hard to see in kind of a tangible set of data whether or not there was gonna be a significant difference. But now, five, six, seven years later, we're really able to start to see those lines drop on the chart knowing that what we're doing is making a difference. And it's reducing intakes at the local shelter. Even though the community that we are in is. Is rapidly growing. And as the community grows, the needs grows and so we have to grow with it. How does the mobile clinic work? So we have a mobile veterinary trailer, and we set it up in communities that we identify who need the most the greatest need, the most assistance. And we set the trailer up. It's essentially a veterinary exam room on wheels. It's climate control that has computers and everything that we would need to be able to provide service and care. And we work with a veterinarian, whether it's one of our staff veterinarians or a contract veterinarian. And we set up in a parking lot and we just. Do a drive-through model. And our most recent clinic that we did about a hundred free rabies vaccines in about three and a half hours. Oh, that's awesome. So your pet resource center focuses on keeping pets with their families. What essential resources or services does the center provide to prevent owner surrenders? Yeah. Food's the number one we probably give out about two to three pallets of dog and cat food every single month. In addition to that, sometimes it's for pets that live primarily outdoors. It's dog houses, it's harnesses, it's dog sweaters. It's anything that a pet parent might need that is preventing them from providing their pet with the level of care that they think that they need. We're really there to try and help them and connect them with those resources. The, for example, the other day a pet parent came in and they thought that their pet was really struggling with the heat outside, but their landlord did not allow them to bring the pet inside the home. And so she was looking to see if we had a little baby pool or a puppy pool. And we had a little plastic pool available and we just got a picture back today of the dog playing in the pool. And just little things like that to where if a pet parent feels like there's something that they're missing that could really. Provide that pet with the next level of care to make them comfortable and happy and prevent them from the owner having a concern that they might not be able to properly care for the pet. We're there're yeah, I love hearing little stories like that too. Just that something like that can make such a difference to an animal. Absolutely. Do you do any kind of adoptions as well? We do, we still operate a rescue program. We've significantly downsized that program to be able to focus on outreach and education and really what we've defined as being the solution towards what we're working towards. But inevitably along the way, pets still cross our paths that need our assistance and so we will take them in. We have a small network of foster homes and we're able to get those pets vetted through our own clinic internally get them rehabilitated and then placed up for adoption. So we have a couple of dogs and a cat or two in foster care right now that are looking for their forever homes. When you're doing your adoptions, do you do that like mainly word of mouth or online, or do you actually have a facility that you would take them to? So we're all foster based for our rescue program. And so all of our marketing usually takes place online. We utilize the standard pet finder and adopt a pet and things like that. And that's where a lot of our applicants come from. But we also do events locally. We'll set up at local coffee shops or breweries. And we've met several of our recent adoption pet parents through those types of events as well. Has the mission changed since you've merged the Bastrop animal Rescue with Sav-an-Angel? Or is the overall mission the same? I think the core of always wanting to be there to support pets and really be just a resource for animals and empowering pet parents has always been there. I think the shift in what we used to do was majority was rescue and. Of the outreach and the education and I think we've just completely flipped that script. And I would say 75 to 80% of what we do now is really honing in on access to care and education and outreach and less rescue. 'cause at the end of the day, rescuing one animal changes the life for that animal, which is incredible. And we love being a part of those stories. It's not going to solve the bigger problem that we face. And so for us as an organization, it was really sitting down and identifying what are the barriers? Why are pets ending up in the shelter? What causes the spike in intake? And once we identified those, then it came to creating the solutions. And that's how we've gotten where we are today. Just on that same note. Our mission will continue to evolve, and so as we, work with pet parents and manage cases on a case by case basis on an individual family or household level every single day, our staff and our team is what can we do better? What can we do to address. A trending issue that we keep seeing. And so I think who we are as an organization is always going to be centered on pets. I think more recently, we, over the last four or five years have really honed in on the people aspect too. And like I said in the beginning, helping pets means helping people too. Yeah. So is your motto pets, people, and purpose? Yes, it's, so that was something that we adopted at the very beginning of kind of the consolidating of the resources with the two entities. And we sat down and identified the barriers and what were the most common things that we kept seeing. And at the end of the day, it was a pet parents were the ones struggling, and pet parents were the ones that needed the resources, but they did not have them available to them. And for us it was really sitting down and listening to them and gathering feedback. And actually, we've adopted what we call a feedback to action loop. And so every day we work with our clients and in the rooms, the exam rooms, we hear stories and we see things. And as we mentally take note of what we're seeing or what we're hearing. We actually gather that data. We notate what client it was that told us that feedback or what resource they might need. And then once we've strategized and we've implemented a solution to what that common item is, we then reach back out to them. To give them the feedback that says, Hey, thank you. This is the action that we're taking and If you still need that assistance, we wanna provide you with that assistance first to pilot that program to see, what we can do to make it better. That's great. That's wonderful that you listen to your clients so you know exactly what they need because there's so many things that can go on that you don't know what their situation is. And when you find that out and if you find a solution, then it's helping everybody. Now, I know a lot of rescues right now are struggling because we are going through what they're calling an animal welfare crisis. And then on top of that, we have this, financial crisis going on as well. So is any of that affecting you? It certainly is. We've definitely seen on the fundraising side of things, we donors that historically have given us, a larger portion of money this year, they're not able to necessarily allocate that amount of funds to us to be able to donate. And they still wanna support us. They still believe in what we do, but. And financially, they just don't necessarily have the means to make the commitment that they have made in previous years. And so we've had to really get creative and go back to more of the grassroots style fundraising where, we're doing planning yard sales and bake sales and fundraisers and things that we had grown out of for a little while. But we're right back to it and kind. Feet on the ground, boots on the ground, trying to identify ways that we can fill that gap and continue to be able to say yes. And that really what motivates our staff and our volunteers every single day is, what do we have to do to be able to say yes and continue to help every single pet parent that walks through our door. So it's definitely been a struggle financially just to be able to sustain, operations and continue to empower every pet parent. And not to mention, rising cost of everything as well. Through our clinic we are seeing that a lot of the cost of medical supplies and even the cost of insurance and just overall operating expenses and overhead it is climbing significantly this year. Now it seems too for that very reason, a lot of people aren't able to keep their pets. So they are trying to surrender their pets. So are you seeing an uptick in the services too that you're offering We have seen an influx in the demand for our the programming and the resources that we offer. And for us, we are in a community that Bastrop County is immediately adjacent to Travis County, which is Austin. And we have Elon Musk here who has Quar. Twitter and which is now known as X and the Boring Company and starlink. And so we've also seen a tremendous amount of just growth overall for our community. And so for us it's hard to really evaluate whether or not it's just the population growth and, or is it, the, economic uncertainty. But there's definitely been a significant increase in the need for pet food and access to care and, bridging, whatever gap may come up along the way for pet parents. And more recently we've been seeing a lot of folks reaching out asking about assistance for like pet deposits. And they're moving and they're trying to find somewhere cheaper to live. But in the course of moving and the cost of moving, they don't have the four or $500 to put down as a pet deposit. And historically, that's not something that we have ever done. But it is something that has recently been a trending need that we are, we're looking into. I was just gonna ask you that. So do you have more people coming up looking for the medical care or more people looking actually for the food? That's actually a very interesting question. There's kind of two sides to that where they either come to us looking for food and they're not necessarily aware that we offer medical care, and so we're able to connect. Them through that entire route of programming that we offer. Or they're coming to us for medical care and in the course of conversation in the exam room, we find out that they might be struggling or they're unable to afford groceries for themselves this month. So then we loop them into the fact that we do offer pet food assistance. Many of our clients are mutual clients of both programs. Looking ahead, what is the next major goal or initiative for Sav-an-Angel? And are there any new programs or services in the works? Right now we're really just, honing in on perfecting the model that we have created here in, in Bastrop County and in the community that we're serving. And then vision down the road would be ultimately to really be able to replicate this programming in another community, another rural community that needs our assistance. Right now it's, economic uncertainty and fundraising. We're really just focused on sustainability for our current programmings and meeting the needs of the community that we're in. But here within the next few years it's on our map of things to look at is expanding and sharing the knowledge and the resources that we've gathered throughout the course of what we've done as an organization. And moving and introducing ourselves into the next community that needs us. So I do have another question to ask you, Jeremy, since you were so young when you started volunteering, what do you think can be done to encourage more new, younger people to start volunteering as well? Yeah I get this question a lot for me, it was definitely something that I've always been driven to, to solve problems. And I was passionate about animals. I've loved animals my entire life, and just realizing the sheer need of help that was needed within the animal welfare community is what motivated me along the way to just continue to take on more and to do more and to step up and to take a bigger role. And we've started doing some programming here locally just to get feedback from the younger generations to see what is it that would motivate them to really step up and into a role. And a lot of the feedback that we get is they're unable to identify what help is needed. They know that. Animals are suffering. They know that animals need help. They know that, there's an issue. They struggle to identify where they fit into that puzzle. And so a lot of our messaging for volunteering here locally, especially trying to target some of the younger generation has been very specific marketing to, we need you to help with this. This is what you can do. And just recently, we had in the last week we've had 11 volunteer applications come in all of which are within that younger generation. Helping them identify where they fit into that puzzle seems to be very successful for us currently. That's interesting. I never thought about it like that. For our listeners who are inspired by your work and what you do, what is the best way that they can help you? Donations. We always need support financially to be able to do what we do. And we have a fund called the Spay it Forward Fund, and that is for folks that financially are able to provide the care that they need for their pets without having any form of subsidy. They're able to make a donation that is specifically into a fund that our team is able to utilize on a daily basis at the clinic. If a pet parent is unable to afford a rabies vaccine. or they need a heartworm test for their pet, but they don't have the means to do it today. Our team with that fund has the ability to say, Hey, we're gonna take care of that for you today. And so the spay it Forward fund for us is truly essential. We could not operate without it. And the donations that come into that fund to, to make our work possible. And then we always need volunteers. And volunteers don't have to be local. They can live anywhere in the United States. They can help with social media and online newsletters. There's all sorts of digital volunteer opportunities that we can loop folks into as well. That's awesome. Before we end the call, do you have any final message for our listeners? Absolutely. I think for us it's at the end of the day, animal welfare is people welfare. And when families are supported, pets are supported. When pets are healthy, families are healthier. It's not just about the animals, it's about compassion. Equity community resilience and the future of animal welfare for us is proactive, progressive. And I really encourage folks within the animal welfare community to root what they are doing in the understanding that pets and people thrive together and incorporate people into the programming and what they do. Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciated speaking with you today. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. We love to talk about pets and people. Yep. It's the best thing to talk about

That's all the time that we have for today's episode. Thank you for listening and we hope you join us next week. If you know somebody that loves animals as much as I do, please send 'em our way. We would love to talk to 'em. Please consider leaving us a donation. A hundred percent goes to our animals.

Paws in the night Claws in the fight Whiskers twitch and tails take flight They’re calling in Stories to spin From the wild to the heart within Broken wings and hopeful springs We’re the voices for these things animal posse hear the call. We stand together. Big and small Rescue tales We’ve got it all Animal posse Saving them all The vet’s got tips The rescuer’s grit The foster homes where love won’t quit From a pup in the rain to a bird in pain Every soul’s worth the strain Animal posse Hear the call We stand together Big and small Rescue tales We’ve got it all Animal posse Saving them all Every caller tells a tale, every howl a whispered wail, we rise up. We never fail. This is the bond The holy grail Animal posse Hear the call We stand together Big and small Rescue tales We’ve got it all Animal posse Saving them all Every caller tells a tale Every howl a whispered wail We rise up We never fail This is the bond The holy grail. Song by Suno.ai