Welcome to Animal Posse, the podcast dedicated to the people and rescues making a difference in the lives of animals. Welcome back to the show everyone. Today we have a very special guest joining us from the Inner Pup, a fantastic organization dedicated to keeping pets healthy and in their loving homes. Welcome, Genie Gold Ring. I'm excited to learn about the Inner Pup. To start, can you tell our listeners a bit about the Inner Pup and its mission?

I would love to. So my daughter Lindsay Goldring, and I started the Inner pup in 2014. And the reason we did it is because we looked around and we said the system is broken. There are too many animals and people can't afford their pets, and they're forced to surrender their pets because they can't afford veterinary care and they can't afford behavioral training and they need education. And the system is broken, and the answer is in prevention. The more shelters we build, the more rescues that are created, the more dogs and cats will come. What we need to do is address it at the prevention level. So we started, we bought a $3,000 truck. Put a logo on the hood and started driving through underserved neighborhoods and handing out toys and treats and educating pet owners and seeing what their needs were. Just asking them questions and they all wanted veterinary help. They all wanted behavioral training, and they wanted to learn more about responsible pet ownership. So we got started and we actually, we started with a focus on heartworm disease. So. I don't know how much the listeners are aware of heartworm disease, and maybe in another podcast if there's a lot of Innerest, I can do an education on heartworm disease, but for now I'll just say that it is a hundred percent preventable and it is very expensive and. Hard on dogs and pet owners to treat. So prevention is easy and it works, but very few pet owners, can afford access to care and can afford retail veterinary care, they don't know what heartworms are. They think they're intestinal worms or they don't even know that, but they're not. They're spread by mosquitoes and, they're fatal if untreated. So we decided to focus on heartworm disease because in Louisiana, mosquitoes are practically the state bird. They're everywhere and they're 12 months a year. And if people don't have veterinary care, they don't have access to heartworm prevention because all of heartworm prevention is prescription only. So we started doing pop-up clinics and we started doing them monthly, and that has become a huge focus for us. We then started a heartworm treatment program because we encountered such a high incidence of heartworm positive dogs and owners who couldn't afford treatment, which is easily one to $2,000 per pet. So. We started a soft kill treatment that has gone through several iterations. And our current soft kill treatment is now the clinical arm of a big study that is starting out this summer and will go on for two and a half years to test the protocol that we developed. So heartworm disease, there's a lot more awareness about heartworms since the inner pup got involved. And at this point we've gotten 107 dogs free of heartworm disease and hundreds, thousands actually more are on prevention because of our programs. So that's a little bit about us.

Thank you. And that was very informative too 'cause I know there are a lot of people that do not know about heartworms, so I'm glad that you could go over that and I most certainly would love to have a show that would focus on something like that as well. Now let me ask you another question 'cause you said that heartworm medications our prescription. So how is it that you are able to get these meds to the public that needs them?

So yes, they are prescription only, and so anyone who doesn't have access to a veterinarian can't get a prescription for heartworm prevention. So we have about 20 to 25 veterinarians who rotate at our monthly clinics, and we have a primary vet under whose license we operate. And it's because of that partnership with our, the veterinary community that we are able to order and dispense heartworm prevention. We don't dispense it at all unless we do a heartworm test on the dog. If the dog is heartworm negative, we offer prevention. If they're heartworm positive, we offer enrollment into our treatment program. And if we do offer prevention, we offer three different types for puppies under six months of age. We offer a topical prevention. It's actually a topical heartworm and flea prevention. And for dogs that are fully grown. We offer injectable prevention, either Pro Heart six or Pro Heart 12, which lasts for six to 12 months. So the compliance is very easy. We're not free. We're extremely low cost, and we don't compete with veterinary. So for our clients, it's not a vet clinic or us, it's us or nothing. And so that's why. Dixie, when we first started, we were warned, you're gonna get such pushback from the veterinary community, and exactly the opposite has happened. We've gotten such support in participation from the veterinary community because they recognize that our clients are not able to. Go to their retail clinics and so they help us. And we also offer at our clinics, a full medicine chest of prescription meds. So when our vets have an eye on the dog, if there is time at our clinics. They will prescribe if they see something simple that doesn't require a follow up, like a skin condition or an ear or infection or something with the eyes or just some kind of an allergy, they'll prescribe right on the spot and there's no extra charge for that. So, it's, access to care is so, so important. And every animal deserves health and quality of life. So we also offer behavioral training, low cost for those who can show low income, and there is an application process for that. We also have an application process, and a client has to show low income in order to get a veterinary visit, and we do offer that service, and we can't help pet owners whose pets have emergency. We're short staffed and we're at capacity. But for pets who have an easily treatable condition, or need humane euthanasia, we can help so animals don't die painfully at home.

you did say that you focus on the prevention based animal welfare.

We do

What do you do in addition to the heartworm treatment,

Our programs are generally monthly heartworm prevention clinics where we see well over a hundred dogs. We also have cat clinics monthly, we have storefronts. We have an office at the Healing Center on St. Claude, and we do monthly storefronts. For cats there. We also do monthly storefronts for our treatment dogs so that they can be treated and serviced in a very calm environment. Our clinics are pretty chaotic. We hold them in underserved neighborhoods, in convenient locations like firehouses, neighborhood engagement parks, places like that. But they're pretty chaotic. We also have a behavior training program and we have a veterinary assistance program, so those are our flagship programs. And then we also offer help just one-on-one as far as. Other resources. When low income pet owners come to us, we try to link them to resources they need, whether they be housing or legal or in any way that we can help. We used to have an education program. It was teacher taught in. At risk charter schools and it was fabulous, but Covid shut that down. So now we do a lot of outreach and education at different community events and whether they're animal welfare events like this past week, past fest, or whether they're just human events. So any way that we can spread awareness. And make people aware of the services we have so that we can help. All we wanna do is help more pet owners and more pets.

Since you did say it is for low income, what are the financial requirements for that?

Thanks for asking Dixie. For our clinics, we don't ask. We assume that anyone who's willing to wait a few hours in line with their pets and inclement weather, whatever they need us. And of course there are always gonna be a few people who sort of skip through, but there are not many, most of the people at our clinics really do need our services. For instance, we had an event on March 23rd. It was our first foray into one Health, which is. Treating humans and pets. And we did that strictly because if people can't afford their pets, they probably are struggling to afford their own healthcare. So we offered human health screenings as well as pet services and we also offered vaccines, which we try to do at least once a year. And we saw 205 dogs and 20 cats. So some people waited four hours. In line. And so our assumption is if they're willing to do that, they need us. So we don't ask for our other programs for low cost dog training and for veterinary assistance. They do have to show need and they have to provide, whether it's federal assistance or whatever, they can show that they're receiving because of their low income. Or however they can prove it to us, we do ask for that.

As far as the clinics and then this veterinary care, is that gonna be at your actual physical location or do you send them to a veterinary hospital

it's another great question. We have five or six participating vet clinics that work with us and they give us great discounts and the client, if they can afford it, they pay a $20 copay and most of our clients want to pay. They just simply can't afford to pay the entire. Fees. So the same with our clinics. For instance, we offer, when we do offer Pro Heart six at our clinics, we offer it. That's a six month of prevention plus a heartworm test, plus six months of flea prevention. I think our call, I think our charge is $45. It's unheard of. As far as from a veterinary clinic, it would be. Probably quadruple that, if not more. If the client can't afford it. If the client is unhoused, we don't deny their pet. That medicine, but most of our clients are really so grateful and happy to pay and want to contribute. They recognize there's a cost to everything, and they wanna help and they wanna help us be sustainable so that they can continue to come back to us.

You said that you do offer, of course, the heartworm, the vaccinations, and you also try to do the outreach to educate people. So the clients that are coming to you, were they aware of these things or was it the outreach that you're doing that made them aware that they need to treat for heartworms, they needed to vaccinate, they need flee prevention, et cetera?

It is a great question. It doesn't have a simple answer, Dixie, because people come to us in many different ways. Some get referred when they adopt a dog from a shelter or a cat. Some get referred to us. Through friends, some of us, because sometimes because we operate in their neighborhood and they just see a clinic happening. We, as I said, we do a lot of outreach at community events and we do have an active website that gets visited. We're active on social media, so. All the avenues that are available to us, we try to use and we love word of mouth. But it is true that most of our heartworm prevention clients had no idea what heartworms were before they heard about us, and now they're vigilant and. They're pretty religious about making sure that their pets, that their dogs get heartworm prevention monthly. They know they can't miss a single month. That's all it takes is one mosquito. And they never want it to happen. They know how much suffering heartworm disease can cause and they care a lot. And there's always compliance issues but that's in any demographic. We handhold a lot initially until people are fully on board and totally understand the significance of heartworm disease. The vaccines we don't offer very often. Thankfully, there are other avenues to get low cost vaccines, but we try to do a vaccine clinic once a year and we do offer vaccines for cats at our storefronts. And our storefronts for cats are. A new program we started this past year just by popular demand. We had so many people and clients who have dogs who also have cats, so that's what brought it on. And we have a number of vets who are particularly in love with cats and we're very happy to volunteer at our cat clinic. So, those have become popular.

And what about spay neuter?

We offer spay neuter as part of our veterinary assistance, and we don't have a separate spay neuter program. We know Jefferson Parish has a wonderful one. We have heard that Orleans Parish is trying to develop one. We always ask for donations. For spay neuter because we would love to have a separate spay neuter program. We know it's a vital resource in the community. There are too many dogs. There are just simply too many dogs and people are. Breeding, they're doing a lot of backyard breeding and pets are dying in shelters. So we strongly support spay neuter. We wish we had more funding for it. We wish we had more funding for everything. We are at capacity. We are a small staff. We have. Two full-time volunteers. I'm one of them, Dixie, and I'm a seven day full-time volunteer. We have three full-time staff and we have about 200 volunteers and we also have an affiliate program for heartworm clinics because we're the only heartworm clinics in the country and we do free consults. with other organizations all over the country with affiliates who want to start their own heartworm prevention clinics because heartworm disease is national at this point. It used to be, it's still much higher incidents in the south, but because of pet transport, heartworm disease has some it's no longer limited to southeast United States. It's really. Every state in the country has some level of incidents of heartworm disease.

Oh, I didn't know that, I knew it was worse of course in the south, but I didn't know that transport is what kind of contributed to it across the the US as well.

Absolutely. And so now it's recommended in I think every state that pets be on year round prevention. It used to be in the north and northeast that veterinarians used to say, in the wInner months you could discontinue. Heartworm prevention, but no longer because there are always reservoirs of mosquitoes. There's always water that's left and 'cause of transport. It has moved there's so many pets from southern rescues and shelters that get transported because there are fewer pets being bred up east and up north. So yes, it has become a national problem, although much more in the south and southeast.

Now, the vets that work with you, do they volunteer their time?

They absolutely do. And it's a good question, Dixie, because we have tried and offered to pay our vets. They do an amazing job. They come in their spare time. Our clinics are scheduled usually for two hours. They always go on for three. And we offer, and we've never had a vet accept payment. And we've put it in their pockets and they've returned it and, said you need it more than we do. And our volunteers are incredible and we have so many vet techs who volunteer with us and skilled blood draws. We partner with the vet school at LSU. And their vet students act as blood draws and do our heartworm test at our clinics. And they love it because they do high volume blood draws and we love it because they're terrific. One thing I should mention is if anyone does wanna volunteer with the Inner pup, we have so many positions. First of all, we love what we call our neighborhood ambassadors who are just people in a question you asked earlier. Who just spread the word of what we do, whether they spread flyers about our clinics or, they're always the sweet, wonderful grandmothers that sit on the front porches and see people walk by with pets and we'll tell them about our services. We have administrative tasks that can be done at home. We have so much administrative work that. It could help our staff if we have skilled volunteers to do, and we always need vet techs and people who are skilled with handling dogs and cats, and all they need to do is write to info@theinnerpup.org. And they'll get a response. They can also sign up, subscribe to our newsletter on our website, and volunteer there. And you know what, we offer volunteers every month we do an orientation. Our operations director conducts a wonderful orientation, which gives an overview and people can select where they feel they fit best. We don't allow clinic clients to become volunteers at our clinics. It's just something we have ruled against, but they can certainly volunteer in other ways. And we always love veterinarians who volunteer and we have such a large pool of incredible volunteers. We couldn't operate for a week without them. So, but we have a small staff. We have two full-time volunteers, of which I'm one and we have three full-time staff employed and one part-time. And we do a lot and we. Always need donations and funding to be sustainable. 'cause our clinic costs are more than we bring in. All of our costs are more than we charge.

It does sound like you have a huge impact on the community, and you did say you were involved in the study. Can you tell us a little bit about that study?

I can give you a preview of it. It doesn't start until August and we are still learning, but we are working and I'm not sure I'm at liberty to give too much information, but I will give you a great preview based on the protocol that we developed. We had a few researchers who. One of whom we met at actually the American Heartworm Symposium in 2019 when we were invited to present a poster of our clinics. And since then we've stayed in touch and she is going to be the lead researcher on a large two and a half year study that is very well funded. And it is to test this protocol which is a soft kill protocol. Some people call it soft kill. Some people call it slow kill. But if the study proves the success as well as our own program has shown the success. It will become, it will be published, and it might change the way that heartworm disease is treated in this country. Heartworm disease is currently the protocol, acceptable protocol by the American Heartworm Society is a. Fast kill protocol that is based on an arsenic based medicine. It is very hard on the dog. It is very hard on the pet owner. It requires restriction of exercise for a number of months. It's big lifestyle adjustment it carries some risk, but it's very hard and a slow kill protocol is much easier to comply with, much easier on the dog, much easier on. The pet owner. So we just need to prove in a very controlled study that it is as successful as we've shown it to be. Over the past few years we've used it, so we're very excited about it.

That's wonderful and good luck on that too. That's really Inneresting. I did not know that much about heartworms either. I'm more of a cat rescuer

Cats get heartworms too. And one or two cat heartworms can kill a cat and. Only about 5% of cat owners give regular prevention. There's no treatment for cat heartworms as of yet, so that's a whole nother discussion. If someone wants to learn more about heartworm disease, we have an incredible video that's on our website, Dixie. It was produced by a gal, Rachel Grissom, who is an award-winning filmmaker local in New Orleans, and it was narrated by Angela Hill, who, if anyone is over the age, maybe 40. They would know her. She was a WWL news anchor forever, for many years, and she's a wonderful person with a beautiful voice, and I think that they can access that if they go on our website, I think it's under the. Affiliate program. And if they scroll to the bottom, it's a two part 15 minute total video on heartworm disease. And it's wonderful. If anyone is as obsessed with heartworms as I am, they'll love it.

Yeah, I'm gonna go check it out. And what's the website?

It's www.theinnerpup.org and I think it's under the first tab is maybe what we do or how we can help, but if you look at there only, I think four tabs at the top and one of them is for the affiliate program and that's where it would be.

Okay, thank you. And I'm gonna include a link to that in our show notes.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Now I have to ask too, it sounds like you're very knowledgeable, of course, about heartworms. So how long did it take you to learn all this and what prompted your Interest in heartworms?

Dixie, you ask great questions. You should be a podcaster. You do a great job you really do listen very well and ask incredibly good questions. If I were gonna ask myself questions, I would ask these questions. So, I. Am from a very medical family, and everyone in my family, including my two sons, are physicians. So I have had a lifelong Innerest in medicine. I grew up in hospitals. My father was a surgeon. I used to go make rounds with him. My first husband was an O-B-G-Y-N. I've always had an Innerest. I've read medical textbooks all my life, so when I got into animal welfare, it was like, heartworm disease, mosquitoes New Orleans. Are you kidding? This is like a no brainer. It said, it tells the entire story that about access to care, that if you. If you have to use a prescription drug for prevention and you need to see a vet to get a prescription, and you can't afford a vet. Then the incidence of heartworm disease is going to be so high in the at-risk community, and it's simply not fair Income should not determine a pet's health or a human's health for that matter, and we need to provide. Access to care, and that's why so many national animal welfare organizations are detouring from sheltering into prevention. So we really did have the right idea when we. Thought up the inner pup. I had a medical background. I had done some freelancing and writing and my daughter had done right out of college, been the director of a animal welfare organization, a shelter in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And it was. We've had this huge love of animals. We've both volunteered our, with animals. And when we looked around, when she moved back home and just said, my goodness, the system is broken. It needs to be the way it was when I was growing up, where you went to a shelter to find your lost pet. You didn't. Surrender your pet there because you couldn't afford to feed 'em. It's just simply not fair and it has to change. So that's why we're here.

That's great. Do you have future goals for the Inner pup?

Yes, we want inner pups all over the country. We want affiliates. We want heartworm prevention and treatment clinics. More than anything, we want to improve access to care. Our largest goal is one health, just as I said, because if people can't afford their pets, they can't afford their own health, but we'll be happy to get, make progress with access to care. And as more and more national organizations are putting their dollars into access. To care and trying to figure out ways to provide it. I think it's going to happen. I'm very hopeful and we wanna spread the gospel of the inner pop to whoever will listen.

And finally, what is the most rewarding part of working with the Inner pup?

That's an easy one. It's the people, it's the gratitude. We see people every day who love and adore their pets, and they are so grateful to be able to give their pets what they deserve because of us. So that's the easy part. We love the people and the pets that our community is so rich. We have. Just discovered, if we feel like the luckiest people on earth, it's such an honor and a privilege to serve the people and pets in our community.

Thank you so much, Genie, for sharing the incredible work of the Inner Pup. It's truly inspiring to see that you're making a difference in the lives of pets and their owners.

Thank you Dixie I love the Innerview. As I said, you asked the most wonderful questions and it's always a pleasure to talk about what we do and hope we can spread the word. So thank you.

You are welcome. And I hope you can come back on another time too.

I would love to.

All right. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Bye-bye. And that's all the time we have for today's episode. If you are in animal rescue, or if you know someone that has a story that should be told, please contact us. We would love to have you or them on the show Thanks for listening, and please join us next week as we continue to explore the world of animal rescue.