Welcome to Animal Posse, the podcast dedicated to the people and rescues making a difference in the lives of animals. Welcome back to Animal Posse. Today we are catching up with a guest that we had on last year, Ashley, with Southern Paws. As we all know, when disaster strikes, our four legged family members are often the most vulnerable. Ashley has been on the front lines of animal rescue and pet safety for years ashley, it is so good to have you back. Thanks for joining us to help our listeners get their go bags in order and we're gonna talk about disaster preparedness.

Hello. How are you?

I'm good. I wanted to say thank you for coming on the show last time and then reaching back out to me about coming on the show again today so we can talk about animals in emergencies and disasters.

Yeah. Yeah. And people and rescues and all of the things.

I looked on your website for Southern Paw and it looks like you have extensive knowledge of doing disaster response and disaster preparedness for pets.

It all started before I actually did animal rescue. I used to do human rescue. I was in emergency services, and when I started to get into animal rescue, I didn't have time to do everything. So I had to pick and choose. And obviously as you can tell I chose animal rescue mainly 'cause I just the real truth of the matter is I just like animals better than people. So it came to a head in 2016 with the, there was severe flooding in Louisiana actually. And I think you're from Louisiana, aren't you Dixie?

I am, yeah. I remember that. Yeah. That was up near like Gonzalez towards the Baton Rouge area

Yeah. Livingston. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Livingston. So we had the 2016 floods. So my sister organization which is technically Tylertown, Mississippi, but we work with a lot of people in the Livingston area and, they were on their way back from a transport and could barely get home. And I remember calling them and being Hey is everything okay? And she was I need help. And I was like, okay. What do you need? And she was like, I need boots on the ground. Can you get here? And I was like yeah. Okay. So we packed up a truck with a ton of supplies and we just left. We just went down, we rented a van. I brought down an entire truck of supplies and we got in and I got there and she said what do you wanna do? And I was like, I wanna be out in the field. I said, it would be a waste to put me in a kennel. And she said, okay. She said here's a grid. This is where I need you to go. These are where the calls are. Like, go out there. And it was like these two passions of mine collided. And I loved it. And I've been obsessed with doing it ever since. So it's cool 'cause I have all these specialties, I have different certifications. So I'm a hazmat technician, I have a Swift Water Rescue certification. I used to be an EMT, I let it lapse. But over the years, all of those different certifications have really. Come together in doing this really amazing search and rescue work which is helping animals, but it's also helping people too in different disasters. Since 2016, I have worked almost every storm that we've had in the United States except for California. Mainly I would say Texas East is what I've done. We have, built this network. I've worked with other organizations under them, but really for us specifically, our team is really made up. More like a coalition. We work with a lot of different rescues. We partner up and we all feel, we all work on the same level, which is really nice. So nobody really works underneath one another unless there's a an MOU involved, which is like a contract with the county or the state or the town, whatever area you're working in. But I love a good collab within, every single element of my life in my work. So this really gives us an opportunity. Every rescuer that we work with, in every organization we work with kind of brings something different to the table. And when we all work together, we really come up with these really beautiful, amazing accomplishments, I worked the floods. I did Hurricane Harvey. I worked hurricane Michael. That was a really bad one. Hurricane Sally. Hurricane Laura. Hurricane Irene. Hurricane Ida. All the I's. I chased Dorian all the way to Florida and then all the way up the East Coast. But I never actually worked it. And then we just did hurricane Helene. We actually did 17 days for Helene, and it was crazy because we actually did human rescue. We didn't even end up doing animal rescue. We did more human rescue during Helene than animal. And yeah it's become we can do it on this large scale, Where we go and we assist during natural disasters or we can do it on a really small scale. An example of that would be, we had this rescue up here Oscar, it's called One Step Closer Animal Rescue. And they just had a fire that it was awful. They lost their entire kennel and just had no idea what to do. It happened to be local to me and I was able to run out and. I self deployed, which you're not supposed to do, but considering their neighbors for me, they're about an hour from my home. I just showed up and was like, hi, this is what I can do. And they were like, oh my God, we need you. Please sit down. So we were able to really help get them organized and implement some of our protocols there. We also are able to do it with hoarding cases, that's a big one. I'm on the cart team which is a animal response team for my county. We also have a couple other ones in the area that I'm a part of. And one of my things there is I'm usually their transport coordinator where, I'll figure out which animals are gonna go where, how they're gonna get there how long they're gonna stay there, and making sure all the paperwork and stuff is in place for that. But it, natural disasters happen. A bad day happens, a fire happens. These are all things that are out of our control. And being able to have somebody who can assist you through it, I think is really something that's super valuable. And that's what I love. That's what we do and that's how I love to do it.

Yeah. I know pets are very resilient in the natural disasters. The way that I help when we have natural disasters is I actually will set up lost and found pet pages for the actual disaster. And there's a group of us that do that. We almost mobilize ourselves to do that. And it's really amazing how resilient animals are. I'm not saying that they don't need to be rescued because they do, there are situations, but I know a lot of people give up hope easily with their animals, and a lot of 'em are so resilient where you might not see 'em and they'll end up showing up. Now, I know in Louisiana when we had that flood in 2016, that was a very unexpected thing. We are used to floods here, but. That kind of flood was insane. Yeah. And the rate at which the water came up and we are honestly here, we're not used to that type of flooding. The type of flooding that we're used to is, we'll hear, okay, we're gonna get a lot of rain and the water comes up and we will flood. But it's usually slow. It's not really fast moving. It's same thing when we have a hurricane and at least for a hurricane we have time to get out. But I know for the 2016 flood it came up so fast that people were actually at work and their pets were in their houses. Yeah. And they couldn't get home. I'd like to hear you know more about that. What is the difference in approaches that you take to a disaster like that versus a hurricane that people can actually plan for. And then you also have to plan for coming to be boots on the ground after the disaster because you've gotta know what roads to take and things like that.

Yeah, so I think there's a lot of elements to that, The first thing I would say is, it's funny that's how you describe it. 'cause there are a lot of the floods, the situations that I've worked. We did the Kentucky floods and then there was the crazy flooding in landslides during Helene. Every single one of these situations were situations where they were like, either oh, we're used to it, and then all of a sudden it's just the flash flood happens and it's just comes so fast. But we had flooding in Kentucky that we worked at was really like that. And they have a lot of what they call hollers up there. So it's all these houses in I don't even know how to explain a holler. It was the first time I've ever experienced that in the heart of Kentucky. But they're these little groves it's literally the bottom of a mountain and there's a whole bunch of houses in there,? And honestly the best thing you can do, and I tell everybody this, get out. If you even think there's a question, just leave if you get evacuation orders. Just leave. Okay. The worst thing that's gonna happen is you're wasting money on a hotel room for a night or a day, or you're staying at friends for a day. The worst case that happens is your house is gone. So when you're looking at your pros and cons I promise you your pros of leaving are a lot higher than your cons are. That's the first thing I say, because 90% of the victims that we meet in these situations, animals and humans are because they were oh, we thought we could stay. Like we've always stayed before. And it was never a big deal. And trust me when I tell you, we've seen the awful disaster and the tragedies that go along with that, the second one for you guys preparing when you have time ahead of time. Like I said, if you can leave, great. Leave If you can't leave, okay. First of all, don't ever go into your attic,? This is a big one, and I know you know this from Katrina, but you'd be amazed how many people still do that. They go into their attics and you never wanna do that because in a situation where you have severe flash flooding you're gonna drown in your attic. There's no way out. And we've seen that in, in multiple scenarios and it's horrific. Number two is if that water is rising, take what you can and just get to high land. We have a rule if it's wind hunker down, if it's water run. And that's exactly what it is, Because water. You are not gonna be able to stay where you are. You're gonna have to get out. Another big one, always have a go bag for your animals. This is a big one that I feel like a lot of people don't have your go bag, especially during storm season or if I know something's coming in, I have my dogs tags. I have at least a day or two of their food. I have a week of their medication. I have their medical records. A lot of the states in the United States have really been great recently about putting together these shelters that are human animal shelters where people can stay with their pets, but you still have to have their supplies, If your dog is in congenital heart failure, make sure you have your meds, for at least a week or two until we can get more. Same thing with their food. A lot of dogs are on prescription diets or they're on sensitive skin and stomach. I have a dog that has IBD, if I give him something other than his food, he's gonna die. There's things that we can do as humans to prepare ourselves, Make sure you have a leash, you have a collar, you have that go bag. So if you need to go, you just up and go. You're not scrambling last minute. Another big one. It's such a silly thing and it's scary when you think about it. But one of the best things you guys can do is take a sharpie marker and write your name and phone number on your dog. Coming from somebody who I really love reunification. There's a lot of organizations out there that aren't for that. I am all for reunification. And we actually work ahead of a storm to try and empty shelters to be able to make space for those lost animals so that people can find their pets. But. In that same sense okay, we get them back. Now nobody has the internet. Nobody really has phone. Nobody's seeing the lost pet pages. So how do you connect with your animals now? And nobody knows where to go. People in the us in animal rescue, we know, go to your local shelter, call the police department and find out where their staging location is for animals. Find out. You can call the vet's offices, they might say, Hey, there's a location here and a location there. Or maybe your animal control is big enough, but I'll use the floods as an example. During the floods, we were staged at Livingston, And we had animals from four or five different parishes. now you're dealing with people lost their cars, i'll tell you what, what works really well is if you've written your, name and number in Sharpie, on their belly. 'Cause chances are eventually they're gonna get to somebody, that's got a phone. Or most of us are gonna take our phones with us. So if we at least have that number, we can call and say, Hey, we have your dog. This is where he is. And then they can say, oh, we don't have a car. And we can say, okay, no problem. We're gonna send a volunteer to bring you your pet. And just being able to provide that. Now when it comes to us, Storm season for me, the best way to describe it is storm chasing. I'm usually glued to my television if there's a storm coming. Don't even talk to me the we are watching the weather Channel 24 7. It's on in the background. I am already. Making plans three days in advance. I'm talking to people, I am trying to figure out who can go how are we gonna get there? Do we need to rent vehicles? Because the last thing I wanna ever do is take, my vehicle into a disaster area. I usually will get a rental vehicle. The enterprise people up here know me real well. 'cause usually I'm calling them and I'm like, hi. And they're like, Ashley, it's seven o'clock on a Friday. And I'm like, I know, but I need a lifted pickup truck and I need it tomorrow morning. And they're like, we're not even open. And I'm like, can you just figure this out, but I need it for this. And they know me so well at this point that they're like yeah, we got you. We'll figure this out. So they've been really great. And it just at the end of the day, ends up being. A lot of support from a lot of different people coming together. We wanna be there as soon as the storm leaves, and we like to be there for at least 72 hours. My rule of thumb is usually seven days. I try to go two days, travel, five days on the ground. By the end of that time, usually the national organizations have gotten in and they're then able to kinda set up MOUs and they are able to really provide much more. Than we can. Our goal is to be there as things are just happening so that we can do the emergency setup until the cavalry can come, if that makes sense. 'Cause it sometimes it'll take them a little bit longer to mobilize. Or if they have especially those spur of the moment things a lot of the national organizations get MOUs, I keep talking about this, they're these contracts that they have that allow you to work in different areas. And those contracts by the time, like OEM, office of Emergency Management and everybody gets done with the human rescue, all of a sudden it then pivots and they're like, okay, now we can also focus on animals. And that's around the time that the more national organization comes in, your A-S-P-C-A, your best friends, your aha, all these different amazing national organizations that come at that point. But we like to try and do that in between time and to hold everybody over before that happens.

The MOUI was gonna ask you about that. That's just basically a contract for you to go in or

Yeah. So it's a contract for you to go into and you can have a standing contract, like a standing MOE with different areas. I know some of the national organizations have standing MOUs with different organizations. And usually what it is office of Emergency Management will usually have a list of approved organizations that they'll bring in. And that's what that MOU is. It pretty much gives you the ability to operate in in whatever area it is that you're working in. And that can come from multiple different places. So for instance, during Hurricane Ida, I was working under A DRC and animal Disaster Relief Coalition, and they had an MOU alongside Terrebonne Parish. So we had permission to operate and work in Terrebonne Parish during the Livingston. Floods we had, or the Louisiana floods of 2016, we were operating under HSL who had an MOU for that area for that parish or whatever it was. I know during Harvey we had one, we were working under somebody, I don't even remember who. But typically we do in it is we usually are teamed up because we do a coalition. And if that county says Hey, you have to have an MOU to work here, we can't work in that county. So if we can't, if assuming we don't have the MOU or we're not teamed up with somebody who has the MOU, That can get a little sticky. And it's like the, I'm not gonna lie to you. There are certain places in Louisiana that we won't work. I will not work west of the Lafayette line if you a state or straight line of Louisiana, because the certain national organizations in that area, or even state organizations have made it so difficult to work. We've been threatened. People have come out and been we're gonna have you arrested. There's some crazy stuff that goes on out there. So after Hurricane Laura. We won't even work in that area. And I understand the MOUs, I respect and love working under an MOU when we can, we don't work somewhere if we don't have, if we're told to leave and we're told we don't have permission to be somewhere we leave, we don't do that. There is a problem in the field with what we call cowboys,? And they're organizations that are not necessarily trained in disaster relief officially. And they come in gun slinging not with physical guns, but they'll come in and they take a whole bunch of animals. They don't categorize them, they don't document where they got them from. They don't bring them to the appropriate staging locations for people to find them. And then those animals get moved out of state, or they get moved out of, the area and then people can't find their pets, Or they're messing up the current operations that are there. And this has been a big problem for many years with many organizations. And it is important that wherever you are, if you're on one of these teams and you haven't physically been invited in, that really should be your first step. So anytime we have a storm, we'll stage outside the storm and then we'll call ahead of the storm and say Hey, it looks like it's gonna hit. Say, I don't know Charleston say it's gonna hit Charleston. We'll be calling everybody in Charleston going Hey. Do you guys have somebody? Are you we'll call emergency management and say, Hey, do you have something lined up for your your animals in this situation? And sometimes they're like, Hey, listen, we don't care about animals right now. We care about people. And I'm like, okay, that's great, but then that's gonna come in a day or two. And then at that point we, we do a lot of scrambling and a lot of conversations to get people to say, Hey, yay, we need you. Or, yay, we don't. Or we go in and we just team up with whatever their animal control is. We just go in, we go to the animal shelters and we say, are you guys good? And sometimes everybody's yeah, we're good. But we heard that, two counties over got slammed. You guys might want to go over there. And then we'll go over there and we'll talk to their animal control. We'll say, Hey, are you guys good? Do you need anything? And sometimes they're like, oh my God, please help us. And sometimes they're like no, we're good, but this one needs it, So it's hard because those first couple of days you're doing a lot of ping ponging, Trying to figure out where the actual need is. And you go in and you do recon to figure it out. But you have some states Florida. Florida has disaster relief. So down pat they don't even need us. We say all the time, we're not going to Florida unless we get invited in. But then we turn around and we look at Hurricane Helene in the Carolinas. They had no infrastructure for disaster relief. Where we were in, in Western North Carolina, they had no idea. So we worked there for days. I didn't even see national organizations out there. Every storm I think is different and every disaster is different. And I think like there are certain places like Louisiana is real strict. Like you have to have an MOU if you're gonna go to Louisiana, Or you have to be working under an organization there. So like we might work under, say. Livington Parish, or we might work under dog friends or we might work under Louisiana Humane, say Louisiana, like whoever is working there, we may work under them. But like I said, there's other areas where it's not like that. It all depends on who and where. I love working with some of these national organizations, they don't necessarily always love working with smaller organizations that are your newer organizations that are not big enough to really sustain MOUs. 'Cause when you go and you get your MOU, you have. All of this that you can offer them. For me, I'm like, listen, I can offer you strategy, I can offer you field work, I can offer you organization, I can offer you setting up tip lines and hotlines and email chains and all these different things. I can offer you a star link, I can offer you donations, but my team is relatively small. These national organizations are huge. So what typically happens is we go down and find out okay, who needs help? And then if it's something that we think we can't handle because it is too small, then I'll reach out to some of my contacts at the national organizations and say okay, hey guys, we're gonna need way more that I can offer these people. Can you come in? And then depending on whether they see the need is there or not, then they'll come in. So that's been how we've operated in the last, however many years. But most of the time when we do go, we've been. Talking to somebody whose boots on the grounds there that's Hey, this is where we are. This is where we need you. This is how you get here. That kind of thing.

Yeah. See, I was wondering how that works because me being from Louisiana, I know how strict Louisiana is. I know if you evacuate for a hurricane, you can't even get back in most of the time. And especially if it's a bad hurricane. If it's a bad hurricane and you evacuate, you might be out of town for two weeks, until they clear the roads and let us in and and they will check to make sure where are you going. They only allow certain people in, so that's why I was wondering about that. Now, do you have an have to have any kind of special certifications to work with any of these people?

Yeah, so we typically have, my whole team is FEMA certified. So there's a whole bunch of certifications that you should get through FEMA if you're looking to do disaster relief work. They have a whole animal disaster certification thing. And so we require everybody on our team especially if they're gonna go do field work, they have to have those certifications. And then honestly, the more certifications you have, the better usually we're teamed up with somebody who has access. So when we worked in Terrebonne, they had access to everything. So all we had to do was say like, this is who we're with. Each storm is different, each area is different. Sometimes it's the credentialing is you have to have, there's not an everywhere certification. I wish there was 'cause it would make things a lot easier. But I could tell you guys this is a great story. So when I was, we were working in Terrebonne Parish with their animal control. And the animal staff there, there were, these ladies were phenomenal and. I like to go with people in my pickup truck when I do this because as we're doing calls, I like to bring food out with me and give food out to the community, Hey, you guys, you have no electric, you have no power. You don't nothing's open. Do you need dog food? Everybody's walking around with hot meals, but nobody's thinking oh, hey, what about food for my dog, food for my cat. People run low on that stuff. So I always like to do that. So all week I kept saying, 'cause they were in these, the animal control trucks and there's no room for stuff like that. So I kept saying let me take my truck. Let me take my truck. Let me take my truck. So finally one of the head girls from animal control says to me, all right, listen, there's one lady, she found this dog, she's gonna foster the dog. I have all the information, but she needs a crate and she needs dog food. Can you bring it? And the whole reason they kept saying to me like, you cannot just go off in your pickup truck and do this because you're gonna get stopped by police. They're gonna ask you a million questions this way you're with the vehicles that are the animal control vehicles, and all these things. But obviously we didn't have any insurance to be able to drive the animal control vehicles and stuff. So we were paired up with the ACOs and the animal control officers. She's just go. All you have to do is give them food, give them this, so it's just me and I have no idea this area. I don't know anything about this area. All I know is I am in the bayou.. Yeah. You are in Cajun country. Oh yeah. Straight up. Straight up Cajun country. It was great. So I get in the, I get in the car and, I'm all excited. I'm gonna go do this call, whatever I'm gonna be so helpful and I am listening to my music and I pull into this it's not even a trailer park, it's a camper park is the best way to describe it. And I pull in and there's this girl, and I see her and she's raking her dirt. There's no grass. So she's just raking dirt. And I'm like, okay. So I pull in and as I pull in, there's this weird noise. And I had heard it and I was like, what was that? Because again, I'm in a rented truck, so I'm like, I don't even know what that noise was. I was like, what was that? And so I turn the car off and I go to step outta the car and come face to face with two police officers. and I realized in that moment that the weird noise I had heard was the whoop of a cop car. They had followed me all the way down into this driveway and they're like, what are you doing here? And I'm like, oh, hi. My name's Ashley. I'm from, Southern Paw. I am doing disaster relief for working with, Terrebonne Parish Animal Control. And I'm telling I this whole story, And literally all that's in my car right now in the bed or two massive bags of dog food and a huge crate. He looks at me and he is you have Jersey plates? And I was like yeah, I know. That's where I'm from. We're just here helping after the storm. And he is okay, can I see your license and registration? And I'm like sure, no problem. So I pull out the license and registration and I'm so flustered because, like, when you get pulled over by the cops, you're automatically flustered. But I didn't even have that split second moment of oh crap, I'm getting pulled over. And the lights are flashing and now the cop is at my door. I had none of that, literally face-to-face license or registration. I'm like, oh God. So I'm super flustered. And so I give him my license and he looks at me and he is huh, and what are you here for? And I tell him again, and I'm like, yeah, see, there's a dog food. And this lady, you would think she would be like, oh yeah, she's here to deliver. No, this lady's still out there just raking her dirt. So I'm sitting there and he looks at me and he is you Yeah. But like you're from New Jersey? And I'm like yeah. Yep. We've established this. Yep. I am. I'm from New Jersey. Yep. I'm here. Just helping. So he asked me like three more questions. And literally at this point, I'm showing him the bag of dog food. I'm like, what is this? And he looks at me one more time and he is but you're from New Jersey. And I was like yes, I am from New Jersey. He lets me go. I give the lady my stuff, I go back to the animal control and Leanne's there and I walk in and I'm like, I get it. And she was like, what? And I was like, you are never gonna believe what just happened to me. So I tell her this whole crazy story and she goes, oh, they thought you were selling drugs. She was like, oh yeah. She's people come in there all the time from outta the area to buy drugs.

See now. Being from Louisiana, I totally understand this. Because there are small towns in Louisiana, and when you get into that small town, it's like you check everything. Make sure you go on a speed limit, putting your blinkers on, make sure your lights are on. It's just how it is especially the small towns.

Oh man, I gotta tell you, there were some crazy things. My chihuahua came out of that storm. My personal chihuahua, I joke all the time and say I trauma bonded him. The day after the hurricane, we were driving through trying to figure out who had the MOU in the area to try and link up with them and, my partner saw this this little chihuahua and sitting on this stairway to nowhere, Like literally, there was a trailer there at some point, but now it's in pieces somewhere else, and it's just this stairway to nowhere and there's this little dog. He was three pounds and I thought he was a cat. And he popped his head up and his ears popped out and we went, oh my God, he's a chihuahua. And so we ended up taking him with us and we reported him as loss. We did all the right steps, nobody ever claimed him. He was three pounds. But he was this little three pound chihuahua at six months old outrode, a cat five hurricane under a set of stairs in a trailer park. He came from outta that storm. And then we also had one of my other favorite stories that we ran into. So Leanne calls us out to another area. It was a neighborhood. And we get out there I pull into this area and they said, there are two dogs. I wanna say it was like two large German shepherds, that were supposedly in a pen in the backyard of a property. We were tasked out to go make sure they were okay, that they had food and water, this, that, and the other thing. Obviously if they're not, or if they're sick or if they need something, bring 'em into animal control. And I'm like, okay, fine. So me and one of the animal control officers that was from Lafayette, or maybe Baton Rouge, he was down substituting his name was Demetrius and he was so much fun to ride with him and I had a blast. And we get out here and we're expecting to find two I don't remember what it was, but it was something ridiculous. I roll up and, Demetrius is just go check it. I'm like, I'm sure it's fine. I'm like, somebody's probably feeding them. So I go out and I get there and there's a poodle in this cage. And I'm like, what the, I'm like, wait a second. So I go back and I'm like, are you sure we're in like the right place? He's yeah he's like, why, what? What's out there? And I, so I tell him, and he is wait a second. He is that doesn't sound right. So we call Leanne over at dispatch, and I'm like, Leanne. I'm like, are you sure that these, she's yeah, I just talked to, the owner of the property. He said they're out there and he can't get back to them, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and this, that, and the other thing. And I'm like, Leanne there's no lab in here and there's definitely whatever. I was like, that's not what's here. And she's what do you mean? And I'm like. There's a dachshund and a poodle in this cage. I'm like, so then this guy comes up and he, and this family member comes up and she sees this, and she's comes up real quick. What are you guys doing? And we're like hey, we're here with animal control. We just got called out to check on, let's say a German shepherd. I got called out for a German Shepherd that's supposed to be in the pen back here just to, to check on him and make sure he is okay. She goes, oh yeah, he's fine. And I said no there's no German Shepherd back here. She's what do you mean? So I called Leanne and we had a real sugar rule, Leanne was like, listen, unless it's sick or broken or needs immediate medical do not bring it back. We don't have anywhere to put it. So I called Leanne and I'm. Hey. I know we're supposed to have a German Shepherd. She's yeah. I'm like, yeah we don't. She's what do you mean? I'm like, I don't know who put these dogs here, but these are not his dogs. And this is not a German Shepherd. And we just talked to the owner and these dogs don't belong to them, so I have no idea how they ended up in the pen in his backyard. I said, but they're sick, and I'm gonna have to bring 'em in. And she's are you kidding me? So now we bring these dogs in, and by the way, there's this cat it was a little Calico coming up and brushing on. And I was like, Dmitri. Put him in the truck.. So we put her in the truck and bring her back. But yeah, it was one of those things where we were so tired and I was like none of this is making sense at all. You wanna be teamed up with somebody because of stuff like those situations, You wanna be dispatched, you wanna have some sort of an organization to it. We do a lot of dropping food. That's another thing. And then what we'll do is we'll collect those addresses and then give them to whoever the animal control is that's in charge. So they can do sheltering in place and stuff like that. But yeah, there's been some great stories awful disasters that we've worked and some really sad moments and really just devastating, heartbreaking stuff. But it's the people that make it, we meet new people, we work with all kinds of people from all walks of life, and it's just, it's really cool.

Did you ever find out about the two dogs?

I never found out who owned those two dogs. Nope. That's crazy. I don't know what happened to the German Shepherd that was supposed to be there either. No idea.

I wanted to backtrack a little bit when you were talking to about the Go bag because there is a tip that I wanna give everybody as well. Yeah. You were talking about make sure you have all your paperwork and photos of your animals. What I started doing since Katrina, 'cause I did go through Katrina. And even people who evacuated our phone lines were down. We had no access to our phones. But one thing that I always tell people to do is get all your important documents and email them to yourself because If your phones go down, you can't access your phone. You can go to a library and access your email through a computer.

Yeah. Yeah. That's smart. Really smart. Yeah. Yeah. I do that with my certification, so I have a booklet of all of my certifications. 'cause that's obviously the first thing that emergency management wants to know when I talk to them. And. They had all said one of the things is I put it all in a Google drive. 'cause I'm like, at least this way I have access to it. I can find it. It's accessible, all those things.

You mentioned that you did this fire two at one step closer. So you went over the go bags for disaster preparedness. So what would you tell people to do for something that's unexpected like that? Like a fire, because that's one of my biggest fears too, especially with animals.

One of the best things that we have are those little stickers that they put in the windows for the firemen. It's a sticker and it says please find my animals, so that the fire departments know that hey, there's animals in the building and please try and find them. A fire is nasty I did a hoarding case fire. 56 cats and the house went up in flames. Luckily the fire was really contained to the upper levels of the house and the cats hid. And I think there was only two that they lost. And then there was three that had pretty substantial burns. But. Fire is so difficult. One of the best things, and I think this goes for humans too, Especially if you have children, plan your escape route. Yes. Everybody's gonna argue with me and say oh in a fire you never, everything goes sideways. But my big argument here is if you've done it multiple times. It becomes real second nature to you. And you can be very calm in the situation, So for us, in my household, we keep our crates in a central location, And if I have to get out, this is the door we're gonna go out of. And we'll even set up simulations in my house especially if you have kids, this is a great one to do with kids. There's a fire in this room. What do we do? And help let the kids help you work it out, So that if God forbid something like this ever happens, you can just grab and go. Now obviously a fire is something that. I hate fire. I'd rather have a flood any day of the week. Fire is just, it's so destructive, it's so fast. And all of the planning, I feel like with a fire really doesn't go great. A big one. Microchipping your pets is huge. Not only microchipping them, but making sure that you're registering them. That's another one. A lot of people I would say five outta 10 microchips that we find are not registered. So make sure your pets are microchipped. Make sure that they always have collars on, that have tags on them. They don't have to be super tight. They can be loose. They don't have to be super big. But a lot of people that I know don't have collars on their dogs, and I'm like, you're crazy. My dogs always have tags on them. The easier you can make it, the better. Knowing and being prepared. My crates for my dogs are in a shed on my property. God forbid, my house burnt down, the shed's over there. The other thing is keep your animals up to date on vaccinations, Nobody ever thinks about this. We really live in a culture of not me. It's not gonna happen to me. And then it does, and you're unprepared, I say to people all the time, 'cause they're like, oh, my, my dog doesn't leave the house so we don't vaccinate him anymore. And I'm like, yeah, but what if you had a fire? What if there was a flood? What if there was an emergency? What if we had a hurricane and you had to go to a shelter? Your animal needs to be up to date on vaccines. So that's another one. That's how you protect your animals in one of these crazy situations. And it's something nobody ever thinks about. 'cause they're like, oh, it's a house cat. Yeah, what happens during a disaster? I didn't work the California fires, but my friend Nikki with paws of War did. And one of the big things was they were not allowing families back into the area to go get their animals because it was still such a volatile area. So animals were stuck in their house, just like you were saying, days and days with no food and water. So what she was doing was she would have them send a picture of their license. They had to fill out a form with a legal signature stating that they had the ability to go to this property and get the animals, and then they were bringing them out of the danger zone and giving them to the owners. If you were in, I don't know, New York and on vacation, and you have a wildfire in California and everybody evacuates. How do you get your dogs? You don't, those dogs are now going to probably go to a shelter and if they're not vaccinated, they're gonna get whatever is in that shelter. And now we're looking at a disaster, which means you're gonna have 10 times the normal amount of animals that are coming in, which means you've got all these different petri dishes happening, which means chances are they're gonna be upper respiratory infections, you're gonna have kennel cough, you're gonna have, all these different things. So having your animals be vaccinated is really important for their protection in those situations.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I've never thought about that either. I vaccinate, so I'm not worried about that for my own pets. But there are a lot of people, like you said, that'll say, my animal doesn't go outside and so I don't vaccinate. And, but that makes perfect sense actually.

Yeah. And we see a lot of that so with our adoption process, I'm super strict about vetting, with our approvals and with the approval process. For me, vetting is just so important. Keeping your dogs up to date on vaccines. People criticize me and say I over vaccinate and things like that. But you know what I've seen we see the worst. So it's important. The other thing I would say too is if you're somebody that's listening that's part of a shelter or an organization. This can happen to you. Okay. We just had a situation where in Newark which is one of our inner city shelters here the snow collapsed a portion of their kennel, So what do you do? Where do we put the animals? Where do we go? Like, how does it happen? We have this Oscar fire, They had 40 animals. They lost six dogs in the fire. It was awful and heartbreaking. But at the end of the day these heroes were running into burning buildings, pulling animals out, and they were able to say, I wanna say 37 was what they saved. I wanna say I don't quote me on these numbers. I could be wrong, but by the time I got to them, they're sitting there on pen and paper trying to figure out. Where are the animals? Who was the animals? How many do we have? There was no accountability. This was an organization that was very old school. A lot of their documentation was not kept in shelter software. So accountability for them was a huge challenge. So it wasn't even a matter of just figuring out. Who went where? It was, how many animals are actually missing, It wasn't until we had those final counts, by the end of that night, we knew there were five that were at unaccounted for. We didn't know if they had perished in the fire or if they were lost. There were two that ended up being lost. We actually brought in Buddha Dog Rescue and Recovery, who's phenomenal. They trap lost dogs, and the dogs actually showed up the next morning at the property next door. So that was a big one. But if you are one of these smaller, rural shelters where you're not really technologically savvy. You do a lot of your stuff on Excel, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but if you have a catastrophe. You need a way to track your animals. So at least make sure your stuff is in a cloud. Make sure that if you don't have one, but you can afford it to do shelter software. There's a couple of shelter softwares out there that are really on the inexpensive side as well as ones that are almost free. There's a lot of companies so definitely do that because if you ever do have a disaster, the accountability is a massive problem. If you can't figure out how many animals you have, you don't know what you lost, So that's a big portion of it. Have a emergency response plan. If, God forbid, something happened and we had to evacuate this shelter. What is my plan, Where are we taking the dogs? What organizations are taking the dogs? Who do we work with that can place dogs? We're lucky here where we have our cart team, which is it's pretty much a certified animal response team, We're all, we went through a certification class and we have this, so we're really lucky that we have that here. So if, God forbid I ever had an emergency and we needed to empty out a shelter or whatever, I could call animal control and my contacts over there which also is the head of my cart team and say Hey Carol we need help. Same thing if you have a farm. These wild fires are crazy. Okay. If you have a farm, you need an escape plan. Okay? You need a plan if there is a flood, And don't give me this oh, that doesn't happen here. 'cause it does. And there's always that small chance. So it doesn't hinder you at all to have some sort of a plan in place. So the more prepared you can be, utilize that plan. My animals are gonna go where, what is the plan for this? How do I do this? Where do I escape to if this there's all these different things that we can do to prepare ourselves for these things, but you just don't wanna get caught in that emergency and not have that plan because that is when things get bad, And then, and that's where we come in and I can say that night I sat down and I literally looked at Cassie and I said, Cassie. Who, she's the director over there. And I said, Hey, or the president. And I said, Hey, like, how many animals do you have? And she was like, I don't know. And I was like, okay, take a breath. And again, they're all panicking, emotions are high, so I'm able to come in with a level head and say okay, do you have a shelter software? No. How do you track your animals? We use Excel. Okay. Is there a cloud? No. Okay. Is there a hard drive? Yes. Okay. Were you able to get Yes. We brought the, somebody brought the hard drive here. Okay, great. Pull the hard drive up there. Boom. That's done. Okay, great. I have my laptop. I'm starting to Google Drive. All right. Who, which dogs went to Happy Hounds? Which dogs went to, Newton Vet, which dogs went to Southern Paws? Which dogs went here? And then you start to get organized, but if you don't have somebody coming in with that level head and then acknowledgement and. I almost didn't go. This property the Oscar property is a little over an hour from us. And I had to go to the facility to get my van, which is a half hour from me before I rode up there, because I was like if they're gonna need us to move animals, I don't wanna go up without the van. So I immediately ran to my facility. I threw a whole bunch of stuff in the truck that was emergency, like things that they might need. And then I started going up with the van and I had four people that called me and said, don't go. They're putting out on the internet that they don't need any more help. Please don't go. It's a mob scene. Nobody wants you there. And everybody kept saying that to me. Even the head, even my chief of my cart team was like, Ashley, we don't self deploy. And I was like, Carol, I'm not going as cart. I'm going to Southern Paws. I'll see you later. Worst case scenario, they don't need me. I'm 15 minutes from there. I've been in the car now for almost two hours. I'm like, I'm gonna at least give them my card because if they don't need me tonight. Over the next couple of days, they are going to need me. I have a very certain set of skills that are not, yes, they don't need average person's help. And that's I think, one of the things that gets lost in the sauce, In this scenario, this is what I'm good at, this is one of the things that I specialize in. So I can come in and help you get organized. I can help you navigate the outpouring of support that's gonna come in. I can help you with phone lines and emails and all these different things, but. I even doubted myself. I was like, maybe I shouldn't go. And I was like, you know what I've almost driven two hours. Just go give 'em your card. And when I walked in, I was like, Hey, listen, I'm not here to move dogs, take dogs. I don't wanna do this. These are the things I can help you with. If you want me to leave, I can leave and I'll just give you my card and then if you need anything, please just reach out. And they were like no, please stay. And I ended up working with them for a week to get them organized. It was huge. It was great. It was a wonderful success. They actually raised over $600,000 that from a GoFundMe that my social media person put together. Oh my God. Yeah, you have to go online and you have to look it out. It's called Oscar Animal Rescue. It's located in Andover, New Jersey. They're resilient and they're beautiful and they're wonderful, and they now officially are getting shelter software. We laugh about this and we do and I say this, don't criticize them because you have no idea how many shelters I've worked in all over this country and people are back in the times there are a lot of them, especially in these more rural areas that are not. Technologically up with the times. And I was one of them. My team had to pull me kicking and screaming into this century. I was very much a paper and pencil kind of person, and they were like, this is insane. We gotta get you digital. So I know what they were going through, but we've developed some really great friendships. I had them at my rescue this last weekend because we had a transport and they came in to see what our protocols looked like. And then, we also teamed up with them. They're really giving us a whole bunch of stuff for a tricky tray event that we're doing in June. And it was really cute. Cassie actually said to me today, she's you supported us so much. 'Cause I was like, stop. I was like, this is too much. You don't need to give us all this stuff. Stop it. And she was like, no. She's you supported us so much through this such a difficult time. Let us help you now. I can help you with this. And so it's really beautiful, these relationships we build too. But yeah, I would absolutely say that having a plan is half the battle. Even if everything goes sideways, at least you have that plan to bring it back to, you might lose out on a couple of steps, but the that saying the best laid plans, but you might lose out on some of it, but it's a way to keep yourself calm when everything is going haywire.

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

It's springtime. We're going into disaster season.

Yeah. Hurricane season fun,

So fun. We got off real easy. Last year I didn't have to deploy out at all last year. So I'm a little scared about this year because usually if there's a year that I don't have to deploy out, it means the following year is gonna be bad. This last year we didn't really go anywhere. I don't have the appropriate certifications to do fire work. And honestly, fires for me are really awful. For some reason I don't like to work fires. So it was really nice to be able to, support paws of war in what they were doing out there. But. Yeah, that was the only thing that we had last year. It was awful. I'm just a little nervous about this year because this last hurricane season was quiet.

Yeah. I know we had some, but it hit areas that were very low populated areas.

Yeah. Yeah. So we had those weird curves, On the East Coast, everything would come in like it was gonna hit, and then it would immediately bounce back out to sea and then just end up in nowhere.

Fingers crossed we don't have a busy season, so

No, I hope we don't. I really don't. But yeah, and if anybody out there listening to this podcast wants help on this or needs help coming up with a plan or wants to talk or, needs some direction or wants to make friends, so that next hurricane you have a team that you can call that will come in and help you, if you need it, please don't hesitate. It's Southern paws Inc. You can go right on our website, which is southernpawsinc.org. Send us an email just put attention, Ashley on it. Or you could put attention, disaster preparedness team, and that way, let's build some more relationships. So if you guys do need us, you have relationships already established for us to come out.

Yeah, and I'll drop that in the show notes too, so that way people can access your page too.

Awesome. Awesome. Dixie, thanks so much. I love coming on this show. I love talking to you.

Good. I'll have you back another time. And hopefully I won't be seeing you for hurricane season,

No. Nope. Hopefully not. So nope. Any other time.

That's it for today's episode. I wanna thank everybody for listening and supporting us. If you wanna take that an extra step, consider becoming a member. We just added this to our website, animalposse.com, scroll down, look for the support tab. Our membership program is going to help us directly support animals in need, whether that be through vaccinations, food or spay neuter efforts.