Welcome to Animal Posse, the podcast dedicated to the people and rescues making a difference in the lives of animals. Today's guest is Dezzie Howe with Healing Broken Hearts Rescue. Hi Dezzie, how are you?

Hi, how are you?

I'm good. Thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Thanks for asking me.

Yeah. I'm looking forward to learning about Healing Broken Hearts Rescue. to begin could you please share a bit about your background and what initially sparked your passion for animal welfare?

Mine is lifelong. My stepdad of 20 years trained police dogs, so we had 40 kennels and a training ground, so I grew up in it, and then I started working in a animal shelter and I did that for 10 years and then I switched over to rescue.

With the Healing Broken Hearts Rescue. What is your title?

I'm the director.

And when was the organization founded?

2019

what is your mission and what is a day like in the life of Healing Broken Hearts Rescue.

The mission is to change the educational system on how we treat animals. I would like to build and teach a whole new way to do animal shelters. There's a better way to do it. I honestly believe there is a better way to do it where we could help our community a lot more. We could get our kids involved in it and we could help our veterans.

When you say a better way, what is your vision of a better way?

No more cages. Let's stop treating 'em like they're prisoners. It's not necessary. It's lazy. It's because they won't put anyone in a facility 24 hours. They won't do night shifts, so you have to use cages. And my idea is to turn it over to veterans and build them into veterans housing, that takes care of your animal population. We have it all drawn out. We have a whole plan.

Tell me about it. I'd love to hear more about this. It's a very interesting concept for sure.

Think about it. If you took and you had one main building and you put in 25 tiny houses, no kitchens in them, you have one main kitchen Main laundry, and all they had was bathrooms and bedrooms in the tinies. You could put two veterans per tiny and each one could be in charge of two dogs, right? And then you could have your dogs that were just coming in or just starting training or haven't been placed in groups yet. The main building. And you could have 50 dogs working with your veterans, getting ready for adoptions or being trained to be service animals for other veterans. There's a concept, actually helping our veterans out because that way you're housing your veterans, you're giving them a purpose, and everyone knows for depression and stuff, animals are really good for you. They help with that. You could really do a lot of good by having them all together, and give them a purpose and take a lot of the strain and stuff off of your smaller counties that can't afford it. Could I go off subject for just a second and tell you What made me go in that direction?

Yes, please.

Okay. About 10 years ago my brother who Owned a construction company, thought I was nuts for dedicating so much time to animals. But he described it in a way that's always stuck with me and why I wanna make the change so desperately on what we're doing in this country. The county shelters the big shelters, he said those are like federal prisons. Those are the big prisons. We treat 'em the same. They're out an hour a day. They're treated just like they've done something wrong to be there and most of 'em have not. And he said the smaller rescues around, are your county jails still in kennels all the time. Still on that, very few get very much freedom. And he said, but the way I do it here, because I do open pack, he said, this is a halfway house and it hit me. Why do we have to have the other two? They could all be done the way I'm doing it if we changed up the way we did the human side of it.

I understand. So explain how you do it

Okay. I don't use any kennels. I don't use kennels. I have kennel here in case of a bad storm or something like that, or just when we have new ones come in and they're acclimating, but once they're acclimated, they get put into one of three groups and then they're just let to be dogs. And it's set up. I have special beds made. I have rooms dedicated, and they just get to be dogs. They each have their own yard to play in. They've all got their own groups to play with. One of my groups is 22, 1 group is 13 and the other group is seven right now. And they don't have to be in kennels all the time. There's no reason for it. There's no reason for 'em to be separated from each other. They need that connection as much as humans. It doesn't do well to put them in solitary confinement. We call it kennel Crazy. And a lot of dogs that have been in shelter situations tend to go kennel crazy. And that's where the ugly side of that job comes in. And we have to do eus And being an EU tech for as many years as I was, I'd like to make it so no one else ever has to do that job. And in most shelters it's a requirement because the way they house dogs. Dogs don't do well. So I think we need to switch it up and there's a better way to do it.

The way that I handle my cats is, we will have separate rooms for 'em. I don't really kennel 'em or keep 'em in a cage unless I have to, like when I do tiny babies, so of course when they're little tiny babies, I have to put 'em in something.

sick, tiny, surgeries.

Yeah. I have to put 'em in something till I get home. But then when I come home, it's like at playtime they get their own separate room. When I go to work again in the morning, they might go in their little thing, but they have plenty of room to run around. But once they get a certain age,

absolutely

and they're all vaccinated and everybody's healthy, they come out into general population. So they can come get along with the big cats.

Exactly.

Yeah

but listen to the way we so naturally called what you just called it. It was natural and easy for both of us to call it general population.

Yes. I never thought about it like that

exactly.

Yeah. That's very interesting.

And it is a normalcy for us to do that. And it shouldn't be, they're animals, they're not criminals. Because words matter.

They do. Yeah, absolutely.

And the perception that's why shelters have so many look I'm not going to a shelter. They're wild animals. It's because we treat them like they're wild animals. We don't treat them like they were somebody's pet that got loose or somebody had to give up an animal that had been living in a home forever, or somebody had a cat and they passed away. We don't treat them like that in the shelter system. And that's because. They don't have anybody to be there 24 7 in the shelter system. They only have day shift. The animals are left in cages all night. See what I mean? And I think that we could change that. My cats are all loose and I took, and I built a cattery outside of my house. They have a room inside that connects to a huge room outside, which connects to 14 kennels that I hung from the ceiling and put pathways that leads to a carport that leads to another huge room.

Oh, that sounds amazing.

That's secured.

I have to see a picture of that. That sounds absolutely amazing.

I'm on TikTok. Okay. We're HBH Rescue on TikTok. And it's healing broken hearts on Facebook. And I have pictures of Cat City and of my dog rooms. Got lots of little videos that we've put up there.

Sounds like they would have a good time in that. Now I'm building, a cat sanctuary. We're at the ground level, so we still have a lot left to do, my vision is similar to what you explained. So we're gonna make a room for where they have a big indoor space, but then we want them to have a safe, enclosed outdoor space that they can go enjoy the sun in.

Yeah. And the one out in the front, the top of it is chicken wire, so it's open to the sun, but the walkways, and I hope they don't look at you as crazy as they did me when I built this, because I kept telling everybody that I was going to use all of my transport kennels in a very unusual way. And they're like, what are you gonna do? And I said, I'm gonna hang them from the ceiling. And they're like, what are you doing? And then I got sewer pipes, the plastic PVC, great big ones, and I cut 'em in half longways, uhhuh, and made walkways. Yeah, that goes from one kennel to another. And I netted it all in and it leads, like I said to the carport where we built a whole nother enclosure on the carport for them to be able to go from all the way inside the house around the house. Come out, hit a couple rooms, go through and they're in it all the time. They love it. And it gives them lots and lots of space. But if you don't have a lot of money and you've got an overhang on your house that's pretty good size or a carport, hanging kennels is cheap. Doing walkways, you can use a fence board, to do a walkway. Part of mine are done with that. Part of 'em are done with two of 'em are done with the tubes from carpet.

Uhhuh. Yeah.

And we painted the tubes so it looks like tunnels. We call it Cat city.

Yeah, I can imagine. They must love it.

They do. And it's amazing on how fast they all learn to run up and down through it and play. And there's stuff hanging in a lot of the cages that are up there for 'em to stop and play with. And they all connect one to the other. And I have them out with the dogs that way. So it helps train the dogs not to be aggressive towards cats.

And how many residents do you have in total?

Okay, so I've got I think 36 pups. Our dogs right now, we have 22 cats all together. I have eight chickens and one old fat house pig, which I adopted from the shelter that I worked at.

And can I ask what shelter you worked at?

I worked at Jefferson Parish I worked at Vermilion County before that. In Illinois.

So suppose there is a rescue that's listening that does a lot of the kenneling and does a lot of the cages. What advice would you offer them to transition to what you do?

Stop being scared. They're dogs. They listen, they're natural pack animals. They are not trying to kill each other all the time. They'll argue with each other, but you can correct them like you're on a playground with children. It is not hard to do. I'm not gonna say that it, it's not easy 'cause you have to stay vigilant with it. But even at the animal shelter when I was there, I got to where I had play groups up to. 15, 20 dogs in a playgroup there, it can be done, it can be done in a shelter. It can be done in a rescue. There's it's fear. I think a lot of it is fear. A lot of people that got their heart in the right place that really wanna help, but they have that fear in the back of their head because dogs can be scary, and you just, you have to get past that fear.

Yeah, I can understand that because I know, like with the cats, I hear it a lot with people that, oh, my cat doesn't get along with other cats. And it's no, if you do it the right way, they get along. Now they might not love each other, but they will tolerate each other. There's just ways to do it.

Exactly. One of the biggest things is animals pick up on our emotions. You have to go in like a boss. If you want to integrate animals together, you have to go in like the boss saying, this is what we're going to do, no questions asked. This is how it's done. And they'll follow you.

I definitely agree with that, with the whole emotion thing too. And for anybody that is skeptical about that, just look at like, when you're stressed out, your animals are stressed out or you know when you're worried, 'cause you gotta take your animal to the vet. Your animal is gonna get worried too and start hiding. It's like they know.

Or when you're in a goofy mood and you're playing, you'll notice your animal will get more hyped up and wanna play with you.

Yep, definitely.

They feel all the emotions, and they'll pick up on it and they will follow what you set forth. People are always telling me, what you do is amazing. I know I'm one of the few that does what I do. But I just believe that if you really want to do this and do it right, you cannot be afraid, even a little bit. And yeah, you may get bit, that's part of it. It's gonna happen sooner or later. Kids fight on the playground every day. You gotta go break 'em up, dogs don't even fight as often as children do, but they do once in a while and there is a chance and you've gotta be able to, willing to stand toe to toe in it. If you wanna make a very happy, adjusted animal, I don't believe kennels are the way to go.

How do you integrate the pig and the chickens into this mix?

You should check my videos. He's with the dogs. Here's the funny thing. I adopted four animals from the animal shelter. I adopted three black dogs because, black dog syndrome and a black pig all at the same time. They're all now seven years old. We built Bo his own bedroom in the house. But he is always hung out with dogs and he actually lives with two great danes. Do you know what great Danes are known for?

What's that?

Hunting pigs.

Really? I didn't know that.

Yeah, that's what they were originally bred out to do was hunt wild pigs. Huh. And I have two living with a pig side by side and they have now for seven years. It's all about the training

Where are the chickens at now?

They're on the carport right now with the dogs because we are building a brand new chicken coop for 'em. They're getting a whole new house.

Yeah. And it sounds like you have some chicken math going on too, huh?

I do. And we've always got chicken math going on. And here's a fun thing. My mother, I had mentioned a couple weeks ago that I would love to have Easter Eggers all of mine lay brown eggs. And I was whining to my mom that I wanted some that laid pretty green and blue eggs. And my daughter happened to have somebody give her a dozen fresh eggs from a farm, and they happened to be Easter egger eggs. They had been in the refrigerator. My mom says let's try it. And she took that dozen eggs and put 'em in her incubator, and I have five new babies coming.

Oh, wow. Congratulations.

From a refrigerator. They had been refrigerated eggs and we still got them to hatch out.

Roosters too?

No, Ru I did have, but I've got a friend of mine that lives outside of Orleans Parish on a farm, and he takes the roos because they made it illegal to have 'em here.

Yeah.

And so I work with another farmer. That if we ever get roos, they've got a safe place to go and they just get to be farm roos at that point.

Yeah. 'cause it's hard finding a place for them to go. 'cause people just don't think of 'em the same way.

No, they don't. Which is, very sad because pretty soon everybody gonna want their own chickens. Chickens are really interesting animals to have. They can become very loving and very friendly. The babies are only a couple weeks old, but now whenever I go to their pen, they immediately, will jump on my feet and will ride my feet around while I'm walking around. It's really cute when they're little. My mom keeps saying, whatcha are you gonna do when they grow up? And I was like, I dunno, but it's so cute now I can't stop 'em.

Yeah, I find they're actually a lot like cats with the curiosity and stuff. Like they'll follow, they really are around and they're like, what are you doing? Let me see what you're doing.

Always interested in what you got in your hands. Is that for me? They are very cute.

The animals that you have, do you adopt those out as well?

I do not the chickens, the cats and the pig. No, I do cat sanctuary here. So a lot of the cats we have are older. I don't know if you've heard of Julia Ackil. She is the absolute best TNR person down here in this area. She is amazing. She does so much for so many and gets so little in return. But she had a colony of cats that the person that was taking care of them was no longer with them. And the neighbors were doing horrendous things and she was so upset one night and she put out a post going, Hey I gotta get these cats moved. And there was a bunch of them and she's I've gotta move them. So I just very quietly got ahold of her and sent her pictures of my cattery and I says, Hey. It's empty. And she says how many can you take? And I started laughing. I said, all of them, get that colony moved and let's get it safe. And so a lot of my cats have been together, they're from a colony. A couple of my cats are from Texas, where we went down there and helped out and brought some in from Texas. Most of those we did get adopted because they, we brought them in as kittens. And if they're kittens, I don't mind adopting them. The older cats, I won't separate from each other. I just, I have the space for 'em and I have the time. There's no reason to make 'em start all over at their ages, when most of 'em are a family unit. I would imagine that they're probably from the area they came out of. They're probably all related in one way or another.

Were they feral when you got em?

Some, but we've got that pretty much worked out. They all like food and we kept 'em for months just in the two rooms. I blocked off most of the walkway and just gave 'em the inside room and the outside room where I could get into both rooms. So I would just go in and sit with them for hours and get everybody used to me. My cat room's pretty comfortable to go sit in.

Yeah, I think that's a misconception people have too, is that once a cat is feral, it's always gonna be feral. I have TNR Cats I have a few at my home and then I have a few actually at my business. And when they came over here, we could not touch 'em, they would see us, they would run, we would put the food out and now we can pick 'em up if we want. Now we're the only ones that can do it.

And see, to me, that tells me all I need to know about you. You good in my book Ferals like you. When you can turn a feral friendly then you all right. You just, are you all right? I've got a couple. I'm so proud that this last couple weeks the hard nose feral I had finally after months has let me touch him and I've been so excited.

It is exciting when they come around and it's like when they come around I find it's not like bit by bit, it's one day they're running from you and the next day they're like, Hey, let's be friends.

Yep. Yep. When they make up their mind, they make up their mind. There's no second guess. And they're like, okay. You've passed, you now get to be a friend, which I think is great. But dogs are a lot the same way as cats. Like that, feral dogs can be the same way.

So do you look for homes for the dogs that you have?

I do. I had some health issues a while back ago and I died for a very short period of time. I had two heart attacks in a day, and then I had to have a series of surgeries. So I've been just on survival mode for a while. We haven't been doing a lot of adoptions because of my health. I just haven't dug it. It's mainly been just keep 'em safe, keep 'em happy, keep 'em alive, and we will work on that when I can dedicate, 12 hours a day to it again I do one or two Like two weeks ago, we did an adoption. We're not doing the number of adoptions we were before. So I've had the same group here for a little longer than what most are, but honestly, that's completely me. It has absolutely nothing to do with this amazing group of pups I have here. They've been dealing with me quite well. I've been so impressed with all of them because of it. But I slowed down because of my health and I'm starting to get healthy again, and I'm starting to, surgeries are all done and I'm feeling better, so we're starting to get back into it. I'm just pacing myself,

yeah, it's a lot going on, so you do need to definitely take it slow.

Yeah. Everybody, they're like, you need to get rid of all of 'em. I was like, no, I don't, because that would kill me again. What I need is for everybody, just, let me take the time I need to heal. That has been probably the most helpful part is I've got a core group that comes and helps when I need it. But most days we just we do pretty good without too much trouble.

When you do adoptions, do you attend events or do you do like pet finder online, Facebook, those kinds of things?

Yeah. I will not do events down here in New Orleans. I'm sorry, I won't go around it. I don't wanna be a part of it. I don't wanna be a part of that culture down here. I think it's extremely toxic. I think it's unhelpful to the animals. I haven't really done a lot on pet finders lately We do a lot of Facebook, and a lot of mine are word of mouth. I've done over 2000 animals through my home. Wow. So through, through the rescue and I've been all over the place. So I've got friends and we've had so many really great adoptions. That word of mouth has done a lot for us because we consistently put out. Good dogs, adjusted happy dogs. But we will probably go back to doing pet finders once everything calms down a little bit.

So tell me what you mean about toxic.

Here's something that I think would change a lot of it really quickly. I think before you should be able to get a 5 0 1 C3, I think one of the requirements is you should have to work a couple years in a shelter, in an actual animal shelter. So you understand Really what the true other side of it is. I believe that. Something that was extremely toxic was called Save Them All. And that is probably one of the worst things that's ever happened because they will spend thousands and thousands of dollars on one animal to extend its life a couple of months instead of making the responsible decision to either let that animal go at that point or make it as comfortable as it can be until it goes and spend the money on actually getting animals moved. So I believe that and then stop trying to save the ones that are so far gone that are a danger. Because they can't make the hard decision. And that's why I believe you should have to have a couple years in a shelter. Because there, you have to make that decision. And if you can't, then it shows you're in the wrong field. I'm sorry. I know that because I'm from shelter work and I was an a ACA for so long, sometimes it makes me sound very. Cold and harsh, and I'm not trying to be, but there is a responsible way of doing things and there is an irresponsible way. And right now, I know for the last seven years this whole country has been on a very irresponsible trek when it comes to animal welfare.

A problem that I see, is that a lot of rescues, they don't wanna work together.

Yes. That's why I won't work with them down here. I've got great rescues in Texas, in Mississippi, in New York, in Connecticut, and the girls up in Illinois are fabulous. And I've got ones in Ohio I've been working with, and they're all great and everybody works together.

It just drives me crazy because we're all here for the same reason we're all helping animals.

I am gonna show my age a little bit, but I've been doing just the rescue and stuff for 32 years with the groups of animals in my house and. Working at the shelters and having the rescue and back and forth. And I've been doing this a long time in a lot of places, and I was a military wife, so we moved all over. So I find that it's worse here than I've ever seen anywhere else. I have different rescues inviting me to please move up around us all the time. And here you can't even get them to. Now one of 'em was so bad, she was getting extra food and stuff and she was letting it go bad. Instead of calling other rescues around and saying, Hey, could you use this? She would just throw it away. Now come on, that's toxic. We all fight in the same fight i've gotten quite a few very large donations here because they've got the words gotten out that whatever I get, I share. If I've got extra, it's going to somebody else in need, like cat food. I was sending a lot of that down to Houma, to the rescues down there and dog food. We were getting large groups, things of dog food for a while. And instead of other groups working with me on it, they went behind and got it canceled for us because they didn't like that we were getting dog food.

Oh, that's a shame.

Yeah, because now I struggle trying to make sure everybody gets fed every day, and we had that to a point where that was one worry we just didn't have. So we could worry about all the others. We were able to take in a few more. We were able to have our numbers a little higher 'cause we didn't have to worry about dog food. And, I've got two really great vets that I work with that I think are fabulous when I need them. And it's Dr. Sachs. He's in New Orleans, absolutely amazing at surgeries. Amazing. I've seen that man and his team go in and do 20 surgeries in an in a morning and never have a bad one. And he's done that several times for me. I know he is done it for others. I know he does the TNR programs, he donates to that. And then Dr. Shine, she's a traveling vet who does large animals, but she also comes here and we try to get her in once, maybe twice a year, every year to do a rabies clinic. And she does the three year rabies shot for $20. So makes it affordable for people. She's pretty amazing. So it's just, there are some down here that will work with everybody, but you'll find that they don't deal with a lot of rescue. Yeah. But I'm not a regular rescuer because I'm a shelter worker. I'm an a ACA, first and foremost. I've been an a ACA most of my life, and I look at it much differently than what somebody who's never had a lot. And I don't agree with the foster based rescues.

Can I ask why?

Yeah, you can, because we were gonna try it. The first three fosters we got in here decided they knew better than us and they wouldn't listen to us. And one of 'em ran a vet bill up to $10,000 without our permission going behind our back to run a dog back and forth to the vet, for the vet to keep telling her there was nothing wrong with the dog. And then I got stuck with $10,000 worth of a bill because of it. Another one decided she knew better and adopted out our animals without telling us and wouldn't tell us who she adopted them to. No microchip. One of 'em wasn't even fixed and she got rid of our animals and when we tried to do something about it, the police, it's not a priority. Animals are not a police priority. There wasn't a whole lot we could do about it. So you don't have the control base. You can't learn their behaviors. You're not doing group settings. There's a lot of things in the behaviors that you're not understanding. Because you're not around that animal every day. You don't know if that foster's got that animal and that foster could tell you anything, and that dog could act one way with that foster and act completely different with you. And in order to do an actual behavioral test, somebody who knows what they're doing with large groups of dogs needs to do that test. And most rescues don't have that person. I just think that it makes it for a more unsafe environment when you're not testing these dogs fully to know every little quirk about them before you send them out. You've got to know your animals because you might have one I've got one dog here. He is absolutely fabulous with people. He's great with a couple different dogs, but God help you, you get him out with others that he don't know, ain't no way, he's not nice, he can be a problem. So his adoption will be very specific. But we know this about him. Why? Because he's been with us for months and we've been able to watch his behaviors and test him on many different things. I just think it's safer.

Earlier in our conversation, you mentioned that you wanted to start things with education. Can we go touch on that a little bit?

Oh, absolutely. I think that our students should be more involved. I think that kids should be taught at a small age or a young age. Jefferson Parish was doing a. Reading time where we would take dogs to a school and we'd go sit in the library with a few of our dogs and they would read to 'em. We used to do 4th of July night at the shelter, which is where students would come in and hang out with the dogs and read to 'em and stuff. Why fireworks were going on. I think that was an amazing program. We used to have groups of kids come to the shelter and we would spend the whole day there teaching them what we did and how we did things and we would take 'em through and show 'em everything and write down to a playgroup on how to integrate dogs together at a shelter. So I think that so many kids have to get hours for school. I think more of 'em should be encouraged to do their hours at the animal shelters. And have more programs set up. And I think school hours should be able to go to places like me who is a rescue, where I could bring in a group of five kids and give them their hours and give them practical experience. You have it to where they could get their school hours, plus I could be a reference for them of practical experience in a pack scenario of a large group of dogs to where if they wanted to go someplace because I don't know if Orleans is, but Jefferson Parish, that's a parish job with parish benefits. That's a good paying job. It's not a bad job at all. And good overtime and, hazard pay and all of that stuff. And that would get their foot in the door at a decent job. You know what I mean? Outta high school.

I'm all for more education programs too.

I think that's the way to go if we really wanna change this. We are never going to convince adults to change the way they do things, but man, we get ahold of the kids. We can guarantee we could have change in another, seven to 10 years drastic change in this country. If we could teach the kids. New ways of doing things.

It's been an interesting conversation. I enjoyed learning about your setup Do you have any adoption success stories that we could maybe end the conversation on?

Oh. I have so many. I get more emails from dogs than I do humans from success stories where I've got one point that sticks to mind. Okay. I adopted out a dog, and this was 11 years ago. I hadn't seen the dog in 10 years, but I used to be the dog walker. I'd babysat him. I adopted him to the woman he was living with, and we had a routine. I would go over there three times a week, go to the front door, he'd bring me the leash, we'd go for a walk, and then I'd come back, and that's what we did. After his adoption, I just became her dog sitter for her, and I moved away and I came back and it had been nine years and I hadn't seen her. And I went over to her house and I got to the front door and the dogs come up to me. They had not seen me in nine years. The dogs come up to me, Percy stands there for a minute and I'm looking hi Percy, how you doing buddy?. And he took a good sniff of me and all of a sudden he went right to his basket, he grabbed his leash, brought it to me, and I looked at her and I said you know what I'm about to do? And she goes, yeah, I'll see you in about a half hour.

Wow,

that's awesome. After nine years he immediately went and got his leash and he took me right back on our walk.

Wow. That is awesome.

Yeah. But I get a lot. A couple weeks ago I was feeling down and I put out in the universe, what am I doing with my life? And that day I probably got nine. Nine different people messaged me with updates on how great their dogs were doing. So there's a lot of success stories in it, and that's what keeps us going. Even in these hard times, we're having trouble getting food and we're having trouble getting, any kind of support because everybody's having a rough time.

Yeah.

And about the time where I wanna give up and I just wanna say, okay, you beat me. I can't I'm done. I'll start getting emails out of the blue, like God's trying to tell me, nah, you ain't done yet. You're just upset today. Put your big pants on and let's go back to work. And I'll start getting pictures and updates and just amazing stories on how great or funny things that the dogs are doing. And I get a lot of those. Some of 'em are going back 15 years.

Yeah. So that definitely is what makes it worthwhile. I love getting

it does

the updates, or just out of the blue, somebody will send you a photo and be like, oh, look how so and so's doing. And you see 'em living their best life

and it's the greatest feeling.

Yes, it is. It definitely is.

Yeah. Okay. Because, people are always asking, because the previous two jobs I did before I started in dogs, I made a lot of money.. And people are always asking me, do you miss the money? I was like, yes, I do. I don't miss the work, but I do miss the money. And in this right now, in the last couple years, the struggle because our dog food, just dog food alone costs me a thousand dollars a month. Just dog food is a thousand dollars a month. And you keep looking and it's like, how am I gonna keep doing this? And people ask me all the time, it's like, how do you afford it? And I'm just like, I don't know the grace of God. I'm not sure. Because It's just always there.

Yeah. The one thing about rescue that a lot of people don't realize is how much of your own money you have to spend on rescue. Everybody will start a rescue. Oh yeah. And they think all this money is just gonna come pouring in on donations and it's, oh no, your own money that you are using to take care of these animals.

Absolutely. And now, don't get me wrong, I have some amazing helpers. I've got a few that are dedicated to helping probably get five bags of dog food a month. I need 30. But I'm guaranteed because I know these certain people that are doing these donations, they are absolutely faithful to it, and it's a bag of dog food. And one of 'em, she told me, she was like, it's two cups of coffee, for the month. She gives up two cups of coffee and she can buy me a bag of dog food every month. Which is amazing that people would do that, so I do get donations, don't get me wrong. And I do get help. There's somebody else here too though, that I, wanna mention her by name, she's been pretty amazing. With getting people to donate and help. Tonda. Johnston and that woman is amazing. We had, a medical issue. And her people before the night was over, it was taken care of, so there are some that will stand up when you need it, but there's just so many right now asking for help. How do you choose? Because everybody needs help right now.

Yeah, I understand that for sure. Thank you, so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed our conversation.

It was lovely talking to you, mam. Great. I'm so glad you called me and thank you for thinking of me.

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. If you are enjoying our show, 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