Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Did you know that the pet care industry is a billion dollar industry and it is continuously growing? But are the people who care for your pets growing as well? I'm Dara Forleo, and on the business of pet Care, we are going to talk about what really goes on behind the scenes of those grooming tables, those daycare walls, and those social media filters.
Welcome to the business of pet care where we are examining the systems, strategies and decisions that are shaping the pet industry today. I am your host, Dara Forleo and today I am thrilled to be joined by BJ Atkins. She is founder of Animal Angels foundation and the author of the Swift to Prevention. And this is a really interesting topic.
Animal Angels foundation is currently serving seven counties in central Alabama through six core programs that are designed to keep pets and families together.
And this is really all about helping them when there are some financial hardships, housing instability, medical needs, behavior challenges, anything that is putting that relationship at risk.
This message is so clear.
Shelters and rescues remain essential, particularly for animals without a safe place to go. But the communities also need stronger support systems to help with that surrender and make sure it doesn't become the only available option. BJ thank you so much for joining me today.
I mean, it really is pretty simple what you do and what your organization is trying to solve.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Well, thank you for having me.
Yeah, it would seem like it would be simple, but we're so used to taking our animals to the shelter or taking them to the rescue that we forget all the events and everything that happened that drove us to do that.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: So can you elaborate on that a bit more? Like what is, what's happening in the days or weeks that's really leading up to this surrender for people?
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Well, According to the ASPCA, about 30% of animal intakes in shelters are owner surrender, and a lot of those are financial. You have people that can't afford veterinary care, you know, like getting a spay and neuter, keeping the animal up to date on their shots, and then, you know, God forbid if something happens where, you know, they have to have an eye removed or they have a broken leg or something like that, it's even more detrimental sometimes if the veterinary clinic has like a pet care program where they can pay. Over time with those programs, they have seen a 93% payback rate.
And it does help the pet owner at least, you know, get the veterinary care that they need.
They also run into things like, you know, they, they can't afford the food, you know, they can't afford a pet food.
And or they have like a medical crisis come up where they maybe have to go into the hospital and don't have anybody to watch their pet for them.
That.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I can see that being a huge problem.
And so you're, you're really here to help support those kind of intakes more is that I think what one thing you say you, you don't adopt or we don't adopt our way out, we prevent it.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Well, by the time they've gotten to the, to the shelter, we've already passed our window of helping.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Prevention is like we do prevention on our cars. We do maintenance, we get the oil changed, we get the tires checked, we get the windshield wipers done so that we don't have to have to pay for the blown up engine later.
Animal welfare, we're still trying to deal with the blown up engine.
And of course, just like with, with our, our health, our dental, our car, doing that preventative maintenance is a lot cheaper than having to do all the repairs that you have to do later.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Okay, so you're trying to help prevent the surrender with your organization.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Correct.
We want to talk to the person when they first start having issues.
Instead of waiting until they've been out of work for six months and haven't been able to feed the dogs and are lucky that they're able to make the rent payment or the grocery payment, they don't have extra for the dog or the cat, so they end up taking them to the shelter.
Also you have people that are moving and if they can't find a suitable rental that will allow pets because a lot of rentals have like breed restrictions, weight restrictions, number of pets.
And so it's, you know, plus the pet deposit and the monthly pet rent. It's extremely hard to find suitable housing when you have a pet.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And, and it does. They don't make it easy anymore with the, the breed specific and like you said, the weight and number. So it is, it is hard to, to move a family and think what with the pets.
Have you. So you are currently in Alabama doing this in some of the surrounding counties of you.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Yes, we're in Pinson, which is about 30 minutes outside of Birmingham.
And there's seven counties around the Birmingham area that we service.
We're also slowly expanding out into.
We've got partners in Colorado, New Mexico, Florida.
We're talking to one in Canada.
Oh, great.
Maybe starting to do some of the prevention programs.
And when we talk about prevention, it's. Prevention isn't one program.
You have to do a combination,
[00:08:06] Speaker A: you know, okay.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Or change in your car and expect everything to be happy.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Right, right, right, right.
So let's.
So with shelters being overcrowded and
[00:08:26] Speaker B: a
[00:08:26] Speaker A: lot of people, I mean, we know the spike in doodles right now, it seems like there's a, of that, that's not slowing down. Any people are out there purchasing like crazy. So are, are you seeing that your programs have helped keep shelter numbers down?
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Well, what we're starting to do is.
What we're starting to do in order to really see an impact, you have to measure it over about a five year period.
Oh, wow.
If you do intensive like spay and neuter, the, the bridge, you know, keeping families together rather than wait until they're at the shelter door, then you don't see a lot of change the first year. The second years you start to see it. The third year, you know, it goes down. By the fifth year you cut it in half.
So if you have, let's say 10,000 animals going into your shelters that first year, by the fifth year you'll have half that and it'd be 5,000.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Okay, so, and how long have you been doing this?
[00:09:47] Speaker B: We've been doing it for about six months in this area. We're fixing to start an intensive spay and neuter clinic over in one of the counties as a pilot.
But we're, we're going to be going out into the neighborhood where they need it the most. We're going to be doing free vaccines, rabies, microchipping heartworm, and sign them up for spay and neuter.
When on the day of their spay and neuter appointment, we're gonna go pick up the animal or animals, you know, have them meet us at a central spot. We'll take them for spay and neuter, we'll bring them back and everybody come picks up their pet.
So there's no financial, you know, like no gateways. There's no, basically the, the only thing they have to do is living in, in the county where we're running the program at.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Okay, so that, that I was going to ask about that. So this, you've been busy. You've only been at this for six months and you've got communities around you already and this new implementation with other states and internationally, that is huge.
Congratulations.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Well, thank you. Yeah, I stay a little bit busy, just a bit. You know, like I'm, I'm also writing volume two for the shift to prevention, which is like implementation and strategies.
So it's going to actually walk somebody through if they want to do a Certain type of prevention program.
It start from how to plan, you know, how to decide if that program's right for your area, how to plan for it, the different steps, Reese, you know, resources plus, you know, like any, you know, copies of forms or you know, like different graphics or anything else like that they need. So it's sort of like a ready made prevention program I can hand to them.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. Well, we gotta take a quick break. We will be right back after this message. But we are going to learn more about this and how all of us can get involved with this program.
Welcome back to the business of pet care. We have been talking about the, what establishes the surrender and how often the final result is really something that starts much earlier than just the animal being left at the shelter. We've talked about financial, housing, medical, you know, just, it's just so sad when, when this happens and people have to part with their animals. And this is what we're talking about, prevention and what that looks like in practice and how this organization is designing multiple interventions around one single goal. And that is keep the pets home.
Welcome back.
BJ thank you again for joining us.
So Animal Angels foundation is describe, you would describe this as the layer that makes less rescue necessary.
So, and I know we're, we're keeping Pat's home. What does that really entail on your end? How long have you been working towards this even before?
[00:14:06] Speaker B: I've been wanting to do this for years.
I mean I fostered for many years and you know, people would ask me where could they take their pet, you know, when they had to surrender it.
And usually by the time somebody's made up their mind to take the pet to the shelter, they've already been through weeks or maybe even months of turmoil of trying to find, you know, like figuring out how they were going to get pet food or figuring out, you know, something as simple as the cat won't use the litter box.
Well, sometimes you have to move the litter box, sometimes you have to change the litter.
You know, I mean there's, there's different things that can be done.
You know, like when we, when they first start having problems, if we can catch them, then, you know, we can help them provide food.
You know, if they're during a financial hardship, you know, maybe they got laid off, they're looking for new work.
You know, I mean that's, you know, those kind of situations have pretty much happened to all of us at one time or the other.
And you know, it's just really nice to know that there's somebody out there that wants to help. I mean, there's a. A lot of. Somebody's out there.
You know, there's a lot of food pantries and shelters that give out food, but if the pet owner doesn't know about them.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: So that's one of the things that we try to help to do, too.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: So have.
One of our other. One of my other guests that I've had on was Dr. Rachel Geller.
Have you heard of her or met her?
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Oh, Dr. Geller is fantastic. Yes.
Yeah, I actually, I had watched a webinar that she did and.
And we've had some zooms and, you know, talk back and forth, you know, with. With email.
And she said, I've actually hooked up. Yeah, I've hooked up cat people to her, you know, to see if she's amazing.
Yeah, she's.
I mean, she taught me so much about cat behavior.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Excellent, excellent, excellent. I just wanted to check and make sure that you had a connection with her, because if you didn't, I was thinking of her.
Since we started talking, I'm like, I gotta introduce them.
So she is a phenomenal resource.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: She is not only, you know, like, are you able to call her? But, you know, she's got YouTube videos that, you know, like, how to introduce your cat, you know, that you're adopting to a cat that you already have at home.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yep, I met her because she helped us with our cats.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: And they're still.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. We've. We've given out referrals to her on our. Our pet help desk because we'll have people call in, you know, like. And one of the. The most recent ones was woman was wanting to surrender a cat that she had adopted because it just was not getting along with her cat that she already had for eight years.
So I connected her with Dr. Geller.
And so they're. They're trying some things that will hopefully work so that she doesn't have to surrender the.
The new kid on the block in the house.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: The new kid on the block. That's right. So leading up to that, can you tell me.
Tell us a little bit about your core programs and the specific surrender risk of each one and how you have designed these to address it.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: Okay. The. The first is what we call snip with, which is spay neuter initiative program.
That is just.
Just basic spay and neuter.
We use that when we start doing our high impact.
What we call high impact clinics, which is what I was talking about, that we're going to be doing in one of the counties here where we go into the neighborhoods, we work with the. The local, you know, the churches and the community organizations, you know, and then we do, you know, like, basically all the services and everything are free.
And we're doing that, you know, plus providing the transportation. And that's so that we can get the highest turnout, you know, most bang for the buck, you know, because we're doing the vaccines and the microchips and the heartworm testing and they were providing the transportation.
And we built that based on several different models that I came across while I was doing research for the shift to prevention.
For example, there's Pet Care Connect in San Antonio, and that's what they did. They went out into the neighborhoods rather than waiting for the neighborhoods to come to you, because the neighborhoods aren't going to come to you.
I mean, we have a lot of shelters and rescues that will do like, free vaccines and rabies and sign them up for spay and neuter.
No one else does heartworm except for the inner pup in Louisiana.
Oh, oh, really? We were like, yeah, we were like, well, we're in Alabama. We, you know, we're have a lot of mosquitoes and heartworm is a big problem here.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I can imagine.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: You know, so we're, we're, we're already there. We're already in the neighborhood. We've already got the pet right there in front of us. Let's do the heartworm, too, and then we can do heartworm prevention.
And then for those that test positive, we'll refer them to a veterinary clinic and help them get the animal through its heartworm treatment.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Okay. And the pet help desk, this serves as like your, your, your, like your, your front door, right? This is your front desk. This is, this is what happens from when people call in.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Yes. What we do, we're putting a list of resources together inside of our animal Welfare Resource network software so that when, for example, if I answer the pet help desk, I can sit there and do a search.
If they say they need food and they tell me what county they're in, I can do a search for who provides free food in that county.
The pet help desk is starting to grow nationwide. So we're trying to get more resources basically in our resource database so that I can answer the same. You know, the pet help desk. Whoever answers can answer the same kind of questions no matter where they're at.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: This amazing. Do you have anything for grooming?
[00:22:28] Speaker B: She put in a module in the animal Welfare Resource Network for groomers because Groomers are, they're on kind of like the front line.
You know, you have the animals coming in and as you're grooming them, you know, you see, okay, is this animal having problems because they're flea infestated? Is there, did you find a tumor?
Do they have horrible breath and you know that they need dental work?
Or maybe the family has told you, you know, like, well, I can barely afford grooming because, you know, I haven't been able to really afford food.
So with the groomer being on the animal, you know, it's like, and, and we have to all work together in order to, you know, reduce the, the number of intakes and reduce the pet population.
Not one organization can do it by themselves.
It's got to be, you know, like a group, a team effort.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Well, I just want to take a minute to really say, I want to make sure that we are underlining the important distinction here. Your model is not based on the idea that shelters or rescues are unnecessary. This is all about being based around an idea that they should have, should not have to, to do this all by themselves and that there are ways to help with prevention and preventable crisis alone. So that's pretty correct there. I could say that before we go on this next break.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: That's, that's exactly right. I mean, rescues and shelters are crucial, especially for animals who don't have a safe place to go, you hear, you know, like them going to shut down puppy mills. Well, those animals have no safe place to go. But if you've got pets that they're already in a family, we can work to keep the pets with the family they already have rather than going into the shelter.
Yes.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: On that note, P.J. we do have to take a quick break, but we can come right back to that after this message.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Foreign
[00:25:26] Speaker A: welcome back to the business of pet care.
Don't miss a second of this show or any of your NOW Media TV favorites streaming live and on demand anytime. Download the free NOW Media TV app on Roku or ISO, or listen to this as a podcast on Now Media TV. Now Media TV is available 20 or so. The stories that you care about are always within reach.
And we are back. We have been talking about all kinds of stuff and everything wonderful about this organization and what angels Prevention is doing.
The whole prevention depends on more than just one nonprofit or one program.
And, and a family in crisis may need more help from a veterinarian, a landlord, trainers, shelters, groomers, rescue, foster transport, like, you name it. This company, this organization, this is a community and this has all been built by bj. You have been building the Animal Welfare Resource Network.
This, to help those organizations coordinate all of this in one place rather than isolate. How are you doing this?
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Well, I'm doing a lot of late nights, or should I say early mornings?
Originally I started because once I put my prevention programs together, there wasn't a software out there that could track the metrics that I needed. It couldn't track the data that I needed to say how many pet families that we kept together, you know, like how many people that we helped, you know, find rental housing or that we helped when they were in a medical crisis and had to go in the hospital and needed a temporary foster. So I created the software to track it and as I went, I expanded it because I'm like, well, if I'm not the only one that is trying to do prevention.
So there are other people out there that are wanting to do prevention too and need to be able to track, you know, because you have to be able to show the data to go for grants and go for funding or go for sponsorships because they want to know what their money is helping to accomplish.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: And so you've been putting together, I mean, over the years, phone calls, spreadsheets, informal referrals, all of this is now becoming part of your database that you have created?
[00:28:35] Speaker B: Yes. I mean, a lot of the different sections, to be honest, started because I needed them.
For example, a woman helping me put together an event sent me a bunch of Excel spreadsheets.
And I was like, there's no way I am tracking and planning and trying to do everything for this event in Excel spreadsheets.
So I created an event where it's called an event builder, where I can create an event, I can save it as a blueprint. So if I run that event again, then I just create a new event based on that blueprint.
I can share the blueprints with, with other, you know, like partners that are on the, the network.
You know, like for example, if somebody else wanted to do a high impact clinic, because pretty much the, the main things that have changed from, you know, one time having the event to the next time is the venue, the date, you know, you still need the same number of volunteers, you still need the same number of supplies, you know, the same supplies.
You have different contact people. So it tracks, you know, like you can put in your event contacts, you know, people that you're tracking that you have to keep calling to prepare for that event.
And I, I made it so that if I change you, you know, If I change the date that all the due dates and follow ups and everything inside of it, they change according to the date so I don't have to do.
You know, I made it as automated as possible because like I said, I was not going to do that on spreadsheets.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And did you recently just have an event? I'm seeing that on your website, Prevention Best in July.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: That for, for next year.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Oh, that's coming up for next year.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Yes. So we're gonna have Provision Fest in July of next year.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: Okay. July 17th.
And you are looking for sponsors for this event?
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Yes.
Okay.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Hosting a booth, volunteer sponsors, food application for vendors. Love it. Raffle items. And you have an RSVP as an attendant. That's amazing. This is great.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: And we're doing it a little bit different than a lot of events. Basically it's going to be an educational event.
Everybody, you know that has a booth will have a topic that they're able to share with pet owners, whether it's, you know, what kind of plants that you don't, you know, what kind of house plants that you don't want to have in your house because they're poisonous to pets, you know, and of course, spay and neuter and vaccinations.
And then we're going to have, for the kids, we're going to have what we call the, oh, we call it the Prevention Passport where they can, they can run around and get stamps from the different booths and then they win prizes based on how many stamps they got.
I mean, they do have to, they do have to listen to some of the, the presentation of that booth. Yeah, but you know, so we're, we're definitely trying to make it a family event, but we also want it to be educational so that people aren't just walking around from booth to booth, you know, being the, you know, learning the same exact thing. Like, you know, so it's, it's going to be a coordinated, coordinated effort.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: You've got your work cut out for you. I'm just, I'm scrolling through all kinds of place things on your website.
So you've been having quite a few events.
Feral Cats Only program.
Butterbean Days. That was last year.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Yeah, Butterbean Days is coming up again this year.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: That's a cute name. You're doing that this year too. Yeah.
And these are the.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, some of them were just having a booth at.
But yeah, we're pretty busy.
You know, we're, we're trying to do a lot of education on the value of Prevention how much money it can save, especially on like a local municipal level.
You know, you have county commissions and cities that are putting money into their local shelters.
And if they could take and divert some of that into prevention, they'd end up, you know, like with a return of 20.1 times, I think it is on most of the programs.
Plus, like I said, if they do, you know, a commitment of five years, then they can see their shelter intakes cut in half.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: That's amazing.
Do you have another. So the software that you're, is that just for, for you or is that for other companies to use? Are you, what is, what does that look like?
[00:35:12] Speaker B: Well, we've got partners coming, coming on. Like I said, we just took one from Florida. I've got another one here locally in Alabama that's coming on.
They can, they can use all, all of the modules or just part of the modules. You know, for example, if they're already running a current software to do their operations, but they still, you know, want to use it for, you know, to track events, to track sponsors, to track grants.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: Okay, all right, I'm, I'm, I'm scrolling through that on here and seeing now shelter rescue operations.
The platform is doing things for them. Foster and volunteer management, adoption tracking and follow up connects to the pet help desk and dispatch. So that's what you're doing.
Resource library, document repository and reporting and analytics.
Okay, so you've got a lot of stuff. You have a lot.
Shelter rescue, veterinary clinics, landlords and property managers. That's fantastic. Community organization.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a, that's a program that we're wanting to get going is our landlord partnership program because we'll, we'll provide a, like a pet resume.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: So that I'm gonna, you know, so that when you go, I'm gonna cut
[00:36:58] Speaker A: you off real quick so that we can go take a break. But what I'd love for you to do is tell everyone where we can go and we're gonna come back after the next and talk about that. Landlord and property managers. So tell people your website, how to reach you and where to find you.
[00:37:16] Speaker B: It's animal-AngelsFoundation.org they can email at angelsnimal-Angels.org and of course they can always call or text to.
Our toll free number is 833-754-7542.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: Perfect.
All right, we will be back after this message.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: Foreign.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Welcome back to the business of pet care. Do not miss a second of this show or any of your now media TV favorites. Streaming live and on demand anytime. And don't forget to download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or ISO or, or listen to this as a podcast on NowMedia TV. Now Media TV is available 24 7. So the stories you care about are always within your reach.
And we are back and we have talked about so many different things and now we're going to pick right back up where we left off because this is very important.
You started to explain to us about the landlord and property managers and what this is. This is part of the app, the software.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: This is actually, it's a prevention program called Landlord Partnership. Yes, it's called Landlord Partnership.
And what we're wanting to do is partner with landlords so that for example, that they would be willing to accept a pet resume instead of going according to breed or size restrictions only because a breeder size restriction doesn't tell you whether the animal is going to cause any damage or whether they're going to end up a barking nuisance or anything like that.
Whereas if they have a pet resume, they can actually see the personality of the animal if it's had any issues in previous rentals, which is a much better indication of whether they're going to have any nuisance complaints or damage created to the, to the rental unit.
But this is, and then also, you know, if they do have, say if there is a dog that, that's barking, then we can try to get like a train, you know, like that dog into some training so that we can work with it to stop barking and then just, you know, work, work with the, the property. Property owner.
Because a pet owner is going to rent a lot longer than a non pet owner.
And part of that is because it's so hard to find reliable, you know, good rental that will accept pets. So pet owners, once they find one, they tend not to move unless they absolutely have to.
Yep.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: No, that makes sense.
That's, that's a, a very good point.
I had not even considered that myself. So, and so a pet resume, we have resumes for everything else. Why shouldn't our dogs have one when we're going to a rental property too?
So this could really have something for recomm that from the vet saying that the animal's been properly or is properly vetted groomers from being able to sign off on the, the shedding and the, or the hair, the maintenance of them. So I think that's a great idea.
[00:41:50] Speaker B: We go look for a job.
You know, the, the employer's not saying, okay, we're only taking people that way. Under 175 and that are of a certain nationality.
If we go for a job interview, we're taking our resume because we want to be judged and interviewed and hopefully hired based on our individual.
Aspects.
So, you know, like, we can do the same thing for pets.
You know, like you said, the groomer, you know, there's a lot of different personalities too that the groomer picks up on that other people don't pick on.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah,
[00:42:46] Speaker B: yeah. Having the groomer and the veterinarian, you know, and any previous landlords so that, you know, if that pet, you know, has it caused any, has it caused any damage in previous rentals?
How has it gotten any nuisance complaints? Have they ever been evicted because of the pet?
[00:43:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: Is the pet up to date on all its shots, which is a big consideration too?
[00:43:15] Speaker A: Yep.
Who is that cutie behind you?
[00:43:24] Speaker B: Cotton?
She was actually a puppy meal. Yeah, she was a puppy meal baby.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Oh, I got three of them.
She's cute.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: Come here.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: So let's go into what should a pet owner do at the first sign of any financial, medical, housing, anything like that that could threaten their ability to keep the animal. What is their first action step?
[00:43:59] Speaker B: Well, their first action step is, well, hopefully they can call the pet help desk and we could help them find resources in their local area.
I said right now we're primarily in the seven county area, central Alabama.
But we are working to expand that.
Like I said, we're working. We've gotten started in New Mexico, Colorado and Florida.
But, you know, not to wait until, You know, that there, there's no time, you know, don't, don't, don't wait a week before you're moving to decide that you need to re home your pet.
You know, once you know you're moving and you know that you're going to have to re home.
Let's start, you know, the rehoming process then because it's going to take a while to get, you know, to get the animal rehomed in the right place
[00:45:13] Speaker A: without stressing about it.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: Let me ask you this, exactly how can other businesses help you?
[00:45:27] Speaker B: What other rescues and shelters, they can help by contacting us and allowing us to put them into our resource database so that if we get a call or their particular, you know, for the services they offer in the area that they offer them, that we have somebody to point the pet owner to.
The same with veterinarians, groomers. I mean, we've had calls where they were thinking about giving up their pet because they couldn't afford the Grooming, So also just spreading the word. But right now a big part of that is, you know, getting with us so that we can enter you into the resource database.
Because we're building a.
It's basically ask the librarian. We have a librarian that's going to be taking care of all the resources in the library.
But whoever answers the pet help desk can ask the librarian who does free pet food in Jackson County, Mississippi or a particular city.
Yeah, but we, we have to get those resources or resources in in order to be able to do that.
And it's okay.
[00:47:00] Speaker A: So our action steps are get started right away that, you know, there could potentially be a problem. Do not wait till the last minute. We need rescue and shelters to reach out and get themselves listed with you.
And we need business owners to support by showcasing you, talking about you, listing them on your website, helping with volunteering in your area.
This is so huge. And you can go to the website and take care of and see all of this on the website. Thank you. Right here.
For the viewers who are, are watching, don't wait.
Do this right away and look for Animal Angels foundation on their website.
Any place you can do the pet help desk, volunteer foster opportunities. There's so much on this website to look at. Bj, we are wrapping up here. It has been an absolute pleasure. It has been wonderful getting to know you and the amazing work you are doing.
Thank you for sharing everything and, and talking about this and, and helping people really register these earlier points of understanding when that crisis is setting up. So this, this again, this is not about shelters and rescues not being necessary, but this is really another, another way to support and keep animals home. Because at the end of the day, that's what we want to do.
Look for BJ and look for Animal Angels Foundation.
And this has been the business of pet care. I am Dara Forleo. Thank you so much for joining us.
Prevention begins before surrender and that's what we want to see more of.
The.
