An Inside Look Into Starting and Running a Successful Pet Rescue

Announcer: 0:02

Welcome to the Starlight Pet Talk podcast, where we'll talk about and explore ways to help pet parents and future pet parents learn everything they need to know to have a happy and healthy relationship with their pet. So sit up and stay for Starlight Pet Talk rescue, adoption and pet parenting done right.

Amy Castro: 0:24

If you're a fan of Starlight Pet Talk, you'll love our new line of merchandise. We have t-shirts, hoodies and more, all featuring your favorite podcast logos and designs. Plus, we're offering a limited number of Starlight outreach and rescue items where a portion of the proceeds go directly to Animal Rescue. Our merchandise is the perfect way to show your support for your favorite pet podcast and animal rescue at the same time. So what are you waiting for? Just visit our website at wwwstarlightpettalkcom to order your merchandise today. While I'm waiting for my guests to arrive for the recording of this week's episode, I wanted to show everybody who's watching on video and if you're not watching on video, you need to go check out the video my Tell your Dog I said hi. T-shirt that I got from our friends at we Great Dogs. If you haven't seen the awesome videos that we Great Dogs does and you haven't seen their great merchandise, you really need to check them out. I'll put some information in the show notes, but you can find them anywhere. Especially, I see them a lot on TikTok, and they're just doing awesome things with the proceeds from their merchandise. So make sure you check them out. Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk. I'm your host, amy Castro, and, as many of you know, I'm the president of Starlight Outreach and Rescue, which is a 501c3 animal rescue in the Houston, texas area. I live on a seven-acre rescue ranch with lots of animals and, with my daughter and a team of great volunteers, we run the day-to-day rescue operations so transporting animals, cleaning and feeding, providing medical care, running to the vet, etc. Etc. And I'm here to tell you it is a challenge to juggle that and everything else in your life. Today, I'd like to introduce you to a fellow animal rescue founder and president who's also taken on this juggling challenge, and I wanted to have her on the show today to learn more about how she got started rescuing and about her path from where she started, when she started her rescue in 2014, to where it is today. So Holly Dool is the president of Camo Rescue, which is home-based in Magnolia, texas. For those of you who aren't familiar with Texas, it's northwest of Houston and Camo is a rescue that first kind of came on my radar for a couple of reasons. Number one, because it's got a really excellent reputation, which, again, as doing this myself, I know you work hard to maintain that and it can be work and also the fact that they've kind of created more of a niche in that they focus their rescue efforts on smaller dogs. And in addition to running Camo, holly is also a busy realtor, so she definitely knows this juggling act of a life that we live and has somehow figured out how to make it work. So, holly, thank you so much for being here today to share your story. Thank you so much. So you know, we don't just wake up one morning and decide we're going to start an animal rescue. There's usually something that leads up to that. So how did you get started rescuing animals?

Holly Dool: 3:31

People ask me that question all the time and I really I wish I knew the answer as to why. So when I was a little kid, when I was four or five years old, I used to check the bulletin board at the grocery stores and the lost and found ads in the newspaper and try to reconnect owners to people that had lost dogs. So it goes way, way back. I've always rescued animals that just came across my path, but I had a difficult time as an adult going to an animal shelter. I was in my late 20s or early 30s before I was ever able to walk into an animal shelter. So when my ex has been and I moved to Odessa, texas, I went to the animal shelter, thinking that I would volunteer at the shelter, and the lady behind the counter literally rolled her eyes at me and said we don't need any help. And I was like, uh oh, that was kind of my first introduction into a an animal shelter that was run by the police department as opposed to, you know, like a city or a county shelter that was privately funded.

Amy Castro: 4:33

Yeah, yeah. Having volunteered at a city facility for several years, I'm sure we could exchange some very interesting tales about that. Yes, so what made you specifically decide to start your own organization, to start camo?

Holly Dool: 4:49

Okay, so shelters need to practice herd medicine. When they have that many animals in their facility, they really need to vaccinate those animals on intake to avoid sickness and that stuff. That I've just learned from being in rescue. You know I had no clue. I started from ground zero. I've always had animals, I've always had dogs, I've always had cats. I did parrot rescue for 16 years before I started dog rescue. I have horses, so I have a general knowledge about animals and disease and quarantine and contamination. So once I learned about animal shelters and what happens in animal shelters, I felt compelled. I had to help. I was like nobody's helping, nobody is here helping. So that's when I started my own 501c3, because when I became a nonprofit I didn't have to pay the $51 to get the dogs out of the shelters and that's what I did. I got her adopted and vetted, I went back to the shelter and I got another dog and I just kept repeating that and finally it was like I can't afford this. I had a little bit of my real estate money set aside to start the rescue and that quickly, you know, depleted itself. I'm like there's got to be a better way. So that's when I started going to city council meetings and trying to get some changes made there. I did make friends with one woman on the city council who was animal friendly, so that's kind of how we got started with cleaning up the shelter. They did start vaccinations on intake and they started microchipping the animals. Another big problem that I had was that the shelter was only open Monday through Friday from 10 to five and I said I have a really big problem with that because you're only allowing people to adopt animals that basically don't have a job. You're cutting out families and people that work nights and weekends. You know they can't get in there to adopt a dog. Well, they said that they had been open on Saturdays and it didn't work. And I'm like I think that's just the kennel manager telling you they don't want to work on Saturday. So I said please try it at least every other Saturday. So they did. They started opening the shelter every other Saturday. Of course they saw increased adoption. So we got that going. Now they are open on weekends. And then we did a fundraiser and we asked them, if we did a fundraiser, if the city would match the funds that we raised to get new flooring, because the flooring was terrible and it was holding disease and the air conditioning system needed to be cleaned out, so we raised $22,000.

Amy Castro: 7:25

And this was all under the rescue.

Holly Dool: 7:29

It was actually my rescue and a cat rescue that got together and we had a fur ball it was what we called it. We sold tickets and we had a silent auction. We had a really large turnout. I was really happy with it. The citizens of Odessa showed up and we raised $22,000 and then the city matched the funds and we used it to resurface the flooring and then to clean out the AC units.

Amy Castro: 7:54

Yeah, it's interesting your story as far as getting that start in animal control and and the frustrations of, I'm sure, a lot of things beyond what we want to talk about on this on this podcast. But you know, just seeing that there's tremendous limitations to what they can and are willing to do and so having that rescue be an offshoot of that to be able to provide support, because that's basically the. You know, the same story with how I started starlight outreach and rescue and this you know, one of the reasons it was called outreach was to do the outreach to Local areas. You know, not not just the one that I started with, although I would say the first Year or two our rescue was in business. The vast majority of the animals that we had in our program were just like you, the little dog that you pull. Luckily they were a little more advanced. We didn't have to pay to pull animals, but you know, animals that we pulled and fostered from the facility. And Then then we, you know, you realize that well, in your case, you moved for us. We realized that, no matter what we did, things were not necessarily going to get better at the shelter that we were Affiliated with. Yeah, and so you know, at some point you can either continue to bang your head against the wall and Fight an uphill battle against this the staff or management or you can just move aside and and do your own thing and help other Shelters and other organizations that actually want your help. So that's kind of that's kind of what we did. So you moved to Houston. How has it evolved since it's been here? Like, I want to talk about this focus on smaller dogs, because there's a rescue for everything. Right, I mean, there's horse rescues, there's, but rescue's. There's rescues for only certain breeds of dogs, but why specifically small dogs?

Holly Dool: 9:38

So I actually started out rescuing Rottweilers and there's a Misconception out there that I don't like big dogs or I don't like bully dogs and that's not true and there's a lot of rumors and drama and rescue and the point is that I'm approaching 60 years of age. I physically can't handle big dogs anymore. You know we had Rottweilers. I love them. They're great dogs. I used to. I was a one-man show when I was in Odessa. I had a huge shop and we had 35 to 40 dogs. I had a mama with the litter of puppies and every. You know we had four walk-in closets at the house. I had a mama with the litter of puppies in every closet. I had a huge shop with kennels in it. I had 35 dogs Kind of at a time and I would get them to the vet myself, I would get them to the groomer myself. I didn't have any volunteers, I just did it all myself because I was new, I just didn't know people. And then when we moved to Houston I didn't have the land. You know we were leasing for a year because we we moved during the downturn in our house and Odessa was for sale for a year. So we leased for a year and I couldn't build A kennel on the land from that, we were leasing from my horses. So I just switched to being foster-based, which took a little bit of time. Nobody knew me here. I can remember being really frustrated and coming here because I was a nobody. Nobody knew who I was. So it took a little time to get established. And then, you know, I started being able to find fosters. You know social media was a great help with that. And then I would make posts on next door and be like, hey, I can save this dog at this. You know, shelter if I can find a foster. And we've slowly built up our foster base To probably a hundred to two hundred fosters, maybe a hundred really active fosters. Wow, and I also found jealous. I'm jealous, I'm sorry. Well it's.

Amy Castro: 11:35

It takes work, it takes time, it takes a lot of work and fosters it's very they can be, it can be very frustrating because fosters aren't alike.

Holly Dool: 11:44

You know there are. There are really good fosters and there are really bad fosters, and you've kind of got to try to weed out the bad ones and we do a online application and we check out the fosters. But another reason why we switched to small dogs was that you know, when I used to do the adoption events, I was doing it myself. I would. I would load up 12 to 20 dogs every Saturday and Sunday and take them to the pet smart in Midland to get them adopted. Well, there, I couldn't do that with big dogs. Another problem with big dogs is that everything is at least twice as much money. A heartworm treatment for a dog is three to five hundred dollars. A heartworm treatment for a dog is three to five hundred dollars. A heartworm treatment for a pit bull or a rottweiler is going to be six hundred two thousand dollars. They eat twice as much. Their vetting is twice as much. Their spades and neuters costs more. Another thing you know there's a local rescue not too far from us that specializes in bigger dogs. They might adopt out a hundred dogs a year and they're just as big as we are and their budget is A fairly comparable to ours. They also do cats, but they only adopt out a hundred to a hundred and fifty dogs a year. We adopt out about a thousand dogs a year. So I'm able to save a whole lot more animals by doing small dogs and we specialize more in, you know, york youth poodle shitsus, the little scruffy fluffies. We take euthanasia listed dogs from all over the state of Texas. We try to help the smaller shelters, like in the Rio Grande Valley, like Palm Valley and those Smaller shelters. We just got some from Westlaco. We had a paid transport bring us five dogs last weekend that were Urgent in in the Rio Grande Valley. Of course we take youth with euthanasia listed dogs all over Houston, dallas, my vice presidents in Dallas and we have a lot of dogs there also and then we take dogs off the streets, which can be a bit difficult. You know we stand for a microchip and we try to find the owner of it. Everybody's like, oh, that dog probably has an owner. It's like, oh, no, they probably don't. People don't realize. You know they're dumping French bulldogs, they're dumping Yorkies. They're dumping right now our biggest problem is doodles and standard poodles. They started Breeding those dogs because there was a huge demand for them and now We've probably taken in 300 standard poodles and doodles over the past six months. A lot of those dogs are coming from breeders. So one of the biggest challenges we face right now is backyard breeders, and I really would people would stop Buying dogs from breeders and start rescuing. You know, stop buying dogs from the side of the road. I think the biggest challenge that we're facing and why there are so many unwanted animals right now is because of COVID. Everybody adopted a dog during COVID, so nobody went anywhere or nobody did anything. So it was great because they were home with their dog. But then when people started going back to work, suddenly we had all these dogs that were. A lot of them were puppies when they adopted them, so they're very unsocialized. You know, nobody went anywhere, so they never socialized these dogs to other people. So we have dogs that are aggressive, that weren't crate trained, and people are going back to work now so they're trying to dump these dogs. So they're literally dumping them at the shelters or dumping them on the streets or dumping them on rescues. We get so many calls from people that have only had the dog a couple of years and then the other thing that happened was that breeders saw the opportunity. I call them breeders with a G. They saw the opportunity because people were adopting animals, so they really ramped up their breeding during COVID. And then what happened? A lot of those breeders got stuck with a Whole lot of dogs. There's one place right now in particular that was trying to unload 200 dogs on rescues and these were Nice quality dogs but they just overbred. During COVID. I literally only had room to take 11 of these dogs because we're full. We have 200 and we have about 270 dogs on the rescue right now. So the breeders are just killing us right now and I really wish we could do something with laws To govern that.

Amy Castro: 16:10

Yeah, I want to just kind of summarize, because I'm glad that you had said something about. You know misconceptions about what your rescue is about and you know, as far as focusing on small dogs and you know, in rescue a lot of times people will question. You know they question us when we say we'll take in an animal. They question us when we say we won't take in an animal and it's like you know, they question everything. They question everything. You know when you won't adopt an animal to somebody I just had an argument with a guy on the phone the other day that was, you know, so upset that we wouldn't adopt a kitten to him and it's like go to a shelter and get a kitten, you know. But I think what we have to do, especially, as you know, when we're the ones that are running the show, we have to do what works for us to make just whatever dent we can make in the pet overpopulation problem. So, I think you know, I think it's super smart that you realize, hey, and that's what we've done here at Starlight Outreach and Rescue. I was just telling Holly, before we started the recording, that you know I originally had these grand plans for this giant dog kennel building with, you know, dozens of dogs and 40 and 50 cats and one you know, and this having this big building. And then I realized the challenges of getting people to volunteer and try to do all that work every day and realize that at some point you come to a realization in the rescue game for lack of a better term, and it's usually a couple of years into it that you cannot save them all, you cannot do it all. And so you start scaling to what you can manage to have an impact. And so I think it's so smart that you said, hey, look, you know I'm getting to this age, I'm not wrestling with these big old dogs anymore. You know, focus on the smaller ones. And what I think is interesting too is just, some people stay very local, like we stay very local, you're reaching out to all over the state of Texas. People oftentimes have a misconception like, oh, little dogs are so easy to get adopted and you know, little dogs don't end up in shelters. But when you look at the state of Texas and the examples that you gave about the backyard breeders et cetera, you know the overpopulation of all kinds of dogs, including cute little, adorable, fluffy ones that should be flying off the shelves and they're on the euthanasia list. So yeah, so you're. You know you're serving a need there for those smaller shelters. In Houston Maybe there isn't as much of an issue of little tiny dogs and shelters compared to dogs, but there is. Yeah but probably more of an issue with the larger dogs, but it still exists and so I think it's awesome and just the fact, like you said, you're able to serve a thousand dogs where somebody that focuses on bigger dogs which you know, there are people that like bigger dogs but it can be harder to find homes for something that's really, really large that you're you know you're saving that many more lives. So for all of you out there who have kind of second guessed what a rescue is doing, please try to understand that we're doing what we're doing, what we can do and still survive, you know, mentally, physically, financially and everything else, because we carry a lot of the burden just on our own personal backs. So we started off as being purely foster based, although a lot of the animals ended up at my house, just because that's the nature of the beast. And then we moved to this seven acre piece of property with an outbuilding and we've converted the garage and still we're relying on fosters in some instances but have struggled to find people to foster dogs, which is why we're now building a small shelter building that'll house at least six dogs. But what's your model for lack of a better term as far as how the rescue is structured today from that standpoint.

Holly Dool: 19:44

Well. So we actually built a facility having dogs and foster homes, and not having any backup was so stressful. You know, if somebody calls and says, hey, you need to come get this dog right now, you know where are you going to put it. You know, the only option being that I run the rescue with my house, and that's stressful. I think I have 16 dogs at my house right now. I've got a litter of Chihuahua puppies in my master closet. I have a bottle fed, a litter of standard poodle puppies that are here, plus my own dogs, plus my foster dogs, so I'm at 15 or 16 dogs. So it's a challenge. I can't just go pick up a dog and bring it to my house. I have little dogs. I'm a Yorkie poodle person. So if somebody said, you know, hey, I've got the pit bull here and I can't foster it anymore, I can't very well just go bring it back to my house. So I actually had a dear, dear friend of mine write me a rather large check a few years ago and handed it to me and said I know you'll do the right thing with it. So it took me a little bit of time to kind of figure out what I wanted to do with the money. I'd been wanting to build a facility and then two months later COVID hit and I was like, oh gosh, what do we do? So, having a background in real estate, I kind of knew what was going to happen, you know, if it got as bad as everybody talked about it getting. People were going to lose their homes, people were going to lose their pets. They weren't going to have a place to take them. So I thought I'm just going to go ahead and at least start with the money that she gave me. It was seed money. It certainly wouldn't build the whole facility, but it gave me a good start. I purchased two acres in Magnolia and it gave me the money to get the plans drawn, lay the foundation and put the cinder walls up. And then I thought, if we take 10 years to fundraise to build the rest of it, we'll do it in 10 years. We actually ended up being able to fundraise and get the whole facility built in about a year and a half. It's a 30 kennel facility with indoor outdoor runs. It's totally heated and air conditioned. We have a beautiful office. We have a groom room. We have a meet and greet room where people can come and bring their dogs and meet our dog. We have three big, beautiful yards you know outdoor yards for the dogs to play in, and we do doggy you know play groups so that the dogs get some activity. We have volunteers that come out and walk the dogs. Of course, it didn't exactly work out as planned, because I had hoped to just have the facility and not have to use fosters, but that didn't happen. It was like if you build it, they will come. We were full within a matter of a week after opening, plus, I still had all my dogs in my foster homes. So nothing really changed except for now. We just have more dogs. So we normally have. That's what I'm afraid of. Yes, yes, we normally have an average of 250 to 270 dogs in the rescue at any given time. And we adopted out 100 dogs last month, so it's not that we're just sitting on dogs. You know, people did adoptions slowed way, way down the past four to six months but now that school is back and summer is over we're seeing that adoptions are picking up a little bit. But we can only take in animals as we have the space for them. So my idea of building the kennel was that we'll bring all the dogs there that need Vetting or quarantine for two weeks to make sure they don't have any communicable diseases before they're allowed to come into the main Adoptions building. And then we have a vet that we work with that comes in from Lagrange County every Tuesday and they help us with our spays and neuters. It's a little cheaper than some of the local vets, so that helps quite a bit to keep money down and we just pretty much send our healthy younger animals there for spay-neuter, microchip, all their vaccinations, any of our older dogs or dogs that need blood tests and dentals and those kind of things We'll send to a regular vet. You know, maybe just something that maybe isn't cut and dried will go to like a standard vet. We take a lot of sick and injured dogs as opposed to a lot of rescues that won't. So, just as an example, just in 2022, my vet bills alone were $486,000. Well, just my vet bills. That doesn't include supplies, kennel costs, operating costs, marketing payroll from my kennel staff grooming I said gave my groomer $600 yesterday. She groomed probably a third of the dogs at the kennel yesterday. So she comes once a week. So there's a lot of money and a lot of operating costs just to keep the kennel running. But yeah, just that bill is alone was 486,000 this test year. And Then people think, oh gosh, you're charging too much for adoption. Well, if we adopted out a thousand Animals and you divide that 486,000, that's $486 per dog. Just invent those. That doesn't include the supplies and the operating costs. So people just they don't understand what we put into it. And you talked about turning people down, the guy that wanted to adopt the cat. We have people all the time that say you know, we turn them down and they're like, well, that dog was just gonna get you tonight. Anyway, well, we take dogs out of a really bad situations and they get hit by cars. We pay an extraordinary amount of money to get them healthy. We're not gonna put them back in a situation that's not ideal. You know, if you cannot afford the cost of adopting an animal, you can't afford that animal. I'm a firm believer in that. You know animals are not cheap. I don't want to adopt a dog to somebody if in a year or two, they're gonna have an emergency and they can't pay that emergency, that visit. No, you're not adopting a dog. For me it's a lifetime commitment and we want those people. Obviously, things happen. You know life changes happen and and you can't always see that coming. But for the most part, we're gonna do our new diligence and our research. We look up tax records. We make sure people live where they really say they live. We call and we check their vet references. We do a home check. We went to virtual home checks after COVID and that's proved to be a pretty good way of doing it. So we're still doing home checks that way. But we're looking for, you know, stagal poems. Do you have stagal poems in your yard? If so, yes, you're gonna have to check them out. We're not adopting a dog to you if you have a doggy door that leads to a pool and you're trying to adopt a little dog from us. Our answer is gonna be no. So yeah, we're picky, but you know we love our dogs so we don't want anything else to happen to them. Most of them came from a less than ideal situation.

Amy Castro: 26:33

Yeah, so again, multiple interesting points rolled in there that I want to make sure to hone in on for people that are listening you know, the first one being the fees. That people don't have any concept with some of these animals that come through the door. Yeah, do you every once in a while get lucky that an animal comes in and it's already spayed and neutered and you don't have to spend Hardly anything on it? Yeah, but it's so rare and even then it's still a vet exam but still testing, testing, testing times, whatever tests it's the vaccines, you know you still are gonna end the microchip and the food and the everything else, so you're still expending money on that animal. And then you've got the animals that cost you couple of thousand dollars. So we can't continue to lose money. Like you know, we sort of lose money and we but we're way smaller than you but we sort of lose money on most animals that we adopt out because our fees are quite low and we're gonna have to change that model, I'm sure, at some point and and elevate those fees. And yeah, people are, they're not happy about it. Sometimes, even with the fees that we do charge and here's my thing You're not required to adopt from my rescue or her rescue or anybody else's rescue. Go to your local shelter and pull something from the shelter Usually those fees are quite reasonable and pray that it doesn't have parvo or disjump or yeah, yeah, that's. That's a whole nother box. And then you take your chances and then you pay all that vetting to take care of things that they didn't take care of or wait till the clue to shelters day. You know where people are dropping fees, things like that. You know Nobody's forcing you to adopt from us. The other aspect is the criteria. That's one of the things that I got into. The argument with this gentleman on the phone is that first of all, he was angry we didn't advertise our criteria on our website and it's like if I advertise my criteria saying we will adopt you and if you meet these check marks, we won't adopt to you, if you meet these checks marks, guess what you're gonna do, you're gonna lie and people. You know people don't want to hear that, but they do it every single day. We just had somebody the other day who we rejected her for adopting an animal and A short period later she has a parent try to adopt an animal from us and it's like you know, we, we do the same kind of sleuthing. I mean we do. We do background checks. We're gonna be looking at your facebook, you know we're gonna. We're gonna look and we're gonna find it and it sounds ugly and it sounds like we're being super picky. But the bottom line, like you said, you put your blood, sweat and tears into these animals. You know around the clock care. You put a lot of time and money and effort into it and you know you were kinder than I. You know the people saying, oh well, you know the animal is going to be euthanized and your thing is look, we save them from that. We want them to have a better opportunity. My thing is and I'll be honest and say it right on the air there are some animals that would be better off being euthanized than with person a or person b, whoever some of the people that we've come across.

Holly Dool: 29:16

It's like I'm way agree about it.

Amy Castro: 29:18

It's uh, yeah, we saved you so that you could go on to have another 10 crappy years of life, and so I don't think we are super, super picky and and picky is such a relative thing but no, in rescue I think most of us, our heart is in the right place and we're just trying to do the very best for the animal, because I'd rather keep it here and not take any more in than to Adopt it out to someone that I don't feel comfortable about, the person or the situation, whatever it might be, and I'm sorry if you don't like it, but if you don't like it, start your own rescue. And make your own rules. And that's my soapbox. I'm going to get off of it now, but uh, it's. It's when you're talking to a fellow rescue person like we can feel each other's pain. It's, we go through a lot of Frustration. It's not all the before, the you know the cute before and after pictures that you see, or the Horrible dog before and that you know. We just did an episode last week of before and after episode of a dog and it's like sometimes what all people see is you know the cute stories, the great adoption stories, the sad stories that turn to happy endings, and they don't see the day-to-day Struggle that goes into dealing with so many aspects of rescue. So what do you want to talk about next?

Holly Dool: 30:30

Well, I do want to hit on free adoptions and clearing the barriers to Adoptions, which is sort of like what we were already talking about. There's a very large rescue that think that there should be no barriers to adoption none and they are now selling their idea to anybody that will listen to them, basically trying to turn all of the shelters into no kill, which we're not at a point right now where we could even remotely come close to doing that, because what that means Is, once a shelter is full, they can't intake any more animals until they have a spot. In turn, that is causing people just to dump the animals on the street. So what they're saying is remove all the barriers to adoption, meaning let anybody adopt a dog, no matter what, if you have to give the animal away, if you have to reduce your feeds, and I'm so sorry, but I'm so far opposed to that and so much in the opposite way. Um, we were invited to an adoption event in october and she said but the thing is, you have to agree to waive your adoption fees. And I said I'm sorry, I can't do that and I won't do that and I refuse to do that. And now I'm on my soapbox, but I just flat out refuse to do that. If you cannot afford to adopt an animal, you cannot afford that animal. End of story, period. Exclamation mark. Most of our animals require grooming every three to six weeks. People can't even afford to groom the animals. They don't know what they're getting into.

Amy Castro: 32:10

Yeah, I'm 100 on board with you from the standpoint of you know, I think people really need to Think more about the cost of owning an animal and what would go into it. And what I think happens is Most people's desire to have the pet outweighs and overrides any kind of logic as to what is the right thing for the pet and whether they can provide that proper care. Yeah, and so that's where we get ourselves into trouble, where it's like, okay, we make it free, now We've made it accessible to somebody that really can't afford the care long term. You know, at the same time, I can see the arguments for it and this actually goes way back to a Philosophy that I have, and people will argue with me about the labels that I give, but I and I won't even give the labels because I get Comments about it all the time. But you know that there's three categories of people who have pets. There's the ones that will spend any amount of money. They'll get another job, they'll do whatever it takes for that pet. There's a category of people that feel like they would do that, but when you start throwing dollar figures out, like would you spend a thousand dollars on your dog? I mean, I spent nine thousand dollars on radiation treatment on my dog's leg. There's a huge number of people that I personally know that would not spend nine grand on a dog. I could do it at the time. There might have been other phases in my life where I couldn't have done it and I would have had taken other option. And then there's the people who you know the dog is property and they don't want to spend but the very bare minimum on them, and that you know that's a simplification and so are you opening the door to that category of person. But I think, even when we have adoption fees, like I know of people you know, that I'm thinking of in my own head is that you know they would pay your adoption fee and they would probably do the grooming. But then it's like when it comes to another expense, and so I think it gets tricky too for us in rescue to to kind of draw that line and trying to evaluate who can really afford to treat the animal the way that we want it to be treated, and it gets dicey, like I think about the Emergency room vet thing. Or I think about some of my friends who are, you know, building second homes and at the same time, don't have a regular vet because they go to the walk-in once a year vaccination clinic kind of thing, and that's a choice. But is that my ideal adopter? No, yeah. And so therefore, it's just, it's really tricky and and you end up being put in kind of this Judgment call, drawing these lines in the sand, and then you know, maybe making exceptions here or there because there's some other mitigating factor. But again, I think I go back to the fact that, if the bottom line is, as Rescues, we create our own guidelines and boundaries with what we want to live with. And so, you know, I don't know if I would have gone to a Wave, your adoption fee event to me it goes beyond the fee. There might be somebody that's like, hey, I'll get to because now I can spend that money on something else, or you know, they might just be drawn to that, but that doesn't mean they don't can't necessarily afford the care for the animal. And I think that's where you do a good job with having a good application, having a good home visit process, because that's where, regardless of what the fee is, that's where you figure out where it's a good home or it's not gonna be a good Home long-term. So I mean, but I totally get you, you've got to do what you feel is right because, again, it's your show. You put in the blood, sweat and tears. You know where that animal came from and where you want it to go, and that's your choice, a hundred percent. You're familiar with other rescues. Are there any other things that you think rescues could do a better job of? One of the things that I find interesting is that as more and more rescues have come on board, how they're run, whether they're effectively run, whether they're doing the right things by the animals or the people that are adopting, kind of gets more and more in question. And then you start getting tick-tock videos, for example, of at least one person that I've watched it like totally slamming rescues and all their rules and the Lack of this and lack of that, and you know what. What do you think rescues could be doing a better job at?

Holly Dool: 36:14

it's, it's overwhelming, it's rescue is stressful enough as it is. I have so many rescues that we work with that we network with. You know there was it's four dogs and really really bad condition. I mean scabies, really bad mange. They had no fur. There was a mom and a dad and two puppies. The lady didn't want to surrender them because she thought we would, you know, turn her in because they were Seriously in that bad of shape. Then if we do that, then we lose face with people and they stop giving us animals. So we took the two puppies and another rescue found a foster for the parents. Why can't more rescues work together? I'll never understand that. I will never understand why it has to be their way or the highway. I do have a problem with some of the rescues that just send their dogs up north and maybe I'm just afraid to let go. But I heard stories of people that send dogs up north and then they don't pass their their tests so they get euthanized. So I have a big fear of sending my animals to a place that I don't know. So we keep our animals here. We will adopt out of state to a private adopter, but we want to do the home check and a better friend. So there is probably something that Could be done to try to get more dogs adopted up north and I would be all for that as long as I knew that those dogs were going to a good place. I just hear too many horror stories about them. I'm covering there's a recent one right now. I think it was in Pennsylvania. They found hundreds of dead animals on the property because the lady was kicking animals just for the pledge money that came with the animals and they were letting the animals die. It was horrifying and there's a lot of Texas rescues that were pulling dogs out of the shelter for that lady. So that's very dangerous. You know, I want to be sure I know where my animals are going and we won't just pull animals for other rescues because I don't know their practice. You just have to be very, very careful. So I think for rescues that are just starting out, it's a learning curve. You you really have to know that not many people are going to tell you the truth and you just have to go with a lot of your gut instincts and Try to do things the right way, without cutting corners, or you're just going to find yourself in a really bad situation.

Amy Castro: 38:29

Yeah, that is an excellent point, I mean, and that's and that's something that we have learned. Like I mentioned, you know we had these bigger plans and we've scaled them back. And it's interesting what you said as far as rescues not working together, because, you're right, they generally don't, when we would try to work with as many as possible at least it, but but we also want to work with the ones where our it might not be policies and procedures, like we don't do home visits and you guys do, it's part of your process. And of course, we're mostly adopting out cats, because I don't have any dog fosters right now. So you know that might be a whole different thing once we start getting further and further into adopting dogs. But bottom line is you know, when we find ones whose values are basically the same, that they at least have some type of Structure and logic to their process, that they're providing the proper care and vetting for their animals. It's like you know we'll work with you, I guess it. But but you're right, I think many times people get kind of head down or you listen to those rumors or whatever might be going around, without Taking the time to really do your own homework, and therefore, you start kind of creating this Silo effect and I think we could. We could be a lot more effective as rescues if we work together. And I think you're right too when you talk about you know some of the challenges like I never thought that I Would have to deal with so many dishonest people. You know, or even maybe not even just dishonest people. You know people lying on their applications, things like that, or People not providing proper vet care. But you know, the other frustration is the people that, despite everything that you tell them about an animal and everything you tell them about taking it home and how to make it work, once you get it home 48 hours, they want to turn it back in and it's like you gotta be. You gotta be kidding me because it did this, this, this. Remember I told you not to allow it to do that, that and that and Wait for two weeks before. You know like we try to provide all this support, but on the other side of the thing, we still do it.

Holly Dool: 40:25

Everybody wants instant gratification, yeah, so that's another reason why we don't let people come to an adoption event and just walk away with a dog. They have to go through the process, because after going through the process they may think about it and go really okay, so really, maybe a puppy really isn't for me. A lot of times people will change their mind, so the process makes them slow down and really think about what they're doing, because it's a lifetime commitment for that animal that might live to be 20 years old. So we just don't want people making spur of the minute decisions.

Amy Castro: 41:02

Exactly exactly, and that's another excellent point. How could adopters be doing a better job of making sure that they are making good decisions? And you've already addressed one thing, so not making spur of the moment just because I walk into a pet shop and suddenly there's puppies and kittens there and my kids are begging and pulling on my clothes that I now need an 18-year commitment to a dog or a cat. What other problems have you run into that adopters could avoid if they took the right steps before adopting?

Holly Dool: 41:32

Most of them are just too quick to want to return the dog. Sometimes it's a matter of hours. Oh my god, I've got to return this dog. There's a rule of three in rescue. It takes 72 hours for the animal to even feel that it's safe in a new environment a lot of times. And then three weeks for them to learn their place in the family and learn the rules. And then three months for them to really settle in and understand that this is my home and this is where I'm staying. And a lot of times people won't even give them the three days. So many dogs and cats, their whole personality, everything about them, can change in the matter of three days to two weeks and they're not giving them that time. Everything is new to them. They've been through so much. They've been to a shelter, they've been on the streets, they've been to the vet, they've been spayed and neutered, they've been in a foster home or they've been at the kennel. You've got to give them a chance. It just kills me when people want to return a dog and we know what that dog is capable of and they're not giving them a chance for that to really be seen. That's very frustrating for us.

Amy Castro: 42:48

Yeah, it's interesting. Before I even heard about the rule of three, we had this running joke around the house Because, like I mentioned to you, we have one very kind school teacher, becky Jizinski I'm going to throw you out there, becky who is kind enough to foster dogs for us and she's been a great puppy foster in the summer when she's off, but during the school years she's got way too much going on. So pretty much all of the dogs that we take in end up at my house and we have this kind of running joke like give it 72 hours because we'll bring in an animal. And it's like, wow, he's so quiet, wow, he's so well-behaved, wow, he's so this. And it's like it's because he's terrified and is totally not feeling it and doesn't know what's going on, doesn't know who all these other animals are, and you give it three days and then you'll see that real personality beginning to emerge. But yeah, I mean, I'm totally with you. It's incredibly frustrating, and especially when we do know the animals as well, as we know them and we've shared all of this information about their likes, their dislikes, their personalities, et cetera, to give it some time to develop that or to get to know them and people just don't. I don't know. I don't know why they don't want to just give it more time. I think they're afraid that they're going to be stuck with something or that it's not going to get any better, or whatever it is. So if people want to support camo in some way and we talked about volunteers and you obviously have many fosters, but I know for all of us in rescue if you live in the area of Magnolia, texas, and you want to get involved in a great rescue, get in touch and volunteer. And I think sometimes people don't. There's so many different ways you can volunteer in animal rescue. It doesn't mean you have to foster. It doesn't mean you have to even poop, poop. There's lots of things that rescues can use help with. So definitely check camo out from that perspective. But how else can people support camo, holly?

Holly Dool: 44:46

We need people that can transport animals, like if we pull animals from San Antonio from as far away as Beville. I paid $450 to get the dogs transported here from the Rio Grande Valley. If I don't have to pay for those, that's ideal. So, grant writers, we have a lot of information on our website, which is camorescuecom. We're very big on social media. Facebook is just camo rescue. You can see our volunteer opportunities on our website. You can go to our website and see all of our adoptable animals. We need fosters, we need volunteers, we need people that can come out to the kennel and do clerical work. If you don't want to clean up after the dogs, we need people that will just sit there at the office and help with clerical work and help when people come in to the kennel, because my kennel staff is busy they're cleaning kennels so if we could have somebody there just to direct people where they needed to go or just to be there for clerical support. We have an Amazon wish list at camorescuecom. There are just so many ways that people can help yeah.

Amy Castro: 46:03

Yeah, yeah, and that is important for people to realize. There's lots of ways to help. Most rescues are going to have some type of an Amazon wish list or I'm sure you've got a donation button. Somebody just wants to make a donation on your website. Everybody's got that too. So if you care about animals and you say to yourself, I just don't have the time to physically get involved, there's still opportunities to get involved, because every little donation certainly helps. So, holly, thank you so much for being here with me today. I had a whole different vision of how this podcast was going to go, but I'm glad it went the way that it did, because I think it is an important thing for people to kind of see the inside of rescue. Why do people get involved and get started in it? The frustrations and the challenges, but the joy when you're adopting out 1,000 dogs to great new homes, saving them from shelters, I mean it's a I think it's kind of a love hate thing. It's like it could be so challenging and frustrating that you say to yourself why am I doing this? But for some reason we keep doing it. And the reason we keep doing it is because we look at the outcomes and somehow that makes it all worth it. So thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us today.

Holly Dool: 47:14

Thank you, Amy, for having us. I really appreciate it.

Amy Castro: 47:18

And thank you all for listening to another episode of Starlight Pet Talk. I hope this gave you some great insight into the life of those of us that rescue and how you can get involved and help out and, just like we say every single week, if you don't do anything else this week, give your pets a hug from us.