Oh Behave - Episode 562 Cindy Ojczyk on the Art of Balancing Being a Mom And Fostering Dogs and Cats
November 20, 2025 • 35 mins
Author and popular blogger Cindy Ojczyk gets candid on the challenges and joys of being a mom to teen-age daughters and fostering lots of dogs and cats in need of permanent homes in this episode of Oh Behave hosted by Arden Moore. Cindy is the author of a must-get new book called, "Mom Loves the Dogs More." She fosters dogs from the organization called Second Chance Animal Rescue Minnesota.
EPISODE NOTES: Cindy Ojczyk on the Art of Balancing Being a Mom And Fostering Dogs and Cats
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/oh-behave-with-arden-moore-harmony-in-the-household-with-your-pets-recommended-by-oprah--6666801/support.
EPISODE NOTES: Cindy Ojczyk on the Art of Balancing Being a Mom And Fostering Dogs and Cats
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/oh-behave-with-arden-moore-harmony-in-the-household-with-your-pets-recommended-by-oprah--6666801/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, this is Pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It's all behaved with Arden Moore, this show that teaches
you how to have harmony in the household with your pets.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Join Ardna.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
She travels coast to coast to help millions better understand
why cats and dogs do what they do. Get that
latest scoop on famous spaces, they're perfectly pampered pets, and
who's walking goo and rent in Tinseltown. From famous pet
experts and best selling authors to television and movie stars.
You'll get the latest buzz from Wagging Tongues and Tails Garner,
great pet tips and have a dog one fer flying
(00:37):
fun time. So get ready for the paws and applause
as we unleaseh your oh Behave host America's pet edutainer, Arden.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Moore, Hey, pet pals, Welcome to the O Behave Show
on Pet Life Radio. I'm your host, Arden Moore, our
special guest today is a major advocate for rescue dogs.
Oh and by the way, she also definitely loves her
own two legged family. But life is and wasn't always easy.
(01:09):
You know, she like us and face a lot of challenges.
So guess what she did. She decided to write a
book about it, and now she is ready to share
in hopes of helping other people and rescue dogs. So
at this time, please welcome to our show the author
of a just released book.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
I love the title, Mom Loves the Dogs More.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Please welcome the talented Cindy oh Check. Welcome, Welcome, Cindy.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Thank you Arden. I couldn't have said it better or
enunciated it the.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Way you did.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
You must have either heard that in your past or
you said that to your old parents, because that's exactly
how it was said to me. But I am absolutely
delighted to be on the show. When I was introduced
to your podcast over a year ago.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I've been listening to episodes and while it's just amazing
the breadth of the speakers, the topics that they have,
their creativity as well as their ability to inspire and
to help people in pets.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
And kudos to you.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I'm a solopreneur and being a small business owner to
stick with it for all the years that you have
is quite impressive.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Well, I think both of beat dogs Hey ho hoals.
We're going to dive into who the heck is Cindy
Ochek and why you got to get your pause on.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Her book, Mom loves the dog more.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
And you got to say it with kind of a
little bit of a tone. But we got to take
a quick break, so you all know the drill. We're
gonna sit. Stay, We'll be right by.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Time for a pause.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
For very ones, actually sit and stay, all behave, We'll
be right back.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
Take a bite out of your competition. Advertise your business
with an ad in pet Line radio podcasts and radio shows.
There is no other pet related media that is as
large and reaches more pet parents and pet lovers than
pet Life Radio with over seven million monthly listeners. Pet
Life Radio podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms,
(03:16):
and our live radio stream goes out to over two
hundred and fifty million subscribers on iHeartRadio, Odyssey, tune In,
and other streaming apps. For more information on how you
can advertise on the number one pet podcast and radio network,
visit Petlife Radio dot com slash advertised today.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Let's talk pets on Petlifradio dot com. All behaviors back
with more tail wagging. Ways to achieve harmony of the
household with your pets. Now back to your fetching host.
America's pet ed You Jiner Ardenmore.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Welcome back to the Old Behave Show on Petlife Radio.
I'm your host Ardenmore. I am honored and delighted to
have a gal on the show who really knows dogs,
and she's a mom, she's a wife. You put that
all together and that is triple talent and triple challenge.
So we're going to back up the bus a little bit,
Sandy O check and give people a little bit of
(04:17):
background on you. You hail from Saint Paul, Mintasota, Land
of ten thousand Lakes, Land of ten thousand lakes, and
there are over twelve thousand of them. Have you seen
how many of those? Have you actually been?
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Maybe one hundred, maybe not to a thousand and it
can get cold there. So do you actually have triple
pain windows? We have double pain windows.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Okay, okay, because I've been there with some friends and
they're very excited because they have triple pain windows.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
That's pretty impressive to be that dedicated to energy efficiency.
Give them a cheer to them.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Well, what I like about you, Cindy, You are a
solo preneur, not manure preneur. We just want to get
all cleared up. So you've been going without the W
two net for many, many years. And what is it
that has inspired you? Because after the show, I really
want people to go to your blog. It's called like
People Like Pets, and your website is Cindy Oh Rights.
(05:18):
Because your last name is too hard to spell. You
have way too many fun letters in there. Go ahead
spell your last name because that's kind of cool. Okay,
it's oh j c z y k. And if you
are a hockey fan, you will see Eddie Oldcheck and
Eddie Olchak shows up on Amazon next to me.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Because well, you shoot your score, so it is nice
to actually see his face up there. And hockey fans
can pronounce my last name, but it's actually a Polish
background and in Polish the j is a y pronunciation.
In Poland it's oil check. But my father in law
(06:02):
started marking everything of his with an oh and a
check mark behind it.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Oh, that's clever.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Fine, And we've just gone by ocheck since then.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Okay, So you do a lot in the world. Do
you have the podcast, you have your website, you're an
accomplished author. You remember the Dog Writers' Association. But something's
been with you for almost three decades. You had me
at woolf You had me at Wolf. What have you
been doing for almost thirty years, Cindy from the fostering
and rescuing side. Rescuing started with my very first dog
(06:38):
that I found during senior week of college wow, being
up to graduation, and he was just walking across the campus.
And back then I lived on campus in a dorm.
So we went to the cafeteria and I'm walking across
this cafeteria, just off across the squad of different people
(06:58):
out playing frisbee and in the sunshine because people are
slowly getting done with their exams and the walking across,
and there's this beautiful furry headed dog and I, of
course it's almost like today's therapy dogs. There he was
stopped to pet him, and the next thing I know,
he's in line with me in the cafeteria.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
So he had followed me into the cafeteria. I brought
him back out, I petted his head, went back with
my friends. And then later that day, I was in
the weight room and I went to put a set
of dumbbells back on the rack, and I look in
the mirror and there he is in the weight room,
all the way across campus. I thought, all right, we
(07:41):
got to figure this out. He didn't have a collar,
beautiful kind of keyshound type dog.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Was he like a medium thirty to fifty pound dog.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Yep, But I lived in a dorm in the weight room.
Said well, I'll take him if you start working on
finding where he belongs. And we worked with the shelters
and the animal control. He stayed there for the week
until graduation, and then I was living in town at
that time or moving into town, and he then became mine.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
What's his name? What was his name? Snooka Snooka. Okay,
so you got the fostering adoption bug right there, didn't you.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Well I did. We kept working at trying to find
him a home, and he loved me right away. He
was home as I could put him out in the
front yard and he would never wander. He wow, go by,
dogs go by, and he was just mine. And we
just became walking buddies. And after a month the animal
control said you either surrender him to us or you
(08:43):
keep them, and he became buddies.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Yes, so you have a double reason for writing this book.
Mom loves the dogs more so TuS up. You've got
now two grown daughters. But what was the spark the
inspiration for you to say, I need to write this down,
I need to share this.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Well, well, back up, because I didn't write this book originally.
The book that you ended up seeing and have been
reading was something else before. So we started fostering, okay.
And I found when I was fostering that I would
say I'm a foster and people would say, oh, I
can never do that. I could never give them up.
And I thought that if I wrote the most inspiring book,
(09:25):
then we would get all these people to foster. So
I wrote a book on fostering, and I used our
foster dogs as the examples of how to foster, how
to do this, how to do that, and included their
stories and I sent I gave myself a year to
write this book, and I did it. That was the thing.
Just sit down and do the darn thing and see
(09:46):
if you can do it. First of all, before saying
I'm going to write a book, is write the book,
and then you've been to yourselfie can do it. When
I sent it out to beta readers, who are those
early readers that you just want some surface level feedback,
they love the dog stories, but they felt it was
just too much of a niche and I needed to
expand it. Well. Then it took me a while to
(10:07):
figure out what that arc was going to be to
make this a book that would be exciting to other
people to read, the masses to read. When I figured
out what that was, which was the story of my
family alongside these foster dogs, I had to back that
up and say to the kids, I'm going to write
(10:27):
this story and you get to say yay or nay,
Well good say if you say no, I'll do something else. Well,
think of something else and how to do it. So
that's pretty much how it went. But that story and
what you're reading really began when our dog died. We
had a family dog. Kids are moving into teens and
(10:50):
tweens at that point, and there's a lot of emotion,
a lot of drama happening, and then the dog dies,
and that true the tsunami of emotions we had never
seen in the house before.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
And what was your dog's name? Tell people quickly was Sierra. Sierra.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Sierra is the not the spitting image of Snooka, but
very similar of Keith Honland, and we ended up adopting
her because she looked so much like Snooka and loved
his personality and in the end, loved her personality. And
she died unexpectedly. We were not totally unaware that she
(11:30):
had anything, and she pretty much died during Fourth of
July weekend during fireworks.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
They believed that she had a heart attack.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Wow, and how old? And what are your daughter's names?
How old were they at the time.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
So Mia was eleven and Anna was fourteen, and we
were all just shaken to the core over this. But
we also that it tripped something that you mean, things
happen as they're growing up. Just think, Oh, that's their personality,
that's their quirk. But then all of a sudden, this
(12:06):
kind of tsunami of emotions came out, and it really
started me thinking that this is not something that's not
quite right. I just didn't know what that was or
even where to even begin thinking about what is not right.
But what I did know was I didn't like the
feeling in the house, that feeling of grief, and I figured, well,
(12:27):
I'm gonna let's let's get a new dog. We'll patch
patch this grief by filling it with a new dog.
And then we started talking about the new dog, and
nobody could agree, my husband, my kids, and me, you know,
looking at the fact that eventually they're going to move
on and we're going to still have this dog, and
what is the dog I want?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
What is the fuck? Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
So none of us were agreen. And then it became
that as those the fighting and intensity kept rising in
the house. I just kept having the sphere of what
if I make the wrong decision, What if I decide
on this dog? What if one daughter thinks that my
decision favors the other daughter?
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Oh my gosh, that is so man, there's so much.
You aren't playing checkers, Cindy, You're playing chess on the
pro level, aren't you? With all these factors.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
With all the factors, and just that parenting moving into
that chaotic adolescent stage where you're a different you need
to become a different type of parent, but you don't
really know how or what or so you just keep
doing the same things that you do. And a friend
of mine then recommended, well, why don't you foster? You know,
that way, you're not making any decisions.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Ah, smart friend, Ah, nice friend, Yes, yes, yes, what'd
you think when you heard that?
Speaker 4 (13:46):
I mean, you know, what a foster's But you know,
we get caught up in life and then somebody just
says something simple and profound. Well, I don't even really think.
Back then, I knew a lot about fostering. I didn't
know anybody that fostered. Okay, he was telling me that
she knew this person that fostered pregnant cats, and they
wouldn't help the mom until the babies were about eight
(14:08):
weeks old, and then another foster took those babies because
then they had to get their shots and spade and
all that, and then she'd get the next mom and
the kids. Then her kids got to see the miracle
of birth. They didn't have this long term commitment to
the cat. They got to do their thing and then
(14:29):
take out fostering again. So when she explained all that
to me, I'm like, ah, this is great. You know,
we're going to have this parade of dogs. You know,
if we love dogs, dogs are all have been part
of our life, and everything's gonna be perfect, right. So
we get the first dog, Poet. He's a little ten
pound dog, and ken I didn't say anything to Linda,
(14:51):
who was the founder co founder of Second Chance Animal Rescue.
She does the dog side, Nancy does the cat's side,
and Blinda had done the onboarding of us, but I
didn't say, oh, by the way, Mia likes little dogs
and Anna likes big dogs. It's who needs a home?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
And let me hit pause for a minute, because I
do want you to do it a little shout out
about Second Chance because it's a pretty long running big
rescue group in Minnesota, right it is.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
It's one of the oldest, and I want to say
thirty two, thirty three years now.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
It's called Second Chance.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Second Chance Animal Rescue. And I know there are other
Second Chance Animal rescues, so you have to say second
Chance Animal Rescue, Minnesota.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Okay, gotcha? Okay, So all right, so here comes Poet.
What's going on?
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So?
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Poet is a little papion mix. He looks like a
little Jersey calf, black and white. Watches the big tufts
of her coming out of the ears and the feathery tail,
and he has eyes for mea and she has eyes
for him, because of course she wanted the pocket dog.
She wanted the small dog. This dog had no eyes
(16:09):
for anybody else in our family. And he was glued
to her. He was he was a tough first dog
to have as a foster. Okay, what happened? What started
happening is then my other daughter was like, how come
she gets her wish first? Because they're typical teenagers, right right? Well,
(16:29):
eventually a Poet was a difficult He was three years
old when he came to us unnutered, so he got neutered,
not house trained, and at three he was just a
difficult dog to try and get to learn how to
use outside versus inside. And so we had some we
had some struggles with Pope that by the time I
(16:50):
felt we were comfortable making progress, we're going to put
him up for adoption. And then it all falls apart
again because now I haven't let them or give them
the opportunity to heal properly with their grief from Sierra's death.
Now I'm asking them to give up this dog.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Oh my gosh, Mom, you didn't even know you were
causing a big old mess, did you.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Well. And that's the part about fostering. I wasn't really
grabbing my head around. I was thinking, oh, we're going
to adopt these dogs out. We're going to check check,
check this list because we had committed to We're going
to foster six dogs. So I was going for the
foster win, which is to find them a new home,
without realizing that there is a reality to fostering, and
that is there's a loss. It's a happy loss.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Thank you for saying that, because all of the dogs
and cats in my home come from the streets, are
from shelters or from foster groups. And it's a happy loss.
But keep going, you hit.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
It, it's a happy loss. But I think that's also
one of the reasons why we don't have as many
people fostering, because loss is loss, and loss is grief,
and I have a strong belief that many people don't
know how to grieve properly, yeah and avoid it at
all costs. One of the things we did learn through
(18:10):
this whole fostering process is how to grief. Grief is
just part of what's going to happen, and you just
never know when it's going to happen and under what circumstances.
In this first situation with Poet, I could not face
those kids going through this grief again, so I ended
up adopting him. Now, as you've probably heard, the term
(18:31):
foster failure, and that is where if the foster home
adopts their own foster dog into their become a resident.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Pret you know what I do. I guess I'm more positive.
I call it foster's success because you realize this is
a good fit for your family and the home that
that dog needs is right here. So I call him
foster successes. What do you think? I like that? I
like it because otherwise people are always like looking down
and go oh and I'm a foster failure. No, pick
(19:02):
your head up. This dog was meant to be for you.
So anyway, we're gonna take a quick break because we
got to talk a little bit more about her book,
Mom Loves the Dog More with Cindy Ochek after we
take this break, So sit stay, we'll be right.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Back time for a walk on the red car. But
of course all behave.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
We'll be backing up lash right after these messages.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Begging to hear more of your favorite show, Hollful. Episodes
of on our shows are available on demand. Go to
Petlife Radio dot com to fed saur entire lineup of
possum pet podcasts. Also dig us up in iHeartRadio, dan iTunes.
Let's Talk Pats live and on demand only from pet
Life Radio let's talk past it.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Let's pets talk about Life Radio, Headline Radio, Petlight Radio
dot Com.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Right it isn't Margaret Oh.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
I'm with Arden Moore on the Oh Behave shout on
Life Radio.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
To be with it.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
We're back from a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Just check the paper and we had our record showing
at the box, the letterbox that is now back to
Oh Behave.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Here's Arden, Welcome back to the Obhay Show on pet
Life Radio. I'm your host, Arden Moore. There's a lot
of fostering folks, a lot. It's not just helping out
a pet and need. I mean you go on any
next door in your neighborhood and you will hear and
see all the pets that are either lost abandoned. I
(20:36):
live in Dallas and that is not a great area
because all of our fosters and homeless dogs seem to
make their way up to your place in Minnesota. And
my sister and her husband in Northwest Indiana they do fostering,
so there is kind of a network. But I think
your book is really needed right now because the joy,
(20:58):
the surface joy of providing security and food and love
to a pet that in the hopes of them getting
a permanent home is such a great but it does
upend the home. And I think your book, you Know,
Mom Loves the Dogs More. I think this is really
the first book I've been aware of that it is
talking about what really happens the ugly side too. And
(21:21):
I'm not trying to be mean, but the reality you
bring any sensient being into your home, it's going to
make an impact on everyone. You got it, You've hit
the nail on the head. It's not I'll go back
and I mentioned my original book was to inspire.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
People to foster. We'll see. We'll see if it inspires
people the foster. But I guess maybe that reality of
understanding what you're getting into is helpful for people to
frame it and then to seek the help that they
may need. In that part about letting go. If letting
go is the hard part for you, there are plenty
(21:57):
of resources, especially many of the rescue are there, have
your foster mentor there to help you get through that
grief process. And for the most part, it is a
happy letting go to know that you're a matchmaker. Yesterday
was at a fundraiser and the woman who just adopted
snickers in midnight. These two cats that I had for
(22:19):
almost eight months. It was hard to let them go.
I get weekly updates from Oh that's nice.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
That warms my heart to know that they've gone on
to a good place. And now I've got another cat,
Nor who's going to be a long term resident.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Spell Nor because it's an unusual spelling.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
It's no you are. She came from of all places,
she came from Cairo, Egypt.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
And as my friend Laurie would say to me, when
you teach your kids to care, you have to be
prepared for them caring. So Mia has now gone on
to become a veterinarian, and she spent a month in
Cairo working with a rescue and a rescue that works.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
With a veterinary clinic. Oh that's awesome.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Nor was she's two years old, but spent a year
and a half with them living in the veterinary clinic.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Just very different circumstances, and most of their adoptions through
the rescue happened internationally rather than locally.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
So what about your daughter Anna, Anna? I don't know
the Restnna Anna. So she was fourteen when you brought
a poet to your what's up with Anna?
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Now she now lives in North Dakota with a farmer.
So they have a big farm, which is perfect for
her because she has equines's a couple of horses and
a donkey rescue donkey, and then her menagerie includes two
cats a dog.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Okay, so raising teenagers and trying to be a foster mom.
And we got to do obviously a shout out to
your hobby. You want to say hi to him because
he might be listening to this.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
He's a quiet guy. I'll say hello, Joe, but he's okay.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
So you know, can you give some tips to parents
that have kids when you want to include fostering of
dogs or cats are both in the household, What can
you share, like three tips because you know that might
help people tune it in.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
I would say frame it right off the bat that
these are not your resident pets, that your goal is
to get them into a new home so that it
opens space in your home for the next dog or
cat in need, or donkey or rabbit, guinea pig.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Gerbil partridge and a pear tree.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
And so that's number one is just frame the I
like that our goal here is to get them adopted out,
so we can continue fostering and not keep them. I
would say number two is this is a family activity.
It will probably fall to a parent in terms of
being the project manager to make sure or the animals
(25:00):
are fed and consistently taken care of. But more than anything,
it's getting the kids involved. Yeah, the animal transition into
the family and know that they're all equal in terms
of expectation. They can they'll get fed, They're going to
get their enrichment through all of the family and not
worrying about somebody off in the corner. So this is
(25:22):
now a family activity. If you bring that animal into
your home and just have fun, it really is fun.
We've had every animal comes in with different personalities. Find
out what their personality is. Are they poet?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Of all the.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
Crazy things that this little ten pound poet love to
run circles in the backyard.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I do too.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
It's really it's really it's a good aerobic exercise. I
get dizzy sometimes.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
So you as our circle runner Shiloh. When I first
got Shiloh, the dog that became our foster success, thank you,
he went out to a home. She was gone for
four years after fostering and they needed to rehome her.
Oh my gosh, medical issues. She was our dog that
would stand at the stairs, roll the ball down, run down,
(26:14):
pick up the ball, barn, roll it down again, and
loved to do that over and over. Frankie, the guy
that's on our cover of Mom loves the dogs more.
He's a little probably a shitsoo mix of something.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
You got to say it like this, you know it ready.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
Just remember he turned out. He loved to swim. The
crazy He'd get in the water and he was chasing
ducks and sticks and he didn't matter that he was
in ten feet of water. He just went around paddling.
I bet he would have been a great doc dog.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah, So how do you juggle mom being a mom
and being a foster mom so that kids don't feel
slided and you got the wonderful teenage years. Do you
have any insight into that that maybe you learned the
hard way.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
That's a really good question. I would say that in
the end, for all that we went through, and we
didn't even get to that part of what we ended
up finding through all this fostering, and that going back
to when I was saying there was something in the stress,
in the tsunami of emotions, We later found out that
(27:25):
both girls were diagnosed with ADHD on the opposite ends
of the spectrum. One was hyperactive, one was inattentive. So
we needed to manage all of that. But the beauty
of fostering in the end is it was caring for
the dogs that kept us together. There were so many
(27:47):
things that wanted to pull us apart, just teenage years,
kids growing up, becoming independent, and then you throw in
mental health challenges, their own desire to be their own people.
It was tough, but they both had anxiety, so managing
all that men, working with their counselors, working with school,
(28:09):
working with medications, but we always had this thing to
come back to, which was the dogs. Now, not one
of them ever helped me when it came to moving
a dog on and taking a dog to visit with
their new family. They that was the part I had
to learn, I'm going to do this yourself, Okay. They
couldn't tough for them. Goodbye was hard.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
I'm glad that you brought that up, because it is
you know, you're you're you're trying to help this pet
get a permanent home. But the pet has left a
imprint on all of you. But I love that. You know,
I'm wondering some of these dogs. Did they help Anna
and Mia a little bit? Sometimes that something that a
mom couldn't do but a dog could.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Oh. Absolutely. You have a lot of guests on your
show that deal with pet behaviors and training. All all
of our dogs were perfectly trainable to sit if somebody
came to the door. But our kids would come home
from school, put that backpack down, lay down on the floor.
I let all the dogs and cats jump on them,
(29:12):
liquor to everything. I got to the point that is
their thing, that is their happy spot. So the animals
were the place where they could be their own. Anna
would take out the big dogs and they'd go walk
for miles. Mia would lay with them, talk to their
hips they were supposed to be created. At night, they
(29:33):
would take them out of the crates and snuggle with them,
and it was just it was exactly what I wanted
a dog to do, which is to be that friend
that a parent and it sometimes our own friends can't
be just. They love us unconditionally, and having that being
that will connect with them without any strings attached was
(29:55):
just a fabulous thing for them to have. All these
different pets in the house. Well, we have just a
few minutes left. So how can people get their pause
on your book, Mom Loves the Dogs More? How can
they follow you author to author? You've got to speak up,
speak to me absolutely. My website is Cindyowrights dot com,
which should be easy enough for most people to.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
To nagod site.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
I saw it, and then from there you can get
to the book. You can get to my Sumstack newsletter,
which is like people like Pets and that I explore
how we mirror each other and how we enhance each
other's lives through just being who we are and who
pets are. That's one easy way.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Well from Dog Sierra, Frankie, Poet Kitties Snickers Midnight. And
you never forget a foster, do you?
Speaker 4 (30:47):
I don't. It's interesting my kids now are starting to
forget who does what when in the middle of it's
time for adoption. We can't let them go. Well, I'm
they're my best friend. And then you move on because
you know they've gone somewhere happy, so you can let
that go and move on to the next one. Me,
(31:08):
on the other hand, I'm holding all these stories to
my heart.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Well, and you're sharing them, and we need to hear
your story. So I do applaud you because this is
a real reality check. You're peeling back the onion of
what it's like to truly have fosters in your home,
and I think I haven't seen that before, So I
really applaud you for that last question. How have foster
(31:32):
dogs and cats made you, Cindy Ochk a better human? Oh?
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Where do we begin? How much time did you say?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Oh? I got to kind of catch for my next
birthdays coming up in six days, so just kind of
pose it up before then, just teasing. So seriously, what's some.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
It makes me step up and see them for their
individuality when you read the story, the story is equal
parts family and kids, equal parts dogs. But when you
put it all together, it's really about stepping back so
that if you're interacting with another living being, are you
seeing them for who they are and providing them what
(32:09):
they need? And I like that that's really it is
about love, But it's about seeing and giving them what
they need, interacting with them and the way they want
in order to bring that joy and when they're happy. Wow,
it's when you take these dogs that come in that
are scared and their whole life ended and abused. Some
(32:32):
of them have just their owners couldn't take care of
them anymore, or the owners went on to assisted living
or a nursing home. They're all scared, they're all and
and you're not just you know what it's like as
a person to be in a new situation and you
know what your kids are are facing. It helps you
be more empathetic towards animals, towards people, knowing that everything
(32:57):
you have no idea really what's going on behind them.
But if you step back and you see them for
who they are and then work within that framework, it
makes life a lot easier and a much better relationship.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
I agree. Nineteen days ago we brought Nova into our home.
She is a twenty three pound brown dog and she's
three four years old, comes from a shelter. I'm going
to do a shout out to Eastlake Pet Orphanage, and
I told my spouse every day, every day, the goal
is to make Nova feel safe. Once Nova feels safe,
(33:31):
we're gonna see her personality and we're seeing it and
it is a nice evolution. It's humanity for a four layer.
So hey, everybody, I have been honored to have on
our show. Cindy Ochak yep, not the hockey player, the
author and foster superstar of pets from Saint Paul, Minnesota.
(33:52):
Again go to cindyowrights dot com at this time too,
I need to do a shout out. I don't need to,
I want to to. My producer, Mark Winter is the
executive producer of Pet Life Radio. We are the largest
pet radio network on the planet and humbly you are
tuned into the longest running weekly pet podcast, oh Behave
(34:13):
has been on the air since O seven. So what
do I do when I'm not behind the mic. Well,
my mission is to help you save pets lives. I'm
a master instructor in Pet First Aid and CPR. I
team up with Pet Safety Dog Kona, Pet Safety Cat
Casey and teach vet approved courses, different levels, short courses,
(34:35):
interactive zooms, self paced even two day instructor programs. To
become an instructor, please check me out at Pet First
Aid For you until next time, it's your flee free
host are and more delivering just two words to all
you two three and four layers out there, oh.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Behave coast at coast and around the world. It's all
behaved with art and more. Find out why kats and
dogs do the things they do, and get the latest
buzz from Wagging tongues and tails and rin tin tinsel Town.
From famous pet experts and best selling authors to television
and movie stars, You'll get great tail wagging pet tips and.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Have a fur flying fun time.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
All behave with America's pet entertainer, aren't More every week
on demand only on petlife Radio dot com
Hey, this is Pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It's all behaved with Arden Moore, this show that teaches
you how to have harmony in the household with your pets.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Join Ardna.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
She travels coast to coast to help millions better understand
why cats and dogs do what they do. Get that
latest scoop on famous spaces, they're perfectly pampered pets, and
who's walking goo and rent in Tinseltown. From famous pet
experts and best selling authors to television and movie stars.
You'll get the latest buzz from Wagging Tongues and Tails Garner,
great pet tips and have a dog one fer flying
(00:37):
fun time. So get ready for the paws and applause
as we unleaseh your oh Behave host America's pet edutainer, Arden.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Moore, Hey, pet pals, Welcome to the O Behave Show
on Pet Life Radio. I'm your host, Arden Moore, our
special guest today is a major advocate for rescue dogs.
Oh and by the way, she also definitely loves her
own two legged family. But life is and wasn't always easy.
(01:09):
You know, she like us and face a lot of challenges.
So guess what she did. She decided to write a
book about it, and now she is ready to share
in hopes of helping other people and rescue dogs. So
at this time, please welcome to our show the author
of a just released book.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
I love the title, Mom Loves the Dogs More.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Please welcome the talented Cindy oh Check. Welcome, Welcome, Cindy.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Thank you Arden. I couldn't have said it better or
enunciated it the.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Way you did.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
You must have either heard that in your past or
you said that to your old parents, because that's exactly
how it was said to me. But I am absolutely
delighted to be on the show. When I was introduced
to your podcast over a year ago.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I've been listening to episodes and while it's just amazing
the breadth of the speakers, the topics that they have,
their creativity as well as their ability to inspire and
to help people in pets.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
And kudos to you.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
I'm a solopreneur and being a small business owner to
stick with it for all the years that you have
is quite impressive.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Well, I think both of beat dogs Hey ho hoals.
We're going to dive into who the heck is Cindy
Ochek and why you got to get your pause on.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Her book, Mom loves the dog more.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
And you got to say it with kind of a
little bit of a tone. But we got to take
a quick break, so you all know the drill. We're
gonna sit. Stay, We'll be right by.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Time for a pause.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
For very ones, actually sit and stay, all behave, We'll
be right back.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
Take a bite out of your competition. Advertise your business
with an ad in pet Line radio podcasts and radio shows.
There is no other pet related media that is as
large and reaches more pet parents and pet lovers than
pet Life Radio with over seven million monthly listeners. Pet
Life Radio podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms,
(03:16):
and our live radio stream goes out to over two
hundred and fifty million subscribers on iHeartRadio, Odyssey, tune In,
and other streaming apps. For more information on how you
can advertise on the number one pet podcast and radio network,
visit Petlife Radio dot com slash advertised today.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Let's talk pets on Petlifradio dot com. All behaviors back
with more tail wagging. Ways to achieve harmony of the
household with your pets. Now back to your fetching host.
America's pet ed You Jiner Ardenmore.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Welcome back to the Old Behave Show on Petlife Radio.
I'm your host Ardenmore. I am honored and delighted to
have a gal on the show who really knows dogs,
and she's a mom, she's a wife. You put that
all together and that is triple talent and triple challenge.
So we're going to back up the bus a little bit,
Sandy O check and give people a little bit of
(04:17):
background on you. You hail from Saint Paul, Mintasota, Land
of ten thousand Lakes, Land of ten thousand lakes, and
there are over twelve thousand of them. Have you seen
how many of those? Have you actually been?
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Maybe one hundred, maybe not to a thousand and it
can get cold there. So do you actually have triple
pain windows? We have double pain windows.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Okay, okay, because I've been there with some friends and
they're very excited because they have triple pain windows.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
That's pretty impressive to be that dedicated to energy efficiency.
Give them a cheer to them.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Well, what I like about you, Cindy, You are a
solo preneur, not manure preneur. We just want to get
all cleared up. So you've been going without the W
two net for many, many years. And what is it
that has inspired you? Because after the show, I really
want people to go to your blog. It's called like
People Like Pets, and your website is Cindy Oh Rights.
(05:18):
Because your last name is too hard to spell. You
have way too many fun letters in there. Go ahead
spell your last name because that's kind of cool. Okay,
it's oh j c z y k. And if you
are a hockey fan, you will see Eddie Oldcheck and
Eddie Olchak shows up on Amazon next to me.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Because well, you shoot your score, so it is nice
to actually see his face up there. And hockey fans
can pronounce my last name, but it's actually a Polish
background and in Polish the j is a y pronunciation.
In Poland it's oil check. But my father in law
(06:02):
started marking everything of his with an oh and a
check mark behind it.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Oh, that's clever.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Fine, And we've just gone by ocheck since then.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Okay, So you do a lot in the world. Do
you have the podcast, you have your website, you're an
accomplished author. You remember the Dog Writers' Association. But something's
been with you for almost three decades. You had me
at woolf You had me at Wolf. What have you
been doing for almost thirty years, Cindy from the fostering
and rescuing side. Rescuing started with my very first dog
(06:38):
that I found during senior week of college wow, being
up to graduation, and he was just walking across the campus.
And back then I lived on campus in a dorm.
So we went to the cafeteria and I'm walking across
this cafeteria, just off across the squad of different people
(06:58):
out playing frisbee and in the sunshine because people are
slowly getting done with their exams and the walking across,
and there's this beautiful furry headed dog and I, of
course it's almost like today's therapy dogs. There he was
stopped to pet him, and the next thing I know,
he's in line with me in the cafeteria.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
So he had followed me into the cafeteria. I brought
him back out, I petted his head, went back with
my friends. And then later that day, I was in
the weight room and I went to put a set
of dumbbells back on the rack, and I look in
the mirror and there he is in the weight room,
all the way across campus. I thought, all right, we
(07:41):
got to figure this out. He didn't have a collar,
beautiful kind of keyshound type dog.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Was he like a medium thirty to fifty pound dog.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Yep, But I lived in a dorm in the weight room.
Said well, I'll take him if you start working on
finding where he belongs. And we worked with the shelters
and the animal control. He stayed there for the week
until graduation, and then I was living in town at
that time or moving into town, and he then became mine.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
What's his name? What was his name? Snooka Snooka. Okay,
so you got the fostering adoption bug right there, didn't you.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Well I did. We kept working at trying to find
him a home, and he loved me right away. He
was home as I could put him out in the
front yard and he would never wander. He wow, go by,
dogs go by, and he was just mine. And we
just became walking buddies. And after a month the animal
control said you either surrender him to us or you
(08:43):
keep them, and he became buddies.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Yes, so you have a double reason for writing this book.
Mom loves the dogs more so TuS up. You've got
now two grown daughters. But what was the spark the
inspiration for you to say, I need to write this down,
I need to share this.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Well, well, back up, because I didn't write this book originally.
The book that you ended up seeing and have been
reading was something else before. So we started fostering, okay.
And I found when I was fostering that I would
say I'm a foster and people would say, oh, I
can never do that. I could never give them up.
And I thought that if I wrote the most inspiring book,
(09:25):
then we would get all these people to foster. So
I wrote a book on fostering, and I used our
foster dogs as the examples of how to foster, how
to do this, how to do that, and included their
stories and I sent I gave myself a year to
write this book, and I did it. That was the thing.
Just sit down and do the darn thing and see
(09:46):
if you can do it. First of all, before saying
I'm going to write a book, is write the book,
and then you've been to yourselfie can do it. When
I sent it out to beta readers, who are those
early readers that you just want some surface level feedback,
they love the dog stories, but they felt it was
just too much of a niche and I needed to
expand it. Well. Then it took me a while to
(10:07):
figure out what that arc was going to be to
make this a book that would be exciting to other
people to read, the masses to read. When I figured
out what that was, which was the story of my
family alongside these foster dogs, I had to back that
up and say to the kids, I'm going to write
(10:27):
this story and you get to say yay or nay,
Well good say if you say no, I'll do something else. Well,
think of something else and how to do it. So
that's pretty much how it went. But that story and
what you're reading really began when our dog died. We
had a family dog. Kids are moving into teens and
(10:50):
tweens at that point, and there's a lot of emotion,
a lot of drama happening, and then the dog dies,
and that true the tsunami of emotions we had never
seen in the house before.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
And what was your dog's name? Tell people quickly was Sierra. Sierra.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Sierra is the not the spitting image of Snooka, but
very similar of Keith Honland, and we ended up adopting
her because she looked so much like Snooka and loved
his personality and in the end, loved her personality. And
she died unexpectedly. We were not totally unaware that she
(11:30):
had anything, and she pretty much died during Fourth of
July weekend during fireworks.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
They believed that she had a heart attack.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Wow, and how old? And what are your daughter's names?
How old were they at the time.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
So Mia was eleven and Anna was fourteen, and we
were all just shaken to the core over this. But
we also that it tripped something that you mean, things
happen as they're growing up. Just think, Oh, that's their personality,
that's their quirk. But then all of a sudden, this
(12:06):
kind of tsunami of emotions came out, and it really
started me thinking that this is not something that's not
quite right. I just didn't know what that was or
even where to even begin thinking about what is not right.
But what I did know was I didn't like the
feeling in the house, that feeling of grief, and I figured, well,
(12:27):
I'm gonna let's let's get a new dog. We'll patch
patch this grief by filling it with a new dog.
And then we started talking about the new dog, and
nobody could agree, my husband, my kids, and me, you know,
looking at the fact that eventually they're going to move
on and we're going to still have this dog, and
what is the dog I want?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
What is the fuck? Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
So none of us were agreen. And then it became
that as those the fighting and intensity kept rising in
the house. I just kept having the sphere of what
if I make the wrong decision, What if I decide
on this dog? What if one daughter thinks that my
decision favors the other daughter?
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Oh my gosh, that is so man, there's so much.
You aren't playing checkers, Cindy, You're playing chess on the
pro level, aren't you? With all these factors.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
With all the factors, and just that parenting moving into
that chaotic adolescent stage where you're a different you need
to become a different type of parent, but you don't
really know how or what or so you just keep
doing the same things that you do. And a friend
of mine then recommended, well, why don't you foster? You know,
that way, you're not making any decisions.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Ah, smart friend, Ah, nice friend, Yes, yes, yes, what'd
you think when you heard that?
Speaker 4 (13:46):
I mean, you know, what a foster's But you know,
we get caught up in life and then somebody just
says something simple and profound. Well, I don't even really think.
Back then, I knew a lot about fostering. I didn't
know anybody that fostered. Okay, he was telling me that
she knew this person that fostered pregnant cats, and they
wouldn't help the mom until the babies were about eight
(14:08):
weeks old, and then another foster took those babies because
then they had to get their shots and spade and
all that, and then she'd get the next mom and
the kids. Then her kids got to see the miracle
of birth. They didn't have this long term commitment to
the cat. They got to do their thing and then
(14:29):
take out fostering again. So when she explained all that
to me, I'm like, ah, this is great. You know,
we're going to have this parade of dogs. You know,
if we love dogs, dogs are all have been part
of our life, and everything's gonna be perfect, right. So
we get the first dog, Poet. He's a little ten
pound dog, and ken I didn't say anything to Linda,
(14:51):
who was the founder co founder of Second Chance Animal Rescue.
She does the dog side, Nancy does the cat's side,
and Blinda had done the onboarding of us, but I
didn't say, oh, by the way, Mia likes little dogs
and Anna likes big dogs. It's who needs a home?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
And let me hit pause for a minute, because I
do want you to do it a little shout out
about Second Chance because it's a pretty long running big
rescue group in Minnesota, right it is.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
It's one of the oldest, and I want to say
thirty two, thirty three years now.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
It's called Second Chance.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Second Chance Animal Rescue. And I know there are other
Second Chance Animal rescues, so you have to say second
Chance Animal Rescue, Minnesota.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Okay, gotcha? Okay, So all right, so here comes Poet.
What's going on?
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So?
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Poet is a little papion mix. He looks like a
little Jersey calf, black and white. Watches the big tufts
of her coming out of the ears and the feathery tail,
and he has eyes for mea and she has eyes
for him, because of course she wanted the pocket dog.
She wanted the small dog. This dog had no eyes
(16:09):
for anybody else in our family. And he was glued
to her. He was he was a tough first dog
to have as a foster. Okay, what happened? What started
happening is then my other daughter was like, how come
she gets her wish first? Because they're typical teenagers, right right? Well,
(16:29):
eventually a Poet was a difficult He was three years
old when he came to us unnutered, so he got neutered,
not house trained, and at three he was just a
difficult dog to try and get to learn how to
use outside versus inside. And so we had some we
had some struggles with Pope that by the time I
(16:50):
felt we were comfortable making progress, we're going to put
him up for adoption. And then it all falls apart
again because now I haven't let them or give them
the opportunity to heal properly with their grief from Sierra's death.
Now I'm asking them to give up this dog.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Oh my gosh, Mom, you didn't even know you were
causing a big old mess, did you.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Well. And that's the part about fostering. I wasn't really
grabbing my head around. I was thinking, oh, we're going
to adopt these dogs out. We're going to check check,
check this list because we had committed to We're going
to foster six dogs. So I was going for the
foster win, which is to find them a new home,
without realizing that there is a reality to fostering, and
that is there's a loss. It's a happy loss.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Thank you for saying that, because all of the dogs
and cats in my home come from the streets, are
from shelters or from foster groups. And it's a happy loss.
But keep going, you hit.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
It, it's a happy loss. But I think that's also
one of the reasons why we don't have as many
people fostering, because loss is loss, and loss is grief,
and I have a strong belief that many people don't
know how to grieve properly, yeah and avoid it at
all costs. One of the things we did learn through
(18:10):
this whole fostering process is how to grief. Grief is
just part of what's going to happen, and you just
never know when it's going to happen and under what circumstances.
In this first situation with Poet, I could not face
those kids going through this grief again, so I ended
up adopting him. Now, as you've probably heard, the term
(18:31):
foster failure, and that is where if the foster home
adopts their own foster dog into their become a resident.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Pret you know what I do. I guess I'm more positive.
I call it foster's success because you realize this is
a good fit for your family and the home that
that dog needs is right here. So I call him
foster successes. What do you think? I like that? I
like it because otherwise people are always like looking down
and go oh and I'm a foster failure. No, pick
(19:02):
your head up. This dog was meant to be for you.
So anyway, we're gonna take a quick break because we
got to talk a little bit more about her book,
Mom Loves the Dog More with Cindy Ochek after we
take this break, So sit stay, we'll be right.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Back time for a walk on the red car. But
of course all behave.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
We'll be backing up lash right after these messages.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Begging to hear more of your favorite show, Hollful. Episodes
of on our shows are available on demand. Go to
Petlife Radio dot com to fed saur entire lineup of
possum pet podcasts. Also dig us up in iHeartRadio, dan iTunes.
Let's Talk Pats live and on demand only from pet
Life Radio let's talk past it.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Let's pets talk about Life Radio, Headline Radio, Petlight Radio
dot Com.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Right it isn't Margaret Oh.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
I'm with Arden Moore on the Oh Behave shout on
Life Radio.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
To be with it.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
We're back from a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Just check the paper and we had our record showing
at the box, the letterbox that is now back to
Oh Behave.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Here's Arden, Welcome back to the Obhay Show on pet
Life Radio. I'm your host, Arden Moore. There's a lot
of fostering folks, a lot. It's not just helping out
a pet and need. I mean you go on any
next door in your neighborhood and you will hear and
see all the pets that are either lost abandoned. I
(20:36):
live in Dallas and that is not a great area
because all of our fosters and homeless dogs seem to
make their way up to your place in Minnesota. And
my sister and her husband in Northwest Indiana they do fostering,
so there is kind of a network. But I think
your book is really needed right now because the joy,
(20:58):
the surface joy of providing security and food and love
to a pet that in the hopes of them getting
a permanent home is such a great but it does
upend the home. And I think your book, you Know,
Mom Loves the Dogs More. I think this is really
the first book I've been aware of that it is
talking about what really happens the ugly side too. And
(21:21):
I'm not trying to be mean, but the reality you
bring any sensient being into your home, it's going to
make an impact on everyone. You got it, You've hit
the nail on the head. It's not I'll go back
and I mentioned my original book was to inspire.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
People to foster. We'll see. We'll see if it inspires
people the foster. But I guess maybe that reality of
understanding what you're getting into is helpful for people to
frame it and then to seek the help that they
may need. In that part about letting go. If letting
go is the hard part for you, there are plenty
(21:57):
of resources, especially many of the rescue are there, have
your foster mentor there to help you get through that
grief process. And for the most part, it is a
happy letting go to know that you're a matchmaker. Yesterday
was at a fundraiser and the woman who just adopted
snickers in midnight. These two cats that I had for
(22:19):
almost eight months. It was hard to let them go.
I get weekly updates from Oh that's nice.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
That warms my heart to know that they've gone on
to a good place. And now I've got another cat,
Nor who's going to be a long term resident.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Spell Nor because it's an unusual spelling.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
It's no you are. She came from of all places,
she came from Cairo, Egypt.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
And as my friend Laurie would say to me, when
you teach your kids to care, you have to be
prepared for them caring. So Mia has now gone on
to become a veterinarian, and she spent a month in
Cairo working with a rescue and a rescue that works.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
With a veterinary clinic. Oh that's awesome.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Nor was she's two years old, but spent a year
and a half with them living in the veterinary clinic.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Just very different circumstances, and most of their adoptions through
the rescue happened internationally rather than locally.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
So what about your daughter Anna, Anna? I don't know
the Restnna Anna. So she was fourteen when you brought
a poet to your what's up with Anna?
Speaker 4 (23:31):
Now she now lives in North Dakota with a farmer.
So they have a big farm, which is perfect for
her because she has equines's a couple of horses and
a donkey rescue donkey, and then her menagerie includes two
cats a dog.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Okay, so raising teenagers and trying to be a foster mom.
And we got to do obviously a shout out to
your hobby. You want to say hi to him because
he might be listening to this.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
He's a quiet guy. I'll say hello, Joe, but he's okay.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
So you know, can you give some tips to parents
that have kids when you want to include fostering of
dogs or cats are both in the household, What can
you share, like three tips because you know that might
help people tune it in.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
I would say frame it right off the bat that
these are not your resident pets, that your goal is
to get them into a new home so that it
opens space in your home for the next dog or
cat in need, or donkey or rabbit, guinea pig.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Gerbil partridge and a pear tree.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
And so that's number one is just frame the I
like that our goal here is to get them adopted out,
so we can continue fostering and not keep them. I
would say number two is this is a family activity.
It will probably fall to a parent in terms of
being the project manager to make sure or the animals
(25:00):
are fed and consistently taken care of. But more than anything,
it's getting the kids involved. Yeah, the animal transition into
the family and know that they're all equal in terms
of expectation. They can they'll get fed, They're going to
get their enrichment through all of the family and not
worrying about somebody off in the corner. So this is
(25:22):
now a family activity. If you bring that animal into
your home and just have fun, it really is fun.
We've had every animal comes in with different personalities. Find
out what their personality is. Are they poet?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Of all the.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
Crazy things that this little ten pound poet love to
run circles in the backyard.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I do too.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
It's really it's really it's a good aerobic exercise. I
get dizzy sometimes.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
So you as our circle runner Shiloh. When I first
got Shiloh, the dog that became our foster success, thank you,
he went out to a home. She was gone for
four years after fostering and they needed to rehome her.
Oh my gosh, medical issues. She was our dog that
would stand at the stairs, roll the ball down, run down,
(26:14):
pick up the ball, barn, roll it down again, and
loved to do that over and over. Frankie, the guy
that's on our cover of Mom loves the dogs more.
He's a little probably a shitsoo mix of something.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
You got to say it like this, you know it ready.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
Just remember he turned out. He loved to swim. The
crazy He'd get in the water and he was chasing
ducks and sticks and he didn't matter that he was
in ten feet of water. He just went around paddling.
I bet he would have been a great doc dog.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah, So how do you juggle mom being a mom
and being a foster mom so that kids don't feel
slided and you got the wonderful teenage years. Do you
have any insight into that that maybe you learned the
hard way.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
That's a really good question. I would say that in
the end, for all that we went through, and we
didn't even get to that part of what we ended
up finding through all this fostering, and that going back
to when I was saying there was something in the stress,
in the tsunami of emotions, We later found out that
(27:25):
both girls were diagnosed with ADHD on the opposite ends
of the spectrum. One was hyperactive, one was inattentive. So
we needed to manage all of that. But the beauty
of fostering in the end is it was caring for
the dogs that kept us together. There were so many
(27:47):
things that wanted to pull us apart, just teenage years,
kids growing up, becoming independent, and then you throw in
mental health challenges, their own desire to be their own people.
It was tough, but they both had anxiety, so managing
all that men, working with their counselors, working with school,
(28:09):
working with medications, but we always had this thing to
come back to, which was the dogs. Now, not one
of them ever helped me when it came to moving
a dog on and taking a dog to visit with
their new family. They that was the part I had
to learn, I'm going to do this yourself, Okay. They
couldn't tough for them. Goodbye was hard.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
I'm glad that you brought that up, because it is
you know, you're you're you're trying to help this pet
get a permanent home. But the pet has left a
imprint on all of you. But I love that. You know,
I'm wondering some of these dogs. Did they help Anna
and Mia a little bit? Sometimes that something that a
mom couldn't do but a dog could.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Oh. Absolutely. You have a lot of guests on your
show that deal with pet behaviors and training. All all
of our dogs were perfectly trainable to sit if somebody
came to the door. But our kids would come home
from school, put that backpack down, lay down on the floor.
I let all the dogs and cats jump on them,
(29:12):
liquor to everything. I got to the point that is
their thing, that is their happy spot. So the animals
were the place where they could be their own. Anna
would take out the big dogs and they'd go walk
for miles. Mia would lay with them, talk to their
hips they were supposed to be created. At night, they
(29:33):
would take them out of the crates and snuggle with them,
and it was just it was exactly what I wanted
a dog to do, which is to be that friend
that a parent and it sometimes our own friends can't
be just. They love us unconditionally, and having that being
that will connect with them without any strings attached was
(29:55):
just a fabulous thing for them to have. All these
different pets in the house. Well, we have just a
few minutes left. So how can people get their pause
on your book, Mom Loves the Dogs More? How can
they follow you author to author? You've got to speak up,
speak to me absolutely. My website is Cindyowrights dot com,
which should be easy enough for most people to.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
To nagod site.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
I saw it, and then from there you can get
to the book. You can get to my Sumstack newsletter,
which is like people like Pets and that I explore
how we mirror each other and how we enhance each
other's lives through just being who we are and who
pets are. That's one easy way.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Well from Dog Sierra, Frankie, Poet Kitties Snickers Midnight. And
you never forget a foster, do you?
Speaker 4 (30:47):
I don't. It's interesting my kids now are starting to
forget who does what when in the middle of it's
time for adoption. We can't let them go. Well, I'm
they're my best friend. And then you move on because
you know they've gone somewhere happy, so you can let
that go and move on to the next one. Me,
(31:08):
on the other hand, I'm holding all these stories to
my heart.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Well, and you're sharing them, and we need to hear
your story. So I do applaud you because this is
a real reality check. You're peeling back the onion of
what it's like to truly have fosters in your home,
and I think I haven't seen that before, So I
really applaud you for that last question. How have foster
(31:32):
dogs and cats made you, Cindy Ochk a better human? Oh?
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Where do we begin? How much time did you say?
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Oh? I got to kind of catch for my next
birthdays coming up in six days, so just kind of
pose it up before then, just teasing. So seriously, what's some.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
It makes me step up and see them for their
individuality when you read the story, the story is equal
parts family and kids, equal parts dogs. But when you
put it all together, it's really about stepping back so
that if you're interacting with another living being, are you
seeing them for who they are and providing them what
(32:09):
they need? And I like that that's really it is
about love, But it's about seeing and giving them what
they need, interacting with them and the way they want
in order to bring that joy and when they're happy. Wow,
it's when you take these dogs that come in that
are scared and their whole life ended and abused. Some
(32:32):
of them have just their owners couldn't take care of
them anymore, or the owners went on to assisted living
or a nursing home. They're all scared, they're all and
and you're not just you know what it's like as
a person to be in a new situation and you
know what your kids are are facing. It helps you
be more empathetic towards animals, towards people, knowing that everything
(32:57):
you have no idea really what's going on behind them.
But if you step back and you see them for
who they are and then work within that framework, it
makes life a lot easier and a much better relationship.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
I agree. Nineteen days ago we brought Nova into our home.
She is a twenty three pound brown dog and she's
three four years old, comes from a shelter. I'm going
to do a shout out to Eastlake Pet Orphanage, and
I told my spouse every day, every day, the goal
is to make Nova feel safe. Once Nova feels safe,
(33:31):
we're gonna see her personality and we're seeing it and
it is a nice evolution. It's humanity for a four layer.
So hey, everybody, I have been honored to have on
our show. Cindy Ochak yep, not the hockey player, the
author and foster superstar of pets from Saint Paul, Minnesota.
(33:52):
Again go to cindyowrights dot com at this time too,
I need to do a shout out. I don't need to,
I want to to. My producer, Mark Winter is the
executive producer of Pet Life Radio. We are the largest
pet radio network on the planet and humbly you are
tuned into the longest running weekly pet podcast, oh Behave
(34:13):
has been on the air since O seven. So what
do I do when I'm not behind the mic. Well,
my mission is to help you save pets lives. I'm
a master instructor in Pet First Aid and CPR. I
team up with Pet Safety Dog Kona, Pet Safety Cat
Casey and teach vet approved courses, different levels, short courses,
(34:35):
interactive zooms, self paced even two day instructor programs. To
become an instructor, please check me out at Pet First
Aid For you until next time, it's your flee free
host are and more delivering just two words to all
you two three and four layers out there, oh.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Behave coast at coast and around the world. It's all
behaved with art and more. Find out why kats and
dogs do the things they do, and get the latest
buzz from Wagging tongues and tails and rin tin tinsel Town.
From famous pet experts and best selling authors to television
and movie stars, You'll get great tail wagging pet tips and.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Have a fur flying fun time.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
All behave with America's pet entertainer, aren't More every week
on demand only on petlife Radio dot com
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!