April 16, 2025 • 33 mins
Animal shelter advocate and founder of Who Will Let the Dogs Out Cara Achterberg shares insights from visits to 150+ shelters, discussing rising dog euthanasia rates and approaches used at successful facilities. Hear her perspective on "managed intake" and "community sheltering" concepts, plus practical ways to help homeless pets through fostering, volunteering, and advocacy. Whether you're new to animal advocacy or experienced, discover strategies to support your local animal shelter and help reduce euthanasia rates in your community. #ShelterDogs #AnimalAdvocacy #PetAdoption
Show Notes
00:00 Introduction
03:13 Cara's Journey: Fostering Dogs to Advocate for Shelter Dogs and Their Heros
07:52 "Managed Intake and "Commuity Sheltering" (Differing definitions)
12:29 Rising Dog Euthanasia and Increase in Stray Population
14:30 Successful Animal Shelters' Key Factors
16:41 Community Engagement in Animal Shelters
22:37 Community and Commitment in Rescue
25:32 Importance of Costs of Care laws
27:58 Effective Shelter Support Strategies
32:22 Summary
Links
Who Will Let the Dogs Out Book on Amazon
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● Email: podcast@animaladvocacyacademy.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to The Animal Advocate. Today, we're
trying something new, our first interview episode.
I mentioned last time that we'd be talking with people doing remarkable
work in this space, people whose stories might spark
ideas for your own advocacy journey. I'm
excited to introduce you to Kara Achterberg,
(00:22):
cofounder of Who Will Let the Dogs Out, which is also the
title of her new book. And what makes Cara's
work interesting isn't that she runs a shelter or
rescue. She doesn't. Instead, she's a
witness and a storyteller. Who Will Let the Dogs
Out visits shelters, more than a 50 so
(00:44):
far, to observe their reality firsthand?
The physical spaces, the community context, the
people doing the work, and the everyday challenges they
face. But here's what really matters. Cara
doesn't just see these places. She helps others see
them too. Many animal lovers wanna help shelter
(01:06):
animals, but they've never stepped inside a shelter. They
haven't experienced the sights, sounds, and feelings of
these spaces, and Cara bridges that gap.
In our conversation, Cara introduces concepts that might be
new to some listeners, like managed intake and
community sheltering. These approaches were designed to
(01:29):
move facilities closer to no kill status. What's
interesting is how these terms carry different meanings to different
people, and sometimes implementation
doesn't deliver on the promised results. She also talks
about how shelter euthanasia rates for dogs are rising
after decades of progress, highlighting why our advocacy
(01:50):
work is so important right now. She's based in Virginia
and has focused primarily on Southern shelters where
resources are often especially limited. Her organization's
purpose aligns perfectly with what we explore on this podcast,
connecting animal lovers with the actual on the ground needs
and empowering them to participate in meaningful change.
(02:17):
Welcome to the animal advocate, where we arm animal
lovers with the information and inspiration you need to become
effective advocates. I'm your host, Penny Ellison, and
I've taught animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania
since 02/2006. If you've ever thought
someone should do something about that, I'm here to guide you
(02:39):
on your journey to being that someone. You can
find us on the web at
animaladvocacyacademy.com. And that's where
you'll find show notes and resources, and you can send us your comments
on episodes and ideas for topics you'd like to hear on future
shows. So on to today's topic.
(03:05):
Welcome, Cara. Thanks, Penny. I'm happy to be here.
Can you tell me what inspired you to start Who Will Let the Dogs Out?
Yeah. I'll try to do it succinctly because it's kind of a long story. For
many years, I was a writer, and I started fostering dogs after losing a down
(03:31):
this path and down this path and wrote about it because I'm a writer,
wrote a blog about it, wrote a book about fostering, went out
to promote that book, and went to the shelters in the
South. And I went there because I was going down to do book signings anyway
in these towns, and I was like, oh, my dogs all come from there. I
think I wanna go see them. I'll take donations. And so I told everybody
(03:53):
I knew, I was doing this, and I said, if you have stuff you wanna
send to the shelters, give it to me. So I had so much stuff, I
had to rent a big truck and then draft a friend to go with me
because I was nervous about driving it. And she and I went off on this
adventure that I thought was gonna be so much fun. And then I
went to my very first shelter in North Carolina, and
I was stunned by the situation. I was stunned
(04:16):
that, you know, you walked in and it just it the smell,
not just of the animals and the disinfectant and but almost
like desperation. Just it it was just so hard. It was a small
shelter. They had taken in 500 dogs that was it
500 or something? I'm trying to get my numbers right because it's been so many
years. But anyway and they had only adopted out a handful. And
(04:37):
so doing the math on that and trying to figure out what what else will
you do, you know, and that that was a little bit of a shock for
me. And the fact that the animals lived outside, the dogs lived
outside in a very humid climate, eighty percent of the dogs were
heartworm positive. They didn't have anything. And
I I was, like, taken back. I was in shock that
(04:58):
I'd fostered over a hundred dogs by then, and I had no idea. This is
true. Running from that shelter? No. From all over the South, but some from that
shelter, yes. And I was just sort of I was just ashamed that I didn't
know. How could I not know? I was all about this, you know, we're all
gonna save all these dogs. And then I get down there, and they have nothing.
They have, you know, a budget that barely covers food. They
(05:20):
have no money really for spay and neuter. Obviously, no money for heart room
preventative. No. Those were basics, and I was shocked.
And from there, I went to 13 other shelters on that tour, some
better, some worse, and came home
furious that I didn't you know, furious about the situation and that,
how can this be going on in our country? How can there be dog pounds?
(05:42):
How can that happen? So I started going and traveling back again and again. I
took a photographer friend because too few people read. And I was
writing my heart out, but not feeling like I was getting the message. And so
I took a photographer friend, and we did it. We traveled down two more times
and finally said, you know, we need more than this. We need a bigger microphone.
We need more people behind this. And so we
(06:04):
started Who Will Let the Dogs Out with a mission to raise awareness and resources
for homeless dogs and the heroes who fight for them. And it's been,
it'll be six years this year. So it's been a journey. Things have changed, some
for the better and some for the worse in the shelters. Let's
talk about that. Because you've been trying to make a difference for six years. It's
been you know, the pandemic interfered, I'm sure. How do you
(06:27):
see things changing since you've been involved in going to shelters?
You know, when we went down in 02/2019 and even very
early 02/2020, you know, everybody seemed to be making some progress. You
know, rescues were having a big impact. Transports were really changing
things. Everybody was working really hard, and
it felt like the numbers were getting a little bit better every
(06:50):
year. The very first trip in 02/2020, I felt like things
were getting better. And I heard I was at a shelter, in fact, one of
my favorite shelters in South Carolina that's headed by a vet who's
done a phenomenal job there. I wrote about her in my book. She used a
term I hadn't heard before. She said, manage our intake. I asked her, how did
you bring your shelter from killing sixty percent of the dogs when she took
(07:12):
the job to, you know, less than ten percent? You know, in six months,
really. Wow. That's an incredible turnaround. It was an incredible
turnaround. And and when I asked her, how did you do that? She said, well,
first off, we just stopped killing dogs. And that was really a powerful statement I've
thought about for years now. And it really is a mindset. As she said,
you when you take it off the table, you'll find other options. And so she
(07:33):
taught me a lot about being transparent with staff, with community, with
everybody so we all are on the same page. We all know what's happening.
But she also talked about doing managed intake, and I was like, what's that? I've
never heard of this. And at the time, managed intake meant
scheduled intake, basically. But open intake shelter, they have to take
surrenders? But they have to make an appointment to do that. And
(07:55):
then I heard again from another shelter director on that
tour, animal control officer, and she said, well, we are
an open intake shelter. But if you come in here and you're bringing an aggressive
dog that you can't handle, we're gonna say to you,
take that dog to your vet and have it euthanized. That is the most humane
thing you can do because we're gonna euthanize it. Why would you bring your dog
(08:16):
here, make it suffer, you know, if they have to hold it
legally for a few days? Any other laws in in that state? I don't remember.
This was Tennessee, and I have a feeling they could've euthanized on intake.
But what put the dog through that? Why if you love this animal, then you
should do it. And that was another take on managed intake that I thought, that
makes sense. I get that. So managed intake seemed like a good
(08:37):
thing to me. Okay. Fast forward, we get to the pandemic.
We get 2021, I think I feel started hearing about
not just managed intake, but community sheltering, which was this other
idea about, you know, putting the burden back on the community. So when you find
a pet, a lost animal, supposedly lost animal, instead of bringing it to the
shelter, they advised you to either take it into your home and try
(09:00):
to foster and find it at home or leave it where you found it
because, you know, most dogs are a mile from the place where they got
lost, which all sounds lovely unless that animal was dumped. Yeah.
Community sheltering sounded like a I thought you were gonna say it's making it a
community resource center, but it means leave the animals in the community? Yeah. If
you Google community sheltering, it was first brought about by the Human
(09:21):
Animal Support Services, HAAS. And that's what they
advocate. If you go to a website that practices that, they're gonna say, don't
call us with your lost animal. Leave it where it is. Try to tell
people in the neighborhood. And there's different variations on it. And I'm really giving you
the very worst interpretation of it because some places interpret it
differently, and it can be successful. But that is the interpretation
(09:43):
that many shelters ran with. And so we started hearing about this. We got
calls from people in Memphis about the stray population being out of control.
And so when we started going back out again, we started seeing that.
Not just that there was a lot of strays, it was just starting at that
point. But the managed intake was also being interpreted differently. It
wasn't just you have to make an appointment. It was we're not gonna take your
(10:05):
dog. Can't even tell you how many shelters we walked through in in 2023,
especially, and definitely in 2024, that had signs on their door that said we do
not take owners or vendors. Closed to intake. They would
have no drop offs. There would just be all these signs. And I
and that was quote unquote managed intake. And those are shelters that are
municipal shelters that are normally open intake. So it's not that it's
(10:27):
a SBCA or humane society that would normally have selective
intake. Okay. Right. Exactly. Because prior to that, that's the only place we
ever saw that. And so I was always writing about it. I think I wrote
a piece called Tale of Two Shelters about the municipal shelter and the nonprofit that
were in the same town, you know, and what that means. And so that trying
to explain to people what that means, because we're all about raising awareness, giving you
the information so that you can help. So it
(10:50):
really was a surprise to me that that was being interpreted that way, but we
saw it all over the place. And a lot of it is just this
pressure. Shelters feel like they have to be no kill. You know, they're not quote
unquote no kill. They don't have that little plaque on the wall. It's hard to
get supporters. It's hard to get people to come in your door. You get labeled
the kill shelter. And so, you know, to be no kill, they wanna get
(11:11):
to that 90%, which is which is a really arbitrary
number in my opinion. They just would not take
in dogs if they didn't have to. Like, in Memphis, the way they got around
it legally was change of one word in the ordinance. The ordinance was
animal control officers shall pick up
dogs running at large. I can't remember the exact word, but some to that effect.
(11:32):
They changed it to May? They changed it to May.
May pick up dog sled. And that little one
tiny word, which who's gonna notice that when we're we're putting up a new ordinance?
Who's gonna notice that one little tiny change? I mean, it changes everything. It
sure does. It's also it surprises me because picking up stray dogs
is usually viewed as human safety. It's human
(11:54):
public safety is why you're picking up stray dogs. You're not picking up stray
dogs for by and large, the municipality is not picking up stray dogs to protect
the dog. So I'm surprised that they would make a a decision in an
ordinance not to pick up all stray dogs. Yeah. And I have the
same thought about community sheltering. Like, why why would you tell people to
keep this? And you know nothing about this dog. This could be a dog that
(12:16):
was dumped because it attacked her child. This could be a dog that is infested
with parasites. This could be a dog that's pregnant. I mean, you don't know. If
you just tell a community to leave it there or bring it to your
house, that's dangerous. That's dangerous. And and not just
for the people, but for the dog. I mean, who knows what those people are
like? Whether they're gonna care for that animal, whether they're gonna you know, how do
(12:37):
you know they're not gonna just chain it up outside and, you know, they don't
even know to feed it? Who knows what they would do? You know? I just
think the way it's been interpreted is creating is change. And it's just amazing to
me to see the difference. You know? And everybody anybody who looks at the news
can see that the numbers of dogs being euthanized has gone up three years in
a row now, first time in two decades that that happened. So we're
(12:58):
euthanizing more animals. And to my mind, that number's barely
showing it because the stray population is so out of
control. And you know because you're involved with shelters, eighty
percent of animals coming into a shelter are not spayed or neutered, at
least in the South. That's the case. So if you are turning away all these
animals and eighty percent of them are not spayed or neutered, they are coming back
(13:19):
to you in You're making the problem worse. You're magnifying the
problem. Yeah. So it's like a snowball, and it's been heart wrenching to me. I
just feel like we've lost so much progress, and I watched this poll. And you
know what? It's all done with good intentions. These organizations that are promoting this, and
they wanna make us all no kill, and we all want everyone to be no
kill. It's great intentions. The problem is it's
(13:40):
been used wrong. People are so focused on that number, and they're
only counting the animals in the building. They're not counting the animals they didn't let
into the building and what's become of them.
(14:03):
So we talked a lot about what's not going well, and certainly it's a
challenging time for all shelters everywhere in the country. And you're right that the
euthanasia numbers are going up. But you've been to over
150 shelters, and that gives you sort of a unique perspective
about who's doing things right. Who's managed to figure
out how to engage the community, how to do everything better? Can you
(14:25):
give me some examples of what you've seen that really is moving the needle
in a positive direction? Yeah. Well, I can tell you what I've seen in terms
of the shelters that are doing well. And I wrote extensively about this in my
book, the fact that they have three things. They have leadership,
leadership committed to saving the animals. And that leadership is usually an animal
control officer or director, shelter manager or rescue director,
(14:47):
whoever it is. I mean, in some parts of, like, Georgia and Mississippi and in
Tennessee, there are no municipal shelters, and so they're private nonprofit
that steps into that gap. You have somebody who's committed to this.
And when they're committed to this, they're committed to involving everybody
and every idea. They're not somebody who comes in with an agenda that we're gonna
do it this way. The ones that we've seen that are successful are the ones
(15:08):
that are, like, networking and working with other other
shelters and expanding their volunteer programs and building a rescue network, and
they're just they're pulling our community together. The second thing is they
have veterinary access, and that's a critical one right now everywhere. It's really hard.
They're real shortage of veterinarians, and it's hard to get them to work for shelters.
Right. Affordable veterinary access. And that has been a huge was a challenge. It's more
(15:31):
of a challenge now because of so many veterinary practices are being bought
up by these private companies, and they generally
put in policies that are not rescue friendly. And it's driven the cost up and
made it harder and harder for animals. And also, there's just,
less, money out there for spay and neuter. I mean, there's
just, you know Right. I'm thinking in the perfect storm, you know, it's it's very
(15:53):
expensive to hire veterinarians because of, you know, it's a very hard job. And and
those private equity firms that have bought up a lot of the vet practices have
driven up the price for for the shelters that have in house veterinarians
to be able to hire. But you're also right that it also you don't have
as many community veterinarians that are willing to work with the shelter at
reduced prices because it's a it's a larger business than that.
(16:14):
Yeah. So it's been really hard. One of the things we have seen is shelters
that are finding their work around their in house clinics, and they're finding
either retired vets or vets who you know, some veterinarians are happy to work at
a shelter because they don't have to deal with owners. And so, like, when
I had inter I just interviewed a veterinarian on this last a shelter veterinarian on
this last tour. And and I said to her, like, why did you leave private
(16:35):
practice to do good? And she said, people. Yeah. And
I totally got it. I totally understand that. So so that you know, that's one
way they're working around it. And I I know of a couple shelters that are
actually, you know, funding a lot of their work by having a
clinic that it does the shelter animals and also community animals. And
so they're able to do it at a little bit of a discount, but for
(16:56):
them, that's income. So that's a really cool model. So those two things,
leadership, veterinary access, but the most important piece is community engagement.
You have to get your community in the door. And that's hard when
I talk to animal control officers who are so you know, they see the
worst of the worst, you know, and they're kinda suspicious of people. But
the key to a shelter, you know, doing well, thriving, saving all their
(17:19):
animals, and being able to operate on open admission, is getting the community
in the door. Like, get the volunteers in there. Have a foster
network, have a rescue network. In my book, I wrote tons of
ideas. Some I've seen in I've bought some of them, like a shelter that built
a paw shaped dog park or dog trail. And so you can
you can come and use our facility. This is obviously for shelters that have enough
(17:40):
land to do this. But take one of our dogs for a walk on our
trail or even walk your own dog on our trail. But it gets people on
the property so they're thinking about you. Yeah. So happy people there.
There's a shelter in Roanoke, Virginia. They have a little free library right in the
front of the shelter. Gets people to stop, you know, to go there.
And that's that community center idea that you were talking about, not community sheltering,
(18:02):
but the shelter more of a community center. So there are activities for
kids, there are activities for older people, and that it becomes, you
know, like a library where people would just stop in. Yeah. I think it should
be a community resource. If if there's anything happening with dogs, it should happen there.
They should have obedience classes, agility classes. There's so many dog
sports that could happen there. You've already got these people with the skill set, you
(18:23):
know? Use them. They know how to train basic obedience
behavior. They know how to teach a dog to walk nicely on a leash. They
know how to do those kinds of things. But you can go beyond that. There's
so many things that you can do at a shelter that brings
people there so that that's their first thought, like, oh, that's where the animals
are. That's where I should go if I need help. But if you're a shelter
(18:43):
who has, like, ten to two, you know, Monday to Thursday hours,
you can't get people in your in your building. You know? Children's education is
another really important piece of it. We promoted it a lot with
Who Will Let the Dogs out. We have a free curriculum on our website for
people just to teach how to safely meet a dog. Because, you know, you
know from being in shelters, a lot of dogs end up from they're from biting
(19:05):
a child. And then usually, nine times out of 10, it's because that child did
not know how to safely interact with the dog. It's a life skill. Everybody should
have this life skill, and I'd love to see it. There's a place in North
Carolina where they actually teach in the schools. They go into the schools. It's a
eight week curriculum. I think it's in fourth grade, and it's for all schools, parochial,
private, public. And they teach humane education. It's a eight week curriculum once
(19:26):
a week. They come in. It culminates in this big event at the end where
they do a microchip clinic, and they you know, the kids can bring
their dogs. This would be like a big dog festival in the park. And it's
so cool, and I'm excited to see how that carries out in
Moore County, like, how that translates as those kids grow up because, you know,
they're learning about spay and neuter. They're learning about that. So we've just
(19:47):
gotta find ways to make this a a true community resource where
people can go for help with their pets and people want to go with their
pets. Yeah, and all the things you're talking about is about
creating advocates. Those kids hopefully are gonna you know, when
they're young, they're gonna say, Our next dog, we should go we go to the
shelter and adopt that next dog, but they also then become advocates and
(20:07):
ambassadors for the shelter, and all of the activities that you were talking
about to bring people into the shelter, like training classes
or volunteer opportunities, it also prevents surrender.
I mean, at the same time, if you're teaching people how to best
train their dogs so that they're, you know, not jumping up and knocking over their
kids, then hopefully you're gonna reduce the number of of dogs in the system from
(20:29):
being surrendered. Right. You know, you bring those people in too. If you have a
foster program, which everyone should have a foster program, those fosters are gonna
be your best advocates. They're gonna be the ones advocating not just for the dog.
Do you have any tips for recruiting fosters? I know you fostered over a hundred
dogs yourself, so you must have talked a lot of people into fostering. I
do. I talk to people all the time. I tell them all the time. It's
so much fun. My kids loved it. And it was they always said it was
(20:51):
like, we got a new dog every couple weeks. And and to them And were
they ever how how did they feel about giving them up? Because that's everybody's,
everybody's fear is, I can't I won't be able to let them go. You know,
I wrote a lot about this in my book, Another Good Dog. But I told
my kids at the beginning, you know, these aren't our dogs. We are just helping
these dogs. We're helping them get ready for their for their real home.
(21:12):
And we always had that you know, when the dog came in the door, we
knew that dog was leaving. And sometimes it was hard. Every time it was hard,
I would say to them, well, if we keep this one, we can't save another.
And that they get that. They totally get that. And they made that connection. Good.
And they totally get that. You know, and it's true of all of us. You
know, if you really care about something and you really wanna make a difference, it
might be painful. And that's what it is. And to me, my little broken
(21:34):
heart is nothing compared to the dogs that are dying in the shelters, you know.
And seeing what's happening there just makes me more and more
fired up to you know, I just had it one leave that I wish I
could've kept in a million ways and even thought about it, but I didn't because
it would have kept me from being able to foster more, so I let him
go.
(22:02):
And that leads me to start thinking about compassion fatigue
because, you know, you you have a great approach to it. It sounds like, you
know, my broken heart is nothing compared to what all of those animals are
going through. But, you know, you walked into a
lot of shelters that were very painful to see and where you saw
a lot of a lot of emotional and physical pain there
(22:24):
in the animals. How do you deal with that emotionally? Because I think a lot
of people are afraid to go into shelters. We're gonna be encouraging people to go
to their local shelter and learn about it and find out what their needs
are. How can you prepare for that emotionally? You know, you
can't ever prepare because you don't know for sure what you're gonna find there.
But I think it's the people that are there. Like, for me, when
(22:45):
I go in and I meet them and I see how hard they're working, how
much they're giving up, it inspires me
more than anything else. There are definitely times where you need a break, where you
need to, like, take off and get away from the animals for
a little while. But it's the other people that are there and and the friendships
you make and the commitments that everybody's made to try to
(23:06):
save more lives. And you have so many great moments too, and you'd have to
keep focused on those. Like, for me as a foster, and I still
foster, I have a Facebook group for my people who
adopt, and I ask them to put pictures up in there, so I can follow.
I can see them after they've been adopted. I can see what they're looking like.
And sometimes when I'm really bummed, I will post in there. Please, I need to
(23:27):
see some happy endings. Can you guys post me some happy endings?
And it just make you know, it makes my day to see when somebody posts
a dog that I fostered, you know, ten years ago. That's true. There,
you know? It's pretty amazing to see that. So, you know, it can be
hard, but there's ways to tippy toe into it also. There's a
program at this one I'm I can't remember what sheltered it, and I love the
(23:49):
idea, and I wanna promote it more. But they treat their dog their dogs are
kinda like a dog library, I wanna say. But people can go in and and
apply to be able to check out dogs, and
they get all approved. And they can check a dog out for an hour just
to take it for a walk. They can check it out to go for a
pup pup. They can check it out for a sleepover. They can check it out.
And it's kind of a way to tiptoe into fostering, and I love
(24:12):
that idea. So you get to take it out. You know, you're not committing. Because,
you know, when you say, oh, I'm gonna foster this dog. Well, if you have
to return it, you feel terrible. Right? You feel terrible if you have to give
it back. And everybody feels bad, and everyone thinks what's wrong with that dog. And
it may have nothing to do with that dog. It may have to do with
your cat or your kid or whatever is going on in your life. So
this was such a cool idea. It's like you were checking out dogs' like library
(24:33):
books. And it was so cool because I love that. Just the short commitment and
You could walk in Even if you never do anything else, you help that dog.
Yes. Exactly. You know, worst case is that dog got out of the shelter for
an hour. That, you know, it can be life changing for a dog. It can
save their lives literally. And maybe somebody saw him in an adopt me vest,
and maybe you got a picture of him out of Starbucks that makes people think
(24:54):
they could they could see him as their dog. There's a lot of ways that
it helps. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I we need a clever name for it
because I, like, check out I have to come up with a clever name because
and I can't and I, for the life of me, cannot remember which shelter
we heard about that at. I wanna say it was in Kentucky, but I'm not
positive. I think we have some around here. It's like, you know, doggy day outs
or play dates or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So
(25:17):
I come to animal sheltering as a lawyer and
think about sort of law and policy and how we might use
that to get better outcomes for animals. Are there any
initiatives in the law and policy arena that appeal to you in terms of
making change? I'm sure these laws are already in place in New England.
But where in the South, 1 of the laws that's kind of catching getting
(25:39):
momentum and starting to get passed everywhere is a a cost of care
act, which is a great thing because, you know, when a when dogs are seized
in a court case and they're the court hold dogs, they're
so isolated in a shelter. Generally, the public's not allowed to
go near them in many shelters. They could sit there for
months. I know of cases where they were there for a year, puppies that grew
(26:00):
up in that shelter. And by the time that case was finally settled,
they weren't even adoptable anymore because they'd been in a shelter all that time. And
so cost of care says that when your animals are seized
because of this, you're gonna have to pay per day for that animal to stay,
or you're gonna have to surrender it. And that's the way the law is being
written in Kentucky, and I believe it's about to happen somewhere else. I wanna say
(26:23):
I should know because someone just messaged me about it. Maybe Georgia. I should know
too. Because that that was actually the first thing that I worked on in terms
of in Pennsylvania was the cost of care law, and we got it
passed back in 2013 because a lot of the cruelty cases I mean, it's
it's terrible for the animals, but, also, sometimes the cruelty law doesn't get
enforced because it was so expensive for the shelters to enforce it. Yeah. In,
(26:45):
say, a hoarding case where you have a 50 cats or something, it's
you just can't take custody of them and and then care for them for the
whole length of a criminal proceeding at your own expense. Right. One
shelter in Kentucky that we visited had just taken, they had 24 kennels. They'd taken
in a hoarding case, and it was, like, 20 dogs. So
they were gonna have to and they were a shelter that euthanizes for space.
(27:07):
Now they're completely they're stuck with these 20 dogs for and that's partly,
it's terrible for the dog, but partly, it also limits the other animals that
the shelter can help. And it means that other dogs are gonna die. So it's
an important law, and it really needs to be passed everywhere.
Hopefully it will. Okay. Great. Is there anything else that you wanna
share with our listeners about what they can do to get involved?
(27:30):
Yes. I believe so firmly that everybody can do something. I
mean, you could do something as small as following your local
shelter and on Facebook or wherever they are and liking
and commenting and sharing and engaging so that it drives those posts
to be shown in more feeds and helps. I mean, that's so minor. That's
just a couple clicks on an daily basis. That can really
(27:51):
help. Obviously, you can always donate. I always encourage people, if you're gonna help
a municipal shelter, shop their Amazon wish list. Getting involved
in your own shelter and trying to find ways to help, to figure out what
it is. When we go to visit a shelter, one of the questions I ask
is, you know, how can people help? What do you need? And we try to
get that put that message out. And and so instead of just
(28:13):
blindly, you know, sending a check, it's sometimes better to
contact them and find out, you know, how can how can we help? What can
we do? We have volunteers all over the country that volunteer for
us and our organization and their job. Many of them are shelter liaisons, and their
job, they're assigned usually about four shelters. I say to them,
stalk online because they're not anywhere near them. And they're just doing
(28:34):
that for us. They're tracking what's happening them. What's happening in their shelter, they're
looking for really good ideas, really cool ideas, and they'll share them with
us. And then we put them in our resource guide. On our website, there's a
resource guide. I think it's under the shelters tab for shelters
tab. And it has every idea we've seen for, like, adoption events or
fundraising or grants or protocols or
(28:56):
enrichment, all of that. Every time we see another cool idea, we put it
in that resource guide so it's in one place. So if you're a shelter or
rescue, when you're looking for a new idea, a novel, something new to
do for social media or for whatever, you can kinda go through that
guide and find a new idea that you maybe didn't didn't think of.
So there's stuff you can do right from your home. You know? I'm also gonna
(29:18):
be the first one to say foster. Fostering will fostering is a right now, with
the situation in our shelters, that is the one thing anybody can do to
truly make a difference and save a life is to foster. Right? We need fosters
more than anything else right now. Every shelter nearly every shelter in this
country is at capacity or overcapacity. Fostering can give them some
breathing room. You can provide some dogs some time. So it's also
(29:40):
super fun. I wanna make a little plug for it. If you have tween
age kids or teenage kids, fostering is a really fun thing that
kinda it definitely brought our family together. I mean, we had a lot of laughs
and a lot of fun taking care of dogs, and we did a lot of
puppies, which was super fun. My kids got to see puppies come into the
world. They saw some hard stuff too because it doesn't always have it's
(30:02):
not always a happy ending, but I think that was also important. They got to
learn that sometimes, like, it doesn't go the way you hoped it would
go, but that doesn't change the importance of doing this, you know,
sometimes. That's a great message. Life lessons for tweens and teens in in
fostering, and that's fantastic. I've heard so many. I love the work
you're doing, and I love your idea of shelter liaisons, and I think
(30:24):
that people can take that idea and even run with it in their own community
and say that maybe I could be the shelter liaison for a shelter near me,
and I could talk to them and find out what their needs are and
share it with people in my community who might not wanna go to the shelter
but could help them get the resources they need to be able to take care
of the animals. So I appreciate all that you're doing. People
(30:45):
can find Cara and all of their work at
whowillletthedogsout.org. Right? Yep. And is there a
link there to buy your book of the same name? There is. There's a link
there. It's also on Amazon, of course, but you can definitely buy it there. We
give this book away free to shelters and rescues. So anybody who is a
shelter or rescue would like a copy, they just reach out to me, and we
send that copy. And if you would like, you know, every purchase that is made
(31:08):
helps pay for us to do that. So if you would like to send one
to a shelter or rescue, you can also do that through our website. You can
fill out the form. You can tell us what shelter you want us to send
it to, and you can buy them a book that way too. Wonderful. Or
your local school, your local library. Okay. Well, thank you
so much, Cara, and keep in touch because I really I really admire your work.
(31:29):
Thank you. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. Bye bye.
Thanks for listening today. I hope Cara's insights gave you some fresh
perspective on shelter challenges and opportunities.
You'll find a link to who will let the dogs out in the show notes,
and I've spent some time exploring their site, And it's full of
practical ideas for supporting your own local shelter. What
(31:51):
I appreciate about Kara's approach is how she connects
observation directly to action, seeing
what's happening and finding specific ways to help. So
take a moment this week to check out your local shelter's website or social
media. What are they asking for? What
challenges are they facing? The most valuable support
(32:13):
comes from understanding the actual needs rather than
what we might assume they are.
That's it for today. The Animal Advocate podcast is brought
to you by the Animal Advocacy Academy. You can find
episodes and show notes at
animaladvocacyacademy.com, along with a link
(32:35):
to our Facebook and LinkedIn pages where we discuss our
podcasts, and we'd love to discuss your thoughts and experiences
there. If you're interested in learning more about protecting
animals, subscribe to the show so you get every episode when it
comes out. If you have any questions on this or any other
topic related to animal law, email them to
(32:56):
podcast@animaladvocacyacademy.com, and
we'll make sure to get them answered. We'll either email you back
or feature them in a future episode or both. And
remember, compassion is great, but compassionate
action is infinitely better. Until next week,
live with compassion.
Welcome back to The Animal Advocate. Today, we're
trying something new, our first interview episode.
I mentioned last time that we'd be talking with people doing remarkable
work in this space, people whose stories might spark
ideas for your own advocacy journey. I'm
excited to introduce you to Kara Achterberg,
(00:22):
cofounder of Who Will Let the Dogs Out, which is also the
title of her new book. And what makes Cara's
work interesting isn't that she runs a shelter or
rescue. She doesn't. Instead, she's a
witness and a storyteller. Who Will Let the Dogs
Out visits shelters, more than a 50 so
(00:44):
far, to observe their reality firsthand?
The physical spaces, the community context, the
people doing the work, and the everyday challenges they
face. But here's what really matters. Cara
doesn't just see these places. She helps others see
them too. Many animal lovers wanna help shelter
(01:06):
animals, but they've never stepped inside a shelter. They
haven't experienced the sights, sounds, and feelings of
these spaces, and Cara bridges that gap.
In our conversation, Cara introduces concepts that might be
new to some listeners, like managed intake and
community sheltering. These approaches were designed to
(01:29):
move facilities closer to no kill status. What's
interesting is how these terms carry different meanings to different
people, and sometimes implementation
doesn't deliver on the promised results. She also talks
about how shelter euthanasia rates for dogs are rising
after decades of progress, highlighting why our advocacy
(01:50):
work is so important right now. She's based in Virginia
and has focused primarily on Southern shelters where
resources are often especially limited. Her organization's
purpose aligns perfectly with what we explore on this podcast,
connecting animal lovers with the actual on the ground needs
and empowering them to participate in meaningful change.
(02:17):
Welcome to the animal advocate, where we arm animal
lovers with the information and inspiration you need to become
effective advocates. I'm your host, Penny Ellison, and
I've taught animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania
since 02/2006. If you've ever thought
someone should do something about that, I'm here to guide you
(02:39):
on your journey to being that someone. You can
find us on the web at
animaladvocacyacademy.com. And that's where
you'll find show notes and resources, and you can send us your comments
on episodes and ideas for topics you'd like to hear on future
shows. So on to today's topic.
(03:05):
Welcome, Cara. Thanks, Penny. I'm happy to be here.
Can you tell me what inspired you to start Who Will Let the Dogs Out?
Yeah. I'll try to do it succinctly because it's kind of a long story. For
many years, I was a writer, and I started fostering dogs after losing a down
(03:31):
this path and down this path and wrote about it because I'm a writer,
wrote a blog about it, wrote a book about fostering, went out
to promote that book, and went to the shelters in the
South. And I went there because I was going down to do book signings anyway
in these towns, and I was like, oh, my dogs all come from there. I
think I wanna go see them. I'll take donations. And so I told everybody
(03:53):
I knew, I was doing this, and I said, if you have stuff you wanna
send to the shelters, give it to me. So I had so much stuff, I
had to rent a big truck and then draft a friend to go with me
because I was nervous about driving it. And she and I went off on this
adventure that I thought was gonna be so much fun. And then I
went to my very first shelter in North Carolina, and
I was stunned by the situation. I was stunned
(04:16):
that, you know, you walked in and it just it the smell,
not just of the animals and the disinfectant and but almost
like desperation. Just it it was just so hard. It was a small
shelter. They had taken in 500 dogs that was it
500 or something? I'm trying to get my numbers right because it's been so many
years. But anyway and they had only adopted out a handful. And
(04:37):
so doing the math on that and trying to figure out what what else will
you do, you know, and that that was a little bit of a shock for
me. And the fact that the animals lived outside, the dogs lived
outside in a very humid climate, eighty percent of the dogs were
heartworm positive. They didn't have anything. And
I I was, like, taken back. I was in shock that
(04:58):
I'd fostered over a hundred dogs by then, and I had no idea. This is
true. Running from that shelter? No. From all over the South, but some from that
shelter, yes. And I was just sort of I was just ashamed that I didn't
know. How could I not know? I was all about this, you know, we're all
gonna save all these dogs. And then I get down there, and they have nothing.
They have, you know, a budget that barely covers food. They
(05:20):
have no money really for spay and neuter. Obviously, no money for heart room
preventative. No. Those were basics, and I was shocked.
And from there, I went to 13 other shelters on that tour, some
better, some worse, and came home
furious that I didn't you know, furious about the situation and that,
how can this be going on in our country? How can there be dog pounds?
(05:42):
How can that happen? So I started going and traveling back again and again. I
took a photographer friend because too few people read. And I was
writing my heart out, but not feeling like I was getting the message. And so
I took a photographer friend, and we did it. We traveled down two more times
and finally said, you know, we need more than this. We need a bigger microphone.
We need more people behind this. And so we
(06:04):
started Who Will Let the Dogs Out with a mission to raise awareness and resources
for homeless dogs and the heroes who fight for them. And it's been,
it'll be six years this year. So it's been a journey. Things have changed, some
for the better and some for the worse in the shelters. Let's
talk about that. Because you've been trying to make a difference for six years. It's
been you know, the pandemic interfered, I'm sure. How do you
(06:27):
see things changing since you've been involved in going to shelters?
You know, when we went down in 02/2019 and even very
early 02/2020, you know, everybody seemed to be making some progress. You
know, rescues were having a big impact. Transports were really changing
things. Everybody was working really hard, and
it felt like the numbers were getting a little bit better every
(06:50):
year. The very first trip in 02/2020, I felt like things
were getting better. And I heard I was at a shelter, in fact, one of
my favorite shelters in South Carolina that's headed by a vet who's
done a phenomenal job there. I wrote about her in my book. She used a
term I hadn't heard before. She said, manage our intake. I asked her, how did
you bring your shelter from killing sixty percent of the dogs when she took
(07:12):
the job to, you know, less than ten percent? You know, in six months,
really. Wow. That's an incredible turnaround. It was an incredible
turnaround. And and when I asked her, how did you do that? She said, well,
first off, we just stopped killing dogs. And that was really a powerful statement I've
thought about for years now. And it really is a mindset. As she said,
you when you take it off the table, you'll find other options. And so she
(07:33):
taught me a lot about being transparent with staff, with community, with
everybody so we all are on the same page. We all know what's happening.
But she also talked about doing managed intake, and I was like, what's that? I've
never heard of this. And at the time, managed intake meant
scheduled intake, basically. But open intake shelter, they have to take
surrenders? But they have to make an appointment to do that. And
(07:55):
then I heard again from another shelter director on that
tour, animal control officer, and she said, well, we are
an open intake shelter. But if you come in here and you're bringing an aggressive
dog that you can't handle, we're gonna say to you,
take that dog to your vet and have it euthanized. That is the most humane
thing you can do because we're gonna euthanize it. Why would you bring your dog
(08:16):
here, make it suffer, you know, if they have to hold it
legally for a few days? Any other laws in in that state? I don't remember.
This was Tennessee, and I have a feeling they could've euthanized on intake.
But what put the dog through that? Why if you love this animal, then you
should do it. And that was another take on managed intake that I thought, that
makes sense. I get that. So managed intake seemed like a good
(08:37):
thing to me. Okay. Fast forward, we get to the pandemic.
We get 2021, I think I feel started hearing about
not just managed intake, but community sheltering, which was this other
idea about, you know, putting the burden back on the community. So when you find
a pet, a lost animal, supposedly lost animal, instead of bringing it to the
shelter, they advised you to either take it into your home and try
(09:00):
to foster and find it at home or leave it where you found it
because, you know, most dogs are a mile from the place where they got
lost, which all sounds lovely unless that animal was dumped. Yeah.
Community sheltering sounded like a I thought you were gonna say it's making it a
community resource center, but it means leave the animals in the community? Yeah. If
you Google community sheltering, it was first brought about by the Human
(09:21):
Animal Support Services, HAAS. And that's what they
advocate. If you go to a website that practices that, they're gonna say, don't
call us with your lost animal. Leave it where it is. Try to tell
people in the neighborhood. And there's different variations on it. And I'm really giving you
the very worst interpretation of it because some places interpret it
differently, and it can be successful. But that is the interpretation
(09:43):
that many shelters ran with. And so we started hearing about this. We got
calls from people in Memphis about the stray population being out of control.
And so when we started going back out again, we started seeing that.
Not just that there was a lot of strays, it was just starting at that
point. But the managed intake was also being interpreted differently. It
wasn't just you have to make an appointment. It was we're not gonna take your
(10:05):
dog. Can't even tell you how many shelters we walked through in in 2023,
especially, and definitely in 2024, that had signs on their door that said we do
not take owners or vendors. Closed to intake. They would
have no drop offs. There would just be all these signs. And I
and that was quote unquote managed intake. And those are shelters that are
municipal shelters that are normally open intake. So it's not that it's
(10:27):
a SBCA or humane society that would normally have selective
intake. Okay. Right. Exactly. Because prior to that, that's the only place we
ever saw that. And so I was always writing about it. I think I wrote
a piece called Tale of Two Shelters about the municipal shelter and the nonprofit that
were in the same town, you know, and what that means. And so that trying
to explain to people what that means, because we're all about raising awareness, giving you
the information so that you can help. So it
(10:50):
really was a surprise to me that that was being interpreted that way, but we
saw it all over the place. And a lot of it is just this
pressure. Shelters feel like they have to be no kill. You know, they're not quote
unquote no kill. They don't have that little plaque on the wall. It's hard to
get supporters. It's hard to get people to come in your door. You get labeled
the kill shelter. And so, you know, to be no kill, they wanna get
(11:11):
to that 90%, which is which is a really arbitrary
number in my opinion. They just would not take
in dogs if they didn't have to. Like, in Memphis, the way they got around
it legally was change of one word in the ordinance. The ordinance was
animal control officers shall pick up
dogs running at large. I can't remember the exact word, but some to that effect.
(11:32):
They changed it to May? They changed it to May.
May pick up dog sled. And that little one
tiny word, which who's gonna notice that when we're we're putting up a new ordinance?
Who's gonna notice that one little tiny change? I mean, it changes everything. It
sure does. It's also it surprises me because picking up stray dogs
is usually viewed as human safety. It's human
(11:54):
public safety is why you're picking up stray dogs. You're not picking up stray
dogs for by and large, the municipality is not picking up stray dogs to protect
the dog. So I'm surprised that they would make a a decision in an
ordinance not to pick up all stray dogs. Yeah. And I have the
same thought about community sheltering. Like, why why would you tell people to
keep this? And you know nothing about this dog. This could be a dog that
(12:16):
was dumped because it attacked her child. This could be a dog that is infested
with parasites. This could be a dog that's pregnant. I mean, you don't know. If
you just tell a community to leave it there or bring it to your
house, that's dangerous. That's dangerous. And and not just
for the people, but for the dog. I mean, who knows what those people are
like? Whether they're gonna care for that animal, whether they're gonna you know, how do
(12:37):
you know they're not gonna just chain it up outside and, you know, they don't
even know to feed it? Who knows what they would do? You know? I just
think the way it's been interpreted is creating is change. And it's just amazing to
me to see the difference. You know? And everybody anybody who looks at the news
can see that the numbers of dogs being euthanized has gone up three years in
a row now, first time in two decades that that happened. So we're
(12:58):
euthanizing more animals. And to my mind, that number's barely
showing it because the stray population is so out of
control. And you know because you're involved with shelters, eighty
percent of animals coming into a shelter are not spayed or neutered, at
least in the South. That's the case. So if you are turning away all these
animals and eighty percent of them are not spayed or neutered, they are coming back
(13:19):
to you in You're making the problem worse. You're magnifying the
problem. Yeah. So it's like a snowball, and it's been heart wrenching to me. I
just feel like we've lost so much progress, and I watched this poll. And you
know what? It's all done with good intentions. These organizations that are promoting this, and
they wanna make us all no kill, and we all want everyone to be no
kill. It's great intentions. The problem is it's
(13:40):
been used wrong. People are so focused on that number, and they're
only counting the animals in the building. They're not counting the animals they didn't let
into the building and what's become of them.
(14:03):
So we talked a lot about what's not going well, and certainly it's a
challenging time for all shelters everywhere in the country. And you're right that the
euthanasia numbers are going up. But you've been to over
150 shelters, and that gives you sort of a unique perspective
about who's doing things right. Who's managed to figure
out how to engage the community, how to do everything better? Can you
(14:25):
give me some examples of what you've seen that really is moving the needle
in a positive direction? Yeah. Well, I can tell you what I've seen in terms
of the shelters that are doing well. And I wrote extensively about this in my
book, the fact that they have three things. They have leadership,
leadership committed to saving the animals. And that leadership is usually an animal
control officer or director, shelter manager or rescue director,
(14:47):
whoever it is. I mean, in some parts of, like, Georgia and Mississippi and in
Tennessee, there are no municipal shelters, and so they're private nonprofit
that steps into that gap. You have somebody who's committed to this.
And when they're committed to this, they're committed to involving everybody
and every idea. They're not somebody who comes in with an agenda that we're gonna
do it this way. The ones that we've seen that are successful are the ones
(15:08):
that are, like, networking and working with other other
shelters and expanding their volunteer programs and building a rescue network, and
they're just they're pulling our community together. The second thing is they
have veterinary access, and that's a critical one right now everywhere. It's really hard.
They're real shortage of veterinarians, and it's hard to get them to work for shelters.
Right. Affordable veterinary access. And that has been a huge was a challenge. It's more
(15:31):
of a challenge now because of so many veterinary practices are being bought
up by these private companies, and they generally
put in policies that are not rescue friendly. And it's driven the cost up and
made it harder and harder for animals. And also, there's just,
less, money out there for spay and neuter. I mean, there's
just, you know Right. I'm thinking in the perfect storm, you know, it's it's very
(15:53):
expensive to hire veterinarians because of, you know, it's a very hard job. And and
those private equity firms that have bought up a lot of the vet practices have
driven up the price for for the shelters that have in house veterinarians
to be able to hire. But you're also right that it also you don't have
as many community veterinarians that are willing to work with the shelter at
reduced prices because it's a it's a larger business than that.
(16:14):
Yeah. So it's been really hard. One of the things we have seen is shelters
that are finding their work around their in house clinics, and they're finding
either retired vets or vets who you know, some veterinarians are happy to work at
a shelter because they don't have to deal with owners. And so, like, when
I had inter I just interviewed a veterinarian on this last a shelter veterinarian on
this last tour. And and I said to her, like, why did you leave private
(16:35):
practice to do good? And she said, people. Yeah. And
I totally got it. I totally understand that. So so that you know, that's one
way they're working around it. And I I know of a couple shelters that are
actually, you know, funding a lot of their work by having a
clinic that it does the shelter animals and also community animals. And
so they're able to do it at a little bit of a discount, but for
(16:56):
them, that's income. So that's a really cool model. So those two things,
leadership, veterinary access, but the most important piece is community engagement.
You have to get your community in the door. And that's hard when
I talk to animal control officers who are so you know, they see the
worst of the worst, you know, and they're kinda suspicious of people. But
the key to a shelter, you know, doing well, thriving, saving all their
(17:19):
animals, and being able to operate on open admission, is getting the community
in the door. Like, get the volunteers in there. Have a foster
network, have a rescue network. In my book, I wrote tons of
ideas. Some I've seen in I've bought some of them, like a shelter that built
a paw shaped dog park or dog trail. And so you can
you can come and use our facility. This is obviously for shelters that have enough
(17:40):
land to do this. But take one of our dogs for a walk on our
trail or even walk your own dog on our trail. But it gets people on
the property so they're thinking about you. Yeah. So happy people there.
There's a shelter in Roanoke, Virginia. They have a little free library right in the
front of the shelter. Gets people to stop, you know, to go there.
And that's that community center idea that you were talking about, not community sheltering,
(18:02):
but the shelter more of a community center. So there are activities for
kids, there are activities for older people, and that it becomes, you
know, like a library where people would just stop in. Yeah. I think it should
be a community resource. If if there's anything happening with dogs, it should happen there.
They should have obedience classes, agility classes. There's so many dog
sports that could happen there. You've already got these people with the skill set, you
(18:23):
know? Use them. They know how to train basic obedience
behavior. They know how to teach a dog to walk nicely on a leash. They
know how to do those kinds of things. But you can go beyond that. There's
so many things that you can do at a shelter that brings
people there so that that's their first thought, like, oh, that's where the animals
are. That's where I should go if I need help. But if you're a shelter
(18:43):
who has, like, ten to two, you know, Monday to Thursday hours,
you can't get people in your in your building. You know? Children's education is
another really important piece of it. We promoted it a lot with
Who Will Let the Dogs out. We have a free curriculum on our website for
people just to teach how to safely meet a dog. Because, you know, you
know from being in shelters, a lot of dogs end up from they're from biting
(19:05):
a child. And then usually, nine times out of 10, it's because that child did
not know how to safely interact with the dog. It's a life skill. Everybody should
have this life skill, and I'd love to see it. There's a place in North
Carolina where they actually teach in the schools. They go into the schools. It's a
eight week curriculum. I think it's in fourth grade, and it's for all schools, parochial,
private, public. And they teach humane education. It's a eight week curriculum once
(19:26):
a week. They come in. It culminates in this big event at the end where
they do a microchip clinic, and they you know, the kids can bring
their dogs. This would be like a big dog festival in the park. And it's
so cool, and I'm excited to see how that carries out in
Moore County, like, how that translates as those kids grow up because, you know,
they're learning about spay and neuter. They're learning about that. So we've just
(19:47):
gotta find ways to make this a a true community resource where
people can go for help with their pets and people want to go with their
pets. Yeah, and all the things you're talking about is about
creating advocates. Those kids hopefully are gonna you know, when
they're young, they're gonna say, Our next dog, we should go we go to the
shelter and adopt that next dog, but they also then become advocates and
(20:07):
ambassadors for the shelter, and all of the activities that you were talking
about to bring people into the shelter, like training classes
or volunteer opportunities, it also prevents surrender.
I mean, at the same time, if you're teaching people how to best
train their dogs so that they're, you know, not jumping up and knocking over their
kids, then hopefully you're gonna reduce the number of of dogs in the system from
(20:29):
being surrendered. Right. You know, you bring those people in too. If you have a
foster program, which everyone should have a foster program, those fosters are gonna
be your best advocates. They're gonna be the ones advocating not just for the dog.
Do you have any tips for recruiting fosters? I know you fostered over a hundred
dogs yourself, so you must have talked a lot of people into fostering. I
do. I talk to people all the time. I tell them all the time. It's
so much fun. My kids loved it. And it was they always said it was
(20:51):
like, we got a new dog every couple weeks. And and to them And were
they ever how how did they feel about giving them up? Because that's everybody's,
everybody's fear is, I can't I won't be able to let them go. You know,
I wrote a lot about this in my book, Another Good Dog. But I told
my kids at the beginning, you know, these aren't our dogs. We are just helping
these dogs. We're helping them get ready for their for their real home.
(21:12):
And we always had that you know, when the dog came in the door, we
knew that dog was leaving. And sometimes it was hard. Every time it was hard,
I would say to them, well, if we keep this one, we can't save another.
And that they get that. They totally get that. And they made that connection. Good.
And they totally get that. You know, and it's true of all of us. You
know, if you really care about something and you really wanna make a difference, it
might be painful. And that's what it is. And to me, my little broken
(21:34):
heart is nothing compared to the dogs that are dying in the shelters, you know.
And seeing what's happening there just makes me more and more
fired up to you know, I just had it one leave that I wish I
could've kept in a million ways and even thought about it, but I didn't because
it would have kept me from being able to foster more, so I let him
go.
(22:02):
And that leads me to start thinking about compassion fatigue
because, you know, you you have a great approach to it. It sounds like, you
know, my broken heart is nothing compared to what all of those animals are
going through. But, you know, you walked into a
lot of shelters that were very painful to see and where you saw
a lot of a lot of emotional and physical pain there
(22:24):
in the animals. How do you deal with that emotionally? Because I think a lot
of people are afraid to go into shelters. We're gonna be encouraging people to go
to their local shelter and learn about it and find out what their needs
are. How can you prepare for that emotionally? You know, you
can't ever prepare because you don't know for sure what you're gonna find there.
But I think it's the people that are there. Like, for me, when
(22:45):
I go in and I meet them and I see how hard they're working, how
much they're giving up, it inspires me
more than anything else. There are definitely times where you need a break, where you
need to, like, take off and get away from the animals for
a little while. But it's the other people that are there and and the friendships
you make and the commitments that everybody's made to try to
(23:06):
save more lives. And you have so many great moments too, and you'd have to
keep focused on those. Like, for me as a foster, and I still
foster, I have a Facebook group for my people who
adopt, and I ask them to put pictures up in there, so I can follow.
I can see them after they've been adopted. I can see what they're looking like.
And sometimes when I'm really bummed, I will post in there. Please, I need to
(23:27):
see some happy endings. Can you guys post me some happy endings?
And it just make you know, it makes my day to see when somebody posts
a dog that I fostered, you know, ten years ago. That's true. There,
you know? It's pretty amazing to see that. So, you know, it can be
hard, but there's ways to tippy toe into it also. There's a
program at this one I'm I can't remember what sheltered it, and I love the
(23:49):
idea, and I wanna promote it more. But they treat their dog their dogs are
kinda like a dog library, I wanna say. But people can go in and and
apply to be able to check out dogs, and
they get all approved. And they can check a dog out for an hour just
to take it for a walk. They can check it out to go for a
pup pup. They can check it out for a sleepover. They can check it out.
And it's kind of a way to tiptoe into fostering, and I love
(24:12):
that idea. So you get to take it out. You know, you're not committing. Because,
you know, when you say, oh, I'm gonna foster this dog. Well, if you have
to return it, you feel terrible. Right? You feel terrible if you have to give
it back. And everybody feels bad, and everyone thinks what's wrong with that dog. And
it may have nothing to do with that dog. It may have to do with
your cat or your kid or whatever is going on in your life. So
this was such a cool idea. It's like you were checking out dogs' like library
(24:33):
books. And it was so cool because I love that. Just the short commitment and
You could walk in Even if you never do anything else, you help that dog.
Yes. Exactly. You know, worst case is that dog got out of the shelter for
an hour. That, you know, it can be life changing for a dog. It can
save their lives literally. And maybe somebody saw him in an adopt me vest,
and maybe you got a picture of him out of Starbucks that makes people think
(24:54):
they could they could see him as their dog. There's a lot of ways that
it helps. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I we need a clever name for it
because I, like, check out I have to come up with a clever name because
and I can't and I, for the life of me, cannot remember which shelter
we heard about that at. I wanna say it was in Kentucky, but I'm not
positive. I think we have some around here. It's like, you know, doggy day outs
or play dates or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So
(25:17):
I come to animal sheltering as a lawyer and
think about sort of law and policy and how we might use
that to get better outcomes for animals. Are there any
initiatives in the law and policy arena that appeal to you in terms of
making change? I'm sure these laws are already in place in New England.
But where in the South, 1 of the laws that's kind of catching getting
(25:39):
momentum and starting to get passed everywhere is a a cost of care
act, which is a great thing because, you know, when a when dogs are seized
in a court case and they're the court hold dogs, they're
so isolated in a shelter. Generally, the public's not allowed to
go near them in many shelters. They could sit there for
months. I know of cases where they were there for a year, puppies that grew
(26:00):
up in that shelter. And by the time that case was finally settled,
they weren't even adoptable anymore because they'd been in a shelter all that time. And
so cost of care says that when your animals are seized
because of this, you're gonna have to pay per day for that animal to stay,
or you're gonna have to surrender it. And that's the way the law is being
written in Kentucky, and I believe it's about to happen somewhere else. I wanna say
(26:23):
I should know because someone just messaged me about it. Maybe Georgia. I should know
too. Because that that was actually the first thing that I worked on in terms
of in Pennsylvania was the cost of care law, and we got it
passed back in 2013 because a lot of the cruelty cases I mean, it's
it's terrible for the animals, but, also, sometimes the cruelty law doesn't get
enforced because it was so expensive for the shelters to enforce it. Yeah. In,
(26:45):
say, a hoarding case where you have a 50 cats or something, it's
you just can't take custody of them and and then care for them for the
whole length of a criminal proceeding at your own expense. Right. One
shelter in Kentucky that we visited had just taken, they had 24 kennels. They'd taken
in a hoarding case, and it was, like, 20 dogs. So
they were gonna have to and they were a shelter that euthanizes for space.
(27:07):
Now they're completely they're stuck with these 20 dogs for and that's partly,
it's terrible for the dog, but partly, it also limits the other animals that
the shelter can help. And it means that other dogs are gonna die. So it's
an important law, and it really needs to be passed everywhere.
Hopefully it will. Okay. Great. Is there anything else that you wanna
share with our listeners about what they can do to get involved?
(27:30):
Yes. I believe so firmly that everybody can do something. I
mean, you could do something as small as following your local
shelter and on Facebook or wherever they are and liking
and commenting and sharing and engaging so that it drives those posts
to be shown in more feeds and helps. I mean, that's so minor. That's
just a couple clicks on an daily basis. That can really
(27:51):
help. Obviously, you can always donate. I always encourage people, if you're gonna help
a municipal shelter, shop their Amazon wish list. Getting involved
in your own shelter and trying to find ways to help, to figure out what
it is. When we go to visit a shelter, one of the questions I ask
is, you know, how can people help? What do you need? And we try to
get that put that message out. And and so instead of just
(28:13):
blindly, you know, sending a check, it's sometimes better to
contact them and find out, you know, how can how can we help? What can
we do? We have volunteers all over the country that volunteer for
us and our organization and their job. Many of them are shelter liaisons, and their
job, they're assigned usually about four shelters. I say to them,
stalk online because they're not anywhere near them. And they're just doing
(28:34):
that for us. They're tracking what's happening them. What's happening in their shelter, they're
looking for really good ideas, really cool ideas, and they'll share them with
us. And then we put them in our resource guide. On our website, there's a
resource guide. I think it's under the shelters tab for shelters
tab. And it has every idea we've seen for, like, adoption events or
fundraising or grants or protocols or
(28:56):
enrichment, all of that. Every time we see another cool idea, we put it
in that resource guide so it's in one place. So if you're a shelter or
rescue, when you're looking for a new idea, a novel, something new to
do for social media or for whatever, you can kinda go through that
guide and find a new idea that you maybe didn't didn't think of.
So there's stuff you can do right from your home. You know? I'm also gonna
(29:18):
be the first one to say foster. Fostering will fostering is a right now, with
the situation in our shelters, that is the one thing anybody can do to
truly make a difference and save a life is to foster. Right? We need fosters
more than anything else right now. Every shelter nearly every shelter in this
country is at capacity or overcapacity. Fostering can give them some
breathing room. You can provide some dogs some time. So it's also
(29:40):
super fun. I wanna make a little plug for it. If you have tween
age kids or teenage kids, fostering is a really fun thing that
kinda it definitely brought our family together. I mean, we had a lot of laughs
and a lot of fun taking care of dogs, and we did a lot of
puppies, which was super fun. My kids got to see puppies come into the
world. They saw some hard stuff too because it doesn't always have it's
(30:02):
not always a happy ending, but I think that was also important. They got to
learn that sometimes, like, it doesn't go the way you hoped it would
go, but that doesn't change the importance of doing this, you know,
sometimes. That's a great message. Life lessons for tweens and teens in in
fostering, and that's fantastic. I've heard so many. I love the work
you're doing, and I love your idea of shelter liaisons, and I think
(30:24):
that people can take that idea and even run with it in their own community
and say that maybe I could be the shelter liaison for a shelter near me,
and I could talk to them and find out what their needs are and
share it with people in my community who might not wanna go to the shelter
but could help them get the resources they need to be able to take care
of the animals. So I appreciate all that you're doing. People
(30:45):
can find Cara and all of their work at
whowillletthedogsout.org. Right? Yep. And is there a
link there to buy your book of the same name? There is. There's a link
there. It's also on Amazon, of course, but you can definitely buy it there. We
give this book away free to shelters and rescues. So anybody who is a
shelter or rescue would like a copy, they just reach out to me, and we
send that copy. And if you would like, you know, every purchase that is made
(31:08):
helps pay for us to do that. So if you would like to send one
to a shelter or rescue, you can also do that through our website. You can
fill out the form. You can tell us what shelter you want us to send
it to, and you can buy them a book that way too. Wonderful. Or
your local school, your local library. Okay. Well, thank you
so much, Cara, and keep in touch because I really I really admire your work.
(31:29):
Thank you. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. Bye bye.
Thanks for listening today. I hope Cara's insights gave you some fresh
perspective on shelter challenges and opportunities.
You'll find a link to who will let the dogs out in the show notes,
and I've spent some time exploring their site, And it's full of
practical ideas for supporting your own local shelter. What
(31:51):
I appreciate about Kara's approach is how she connects
observation directly to action, seeing
what's happening and finding specific ways to help. So
take a moment this week to check out your local shelter's website or social
media. What are they asking for? What
challenges are they facing? The most valuable support
(32:13):
comes from understanding the actual needs rather than
what we might assume they are.
That's it for today. The Animal Advocate podcast is brought
to you by the Animal Advocacy Academy. You can find
episodes and show notes at
animaladvocacyacademy.com, along with a link
(32:35):
to our Facebook and LinkedIn pages where we discuss our
podcasts, and we'd love to discuss your thoughts and experiences
there. If you're interested in learning more about protecting
animals, subscribe to the show so you get every episode when it
comes out. If you have any questions on this or any other
topic related to animal law, email them to
(32:56):
podcast@animaladvocacyacademy.com, and
we'll make sure to get them answered. We'll either email you back
or feature them in a future episode or both. And
remember, compassion is great, but compassionate
action is infinitely better. Until next week,
live with compassion.
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