February 20, 2024 • 28 mins
Ever heard the powerful tale of Attila the Czech Shepherd, or the bond between Army handler Angela and her dog Szultan? In this episode I am joined by Bob Bryant, the compassionate co-founder of Mission K9 Rescue, who shares these heartwarming stories and sheds light on the lesser-known journeys of working dogs as they transition to retirement. We chat about the remarkable lives of these canine heroes, from sniffing out danger in explosive detection to their vigilant roles with the TSA, and delve into the critical need for structured post-service care.
Bob walks us through the intricate process of rehabilitating and rehoming these valiant dogs, unveiling the challenges they face, including coping with conditions like arthritis and PTSD. We also discuss the legislative efforts to provide these four-legged veterans with the medical benefits they deserve. If you're keen on learning how to support the legacy of these retired dogs or considering opening your home to one, tune in to find out how every contribution can ensure that these devoted companions live out their retirement enveloped in the love and dignity they've earned.
Useful Links:
https://missionk9rescue.org/
Angela and Sultan's Story https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=284199347167928
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*This podcast is for informational purposes only, even if, and regardless of whether it features the advice of veterinarians or professional dog trainers. It is not, nor is it intended to be a substitute for professional veterinary care or personalized canine behavior advice and should not be used as so. The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or the individual views of those participating in the podcast.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, first of all, thank you so much for popping on
and having this chat with me.
One of the visions, or thevision for my podcast is to kind
of create awareness around allthings dog, and one of the
things that we haven't chattedabout are working dogs.
Dogs that you know worktirelessly, you know, in the
military or police canines, eventhe dogs that we see at the
(00:22):
airport, you know, like the TSAdogs, and I think that we're
definitely not thinking aboutwhat happens to these dogs when
they can no longer perform thetasks that are required of them
or when they're ready to retire.
Right, and you, bob, are theco-founder of an incredible
nonprofit Mission, canine Rescue, whose mission is to let's hope
(00:45):
that I can get this rightrescue, re-home, rehabilitate
and repair.
Are we missing one?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yes, and re-home reunite yes.
Rescue reunite, repair, re-homerehabilitate.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
We're tired working dogs.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Exactly Five of them, the big five R's.
My co-founder came up with that.
I am not responsible for thefailure or success of you
remembering it.
I have to check myselfsometimes.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, it's a lot.
It's a lot, but it's amazingwork that you do.
So I do have some notes andsome questions for you, but I
would love for you to just jumpin and really tell us about
Mission Canine Rescue and theincredible work that they're
doing for our working dogs.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Just briefly I'll give you a little description.
I'll also give you our 10-yearstatistics of this point, since
we've operated for 10 years now.
We're a rescue located justnorth of Houston in Magnolia,
texas.
We adopt out entirely all overthe USA.
There's no restriction to that.
(01:50):
We brought dogs in from everycorner of the world.
In 10 years we've rescued 642working dogs.
Now these were either militaryworking dogs without handlers or
contract working dogs, tsa dogs, things like that, and we have
(02:10):
rescued another 654.
So that's 1,300 roughly totalthat we've reunited with their
former handlers.
And in 10 years we've paid.
I think we've just bumped over$2 million in veterinary care
payments and all of that isusing 93 cents out of every
dollar we're donated by thepublic.
(02:32):
Torner work.
We don't waste money and we tryto do right by our donors.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
That's fantastic.
Well, let's first start off bytalking about what a working dog
is.
What does a working dog looklike?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Let's go over the gamut on where the working dogs
come from.
They come from law enforcementpolice canines.
They come from TSA, which arenormally explosive detection,
single-purpose canines.
Some are drug detection, butnot too many we rescue well,
(03:09):
actually we're not rescuing them.
These contractors are very kind.
They retire their dogs veryearly.
Agricultural pest detectiondogs these are dogs that run in
orchards and they're trained todetect citrus pests and when
they find a tree that's diseasedwith the pest they will alert
so the orchard owner can removethat tree instead of the disease
(03:32):
eating up the entire orchard.
So we've got dogs that do bedbug detection.
We have currency detection dogsthat can literally find money.
I want one of those.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I wouldn't mind one of those.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
I've got a patrol canine yeah, I've got a patrol
canine from Canada.
All he does is wants to eatpeople and he finds me drugs
from time to time.
Other than that, he's kind ofworthless.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I will not tell him he did that.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
And then, of course, a contract working dog.
People here military workingdog, contract working dog.
Contract working dog is simplya privately owned working dog,
probably trained just the sameas a military Same tasks, same
kind of work but just not ownedby the government.
And of course, you're militaryworking dogs owned by the
government.
Government property can have upto five handlers in their
(04:22):
career.
Government decides whichhandler the dog can retire with.
They were routinely euthanizeduntil 2009 when a law preventing
that was passed, and we cantalk about that later.
But the most common breachyou'll see for working with dogs
these days the one the topsmall is a Belgian Malinois.
(04:45):
We call them the velociraptorof the German shepherd family
Very fast, very lighter weightthan shepherds, less prone to
hip dysplasia and other issues,plus their borderline psycho
which helps when they're patroldogs.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
They're like German shepherds on speed.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, exactly.
And then we have LabradorRetrievers, german shepherds, we
have some German shorthairedpointers as well as Springer's
panels, and Labrador Retrieverswork for TSA.
What do you suppose TSA usesthem?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Good question.
That's a trick question.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
No, it's not.
It's very straightforward.
Why would they use a lab, aGerman shorthaired pointer or
whatever else Springer's spanielover, say, a shepherd or a
Malinois?
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Offhand, I would say, because people are often scared
of shepherds, and Malin was.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
You just won the prize.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
They're not scary looking Okay, got it.
That makes sense.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
They get the job done and the public says, oh,
there's a cute dog, I want a pet.
I always keep a couple oflittle dog treats and my pocket
drives them crazy.
They hate me when I go to theairport and then we have
military working dogs.
Those are your breeds that wejust went through.
(06:20):
I've heard of dogs as small asJack Russell Terriers that have
been trained for use onsubmarines for drug searches
back in the day because theycould get in the little nooks
and crannies, tight spaces.
Also some little dogs that getin tunnels where bigger dogs
can't.
But that's kind of the gamut onthe breeds we see.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Wow, that.
When is a dog of retirement ageand what are some of those
qualifications?
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Unfortunately, what it looks like for the military
is when the dog loses work driveor is injured.
We'd love to see dogs mandatoryaged out at eight years old.
That way they have some shot atan eight year retirement.
Most of them are only going toget six of that before they pass
.
We see a lot of cancer inworking dogs because of the
(07:11):
compounds they're exposed to,because of the things that are
used to clean their kennels.
We see a lot of eye lingering,eye problems, disease issues
from heavy bleach basedcleansers and that.
But unfortunately it's workdrive determines that.
We've taken a dog from themilitary that was 12 years old.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
But the dog still had work, drive Live six months
into retirement.
Thank you, all for saying thatWow?
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah, because you think about shepherds and I
don't know.
I know many shepherds.
I have a few that I care for,but I don't know, I don't know.
I've met a few Belgian alimans,but I know shepherds have hip
issues and hip dysplasia andwhen they get to be that age, I
mean it's just like they're someof them, a lot of them that
I've known they're barelyfunctioning.
Those hips are just not workingpast nine.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
We've done hip replacements on shepherds.
Wow, now any vet care thesedogs need when they come to us.
They get it because militaryworking dogs or contract working
dogs, when they retire, theirhealthcare is retired as well.
They get nothing from thegovernment or their contractors
and we're helping cosponsor abill with a congressman.
(08:25):
This is the second shot at itsince 2018 of getting the
government to agree that,because military dogs have
served, you know they havewhatever they've gotten, they've
gotten it because of theirservice that they should be
cared for and non-profits thatare spending their money wisely
meaning 70% or more on theirwork and being able to show
(08:48):
what's going to veterinary billsNot some of these places that
contact every dead person bymail within 200 miles.
You know, with a newsletter,farming with it would make me
angry as a donor to send, say,$100 to help with the dog
surgery and find out they use itfor marketing, absolutely yeah.
It's just not the thing to do.
You know I use seven cents outof every dollar to market
(09:11):
organization.
I think that's frugal andnobody's fussed at me yet.
So we'll see Now.
I went on a tangent aboutspending and I probably just
kind of forgot your question, sotell them home me back in.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
What was my question?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
My question was retirement age.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Retirement age.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, yeah, no healthcare.
We see a lot of cancers inolder dogs, we see joint issues,
we see a lot of TPLO surgeriesum distory and we see,
unfortunately, some PTSD andpeople ask us well, how do you
fix a PTSD?
You don't.
You just learn what triggers itand how to avoid those triggers
(09:50):
and the dog will have a muchbetter life.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
You learn how to manage it.
So there's there's no benefitsfor these dogs, there's no
military benefits for these dogswhatsoever.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Nothing, nothing.
You don't have their handler orthe adopter.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, totally, and it's wrong.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, absolutely.
This should be something thatthe military or the government
pays for, especially with, youknow, the military working dogs.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, but instead two million dollars over 10 years
of money.
At least half of that shouldhave been government funded
because it went to the care ofmilitary working dogs that were
retired even though they wereveterinarily sound.
When they retired they stillhad joint, she still had
arthritis, they still hadpanacea lots of things that were
(10:35):
going to cost money for therest of their lives.
Senior vet care for canines isabout a thousand a year just for
basics.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
So how do people contact when a dog is ready to
retire?
How do they find you?
Does the government seek youout, or are you seeking out dogs
that are ready to be retired?
And then how do you get themover here?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Ten years into it, the handlers know who we are and
what we do, and when their dogis being dispositioned as what's
called excess, then the handlerreaches out to say, hey, my
dog's getting disposed, he's atFort Leonard Wood or he's over
in Bob brain or, let's say, inGuam, you know, can you help us
(11:23):
get him home?
The answer is never no.
It's always yes, because wehave difficulty funding for
veterinary care, which makes mesad, because everybody wants the
dogs to come home and then theywant somebody else to pay for
their vet care.
That's why I'm so hyped up ongetting this bill passed, where
government actually funds someof their own issues.
(11:45):
But they will reach out to usand we'll contact their kennel
master wherever they are andfind out if the military is
going to help it all with thetransport Sometimes.
Back in 2016, obama signed aportion of the National Defense
Authorization Act that within anincluded clause that military
dogs retired overseas would goback to American soil, and they
(12:09):
at that time got around it bycalling forward operating bases
to American soil.
So until 2021, we didn't see abit of help.
But then one day we weresurprised when they put three
retiring dogs in a rotatorflight that was going to Seattle
.
So even though we had to getthem across the country, that
was $6,000 apiece that we didn'thave to pay to get them back
(12:34):
from Japan.
So they're helping now somewhat.
Some they're not helping at all.
If it's stateside, forget itRight.
You know we have to go get thedog where the dog is, and a lot
of people say, well, why don'tthe handlers just go get their
own dog if it's stateside?
They're working, they don'thave the funds, they're not able
to take the time off, and it'ssomething I feel, it's a debt I
feel that we owe to them toreunite them with someone that
(12:57):
was a vital part of theirmilitary career.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Absolutely.
This is something that that canhelp support.
You know we talk aboutsupporting the health and
wellness and the mental healthof our, of our veterans.
Having your, the dog that youwere working with and going
through all of these experienceswith you know it can provide
some sort of of comfort andsupport to at least be at least
(13:22):
be helping get the hand havingthe handlers get their own dogs
back right.
They should at least be helpingwith that part, correct?
So now are the hand the dogsare going directly to the
handlers, do they have to gothrough a rehabilitation process
?
Or they just do, or they justgo just back to their handler
and that's where they're going.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, no, when.
When we get a dog from themilitary, normally we will
reunite that dog immediatelywith a handler, Unless, for some
reason, the handler is, youknow, finishing up his service
somewhere and he's having apermanent change of station.
Then we might keep the dog fora month or two if they need to.
Most of those are immediate,the dogs that require most of
(13:58):
our heavy duty work or contractworking dogs.
When they come back to us,they're not always medically fit
.
We have to get them healthy.
They need to learn how to be athome, how to, you know, be in a
ranch house, how to be aroundother people.
We need to test them to see howthey are with other dogs, other
(14:19):
other animals in general.
Are they fence aggressive orthey food aggressive or the
crate aggressive?
A lot of that's going to tell uswho is qualified to adopt them,
and we evaluate all thesethings and we give them whatever
they need to make them suitablefor adoption to the public.
And people ask us well, do Ihave to be a handler to adopt a
(14:41):
dog?
No, you don't.
You just have to be able to beable to pardon me, be able to
physically control the dog.
In other words, if you're 90years old and four foot eight,
please don't want to adopt ahundred pound German Shepherd.
It's not going to happen.
Be able to afford the cost ofcare and we want them to have
(15:03):
time for a dog.
Yeah, if you work all day, ifnobody's home, don't adopt a
working dog, please.
A Belgian Malinois will eatyour house.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I guarantee it, they require a lot of mental and
physical exercise.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
No, my, my shepherd is with me Probably 20 out of 24
hours a day because he just youknow he wants to go and he
doesn't care where he is, hejust wants to be there, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
And that's that.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
And the vision is you know, I was reading that you
your goal is to retire thesedogs.
They're not going to come backand work with someone.
You want them to live a happy,healthy, family-oriented or, you
know, relaxed life right.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Right, that is part of our adoption criteria is
these dogs cannot be worked.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Period.
We get a lot of people will.
I want to get a police caninefor my protection.
Uh-uh, Get a young dog.
You know, don't ask Grandpa tofight for you.
Grandpa may win, but he's goingto carry scars from the battle
that you may never see.
But you know, we just don'twant that for our dogs, Right.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, so you know we have scars.
What are some of the?
You touched on a little bitsome of the issues that may crop
up with some of the dogs thathave been, you know, out in the
field and then come home.
But what are some of the thingsthat you see?
You know that you said PTSD.
How does that show up?
How does that look like in ourdogs?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
It can look like terror, or it can look like
aggression, or it can just looklike indecision, where a dog can
go to stick his head in thecorner yeah, frozen.
We do not really want to lack ofinteraction and we try to
determine what caused the dog todo that and then you know, do
(16:57):
our best to not repeat it andjust see you know what's up with
it.
Medical issues as I said, wesee a lot of lymphoma, we see a
lot of sarcoma, we see a lot ofnasty, nasty blood cancer.
My own dog passed from an ohhemangiosarcoma.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yes, my dog just had that.
He just had, but he had thesubcutaneous kind, so it showed
up in his skin and not in his,like his organs.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Okay, make sure to check him, because they got it
out of her spleen and then,after being fine for two months
later on experimental treatment,it had there was lesion in her
gut, that burst, and basicallyshe bled out.
There was nothing anybody coulddo about it, Is it really
really scary?
Now, I'm not trying to terrifypeople that might want to adopt
(17:49):
a dog.
So oh, your dog's going to getcancer.
Some of them don't butunderstand that these are senior
dogs.
A lot of dogs get variouscancers.
Many of them are very treatable.
There's a good quality of life.
But unfortunately, if you adoptthe dog, you'd be responsible
for the cost of that care and wewould expect you to provide the
(18:11):
care.
Now, can you ask, go fund mefor help, sure, but let's get
the dog surgery needs.
And if we're in a position tohelp, which we're very often not
after dogs adopted, becausemany times we have to pull from
transport funds and keep dogswaiting overseas to pay for
needed medical care for dogs inour care at that time.
(18:33):
So we just encourage ourdoctors to be able to afford the
cost of care if and when it'sneeded.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And then we're moving into this understanding that
they're caring for a senior dogand they are there to help the
senior dog live out theremaining years in peace right.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Correct, that's correct no-transcript.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
So you were saying that handlers have the first
dibs on there?
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yes, yes, the government determines which of
up to five handlers should adoptthe dog.
I don't know how they come upwith it or what their formula is
, but let's say they tell thecurrent handler hey, great, you
get to keep your dog.
But the dog is a patrol trainedattack dog.
(19:22):
That's a Belgian Malinois,that's absolutely toy crazy and
military member.
Handler number one has a smallchild at home that's not going
to work.
So many times that handler willpass that dog to another
handler and a lot of times theyhave agreements between them.
They come see the dog wheneverthey want to, and so it works
(19:43):
out well for everybody.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
That's so great.
That's so great.
Along those lines do you have?
We've all seen, you know, thebeautiful, heartwarming videos
of a dog being reunited withtheir handler.
That brings most of us to tearswhen we come across them.
Do you have any story that youwould like to share like a
heartwarming story of a dogthat's?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
been reunited.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
I'm sure you have a million.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I've got one of them, and this was a little, very,
very short video clip.
You can probably find it onYouTube.
It's military working dog,attila A-T-I-L-A.
Beautiful Czech Shepherd, andAttila hadn't seen her handler
or his handler, jd, in severalmonths, and they were reunited
(20:32):
up at O'Hare in Chicago and whenhe saw Attila from across the
airport, he started squealing,making this goofy sound and
noise.
She ripped away from Kristen,my partner, and went flying over
to him.
So that was excellent.
I really enjoyed that one.
(20:54):
And the American Association ofRetired Persons, arp.
They keep wanting me to join.
I'm of age, but I resist.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
I don't know that I need to necessarily meet them.
Isn't 50 age now with the AARP,when you turn 50?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, they start bugging you and you start
getting the hearing aid ads at51,.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
I think.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
But they did a great video feature on one of our
female Army handlers, angela Herlast name is Neil and we
reunited her with her militaryworking dog, zoltan
S-Z-U-L-T-A-N.
And there's a video on YouTubeby AARP done believe it was last
(21:37):
November or November 2022, thatyou can go back and see.
It's beautiful.
We've done 654 reunions to thispoint and all of them are
somewhat special.
That's so great.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
I'll definitely put the links.
I'll try to find those videosand I'll put the links in the
show notes to those.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Back to the adopters.
So if the handlers, forwhatever reason, cannot take on
the dog and you are putting thedog out for public adoption,
what are some of the some morethings that people need to know
they need to be prepared for?
We covered it a little bit.
Do they need to have previousbreed experience?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
No well, they just need to be able to handle a
larger animal, got it?
In other words again, if you'reMr Casper Milk Toast and you
know you struggle to open doorsfor people in the supermarket,
you probably don't want to adopta working dog.
They need to not have a lot ofother animals in their home.
(22:38):
Most working dogs are notfriendly with other dogs,
especially they don't wantanother dominant dog in the
house.
That's a recipe for disaster.
Make sure of that Again.
Space for the dog.
We don't want a dog that's leftoutside.
If your idea of owning ananimal is to put it outside and
(23:00):
just go say hi to it every oncein a while, don't ask to adopt.
We have adoption coordinators.
They have a way of finding outeverything.
We adopt our dogs to the bestcandidates out there.
We have several hundredapplications at any one time and
these two ladies work theirtails off going through them to
get our dogs the best homepossible.
(23:21):
The only thing we charge foradoptions.
We have a $300 fee andbasically it doesn't even cover
the cost of what we spend onthem.
We ask for it for the neuter inthe space because male dogs are
intact when they come here, andalthough I call my partners the
ball taggers, there is a validreason for neuters.
(23:45):
Less cancers result of it, andyou may have other issues that
are significantly less.
As a male, I still want toprotest.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It's a complicated issue.
We've covered a lot.
Is there anything else that youwant people to know about
Mission Canine Rescue and how wecan support them?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I'll tell you a little bit about the supporting
issue.
As I mentioned, $0.93 out ofevery dollar goes to our work,
which is pretty unheard of.
We are really no profit.
Nobody rides first class,nobody has fancy cars.
My partners do hard workingfemales in their 50s that travel
the roads and transport vanswith these dogs, taking them
(24:30):
wherever and all over the world.
To get military working dogshome and Korea, spain, italy
with dogs in just past threemonths, this year especially, we
need to build a new kennelfacility.
Our initial kennel was built in2016 down in Magnolia.
We need to reside it because,due to the humidity and the
(24:53):
weather in Houston, we've gotsome rusting along our bottom
panels and we want to alleviatethat re-water proof but, in
addition, build a new structureto handle up to 40 more dogs.
People always ask us to do more.
We try to do so as we havefunding.
As with any non-profit, it'snature is to have its hands
stuck out.
(25:13):
You know we want your money,but we want to come by your
money honestly and at this timeI can tell you that we
appreciate anything somebodywould reach out and want to
donate to us for fundraising forour kennel.
We have six mind detection dogsthat are over in Bosnia right
now.
We need to bring them home.
(25:33):
It's about $20,000 in cost andwe have several military working
dogs to reunite with handlers.
Those costs vary between athousand to seven thousand
dollars depending on where thedog comes from and how we have
to get them.
Here.
You can see most of our recentwork on Facebook.
We're Mission K9 and ourwebsite, where people can donate
(25:56):
if they choose to or apply foradoption, is missionk9rescueorg.
It's a letter K than numbernine and I'm available.
If anybody wants to chat, theycan reach out.
Our 990 is public information.
You get that from the IRS andwe're well-rated.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
What about that cool sweatshirt you're wearing?
Is that on your website?
Is that part of the Mission K9Rescue?
I love that pressure.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
No, we do this several times a year.
We'll have t-shirt, campaigns,hats, and next time we do people
can buy them and it helps uswith that as well.
That's great.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Well, thank you, Bob.
I really appreciate you jumpingon and having this conversation
.
Thank you for all theincredible work that you do and
that you continue to do to helpthese dogs and the people that
love them as well.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Thank you.
I appreciate the chance to beon your podcast and if you need
to know anything else, justreach out.
And thank you again.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Thanks, Bob.
Well, first of all, thank you so much for popping on
and having this chat with me.
One of the visions, or thevision for my podcast is to kind
of create awareness around allthings dog, and one of the
things that we haven't chattedabout are working dogs.
Dogs that you know worktirelessly, you know, in the
military or police canines, eventhe dogs that we see at the
(00:22):
airport, you know, like the TSAdogs, and I think that we're
definitely not thinking aboutwhat happens to these dogs when
they can no longer perform thetasks that are required of them
or when they're ready to retire.
Right, and you, bob, are theco-founder of an incredible
nonprofit Mission, canine Rescue, whose mission is to let's hope
(00:45):
that I can get this rightrescue, re-home, rehabilitate
and repair.
Are we missing one?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yes, and re-home reunite yes.
Rescue reunite, repair, re-homerehabilitate.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
We're tired working dogs.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Exactly Five of them, the big five R's.
My co-founder came up with that.
I am not responsible for thefailure or success of you
remembering it.
I have to check myselfsometimes.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, it's a lot.
It's a lot, but it's amazingwork that you do.
So I do have some notes andsome questions for you, but I
would love for you to just jumpin and really tell us about
Mission Canine Rescue and theincredible work that they're
doing for our working dogs.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Just briefly I'll give you a little description.
I'll also give you our 10-yearstatistics of this point, since
we've operated for 10 years now.
We're a rescue located justnorth of Houston in Magnolia,
texas.
We adopt out entirely all overthe USA.
There's no restriction to that.
(01:50):
We brought dogs in from everycorner of the world.
In 10 years we've rescued 642working dogs.
Now these were either militaryworking dogs without handlers or
contract working dogs, tsa dogs, things like that, and we have
(02:10):
rescued another 654.
So that's 1,300 roughly totalthat we've reunited with their
former handlers.
And in 10 years we've paid.
I think we've just bumped over$2 million in veterinary care
payments and all of that isusing 93 cents out of every
dollar we're donated by thepublic.
(02:32):
Torner work.
We don't waste money and we tryto do right by our donors.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
That's fantastic.
Well, let's first start off bytalking about what a working dog
is.
What does a working dog looklike?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Let's go over the gamut on where the working dogs
come from.
They come from law enforcementpolice canines.
They come from TSA, which arenormally explosive detection,
single-purpose canines.
Some are drug detection, butnot too many we rescue well,
(03:09):
actually we're not rescuing them.
These contractors are very kind.
They retire their dogs veryearly.
Agricultural pest detectiondogs these are dogs that run in
orchards and they're trained todetect citrus pests and when
they find a tree that's diseasedwith the pest they will alert
so the orchard owner can removethat tree instead of the disease
(03:32):
eating up the entire orchard.
So we've got dogs that do bedbug detection.
We have currency detection dogsthat can literally find money.
I want one of those.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I wouldn't mind one of those.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
I've got a patrol canine yeah, I've got a patrol
canine from Canada.
All he does is wants to eatpeople and he finds me drugs
from time to time.
Other than that, he's kind ofworthless.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I will not tell him he did that.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
And then, of course, a contract working dog.
People here military workingdog, contract working dog.
Contract working dog is simplya privately owned working dog,
probably trained just the sameas a military Same tasks, same
kind of work but just not ownedby the government.
And of course, you're militaryworking dogs owned by the
government.
Government property can have upto five handlers in their
(04:22):
career.
Government decides whichhandler the dog can retire with.
They were routinely euthanizeduntil 2009 when a law preventing
that was passed, and we cantalk about that later.
But the most common breachyou'll see for working with dogs
these days the one the topsmall is a Belgian Malinois.
(04:45):
We call them the velociraptorof the German shepherd family
Very fast, very lighter weightthan shepherds, less prone to
hip dysplasia and other issues,plus their borderline psycho
which helps when they're patroldogs.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
They're like German shepherds on speed.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, exactly.
And then we have LabradorRetrievers, german shepherds, we
have some German shorthairedpointers as well as Springer's
panels, and Labrador Retrieverswork for TSA.
What do you suppose TSA usesthem?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Good question.
That's a trick question.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
No, it's not.
It's very straightforward.
Why would they use a lab, aGerman shorthaired pointer or
whatever else Springer's spanielover, say, a shepherd or a
Malinois?
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Offhand, I would say, because people are often scared
of shepherds, and Malin was.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
You just won the prize.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
They're not scary looking Okay, got it.
That makes sense.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
They get the job done and the public says, oh,
there's a cute dog, I want a pet.
I always keep a couple oflittle dog treats and my pocket
drives them crazy.
They hate me when I go to theairport and then we have
military working dogs.
Those are your breeds that wejust went through.
(06:20):
I've heard of dogs as small asJack Russell Terriers that have
been trained for use onsubmarines for drug searches
back in the day because theycould get in the little nooks
and crannies, tight spaces.
Also some little dogs that getin tunnels where bigger dogs
can't.
But that's kind of the gamut onthe breeds we see.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Wow, that.
When is a dog of retirement ageand what are some of those
qualifications?
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Unfortunately, what it looks like for the military
is when the dog loses work driveor is injured.
We'd love to see dogs mandatoryaged out at eight years old.
That way they have some shot atan eight year retirement.
Most of them are only going toget six of that before they pass
.
We see a lot of cancer inworking dogs because of the
(07:11):
compounds they're exposed to,because of the things that are
used to clean their kennels.
We see a lot of eye lingering,eye problems, disease issues
from heavy bleach basedcleansers and that.
But unfortunately it's workdrive determines that.
We've taken a dog from themilitary that was 12 years old.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
But the dog still had work, drive Live six months
into retirement.
Thank you, all for saying thatWow?
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah, because you think about shepherds and I
don't know.
I know many shepherds.
I have a few that I care for,but I don't know, I don't know.
I've met a few Belgian alimans,but I know shepherds have hip
issues and hip dysplasia andwhen they get to be that age, I
mean it's just like they're someof them, a lot of them that
I've known they're barelyfunctioning.
Those hips are just not workingpast nine.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
We've done hip replacements on shepherds.
Wow, now any vet care thesedogs need when they come to us.
They get it because militaryworking dogs or contract working
dogs, when they retire, theirhealthcare is retired as well.
They get nothing from thegovernment or their contractors
and we're helping cosponsor abill with a congressman.
(08:25):
This is the second shot at itsince 2018 of getting the
government to agree that,because military dogs have
served, you know they havewhatever they've gotten, they've
gotten it because of theirservice that they should be
cared for and non-profits thatare spending their money wisely
meaning 70% or more on theirwork and being able to show
(08:48):
what's going to veterinary billsNot some of these places that
contact every dead person bymail within 200 miles.
You know, with a newsletter,farming with it would make me
angry as a donor to send, say,$100 to help with the dog
surgery and find out they use itfor marketing, absolutely yeah.
It's just not the thing to do.
You know I use seven cents outof every dollar to market
(09:11):
organization.
I think that's frugal andnobody's fussed at me yet.
So we'll see Now.
I went on a tangent aboutspending and I probably just
kind of forgot your question, sotell them home me back in.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
What was my question?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
My question was retirement age.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Retirement age.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, yeah, no healthcare.
We see a lot of cancers inolder dogs, we see joint issues,
we see a lot of TPLO surgeriesum distory and we see,
unfortunately, some PTSD andpeople ask us well, how do you
fix a PTSD?
You don't.
You just learn what triggers itand how to avoid those triggers
(09:50):
and the dog will have a muchbetter life.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
You learn how to manage it.
So there's there's no benefitsfor these dogs, there's no
military benefits for these dogswhatsoever.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Nothing, nothing.
You don't have their handler orthe adopter.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, totally, and it's wrong.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, absolutely.
This should be something thatthe military or the government
pays for, especially with, youknow, the military working dogs.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, but instead two million dollars over 10 years
of money.
At least half of that shouldhave been government funded
because it went to the care ofmilitary working dogs that were
retired even though they wereveterinarily sound.
When they retired they stillhad joint, she still had
arthritis, they still hadpanacea lots of things that were
(10:35):
going to cost money for therest of their lives.
Senior vet care for canines isabout a thousand a year just for
basics.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
So how do people contact when a dog is ready to
retire?
How do they find you?
Does the government seek youout, or are you seeking out dogs
that are ready to be retired?
And then how do you get themover here?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Ten years into it, the handlers know who we are and
what we do, and when their dogis being dispositioned as what's
called excess, then the handlerreaches out to say, hey, my
dog's getting disposed, he's atFort Leonard Wood or he's over
in Bob brain or, let's say, inGuam, you know, can you help us
(11:23):
get him home?
The answer is never no.
It's always yes, because wehave difficulty funding for
veterinary care, which makes mesad, because everybody wants the
dogs to come home and then theywant somebody else to pay for
their vet care.
That's why I'm so hyped up ongetting this bill passed, where
government actually funds someof their own issues.
(11:45):
But they will reach out to usand we'll contact their kennel
master wherever they are andfind out if the military is
going to help it all with thetransport Sometimes.
Back in 2016, obama signed aportion of the National Defense
Authorization Act that within anincluded clause that military
dogs retired overseas would goback to American soil, and they
(12:09):
at that time got around it bycalling forward operating bases
to American soil.
So until 2021, we didn't see abit of help.
But then one day we weresurprised when they put three
retiring dogs in a rotatorflight that was going to Seattle
.
So even though we had to getthem across the country, that
was $6,000 apiece that we didn'thave to pay to get them back
(12:34):
from Japan.
So they're helping now somewhat.
Some they're not helping at all.
If it's stateside, forget itRight.
You know we have to go get thedog where the dog is, and a lot
of people say, well, why don'tthe handlers just go get their
own dog if it's stateside?
They're working, they don'thave the funds, they're not able
to take the time off, and it'ssomething I feel, it's a debt I
feel that we owe to them toreunite them with someone that
(12:57):
was a vital part of theirmilitary career.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Absolutely.
This is something that that canhelp support.
You know we talk aboutsupporting the health and
wellness and the mental healthof our, of our veterans.
Having your, the dog that youwere working with and going
through all of these experienceswith you know it can provide
some sort of of comfort andsupport to at least be at least
(13:22):
be helping get the hand havingthe handlers get their own dogs
back right.
They should at least be helpingwith that part, correct?
So now are the hand the dogsare going directly to the
handlers, do they have to gothrough a rehabilitation process
?
Or they just do, or they justgo just back to their handler
and that's where they're going.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, no, when.
When we get a dog from themilitary, normally we will
reunite that dog immediatelywith a handler, Unless, for some
reason, the handler is, youknow, finishing up his service
somewhere and he's having apermanent change of station.
Then we might keep the dog fora month or two if they need to.
Most of those are immediate,the dogs that require most of
(13:58):
our heavy duty work or contractworking dogs.
When they come back to us,they're not always medically fit
.
We have to get them healthy.
They need to learn how to be athome, how to, you know, be in a
ranch house, how to be aroundother people.
We need to test them to see howthey are with other dogs, other
(14:19):
other animals in general.
Are they fence aggressive orthey food aggressive or the
crate aggressive?
A lot of that's going to tell uswho is qualified to adopt them,
and we evaluate all thesethings and we give them whatever
they need to make them suitablefor adoption to the public.
And people ask us well, do Ihave to be a handler to adopt a
(14:41):
dog?
No, you don't.
You just have to be able to beable to pardon me, be able to
physically control the dog.
In other words, if you're 90years old and four foot eight,
please don't want to adopt ahundred pound German Shepherd.
It's not going to happen.
Be able to afford the cost ofcare and we want them to have
(15:03):
time for a dog.
Yeah, if you work all day, ifnobody's home, don't adopt a
working dog, please.
A Belgian Malinois will eatyour house.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I guarantee it, they require a lot of mental and
physical exercise.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
No, my, my shepherd is with me Probably 20 out of 24
hours a day because he just youknow he wants to go and he
doesn't care where he is, hejust wants to be there, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
And that's that.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
And the vision is you know, I was reading that you
your goal is to retire thesedogs.
They're not going to come backand work with someone.
You want them to live a happy,healthy, family-oriented or, you
know, relaxed life right.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Right, that is part of our adoption criteria is
these dogs cannot be worked.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Period.
We get a lot of people will.
I want to get a police caninefor my protection.
Uh-uh, Get a young dog.
You know, don't ask Grandpa tofight for you.
Grandpa may win, but he's goingto carry scars from the battle
that you may never see.
But you know, we just don'twant that for our dogs, Right.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, so you know we have scars.
What are some of the?
You touched on a little bitsome of the issues that may crop
up with some of the dogs thathave been, you know, out in the
field and then come home.
But what are some of the thingsthat you see?
You know that you said PTSD.
How does that show up?
How does that look like in ourdogs?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
It can look like terror, or it can look like
aggression, or it can just looklike indecision, where a dog can
go to stick his head in thecorner yeah, frozen.
We do not really want to lack ofinteraction and we try to
determine what caused the dog todo that and then you know, do
(16:57):
our best to not repeat it andjust see you know what's up with
it.
Medical issues as I said, wesee a lot of lymphoma, we see a
lot of sarcoma, we see a lot ofnasty, nasty blood cancer.
My own dog passed from an ohhemangiosarcoma.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yes, my dog just had that.
He just had, but he had thesubcutaneous kind, so it showed
up in his skin and not in his,like his organs.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Okay, make sure to check him, because they got it
out of her spleen and then,after being fine for two months
later on experimental treatment,it had there was lesion in her
gut, that burst, and basicallyshe bled out.
There was nothing anybody coulddo about it, Is it really
really scary?
Now, I'm not trying to terrifypeople that might want to adopt
(17:49):
a dog.
So oh, your dog's going to getcancer.
Some of them don't butunderstand that these are senior
dogs.
A lot of dogs get variouscancers.
Many of them are very treatable.
There's a good quality of life.
But unfortunately, if you adoptthe dog, you'd be responsible
for the cost of that care and wewould expect you to provide the
(18:11):
care.
Now, can you ask, go fund mefor help, sure, but let's get
the dog surgery needs.
And if we're in a position tohelp, which we're very often not
after dogs adopted, becausemany times we have to pull from
transport funds and keep dogswaiting overseas to pay for
needed medical care for dogs inour care at that time.
(18:33):
So we just encourage ourdoctors to be able to afford the
cost of care if and when it'sneeded.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And then we're moving into this understanding that
they're caring for a senior dogand they are there to help the
senior dog live out theremaining years in peace right.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Correct, that's correct no-transcript.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
So you were saying that handlers have the first
dibs on there?
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yes, yes, the government determines which of
up to five handlers should adoptthe dog.
I don't know how they come upwith it or what their formula is
, but let's say they tell thecurrent handler hey, great, you
get to keep your dog.
But the dog is a patrol trainedattack dog.
(19:22):
That's a Belgian Malinois,that's absolutely toy crazy and
military member.
Handler number one has a smallchild at home that's not going
to work.
So many times that handler willpass that dog to another
handler and a lot of times theyhave agreements between them.
They come see the dog wheneverthey want to, and so it works
(19:43):
out well for everybody.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
That's so great.
That's so great.
Along those lines do you have?
We've all seen, you know, thebeautiful, heartwarming videos
of a dog being reunited withtheir handler.
That brings most of us to tearswhen we come across them.
Do you have any story that youwould like to share like a
heartwarming story of a dogthat's?
Speaker 2 (20:04):
been reunited.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
I'm sure you have a million.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I've got one of them, and this was a little, very,
very short video clip.
You can probably find it onYouTube.
It's military working dog,attila A-T-I-L-A.
Beautiful Czech Shepherd, andAttila hadn't seen her handler
or his handler, jd, in severalmonths, and they were reunited
(20:32):
up at O'Hare in Chicago and whenhe saw Attila from across the
airport, he started squealing,making this goofy sound and
noise.
She ripped away from Kristen,my partner, and went flying over
to him.
So that was excellent.
I really enjoyed that one.
(20:54):
And the American Association ofRetired Persons, arp.
They keep wanting me to join.
I'm of age, but I resist.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
I don't know that I need to necessarily meet them.
Isn't 50 age now with the AARP,when you turn 50?
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, they start bugging you and you start
getting the hearing aid ads at51,.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
I think.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
But they did a great video feature on one of our
female Army handlers, angela Herlast name is Neil and we
reunited her with her militaryworking dog, zoltan
S-Z-U-L-T-A-N.
And there's a video on YouTubeby AARP done believe it was last
(21:37):
November or November 2022, thatyou can go back and see.
It's beautiful.
We've done 654 reunions to thispoint and all of them are
somewhat special.
That's so great.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
I'll definitely put the links.
I'll try to find those videosand I'll put the links in the
show notes to those.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Back to the adopters.
So if the handlers, forwhatever reason, cannot take on
the dog and you are putting thedog out for public adoption,
what are some of the some morethings that people need to know
they need to be prepared for?
We covered it a little bit.
Do they need to have previousbreed experience?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
No well, they just need to be able to handle a
larger animal, got it?
In other words again, if you'reMr Casper Milk Toast and you
know you struggle to open doorsfor people in the supermarket,
you probably don't want to adopta working dog.
They need to not have a lot ofother animals in their home.
(22:38):
Most working dogs are notfriendly with other dogs,
especially they don't wantanother dominant dog in the
house.
That's a recipe for disaster.
Make sure of that Again.
Space for the dog.
We don't want a dog that's leftoutside.
If your idea of owning ananimal is to put it outside and
(23:00):
just go say hi to it every oncein a while, don't ask to adopt.
We have adoption coordinators.
They have a way of finding outeverything.
We adopt our dogs to the bestcandidates out there.
We have several hundredapplications at any one time and
these two ladies work theirtails off going through them to
get our dogs the best homepossible.
(23:21):
The only thing we charge foradoptions.
We have a $300 fee andbasically it doesn't even cover
the cost of what we spend onthem.
We ask for it for the neuter inthe space because male dogs are
intact when they come here, andalthough I call my partners the
ball taggers, there is a validreason for neuters.
(23:45):
Less cancers result of it, andyou may have other issues that
are significantly less.
As a male, I still want toprotest.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It's a complicated issue.
We've covered a lot.
Is there anything else that youwant people to know about
Mission Canine Rescue and how wecan support them?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I'll tell you a little bit about the supporting
issue.
As I mentioned, $0.93 out ofevery dollar goes to our work,
which is pretty unheard of.
We are really no profit.
Nobody rides first class,nobody has fancy cars.
My partners do hard workingfemales in their 50s that travel
the roads and transport vanswith these dogs, taking them
(24:30):
wherever and all over the world.
To get military working dogshome and Korea, spain, italy
with dogs in just past threemonths, this year especially, we
need to build a new kennelfacility.
Our initial kennel was built in2016 down in Magnolia.
We need to reside it because,due to the humidity and the
(24:53):
weather in Houston, we've gotsome rusting along our bottom
panels and we want to alleviatethat re-water proof but, in
addition, build a new structureto handle up to 40 more dogs.
People always ask us to do more.
We try to do so as we havefunding.
As with any non-profit, it'snature is to have its hands
stuck out.
(25:13):
You know we want your money,but we want to come by your
money honestly and at this timeI can tell you that we
appreciate anything somebodywould reach out and want to
donate to us for fundraising forour kennel.
We have six mind detection dogsthat are over in Bosnia right
now.
We need to bring them home.
(25:33):
It's about $20,000 in cost andwe have several military working
dogs to reunite with handlers.
Those costs vary between athousand to seven thousand
dollars depending on where thedog comes from and how we have
to get them.
Here.
You can see most of our recentwork on Facebook.
We're Mission K9 and ourwebsite, where people can donate
(25:56):
if they choose to or apply foradoption, is missionk9rescueorg.
It's a letter K than numbernine and I'm available.
If anybody wants to chat, theycan reach out.
Our 990 is public information.
You get that from the IRS andwe're well-rated.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
What about that cool sweatshirt you're wearing?
Is that on your website?
Is that part of the Mission K9Rescue?
I love that pressure.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
No, we do this several times a year.
We'll have t-shirt, campaigns,hats, and next time we do people
can buy them and it helps uswith that as well.
That's great.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Well, thank you, Bob.
I really appreciate you jumpingon and having this conversation
.
Thank you for all theincredible work that you do and
that you continue to do to helpthese dogs and the people that
love them as well.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Thank you.
I appreciate the chance to beon your podcast and if you need
to know anything else, justreach out.
And thank you again.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Thanks, Bob.
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