September 14, 2025 • 34 mins
Can you imagine running an open-admissions city municipal shelter that has over 500 dogs in a facility built for 235 dogs? That is the job that Steve Kozachik has – Director of Animal Services at PACC, Pima Animal Care Center. And did I mention that there are currently 800 dogs in foster care? And there are 600 cats in foster care. That’s a lot to manage! Hear some of Steve’s hopes, dreams, and frustrations with the situation at this – and many national shelters. The system may be broken, but some small changes are making a huge difference in the lives of shelter animals. Little programs like read to the dogs, take a dog overnight for a pajama party, take a dog out for lunch – a burger, an ice-cream, or a hike in the mountains. Hear some hard truths, but also some exciting possible ideas to improve the quality of life for all shelter animals.
EPISODE NOTES: A Shelter Director Speaks
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EPISODE NOTES: A Shelter Director Speaks
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-human-animal-connection-pet-life-radio-original--6669311/support.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is pet Life Radio. Let's talk pats. Welcome to
the Human Animal Connection Show, where we believe we can
communicate with all animals. Join us as we explore the
thirty three principles and healing methods of the Human Animal Connection.
As animal lovers, we know that you share our commitment
(00:22):
to making the world a kinder place for all creatures. Together,
let's embrace the transformative healing power of the Human Animal Connection.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hello everyone, welcome to the Human Animal Connection Podcast. I'm
your host, Jeanie Joseph Anna have a really fun interview
for you today. I'm going to be speaking with Steve
Kozatrik and he is the new director of Animal Services
at Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson, Arizona. So, Pima
(00:52):
Animal Care Center is the municipal shelter, which means it's
what's called open admissions. That means any dog that come in,
basically you have to take them. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Pretty much? It We were kind of managed, didn't take basis.
But yeah, I mean if somebody insists that we take
their animal, then we take their animal.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Okay, great. So this is the updated shelter. I remember
the old days when it was the old shelter, but
this is the updated shelter, and the shelter was built
for what was it, two hundred and thirty dogs?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Is that wellroughly two thirty five?
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Yeah, yeah, two thirty five dogs, And just a little
weather report, how many dogs do you have there today?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
We have about five hundred and thirty five.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Five hundred and thirty five and a shelter built for
two hundred and thirty five. So this is I think
everybody listening knows what that means. It's a pretty rough situation.
And this is not just your shelter seen We're seeing
this nationally. These kinds of numbers really the census going
up everywhere. What are some of your thoughts about why
we're in such a crisis nationally?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
We have a we have a situation right now where
people are not spaying and urting their animals, they are
not confining their animals, they're not vaccinating their animals, licensing,
micro chipping, it's all of the above. And so it's
not a Tucson problem, it's a as you said, it's
a national problem. And so what we're what we're challenged
(02:16):
with doing is educating the public that you know, we
we simply cannot continue to take dogs and cats at
the same cadence. By the way, the cats are also
in his shure, it's not nearly as significant as the dogs,
but we're over one hundred and ten cats right now
as well, so that is spread on the vergic kitten
(02:36):
season right So our challenge is how do we manage
how do we manage a community problem? Being the only
open admission shelter in the ninety two hundred square miles
of p MC County. Wow Humane Society, some of the
other nonprofits, the rescues, they can shut their door, they
can say, you know, there's no room at the inn.
(03:00):
We don't have that luxury right And there are others
some other other constraints that I'm generally tear challenging right now,
and that is as an open admission shelter, can we
charge for for intake? Can we charge for owner surrenders,
or can we charge when someone shows up and they
want to turn in astray? Sort of sort of a
(03:20):
double edged sore, if you know, if we start charging
for them, then just going to abandon them and they'll
wind up coming in the back door for our Animal
Protection Service team as a hit by car right, So,
so it's a it's a kind of a multi pronged problem. Yeah,
not unique to us, but certainly nobody quite has figured
out what that magic bullet looks.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Like yet, right, really complicated situation, and I think everybody
there is, you know, doing the best that they can
to give the animals best care that's possible. But it's
just inherently you know, you're you're fighting an uphill battle here. Well,
what are some of the things. I know you've started
a new program of giving away leashes to homeless people,
(04:02):
I think, or tell a little.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, it's even more than just homeless people. We have
I mentioned our Animal Protection Service, our APS, and if
that's our enforcement team, they are out in the community
enforcing cruelty, neglect, boarding situations, people beating their dogs, people
not feeding their dogs or cats, primarily dogs in this case.
(04:27):
And so we have an APS team that right now
I mentioned ninety two hundred square miles. Our APS unity
has eighteen eighteen officers working three shifts a day to
monitor all ninety two hundred square miles. Needless to say,
they're not going to get to every call that comes in,
and they're going to prioritize those calls. We have about
(04:48):
seventeen hundred calls on our backlog right now, seventeen hundred
that we are not getting to.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Nine hundred of those are simply off leash calls. There
there's some people people in pick your Park, people in
Himmel Park, with people in Reed Park, they're walking their
dogs off leash. Well, Genie, we're not going to get
to those calls. We're out chasing cruelty and neglect and
hoarding and all the much more high priority calls. And
so what we did in response to try to address
(05:17):
those calls, because they're not nothing on the just not
huge priorities, that I've formed a an auxiliary volunteer APS
unit whose charge is to go into parks and to
approach people not with a heavy hand, with an educational focus,
saying that here's a leash lop. Can we offer you
(05:38):
a leash or collar. Here's some treats for your dog,
here's some activity books for your kids to play with.
Here's a food, here's a water dish for your for
your dog. You know, kind of and we're expanding it. Also,
I've gotten some local businesses to step up and offer
gift cards. So the people who are doing it right right,
So it's not simply a matter of let's go find
(05:59):
the the people who are running their dogs off leash.
If somebody is doing it right, here's here's a gift
card for two movie tickets to a roadhouse theater, or
here's a fifty dollars gift card for Corbett's or whatever
it is. So we're trying to educate the public in
that manner by offering these incentives and letting them know
that it is the law. You Also, the part of
(06:22):
a message is that it's not that your dog might
be aggressive or it might run up and bite somebody.
But number one, you're potentially liable if your soft fluffy
goes up and starts playing with some person and it's
an elderly personally accidentally knocks the person over because they're
playing too hard and the person breaks a hip. That's
(06:43):
your civil responsibility and you could be cited for that. Yeah,
but we're trying to let people know. But to your point,
we are giving away the you know, the leashes when
people need them. If we find homeless people in the parks,
and it's not uncommon that we find that, yes, we
will give them provisions not only for themselves but also
(07:03):
for their animals, because we want to make sure the
animals are well cared for and that they're not running
a large.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Mm hmm yeah right, great, okay, great program. So I
know the situation is very complex and there's no simple answers,
but if you could wave your wand what would be
one thing that you would do, like if you could,
you know, not just starting from the current situation that
we're in, but what would you do to change the
shelter system? I know the community, you've mentioned what you know,
(07:30):
the changes that need to happen in people's understanding about
responsibilities with animals. But what would you do in terms
of the shelter system to redesign it if you could
start over.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
First of all, I've had people suggest why don't you
just build more kennels? The challenges if you build it,
they will come. You know, our problem is not that
pack was designed inappropriately or we don't have the right
number of kennels. Our problem is out in the community.
It's outside the four walls of this place. I would
(08:00):
if we can start waving magic wands, it's that people
appropriately spay and new to their animals. It's a matter
of getting rid of backyard breeders. Yeah, it's a matter
of shutting down puppy mills and making sure that when
retail establishments are sourcing their animals, they're doing it through
either shelters or rescues. Those are just a few a
(08:24):
few examples of where we are systemically broken. When I
was on the I served for fifteen years on the
Tucson City Council, and about ten years ago we adopted
a puppy mill ordinance, and the gist of it was,
if you're going to sell animals at a retail level,
and we have some retail stores here a pet stores
(08:45):
in town that are that are selling selling dogs and
cats and everything else, you have to source those dogs
through either a shelter or a rescue. That was such
a non partisan issue, yes, that I had a very
very far right wing and a very far far left
wing radio talk show hosts who in alternate universes would compete.
(09:08):
They were totally aligned with this, and this is about
the animals, it's about animal welfare. It's about the fact
that puppy mills treat these animals horribly, and so they
were supportive. Yeah, what happened is that we adopted that
puppy mill ordinance here in the city of Tucson, and
the owner of a retail pet store here in Tucson
(09:29):
went and started lobbying the state legislature and was able
to get state law which preempts local jurisdictions from adopting
puppy mill ordinances, and so ours was in effect for
probably thirty six hours, and all of a sudden it
was rendered moot of the state legislature.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
So another another change you're asking about change is getting
state legislatures nationally educated or the federal legislative Federal Congress
educated nationally that puppy mails are a real thing. They
are a challenge for the shelter industry because people are
(10:09):
going to stores and paying an exorbitant amount of money
for a dog that they could come to the shelter. Genie,
We're offer an adoption for free writing and so people
can go and pay twelve hundred dollars for a dog
at a retail out letter, they can come in here
and get it for free. So puppy mails are a
real thing. Backyard breeding is a real thing. People. I
was at a We have a nonprofit called Friends of Pack.
(10:33):
They host as a fundraiser. They host a parade annually.
And I was at the parade. People show up with
their dogs and cats and pets, and it's a fundraiser
for Friends of Pack. And I was standing talking to
a guy who had a couple of Saint Bernard's and
this parade and so the beautiful dogs. What your plan
for me? He says, Oh, We're going to get a
couple more litters out of them. And so I'm standing
(10:56):
there thinking, we are at a fundraiser. Our nonprofit is
trying to support the shelter that has a that has
a five hundred and thirty five dogs census right now,
and you're out there breeding Saint Bernard's now, yeah, and
why are they doing that Because they're able to make
twelve or fifteen hundred dollars a dog when they breed
(11:16):
those puppies. So getting legislation that would either curb or
force registering backyard breeders and put a cap on the
number that they can breed before they're forced to alter
the animals, that's another situation. So our problem is out
in the community. Our problem is not that we're we
don't have an effective way to manage the shelter is
(11:38):
that we don't have a community that respects the fact
that just because we're open admission doesn't mean we have
an endless in the supply of kennels, and an endless
supply of staff, and an endless supply of volunteers who
can come in and do the do the due diligence
and due diligence and care for the animals. We also
know the clinic, and the clinic that we have at
(12:02):
PACK is also over stressed. And I know we're coming
up on a break, so I can kind of save
that piece of the story for, you know, for once
we get out of the break.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Yeah, we can. I just want to mentioned about your
foster program. You have about five or six hundred dogs
in foster now at the time that you have five
hundred in the shelter, right, is that correct?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Actually, we have over eight hundred and fifty.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
Wow, eight hundred and fifty dogs in foster.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah. Yeah, we have five hundred and thirty five in
the shelter. We have eight hundred and fifty out in foster.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Cats, we have about one hundred and ten in the
shelter and we have over six hundred out in foster. Wow,
it's an insane number of animals that the Republic has
simply dumped onto the system of figuring that we'll just
figure it out if you add those, you know, eight
hundred and five hundred, we got thirteen fourteen hundred dogs
and we've got about seven hundred shafts within our system. Yeah,
(12:58):
that's what we're trying to mapple. We would absolutely sunk
if we didn't have thus fosters.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Yeah, it's an amazing program, and I think our listeners
if you're in a position to foster, it is such
a beautiful thing to do.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
It can be difficult to not be able to keep
the dog.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
You always have the choice as a foster. You get
first dips if you decide want to keep. I know
we've all had foster fails in our lives, so called
foster fails. But it's very, very rewarding to help a
dog get out of the shelter and just have some
peace and quiet and sweetness and you know, get them
ready for being in a regular home. And also the
notes that a dog might have in a shelter in
(13:38):
a very stressed environment, and you know that might deter
some adopters. But if you can have wonderful notes and say, oh, well,
you know, Harry loves to play, and he sleeps with me,
an he's sweet and and he's that and all this
good stuff, then you can change the course of an
animal's life by being a foster. So we really want
to encourage people to think about that I know stuff.
(14:00):
But maybe some people out there are saying I was
just talking to someone today said it's not sure if
he's ready to have a dog, and said, well, why
don't you just go faster one and see how it
feels to be Because theoretically, what you imagine what would
be like to have a dog, but until you actually
have one, you don't always know. And of course every
dog is different, so you want to just have that experience.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yeah, well, and all of that is correct, and you're
you're very well read on this. The situation here is
that you can foster to adopt. You can take a
dog home overnight. We call them pajama parties. They're just
out of the shelter for twelve eighteen hours and we're
back in. But you're exactly correct. They get out of
(14:41):
this stressed environment where you're sitting crammed in a kennel
with another dog or two and it's a you know,
four y eight kennel. And yeah, the stress, the kennel
stress is a real thing, real thing, and it digs
dogs overtime less and less adoptable. So to the instant
that they can get out out for a day, a weekend,
(15:03):
a week what you pick your time, we are our
foster options are are all over the map to make
it really convenient for people to allow to get to
get an animal out of here. Then we have medical
fosters as well. A lot of times we have our
clinic that treats the animals and they will will put
the animal out into a home with the medications and
(15:25):
with the with the veterinary protocols that they bring it
back to the clinic. Well, we're paying for all the
medical medical care while the thing is in foster and
as well it's being rehabbed. And we have we have
families that are taking these medical fosters. They're saying, look,
I'll take this on while the dog is or cat
is being rehabbed and then when it's whole again, then
(15:46):
we'll we'll put it out for an option. So so
we have a lot of options, and we've got a
great community who stepped up to really help out.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah. I know, I've taken some dogs out for ice cream.
You know, you just take them out for an hour, right,
or you to take them out for burger. So yeah,
there's lots of options. All right, Well, we're going to
take a short little break and then when we come back.
I forgot what we were going to talk about when
we come back, but something good.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I know.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
We'll be right back in just a moment.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
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Speaker 1 (16:49):
Hey friends. If you like what you're hearing and want
to learn more, check out doctor Joseph's book The Human
Animal Connection, Deepening Relationships with animals and ourselves, or visit
the website The Humananimalconnection dot org to book an online consultation.
Thank you for loving animals. Now back to the show.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
Let's talk pets on petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Welcome back to the Human Animal Connection.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
I'm your host, Genie Joseph and I'm.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
The founder of the Human Animal Connection speaking with Steve Kozachik,
and he is the director of animal services at a
big municipal shelter here in Tucson with over five hundred
dogs in the shelter, over eight hundred dogs.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
You said in foster care, it's just such a that's exciting,
so that there are parts of the community that really
care and that are educated and that want to step up.
So that's just really wonderful. And we have helped veterans.
We'll go to the shelter with them if they're looking
for a dog and will help them evaluate the quality
of the because it's really important for people not to
(18:02):
just pick based upon I want a Saint Bernard or
I want a Labrador or something like that, but to
really look at the individual dog and see if it's
a good connection and to help people understand are you
looking for a dog that's going to be your running
buddy or are you looking for a dog that's going
to be your couch potato and make you feel happy
and cuddle all day long. You know, these are questions
(18:23):
that sometimes people adopters don't always think through, but can
make a big difference because if you people go in
looking for, oh, I want this kind of dog, or
this is the one I had when I was a
kid or something, and they might end up with a
dog but looks similar. But the expectations that the person
has and the reality of the dog that can get
a little mixed up. So this is one of the
(18:44):
things that we help people that we work with is
how best to evaluate the connection between the person and
the dog. So I bet you have some fun stories
that are inspiring that keep you going over the rough
days there in a big municipal shelter.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
One of the things that we're trying to do is
to curb our intake fifty seven percent of the dogs
that we take in our strays, and one of the
ways that I'm trying to address that is by I've
distributed some microchip scanners out to some of the Parks
Department administration buildings so that when members of the public
(19:22):
find a dog or a cat that is astray. They
can scan it and they can try and find the
owner on the spot and not even bring it to
the shelter. That's great. Last week, about eight thirty at night,
I got a call from a woman that I've known
for quite a while who works at the local hospital,
and she said, we just found saw a Saint Bernard
(19:43):
walking down Grant Road. And Grant Grant Road is an
arterial here in Tucson. It's a big, big street. So
she said, we checked for a microchip and we found
the owner, but nobody's called us back, so I have
to bring it in to you tomorrow morning. Oh and
I'm thinking, well, we have five hundred and forty dogs here,
we don't need a Saint Bernard. Please. I said, give
(20:07):
me a call in the morning if you still can't
find the owner, and we will will then take it.
It was hard to say, but that's what we're doing here.
We're an open emission shelter. So I called her in
the morning and thankfully they had a microchip worked. The
owner called them. They said they got some contractors working
at their house and the contractor just accidentally left the
(20:31):
gate open. The Saint Bernard decided he'd go off for
a stroll and it turned into a slumber party at
my friend's house. And but back home he is. And
so so please micro chip your animals. It's a story
that is too uncommon. Roughly fifteen percent of the fifty
seven percent of the strays weigan our microchip, Jamie. We're
(20:53):
offering free microchipping through July fourth. Right now. We want
you to chip your animals. We don't want them in
the shelter. That's that's a good news story.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
That is a great news story. I think that's so
important to get those scanners out there, you know, wherever
they can, you know, as many scanners as you can
get out there, because I think everybody's seen that they've
seen a stray dog wandering and not known what to do.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
So and the reality is is that the vast majority
of dogs that go straight, they're within a mile of
their home. And and so it's not that they've they've
strayed and they've walked from Tucson up to Phoenix one
hundred miles away. These are dogs that are close to
home and and they're just out for whatever reason. And
and even if even if it's not a threat that
(21:38):
they can walk, walk and start attacking someone else's animal.
They can get hit by a car. You know, they
can get We have in Tucson we had avelina and
we have other urban wildlife coyotes. They could wind up
getting getting bitten by a rabbit or otherwise urban urban
oil that animal. So there are there are dangers outside
(22:00):
the confines of your yard that we want to make
sure these animals are protected. So there are legitimate reasons
for one on the outside of the shelter for us
wanting to make sure the animals get home. You mentioned
the fosters. Another story that I would share is that
we have a very robust volunteer group here the shelter.
(22:24):
We have five hundred and forty dogs round numbers in
over one hundred cats. We would be sunk without the
volunteers coming in and walking the dogs and spending time
with them, taking the margin to play groups and that
kind of thing, just to decompress them and get them
out of the out of the kennels. One of the
(22:45):
programs that we're going to implement, in fact we have
implemented it's going to kind of come to a crescendo
in a week or so, is a program called Pause
and Pages is for people come out and they simply
sit in front of a kennel and they read to
the dog for four yes minutes. Yes, now it might
sound weird. Oh it's great. It's a great I love
(23:07):
doing it.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
You know, the dogs they just calm right down the
human voice and you know, they don't have to do anything.
The Persson's not asking them to perform or sit or
you know, behave a certain way. They just get a
little bit of human energy. And it's beautiful to see
because sometimes you'll you'll go on the shelter and people
are reading and the whole line is calm, like not
(23:29):
just that, not just the dog that's being read to,
but the neighbor feels good, and the neighbor over there
feels good. It's a beautiful program.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
You really fund so and when you start out, the
dog might be barking at your right up in your
face and vice you say. But by the end of
the session, the dog is making eye contact with you
and just kind of sit and listening. So what we're
going to do is there's a there's an there's a
condition called a phasia. It's a form of dementia that
can also be brought on by blunt force trauma. In
(24:01):
for instance, for our former congressman, when Gabby Giffers was
shot and they head and she lost her ability to
speak and to articulate and to understand the written and
spoken word. Through pretty significant speech therapy, she was that
she's been able to regain much of her speech ability.
(24:21):
That is the blunt trauma kind of aphasia. Another kind
is it's a progressive I mentioned dementia kind of a
condition where it where progressively you lose your ability to speak,
you lose your ability to read, to understand the spoken
a written word. So what we have is a group
of aphasia, members of a local group friends of Aphasia,
(24:43):
and I've got Gabby Giffert's speech therapists working with a
group of eight of them right now and they will
they're working on books, lower level books that they are planning.
They're learning to read the book and next Thursday they're
going to be coming in and do a pause and
pages just with this Aphasia group. Yeah, it'll be so
(25:05):
cool to see this group of people who is struggling
to articulate the word. For instance, one of the this
is a twenty five year old woman who had a stroke.
The book she chose is the Doctor Seuss book Hop
on Pop. In her first session with the speech therapist,
she couldn't At the beginning of the session, she couldn't
(25:27):
articulate any of the words. At the end of the
first session she was able to say hop and pop.
So she's working on them. By the time she gets
down here after eight weeks, she'll be able to maybe
read that book to the dogs. It'll be such a
cool experience for the for the Aphasia people, and the
(25:47):
dogs will be sitting there totally ungent, nonjudgmental. Right, and okay,
you stumbled over that word, but that's ca yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Okay, as long as I hear your hosts and they
feel your energy and your heart, and you know, in
a shelter environment there's such a need for a moment
of individual human to dog attention. And I know the
volunteers are doing great job. But the volunteers at Packer
like they're like the Marines. They they're going to get
their dogs walked. You know, you don't want to get
(26:17):
in the way of It's really it's really beautiful to
see the level of volunteering that goes on at the
shelter and just to see how much change is possible
by but by just giving a dog some very individual,
gentle attention. It's love, you know, it changes the person,
(26:39):
it changes the dog, it changes the shelter well.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
And here's our challenge is that it's Tucson, it's over
one hundred degrees outside, it's sellar. A lot of our
volunteers are snowbirds. They're winter visitors. Ah, they're here from
Minnesota between September and January, and then they're back in
Minnesota or pick you know, outside of the winter months.
(27:05):
So they're avoiding our so we are avoiding our heat.
So right now we are down. We are short volunteers.
We need more volunteers to you know, to sit and
do the things that you just mentioned, as far as
the you know, walk on their dogs, get them out
of the kennle, taking the plague of breed to them.
And so we're short on volunteers. And one of the
reasons this is important is because the dogs need to
(27:28):
get out of the kennels or the can. The kennel
sash is a real thing we have right now, Like
I mentioned, about five hundred and forty dogs, we have
over fifty dogs right now that have been in the
shelter for over one hundred days. Wow, that's three plus month.
That's fifty two dogs that have been sitting in that
kennel for one hundred days or longer. Now, that simply
(27:51):
makes the dog less and less adoptable. The stress. The
stress amps up, the reactivity amps up the ability to
get that dog into a home where it's where it's
in air quotes, true personality can shine. They may have
lost that true personality. Seventy five days ago after being
stuck in a shelter, I ran some numbers on length
(28:18):
of stay and our outcomes. In the month of Mark
and the month of May, we adopted or returned to
owner almost seven hundred dogs in the first twenty days
that they were here. That's the first twenty days. In
the last well say, from ninety days on, we adopted
(28:39):
out fewer than fifty. And so it just demonstrates that
the longer they hear, the less adoptable they get. And
that even really highlights the notion that our volunteers getting
them out of the cannels and into a situation where
they can really decompress is really critical. We have another
partner here in Tucson called On Rescue Now it's located
(29:03):
at It's located at Grant and Swan. It's a shopping
center and it's a woman named Bonnie who used to
be a pack employee, so she witnessed firsthand what the
what the shelter was like, and what she has done.
She has opened up a retail store where she will
take eight to ten of our animals out Thursday, Friday,
(29:25):
Saturday and Sunday for six hours a day, get them
into that environment, out of the shelter and let people
come and see them and interact with them in a
different in different location.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
It's completely different. Yeah, the dogs are on a couch,
you know, so you can sit on the couch next
to the dog. You know, you have that eye contact,
that nice soft close connection, and it's a lot less
stressful than you know, going you know to a shelter
to look at five hundred dogs. How do you pick one? Yeah,
So it's a wonderful program. I think that's just terrific.
(29:58):
And I know also has a playgroup program which is
just extraordinary where dogs get out not just for a walk,
but they get a chance to go to playgroup. And
I know you have behavioralists who will sort of evaluate
to make sure that the dogs have similar energies, are
playing together, and they're watching over They're not just leaving
dogs in the yard and seeing how it goes. But
(30:20):
it's beautiful because this is an important stress relievers. Dogs
need to play, you know, they need to play with
each other, and that is just a wonderful program. I
wish every shelter had a program. I know it's not
possible for every shelter, but it really makes a difference
when dogs can get out and play. Being in a
playgroup for even twenty minutes is the equivalent energetically of
(30:42):
a three hour walk in terms of what it can
do for the dog and socially, it helps them work
on their skills. And when adopters see dogs do well
in playgroup, they're more likely to consider adopting that dog
because you know, maybe they have often good adopters have
already adopted. Well, yeah, that's such an important thing.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah, the play group is a big deal for all
the reasons you mentioned. Trying to sort of piggyback on
the idea, one of the things that I'm working on
out here right now is, as you know, there are
two dogs in a kennel. What I'm trying, what I'm
working on, is getting expanded kennels, so it's instead of
a small kennel for two dogs, it will be a
(31:23):
larger space. It can put five or six dogs in. Yeah,
so it would be sort of the analog to a playgroup,
but it's really going to be a kennel situation where
these five or six dogs are interacting all the time. Yeah,
and not just for that twenty minutes. And so people
can go by and see those dogs really socialized, and
(31:44):
that's beautiful.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
It'll do a couple of things. It'll do the socialization
piece that I mentioned, but what it will also do
is if I can get six dogs into one kennel,
it frees up three other channels for them where they
had two at a time.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Well, we're trying to do some creative thinking as to
how do we expand the the capability, the capability of
our shelter to house more animals without just going out
and building a boat a little more to dog cannels.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
That's beautiful. I love that. Because every dog is different,
some dogs need a lot of social dog on dog connection.
All the dogs need less, but the ones that need
it can really benefit by that. It can really show
potential doctors. Wow, look at they all have a happy
thing and they're doing well. This also work in my household.
I can see how this could work because sometimes it's
(32:33):
hard to imagine when you go and if you have
a dog at home already and you're meeting a stress dog,
you know how that's going to work. So that's beautiful, congratulations,
I love that.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Well, it's all money, it's all yeah. So that's one
of the reasons where you're leaning into Friends at Pack
even more and more every day. That's our profit or
a fundraiser, and it's you know, we need to talk
about expanded kennels. We need to talk about we didn't
quite to the clinic, but we need to talk about
expanding our clinicic clinic options. Friends a Pack just open
(33:05):
to low cost clinic called the Friends Pet Clinic where
they're offering low cost veterinary care. Oftentimes, people, especially in
this economy, are reluctant to take on at the financial
obligation of an animal because of the veterinary costs, and
so Friends has opened up their clinic as well. So
there are a lot of moving parts to the challenges
(33:26):
that we're facing. Sensus is just a piece of it,
and both were We're not going to find a magic
eligs or fixer, so we're chipping away at each at
each piece that we can in small wastes of air time.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
Great, wonderful, Well, thank you Steve. It's been wonderful to
talk with you and we share all the best.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
There sounds like you're doing some really good and important
things and every little bit counts.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Well.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Appreciate the time to show the store.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah, you've been listening to The Human Animal Connection.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
We'll see on the next episode by for now.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Thank you for tuning in to The Human Animal Connection Show.
Please visit our website, Thehumananimalconnection dot org. There you can
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(34:19):
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changing services.
Speaker 6 (34:26):
Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on Petlight
Radio dot com.
This is pet Life Radio. Let's talk pats. Welcome to
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(00:22):
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Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hello everyone, welcome to the Human Animal Connection Podcast. I'm
your host, Jeanie Joseph Anna have a really fun interview
for you today. I'm going to be speaking with Steve
Kozatrik and he is the new director of Animal Services
at Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson, Arizona. So, Pima
(00:52):
Animal Care Center is the municipal shelter, which means it's
what's called open admissions. That means any dog that come in,
basically you have to take them. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Pretty much? It We were kind of managed, didn't take basis.
But yeah, I mean if somebody insists that we take
their animal, then we take their animal.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Okay, great. So this is the updated shelter. I remember
the old days when it was the old shelter, but
this is the updated shelter, and the shelter was built
for what was it, two hundred and thirty dogs?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Is that wellroughly two thirty five?
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Yeah, yeah, two thirty five dogs, And just a little
weather report, how many dogs do you have there today?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
We have about five hundred and thirty five.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Five hundred and thirty five and a shelter built for
two hundred and thirty five. So this is I think
everybody listening knows what that means. It's a pretty rough situation.
And this is not just your shelter seen We're seeing
this nationally. These kinds of numbers really the census going
up everywhere. What are some of your thoughts about why
we're in such a crisis nationally?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
We have a we have a situation right now where
people are not spaying and urting their animals, they are
not confining their animals, they're not vaccinating their animals, licensing,
micro chipping, it's all of the above. And so it's
not a Tucson problem, it's a as you said, it's
a national problem. And so what we're what we're challenged
(02:16):
with doing is educating the public that you know, we
we simply cannot continue to take dogs and cats at
the same cadence. By the way, the cats are also
in his shure, it's not nearly as significant as the dogs,
but we're over one hundred and ten cats right now
as well, so that is spread on the vergic kitten
(02:36):
season right So our challenge is how do we manage
how do we manage a community problem? Being the only
open admission shelter in the ninety two hundred square miles
of p MC County. Wow Humane Society, some of the
other nonprofits, the rescues, they can shut their door, they
can say, you know, there's no room at the inn.
(03:00):
We don't have that luxury right And there are others
some other other constraints that I'm generally tear challenging right now,
and that is as an open admission shelter, can we
charge for for intake? Can we charge for owner surrenders,
or can we charge when someone shows up and they
want to turn in astray? Sort of sort of a
(03:20):
double edged sore, if you know, if we start charging
for them, then just going to abandon them and they'll
wind up coming in the back door for our Animal
Protection Service team as a hit by car right, So,
so it's a it's a kind of a multi pronged problem. Yeah,
not unique to us, but certainly nobody quite has figured
out what that magic bullet looks.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Like yet, right, really complicated situation, and I think everybody
there is, you know, doing the best that they can
to give the animals best care that's possible. But it's
just inherently you know, you're you're fighting an uphill battle here. Well,
what are some of the things. I know you've started
a new program of giving away leashes to homeless people,
(04:02):
I think, or tell a little.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, it's even more than just homeless people. We have
I mentioned our Animal Protection Service, our APS, and if
that's our enforcement team, they are out in the community
enforcing cruelty, neglect, boarding situations, people beating their dogs, people
not feeding their dogs or cats, primarily dogs in this case.
(04:27):
And so we have an APS team that right now
I mentioned ninety two hundred square miles. Our APS unity
has eighteen eighteen officers working three shifts a day to
monitor all ninety two hundred square miles. Needless to say,
they're not going to get to every call that comes in,
and they're going to prioritize those calls. We have about
(04:48):
seventeen hundred calls on our backlog right now, seventeen hundred
that we are not getting to.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Nine hundred of those are simply off leash calls. There
there's some people people in pick your Park, people in
Himmel Park, with people in Reed Park, they're walking their
dogs off leash. Well, Genie, we're not going to get
to those calls. We're out chasing cruelty and neglect and
hoarding and all the much more high priority calls. And
so what we did in response to try to address
(05:17):
those calls, because they're not nothing on the just not
huge priorities, that I've formed a an auxiliary volunteer APS
unit whose charge is to go into parks and to
approach people not with a heavy hand, with an educational focus,
saying that here's a leash lop. Can we offer you
(05:38):
a leash or collar. Here's some treats for your dog,
here's some activity books for your kids to play with.
Here's a food, here's a water dish for your for
your dog. You know, kind of and we're expanding it. Also,
I've gotten some local businesses to step up and offer
gift cards. So the people who are doing it right right,
So it's not simply a matter of let's go find
(05:59):
the the people who are running their dogs off leash.
If somebody is doing it right, here's here's a gift
card for two movie tickets to a roadhouse theater, or
here's a fifty dollars gift card for Corbett's or whatever
it is. So we're trying to educate the public in
that manner by offering these incentives and letting them know
that it is the law. You Also, the part of
(06:22):
a message is that it's not that your dog might
be aggressive or it might run up and bite somebody.
But number one, you're potentially liable if your soft fluffy
goes up and starts playing with some person and it's
an elderly personally accidentally knocks the person over because they're
playing too hard and the person breaks a hip. That's
(06:43):
your civil responsibility and you could be cited for that. Yeah,
but we're trying to let people know. But to your point,
we are giving away the you know, the leashes when
people need them. If we find homeless people in the parks,
and it's not uncommon that we find that, yes, we
will give them provisions not only for themselves but also
(07:03):
for their animals, because we want to make sure the
animals are well cared for and that they're not running
a large.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Mm hmm yeah right, great, okay, great program. So I
know the situation is very complex and there's no simple answers,
but if you could wave your wand what would be
one thing that you would do, like if you could,
you know, not just starting from the current situation that
we're in, but what would you do to change the
shelter system? I know the community, you've mentioned what you know,
(07:30):
the changes that need to happen in people's understanding about
responsibilities with animals. But what would you do in terms
of the shelter system to redesign it if you could
start over.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
First of all, I've had people suggest why don't you
just build more kennels? The challenges if you build it,
they will come. You know, our problem is not that
pack was designed inappropriately or we don't have the right
number of kennels. Our problem is out in the community.
It's outside the four walls of this place. I would
(08:00):
if we can start waving magic wands, it's that people
appropriately spay and new to their animals. It's a matter
of getting rid of backyard breeders. Yeah, it's a matter
of shutting down puppy mills and making sure that when
retail establishments are sourcing their animals, they're doing it through
either shelters or rescues. Those are just a few a
(08:24):
few examples of where we are systemically broken. When I
was on the I served for fifteen years on the
Tucson City Council, and about ten years ago we adopted
a puppy mill ordinance, and the gist of it was,
if you're going to sell animals at a retail level,
and we have some retail stores here a pet stores
(08:45):
in town that are that are selling selling dogs and
cats and everything else, you have to source those dogs
through either a shelter or a rescue. That was such
a non partisan issue, yes, that I had a very
very far right wing and a very far far left
wing radio talk show hosts who in alternate universes would compete.
(09:08):
They were totally aligned with this, and this is about
the animals, it's about animal welfare. It's about the fact
that puppy mills treat these animals horribly, and so they
were supportive. Yeah, what happened is that we adopted that
puppy mill ordinance here in the city of Tucson, and
the owner of a retail pet store here in Tucson
(09:29):
went and started lobbying the state legislature and was able
to get state law which preempts local jurisdictions from adopting
puppy mill ordinances, and so ours was in effect for
probably thirty six hours, and all of a sudden it
was rendered moot of the state legislature.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
So another another change you're asking about change is getting
state legislatures nationally educated or the federal legislative Federal Congress
educated nationally that puppy mails are a real thing. They
are a challenge for the shelter industry because people are
(10:09):
going to stores and paying an exorbitant amount of money
for a dog that they could come to the shelter. Genie,
We're offer an adoption for free writing and so people
can go and pay twelve hundred dollars for a dog
at a retail out letter, they can come in here
and get it for free. So puppy mails are a
real thing. Backyard breeding is a real thing. People. I
was at a We have a nonprofit called Friends of Pack.
(10:33):
They host as a fundraiser. They host a parade annually.
And I was at the parade. People show up with
their dogs and cats and pets, and it's a fundraiser
for Friends of Pack. And I was standing talking to
a guy who had a couple of Saint Bernard's and
this parade and so the beautiful dogs. What your plan
for me? He says, Oh, We're going to get a
couple more litters out of them. And so I'm standing
(10:56):
there thinking, we are at a fundraiser. Our nonprofit is
trying to support the shelter that has a that has
a five hundred and thirty five dogs census right now,
and you're out there breeding Saint Bernard's now, yeah, and
why are they doing that Because they're able to make
twelve or fifteen hundred dollars a dog when they breed
(11:16):
those puppies. So getting legislation that would either curb or
force registering backyard breeders and put a cap on the
number that they can breed before they're forced to alter
the animals, that's another situation. So our problem is out
in the community. Our problem is not that we're we
don't have an effective way to manage the shelter is
(11:38):
that we don't have a community that respects the fact
that just because we're open admission doesn't mean we have
an endless in the supply of kennels, and an endless
supply of staff, and an endless supply of volunteers who
can come in and do the do the due diligence
and due diligence and care for the animals. We also
know the clinic, and the clinic that we have at
(12:02):
PACK is also over stressed. And I know we're coming
up on a break, so I can kind of save
that piece of the story for, you know, for once
we get out of the break.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Yeah, we can. I just want to mentioned about your
foster program. You have about five or six hundred dogs
in foster now at the time that you have five
hundred in the shelter, right, is that correct?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Actually, we have over eight hundred and fifty.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
Wow, eight hundred and fifty dogs in foster.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah. Yeah, we have five hundred and thirty five in
the shelter. We have eight hundred and fifty out in foster.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Cats, we have about one hundred and ten in the
shelter and we have over six hundred out in foster. Wow,
it's an insane number of animals that the Republic has
simply dumped onto the system of figuring that we'll just
figure it out if you add those, you know, eight
hundred and five hundred, we got thirteen fourteen hundred dogs
and we've got about seven hundred shafts within our system. Yeah,
(12:58):
that's what we're trying to mapple. We would absolutely sunk
if we didn't have thus fosters.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Yeah, it's an amazing program, and I think our listeners
if you're in a position to foster, it is such
a beautiful thing to do.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
It can be difficult to not be able to keep
the dog.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
You always have the choice as a foster. You get
first dips if you decide want to keep. I know
we've all had foster fails in our lives, so called
foster fails. But it's very, very rewarding to help a
dog get out of the shelter and just have some
peace and quiet and sweetness and you know, get them
ready for being in a regular home. And also the
notes that a dog might have in a shelter in
(13:38):
a very stressed environment, and you know that might deter
some adopters. But if you can have wonderful notes and say, oh, well,
you know, Harry loves to play, and he sleeps with me,
an he's sweet and and he's that and all this
good stuff, then you can change the course of an
animal's life by being a foster. So we really want
to encourage people to think about that I know stuff.
(14:00):
But maybe some people out there are saying I was
just talking to someone today said it's not sure if
he's ready to have a dog, and said, well, why
don't you just go faster one and see how it
feels to be Because theoretically, what you imagine what would
be like to have a dog, but until you actually
have one, you don't always know. And of course every
dog is different, so you want to just have that experience.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yeah, well, and all of that is correct, and you're
you're very well read on this. The situation here is
that you can foster to adopt. You can take a
dog home overnight. We call them pajama parties. They're just
out of the shelter for twelve eighteen hours and we're
back in. But you're exactly correct. They get out of
(14:41):
this stressed environment where you're sitting crammed in a kennel
with another dog or two and it's a you know,
four y eight kennel. And yeah, the stress, the kennel
stress is a real thing, real thing, and it digs
dogs overtime less and less adoptable. So to the instant
that they can get out out for a day, a weekend,
(15:03):
a week what you pick your time, we are our
foster options are are all over the map to make
it really convenient for people to allow to get to
get an animal out of here. Then we have medical
fosters as well. A lot of times we have our
clinic that treats the animals and they will will put
the animal out into a home with the medications and
(15:25):
with the with the veterinary protocols that they bring it
back to the clinic. Well, we're paying for all the
medical medical care while the thing is in foster and
as well it's being rehabbed. And we have we have
families that are taking these medical fosters. They're saying, look,
I'll take this on while the dog is or cat
is being rehabbed and then when it's whole again, then
(15:46):
we'll we'll put it out for an option. So so
we have a lot of options, and we've got a
great community who stepped up to really help out.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah. I know, I've taken some dogs out for ice cream.
You know, you just take them out for an hour, right,
or you to take them out for burger. So yeah,
there's lots of options. All right, Well, we're going to
take a short little break and then when we come back.
I forgot what we were going to talk about when
we come back, but something good.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I know.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
We'll be right back in just a moment.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
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Speaker 1 (16:49):
Hey friends. If you like what you're hearing and want
to learn more, check out doctor Joseph's book The Human
Animal Connection, Deepening Relationships with animals and ourselves, or visit
the website The Humananimalconnection dot org to book an online consultation.
Thank you for loving animals. Now back to the show.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
Let's talk pets on petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Welcome back to the Human Animal Connection.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
I'm your host, Genie Joseph and I'm.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
The founder of the Human Animal Connection speaking with Steve Kozachik,
and he is the director of animal services at a
big municipal shelter here in Tucson with over five hundred
dogs in the shelter, over eight hundred dogs.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
You said in foster care, it's just such a that's exciting,
so that there are parts of the community that really
care and that are educated and that want to step up.
So that's just really wonderful. And we have helped veterans.
We'll go to the shelter with them if they're looking
for a dog and will help them evaluate the quality
of the because it's really important for people not to
(18:02):
just pick based upon I want a Saint Bernard or
I want a Labrador or something like that, but to
really look at the individual dog and see if it's
a good connection and to help people understand are you
looking for a dog that's going to be your running
buddy or are you looking for a dog that's going
to be your couch potato and make you feel happy
and cuddle all day long. You know, these are questions
(18:23):
that sometimes people adopters don't always think through, but can
make a big difference because if you people go in
looking for, oh, I want this kind of dog, or
this is the one I had when I was a
kid or something, and they might end up with a
dog but looks similar. But the expectations that the person
has and the reality of the dog that can get
a little mixed up. So this is one of the
(18:44):
things that we help people that we work with is
how best to evaluate the connection between the person and
the dog. So I bet you have some fun stories
that are inspiring that keep you going over the rough
days there in a big municipal shelter.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
One of the things that we're trying to do is
to curb our intake fifty seven percent of the dogs
that we take in our strays, and one of the
ways that I'm trying to address that is by I've
distributed some microchip scanners out to some of the Parks
Department administration buildings so that when members of the public
(19:22):
find a dog or a cat that is astray. They
can scan it and they can try and find the
owner on the spot and not even bring it to
the shelter. That's great. Last week, about eight thirty at night,
I got a call from a woman that I've known
for quite a while who works at the local hospital,
and she said, we just found saw a Saint Bernard
(19:43):
walking down Grant Road. And Grant Grant Road is an
arterial here in Tucson. It's a big, big street. So
she said, we checked for a microchip and we found
the owner, but nobody's called us back, so I have
to bring it in to you tomorrow morning. Oh and
I'm thinking, well, we have five hundred and forty dogs here,
we don't need a Saint Bernard. Please. I said, give
(20:07):
me a call in the morning if you still can't
find the owner, and we will will then take it.
It was hard to say, but that's what we're doing here.
We're an open emission shelter. So I called her in
the morning and thankfully they had a microchip worked. The
owner called them. They said they got some contractors working
at their house and the contractor just accidentally left the
(20:31):
gate open. The Saint Bernard decided he'd go off for
a stroll and it turned into a slumber party at
my friend's house. And but back home he is. And
so so please micro chip your animals. It's a story
that is too uncommon. Roughly fifteen percent of the fifty
seven percent of the strays weigan our microchip, Jamie. We're
(20:53):
offering free microchipping through July fourth. Right now. We want
you to chip your animals. We don't want them in
the shelter. That's that's a good news story.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
That is a great news story. I think that's so
important to get those scanners out there, you know, wherever
they can, you know, as many scanners as you can
get out there, because I think everybody's seen that they've
seen a stray dog wandering and not known what to do.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
So and the reality is is that the vast majority
of dogs that go straight, they're within a mile of
their home. And and so it's not that they've they've
strayed and they've walked from Tucson up to Phoenix one
hundred miles away. These are dogs that are close to
home and and they're just out for whatever reason. And
and even if even if it's not a threat that
(21:38):
they can walk, walk and start attacking someone else's animal.
They can get hit by a car. You know, they
can get We have in Tucson we had avelina and
we have other urban wildlife coyotes. They could wind up
getting getting bitten by a rabbit or otherwise urban urban
oil that animal. So there are there are dangers outside
(22:00):
the confines of your yard that we want to make
sure these animals are protected. So there are legitimate reasons
for one on the outside of the shelter for us
wanting to make sure the animals get home. You mentioned
the fosters. Another story that I would share is that
we have a very robust volunteer group here the shelter.
(22:24):
We have five hundred and forty dogs round numbers in
over one hundred cats. We would be sunk without the
volunteers coming in and walking the dogs and spending time
with them, taking the margin to play groups and that
kind of thing, just to decompress them and get them
out of the out of the kennels. One of the
(22:45):
programs that we're going to implement, in fact we have
implemented it's going to kind of come to a crescendo
in a week or so, is a program called Pause
and Pages is for people come out and they simply
sit in front of a kennel and they read to
the dog for four yes minutes. Yes, now it might
sound weird. Oh it's great. It's a great I love
(23:07):
doing it.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
You know, the dogs they just calm right down the
human voice and you know, they don't have to do anything.
The Persson's not asking them to perform or sit or
you know, behave a certain way. They just get a
little bit of human energy. And it's beautiful to see
because sometimes you'll you'll go on the shelter and people
are reading and the whole line is calm, like not
(23:29):
just that, not just the dog that's being read to,
but the neighbor feels good, and the neighbor over there
feels good. It's a beautiful program.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
You really fund so and when you start out, the
dog might be barking at your right up in your
face and vice you say. But by the end of
the session, the dog is making eye contact with you
and just kind of sit and listening. So what we're
going to do is there's a there's an there's a
condition called a phasia. It's a form of dementia that
can also be brought on by blunt force trauma. In
(24:01):
for instance, for our former congressman, when Gabby Giffers was
shot and they head and she lost her ability to
speak and to articulate and to understand the written and
spoken word. Through pretty significant speech therapy, she was that
she's been able to regain much of her speech ability.
(24:21):
That is the blunt trauma kind of aphasia. Another kind
is it's a progressive I mentioned dementia kind of a
condition where it where progressively you lose your ability to speak,
you lose your ability to read, to understand the spoken
a written word. So what we have is a group
of aphasia, members of a local group friends of Aphasia,
(24:43):
and I've got Gabby Giffert's speech therapists working with a
group of eight of them right now and they will
they're working on books, lower level books that they are planning.
They're learning to read the book and next Thursday they're
going to be coming in and do a pause and
pages just with this Aphasia group. Yeah, it'll be so
(25:05):
cool to see this group of people who is struggling
to articulate the word. For instance, one of the this
is a twenty five year old woman who had a stroke.
The book she chose is the Doctor Seuss book Hop
on Pop. In her first session with the speech therapist,
she couldn't At the beginning of the session, she couldn't
(25:27):
articulate any of the words. At the end of the
first session she was able to say hop and pop.
So she's working on them. By the time she gets
down here after eight weeks, she'll be able to maybe
read that book to the dogs. It'll be such a
cool experience for the for the Aphasia people, and the
(25:47):
dogs will be sitting there totally ungent, nonjudgmental. Right, and okay,
you stumbled over that word, but that's ca yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Okay, as long as I hear your hosts and they
feel your energy and your heart, and you know, in
a shelter environment there's such a need for a moment
of individual human to dog attention. And I know the
volunteers are doing great job. But the volunteers at Packer
like they're like the Marines. They they're going to get
their dogs walked. You know, you don't want to get
(26:17):
in the way of It's really it's really beautiful to
see the level of volunteering that goes on at the
shelter and just to see how much change is possible
by but by just giving a dog some very individual,
gentle attention. It's love, you know, it changes the person,
(26:39):
it changes the dog, it changes the shelter well.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
And here's our challenge is that it's Tucson, it's over
one hundred degrees outside, it's sellar. A lot of our
volunteers are snowbirds. They're winter visitors. Ah, they're here from
Minnesota between September and January, and then they're back in
Minnesota or pick you know, outside of the winter months.
(27:05):
So they're avoiding our so we are avoiding our heat.
So right now we are down. We are short volunteers.
We need more volunteers to you know, to sit and
do the things that you just mentioned, as far as
the you know, walk on their dogs, get them out
of the kennle, taking the plague of breed to them.
And so we're short on volunteers. And one of the
reasons this is important is because the dogs need to
(27:28):
get out of the kennels or the can. The kennel
sash is a real thing we have right now, Like
I mentioned, about five hundred and forty dogs, we have
over fifty dogs right now that have been in the
shelter for over one hundred days. Wow, that's three plus month.
That's fifty two dogs that have been sitting in that
kennel for one hundred days or longer. Now, that simply
(27:51):
makes the dog less and less adoptable. The stress. The
stress amps up, the reactivity amps up the ability to
get that dog into a home where it's where it's
in air quotes, true personality can shine. They may have
lost that true personality. Seventy five days ago after being
stuck in a shelter, I ran some numbers on length
(28:18):
of stay and our outcomes. In the month of Mark
and the month of May, we adopted or returned to
owner almost seven hundred dogs in the first twenty days
that they were here. That's the first twenty days. In
the last well say, from ninety days on, we adopted
(28:39):
out fewer than fifty. And so it just demonstrates that
the longer they hear, the less adoptable they get. And
that even really highlights the notion that our volunteers getting
them out of the cannels and into a situation where
they can really decompress is really critical. We have another
partner here in Tucson called On Rescue Now it's located
(29:03):
at It's located at Grant and Swan. It's a shopping
center and it's a woman named Bonnie who used to
be a pack employee, so she witnessed firsthand what the
what the shelter was like, and what she has done.
She has opened up a retail store where she will
take eight to ten of our animals out Thursday, Friday,
(29:25):
Saturday and Sunday for six hours a day, get them
into that environment, out of the shelter and let people
come and see them and interact with them in a
different in different location.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
It's completely different. Yeah, the dogs are on a couch,
you know, so you can sit on the couch next
to the dog. You know, you have that eye contact,
that nice soft close connection, and it's a lot less
stressful than you know, going you know to a shelter
to look at five hundred dogs. How do you pick one? Yeah,
So it's a wonderful program. I think that's just terrific.
(29:58):
And I know also has a playgroup program which is
just extraordinary where dogs get out not just for a walk,
but they get a chance to go to playgroup. And
I know you have behavioralists who will sort of evaluate
to make sure that the dogs have similar energies, are
playing together, and they're watching over They're not just leaving
dogs in the yard and seeing how it goes. But
(30:20):
it's beautiful because this is an important stress relievers. Dogs
need to play, you know, they need to play with
each other, and that is just a wonderful program. I
wish every shelter had a program. I know it's not
possible for every shelter, but it really makes a difference
when dogs can get out and play. Being in a
playgroup for even twenty minutes is the equivalent energetically of
(30:42):
a three hour walk in terms of what it can
do for the dog and socially, it helps them work
on their skills. And when adopters see dogs do well
in playgroup, they're more likely to consider adopting that dog
because you know, maybe they have often good adopters have
already adopted. Well, yeah, that's such an important thing.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah, the play group is a big deal for all
the reasons you mentioned. Trying to sort of piggyback on
the idea, one of the things that I'm working on
out here right now is, as you know, there are
two dogs in a kennel. What I'm trying, what I'm
working on, is getting expanded kennels, so it's instead of
a small kennel for two dogs, it will be a
(31:23):
larger space. It can put five or six dogs in. Yeah,
so it would be sort of the analog to a playgroup,
but it's really going to be a kennel situation where
these five or six dogs are interacting all the time. Yeah,
and not just for that twenty minutes. And so people
can go by and see those dogs really socialized, and
(31:44):
that's beautiful.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
It'll do a couple of things. It'll do the socialization
piece that I mentioned, but what it will also do
is if I can get six dogs into one kennel,
it frees up three other channels for them where they
had two at a time.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Well, we're trying to do some creative thinking as to
how do we expand the the capability, the capability of
our shelter to house more animals without just going out
and building a boat a little more to dog cannels.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
That's beautiful. I love that. Because every dog is different,
some dogs need a lot of social dog on dog connection.
All the dogs need less, but the ones that need
it can really benefit by that. It can really show
potential doctors. Wow, look at they all have a happy
thing and they're doing well. This also work in my household.
I can see how this could work because sometimes it's
(32:33):
hard to imagine when you go and if you have
a dog at home already and you're meeting a stress dog,
you know how that's going to work. So that's beautiful, congratulations,
I love that.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Well, it's all money, it's all yeah. So that's one
of the reasons where you're leaning into Friends at Pack
even more and more every day. That's our profit or
a fundraiser, and it's you know, we need to talk
about expanded kennels. We need to talk about we didn't
quite to the clinic, but we need to talk about
expanding our clinicic clinic options. Friends a Pack just open
(33:05):
to low cost clinic called the Friends Pet Clinic where
they're offering low cost veterinary care. Oftentimes, people, especially in
this economy, are reluctant to take on at the financial
obligation of an animal because of the veterinary costs, and
so Friends has opened up their clinic as well. So
there are a lot of moving parts to the challenges
(33:26):
that we're facing. Sensus is just a piece of it,
and both were We're not going to find a magic
eligs or fixer, so we're chipping away at each at
each piece that we can in small wastes of air time.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
Great, wonderful, Well, thank you Steve. It's been wonderful to
talk with you and we share all the best.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
There sounds like you're doing some really good and important
things and every little bit counts.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Well.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Appreciate the time to show the store.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah, you've been listening to The Human Animal Connection.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
We'll see on the next episode by for now.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Thank you for tuning in to The Human Animal Connection Show.
Please visit our website, Thehumananimalconnection dot org. There you can
sign up for our free email newsletter, book a consultation,
or check out our blogs and resources. Our best selling book,
The Human Animal Connection is available on Amazon, and your
(34:19):
donation of any amount keeps our nonprofit organization providing life
changing services.
Speaker 6 (34:26):
Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on Petlight
Radio dot com.
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