12.4.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
I will be reading the Smithsonian magazine dated December twenty
twenty five. As a reminder, RADIOI is a reading service
intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities
that make it difficult to read printed material. Please join
me now for the first part of the article titled

(00:23):
the Nation's biggest animal sanctuary operates under a mantra to
save them all? How could that be controversial? Best Friend's
Animal Society has a sprawling campus in the canyons of Utah,
but its influence has grown to reach almost every shelter
in the country. By Douglas Starr. In nineteen eighty two,

(00:47):
a balding, bearded guy named Francis Battista drove through a
canyon outside of Canab, Utah in a battered blue hatchback.
He gazed up at the majestic red walls rising from
the lowlands of junipers and pines. It's magical, he thought,
lowering his eyes, he saw a locked gate with a
sign three dollars for a tour map. He paid the

(01:09):
woman nearby. The gate belonged to a ranch, and on
an impulse, Batista asked the woman if the land might
be for sale, Sure might, she replied. The area had
once been a popular filming location for westerns. The TV
series Gunsmoke had been shot nearby, as had many movies,
and the property's owners, a group of business men from

(01:32):
cannab had been running a tour business, but it wasn't
going so well and some of the stakeholders wanted to
unload the property. Excited, Batista drove back to a homestead
in Arizona he shared with twenty six friends and two
hundred dogs, cats, bunnies, burrows and birds. Batista and his

(01:52):
friends belonged to a new religion called the Foundation Faith
of God. The faith's founder was originally a sciontologist who
broke off from the church and added elements of Christian
millennialism and psychotherapy. The group ministered to children's hospitals, prisons,
poor neighborhoods, and other places where they believed they could

(02:13):
offer physical, mental, and spiritual help. It was all about
how we get in touch with the angels in our lives,
Batista told me. Batista and his cohort were in charge
of an animal rescue ministry. They were a motley group
architects Oxford and Cambridge graduates, artists, writers, college dropouts, an engineer,

(02:36):
a CPA, a real estate agent, an heiress, a British
stage actress, and an Afro Cuban bass player who chipped
in to buy the small ranch in Arizona on behalf
of the Foundation Faith. After taking in a couple hundred animals,
they ran out of space, which was what motivated Batista
to go looking for more. By nineteen eighty four, the

(02:59):
group had scraped together enough money for a down payment
on the ranch in Utah, and they moved in with
their two hundred adopted pets. Throughout the decade, as they
focused on building what would become the Best Friend's Animal Society,
the religious group began to dissolve the Foundation Faith ran
its course. Batista told me recently, everything was being oriented

(03:23):
around the animals. Today. Best Friends is a secular organization
that runs the country's largest sanctuary for neglected and abused pets,
as well as a national network of like minded shelters.
Its property in Utah covers nearly six thousand acres and
houses around sixteen hundred animals, including dogs, cats, horses, pigs, bunnies,

(03:47):
and birds. It's so big it has neighborhoods, dog Town, Catworld,
Horsehn and others. Each animal gets individual medical and emotional care,
ideally becoming healthy to be placed in a private home.
More than three hundred employees are joined there each year
by six thousand volunteers and forty thousand visitors, some of

(04:10):
whom stay for weeks to play with and care for
the animals. The place has become such a popular tourist
attraction that the managers bought and refurbished a derelict hotel
in town and a fleet of vans to transport animals
and people. But Best Friends has also become a source
of controversy. The group was among the earlier animal welfare

(04:34):
organizations to come out against the widespread shelter practice of
killing animals to relieve chronic overcrowding. Its call to action
is direct, together, we can save them all. Increasingly, Best
Friends has taken this goal nationwide, funding training programs, embedding
its staff inside struggling shelters elsewhere, and offering grants to

(04:58):
those that share its vision. In the process, Best Friends
has become a major voice in the national conversation about
animal welfare, alongside such groups as the Humane Society and
the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
Yet critics argue that its tactics are uncompromising and sometimes counterproductive.

(05:22):
I give them a lot of credit for pushing the
industry beyond its comfort zone, Julie Levy, an expert in
shelter medicine education at the University of Florida, told me,
But sometimes those strategies backfire and you have to step
back and try a different method. Julie Castle, the society's CEO,

(05:42):
responded to the criticism by reiterating the group's guiding principle,
our pets are our best friends, why should we be
killing them? The Red Rock region of southern Utah had
seen a lot of residents over the years. Early inhabitants
included an Ststral Puebloans who dwelt there thousands of years

(06:03):
ago and carved mysterious petroglyphs on the rock walls. A
Spanish expedition came through in seventeen seventy six looking for
a trade route between Santa Fe and Monterey. A century later,
ten Mormon families arrived and established the present town of
Canab Then came the movie making days of the early

(06:25):
twentieth century. By the time the Animal Sanctuary arrived, those
days were largely over and the canyon was quiet. Cyrus Mahea,
a co founder and board member of the group, recalled
his first impressions of the ranch. There was nothing, he said,
No infrastructure, no roads, no electricity, no telephone. The friends

(06:49):
pooled their funds, got a couple of donated trailers, and
started building a bunk house. They used do it yourself
manuals to teach themselves construction. There's a good hearted debate
among the founders about whether they used readers, digest, or
a time life guide. They hired a local man to
help them dig wells. Their plan was to take in

(07:11):
animals that had run out of chances and would otherwise
be killed. We wanted to give them space and time
to heal. Maheas said. Soon animals started coming in, people
would bring an unwonted pet. Local law enforcement would drop
off a few strays. Everything changed after one dog ran
away from the sanctuary and turned up at the local pound.

(07:35):
The sanctuary members found it to be a grim ten
footed cell block, boiling in the summer and freezing in
the winter. A vet would come once a week and
put down any unadopted creatures. Here was a prime example
of the problem, right on their own doorstep. Batista spoke
to the mayor of canab explaining that he and his

(07:56):
friends were new to the area, had limitless land, and
would be happy to take over animal control. Sure, said
the mayor. It's just a tiny town, thought Batista and
his friends. How bad could it be? They quickly found
out the animal control district stretched beyond cannob It included
all the towns and counties in the area, encompassing thousands

(08:19):
of square miles. When word got out that a bunch
of hippies were adopting animals, the critters came pouring in, strays, invaders,
victims of hoarding, and pets that the owners could no
longer take care of. One time someone called us to
see about some cats under their trailer. Batista said, by
the time we got out of there, we had sixty

(08:41):
five cats. From the beginning, Batista and his friends were
committed to doing things differently from conventional pounds, which had
their roots in the mid nineteenth century and were established
to protect the public's health. Pounds initially served as depots
where stray dogs presumed to carry rabies were rounded up

(09:02):
to be executed. Yes, it was cruel, but it was
an improvement over letting people shoot or club dogs in
the streets. In the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties, rabies
vaccines for dogs became widely available, reducing the threat. The
population crisis began to ease in the nineteen seventies thanks

(09:22):
to low cost spaying and neutering. Cultural shifts also played
a role, as people began to see pets as family
members and became less likely to abandon them. Still, Americans
shelters were so overrun that they killed at least thirteen
point five million cats and dogs per year, according to

(09:43):
the Humane Society. Best Friends adamantly opposed this approach. It
is committed to rehabilitating every animal it possibly can, only
putting down creatures a vet has deemed beyond rehabilitation when
it comes to animals that are simply taking up space
or need more time to heal. Best Friends argues that

(10:05):
euthanasia is a weasel word. It prefers the frank and
direct word kill. Because of this philosophy, it didn't take
long for Best Friends to have two thousand animals, far
more than the number of humans coming to adopt them.
Money ran short, in danger of having their animals starve,

(10:27):
not to mention going hungry themselves, the founders started begging,
or tabling, as they called it. They'd drive hundreds of
miles to Salt Lake City, Denver, Las Vegas, and other cities.
They'd set up tables in front of grocery stores and malls,
display photos of happy animals, tell their story, give advice

(10:47):
about animal care, and set out a coffee can where
people could drop a few dollars. It was a daily
penny counting existence. Their luck changed one day in Los
Angeles when Maria Borgell Peterson, the wife of the movie
director Wulfgang Peterson, stopped at their table. Moved by best

(11:08):
friends mission, she recruited her celebrity friends to publicize the
cause and help raise money. In nineteen ninety two, one
of the co founders, with the background in publishing, created
a magazine with a subscription list and membership fees. Thousands
signed up. Then, in the summer of nineteen ninety three,

(11:30):
Caroline Marcus dog Walker to the Stars, stopped at a
table manned by Batista and his future wife Silva. She
worked with them to organize a fund raiser and invite
a bunch of a list celebrities. That fall, Marcus and
Best Friends hosted a benefit at Chateau MArmand, one of

(11:50):
the swankiest hotels in town. Batista and his crew were
so poor they had to borrow formal wear from their
Hollywood acquaintances. We felt like the Muppets take La, he recalled.
More events followed year after year. They were at all
the best places, Silva Batista said, the Hollywood Roosevelt, the

(12:12):
Hollywood Palladium. One time we had Charlise Theron, Laura Dern,
Hillary Swank, and Deborah Messing all at the same event.
Her husband added, still a little starstruck. In nineteen ninety five,
Best Friends began holding local Strutyer Mutt adoption events in
various cities. In nineteen ninety nine, it began an annual

(12:35):
super adoption event in La. The most recent took place
at the Rose Bowl. With donations and grant money coming in,
the organizers could feed the animals and continue construction. Each
section dog Town, Catworld, Horsehaven, Marshall's Piggy Paradise, bunny House,

(12:56):
and Parrot Garden included multiple buildings and enough outdoor space
to make the animals feel stimulated and at ease. They
built a wildlife area, a veterinary clinic, and a welcome center,
and they purchased a fleet of vans. They also hired
more staff, and in two thousand and one began to

(13:16):
hold conferences spreading their message and confabbing with other shelter
leaders on how they could achieve their goal. Then came
a tragedy that rocketed Best Friends to fame. In two
thousand seven, police in Virginia rated the Bad News Kennels,
the dog fighting operation co owned by NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

(13:39):
The animals had been horribly abused, run to exhaustion, whipped
with chains, starved, shocked, set against each other, and killed
if they didn't act aggressively enough. People may have had
vague notions about dog fighting, but this case, so extreme
and involving a sports star, brought the issue to wide attention.

(14:02):
Most people assumed that dogs trained for fighting were too
vicious to let live. The Humane Society, among others, recommended
they be put down. Best Friends had other ideas, and
it took in twenty two of the most traumatized animals,
a Bay Area pitbull advocacy group took ten others. The

(14:24):
caregivers insisted that these dogs were frightened, not vicious. Under
the supervision of Frank McMillan, an expert and animal behavior,
best Friends evaluated each dog and created individual rehabilitation plans.
Within weeks, some of them were coming out of their shells,
having fun with toys and engaging with people. Michelle Weaver,

(14:47):
who managed the project, said in the end, thirteen dogs
were sufficiently rehabbed to be adopted, and nine lived out
their lives at the sanctuary. None of the bad news
rescue that went to the sanctuary had to be killed.
National Geographics celebrated the program in Dogtown, a television series

(15:09):
about best friends. As The Washington Post put it, the
dogs became ambassadors, tail wagging proof of what's possible through
rescue and rehabilitation. Visiting the sanctuary is like spending time
in a national park, with its majestic scenery and rustic
looking buildings. The welcome center offers exhibits, trail maps, a

(15:33):
desk where you can sign up for tours, and a
gift shop. A dirt road winds through the canyon with
pull ins for the various domains and an award winning
plant based cafe. Along the way, you'll see volunteers walking
dogs or wheeling a trolley with a cat. Some tourists
come for adoption and they get time to hang out

(15:56):
and play with their future pet. Each animal or arriving
at the sanctuary goes through an intake procedure that includes
medical examination, vaccination, and any other care it may need,
including surgery. It's also spade or neutered and quarantine to
make sure it's free of disease. Then it's evaluated for behavior.

(16:19):
Is the creature aggressive shy? Does it get along with
its fellow animals and with people? Then it's treated with
behavioral protocols therapy. In human terms, it can take weeks, months,
or years for an animal to become ready for adoption.
If that isn't possible, it lives out its life in

(16:40):
a beautiful, low stress environment. During my few days at
the sanctuary, I met Melissa McCormick, a senior manager at
Dogtown who has a degree in biopsychology. She worked with
an on site staff of around thirty who care for
more than four hundred and twenty canines. Sizing social adjustment,

(17:02):
we try to get them into a play group. She said.
They bring each new dog to a small solo enclosure
next to the larger group pen and watch its body language.
If it seems okay, they'll put it in with a
small pack and a greater dog, a highly social, low
key animal that's good at making other dogs feel comfortable.

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A staff member is always present inside the yard. McCormick
and her staff favor an approach known among dog trainers
as LIMA least intrusive, minimally aversive. The idea is to
reduce fear in an animal that's already stressed out from
confinement or abuse. They use a training clicker paired with

(17:47):
a treat to identify and reward positive behavior, such as
coming when called, or to distract a dog from negative behavior,
such as guarding its resources to aggressively. The absence of
a reward might be enough to discourage negative behavior, or
they might use a squirt of water to interrupt it.

(18:08):
Staff members enter notes about each animal in a daily log.
It's a gradual process whose pace depends on the dog.
Sometimes the trainers put a dog on a leash outside
the front door and give it a treat simply for
staying calm. Days later, they might walk a few feet
from the building, letting the dog slowly build confidence that

(18:31):
they'll return and eventually go further. When a dog is
really comfortable, the staff encourage volunteers to take it for
walks or car rides. Gilmore, a chubby tan dog, had
been attacked by other dogs at a shelter in New Mexico,
and he still wasn't comfortable in a play group. Now

(18:52):
he was staying in his own private kennel and outdoor
run around humans. He was shy but not terrified. You
can pet him briefly, but he doesn't love it. McCormick
advised she and her team were building his confidence with nosework,
among other things, hiding his food and letting him feel

(19:13):
competent by sniffing it out. As they slowly exposed him
to people and other dogs. He was making progress. McCormick
said he was adoptable, but would need a special person,
someone who wants a really shy dog. When I visited Catworld,
around five hundred and fifty cats were living in its

(19:34):
eleven buildings and outdoor areas. Each cat that needs rehabilitation
is assigned a pathway to progress, a series of thirty
sixty and ninety day goals, with daily milestones recorded in
a log book. Pipkin, for example, was a well adjusted
tabby who had an aversion to human hands. She'd come

(19:57):
up and rub on you, but if you tried to
touch her with your hand, she'd attack, said Amy Kulbecker,
who was serving as the director of Catworld. Pipkin's thirty
day goal was simply to allow a human to come
near her. Sixty day goal was allowing a trainer to
touch her with a plastic hand on a stick. Kulbecker

(20:18):
said they used a fake hand to avoid being bitten
and scratched. Eventually, Pipkin reached her ninety day goal letting
some one pet her without a violent reaction, the ultimate
goal getting her adopted to a calm, understanding home. Pipkin
was adopted soon after my visit. Another cat, Charlie, had

(20:42):
been part of a therapy program in a woman's prison
until one day an inmate started kicking her until a
guard intervened. That was more than a year before my visit,
but Charlie remained traumatized. She expressed it by biting herself
on the side until she bled. Charlie wore a plastic

(21:02):
recovery cone like the ones you see on dogs after surgery.
She loved to be petted and acted like any well
adjusted cat. But the moment the caregivers took off the cone,
Colbecker told me, Charlie would start biting herself again. We've
done every test under the sun to find out if
there's a physical issue, Colbecker said, it's more psychological now.

(21:26):
Despite such cases, Catworld was a cheerful place. There was
a house and outdoor space for every category of need,
incontinent cats, cats with neurological problems, rescued ferrells, cats with
feline leukemia virus, and healthy cats. Most of the animals
were available for adoption. Colbecker was speaking to me in

(21:48):
a room full of healthy adolescent cats when a tour
group came in. They melted at the spectacle of kitties
scampering over obstacles, running through tunnels, batting around toy tumbling
over each other, sheer feline cuteness. Within moments, the visitors
had cats in their laps. Oh look at these guys. Oh, mom,

(22:10):
over here, they're so pretty, so precious. I love that
black cat. If you fall in love with one of
these guys, our adoption specialists will make sure that you're
well informed about making that decision, said the tour guide.
Exotic birds might be the least adoptable creatures at the sanctuary,

(22:30):
especially the big parrot species. They're blessed with longevity. Some
have life spans of fifty years or more, but that
means they can outlive their owners, and some have difficult behaviors.
Cockatoos love to yell. Their shrieks can exceed one hundred
and thirty decibels, more than enough to damage your hearing.

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The bite of some parrot species has a force of
more than three hundred pounds of pressure per square inch,
which can partially finger. These birds are never truly domesticated,
said el Greer, who oversaw parrot Garden. While dogs and
cats have lived with humans for thousands of years, some
exotic birds may be only a generation or two removed

(23:16):
from the wilderness. You're talking about a wild animal that's
extremely intelligent and has some of the most complex social
dynamics that we've been able to study, Greer said. Putting
these birds in solitary confinement in a cage makes them crazy.
She said at least ten to fifteen percent of parrots
in captivity exhibit self destructive neurotic behaviour. It may take

(23:41):
the form of compulsive preening called barbering or plucking out feathers,
or a self mutilation to the point of drawing blood.
Many caged birds develop physical ailments such as heart disease
and osteoporosis from poor diet, as well as a lack
of sunshine and excerpt size. Some one hundred and forty

(24:02):
birds live in Parrot Garden in a cluster of indoor
and outdoor aviaries. Their screeches are so loud that ear
plug dispensers are mounted along the walls. Like other trainers,
Greer in her colleagues create progress plans for the animals,
and they use positive reinforcements and stimulating games to distract

(24:24):
the birds from destructive behavior. Matthew, a hybrid macaw, had
been surrendered by an elderly woman who could no longer
take care of him. He was a two and a
half foot festival of colors blue, yellow, red, and green,
with a white face and black patterned rings around his eyes.

(24:44):
He'd arrived with an assortment of symptoms, including seizures that
caused him to fall off his perch and lie motionless
on the cage floor. He bit without warning, with the
force that could cut through a piece of tin. If
he was a dog, he'd have to be muzzled. Greer said.
He was also engaging in feather picking, which his trainers

(25:05):
aimed to prevent by giving him toys to distract him.
They added stimulation by making him forage for meals by
covering his food bow with shredded newsprint, a strange new
experience for a bird that may never have seen shredded
paper before. Matthew was lovable in his own way. He
was musically inclined, and he liked popular nineteen nineties ballads,

(25:30):
especially Whitney Houston songs. He'll sway to the music and
go La la, La La la, Greer said, It's very cute,
but Matthew's seizures and unpredictable biting meant he would be
a difficult candidate for adoption. At Horsehaven, I met Emma Dean,
a reddish brown mare who had survived an ordeal. She'd

(25:53):
been grazing with her foal on the shores of Lake
Powell when fast rising water from a record spring runoff
trapped them for weeks. Water in front of them, cliffs
behind horses, as prey animals are naturally skittish, Emma Dean's
experience made her doubly so. The foal survived and was adopted,

(26:15):
But Jan Reed, senior manager of horses at the sanctuary,
knew that Emma Dean's nerves were strung as tight as
a fiddle string. For weeks, Reed didn't even enter the pen.
She'd drop in the hay for the horse to eat
without making eye contact. She spent months gradually getting closer
to the horse a step at a time, watching for

(26:37):
subtle signs of distress. If she flicked an ear at me,
I'd stop my forward progress, Reid said. Eventually she was
able to touch Emma Dean with an eight foot lunge
stick while keeping her distance. Weeks later stroke her flank.
Months after that, slip on a halter. Still later, take

(26:57):
her for a walk bit by bit, Emma Dean was
learning to let go of her fear. When I met Emmedane,
she had been at the sanctuary for a year and
eight months. She showed a comfortable body language as we approached,
soft eyes, non twitchy ears, relaxed mouth. She stood calmly

(27:18):
as Reed stroked her face, slipped a rope halter over
her head, and walked her around. It's sort of like
meth Reid said, explaining the process. You start with one
plus one, then one plus two, and you just add
complications until eventually you're doing algebra and trigonometry. Best Friends

(27:41):
is big, and not just in terms of acreage. In
recent years, its annual revenue has been more than one
hundred and seventy three million. The society has become a
marketing juggernaut, with a sophisticated web presence and more than
nine hundred nationwide employees. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian

(28:03):
Magazine for today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank
you for listening, and have a great day.