The Deal With Animals with Marika S. Bell
83: Unmasking COVID-19's Impact on Animal Welfare with Nanette McCann and Corey Regnerus-Kell (S8)
Episode 8 of Series 8: The World of Animal Welfare and Sheltering Transcript
This discussion with Nanette McCann, executive director of Homeward Pet Adoption Center, and Corey Regnerus-Kell, general manager for animal services at the Royal New Zealand SPCA, will unmask the various strategic shifts these organizations have undertaken in response to the pandemic, we'll explore topics ranging from operational changes, volunteer engagement, and fundraising, to the profound and enduring human-animal connection.
The conversation takes a deep dive into the difficulties of managing an influx of animals in need, ensuring their welfare, and maintaining staff morale despite these challenging times. Nanette and Corey share how they navigated these changes and the ripple effect it had on volunteer numbers and engagement.
Guests: Born and raised in Florida, USA, Corey Regnerus-Kell, has embarked on a journey with animals since he was young. While working towards becoming a Veterinarian, he worked as a Veterinary Technician for general practice as well as Small Animal Emergency Medicine throughout several veterinary clinics in South and Centra Florida. Most recently he was appointed as the General Manager for RNZ SPCA in New Zealand looking after the 29 centres, the National Animal Welfare Inspectorate and National Desexing (spey & neuter) Programme. He lives on a small block with his husband and son and their real life ‘McDonald’s Farm’ with everything from Ostriches down to Guinea Pigs!
Nanette McCann joined Homeward Pet as the Executive Director in 2018. It was Homeward Pet’s reputation for community engagement and volunteer dedication that spoke to Nanette’s personal values over her 30+ year career as a non-profit professional. She proudly leads a staff of 27 full and part time passionate welfare professionals, successfully partners with her 18 member board of directors and has set the goal of Homeward Pet owning its forever home by 2031. Nanette is the mom of five girls, ages 32 to 8, and two fur-babies, Frankie and Ursula.
Book Recommendations: The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book) by Don Migel Ruiz
and Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
Similar Top
Show Credits Thank you also to John Lasala for his beautiful music and audio engineering on Series 11!
Read the Blog! (Guest profiles, book recommendations, trailers and more!)
What to start your own podcast in he Animal Advocacy or Animal Welfare Space? Check out my Podcast Mentoring Services!
Episode 8 of Series 8: The World of Animal Welfare and Sheltering Transcript
This discussion with Nanette McCann, executive director of Homeward Pet Adoption Center, and Corey Regnerus-Kell, general manager for animal services at the Royal New Zealand SPCA, will unmask the various strategic shifts these organizations have undertaken in response to the pandemic, we'll explore topics ranging from operational changes, volunteer engagement, and fundraising, to the profound and enduring human-animal connection.
The conversation takes a deep dive into the difficulties of managing an influx of animals in need, ensuring their welfare, and maintaining staff morale despite these challenging times. Nanette and Corey share how they navigated these changes and the ripple effect it had on volunteer numbers and engagement.
Guests: Born and raised in Florida, USA, Corey Regnerus-Kell, has embarked on a journey with animals since he was young. While working towards becoming a Veterinarian, he worked as a Veterinary Technician for general practice as well as Small Animal Emergency Medicine throughout several veterinary clinics in South and Centra Florida. Most recently he was appointed as the General Manager for RNZ SPCA in New Zealand looking after the 29 centres, the National Animal Welfare Inspectorate and National Desexing (spey & neuter) Programme. He lives on a small block with his husband and son and their real life ‘McDonald’s Farm’ with everything from Ostriches down to Guinea Pigs!
Nanette McCann joined Homeward Pet as the Executive Director in 2018. It was Homeward Pet’s reputation for community engagement and volunteer dedication that spoke to Nanette’s personal values over her 30+ year career as a non-profit professional. She proudly leads a staff of 27 full and part time passionate welfare professionals, successfully partners with her 18 member board of directors and has set the goal of Homeward Pet owning its forever home by 2031. Nanette is the mom of five girls, ages 32 to 8, and two fur-babies, Frankie and Ursula.
Book Recommendations: The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book) by Don Migel Ruiz
and Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
Similar Top
Show Credits Thank you also to John Lasala for his beautiful music and audio engineering on Series 11!
Read the Blog! (Guest profiles, book recommendations, trailers and more!)
What to start your own podcast in he Animal Advocacy or Animal Welfare Space? Check out my Podcast Mentoring Services!
We had really been struggling, prior to the shutdown, forever doing any sort of professional development and so, all the staff being at home, we did a lot of professional development.
Speaker 2:COVID was the first time that we all had to come together and go. No, this is how we do it.
Speaker 3:This is the Deal with Animals. I'm Marika Bell, anthrozoologist, cptt, dog trainer and an animal myself. This is a podcast about the connection and interaction between humans and other animals. This is the last episode in series eight the world of animal welfare and sheltering. You can start this series at episode 72 or pretty much listen in any order you like. It's been a fascinating and often surprising journey through subjects like national transport programs, moving animals from the south to the north, as well as surprising new innovations and progressive steps towards helping unhoused people alongside their companion animals. If you want to stay updated on all the latest news about new episodes, events or podcast and book recommendations, go to thedealwithanimalscom and sign up for our newsletter.
Speaker 3:Today we're talking to Nanette McCann, executive director of Homeward Pet Adoption Center, and Corey Regneris-Kell, general manager for animal services at the Royal New Zealand SPCA, and they're going to share with us some of the changes and adaptations their organizations had to make in order to survive and, in some ways, even thrive, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We're going to talk about the impact the pandemic had on shelters, as well as reflect on these changes after the pandemic had become more endemic and really just part of day-to-day life. We're going to talk about staffing, operations, volunteer engagement, fundraising, challenges and the human-animal connection. Thank you for joining us as we ask the question. What's the deal with animals? Sometimes things don't always go to plan and I forgot to hit the record button when Corey was introducing himself, so we had to do a little redo. All right, let's start that over Nice practice session though. There, corey, that was great it was awesome.
Speaker 1:I was intrigued, it was awesome, I know.
Speaker 3:I can't wait to hear it again. Okay, oh my God. So welcome to thedealwithanimals podcast. Would you please introduce yourself and share your pronouns? We'll start with you, corey Corey.
Speaker 2:My name is Corey Rignaris-Kell, I'm the general manager Animal Services for the Royal New Zealand Society for Prevention of Animal Cruelty, or the RNZ SPCA, and my pronouns are he, him and.
Speaker 3:Nanette.
Speaker 1:I'm Nanette McCann. I'm the executive director for Homeward Pet Adoption Center in Woodinville, washington, and my pronouns are she, her.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much. And now let's go into demystifying how lockdown affected your shelter, your organizations, and what changes had to be made to address the things that were going on during that time. I think, corey, we're going to start with you, but first let's talk a little bit about how your organization in New Zealand works for New Zealand, because, as we were talking about before I hit record for a while there it works a little different here in the US typically. So in the US we have one-off organizations that are responsible for a particular area of their city or of their state or of their county. Some of them are private, some of them are government funded or work with a contract. So tell us how that's a little bit different in New Zealand.
Speaker 2:Great question because it is quite different. So my background originally I'm from the States, from Florida, so I was aware that there's pretty much, I think, from memory, there's only one SPCA that operates for the whole state of Florida. New Zealand is a tiny island down at the bottom of the world. It is not a branch off of Australia, as many might think. It's its own tiny little entity. So we are here. There's two islands in the South yeah, in the Southern Hemisphere, so the North Island and the South Island, so that we have a human population of about 5 million just shy of 5 million people now across the whole country, and those are isolated into mainly urban areas, and we have one city in particular, which is Auckland, as our largest city, with about 1.3 million of that population in total. So we've got a very high condensed population in one area.
Speaker 2:One of the benefits that does allow us as an organisation with SPCA in New Zealand is that we can be a single entity that's now operating. Previously, spca did actually used to operate with individual SPCA's in all the different locations around the country. There were about 34 to 35 of them in total, and in 2017, we actually consolidated into a single network in order to leverage exactly what you've just spoken about is the fact that, by operating independently, we all had to have the same resources, the same outfits, the same effort it was required in order to help the animals and raise funds. And be aware SPCA is a charity, it's a not-for-profit, it is totally funded off of the fantastic good giving of the New Zealand population. We have a very small percentage with a government contract that only supports the inspectorate work that we do or the animal welfare investigations and police work that we do. About 10% of the overall organisation function is covered in the costs of the contract that we have with the government and we cost about $65 million a year to operate as an organisation.
Speaker 3:So there are about 40 different locations across New Zealand.
Speaker 2:There were originally, we are down to actually 29 now. So one of the things that happened as we consolidated was, as you can imagine, in some of the small rural remote areas there were a lot of facilities that were subpar, that were operating, and what we were able to do in the consolidation was remove some of those that weren't operating and leverage the networks around them. Some were in very close proximity, some a bit further, but we now run a hub and spoke model across our network to be able to leverage it as a whole across the country.
Speaker 3:Okay, good context. Thank you so much for that. And we were going to start out the discussion with talking about how, why, when adoption spiked during COVID, because I think that's something that people are thinking about, especially now when adoptions have gone really down at least they have in this area so why don't we start there and just talk about what you saw happening in New Zealand when all of this started in lockdowns and how that was different for you?
Speaker 2:So, like we talked about before, new Zealand was quite different to the rest of the world when it came to COVID and, at being an isolated little island country in the bottom of the world, we managed to watch a little bit about what took place everywhere else before it actually landed and crossed the borders here. However, I have to say New Zealand came pretty unprepared, even though it was happening everywhere else. But I think the whole world was caught by surprise at just how little we knew about these and just how little information we really had even around what the risk of things like animal to human transfer might have been back in the early days of COVID.
Speaker 3:For a little bit more about the research that went in around zoonotic or animal to human transmission, at least what we knew about it. Check out episode one, the very first episode of the Deal with Animals. I interviewed a researcher that was discussing this exact topic.
Speaker 2:So with New Zealand government. They originally shut down the whole country pretty much overnight. Everybody was required to stay indoors, nobody could go out. The world quite literally stood still overnight when that happened. So we didn't see any changes in increasing adoption numbers at that point, as you can imagine, because nobody had any time to prepare, and obviously we did see a decline in adoption services, and it was important to point out that we were even trying to work out if we could operate as an organization at this time.
Speaker 2:We were trying to fight to make sure that we were classified as an essential service, that animal welfare needed to be prioritized during this time, and we had to rally together as a whole profession to even get veterinary medicine recognized as an essential service. And it was classified for, yeah, it was a bit of a hard time to watch and see these things unfold, but what it did mean was essential services could be provided, but things that were classified as elective or things that might be able to be postponed had to be put on hold. This included things like spaying and neutering of cats and dogs in general practice. Spca, on the other hand, was classified as an essential service and with that we were able to still continue with the desexing of animals or the spaying and neutering of animals that were in our care, so we were privileged in that space to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:What we did see, though, however, is as we all went out of lockdown, vaccinations came through, and then we had the second wave of Omicron, that dreaded Delta variants and the Omicron variants that came through.
Speaker 2:We all talk very scientific now, which is fantastic for me, being a vet by trade.
Speaker 2:I love it, but what we did see is we actually had a really lovely article that got put out. The next time we went into a complete lockdown around the country, the government gave us about a five-day notice period, and in that five-day notice period they had over a thousand animals adopted across the SPCA going into the lockdown, which is a marked about triple the rates that we would normally see at any given time period beforehand, and I guess for context, a thousand animals might not seem like a whole lot, but just remember we've got a tiny population here. A thousand animals is the equivalent of basically the entire center operating for a year at some of these locations. So of the 29 in operation, probably at least a quarter of them, or even possibly a bit more would normally help support, treat and re-harm anywhere between 1,000 to 1,500 animals per year, so we're talking whole years worth of adoptions out of the center could have potentially taken place in those five days leading up to the next round of COVID.
Speaker 3:Wow. And Nanette, what was your experience around adoptions? Full disclosure I was the board president of Homeward Pet for the year of 2020. And if you do the math, you may also realize I had a newborn baby at home. Great timing, I know. So even before COVID officially kicked off in Washington state, I was not spending my time in the shelter itself and didn't have regular interactions with staff other than Nanette. And while the board was informed and supported the decisions Nanette and her staff made during COVID, we did not participate directly in them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, first I'll give you a little background about Homeward Pet, as Cori was talking about some of the sizes of the shelters the communities that would be part of the SPCA in New Zealand thinking about. Well, that sounds about like the size of Homeward Pet. We are a small organization. We've been around for 33 years prior. Just to give some reference prior to COVID we were adopting almost 2,000 animals a year. Since COVID We've had to be basically building back up and we're at about 1,400 right now. So for us there's a lot of familiarity with what you were saying about all the things going on. It's interesting to see two complete different countries and what they were experiencing. But we had our first round of shutdown. We had some notice about a week and then all of a sudden we had to be shut down and all of our animals that we had in the shelter went into foster. We completely cleared out the shelter and put every single animal into foster which was amazing that we were able to do that so quickly, with the goal of there not being anyone in the shelter at all, and we went into it a couple of weeks with the shelter being completely empty, and then we had one of our animals that was in shelter or in foster. She had to come back to the shelter because of some behavior concerns and how she was doing in foster, so we brought her back into the shelter and set up basically a one person at a time care plan that brought somebody in to just provide her care throughout the day and she actually did pretty well and seemed to blossom while she was in here, so we stayed.
Speaker 1:I want to say it feels like March 24th was the date that we had our complete shutdown and by the middle of June we had some staff that were coming back in and mostly it had to do with foster care for or care for the animals that were in foster. We also started to back up our clinics or clinic shutdown at the same time, only providing care medically to the animals that were in foster, and a lot of spay and neuter programs in our area shut down. They completely shut down during that time. It was not considered an essential surgery, it was something that could be put off until later, and so they were really getting restrictive around what kind of the materials that were provided the masks, the gowns, the gloves, that a lot of the human medical facilities needed were being limited to what the animal care facilities could have access to. So that was another impact where we luckily had some stockpiling going on, because we're really good at saving things and conserving things.
Speaker 1:So we were able to open back up slowly and we actually made the decision to open up for public spay and neuter, which we have been doing. We have a public spay or neuter day every Monday for the most part, and so we opened back up to do public spay and neuter, slowly, limiting the number of people that were in. We did the whole thing where you'd go out to the car, have the individual fill out the information that we needed, take the animal from the vehicle, bring them in to do the surgery and set up a time for their owner to come back and get them and then take them back out to the vehicle, give them the information, have it all packaged up for them with their medication. Everything was done very how do we limit the contact that we're having and have it be outside if we can do that as much as we can? So that was something I was really excited and proud of that we participated in, because it was really hard to hear that spay and neutering animals was not considered an essential service, and I think, as we talk about later the impact, I think there are some things that we're actually dealing with now because of that For us.
Speaker 1:We talk about the level of adoptions. We didn't see this incredible increase in the number of adoptions that were happening. I even you know, in talking to my peers they didn't see a level of increase. What we actually saw and what was being shared and experienced nationally was a reduction in surrenders and euthanasia. People were home with their animals and so they were learning to live with the behaviors or they were managing behaviors like separation, anxiety, because they were home all the time, and so we saw a reduction in the number of animals that were being surrendered to different facilities and then also reduction nationwide in euthanasia. So that was exciting.
Speaker 1:I felt like the media actually pushed that idea of people running out and adopting all kinds of animals as being a little over the top. They grabbed onto it somewhere and made it the big story everywhere, where there wasn't what we were seeing and what some of my peers were seeing. We're not experiencing that at all. It's kind of the same as the opposite, which was once people started going back to work. Was this they're this huge influx of surrendered animals and euthanasia requests, and that's another thing we have not seen a huge influx in as well. So I'm hoping that's because we're helping to mitigate some of the issues that they might be having with going back to work. But at this point, this far out, we're not seeing it.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, I was just thinking. I mean, of course it's going to be different, no matter in all the different locations, and it's too bad we can't have someone from every single region of the world on our phone call today, because then we could get a better view of what's happening. But what were, you think, maybe two or three of the biggest changes? Or pivots was the word that everybody liked to use During that first sort of six months of the pandemic, in terms of making sure animals either did get adopted or people had access to the services, or anything else you think really stood out as ways in which your organization had to change or make changes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for us it was a big. Like we mentioned before, the kind of the total lockdown approach meant there was a huge amount of questions that were being asked on what to do, and one of the values and the purposes of organizations like SPCA, and obviously the Homeward Group here as well, is about making sure that when we are re-homing animals, that they end up in the right homes and hopefully in their forever homes. So one of the things that was done and potentially not done terribly well across other organizations in New Zealand was we were always doing before adoptions assessments. We were doing home checks. We were doing almost personality profiling checking to see what their opportunities were, what did their work life look like, how much time could they spend at home with their animals that might have increased needs, etc. So obviously that was just being spoken about was that we've got people that were at home more often. So we knew actually this was a really good time to get animals out. We also didn't know what we were doing and we wanted to focus on supporting our staff in this time period and it seems strange to think about it now, but we were questioning do we need to be decontaminating animals that are coming back in, do they provide a risk to our staff?
Speaker 2:During this time period, we wanted to make sure that we weren't only focusing on the animals but on the people too. So what we did do was is we started to do a contactless and almost a virtual adoption process. That was quite a good change. So in the beginning, originally we would have things like home checks, that we would go out and make sure fencing was adequate and appropriate if they were getting dogs or if they had multiple animals in the house, that if they were going to be taking a new adoption on that there weren't going to be any issues, say, with a dog that was a bit unfriendly towards cats. We get that scenario a lot, but we wanted to make sure that we had that sorted. So we moved into a virtual assessment process where we could meet with people. Obviously, digital services like Zoom became very common all of a sudden. Zoom, facetime and Facebook Messenger were our best friends as an organization, because we could actually get into people's homes and backyards a lot easier.
Speaker 2:Once the restrictions started to lift a bit, then we were able to still actually go out and do those home inspections in person, because most of the time we were standing outdoors, so we knew that we could meet all the government requirements at the time and still interview people and again try to get these animals out. The one thing that we do know is that animals inside of a shelter environment is not the ideal situation, and especially for long-term care. We see more problems coming in from a behavioral standpoint the longer that they're in an actual center. So getting them out into fosters and into adoptions is a huge priority for us, so that we can make sure that we can support those animals. So that would be probably the first one. That was.
Speaker 2:The biggest change that we made during that time was actually just shifting over towards a virtual piece and just really assessing what our adoption barriers were, so that we could start to figure out. Do we really need to have these in place? Is it essential that we have an eight-foot fence in a backyard for a jack russell? Well, probably not. So what types of things do we really want? To make sure that we're getting right, moving forward, and we had a bit of time to do that.
Speaker 3:What were some of the things that you actually dropped from your requirements?
Speaker 2:The first one was that they had to have a physical home inspection, so in the very beginning, so we had to have an SPCA member come out and vet your home. To be fair, I don't think we dropped out too many things and we're still in the process of discovery at the moment, given that we had these really high adoption rates in the beginning, where people were happy to do it. We've always struggled with things like rentals and before we used to have to require that the landlords would actually provide a written letter of intent to say that they can have an animal housed in that location. But we moved to. It's the person's responsibility at the end of the day, so we will ask if they've received consent and if they had, we had to take that on face value, but we stopped putting in some of those other barriers in place.
Speaker 2:At the moment we're still investigating this. Our adoption numbers have plummeted since COVID. This is our, our biggest issue. We know now that animals are spending, on average, at least in extra 20 days or more with us in centers and shelters, and this is what we're still discovering. So we're still leveraging, I guess, the learnings from COVID. To go hang on a second, just because we've ended COVID. We don't need to go back to the way we were doing things. We need to make sure that we're progressing in the right direction.
Speaker 3:How about homework pet in a net? Is there any any of the things that you had that you thought were barriers that ended up having to get taken down and then maybe decided not to keep?
Speaker 1:I think the biggest change for us was that I there were a lot of conversations prior to COVID about doing things like pre-applications for adoptions, where somebody could submit an application for a specific animal and make a deposit or whatever that might look like, and we were very much against it prior to COVID, but literally COVID forced us to have to do that.
Speaker 1:We had to do applications ahead of time where they could apply for a specific animal online and then they would get you know a communication saying your application has been received. You're going to receive an email or a phone call from an adoption specialist who's going to talk to you about this animal. We had actually stopped doing home visits or assessments a couple years prior to COVID, so that wasn't something that we had to worry about or consider, but we had always been adoption basically first come, first serve. We would allow people to put in applications starting at about 9 am in the morning, but at 12 noon we opened up our doors and whatever that line was outside the door is how people were served, and on the weekends we could end up with 30 people in our waiting area and then a line out the door, depending on if we had puppies or a particular group of cats that were very interested, interesting for people, and so you know, to completely shut that down and be like, okay, what do we do now? This has been our practice for so long, but now, what do we do now? To put into a plan that took us some extra time to get going, where individuals had to apply and there had to be interviews and then scheduling opportunities for them to meet the animal or do meet and greets, started very slowly, started with them coming and we were outside. We have a great outside area so we were able to do a lot of meet and greets outside. If it had to be inside, then we were everybody masking up and only two people at a time and trying to keep as much space as possible. So that really was a complete pivot for us in how we were doing adoptions and having to let go of this idea of seeing the person and having them see the animal face to face.
Speaker 1:I think the other big change for us was a significant portion of our population comes from owner surrenders and we shut down accepting owner surrenders and what we did is we joined a program called Home to Home and that allowed individuals to re-home their animals on their own. So it was almost like I don't want to say it's like a craigslist, but it's like that where they submit the information about the animal that they want to re-home, we follow up and review the application, so to speak, before it's posted and then the information is posted on the Home to Home website and it's all animals, it's not just cats and dogs, which we primarily take care of cats and dogs and so individuals could post the animal. There could not be a re-homing fee. They couldn't charge for it. So there was no adoption fee associated and individuals would go to who wanted to adopt would go to the Home to Home website. They would see all the animals that were available and then they would reach out to the adopter and start that conversation.
Speaker 1:And this was something that, again, we had said no, we don't need to do this, it isn't a service that we need, it's not something that we want to get involved in.
Speaker 1:And I would say, three months into COVID, it was like we should be doing this and it was. That's a great idea, we should be doing that and we continue to do Home to Home and we continue to encourage individuals to utilize that program Instead of surrendering to us because, like you said, being in a shelter is not the best place for an animal. We all think we provide great care and lots of love and they get everything that they need plus, but really being in a home is the best option for them, and we've had individuals including a member of our board who used the Home to Home program to adopt a pet and almost had like an open adoption where they were sending pictures back to the family that had released or re-homed their pet so that they could see how their loved one was doing in their new home, and it's really been a really good experience for us.
Speaker 2:Love that.
Speaker 3:Corey, it sounds like you had something to add to that.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was just blown away. I hadn't actually heard of that service but I've just very quickly Googled it and I tell you what I might be pilfering that idea very quickly. Steel with pride. They say right, so we need to be looking at it. But man, you've.
Speaker 1:It's the best compliment you can give is to steel, that's right and it was actually a small shelter, gosh, I want to say, in Idaho, idaho. Yeah, that started it and brought it forward, I think like an HSUS Animal Care Expo, and it got funded and so they decided it just funded to be spread to other shelters and made available. So, yeah, it's a great program.
Speaker 2:Love it. Yeah, and the fact that you guys are still involved. I think that's where we've been so far. I think that's where we've been struggling. But, like you said, trying to keep animals actually in homes is the goal. It's not actually to bring them into our care and look after them and then re-home them. It's to keep them in homes. So trying to get really creative on how we can do that is essential, and I'm loving this. So you've just given me something else to add to my to-do list, but it's good. I like it. It's good work. It's good work.
Speaker 1:I think that was one of the other things that we really focused a lot of attention and energy on was trying to make available other resources that individuals could access, whether it was if they needed help with housing or they needed help with food. We have a food bank and we participate with a number of other people food banks or we're providing animal food to them so that they can continue to help people keep their animals in their homes, and so we really tried to give out as much resource information as we could so people could retain their pets if that's what they really wanted to do.
Speaker 3:I was going to ask about. I guess I lost my train of thought. The Home to Home program I was just going to comment was a really interesting thing to get going too, because it's not. There's a lot of organizations basically involved in the same program, right, you wouldn't necessarily say, if you adopted a pet from Home to Home, that I adopted this pet from Homeward Pet Adoption Center because you didn't. Homeward Pet was just facilitating that, almost like sponsoring the people in the area that have these animals that need to find homes.
Speaker 3:And I don't know how many times now I have suggested that to people, because when people know that I'm involved in animal welfare, a lot of times I do get that. Well, my friend just had a bunch of kittens and she doesn't know what to do with them. Or I've been fostering this cat, literally. This happened to me like two days ago. A neighbor stopped me on a walk with my dog and said you foster cats, right, like okay, I know where this is going. And I told her about the Home to Home program, about if it really isn't working out. You've got this cat that a friend gave you that you thought you were going to be able to find a home, for you thought you could fit it into your home and it isn't working. Like, look this up, because you don't have to go anywhere to do it, you can just work it out.
Speaker 1:I think one of the other benefits of it is I was contacted by someone in. I want to say they were in, like Arizona, and they were looking for an animal and did I know of where they could go to find a new dog. And I said, well, let me check really quick. And so I got on the Home to Home website and I looked for participating organizations in Arizona and I sent back are you connected to these areas or close to these cities? Oh, yeah, well, they have this Home to Home program here. Let me send you a link. And so it was like that's. Another really cool aspect of it is you do now have nationally organizations who are participating, so if somebody is looking, you can use that as a resource. Oh, my mom, my grandma, my cousin is looking in X-Town or has an animal they need to re-home. What do I do? It's a great resource to be able to share.
Speaker 3:And it was hard to find animals for a while. Wasn't it for people, or was that another media hype? Do you think there was this time period where people are saying, well, you just can't adopt right now, like there's just no animals, or, if you try to, there's no appointments open to see the animals? Did you guys find that was true, or was that more media hype?
Speaker 2:I think there's probably a component of media in there. I mean, there was never a point that we were empty, so we've never not had animals for adoption. That would probably be what success looks like for the organization If we could get to the point that we were proactively preventing animals coming in and the need for that to happen. However, what did happen and again probably one of the changes that we're still working through, to be fair, was this by appointment only. All of a sudden, a lot of our centers and again we can go on rated from 34. We've now got 29 different centers around the country who all had to move to buy appointment only, because the New Zealand government again brought in some other changes which required vaccine passes and mandates and safe workplaces and what you could do and, as we've discussed a little bit, social distancing and all that. So we still have facilities at the moment that are operating by appointment only, and what has categorically happened in those is that foot traffic being gone.
Speaker 2:Adoption numbers have been worse than the other centers which have reopened their doors.
Speaker 2:However, there's a time and a place for some of these things.
Speaker 2:We did have one of our larger centers where we had a fantastic dog adoption area where you could go and walk through and see all the dogs.
Speaker 2:But actually one of the things we did find out over COVID, was this actually the best for the animal welfare for these pets? Because really we just ended up being a free zoo that you could bring your kids to on the weekend and they'd all run by and the puppies would get excited and then the other dogs would get excited and they'd all bounce and bounce around and everybody would just leave at the end of the day but the staff had to deal with those behavioral complications that arose. So probably a bit of both. I think we're still working through the by appointment only where appointments are still required, but we will make you an appointment when you walk in the door and that seems to be a good approach so that we can do it. However, at the same time, we're probably never going to go back to the way that we were, because we have seen marked improvements in long term behavioral outcomes with our dogs in the center that are no longer on viewing display as you would at a zoo.
Speaker 1:I have to say that's definitely one of the things that we walked away with, too was the just the level of difference in the behavior of the animals between having 30 different people walking through the shelter on a weekend. And obviously, yes, we had people that would come in and say, oh, we just want to see the cats and dogs, or we just wanted to walk through, my child wants an animal, so we want to see what they might be interested in, and that is one of those things that we have now said we just are not interested in going back to. We even had surprisingly, we had an open adoption day just here recently. Where it was. We advertised it that you can just walk in and show up, and it was a sponsored event and we had fewer animals adopted that day than any other Saturday that we'd had in like for years.
Speaker 1:I feel like the other thing that happened for us since we started out, we completely cleared out the shelter and then we had animals out in foster and we were adopting out of foster and we slowly started to bring some of the animals the dogs and cats back into the shelter and we started with a pretty strong mix of the dogs and cats that had either behavior or medical issues that needed different support than your happy puppy that just needs to be cared for, or the kitten that needs to be fed, and so we brought them back in first. And since we were to begin with we didn't have volunteers back in the shelter, it was just staff. So we didn't want to burn out our staff, so we limited the number of animals by half of what we'd had previously in the shelter and so we were opening up double kennels for the dogs and for the cats so they could have double the space that they had before and be able to be a lot more moving around in between the kennels, and that we've stuck with that. We have not gone back to single kennels. Even with small dogs we'll have a double kennel.
Speaker 1:In some cases, if we don't have a high population or we have dog or cat that specifically would need more support, we'll open triple or quadruple kennels. I'll open up a whole roll for just one animal and it has really reduced the stress and anxiety that those dogs and cats are experiencing being in that. You know that small five by five, five by six space for the dogs or whatever the size kennel that the cats are in, and that's a change that we've grasped. We're really working on becoming more of a fear free organization, so we're embracing a lot of the fear free shelter activities and it's, I would say, benefiting our animals in a whole.
Speaker 2:So fundamental question for me on that you've really piqued my interest now Is you know, we get this rhetoric right, like you build it and they will come. We feel as shelters and rescue groups and organizations that we need to have huge capacity because the reality is if we tell somebody we've got 150 dog kennels, they'll fill it. It will be fundamental whether the SPCA is probably a little bit different than your organization, where we do have the inspectorate site, so we have animals that have to be removed out of horrible welfare situations where they can enact the powers in New Zealand under the animal welfare act to be able to uplift those animals and take them in. But we struggle now even at a capacity level of oh, we just don't have enough space. But fundamentally my question is yeah, but is that making the right impact? You've just said you've reduced your numbers potentially by half. So what's the welfare impacts that you've seen? Have you seen it decline or are you seeing better outcomes?
Speaker 1:I believe we're seeing better outcomes. We're still, I mean, like I said, we're growing our population back up. We dropped to about 1,100 adoptions the first year of COVID and we're slowly bringing that back up. And really the theory and what we're experiencing is the idea that if you are working with animals who have behavior or medical challenges and you're doing things to reduce their stress and anxiety in the shelter, they should be responding quicker to the training that you're providing to them or the redirection they're receiving or the medication they're on that those things should be happening at a quicker pace and the vision is that, if we continue with this sizing, that we are moving animals who maybe would have to be in the shelter for six to eight months they're with us for three months Because they're receiving the care that they need, with a smaller population, a higher level of care, more targeted care, so that versus having 100 animals in the shelter, you have 50 animals in the shelter. You're able to therefore double the care that individual animal is receiving.
Speaker 3:Wow. So much to think about for everybody listening right now, I think. So there was something I want to grab onto that you you mentioned, and that was the people. So a lot changed for workers during that time. I mean, it was a roller coaster, ups and downs all over the board, but what were maybe some of the fundamental things that changed for the staff, the colleagues in your organizations? Yeah, I'm not gonna even outline it any further than that.
Speaker 2:I want you guys to tell me what you think was the biggest impact for them and for your organization, for us and I guess one of the differences that we've talked about within the two groups which is great is that we're operating a network, really, of different centers around the country. We rely heavily on volunteers in that space. This is one of the things that was absolutely detrimentally impacted by COVID during this time period. So we normally we classify our foster parents as volunteers as well, but when we start looking at numbers we're basically running almost a one-to-one program and we're actually running almost a one-to-ten staff to volunteer ratio across the organization. When we went into COVID lockdowns then all of a sudden it was staff mandates that kind of came through and you needed to limit to essential staff that were located in different premises. So our volunteer numbers had to drop dramatically overnight. Some of them were so regular in their volunteer and had been for years that we could class them as almost contractors during that time period and get them in the doors, which was great.
Speaker 2:What we did see as well is that we had a very large elderly population that were part of our volunteer workforce. Covid was terrifying for that group of people. So our volunteers started dropping out, not because they weren't welcome to come in, but because they had fears for their own health and safety. Same when vaccine mandates came in, and obviously there was a whole lot of conversations that were taking place around that that we definitely won't go into here, but you know miscommunication, conspiracy theories, et cetera. That really started to drive the organization apart when New Zealand again brought out, for majority of its business, vaccine mandates, where you had to be vaccinated in order to be able to work but had to ask really fundamental questions Do we require this just of staff or volunteers? Because our volunteers are here as often, if not more, than some of our staff are. So what does this look like?
Speaker 2:Even now, we've never bounced back to the volunteer numbers that we had before COVID, still struggling to get them in, and a lot of these are for a few different reasons. Some of them are the elderly that are just all concerned about getting sick and being in these environments where they could potentially do that. But the cost of living is a huge issue post-COVID that we've resulted in from this. So, with increasing inflation in New Zealand in particular being very bad in this space where we've had, you know, the highest interest rates and things that we've ever seen as a country, the cost of living crisis is huge.
Speaker 2:Nobody can volunteer or everybody just needs a job to survive. So where they used to be able to give three to four hours a week, maybe to go walk a dog, all of a sudden they can't do that anymore because that three or four hours has to be filled with generating income and revenue somehow. So those have been the impacts for us from the people side where we had to really look at again what was required for our staff. How do we look after them, how do we protect them in the public to still go out and service it, because we still needed to respond to animal welfare emergencies as the only charity in New Zealand that has powers under the animal welfare act to investigate these things. So it was all about how do we protect them and find those balances, but still really struggling on that volunteer side.
Speaker 3:How about you, Nanette? What comes to your mind when we talk about the people? Part of the last two or three years.
Speaker 1:I would say everything that Corey said is 100% true for us too, and what we've experienced our volunteer numbers significantly dropped. While we stopped allowing volunteers into the building for quite some time and getting them to come back. We had a number of folks, like you said, who just chose not to come back out of fear of exposure or for their own personal health. We've been impacted by the economy and the availability of people who have the time to volunteer, but because we also changed so much about our program in how we the number of animals that we are housing and the number of adoptions that we're doing, that also changed the number of volunteers that we need in order to work successfully when we maybe on a Friday morning, I would see 12 volunteers standing outside the dog room waiting to go in and walk dogs, and now we need half of that just because we are limiting our numbers, and there's been some conversation and pushback around. Part of it is the volunteers not feeling like there's enough for them to do, and so they have some feelings and get some frustration there, and the other, being just around the idea of limiting our population, is there are more animals out there who need our help, and so it's a really that's a tough one to walk that line. I'll just share that with you that when you make that decision you're gonna get pushback. But we definitely saw people impacted.
Speaker 1:When we first shut down, we had, I wanna say, about 26 staff between full and part time and we went to completely working from home. My goal was to keep people employed through the entire time that we were in shutdown and we did not have to do layoffs or any sort of reduction in pay during that first year and a half because the community of donors who were a part of our organization were just so dedicated and determined that we were gonna keep going and my development team was able to work from home so they could keep raising funds. We had to do some things differently, but there was also some states or not state support, but federal support that we received to help pay the bills, and so that helped and we could keep people employed. But it did. It changed the way that we work. It changed the way people feel that their time is spent. I have a lot of people who much would rather work from home than work in the shelter, which, if they have the capability to do so, with their jobs and we work to allow them to continue to do that. But it completely changed the environment between what it was before and what it is now.
Speaker 1:We still adhere to COVID protocols, where we have staff who either have an exposure or they end up with a positive test themselves, and so we have protocols in place.
Speaker 1:I think one of the things as a policy up until this year we covered time off for COVID and this year we changed it to where we have a five day policy that if you're out for COVID flu, anything like that that you're gonna have to be out for five days straight. Then you have that one week for coverage, but otherwise you do need to use your own PTO. So there's just a lot of things that we did during that time that we have either held onto with working with our staff and including making sure they get lunch breaks, or before we weren't completely sure they were getting lunch breaks because we were so busy that we continued to work with and evolve. Now, I mean, I honestly feel like COVID was just this catalytic event that forced us to really relook at everything that we were doing and make adjustments, because we had to and then decide if this was what was best for our animals, our volunteers, our staff, the public, and that just it wasn't business as usual any longer.
Speaker 3:You mentioned there for a second about how there wasn't enough to do because you didn't have any animals in the shelter, and yet you didn't lay anyone off. You found stuff for people to do, so why don't we talk about what you found for people to do? What did people do during that time?
Speaker 1:We had really been struggling prior to the shutdown for ever doing any sort of professional development and so all the staff being at home, we did a lot of professional development. We had our staff become fear free, certified and go through the shelter certification program. We looked for webinars and podcasts and anything and everything we could find that we shared amongst ourselves so that there was some sort of learning activity happening during that time, and it was really. I wanted to retain the people as much as possible, because hiring good people is really challenging, so I didn't want them going anywhere and making more money someplace else and not coming back to work for us after things opened back up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, corey. What do you know about what went on with the staff and whether people had enough to do in your facilities?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we were on the slightly opposite spectrum of that, because we I would have loved to have said we would have been able to empty out our centers and have them all out in foster. I need to get some more tips from you on how you've built up such a strong foster parent network. I think that's an essential underpinning. On there as well, we were again the opposite right. So we had animals that were all in our care. We had some that either fosterers didn't know what they were gonna be able to do or how they were gonna look after these animals during the COVID lockdown, so they came back into our care at the centers and then again we lost our volunteer numbers in the centers. So they had plenty, plenty to do to keep them busy over this time period. But similarly, there is some difference of time. That's there, you know, when you're not actually having to engage with the public every day, it does still free up quite a bit of time. So the amount of time and investments is similar to what you were talking about in the net with the opening up extra kennels because they were a little bit of extra space, or reinvesting in what sensory gardens looked like at the center Getting involved on the grounds a bit more, making sure that there was interactive. We did the same. So I'm pretty sure now we've got a policy in place that every person that comes on board and goes through their training they have to go through the fear free shelter course which is a lovely free course, and gosh couldn't recommend it more for our staff to just really understand the impacts that they make on a day to day basis to these animals potentially being re-homed or not into a forever home. So that has been part of what it's done and we definitely looked at other policies and procedures and how do we standardize care in that space?
Speaker 2:Covid was probably again one of these other hidden gems of a catalyst where we had gone through a consolidation as an organization from these 34 into the 29 that we now currently have as one SPCA across the country, and they were all operating independently for years. The organization's 150 years old as a total across New Zealand. So there was a lot of this is how we did it. Covid was the first time that we all had to come together and go no, this is how we do it and how do we do that moving forward. So that's definitely been some of the things that have changed again as an outcome and a positive, of looking at how we can continue to do that and really understand what people do, because the amount of talent, like you said, in the net good staff hard to find, good staff hard to keep but the amount of ideas and passion that they bring because this is their area of interest, they're here for the right reasons every day.
Speaker 3:So let's talk a little bit about fundraising too. Another oh, my dog is getting. This is still very spicy. You know what you guys chat amongst yourself for a second. I'm gonna let her outside real quick so I don't have an accident to clean up in a minute. I will just keep recording and I will listen to this bit later. But I will be right back and I'm gonna ask you about fundraising when I get back. All right, so what did I miss? If you wanna hear what I missed, head over to Patreon and become a patron for just $3 a month. It helps support the production of the podcast for as little as a cup of arguably inexpensive coffee. Patreon is where I post links to past newsletters, updates about events, answer questions and where I'll be posting bonus content, hopefully before the end of 2023. So become a patron now and get access to all of that, while helping to support the podcast.
Speaker 2:So with New Zealand government. They originally shut down.
Speaker 3:All right, let's start that over. So let's talk a little bit about fundraising, how that changed. There was a moment where one of you was mentioning something about how oh Nanette, you were mentioning about how the donors really sort of got behind the organization at the beginning of COVID. Did that last. Is fundraising fundamentally changed from this process?
Speaker 1:I would say really for the first two years. So 2020, 2021, fundraising, as far as individual gifts, continued to be significant. I you know those were probably a couple of our most I don't wanna say flat years, but you know we were able to pay our bills, keep our people and keep moving forward. So that was good, I feel the biggest impact, which has been obvious, was events. We took a huge hit on our biggest event. We have an event called Fur Ball. It's an auction in Gala In 2019, it made the most money it had ever made.
Speaker 1:It made almost $500,000, which at that time was about a quarter of our annual budget. And in 2021, we had to pivot really quick and put it virtual and it dropped our income in half. It went from 500,000 to 250,000. And in 2021, it dropped in half again, got down to 135,000. And just, I don't know what it was to put my finger on, other than everything was online and there were so many virtual things happening. And I think for some of the population of people who give two charities, it is tends to be a more experienced population that have the funds to share and they're not as comfortable with online or computer type programs. That can make it a challenge, so that, I think, is where we struggled a little bit there.
Speaker 1:The individual giving, though, was great.
Speaker 1:It was fantastic.
Speaker 1:The availability of emergency funds that were through foundations that we'd never been in contact with before was very different, and for me, during that time, the events just became a way to stay relevant and stay active online.
Speaker 1:We actually added an online event during 2020. That was an online art auction, where we got people to donate art that they had sitting around their houses, that was animal related, that they just they didn't need the dogs on felt playing poker anymore, and so they could donate that, and we had some great, great online art auction type things, and we did that for two years. It didn't make a lot of money, but it was fun, and it was a completely different way to interact with people during that time period, so that is the one thing I have to say I'm grateful for is that our events are starting to pick back up again our public events. The other side of it, though, is, since COVID and with what's been happening with the economy and employment, we have seen a decrease in the size of the gifts that we are receiving and the number of gifts that we are receiving. It has made individual giving just complete opposite to what it had been before, and I fear that we're going to be experiencing that for at least a couple more years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me. I mean we were. Yeah, we were good for a while. I mean the government subsidies that came in that were never available before, specifically for staffing, helped during COVID over that time period. People still saw the need, especially for animal welfare during that time period. So our regular giving has continued. However it is, it is getting more and more challenging. So, very similar. You know I can't speak to it because I wasn't here during that time period, but I wasn't made aware of any issues with keeping staff over that time period. Like I said, we were the busiest we've probably ever been because we lost the majority of our volunteer workforce. So that was there.
Speaker 2:But the just the fundamentals of fundraising changed your street appeal. Where you go down to the local supermarket and sit outside with a bucket, nobody carries cash anymore. We were thrust into the 21st century with digital services needing to be required. We also saw a whole lot of scamming and all sorts of things that have increased over this time period between you know fake links to click through or swiping details off of pay waves, but even essential, really simple things of well, if we want to go out and do a street appeal and, yeah, nobody carries cash anymore. Well, we might want a credit card machine that takes contactless payments, but you know what? There's a surcharge attached for that contactless payment on top of the normal surcharges. So now, as a charity, you're starting to go oh gosh, can I really afford three to five percent being taken off of my $5 donation that's coming through, or is that just such a disservice? There are a few organizations that came around and started offering these services, but of course, they decided they'd clip the ticket along the way as well. So it became became really challenging and we definitely are feeling that now we have some amazing long term donors and major donors that have seen it as an essential piece and part for them to play in. We have a whole lot of regular giving. I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but operating expenses for us as an organization are $65 million a year to stay afloat and run. So we are a big group and a big organization and, again, totally funded off of the New Zealand donated dollar, as well as bequests and wills that have been left to us.
Speaker 2:So, like you mentioned, with events disappearing, this is one of the things that fell over during COVID for us. We cannot undervalue community engagement from an organization that relies on public donation for such an essential service. You know, if you did a survey today and asked New Zealanders do they think animal welfare is a priority? The answer to that is yes. We just had an election here where that was pretty clear. That was one of the campaigns that people were running on.
Speaker 2:So it's an essential service, but it's not anything that's government organized, run or set. So it's charities like ourselves and the many other rescues in New Zealand as well that are providing a really essential service pretty much off their own good, but it's something that it's expected of the New Zealand public, since we lost a lot of that income as well. We just don't have those community gatherings and groups that have taken place and kind of almost that you just happen to know somebody, who knows somebody who will get you a deal on this or a deal on that, and you know saving as well in that space can be really good and the amount of people that you can convince to actually come in and foster pets or adopt pets or volunteer. We've lost from the lack of those community engagements. So we're slowly trying to climb that hill back, but it's a challenging one, but it's very clear that we need to be out in the communities actively, and it's not like you said, it's not about necessarily raising money. It's about that engagement, that awareness and that understanding.
Speaker 3:Let's go to our three questions. Then, nenette, if there was a book that you could gift to all of the listeners, what would it be?
Speaker 1:I actually, did a lot of thinking about this. I think the book that I would give to all the listeners is the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I have used the values in that book in so many different ways in my lifetime that I feel that it is just a universal philosophy that if we all lived by the Four Agreements, the world would just be a little bit better place.
Speaker 3:I was just thinking about that book today. How strange is that. I read that book probably I don't know 15 years ago. Yeah, excellent option. I can't wait to put that one up on my podcast list. For people who are looking to find books for Christmas or for gifts for themselves or others, then they can go to thedealwithanimalscom and look at the podcast book recommendation list and I put up all of everybody's recommended books on there. And yeah, that's a good one. All right, corey, what about you?
Speaker 2:Well, I've taken a similar thread. Yeah, I really had to think. I was like, oh gosh, what am I going to do with a book recommendation? Does it need to be animal related or not? But, to be honest, I'm relatively new to this organization. But Simon Sinek's stuff is great and I don't know if you've seen any of his podcasts and TED Talks and whatnot, but he's got a book. Start with the why and I think as an organization now and quite timely I guess, for this conversation about how's COVID impacted you and what are you doing? Really understanding that power of your why is quite critical to make sure that when you're on track, are you doing the right things. And just because we've done a whole bunch of stuff in the past and we've really tried to diversify, we need to just come back to the why. Why are we here, why are we doing it and how do we motivate our staff in the same way? So without our staff, we don't have the animals being cared for. So it's super important for me that we get that right.
Speaker 3:I've heard of it but I have not read it. I will have to get that one, because that sounds like a fantastic book for me to read right now. All right, Corey, why don't we go with you first this time and ask if you would share a formative or early childhood memory of your connection with animals? What made you decide to become a vet?
Speaker 2:Yeah, becoming a vet. I mean, I think, to be fair, I wanted to be an astronaut first, so it's like pivot in my career pathway.
Speaker 3:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:I feel like maybe being raised in Florida, that was just like a natural progression. You've got the space in there, so you should be doing that from a early childhood memory. It's sad and I'm not going to drag it down, so I won't do it. But the first couple pets that I had both a cat and a dog had disappeared for different reasons, and I think over that time one was actually stolen. There was a beautiful golden retriever puppy and she was taken, and then I had a. Her name was Noel, so she was my Christmas gift, so very, very cute. I still have her little like adoption certificate that we got at the time, something I've hung on to for a very long time. But a cat named Coral she was all white. She was too disappeared after very short periods of time being in my life and I think then I kind of realized just how much of an impact they can have and that I didn't really want other people to have to deal with these things, and that's probably fundamentally what sparked my journey down that animal pathway.
Speaker 3:And that's interesting. That's what you do now is making sure that people find animals that are lost or that are new for them. That's a really interesting connection, all the way back to when you were little and lost your first couple of animals. How about you, nanette? What's a memory that you have of your connection with animals?
Speaker 1:I I would had a hard time with this. My actual first memory, I think, of that desire to care for animals. I was probably about four and we were living on a farm and I was outside one day and I found a kitten that had been bit by one of the dogs that roamed the farm and I took it to my mom and my mom said you need to go put the kitten back. Or you found it or its mother will not find it and will not take care of it. And I felt so weird doing that, like I needed to save this kitten. But I did what she said and the mom.
Speaker 1:Eventually I saw the, the mama cat, come around and take care of the kittens. But it was just this desire to want to help, to want to care for this small animal that needed me, that I think the next thing that popped into my head was a stray dog. They used to follow me home from school every day and I just wanted to take it home. I couldn't, my family wouldn't let me, but I just felt like this is now my friend that I need to care for, and so I would feed them and talk to him, and it's just that idea of wanting to care for these animals that are just here, that give such unconditional love to us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the thing that strikes me about your story as well is this moment that I think we all have at some point, whether you're an animal person or not, where you have a connection to an animal, like whether you knew that animal ahead of time and it was the animal you grew up with, or just some random animal that follows you down the street and you're like, well, why, why me? Why is this animal asking me for help? Or why is this animal trying to communicate and connect with me? And it's just so weird when you think about it. Isn't it Like that these other species are interested in us at all as a species, or even us as individuals? Like, what are they getting from this experience? Let's jump to our final question, then, which is what's the deal with animals? Who would like to start?
Speaker 2:I feel like you've got to be up first on this one, annette. It's been me first. Every time there's a pause and a break, it's Cori will go first. Annette, you go first, you take the lead.
Speaker 1:What's the deal with animals? I have to say, marika, something that you wrote in the paper that you gave me when I was first hired at Homeward Pet. It was like your thesis that you'd written about animals and behavior, and there was something that you wrote in it that talked about how we, as humans, have domesticated these animals. You've taken them from them being in the wild to where they're independent and take care of themselves to where now they're dependent upon us. And because we have done this, it's our responsibility to care for these animals. They depend on us and we have to accept that responsibility, and I think that's the piece that when I think about animal care, animal welfare, it is that idea that we have created the dependency and it's our responsibility to care for the dogs, the cats, the rabbits, any of the animals that are in shelters. I think that's just for me, that's the deal with animals is the desire to care for those who are dependent on us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was listening to the Animal Turn podcast, which is another Anthrozology podcast, and Claudia recently had someone on that was talking about our domesticated animals as citizens of our world or citizens of our cultures. Because they've been domesticated, they're part of our society and they're a part that doesn't get any kind of very much legal protection anyway. And how do we bring them into our society as true citizens that can't speak for themselves and they need us to speak for them, and what that would actually look like if we treated the animals, the domesticated animals, in our society as true citizens. And I thought that was such an interesting. That's the next level, I think, of what you were talking about, of that step, of what we owe the animals that we live so closely with. Absolutely, corey, how about you? What's the deal with animals?
Speaker 2:And what a good, probing question that was what's the deal with animals? I had to sit and reflect on that one quite a bit, I think when we first met and had a bit of a discussion around what the podcast was about and why we were here and why you wanted to talk to somebody from New Zealand down at the bottom of the world. But I think when it comes to what's the deal with animals, I mean really they're just so involved in every aspect of life that we're doing at the moment. I mean, if we reflect on the conversations we're having from COVID, I can vividly remember the very first cat that tested positive for COVID, and then there was the tiger that tested positive for COVID in one of the zoos. And we talk a lot around another good book If you haven't ever read it was, I think it's called the Hot Zone, which was all about the Ebola outbreak and the old TV, the old movie Contagion that came out. That was just like this had never happened. This is crazy.
Speaker 2:And then real life occurred, all about that interaction and that crossing of paths of animals every day. I mean we are they're either in our personal lives because we want them or we don't want them. They are part of the food chain, they are a part of a functioning economy, they are part of everything we do all the time, and I think you're just talking about what's that next step look like in regards to citizenship of animals, and one of the things I'm proud to be in New Zealand or for is we actually were one of the very first people, one of the first countries in the world, to recognize sentience within the animal welfare legislation. So animals are recognized as sentient beings here, which means we have to adhere to more than just basic principles and that they do actually have a mind and they can think and they can feel, and because of that, we have to be very cognizant on what it was and how we interact with them on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:So I think, when it comes down to just what's the deal with animals is that they're just cool. They're here, we're here. We're an animal at the end of the day. But I love what you guys have both said about that, that innate need for caring, and I think that's probably what we would define a bit as human nature and wish we all did it a little bit more. We can be very caring with animals, but we can also be very uncaring with people. So it's yeah, I think it all swings in roundabouts, very interconnected, but love the concept. Feel like there's a whole podcast series dedicated just to that question for you.
Speaker 3:Well, we get to touch on a little bit of it in each episode and maybe we'll eventually get there and have a definitive answer, but for now, I think we'll leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me. I think this episode is going to be fantastic for people to learn from and get perspectives, and if they work in animal welfare, which this whole series has been about, then this is a really great wrap up to this entire series. So if you haven't had a chance to listen to the previous episodes, please do that and listen to this one. Share this episode with all of your animal welfare friends. Really appreciate you all listening in and thank you, corey and Nanette, for joining us today and sharing your insights. Thank you, it's great to meet you, Corey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same, nice to meet you too, nanette, and thanks, marika, for pulling us together from all ends of the earth.
Speaker 3:That was Nanette McCann, executive Director at Homeward Pet Adoption Center, and Corey Ragnaris Kell from Royal New Zealand SPCA. And that was the last episode of series eight, the World of Animal Welfare and Sheltering. If you started at the end, you can go back to episode 72 and listen to all of the surprising and fascinating stories we've heard, from myth-busting to public engagement and beyond. In December we're going to delight your ears with two special episodes and then start series nine in January. Stay tuned next week for the series nine trailer and thank you for joining me as we try to answer the question.
Speaker 3:What's the deal with animals? I'm your host, marika Bell. The theme music for the deal with animals was composed by Kai Strandskoff. You can see links to the guest book recommendations, as well as their websites and affiliated organizations, in the show notes and at thedealwithanimalscom. This podcast was produced on both historical tribal land of the Snoqualmie and Quinal Indian nations. For more information, go to the Snoqualmie Tribes Ancestral Lands Movement. So what do you think is the deal with animals? The deal with animals is part of the Iroar Animal Podcast Network.