Heroes and Their Pets: Alisa Johnson on Dogs on Deployment and Fostering for Soldiers

When former Marine Corps C-130 pilot Alisa Johnson deployed in 2011, finding a temporary home for her dog, JD, was a struggle. Dogs on Deployment was born out of that struggle. Alisa founded the organization with her husband, a former Navy helicopter pilot. Now at the helm of Dogs on Deployment, Alisa shares the transformative impact of their mission to provide foster care for the pets of our nation's defenders during times of need. Imagine a service member's relief, knowing their furry companion is in loving hands while serving our country. In this conversation, we uncover nearly 3,000 success stories, explore the deep bond between humans and animals, and hear a particularly touching tale involving the support of a veteran with multiple amputations.

The second portion of our talk takes us behind the scenes, where the true champions are the thousands of borders nationwide taking pets in. , Dogs on Deployment needs volunteers to dedicate their skills to ensure our service members' pets are cared for. We discuss how businesses and individuals can forge partnerships that preserve these precious human-animal bonds. Alisa illuminates the emotional struggle and logistical challenges faced when duty calls and a beloved pet is left behind, emphasizing the essential roles that education and military command support play in these scenarios. Join us for this heartfelt episode that celebrates the unsung heroes—and their pets—of the armed forces.

For more information or to donate or volunteer, see the web page at https://www.dogsondeployment.org/.

Transcript

Larry Zilliox: 0:15

Good morning. I'm Larry Zilliox, your host and Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run, and today our guest is Alisa Johnson. She's co-founder and president of Dogs on Deployment, and this is an organization that finds boarders and people who are willing to take dogs in and board them for a period of time that a active duty soldier is deployed. So it's just an amazing organization. When I ran across it, I couldn't believe it that it even existed. I hadn't even thought about the issue and in our staff meeting, everybody on staff was so excited about this when they wanted to know what podcast was coming up, because I don't think any of us knew about it, and it's going to be a great resource for our guests and we just want to get the word out. So, Alisa, welcome to the podcast and I really appreciate you joining us. And, if you would, could you just tell us a little bit about your background?

Alisa Johnson: 1:20

Yeah, absolutely. Hi everyone Again, Alisa Johnson, president of Dogs on Deployment. Well, for starters, I never thought that I would be the president of a nonprofit starting off, so my background has been one that has definitely taken me for a couple of fun loop, been one that has definitely taken me for a couple of fun loop. But to kind of get idea of how this organization started, it was because I was in the military.

Alisa Johnson: 1:47

I served in the Marine Corps as a C-130 pilot and my husband was in the Navy. He was a helicopter pilot and together we had a dog named JD. And in 2011, I had to go to the basic school in Quantico, virginia, for six months and live in the barracks and at the same time, my husband deployed and we found ourselves in a situation where we couldn't watch our dog. So we started looking into other options boarding family and friends and we realized that our resources were actually pretty limited. Unexpectedly, while we were very lucky that a distant relative did step up to help watch JD for that time, we recognized that our remedy was really lucky and unique, and so we saw this need in the community of pet support and that's what we set off to create and that eventually became Dogs on Deployment.

Larry Zilliox: 2:49

Wow, how many years were you in?

Alisa Johnson: 2:51

I served from 2011 to 2019. And during that time I was building dogs on deployment, kind of in my part-time, you know off-duty time. Yeah, I had a lot of different experiences where I was both like this active duty Marine pilot in my own chain of command, but at the same time I was also this nonprofit president and I was assisting so many service members through this organization and it really helped develop me as a leader, I think in my space, a very unique leadership style in the Marine Corps especially.

Larry Zilliox: 3:32

And how many years has the organization been around?

Alisa Johnson: 3:35

Same. We started the organization in June 2011. That's when I reported to the basic school and I bought the website domain wwwdogsondeploymentorg and had no idea what I was going to do with it. But you know, years later, it's a thing that basically we operate like a rover matchcom, where our website allows applications from service members and I know you mentioned active duty for deployments but we also assist military relocation.

Alisa Johnson: 4:09

We assist family members if there's some sort of emergency while the main service member is deployed, or we also assist veterans receiving any kind of treatment or inpatient care. You know even what you do. We would be very interested in helping a family if it meant you know them receiving some sort of healing benefit, but maybe they are afraid to take advantage of that because they, you know, have this animal at home that maybe they can't afford to board. You know that would be something that our organization, our mission, is to provide America's heroes peace of mind concerning their pets during their service or hardship, and our organization does that through providing a free foster network and also financial assistance for pet care providing a free foster network and also financial assistance for pet care.

Larry Zilliox: 5:06

Wow, well, we're very fortunate. Here, locally near the retreat, we have two boarders that will board a dog for the Warriors five-day stay while they're there at no cost.

Alisa Johnson: 5:14

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people.

Larry Zilliox: 5:17

Yeah, we're very, very lucky when it comes to that. How many, how many dogs do you think you've placed?

Alisa Johnson: 5:25

We have, and again it's dogs, cats We've had ferrets, parrot, rabbit, lizard, snake, chicken, pot-bellied pig one time, yeah, we have. A service member owns it One time, okay, yeah, if a service member owns it, we have afforded it. Oh, and we're just shy of 3,000 successful placements.

Larry Zilliox: 5:47

Wow, wow, that's awesome. Let me describe a scenario that we encounter, which is that our guests that come and stay at the Warrior Ret retreat are generally assigned to soldier recovery units at Walter Reed and Fort Belvoir, but there's 14 around the country and there are situations where a service member needs medical treatment and a non-medical attendant, which is usually a family member or a mom or dad or somebody, comes to be with them while they're in the hospital. Mom or dad or somebody comes to be with them while they're in the hospital, would you be able to board the pet for the relative that's coming to be with the wounded warrior?

Alisa Johnson: 6:27

You know, absolutely, and in fact, this reminds me of a situation that we received several years ago. I actually mentioned it. I did a speech where I brought this scenario up. We had a service member who had multiple amputations of limbs after an IED attack and the mother and father had cats. And this service member, his wife, left him, took the kids. He's in this horrible state and his parents came out to help him and they contacted us, and the father was also a Vietnam veteran. You know her answer was yes, absolutely, Because you know, as a military parent, you know that is extremely. You are also sacrificing something in what you're providing support for this service member, for this hero, you know, and so, of course, we would consider applications.

Larry Zilliox: 7:26

So there's two sides to this puzzle. You have the service member who has the pet, and then you have the folks that are willing to step up and board the pet. How does it work? How do you put each one in touch with the other, and what does it take to qualify to board a pet? Is it just anybody who just raises their hand, or do you have a certain criteria?

Alisa Johnson: 7:52

Great question Again. I consider our organization set up similar to a matchcom. When a pet owner comes to our website, they do have to go through a very stringent application process where we verify their identity, we verify the unit that they're attached to or their veteran status, we verify their military commitment to ensure that they're using our organization's foster network for an eligible situation and then, if they're eligible, then they're approved for boarding. Now, once they're approved, their pet will then be listed on our website under pets in need, and so, at any given time, we'll have, you know, a hundred or so pets across the country that are looking for what we call DOD borders dogs on deployment or a foster home. And as a border, you would come to our website and register as a border, you would create a profile. You'd say this is, you know, I live in a house or I live in an apartment, I have a yard, or I don't have a yard. I have kids in my house. I don't have kids, I have pets. I don't have pets.

Alisa Johnson: 9:02

I have pets, I don't have pets, etc and from there your profile gets listed on our database. Now, dogs unemployment. We're a very small team. I know a lot of people go to the website and they assume that we're a large organization, but we're not. We're a very small team. Because of that, we don't have the ability to interview all of our borders, um.

Alisa Johnson: 9:21

So we really do press that on the pet owners, um, by having them be the ones that contact the borders, interview the borders, do a meet and greet with the borders, a trial run with the borders, and then, if that's a good fit, you know, the border would then take the pet from the service member and once they do that, if the pet is deployed to that border in our system, they do that. If the pet is deployed to that border in our system, that border then gets access to what we call a boarding and care plan, which is part of the application process of that service member. That is okay. This is my pet's name, here's all of its medical history, here's its diet requirements, here's emergency contact care, et cetera. And so by doing that, all that information is provided to the boarder. And then we, of course, as dogs on appointment, are available to boarders if they're boarding a pet and if there's ever a situation or an incident that occurs that they need assistance from, we are available to assist in those cases.

Larry Zilliox: 10:19

So I'm guessing that the service member would search your database geographically. So if they're located in Fayetteville then they would do a search by zip code and it would come up with maybe three or four borders in the area. Is that right?

Alisa Johnson: 10:36

That is absolutely correct.

Larry Zilliox: 10:38

Yes, Okay, how many borders do you have?

Alisa Johnson: 11:11

What borders do you have? Do you have them in all states or around different types of military installations, like an Air Force base or an Army base, marine Corps and are maybe not active anymore, but they're still listed in our database as being available. You know, if there were a major plea for support, we have about 46,000 borders. On any given day, we probably have about 800 to 1,000 active borders on our website, hundred to a thousand active borders on our website and, yes, they are generally located around military bases because that's usually where we get pets in need and our organization, again, as a small kind of grassroots organization, we're very big on organic followership and support from local communities. So you know, if we have several pets from a military base that are in need, we share them on social media and then those pets get fared and then somebody eventually sees that and then you know they create an account and so, just by the nature of the way that we engage with our audiences, we end up recruiting boarders near military installations.

Alisa Johnson: 12:06

But that isn't to say that we don't have boarders far away from military installations and in some cases we have seen service members drive hours out of state lines to put their pet with a perfect boarder, because not always that perfect person is that, for your animal is going to be near you. And so we, we really are big on the right fit and in the cases where we have had pets that have gone distances to be with the right border, um, you know, we've worked with network partners to do pet transportation, or we've helped with gas, you know, etc. Et cetera, because we want to make sure that our pets are going to the right home. One, because that prevents pet relinquishment to a shelter in the first place, which is one of our it's our number one priority is to reduce unnecessary pet relinquishment to animal shelters by the military community. And then, two, it also ensures that the likelihood that something's going to happen during boarding that would require that pet to be placed again in another home while that service member is deployed is reduced.

Larry Zilliox: 13:19

I'm guessing that when service members drive a distance to place their pet with a specific border, is it a case of where they've been with that border before and we're looking at multiple deployments and they know they can trust that border.

Alisa Johnson: 13:37

We do a webinar series once a month that you can register for on our website where we have conversations very similar to this with our partners and we will have volunteers come on that have boarded 35 plus dogs from our website. So, yes, our repeat boarders definitely have a sort of reputation and they definitely it's like that word of mouth gets around in their units, you know, and everybody kind of is like, oh, have you heard of this Dogs Unemployment Boarder? Like way out there on, you know, in the boondocks of Washington state, like you got a user.

Larry Zilliox: 14:19

Wow, how do the service member and the boarder initially contact? You Is the best way through the webpage.

Alisa Johnson: 14:27

That's the only way is through the website. Dogs in Employment does monitor all communication so we can ensure that we don't have any fraudulent boarders or service members that are trying to misuse our services or anything. So our messaging system is the number one place and I should say we do not have that happen Very, very rare circumstances. But we do want to ensure that we give the most amount of peace of mind to all of our users and so by going through the website that ensures that communications are tracked for record and it also maintains privacy. So in case a service member doesn't want to use a border, you know they can control access to that communication or vice versa.

Larry Zilliox: 15:15

And what kind of volunteer support do you have? How do volunteers play into the operation of your organizations?

Alisa Johnson: 15:23

Well, I'm glad you asked that question because you know we all learned COVID changed a lot of things and for our organization it was definitely our community volunteers of the organization, where we would have individuals that are located near a military installation that would do events and, you know, create fundraisers and hand out postcards and et cetera, do boots on the ground, campaigning as we like to call it. And with you know the pandemic, we lost a huge amount of our volunteer for yeah, and with this, yeah, you're like you know, and and that low roll of events and stuff coming back has really it kind of shifted the landscape of how we have sought out volunteers. So I would definitely say for listeners, we are still looking for people in the military installations that are interested in being those boots on the ground kind of advocates for dogs on deployment. If you have access to base, that's huge for us to be able to say, hey, like we can send you, you know, 500 rat cards, can you go to base and just put these up that you know wherever they'll let you, or around the base. You know, at the, at the barber shop that all the young Marines go to or whatever. That's really helpful.

Alisa Johnson: 16:49

But other areas that we really do need volunteers are in professional services. So we really appreciate support from people that can offer technical skills to the organization or, you know, collaborate for mutual support, kind of like affiliation programs with business owners that are interested in using us to partner for a cause. So we're very open-minded to how people if you're listening to this and you're inspired to say I want to support this cause, but I don't know how like let's schedule 15 minutes and talk about how, so that it's a really good, mutually beneficial volunteer opportunity for people.

Larry Zilliox: 17:34

We experienced the same thing. We had quite a core of volunteers that COVID hit and almost all were gone and it's been a journey to build them back up. But I know they're out there and they want to help and hopefully some of our listeners really will look at the webpage and find a way to help. I have some resources for you We'll talk later that I think would be very useful in getting the word out, especially around military installations. But I want our listeners regular listeners know that when I'm talking to somebody from a nonprofit, such as yourself, we start to talk a little bit about the web page, and yours especially is very well done, thank you. But as our listeners know, that web page, when you go to it almost every web page out there for a nonprofit when you look up at that right hand corner, you're going to see a button that says donate and I want everybody to Just bang on that button.

Larry Zilliox: 18:48

I just did it and took less than two minutes and what I really liked is when I was done and it confirmed a donation, it popped up with share it on Facebook, which is another vital thing. So everybody out there listening, everybody needs to make a donation, share it on Facebook and really drill down and find a way to support Dogs on Deployment it really is Pets on Deployment which amazes me. But find a way to contribute somehow. Maybe volunteer in your area, volunteer with some specialty skills that you might have. I know every organization out there needs help with social media and, at a minimum, sharing everything that you can find out about the organization. Yeah, what do you think? One thing that you mentioned that sort of really bothered me was the thought of a service member having to relinquish a dog or a pet to a shelter because they can't find anybody to take care of it. How often do you think that happens?

Alisa Johnson: 19:55

You know that's a hard number to actually get a hold of. I can't tell you how many animal shelters we have called and asked for data on this and they will not release particular numbers. This and they will not release particular numbers and most shelters say that they don't ask that question when they take in a pet for relinquishment, which I think really is a disservice to the amount of support that you know organizations that help service members. It would be very nice to have that number when building the need, the case for our need by. You know, any given day you can get on Instagram or Facebook and see some animal shelter that's posted military members deploying. You know their dog has been turned in. You know it's a really hard situation because for our organization we have a very high placement rate. Nine out of ten, nine and a half out of ten dogs that are approved for boarding on our website will receive will find a border. It's either because that service member is not actually eligible to use our foster network, which there are those cases at times, or that service member finds other care options for their dog, or maybe their deployment is canceled or they really just you know that last case is they really couldn't find somebody through dogs on employment. But that very rarely has happened in the last decade and a half because of our team and that's our number one priority is to prevent that animal relinquishment. So if a service member comes to us and says I'm going to turn in my animal if I can't find somebody, it's like, ok, we're going to do everything we can. So when a service member doesn't know about dogs on deployment or chooses not to go through our organization and then relinquishes an animal to a shelter, you know that's a real problem point for us because it does that animal shelter not know about us?

Alisa Johnson: 22:03

Did the animal shelter provide us as a resource to that pet owner? You know, is this a short notice deployment? Where did the command fail at ensuring that their service member was ready for deployment? You know where was this animal? What was the plan when the service member got the animal in the first place? Did they adopt a pet with any sort of education on what owning a pet would really look like for them as a service member?

Alisa Johnson: 22:36

So there's a lot of things at play here, you know pet owner education, animal rescue, alliances and collaboration, military command collaboration, collaboration, military command collaboration. And that's really where I mentioned back to that volunteer aspect is when we need people, because if you want to say I want to support dogs in my local area, send me some rat cards. We'll go take our rat cards to the animal shelters so the next time a service member comes into them and says I need to relinquish my pet, I'm going on deployment. They can hopefully give them one of our rat cards and we can save that animal from having to be rehomed and all the resources that the animal shelter has to go through right the intake, the processing, the adoption like that's so unnecessary if our organization was just, you know, spread like wildfire and that's really where we rely on listeners to make that happen.

Larry Zilliox: 23:33

And I've got to believe, from the command standpoint, that you know giving up your pet, someone who you treat like a member of the family, it's got to be just so hard. And when you're talking about a service member who's being deployed, their head needs to be in the game and it can't be. You know, you know what it's like to fly a C-130. You can't be thinking about other things. You have to be concentrating on flying that plane, and I just think that the commands can do much more, especially on the education side. Yes, wow.

Alisa Johnson: 24:14

And that's really like where you can really see my pilot-ness come through in the mission statement of the organization. Right, our mission is not to foster the pets of deployed service members. This is what we do. Yeah, our mission is to provide peace of mind to service members, to American heroes I should say American heroes because we also allow fire and police and first responders to use our network in eligible situations but that peace of mind is extremely important. You know, as again, yeah, you hit the nail on the head as a pilot If I knew that my crew master in the back was having an issue with their pet. They can't be focused on the mission and that ultimately puts our entire crew, the entire mission, at risk. And so, yes, and the most difficult part about military leadership is that it changes over so frequently. You know, about military leadership is that it changes over so frequently. You know, every two years you get a new commanding officer, and that becomes very difficult for us to constantly be getting our information into the commands.

Alisa Johnson: 25:21

And you know, when I was active duty as a young captain, or you know, as I came up through the ranks and I was in the aviation community and my husband was in the Navy, and so we had this really wide net of junior officers.

Alisa Johnson: 25:34

You know that for about a decade that were just kind of floating this name through.

Alisa Johnson: 25:40

You know the Marine Corps and the Navy, which is why dogs and employment is pretty big, more so in the Navy and the Marine Corps bases because of my husband and mine's service and our influence among our peer group. It was wide casting. And you know our mascot. Right now we every year we do a mascot competition and our new mascot is actually a Navy flight student, a Navy flight student, and so it's really this kind of interesting like revival of the same story that with Dogs Unemployment's origins, which is getting people you know young people that are in the service right now, especially leaders or future leaders, which if you're in the service, you're all a future leader. It's not just the people that want to support dogs in employment that we need to be involved in our organization, but it's also the service members that we need to be advocates for our organization, because while you might be married and have a dog and not worry about where your dog is going to go, while you're on deployment, what about your single friend and their dog?

Larry Zilliox: 26:49

Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. Go while you're on deployment. What about your single friend and their dog? Yeah Well, I just think you know. God bless you. You do amazing work. This is a wonderful organization. I encourage all of our listeners to go to the webpage, which is dogsondeploymentorg Really easy. Check everything out, hit every page on it, look through everything, read them. There's some amazing pictures of dogs and it looks like your board is. It's a solid board of dog lovers for sure. Yeah, yeah, it looks like you have a great board and support. Really, I wish you all the luck in the world. You just, you're just doing great work.

Alisa Johnson: 27:30

Well, thank you, you are too, you know we just everybody needs help in different ways and ultimately, you know, if there's a need out there and you're doing something to help, that need be met. That's all we can really ask for to make this world just a little bit better of a place.

Larry Zilliox: 27:50

Yeah for sure. Well, thank you so much for coming on today For our listeners. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willingwarriorsorg, and we'll have another episode next Monday at 0500 for you early risers who like to get up and listen to podcasts.