The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Saving Dogs and Fighting Rabies with Dogs Trust USA’s Owen Sharp

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Dogstrustusa.org Saving Dogs and Fighting Rabies with Dogs Trust USA's Owen Sharp About the Guest(s): Owen Sharp is the Director and President of Dogs Trust USA, appointed in July 2019. With a rich history in leadership roles within the non-profit and healthcare sectors, Sharp previously served as the Global CEO and Executive Director of the Movember Foundation in Culver City, California, and has had an impactful tenure as the CEO of Prostate Cancer UK. A trained nurse from Glasgow, Scotland, Owen is also honored with a doctorate from Glasgow Caledonian University. His passion for animal welfare, particularly dogs, is matched by his personal commitment to animal rescue and advocacy. Episode Summary: In this episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss engages with Owen Sharp, President of Dogs Trust USA, for an insightful discussion about the critical issues facing dog welfare today. Sharp, with his extensive background in leadership and dog welfare, sheds light on the staggering challenges animal shelters face, from overpopulation and economic pressures to the rising abandonment rates following the COVID-19 pandemic. The conversation traverses the importance of education and responsible dog ownership as a means to alleviate these issues. Sharp discusses the ambitious goals set by Dogs Trust USA to tackle poorly managed dog populations, improve physical welfare, and address the deaths caused by rabies internationally. Emphasizing the necessity for affordable spay and neuter programs and veterinary care, he urges for a committed community effort to support shelters in the US. By understanding the intricacies of training and matching the right dog to the owner, as well as creating awareness around rabies prevention, these measures promise to enhance dog welfare significantly and save countless lives. Key Takeaways: Dogs Trust USA focuses on the crucial areas of population management, low-cost veterinary care, and rabies prevention to improve dog welfare globally. COVID-19 has significantly increased dog abandonment rates, as many people adopted pets during lockdowns without fully understanding the responsibilities, leading to crowded shelters. Achieving responsible pet ownership starts with selecting the right dog for one's lifestyle and ensuring proper training and socialization. Rabies is a major global health problem, with one person dying from it approximately every 8-9 minutes worldwide. Dogs Trust strives for the total elimination of canine-mediated rabies. Supporting local shelters can be done through donations, volunteering, and fostering dogs, contributing to sustainable solutions in the welfare community. Notable Quotes: "If you have the right knowledge, if you have the right skills, nearly all of those behavioral issues can be avoided." – Owen Sharp "Our ambition is to halve the number of human deaths from rabies in the next five years." – Owen Sharp "It's not just saying, 'I want a dog,' and I want that one that I've seen for whatever reason, be it fashion, or a TV show." – Owen Sharp "We need to educate people about the type of dog that they get." – Owen Sharp "Rabies is 100% preventable—there is a vaccine that exists that you can give to animals." – Owen Sharp

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, that makes it official. Welcome to the show. We never invite dumb people on. It's just the host who gets on the show because I entitled it The Chris Foss Show in 2009. And so I can be as dumb as I want, but that's why we have guests that are smart. See what we did there? We got it fixed. Anyway, we have an amazing

young man on the show today. In the meantime, go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, linkedin.com, Fortress Chris Foss, Chris Crispus, one of the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. He is a gentleman who loves dogs and who doesn't. And anybody who doesn't love dogs, you should give them the side eye as it were. Owen Sharp joins us on the show with us today. He is the director and president of Dogs Trust USA. He was appointed there in July 2019, and prior to Dogs Trust,

he was the global CEO and executive director of the Movement Foundation based in Culver City, California, before November or Movember? Movember. Movember. Before Movember, the largest funder of America's health services and research which

works closely with the prostate cancer foundation the USA Owen was CEO of prostate cancer UK and interim deputy at CEO at victim support he rebranded the prostate cancer charity as prostate cancer UK and led the merger with Prostate Action. Sorry, I got to giggle that a little. And launched the high-profile Men United campaign. So men at that time were united in Prostate Action. Owen began his career... Sorry, I'm making fun of your prior businesses. I'm sorry, Owen.

It's fine. I'm not sure what any of that means. He began his career nursing at Glasgow, Scotland, going on to work in leadership roles in hospitals across the UK. He was recently awarded an honorary doctorate at Glasgow Caledonian University. Animals have been a big part of Owen's life. He's a huge dog lover and lives in the UK with an eight-year-old Labradoodle, Dixie, and two other dogs. Dogs Trust Rescue Lexie. Is Dogs Trust Rescue two year old Dogs Trust Rescue?

Oh, it's from the rescue of the Dogs Trust. Is that, is that what it is? Am I reading that right? Yeah, no, I rescued Lexie from Dogs Trust or, and she rescued me by coming from Dogs Trust, depending which way around you put it. We'll talk about that on the show. Cause I've been rescued by dogs as well. Welcome to the show.

On gibboush.com, where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? So great to be here, Chris. Thank you so much for the invite. Really brilliant to be talking to you. Yeah, so dogstrustusa.org is where you will find all things Dogs Trust. Dogstrust.org. I love dogs. So give us the 30,000 000 overview what you guys do there

dog's trust is the big main uk charity has been around for 135 years so we've been doing this for quite a long time a victorian charity that started looking after dogs in the uk when there was a real big problem with strays as i said we've been doing it for a long time. We registered as a charity in the USA in 2016. I joined in 2019. And we are all about supporting and helping organizations who are there to change the life of dogs. Primarily, our biggest focus is around population management. So spay and neuter programs and low-cost veterinary care,

giving people who can't afford it access to reasonable veterinary care because we know that's one of the biggest reasons that dogs end up in shelters and too often, I'm afraid, are facing euthanasia on too big a scale. So we're all about changing that in every single way that we can. Yeah. And I think, I don't know if it's going on in the UK, but I know here in America, one of the problems we're having is a lot of people got animals and dogs for pets during COVID because they were alone and they didn't want to talk to their spouse, evidently. And one of the problems we have is that they're now starting to dump these animals in shelters because they're just like, ah, I'm kind of over this. COVID's over. I can go hang out with people. I don't need this dog anymore. Maybe they're moving to a place that, you know, they're having to, they're having to,

you know, do stuff with, but they can't have dogs, which I think is unfortunate. So is that happening in the UK too as well? Yeah, it is. It's not an understatement to say that the animal welfare sector in the UK and most other parts of the world is facing its biggest challenges ever faced at the moment. By way of example, in the UK, we count the dog population every year. And just before the pandemic, it was 9 million dogs in the uk and after the end of the pandemic it went up to 12 million so an increase of 30 plus percent in a very short space of time and as you rightly say out coming out of the pandemic for a huge variety of reasons there's loads of people who can't cope with those dogs that might be because they've just kind of

got bored of them as you said it might be because they're facing economic pressures because we know the world is a expensive place at the moment and inflation and we've seen the cost of pet food and vet care go up even higher than the overall rate of inflation or it may just be that those dogs actually weren't very well socialized during the pandemic they're not great with other dogs. They're not great with people. So you put all that together and you've got a shelter system that's under a level of pressure that it hasn't been under for a long, long time. Yeah. I've seen places in California where they're just like, we can't take any more dogs. We're full. And then of course, no one seems to want them. You're right. Economics, you know, the inflation has been bad for people. Housing has been expensive. You know, one of the problems I've always had all my life of owning four Huskies is

I can't always move into the nicest places I want. You know, I have to take a step down or two because, you know, even though I can afford it, I could, you know, some of the nicer places are like, yeah, you can't have a dog in the mansion, eh? And we're just not pets, which I get. But it's kind of interesting to me. I've lived in houses with children. And as a realtor, seeing houses have children versus houses that have pets. Yeah.

And there's a lot more wear and tear with kids. I'm sorry. Those kids will drop all sorts of food on everything. You know, I mean, when I was a kid, I poured grape juice in my parents piano and freaking ruined it you know yeah sure a dog might poop on the floor or pee on the floor until you teach them not to but you know it's the other thing you mentioned is training you know i wish people more people would realize that the problem usually is the dog the problem is the owner has to be smarter than dog and train them properly you know i i own i've owned four huskies now and probably coming up on our fifth here soon in probably the next year and you know i learned a long time ago that you got to be smarter than the

dog and you got to train them otherwise they train you and you know when i see horrible dogs it's kind of interesting how whenever i go to the dog park, the worst human beings that are the, you know, they're just the awful ones. You know, they're usually bullies there at the dog park. They usually have the worst dogs. You know, they're the dogs that attack the other people. And then if you complain, then they, the people attack you. And you're just like, I see why your dog has a socialized problem because you have a socialized problem. But one of the problems with Huskies too, and Huskies are like, have a hard time getting into shelters now, especially in like California where they're full.

And there's some Husky shelters that have been set up just for Husky shelters because they can't get things. And there was a lot of them. They bought Huskies during the Game of Thrones run because there was wolves or dogs in there. So they were like, we're bought huskies during the game of thrones run because i guess there was wolves or dogs in there so they were like we're getting huskies so all these people bought huskies from game of thrones influence and then once they realize how much work goes into that dog because it's a really hard dog to manage they just threw them all back into these things so any thoughts on some of that that i rambled on about? Yeah, no, you are spot on, sir. You absolutely are spot on. So more than 50% of the dogs who are given up to shelters

anywhere around the world are given up for behavioral reasons. And we believe that if you have the right knowledge, if you have the right skills, nearly all of those behavioral issues can be avoided. If you start to struggle, it's really important that you get help early on because if you just ignore the problem, it gets worse and worse and then people can't cope. And I think the other thing that you were saying that is absolutely right is that we really do need to educate people about the type of dog that they get. It is not just saying, I want a dog and I want that one that I've seen for whatever reason, be it a fashion reason, be it something that I've seen on a TV show or a movie.

So, for example, in the UK and here in the US, we had a huge run on Belgian Malinois, which was the dog that was featured in the John Wick's movie. That is not a dog for an inexperienced owner. They are incredibly active dogs. And you just see these trends all the time and that that drives poor breeding practice because you get underground breeders who suddenly start just trying to meet that demand so it really is being educated not just in terms of once you've got the dog but thinking about it beforehand you know is it a dog that you're going to have the adequate time to exercise to train and work with or do you need a simpler smaller dog you know so

think about the one that's right for your lifestyle not the one that you think is the the right fashion accessory yeah as husky so as husky owners we're really good at warning anytime i meet a new husky owner i'm like have you owned this dog before okay you really need to do some research because i i spent the first year with my Husky making her life hell and my life hell. And she made my life hell too, because I, I wasn't, I wasn't managing things right. And yeah. And then somewhere in the middle of the first year I, I said, God damn it. I can't, there's so many problems. What the hell?

And I finally looked up on the internet and read about stuff and I'm like, Oh wow. Okay. I should have read about this dog sooner and educated myself on what the challenges are and what I need to be aware of. And that helped a lot. And I think more people need to do it. You know, sadly, I come from this generation, which I think is very boomer and Jen, I think

Gen X bleeds into a little bit of it. There might be some people that still have this attitude i think that i've seen but they just have this attitude of you get a dog maybe for security or to make the kids happy you chain it in the backyard to a box and you forget about it largely and i think some people still have that attitude i know here in utah i've seen dogs that are still treated that way they They're locked in the backyard, very few times allowed in the house because they're poorly trained. And it's just insane. So you guys have some goals you talk about on your website. There's three goals you have.

Number one, poorly managed dog populations. Number two, poor physical welfare. Number three, dogs' deaths caused by rabies. Talk to us about what these goals are, what they mean and what you guys are trying to do to help. Yeah, it's three areas and there are lots of other areas, but these are the ones that we think Dogs Trust USA can play the biggest part in. So the first one is population management. That is all about encouraging people wherever appropriate to get their dog spayed or neutered you know the cost of that is going up hugely and i've heard recently you know kind of the average

cost of getting a dog spayed or neutered particularly if it's a slightly larger dog has now gone over a thousand dollars that's crazy and that's stopping people doing it you end up with unwanted puppies you just end up adding to the problem so we work with and we fund organizations all across the us who run low-cost or even free spay or neuter programs and where they've been doing that for a long while that really is changing the nature of the dog population and alongside that we we work with organizations that provide good affordable veterinary care you know we're focused on what we would call the fundamentals of veterinary care. It's about being able to make sure that people can access veterinary care early,

because if you ignore problems, they become chronic, they become much more expensive, and often they do lead to dogs being given up or turned out in the street and become part of the stray population. So we work similarly with organisations who work in that space and there are great organizations all across the united states doing that how can people sorry how can people do more to support shelters or do more people need to try and get involved in starting shelters or how do we solve the shelter problem? Do we need to educate people more on what dogs are about before they buy them and how to get them or how do we overcome that whole shelter issue?

Yeah, it's a fabulous question. I mean, I personally, I don't think the answer is more charitable foundations and shelters because you just end up at the periphery. You've got a great network. We've got it in the UK and you've got just end up at proliferation. You've got a great network. We've got it in the UK and you've got it in the US as well. They are organisations that need help and support. And frankly, they all need money. So if you're ever in a position to donate to organisations like that, then please do. They certainly need volunteers. These organisations very often can't exist without the contribution of volunteers. So if you are ever able to give any of your time to volunteer for them, and that doesn't even have to be direct voluntary care.

You might be somebody who's got accountancy skills or you might be somebody who's got HR skills. They can often benefit from having that sort of support as well. And then the third thing that people can do is become adopters or become foster carers. We've got too many people who are automatically going out and sourcing new dogs, getting dogs from various places on the internet. Go and get your dog from a rescue organization. And to do that, be patient. Don't expect to just turn up on the first day and have the ideal dog. Go talk to them.

Don't go in with preset views about what sort of dog you want. Go and talk to them about your lifestyle and they will find you the right dog go talk to them don't go in with preset views about what sort of dog you want go and talk to them about your lifestyle and they will find you the right dog they might not find it on day one but they will find it for you i like that idea i like that idea and learn to train you know one of those really helped me with my dog and it was just probably something you know was by default and luck but one of the problems i was having with my Husky and watching the dog whisper guy, I'm not endorsing him or saying he's the greatest or whatever. Don't come at me with hate. All I'm saying is I watched an episode of him with an S with a Husky.

And I was like, okay, I'm watching this episode because I have Huskies and I can't control them for shit. And so watching the episode did help me. Now, I know for some reason he's a little controversial i can't remember what it is but some people have anytime i've told that story they throw shit so just just realize i'm not endorsing him in any way shape or form i'm just saying it really helped that episode because i i watched how he handled the husky but and i think it's an example of what more people need to get trained in, you know, maybe, maybe before you, you know, we allow people to have a dog, they should get, they should have to go to school for it.

Just kind of, I believe you shouldn't be allowed to be a parent unless you go to school and also work out your psychological issues ahead of time. But that's me. No one seems to care anyway. They're just like, yeah, just, we'll just wing it. And who cares if we screw up some kids, but there's me. No one seems to care anyway. They're just like, yeah, just, we'll just wing it. And who cares if we screw up some kids, but there's that. I'm not, I'm not doing the childcare thing. Dogs is big enough problem to solve.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I need, I have some people that they need to be, they need to be, they're breeding needs to be really, they need to be, they need to, they need to have some, what is it called where they anesthetize the dog, Not anesthetize them, but anyway, jokes aside. Let's get in number three, where I cut you off on dogs' deaths caused by rabies. Yeah, so a lot of people don't realize, but rabies is a huge problem across the globe. So Dogs Trust USA focuses on it, but the main thing that we're trying to do is essentially raise awareness and raise funds for work going on in the

in other parts of the world but to give you a context one person every eight to nine minutes dies of rabies somewhere in the world really yeah it's still a it's still a very dreadful disease and that is probably a massively underreported number rabies the by far the most common source of people getting rabies is from dogs, and that's just because dogs live in such close proximities to people all around the world. The big parts of the world that are most affected by rabies are Southeast Asia, so places like Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam. India is the place where more people die of rabies than anywhere else, and that's probably just down to population density and sub-Saharan Africa.

So it's a dreadful disease. If you get bitten or scratched by a animal with rabies, you've really only got 24 hours to seek treatment. And in most of the parts of the world that people live in where rabies is endemic, you're just not going to get that treatment. And after those 24 hours is 100 fatal and it's not a nice disease to die of but the good news is that rabies is 100 preventable there is a vaccine that exists that you can give to animals and if you can vaccinate 70 of the

animals in a population then you will drive rabies out of that area if you keep that level above. So what we do through partner organisations that we have as part of the Dogs Trust family called Mission Rabies, they do two things. First thing is they do mass vaccination campaigns. So as we speak, there are about 200 volunteers, many of whom have come from the US, are currently vaccinating dogs in Phnom Penh in Cambodia and in two weeks we will vaccinate 200,000 dogs and that is a really big step towards getting that vaccination level above the 70 percent and then the second thing we do is we work with local organizations we train people to become what we call para vet so train people who don't have to be full vet

resurgence but might work in the animal health care field how to catch handle dogs safely and to give them a vaccination and so it is a solvable problem our ambition is to half the number of human deaths from rabies in the next five years and over the next 20 to 25 years we want to see the total elimination of canine mediated rabies so it's a big ambition and it's going to involve scaling up all of the efforts that we do but we think it's eminently doable and so we talk to a lot of our donors in the US about doing that both in terms of giving us funds to support us do it but also to become part of the volunteer network so in particular we're working with vets and vet resurgence from all across the U.S.

who take part in this work that we do all around the world. Nice. And I'm glad you guys do that. Do the police or the animal control, do they still put dogs down if they don't have their rabies tags? Because they don't know, right, if they don't have their rabies tags on them. I think I heard once that they tend to put dogs down if they if they can't clarify that they have rabies or not when they pick them up you know they catch them running around you know huskies are notorious for that etc etc yeah i haven't heard that to be honest

but i'll be honest it wouldn't surprise me you do hear lots of things that there are pockets of where that is still happening i mean you can quarantine a dog and check to see whether it's showing signs and symptoms any dog can be given the vaccine there and then but certainly we would encourage anyone in a place where rabies exists to get their dog vaccinated against right yeah one of the you know i went through some hard times after was it 2000 i think it was in 2008 when the mortgage crash business and we all saw over companies which number one was a mortgage company and when we did it i had moved to vegas i didn't have really a doctor for us or anything but i need to get rabies shots for both my dogs and at the time i was able to go to an ifa and buy the rabies shots and administer them myself. And I think it was like eight bucks, 12 bucks per dog. And really, I just need to know the skill to make sure I took the air out of the,

out of the shot before I injected it. Otherwise I'd probably kill him. Thank God the IFA person told me that. But other than that, I gave them my own rabies shot at a very cheap rate. And I was pretty broke back then because we lost everything we got wiped out so i had to start basically from zero again and thankfully i had skill and knowledge but you know but i guess you can't do that anymore like i think i went years back to get my rabies done again and and i have money now but i was just like yeah i didn't want to say i want to save money but now if i want to get rabies done i I can't go to IFA anymore, evidently. Intermountain Farmers Association is what that's called.

And now I've got to go pay, I think it's $75 for a visit because I have to pay for the visit for the doctor on top of the thing. And, you know, with people that are struggling that are out there, I've got money. I still find it egregious to pay that much for what used to be an $12 shot at getting an IFA. But, you know, I can see that if people are struggling with inflation, paying the bills, you know, they've got a bunch of kids and all that sort of stuff. Daycare has gone through the roof. I don't have any of those issues. It can be hard to do the rab through the roof you know having those issues it it's it can be hard to to do the rabies thing you know even i kind of hate doing it i'm just kind of geez do we really

have to do that but you know they're in the yard there's raccoons that come into my yard skunks that come to my yard you name it they they'll get into it with them so i don't know any thoughts on that making maybe making it cheaper to have people get access to these things. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think, I think there's a real degree of us shooting ourselves in the foot here that we've got relatively cheap things that people are being discouraged from

getting because the costs have just got out of control. And there is a real challenge in, in many parts of the world, the U S in the UK as well, that veterinary costs are just going through the roof. So a lot of the work that Dog Trust USA does in setting up and supporting organisations that do access to low-cost vet care, things like rabies vaccine is part of that. The other challenge that we're facing at the moment, and it's certainly not unique to rabies

vaccinations, but it is impact to me is that there just isn't the stocks of vaccines that was before because so much vaccine production was shifted during the pandemic to producing the covid vaccine we've not caught up with ourselves yet one of the things that we're trying to do and work with pharmaceutical companies is to really encourage them to try and find ways to get vaccine production up for rabies vaccine. And I know other disease types are working with them around that as well, because, you know, if we want to scale up and solve this problem, the biggest limiter is one of the biggest limiters is actually going to be the vaccine. It's a relatively cheap vaccine.

It's the cost. And we do get the vaccine at discount from some pharmaceuticals. So thank you to them because they do do a great job. But for us overall to get a dog vaccinated, so not just the price of the vaccine, but actually to get it into the animal, it costs us approximately $4. And that statistically, every thousand vaccines you give, you will save the life of one child if you're giving them to in places where vaccines ramp. So, you know, you're talking for $4,000, you are saving the life of one child if you're giving them to in places where vaccines ramp so you know you're talking for four thousand bucks you are saving the life of a child statistically

so you can see that if we can start to aggregate this up and to start getting it happening at scale we can truly transform the lives of lots of people lots of dogs because if you live in a part of the world where where rabies is prevalent then the relationship between dogs and people is not going to be good because you are fundamentally frightened of them. And so you can never solve any other welfare problems if you've got a population that's got rabies that is running rife in it. So we have to solve this problem around the world to actually change the relationship between people and dogs in all part of the world yeah i mean i i think i might understand why they they made it so you couldn't get access to rabies shots i think local cities i know that where i live when my dogs get the rabies things they're registered with the city probably that's the

same data that goes to the dog catcher if the dog catcher picks up my dog i don't know they call dog catchers anywhere i don't think so boy i'm old but you know if they picks up my dog. Are they called dog catchers anymore? I don't think so. Boy, I'm old. But, you know, if they pick up my dog, they can check their records because my understanding is my vet sends those records to the city. And so they're there. And they get like a specialized tag that says, you know, this dog has been checked for rabies. And I think maybe it was just to get some control over that. But ending that, creating that barrier to that medicine that was really cheap and that I could do it when I was broke. Because I know a lot of broke people are out there today. It's unfortunate.

And so people are just going to not go to the vet. They're not going to get the shots if there's a barrier of price. And, you know, if it's such a big fucking deal, it is from what you're telling me let's let's get let's make it cheap you know it's it's like insane you're you know do you want to save people or do you want to make money and sadly you know it's gotten expensive to do dog stuff when i first got my dogs it was relatively cheap in the 90s to to you know get your dog all the work done and now it's gotten so expensive it's just it's just crazy and i think i think that's another reason people give up on their animals and and care it looks like you guys have some projects you support some organizations that love dogs as

well here in the u.s you've got some educational stuff on how to find the right partner and do stuff. How can people support you? The people that are out there listening to the show, what are the ways they can get involved with Dogs Trust? What can they do to get involved and help? It's a great question. If you go to the website, so dogstrustusa.org, you can see all the work that we're doing. I mean, the number one thing that people can do to support is to donate to us any donation does make a huge difference what we do is work with a network of shelters across the USA so you're quite right you say currently we've kind of supported or supporting around about 63 organizations all across the country most recently we made awards

to another six that we're working with, who are in various states that have some real challenges. So we were working with organizations in Kentucky, in Tennessee, in Mississippi, in Florida, and in California, all of whom face real challenges. And they're not always in the most obvious places. So for example, the organization that we're working with in california are up on the edge of the wine producing areas up there so up right the top of sonoma county and you get huge number of dogs coming in with workers coming in and out to support the the wine industry and they often bring dogs with them those dogs aren't spayed or neutered you end up with

unwanted puppies there's very very poor access up there So what they've set up is both a clinic in a centre, but also they go out and do mobile work. So they go out and do mobile clinics. So all of those things are what Dogs Trust is USA is all about. So we're directly supporting those organisations. But the other thing that we do is we bring them together as a network and they can support one another as they develop things. And they can also draw support from Dogs Trust in the UK, who, as I said, have been doing this for 130 years. So we've been kind of round the block. We've made plenty of mistakes. So as people are starting to develop new services, thinking about new ways of working, they can draw on the experiences that we've had in the UK as well so we've created this network

of organizations who are supporting one another sharing best practice but most importantly often sharing what hasn't worked because there are lots of great ideas out there that people are exploring so yeah go to our website see what we're doing you'll find about the organizations that are out there but if you'd like to sign up to what we're doing, you can become a friend of Dogs Trust USA. You can become a donor. It's a great journey to be on and we can make a real difference to the lives of a lot of people and a lot of dogs. Oh, yeah. We love dogs.

The more I get to know people, the more I love dogs. We like to sit around here. Yeah. I didn't realize rabies was so bad, so I'm glad you're educating people on that. I was kind of on the fence, and maybe a lot of people are. They're like, it's kind of eradicated. Do we really need to do it? But it sounds like from the data you've given me, we definitely need to stay on that.

So people can get involved. You've got a newsletter they can sign up for as well. I just signed up for it. People can check that out and get involved any way they can by supporting you guys absolutely yeah please do sign up you can become part of a big movement here that's going to make a huge difference and and you know as you said we've got issues that lots of people are not talking about rabies it's you know it's under a relatively level of control in the usa but globally it's a huge problem and we need to stay on top of it.

And like you said, there are lots of challenges to be met out there. So if you can be part of this exciting journey for us, you can make a real difference if you love dogs. And as you said, what sane person doesn't love dogs. Yeah. And if you don't help out, you hate dogs. No, I'm just kidding. Just doing the jokes, folks, guilts, guilts, everything like Chris Foss show. So anyway, thank you for kidding. Just kidding. Teasing. Just doing the jokes, folks. Guilts. Guilts everything. The Chris Foss Show.

So anyway, thank you for coming to the show. Give us the.org and whatever else we need to know about. And we go out. Yeah. So please go along to dogstrustusa.org and find out all about Dog's Trust. Become part of this journey. Become part of this movement to change the lives of many dogs. We'd love to have you on that journey. It's going to be exciting. All right. Thank you

for tuning in. We really appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you very much, Owen. Delighted to take me. Really great. Good chat. Folks, save dogs. Dogs are awesome. They love everyone. Cats hate people half the time and love people half the time. Dogs love people 100% of the time.

I'm not saying cats are bad or anything. No, we love cats. We love all animals. I have a hard time any time to see any animal suffering. I have a hard time seeing it. And so let's all be better humans to each other, be more benevolent, and take better care of our animals. Thanks for everyone for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com for it saysmas linkedin.com for it says christmas

christmas one the tiktokity and all those crazy places on the internet be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time and that should have us out