Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on the biggest issues in facting you this week.
Here's many Munyos.
And welcome to another edition of Iheartradios Communities. As you heard, I am Manny Munyo's. If you know me at all, you know I am a dog lover. I'd rather much be surrounded by a pack of dogs than a group of people any day. So I'm happy to be able to bring in our guests and discuss this next topic with you. Suzanne Covid is the president of petco Love. It's a national nonprofit focused on improving the lives of pets and their people. I love that terminology. The website
is petcolove dot org. P E T C O l o ve dot org. Suzanne, thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate the time.
Oh thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here today.
So for people who might not be familiar, tell me about petcolove and what your primary man.
Yes, yeah, improving the lives Our primary mission, we say is improving the lives of people, pets and the people who love them. But what does that really mean? Right? So first of all, I think we really have three sort of pillars that we're going for. We want to make sure that we create new loving families with the
pets that are in shelters. There are millions of pets and shelters, and we talk about in the US we love our pets, but we have to make sure that we save our pets that are in our animal shelters around the country. And we call that sort of pillar of what we do pet Go Love Adopt. So we work with thousands of organizations nationwide to help promote pet adoption, to help give them the resources to save the pets
that are in their organizations. And then sometimes we do a lot of fun things like create these mega adoption events where thousands of pets come together in a weekend and we'll we'll make create two thousand new families with shelter pets going into loving homes all in one weekend. So we really just try to get creative and make sure that people know that Listen, if you're looking to at a new family member and bring a pet into your family, please choose to adopt that pet.
Yeah, there's no question about it.
And I want to get into fostering in a moment because the people that managed to do that have have much bigger hearts than I. The last pet that we tried to adopt is still in our house six years later, So that's.
A different issue. We'll get to in a moment.
How many shelters and rescue partners across the country do you have for pet co Love?
So we work at thousands of shelters and rescue partners around the country. We will work with our large municipal shelters, we work with the humane societies, we work with small rescue groups, and then we work with some very interesting organizations which I know we'll probably talk about that really take on some special activities and like saving shell pets and helping them to be heroes for others.
So what are the number one ways where pets, a dog, a cat, what have you might end up at one of these shelters in our communities that we're all familiar with.
So the number one way that a pet ends up at a shelter is because that pet has been lost. We talked earlier about what do we do I sort of I talked about and I know we're going to cover all these I talked about adoption, but we also want to make sure we want to create families through adoption. When the pets are in those families, we want to help families care for them. And the other big thing that we do is we want to make sure we reunite lost pets because that is the number one way
that pets are entering shelters. Other ways could be someone can no longer care for them. That goes to our second color, helping them care for them, keeping them out of shelters, and those generally are your primary ways that pets are entering shelters.
I imagine that you don't just work with anybody, right, You've got cit you have to have criteria that you use to select the organizations for grants or assistants or whatever else you might do for them.
Right.
Yeah, we are really looking at the life saving impact. We say we want to help those organizations that are making the most significant life saving impact possible with their resources. So organizations are always going to be doing something if you're a nonprofit, but are you doing the most that
you can do? And that's what we look We look at overall organizational effectiveness, and I think we are an unusual organization and that we try to just support organizations with unrestricted funding because if they're doing a great job, we don't need to tell them what they need to apply the money to. We need to trust them to know what they need to utilize those funds for. That's
generally most of our funding. We do have some other, you know, very specific situations, and I know we'll probably talk about some of these, like disaster support and pet cancer and other things. But generally we like to help organizations do what they think they know best to do
to save lives. And we also will help some nonprofit clinics that are maybe they're not saving shelter pets, but they're helping the community provide spain hooter services, low cost vaccines, free vaccines, or even just affordable veterinarian care for pets.
A couple more minutes here with Suzanne Kogi. She is president of pet co Love. The website is petcolove dot org. Talk to me a little bit about how you manage to operate where, how do you fundraise? How do you provide the funds for all of these amazing groups to do what they do for our pets.
Yeah, so our primary way that we raise funds really it's with our dedicated loyal pet go customers that go in and they've shopped and they spoil their pets. Yeah, but on their way out they make that extra two five ten. How about that twenty dollars donation to pet go up. That is really where most of our funding will come from. We have some other wonderful relationships. We've worked with Sketchers Bobs from Sketchers. They have a philanthropic
line of apparel that supports our efforts. And then we have private individuals that will donate. They believe in the tech go love and how we are supporting organizations and how we're helping.
You also talk about some of the amazing partnerships that you have, like taking adoptable puppies to Hollywood or red carpet events or on the ice for Stanley Pup things like that. How do those events help pups get adopted other than just kind of bringing it to people's attention.
So I think we want to make pet adoption cool. And what's cooler than partnering with you know, the sports teams, the NHL celebrities on the red carpet. Pet adoptions should be cool. We want people again like there are if you go to your local shelter and sometimes I think people are afraid to go to their local shelter, right, but you shouldn't be, because that is what you can make a difference. You can see that there's such a
great variety of pets looking for home. Cats, kittens, bunnies, you know, rats, dogs, puppies, and they're just a great variety of breeds. I think we're also just trying to make sure that people can see how playful they are, no matter what they are. That I think everyone goes around and says, I have to have this breed or I have to have that breed, you know. I think
I think love knows no sort of specific breed. The love that you're going to get from a pet, you're going to get it no matter what breed it is. I always encourage people to open their hearts up to whatever really needs a home.
Yeah, and I know I've had this debate with people as well. A lot of people like to go out. You mentioned the you know, the designer brand pets, the designer brand dogs, and they go out. They might get it from a store or a breeder or something. There really is nothing like saving a pet from a shelter, is there? Adopting my gosh.
I mean when you take so I know I'll talk about fostering, but when you adopt a pet and you bring them into their home, yeah, and I mean they just know it. They know that you have saved their lives. They are forever grateful to you, and there's just something special. I mean, I think people generally are so good natured and want to help others, and this is an easy way to help an animal that really does need you and that may be at risk for euthanasia.
Yeah, and that's one of the reasons to either adopt or even I mentioned fostering. I don't have the heart to bring a pet, a dog into my home and then give him to his.
Forever family or her.
The last one that we did that with has been with us now for I guess six or seven years. But just fostering, even if you can't adopt full time, it does help prevent unnecessary euthanasia, doesn't.
It absolutely does. I think when we talk about unnecessary euthanasia, we're talking about pets that are being euthanized simply because there's no room at the end, there's no more space for them. And I mean, look around in your home. If you have some space. Just think about it. I mean, you could take a couple of kittens and put him in an extra bathroom for a few weeks. It may only be a few weeks, it may be even less, but just opening up your home can save a life.
I am a huge advocate for fostering. Not only am I an advocate for it, but I'm always I'm always gonna.
Follow how many how many pets have you fostered?
I lost count after probably about five hundred, So.
I've been five hundred.
Years easily because I've done some puppies, I've done some litters that could be some big Right now, I have a big old I don't know if it's a great down, great day in lab mix or a hound in my house. But he's easy. He just sort of hangs out with the other dogs. Yeah, no, fostering is I love fostering. Not only does it bring just such joy in my house.
Sometimes you will take them out of the shelter. Maybe they were in a you know, a cramped crampe together, bring them home, give them a little back, put them in a pen, and then just like this is puppies obviously, watch them play around and I'm like, now, just so happy. Turn off the TV watch puppy play. You know that will make your day and it'll just change your life. But I've also it's not about them. It's also about have made such great relationships with people that have adopted
the pets that I've fostered. I woke up to a text this morning with someone sending me photos by little Mama Dog that I had fostered. She had three puppies. She's now living the life and their home and having a ball. And I get to see that and I get to think, like, hey, I was part of making that possible, for changing her life. It's the greatest feeling around.
Speaking with Suzanne kogaci is, the president of pet Co Love, you talked about your history. You were a lawyer to financial services corporation beforehand. You've been not only in the animal saving industry for a while now, you've been with pet Co Love for over a decade. Talk to me about that. I mean, that is a drastic change in your life. But obviously you can't do what you do without loving the pets.
Yeah, I mean working at pet Co Love was just an incredible opportunity to really help on a national basis and help us save more lives on a national basis. You know, it's always interesting saying people will ask me how I got into this, Why did I start working at a shelter and stuff? Did I grow up with pets all my life? I didn't. I actually didn't, And
somewhere I adopted that first pet. And that first pet that I adopted absolutely changed my life because I became more aware of the needs that exist and more aware of how we as individuals can make a difference. We can't just let the nonprofits, the municipal shelters, the rescue groups, they can't do it all without us, and we as individuals just can do our partner help. So I'll give
you one statistic that to me, it just resonates. If just two percent of all pet parents, people that already own a pet, would foster one pet a year, just two percent, we don't have to get one hundred percent, just two percent, we would have enough places for the pets that we could eliminate unnecessary euthanasia euthanasia first space in our shelters tomorrow. So like, why isn't that happening? We can do this. It's just a you know, just look at your neighborhoods, people you know on pets just
one a year. I'm going to foster more than one a year, So I got you covered on that.
Yeah, petcolove dot org.
Petcolove dot org is the website to go to if you want to get some information more on what they do, because we've got a lot more to cover or to donate. Of course, I want to delve into something you talked about there a moment ago, because there are people out there that aren't pet people. For example, my boss was never a pet person until she became a pet person, a dog owner, a dog lover, and you can't be a dog owner without being a dog lover. As far
as I'm concerned, what prompted you? You said you didn't grow up with pets, you weren't that kind of a person, but something prompted you to make that first adoption. What was it that drove you that? Because, like I said, there's a big difference between pet people and non pet people.
Yeah, I think so, so I So the first pet in my life wasn't an adopted pet, So I'm gonna I'm gonna put that out there, and it was. It was a boyfriend of mine. It was his dog at the time. But when that pet passed, I said, he I'm going to get another pet. And I became searching and I was like, oh my gosh, all the pets that are out there. I can help a pet. I think I'm generally by nature, and again I think most people are you want to help. If you can help,
you do want to help. And so it was that I actually adopted to it first, and it wasn't shortly after adoption. I adopted those two that I then became a volunteer for the org that I adopted from. I
started helping their efforts. I started organizing more things. You know, I think when you when they there's a pet in your life, no matter what happens around you, you always have love in your home like there is you come home from a hard day at work, you're gonna if you have a dog, You're coming home to.
Your spouse, Your kids might be interested in, might not be interested in welcoming you at the door.
Your pet will always be.
There, always, always, and it just makes a difference. It fills our lives with love. I think if everyone had a pet in our life, you will always have love in your home.
I don't think there's any question about that.
So we've talked about the many ways what pet co Love does in terms of adoption, in terms of being a foster.
There's so much more that you do, and something you mentioned.
Earlier, I want to get into a little bit tell us about your free national Lost and Found pet database called pet co Love Lost, because and I see it all the time on social media, people whose dog may have run out the door, who've gotten out of the backyard or something like that, and my heart breaks each and every one of them because I think about how would I feel that were my pets.
So you always want to help.
Yeah, and that's a perfect that's a perfect segway into why we created pet go Love Loss. If your dog, cat, whatever pet you have is, if it gets lost, you are in an absolute state of frantic, Right, how do I find this pet? And honestly, if you go off and look at like online, what are the resources, you will see a laundry list of things that you should do while you're in a state of panic. One of them, in this day and age of the digital world is
put a flyer on a telephone pole. Yeah, right, but that requires someone to drive by that exact location where you put the flyer on a telephone pole. What if we had one central database where all of those photos of pets could go into and we could reunite more pets. And that's exactly what pepcol Lost is. We've created that
one central database. You simply if you lost a pet pet or if you find a pet, you upload it to our database, which means on any given day, there could be over two hundred thousand lost pets or found pets in that database. And so that's where our photo matching technology goes to work and helps reduce those those potential matches to your lost pets. So that's what PECO Love Loss is. It's a national lost and found database, free for anyone to use with a simple photo of
their pet. And who doesn't have a photo of their pets on your phone? That's face it. You know you do? You know you have about a thousand of them, And that's what it does. And not only that, we've taken it one step further pets and shelters. We are connecting with the shelters and automatically getting those pets that are in shelters into our database. We've now integrated with next tool or in neighbors, so those pets that are posted on social sites are into that database, the one place for all.
How many reunions have you made so.
Far, We're actually getting close to one hundred thousand. We're coming around the corner for one hundred thousand, and you know that. That's the thing. The great thing is is this can be used by anyone anytime before or after your pet go's missing. But what you could even do today is just upload the photo. Get it in there today. So if your pet did go missing, you just simply go into there and hit a button my pet is lost, and there you go.
It's in the system, and it's at the same website, the petcolove dot org.
You can find it at petcolove dot org. It'll have a link to petco Love Lost, or you could go directly to petcoloveloss dot org.
And I do want to point out Petco does all of this great work through Petco Love and all of the things we're talking about. You don't have to be somebody exclusively that shops at Petco to take advantage of this, or to donate or whatever.
This is a national database for everyone, and in fact, one of the things you know that I think this, and especially you know, given where we are today, disasters will happen all the time. And when you look at a situation where a disaster, we've been relying on people to always go to their shelters, but sometimes their shelters are in a disaster. Are having shelters all over It could be at a fair grounds or something like. Animals can be housed all over and sometimes in a disaster,
no one could even get them to the shelter. The goal with this is it's usable by anyone anywhere who you find a lost pet, you bring them in your house temporarily, you upload that photo and hopefully it's your neighbor down the road and you can connect directly.
This might be a silly question. Are there times of the year where you find that more pets go missing, more pets turn up at the shelters.
Yeah, ironically, it's probably the times of the year that we are all celebrating and our pets aren't. Yeah, right, so July fourth, Memorial Day, weekend, New Year's Eve, anywhere, or there's loud noises. We often forget that our pets their sensory you know, traits are exponentially better than ours. So while we're having fun, a lot of our pets are absolutely terrified, right, and so those times of the year we always make sure people are using Pecko.
Love Lost speaking with us Susan Kogan, president of petco Love. The website is petcolove dot org, p E t c O l O ve E petcolove dot org. And I do want to point out whether somebody uses petco Love to adopt a pet or foster a pet, you don't just kind of dump them on these people. There are all sorts of programs I know, you do, free vaccinations, everything else to help those new pet owners adapt.
Yeah, one of our core missions is also to make sure that we can increase access to veterinarian care for people that have pets. A lot of people do have pets and they're struggling to afford the care for those pets. Now, I'll admit that that's a big that's a big problem that we see nationwide and one that we alone won't solve. But what we did try to do is we looked at really something that we were seeing a lot of, and that's diseases that are wholly preventable by vaccines. Carbavirus
and distemper and dogs and pan leukopenia and cats. These diseases when our pets get them, can be quite costly, upwards of one thousand, two thousand dollars to treat. Some of them, are not really successful in treating distemper can be a tough one. So what we've said is, instead of focusing on treatment, why don't we just prevent these diseases from happening, because that is something we can do at a much lower cost by getting these pets vaccinated.
Petsnead otherwise wouldn't be vaccinating. So that's In fall twenty twenty one, we launched our Vaccinated and Love campaign and we were working with our partners around the country. We wanted to have free vaccine clinics. We wanted people, if you can't afford to get your pet vaccinated, we're going
to do it for free. And so far, three million free pet vaccines have been administered in communities where pet parents simply just needed a little help to care for their pets and they love their pets even if they're struggling, and there's lines just to get those pets vaccinated.
Those are illnesses and pets that could be preventable. Cancer is not. And I know that you do a lot in terms of fighting pet cancer as well.
Tell us about that.
Yeah, this has been a partnership, and this has been a partnership that was started I think it's fourteen fifteen years ago now in partnership with Blue Buffet. Also they have been supporting this campaign. And our goal here really is we've supported some research on pet cancer, but we've also supported subsidized treatment. We want to make treatment for pet cancer more affordable for people that can't can't get that care for their pets. It is the number one
disease related killer of our pets. And you know, I think we'll see through the years some very interesting things happening too. We've done some we've supported some research which is really research where we're furthering treatments for pets that actually can help people. Lately, or there's a lot of treatments for pets that started with people that are now helping pets as well. But that's a devastating diagnosis when you get that your pet has cancer.
And we've and we've had three of them, and I know, I know it's difficult, so many people deal with it because it sometimes it just kind of comes on. I always say, and the experts I've spoken to in humans, sometimes it's not just lifestyle. Sometimes getting cancer's luck of the draw. I know you're not a physician, a veterinarian.
Is is it.
Similar with dogs? I mean, is it with pets? Is it it's not a lifestyle thing?
Is it?
No? And I think it's a lifestyle thing. I think there's some breeds that are more prone to certain cancers. I know there's a study on Golden retrievers and looking at cancers that are more common and those breeds osteosarcoma. I believe is is more prevalent in certain breeds. But like any listen, I've had mixed breeds and have adopted from shelters, and I've had I've pets that have had cancer. Now I also always have a lot of pets, so I've had sevens.
I'm done right now higher odds NG.
But but it is, it is really very prevalent and and something that is crushing when you get that diagnosis.
It sure is because because the le's face it, they're part of our family. They are part of the family. If everything that we've discussed Susan isn't enough for pet Co Love to address. I know you also do work with veterans and service dogs. Explain that part of the program to me, because it's so necessary and it is so beneficial for those fighting men and women.
Yeah, this is a this is a program first that is that has been well researched, like there's a there's a lot of scientific research behind the fact fact that pets really can help our veterans, you know, be able if they have PTSD traumatic brain injuries. Pets really can help them live their daily lives in a way that they can't without pets, even reducing the medication they may
have to take. And so we work with organizations that are going to shelters and taking shelter pets and then training them to support veterans that need a service animal, and which I think is just beautiful and Number one, I think that's just the relation in itself that helps. But some of these pets are supported to do very specific tasks and help our veterans. We've done things even
beyond that. There's even programs to help maybe children with autism and other types of conditions that our pets can help us through our daily lives. And then I'll add
one more thing too, because I love this organization. There's an organization that actually helps save shelter pets and train them to be search and rescue animals, the National Search Dog Foundation up in Ohi, and they train animals that are then placed in fire departments around the country and other emergency response units throughout the country, and they are deployed in times of disaster.
That's amazing.
We know more and more, it seems like, almost on a monthly basis. I talk about research about how loneliness in our country has grown over the last few years, over the last decade or so, and how that cuts ears off our lives, and sometimes just having a pet can help cure that loneliness.
Right, I think that there's always a pet for a person. Yes, you know this may not be the right pet for you, but I know that there's one out there for you. I think if you go to your shelter and again, I think sometimes we think we need this certain pet, and sometimes what we need is a little bit different
than what we need. So as senior pet, a puppy isn't for everyone, no, but a senior pet is going to bring you just as much joy and to your point, combat that loneliness and they're really going to still fill
your house with love every day. I think that there's a lot of people that I mean, for me, sometimes my pet actually helps me, helps make me physically healthier as well, because I may not go out and do that walk that I really need to do for my own physical health and for that, you know who I'll do it for. I'll do it for my pet. Yeah. So I think there are huge studies that pets improve our physical and our mental health.
Without question stress relief.
All right, So how can listeners get involved in supporting pet COO Love's amazing numerous life saving efforts that we've talked about here.
Okay easily if you're going to get a pet, adopt a pet. If you can't adopt right now, but you can help temporarily foster a pet and do this directly from your local shelter for us, help us reunite pets. I want everyone to become the become part of the petco Love Loss search party. So when you see things, if you're on a social media app and you see a lost pet, tell them to post on petcoloveloss dot org.
And then of course anyone can donate to us at pecolove dot org too and we'll put the money to good you.
I love that that was the final option that you wanted people to be proactive about the pets before you even brought up donating, which I imagine has to be a big part of it, because otherwise you can't do all of these other amazing things.
Yeah, the resources helped support the great work that we do, but there's a lot that everyone can do individually to help in your local community as well.
Suzanne Coget, president of pet co Love, the national nonprofit focused on improving the lives of pets and their people. I love the way they say that again. The website is Petcodlove dot org.
P E. T. C. L o Ve dot org.
Suzanne, thanks so much for what you're doing at petco Love and sharing the time with us.
Best of luck, Thanks for having us, and.
That'll do it for another edition of Iheartradios Communities. I'm Manni Muno's until next time.
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