It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
And we're playing this for a reason. All of our scheduled guests, our ladies. We were going to lead off with Cheryl Findaka from Call for Action on Channel four, but for whatever reason, we are unable to get her on the line. So I moved my nine o'clock to eight o'clock, and if we do get Cheryl, will put
her on at nine o'clock. But you have seen these commercials on TV with Eric McCormick and Oh what's the name from the Sopranos Edie Falco talking about abused animals, and I've got on the line someone who has done something about it. She has a sanctuary for dogs. She's out in the Great State of Minnesota. I say the Great State of Minnesota because that's where Nancy is from, and she's about to tell us about her organization. Even
though she's in Minnesota. You you hear Massachusetts or any one of the thirty eight states that we hit with our signal can get one of her abused K nine friends. Cindy Bruce, Welcome to Night's Side.
Hello Morgan, how are you.
I'm doing very very well. Tell me about your organization.
My main organization that I foster for is PNC Midwest Rescue. They do mostly Pekinese and Japanese chins. We have gotten dogs from puppy mills, we've gotten dogs from owner surrenders, all sorts of them. The thing with Pekines is they're very cute. They're just teeny tiny when they're little, but they are born with an attitude. They like to growl and they like to bite, and people think it's really cute when you know, they're like two pounded dogs out
of the sea. Yes, yes, it can, okayes definitely, but most people think it's just really cute when this little fluffball that fits in their hand is growling at them and snapping at them, and you know, then it turns into a fifteen pound dog that is still growling and snapping at them. So the in fact, the very first
foster dog that we had, that was the case. He was a cute little fluffball who growled and bitted his owner and thought he was the boss, and they just couldn't handle him anymore after he got to be a fifteen pound dog. Okay, so he came to us. He came to us with food aggression, and he just thought he was the boss and intelligent.
Back up one second. What is food aggression?
If you usually it starts out with other dogs or other animals. They guard their food dish. If you come near their food dish, they growl, they snap at you. They do the same thing with owners sometimes. But all of all of these things can be they can be fixed. You know, There's there's very few issues with the dogs that we've had that have come in that could not be fixed.
So I'm going to tell I'm gonna this story. This story happened when I owned two German shepherds back in the eighties, got them as puppies. I trained them, and shepherds have a series of training methods different than most other dogs, so I followed the rules from a book and a videotape. They were very well trained. There were sister and brother from the same litter my feet. I would feed them in two different bowls, her bowl and
his bowl. She would woof down all of her food then eat almost to the measurement half of his food. And I tried moving the dishes, I tried putting them in different rooms. I tried everything, and finally I decided, let me put all the food in one bowl. She would eat half, he wouldn't go near it. She would eat half walk away, and then he would eat the remainder. Is that common for dogs?
Not?
The dogs are on my house, not a lot of them. They wolf down their food and then they try to join in on the other ones. But I think with German shepherds that's a big thing, especially if you have a brother and a sister. I think that's a pretty common thing. So, yeah, we feed. We have I currently have five dogs at my house and we feed them all in the same room, out of their own dishes. Okay, so we just make sure. We just make sure that they don't go from dish to dish.
And let me ask a question. I know you will ship dogs once you've proven this is a worthy home, you will ship dogs anywhere in America. How do you work that? How do we okay? Go ahead?
Usually we have one of the Usually we have one of the volunteers from the group fly with the dog. The people who adopt the dog have to pay the ticket to get the dog there. They have to pay the expense to get the dog there. But we try not to put we keep them in the cabin with us because Pekinese, especially the Pekinese and Japanese chins, they're small enough dogs. We're uh, flying them in the cargo area is not healthy for them. Okay, consider to have
them in the cabin with you. And if we don't fly. We have done relays where we have volunteers. It starts in Autana and then we just do different legs of the trip in order to get it to the to the new owner. I've made trips from Autana to South Dakota, Missouri, places like that.
All right, well, you know again we hit thirty eight states with our sign. Though, how could somebody here in Massachusetts or in New York or Wisconsin and check out the dogs? Is there a website that they can see one of these dogs and fall in love with it?
Yes, there is. There are tons of very worthy rescues all over the country. So I would recommend checking a local, either a shelter or a rescue group because there are tons of dogs also in kill shelters and non kill shelters that are looking for homes. It's amazing how many dogs. You know, people breed them and it's not just puppy mills. It's people backyard breeders breeding them because they think, you know, female dogs should have at least one litter of puppies.
And you know, people get these dogs and usually over half of the litter ends up in a shelter or abandoned out in the country. If they're a big dog German shepherds, that's a big thing. You take them out to a farmer and you dump them off and they drive away. But there's like you said, all you all you need to do is go out onto the internet and search dog rescues and they're listed all over the country. Pekan chin is PNC Midwest Rescue dot com for other
people in Minnesota, there's that organization. There's also MARS Midwest Animal Rescue Services. They do a very good job. I've fostered for them before. But yeah, okay. Big thing is adopt, adopt, don't shop and pet shops. Pet shops they don't directly buy from the puppy mills, but they buy from the brokers that buy from the puppy mills. So there's not a there's not a pet shop anywhere that doesn't get their dogs from a puppy mill.
Let me take my break. When we come back, we'll get more information and I hope I'll throw out the phone number that we get some calls that are informative and within this subject matter about Now it's not cats, it's just dogs.
Correct, I I just foster dogs, all right. Mars does have does have cats that they foster. They have people that foster cats for them. Most there's rescue groups for cats everywhere too.
So yeah, okay, phone number six one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty or eight eight, eight, nine, two, nine ten thirty. Denray is off. He's off until Wednesday, the first of the year. I am here. My name is Morgan White, Junior. Time and temperature eight sixteen thirty three degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
I'm speaking with Cindy Bruce. She's saying minutes so of all places, and she runs a dog sanctuary and Sidney. What's the official name.
PNC Midwest Rescue.
Okay, I have not a suspicion, but I know a lot of people give their children pets during the holiday season, especially little small Pekinese and other fur ball type of doggies. They give it to little Bobby, Little Susie, and for whatever reason it doesn't work out. Tell me about the people that try to give the dogs back for whatever reason.
If you adopt it through a rescue group, you sign excuse me, you sign a contract saying that if you ever do not want this dog anymore, that you will contact us and you will give us the dog back. We take the dog at any time for whatever reason. If you adopt it from us, we'll take it back.
And norm now for our dogs, when our dogs are adopted, the adopters get our phone number and they can call us with any questions and will help them with any behavioral things that come up or anything like that, because the dog is moving to a new home obviously, and you know there's going to be issues that come up because you know, it's stressful for anybody to go to somewhere where they don't know anybody in that so we are we are always available to answer any questions that
they have them to help them through any of the issues that they have. But yeah, we you can if you go out on the website and you find a dog that you like. All of the adopt all of
the dog rescues that I've worked with. They have an app VACATIONI that you fill out and they call you and they talk to you and we request references so we can call people and make sure and we try to make sure that the whole family is involved in this because we don't want the wife buying a dog and you know, the husband isn't you know, doesn't want it, because nine times out of ten then it ends up coming back and then we have we send somebody to do a home visit to make sure that it's a
good home for the dog. And then usually the foster talks to the potential adapter because we've been living with the dog for however long and so yeah, so then we go through that and it kind of makes me cry when people get their kids pets for Christmas presents, because pets are a big I mean, it's a big step and then they take a lot of time and a lot of yeah, a lot of time, time, a lot of money.
You know.
So but yeah, but we are and a lot of times if you go on to if you find it, if you're having problems with your dogs, you can or any of your pets. You can usually go online and if you search up rescue groups. They are usually even if you didn't get the dog from them, they are more than willing to help you out with suggestions and you know, try to help you so you can keep your pet soul.
How do you in Minnesota? You say you do a home visit? How do you manage that? You Let's say I got a dog, I live in Illinois and you're in Minnesota. How do you manage coming there from? Is it directly from your organization or a sister organization that works with you that's in Illinois.
We will try to use a sister organization. If we can't, we have done video tours of the home with the owners. If there isn't an organization that we can get a hold of that would be willing to do the home visit for us. But yeah, otherwise we do it a video call.
Okay, I was just curious how that works.
And what we have. We have volunteers all over. The lady who who actually does run the rescue group, she lives in Iowa. I'm in you know, Minnesota. We have volunteers that lives in I can't remember if it's New Jersey or New York out there. So we have them all over the place.
Okay, and you mentioned that the give me the exact breed of the Pekinese, the breed, the breed, because I'm curious to do most you go first, you go first.
Yep, we do. We do mostly Pekinese. They're they're short dogs with long hair, or we do Japanese chins and they're and they're both flat faced dogs. Japanese chins we're originally bread to fit in the sleeve of the emperors and that. So they're just they're little dogs. They are. I tell people, Japanese chins are the most catlike dog you will ever own. They just want to hang out and be by their owners, and you know they don't.
They're just very they're usually very laid back. Pekinese, on the other hand, are born with an attitude and it just kind of never goes away. So you have to establish the fact that you're the boss. But yeah, I've had We've had Pekinese, Japanese Chins, we had a couple of was here, We've had I'm pretty sure there's been at least four or five hundred dogs that have went through my house since two thousand and seven.
Wow, and other breeds. Because the three breeds you mentioned all are basically teeny weeny dogs. What about the bigger dogs, the labs, the German shepherds, the Great Danes. How often are they abandoned and abused?
Oh?
Just about as just about as often as Pekinese are. There are organizations that that's all they do, is they work with German shepherds because they are German shepherds are very breed specific. You know, people get them thinking they're going to be wonderful guard dogs and all that, and you know, they don't understand that you need to. It's a little different when you have a German shepherd than if you have a small dog. You know, you have to give them something to do and keep them from
being bored and all that stuff. But there are breeds for labs, there's breeds for German shepherds. There, I know there's uh and I'm pretty sure it's in Minnesota up by the Cities. It's a they have a pit bull rescue group just for pit bulls. Yeah, so yeah, because you know, most people are kind of leery about adopting pitbulls because it's a bad press they've gotten. But no, there's there's all sorts of different kinds and if we
get we try to do just the little dogs. But if we get a call from somebody, we've We've had an English bulldog at my house a couple of them. We've had a German shepherd who came with nine puppies. She was at my house for a while.
Yeah, let me tell people, get paper and pencil when we come back from the news, because I'm about to take a news hit when we come back from the news. I'm going to have Cindy give her phone number and also the website, the computer, email, and that way you have a number of different options to get in touch. Now, you said P and.
C yep, PNC Midwest Rescue, all.
Right, because around here we have a P and C organization that uses bicycles for fundraising. So I don't want to make that mistake, and I want you to give your phone number and your email address when we come back from news. I'm about to take my news hit. Now, if you want to call in and speak with Cindy, Cindy Bruce, that's who you're hearing here on Nightside. Her phone number six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty or eight eight eight nine two nine ten thirty. So
let me sow to Rob. Rob's back tonight where he needs to be in the production booth. Here on Nightside time and temperature eight twenty nine thirty three degrees.
You're on night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Dan is off obviously for the rest of this week. I've been here since Monday. I will be here tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday, and my own show on Saturday, The Morgan Show. This is Cindy Bruce and she makes sure dogs have a safe place to be. She has a dog sanctuary in Minnesota. PNC is its name, and Cindy, give whatever numbers you need to give that people can get in touch with you and check out your website see what pooches are available.
Okay, The website is Pncmidwest dot org. My phone number is five oh seven two one three four five eight one, and my email address is cool Grandma of six. That's the number six at gmail dot com. And I can forward it on to the people who need to get it. And we are always always always looking for people to foster dogs also to take them into their home and
get them socialized. And quite a few of them come in there, not potty trained, house train them, get them social, get to know the dogs, help help them get to the right home. We're always looking for volunteers.
Is it conceivable dog a will watch dog b uh do the right things when it comes to being party trained, request to go outside or maybe you have a doggy door and your your kitchen door wherever, and the dog that doesn't know about being party trained learns from observing the other dogs. Can that happen?
Yes, definitely, yep. They learn good and bad habits from the other dogs. They usually pick up on the bad habits faster. I'm not gonna lie.
Yeah, right now, give me two bad habits.
For male dogs. They like to mark their territory.
Okay, what we do.
What we do for that is we put a belly band on them. It's just a keith of material and you can put a sanitary pad in there and you wrap it around so that when they pee it goes on the sanitary pad instead of on your house. And another one is chewing on things.
Oh yes, y I'm looking at the box right now. It's just a box with generic stuff in it. And my cat, for whatever reason, started the claw at the corners of the box like he picked that area specifically, the left corner and the right corner that box right there, and that's the way that he is marking his territory his area. Are there other ways that they mark their area beside your nation and scratching?
Usually for dogs, it's just like you said, the male dogs, they lift their leg and they pee on things. That's pretty much the way they do it. So female dogs not so much. They don't mark so much. They get to be territorial and then they get to be very protective of their people on that. So you just got to kind of keep an eye out for that. But and I haven't. I grew up with big dogs. They don't know how I ended up with a bunch of little dogs at my house. But I grew up with
German shepherds and stuff like that. But yeah, but the only thing we've really fostered is, you know, the littler dogs. But yep, and cats. If if your cat is doing anything other than scratching, if they're going to the bathroom outside the litter box, that's definitely of that visit because cats don't normally do that unless there's something medical going on.
He he knows. We have two litter boxes and they'll use one more than the other, but no examples of not using the litter box. Yeah, very intelligent when it comes to that, yes, yep. Oh.
And when when you do adopt a dog from us, there is an adoption fee. What pekan Chin does when we have dogs come in, they get a vet visit, they get all they get check ups done, They're checked for all sorts of diseases and things. If they're not spade or neutered, we spay and neuter them. So there's some some of our dogs. The adoption fee absolutely does not cover what we've sunk into the dogs with the set visit. So yeah, so this is.
I have such a love of dogies, even though I own a cat. Now I have found that I still have a love and I missed my shepherds. I had them till they both were about eight or nine years old. I had to put each of them down about six weeks in between. One my female got leukemia and we paid the money to have her operated on to remove it, and they thought they got it all, but within two
weeks it all came back and even worse. And then my male had hip displasure, which is common in German shepherds, and I had to put them down basically within four or five weeks of each other. And they were my children. It just tore me, tore me up. Yep. And I want anybody out there that gets a dog, whether it's from PNC or the pet sharp at the mall, train it. And it takes time, it takes love. Don't beat it. I never ever beat my dogs ever, words of encouragement
and the scruff of the year behind the air. I did all the things the book and the tape told me to do. I lived in the city of Boston. I lived in the Austin Brighton area. I could walk them without a leash. More often than not. I walked them with a leash, but I could walk them without a leash. My male stayed on my right side, my female stayed on my left side. And it was the three of us and we were eight unit. And I
missed them to this day. It's been over thirty years since I've had Hack and Honey, and what are you going to do? Time March is on. But I wanted to make sure they were well trained. Living in the city, definitely.
And the thing is even with you know, like German shepherds or pit bulls or Rottweiler's. My brother has from the time he was an adult on his own, he said, Rottweiler's and pit bulls, and they have been just the sweetest dogs ever. And if you're looking for a dog to help protect your family, you don't have to put them through the training for being a guard dog or anything. If you love them and take care of them, they're
going to help protect your family. You know, you don't need to put them through the you know, the police dog training or anything like that. As long as you you know, you make sure that they know you're the boss and you treat them right, they will protect your family no matter what.
And I saw evidence of that. They knew how to protect and more importantly, when to protect. Definitely, I don't know what my cat would do so somebody broke into the house. I would hope he would be in protect mode, but you never know.
Yep, yeah, my cat would run away and hide. He doesn't like people that he doesn't know.
Okay, And how do how do your dogs, because I think you said you have as many as a dozen at a time, how do they get along? Obviously you've got different breeds different sizes. Do they play nice with each other?
Usually I do. Sometimes we run into my personal dog that was the oldest dog in the house. I'd have him put down last summer, but he once in a while, when another male dog would come in the house, he would definitely have to let him know that this was his house. And that's that's one of the things that's nice about having organizations that foster the dogs and homes because you can help them get used to other animals.
And there have been some dogs where we've had to say, you know, they got used to being in a house with other dogs, but they're really not comfortable with it, you know, because there are some dogs who are not comfortable with you know, multiple animals in the house. But like I said, that's what works really nice with the foster groups is they come into the house, you get to know the dog. You can say, okay, probably not
a good fit with cats. We've had a couple of dogs come in that just they were not kid dogs. They you know, they didn't want anything to do with kids. They didn't like it when my grandkids came over. So it was you know, this dog needs to go to a home that doesn't have kids.
Okay, so yeah, let me tell you my last break of this hour, and for people who tuned in to hear Sheriffian Daka, she will be joining us at nine o'clock. Cindy was kind enough to come in an hour early, so again, let me say thank you for you doing
that and let me take my break. Give the phone numbers six one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty or eight eight, eight, nine, two, nine, ten thirty if you want to call in and talk about adopting a dog or your history dealing with how you brought a dog into your home and the details of that adoption, we want to hear about it. This is Nightside. Dan Ray is off. My name is Morgan Here. I am time and temperature eight forty five thirty three degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the window World Life Sights to you on WBZ News Radio.
My name Morgan White Junior. I am filling in for Dan Ray here on Nightside. Night Side happens, and when Dan takes a vacation, night Side still happens. And if you want to call in to speak to my guest, Cindy Bruce six one seven, two, five, four ten thirty eight eight eight, nine, two, nine, ten thirty. And where do you see your business, your company growing from here?
Well, I don't think it's going to go away because people get animals without doing research and then they don't know what to do with them once they've got them. Right now, we're we're still trying, like I said, we're trying to find new foster homes, uh and we're trying to find volunteers that'll help us out with things like that. At and even if you don't foster for P and C, there's organizations all up and down the East Coast, all over the United States that are just crying for people
to help them. The shelters, both the kill shelters and the non kill shelters and the rescue groups are just hecked to the ceilings with animals and critters and everything. So what are.
The parameters at a kill shelter and a non kill shelter?
So we know the difference a kill shelter, Well, there's a deadline for the amount of time the dogs can be there. The city organizations that have animal control officers, they have dog they don't call them dog palms anymore, but they come in and these animals have a very limited amount of time to either find the owner or to be adopted, and then they are put down. They're euthanized if they don't get adopted.
So.
They that's that's the kill shelter usually and normally it's like two weeks to a month. Usually not a month, but usually it's it's as little as two weeks to either find the owner or adopt the dog or cat or whatever animal it is out and then because they don't they don't have the resources to keep the animals longer than that. So yeah, and then the no kill shelters are usually they they will keep them forever if they have to.
You've got a lot of.
Times, I know.
I'm sorry, you've got a phone call.
Okay, yeah, all right.
Let's go to Chelsetort and speak to Chris. Chris, thank you for calling Nightside. Hope you've had a happy holiday week and happy New Year to you.
Every New Year to you, you guess and the provided Nightside. I had a good Christmas here at the group home in Jumford. When I used to live in Dorica, we did have a dog and it was a very nice they named its Sport. But for some reason he would he when when he was over one was around today, he did two of some things. And I'm wondering, how could dogs get out of that habit of doing that? Well, I forget when the dog died, but I didn't want to was over three years of age, all.
Right, Cindy. How do you break a dog from chewing things?
There are some dog breeds that chew their whole life. At the times, dogs just chew when they're teething, but some dogs chew their whole lives. My house is filled with dog toys. There are things for them to chew on all the time, so they don't chew on my things anymore. And that's that's usually the best way to go about it is buy them things that they're allowed to chew on. How do they.
Know the difference? I'm sorry, how do they know the difference from your house shoe to that rubber bone?
Exactly?
Usually I keep my shoes away from my dogs. I keep them in closets and things like that. A lot of times, I think your pets will train you much better than you will ever train them. You learn you know what things not to.
And for women's dogs and men's men's dogs, like men and juice for example.
Well as as Cindy just said, you're hoping that the dog will know his chewable toys, his toys, her toys. You're hoping that the dog will know that that reddish bone looking thing over there is for him, that thing with the fur on it, and the place for a foot is mommy's. You can't chew mommy's shoe, good, yeah, and.
We usually we usually try to when we buy them a new chew toy. We had a black lab, who you know, black labs chew on things their whole lives, and we bought we use pot bottles, empty pot bottles, and that way it made noise. He thought he was chewing on something he wasn't supposed to do and that that worked fine for us. Or when we get them a new toy, we play with the toy and we make sure that they know this is for them to chew on and play with. So that's so far, that's worked really well for us.
All right, Chris, anything else.
And I know that's aboute it And you have a good weekend, Wigan, and you guess.
Same to you, Chris, thank you for the call, Bye bye, all right, and before I run out of time. I've got maybe two or three more minutes left with you. Cindy, could you give your phone numbers or email website what have you?
Once again please Yep, It's Pncmidwest dot org. And my number is five oh seven two one three four five eight one and I can definitely if they call me, and then my email address is cool GRAMDMA of six the number six at gmail dot com. And I can definitely get them to the people that they need to talk to about fostering or adopting or any of that stuff.
And let me state the obvious, Like I told you, we hit thirty eight states, and I'm sure you and your P and C company outreach to all thirty eight states through sister organizations and what have you.
True, Yes, true, And we have also one of the dogs that I've had at my house was adopted to a couple in Canada. And we have also adopted out one of our dogs to a couple in Alaska, so we can get them. And a couple of the head of our organization has taken a couple of dogs that were adopted to Italy. Wow, so they go everywhere.
We hit Canada with that signal. So Canada is no issue, and I'm sure they need dog help up there as well as the rest of the United States.
Oh definitely, yea.
Thank you for green to come on. I know you reach. Thank you for having and we will do this again maybe in.
The spring, definitely.
Okay, Cindy Bruce, you take care. Bye bye bye bye bye. All right, rest of the show. Trophy and Doctor will be here after the nine o'clock news. You know her from her segment on Channel four News. She's been doing it for if I'm not mistaken, ten years. Maybe, yeah, call for action. I've got Joyce Cole Haywick. I call her the Empress of Entertainment. And at eleven o'clock Susan
Brigman will be here. She's written several books based around Massachusetts, New England, one on Candlepin Bowling and one on Route one and the Places to Go Sightseeing and Enjoy and Sharp and Eat or Root one. So three more hours of Nightside here just for you time eight fifty eight