Welcome to the Soul Touched by Dogs Podcast, the show for dog lovers who
see dogs not as toys or tools, but wise souls worth our respect and care.
I'm an Herrmann, and I'm your host.
I talk to poor some humans, people who do great work for dogs and their people.
So come and join us for today's conversation.
Anke: Hello and welcome back, I have to say.
Kathy, I'm delighted to have you here again.
Kathy: I am delighted to be here.
I love what you're doing, Souls Touched by Dogs.
How wonderful.
Anke: Absolutely.
And, um, I'm curious to hear, I mean, let's just start at the beginning.
For people who haven't heard the first episode with you,
that's, that's been a while back.
Let people know where you're based and, you know, what's your business with dogs?
Kathy: Terrific.
Wonderful.
Thank you, Anke.
So, for 20 years, what I've really done is I've helped other rescues get
visibility for their dogs, because it's just random that somebody happens to
see a post on Facebook, because we all live on Facebook and Instagram, right?
And so that's the way we get it out.
Pet Finder, Adopt A Pet, those are very clunky.
They don't really get the message out.
They're hard to search.
You know, the dog is often gone.
It's manual to upload it.
So, for 20 years, what I've really done is Use my connecting networking
skills to help rescues place their dogs.
And then I've taken adopters from people that are frustrated
because most rescues don't reply.
They just don't act like businesses.
And so if you have a high value proposition, what we call like a
doodle or little foo foo dog or golden retriever, you're going
to get a hundred applications.
And they don't have any mechanism for going back to people.
Now, if we were in business together, we'd have an email marketing
system, a CRM, automatic replies, and they just don't set it up.
And you can't talk to them about it either.
It's just really frustrating.
It, the business stuff goes in one ear and out the other.
So I helped place a golden retriever in the end of 22.
He had been abused, physically abused, beautiful, drop dead, gorgeous, cream
golden, I love goldens, I love all dogs, and it went viral with 1, 800 shares.
So my phone is in my ear going ding, ding, ding all day long, Facebook
Messenger, Facebook Messenger, and Messenger is also very difficult to work
with, they disappear, they go further and further down, you can't find them.
Find them again.
If I go searching for Anke, I'll come up with 8 million Anke's all over the world.
Right.
And so I started an Excel spreadsheet of all these people that wanted
this dog, but this particular dog had PTSD and he was big.
And so we had a lot of restrictions.
So I had all these people that wanted gold retrievers.
And I look at it like a business.
Like I have leads.
I have homes for dogs.
Let's find dogs who need homes.
Right?
And I went to all my rescue friends, I couldn't get them to focus.
It was like, can you find goldens?
Do you have any goldens?
Have you seen any goldens?
I live on the East Coast.
I live in Westchester County, New York.
There are no goldens out here.
Oh, they're very, very few.
There's only a couple golden retriever rescues for each state.
They're very specific.
They have wait lists.
They're often not very nice.
And so believe it or not, through a commodity deal I was doing with a guy
in Texas, I met a guy in Dallas who was taking dogs off Craigslist Goldens.
He loves goldens and he had applied to the golden rescue out there
when he came back from Iraq and they denied him for a silly reason.
So he went on a personal mission to find goldens.
And so I didn't actually set out to start a rescue.
I was like, dude, if you have goldens, I have homes.
And then all of a sudden I'd done this for 20 years, but I
always had a rescue in between.
Now it was us.
It was like, Oh, we need fosters.
Oh, I need vet care.
Oh, I need a transport to the East coast.
Like how am I getting this dog to Connecticut or New
York or wherever it was going?
So that's how we started.
We started officially in March of 23.
It was originally called the Golden Retriever Lovers with Brad and Kathy.
And then we had a formalized, we got so busy so quickly.
We did 32 dogs in four months, all Goldens.
And so I built up this humongous network.
We rescue all over Texas.
We've saved 275 dogs in 19 months.
About 60 percent of those are golden retrievers, so we formalize it into
the Golden Project, but the tagline is saving those with hearts of gold.
Oh, and just like touch by a soul, right?
Dogs touched by a soul.
I think every dog has a heart of gold.
So we are best equipped because goldens have been our focus.
We do goldens, we do great pairing mixes, we do labs, but invariably
I end up with other dogs.
So lately we've been doing doodles and so we work.
Just like a business, we work backwards.
We get people onto a pre approved adopter list, and then we find the
dog or match the dog to the home.
Most rescues will post a dog, which we have some of those as well.
We're just posting and randomly hoping that somebody sees
the dog and falls in love.
But we know our dogs really well.
We're foster based.
We have 65 foster families in Dallas, all over Dallas.
And we have transport set up to come up from Rio Grande Valley, which is
the valley of death for so many dogs.
So Texas is like a third world country when it comes to dogs.
They don't neuter spay.
It's very poor in many areas, uneducated in many areas, very large.
Rural areas, ranchers get great peonies, they don't neuter spay, don't take them to
the vet, they breed, more puppies, puppies get dumped, puppies get thrown into
garbage pails and dumped in suitcases.
It's just tragic what we see on a daily basis.
So that's the background on the Golden Project.
Anke: Wow, that is just like such a, and I love that you're coming at this
with this business hat because I think one of the reasons I even started
Soul Touched by Dogs was that I often saw, you know, rescues, literally what
you're saying, you know, it's the same in Spain, they just pop it on Facebook
and then, you know, and then pleading for money and then you've got bullshit
artists hanging off it and, and it all gets like, people don't trust it and
It's not really run like a business.
It isn't run, it is not well organized and even it's more an
attitude than a financial thing only.
So it's that, um, so what are quite, I mean, I love the idea to
like, okay, let me find the, let me find potential homes first.
Or like you had those and now let's find them the dogs, which I love
because all of a sudden it's not, Like the whole perception changes, right?
It's not just like you do, you're kind of doing the dog a favor or it's this pity
kind of thing, like, oh, rescue the dog.
Now, all of a sudden, the dog's the prize, right?
And you have to apply for it and you have to, you know, What kind of
criteria are you looking for when it comes to pre approving, um, a home?
Kathy: So, good question.
People ask us that, right?
What we really want, Anke, is we want to know that our dog is going
to be loved and cherished forever.
We want to know that they're financially capable of something happening, right?
If a dog, a golden especially, is prone to eating things, right, they're
chewed, they're chewed, they're chewed.
And especially if they're puppies, and if that sock goes in, it
can twist around the intestines.
And I just talked to an adopter this morning, and her mini golden dooda had to
be put down at six years old because it was the second time he ingested something,
and they'd already taken out part of his intestines on the first surgery, so they
said he wouldn't survive the second one.
So, you know, and they had tried to be really careful, but three boys
in the house, plus daddy, you know, all playing sports, and there's
invariably going to be socks.
And, you know, some dogs are just So, you know, that kind of
surgery can be 3, 000 to 5, 000.
So we want to make sure if they can't afford our adoption fee,
then that's a flag for us, right?
And if somebody is really well referenced or friends with somebody
that we know, like another adopter, and they highly recommend, and they
may be going through a financial crunch right now with kids in college and
renovating the house, then what we ask is we ask them to buy pet insurance.
So this way we know that our dog will be taken care of.
So, so that's one of the big things.
We don't want the dog back, right?
Period.
You know, I don't want to re home a dog that's very traumatic on the dog.
It's hard on us.
Um, we do do a three hour driving distance from any board member or key
volunteer, but that gives us 11 states.
Um, and when I do the criteria here where I live, I live in Westchester
County, so we're little villages, 000 people in each village.
Because I rode my horse for years, we have 130 miles of trails, I know
so many roads, I know the houses, so I'm real comfortable, like, and
I'll also have Facebook friends in common or LinkedIn people.
I have 167 common LinkedIn connections with one adopter.
So it gives me a high degree of comfort in terms of knowing who they are.
Once we get out to Texas, it becomes much more difficult because it's so large.
Just driving within Texas could be 10 hours.
And once you get out into the boonies, into the country, you know, you just
don't have as many vets, you don't have orthopedic surgeons, you know, the closest
one can be 90 minutes, two hours away.
And so if something happens to your dog, they're not going to be seen.
So those are the things that we look at.
Um, I'm very blessed in this foster system.
I have these angels, these amazing angels.
I built a private Facebook group.
We don't let anyone in until they are approved to adopt or foster or volunteer.
And so we built this sense of community.
And so when I put a dog up, we just recently took a starving dog, it looked
like a skeleton, it was a black mouthed cur, and she was out on the streets of
Rio Grande Valley next to a dog that we thought was a golden, who's not a
golden, and she was so skinny, Anke, you would just cry looking at her.
So I was hoping another rescue would step in, but unfortunately
everybody works in urgency, so once we got the dog off the street into
boarding, Then the urgency is gone.
No other rescue stepped up.
So we have a black mouth curve.
So I put a plea in the, in the group.
I put a picture of her and I said, we're taking Rita off the street.
If anyone can help with food, she's so skinny.
We need puppy food.
We need stew.
We need, um, de warmer.
And oh my goodness, people are so generous.
They sent six bags of this very expensive food that we use and
stew and de warmer and food.
People are just so generous, you know?
So, um, so we have this wonderful sense of community.
We got Rita up to Dallas, which is a 10 hour drive.
We have a transport that comes up on Mondays.
And she has heartworm, both tick borne diseases, a leper respiratory
infection, parasites, and ear infections.
So, she's already cost us 300 for the first visit and heartworm will be another
600, spay and neuter and everything else.
So, you know, she'll be at 1200.
Anke: Everything is so expensive, right?
Kathy: Well, Texas is cheap, cheap, cheap for spay and neuter.
I mean, I pay, I pay under 200 for spay and neuter here on the East Coast.
The cheapest I can get is 300.
Yeah, so big difference.
It's 1, 100 usually if you're a regular person going in on the East Coast.
Anke: So if somebody is thinking of getting into all of this, right, uh, so
hey, well I wanna, and I would imagine a lot of people sort of stumble into
the whole rescue thing, they probably, I would imagine you find a dog and you
find another dog and before you know it you have a rescue kind of thing.
So what is something that like, Anke Herrmann, Taming the Tech Monster, Anke.
How does one go about setting this up in this well structured way so that
the dogs aren't just like, you know, on a list and just with a way there?
Kathy: Yeah, so that's a very difficult question.
So what we hope to do is I'm working on some major deals and I hope
to be able to create a foundation and put tools in it and a primer.
If I actually had a book that actually said this is step
one, two, three, four, right?
That would have made it so much easier.
I didn't know 501c3.
I'm not good at administrative.
I don't have an assistant, you know, like hiring an attorney.
Should we do a dual registration?
There's so many, many pieces.
You have to be licensed in each state, you know?
So what I would suggest, I was an independent rescuer.
I stayed in between.
I had five of my own dogs all the time.
Lots of cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, you know, once you're set up for one
thing, it's like, ah, what's one more?
And so I think, um, some people can get in over their head.
So I would say suggesting, plan it out just like a business.
How many are you going to take?
Are you going to be foster based or kennel based?
Are you going to do a specific breed?
Are you going to take from a certain area?
How are you going to adopt?
You know, a lot of this, I just stumbled through.
We needed fosters.
I started, the guy I started with could take one dog at a time.
Um, and he works full time and he has a mouse tracker on his computer so his
boss knows whether or not he's working.
So he can't get up and run out in the middle of the day.
Um, and so we're very, very blessed to have these amazing angels.
I mean, we took a dog off death row.
I didn't know she was pregnant.
And this foster way out in the country happened to be in the city
and saw my post and volunteered and we had 14 dogs, 14 puppies.
She bought incubators, hand fed them.
So finding people like that are what you need.
You need to have angels around you.
People that are willing to do the work aren't going to say, Oh, sorry, I
can't drive at nine o'clock at night.
It's past my bedtime.
Right?
Because we never know when we have to go pick up a dog.
Anke: So true, so true.
So, you know that book you wish you had?
Are you going to write it?
Kathy: I am, yeah.
We're going to do, actually, we're going to do a couple things.
We're going to set up a software directory of all the dog
rescues in the United States.
We're going to require audits.
We're going to pay for the audits under X, we're going to give them
a discount on audit fees between X and Y, and then over Z, they'll pay
for it every year, the others will be random once every three years.
That gets rid of the scam rescues, because there are scam rescues out
there that take pictures of a maciated dog, the dog I was talking about,
Rita, take her picture, nobody knows whether or not they actually have it.
Anke: Yeah, and you see that a lot here and I know, yeah, I had a, you know, a
project going on in like, well, 10 to 11 years ago and that was a big problem
that you get people who take these photos and then just go out beg for
money and don't even have the dog or have no intention of helping any dog.
They just, you know, take advantage of people who want to help but then
they get burned and then they're not going to help the dogs that really
need it and that's a big problem.
So, It's a huge problem.
I love that you have that control on it.
Kathy: Nope.
So if you have the financial rating, so now we have sort of a Yelp rating, right?
And then in this foundation, we're going to give them actually video
training for their employees, for their, for their volunteers.
We're going to give them the primer.
We're going to give them access to things like, I didn't even know
you could buy your own microchips.
We can buy our own microchips for 5.
It's 80 on the East Coast to get a microchip.
Out in Texas, it's usually 25 to 30.
But they'll only charge you 10 to input it.
So if I have 5 cost and then 10, it's 15 rather than 25 or 30.
And when you're doing as many dogs as we are, it really adds up.
You know, every couple of months we have another spay paid for.
So that's the, you know, so that's one of the things that I
didn't know and you can't actually buy them until you're 501c3.
So, you know, all that sort of stuff.
So we are going to put this out there.
We're going to, my goal is to make this more efficient.
Because there are so many dogs, we overlap one another as rescues.
Sometimes we're going after the same dog, the same dog gets publicized,
nobody updates as to whether or not it's been adopted or rescued.
And, um, so we do a lot of accountability.
And so I show pictures of the five dogs that went on transport the
other day, leaving Texas and then arriving in New York, and then we
The pictures of the happy dogs.
Last week we adopted 16 dogs in one week.
And we've taken 9 in this week.
So we're very, very active.
You know, so we give accountability for that.
You know, and that's the thing that's really missing.
Is the accountability.
And you just don't know.
And transparency,
Anke: right?
Yeah, because that's the trust building and I think that it's always, it always
comes down to trust, you know, just like you want to be able to trust the,
the, the, the homes or like the people who adopt it or the people foster.
It's like, yeah, people also need to trust you.
So it's that, and that transparency makes, makes all the difference.
I love that.
Yeah, this whole, like, I love how you put your business hat on to
run this in this, you know, yeah, I think in that sensible, sensible way.
I don't even want to say like a tight chip.
It doesn't even feel like a tight chip.
It just feels like, oh, there's common sense.
There's a business hat on.
There's like efficiency.
There's transparency that actually makes this so much more impactful,
you know, because I would, I don't, I have no numbers to compare to,
but like the number of dogs you've saved in such a short amount of time.
I mean, that is just Mind blowing.
Kathy: I, I think it is a big number.
I mean, the first nine months we'd done almost a hundred and one of
the other volunteers, you know, was like, do you know how amazing that
is for a brand new organization?
We weren't even a 5123, right?
So we're running this through one of my businesses.
So we've made some mistakes along the way.
We've had some learning lessons, you know, we've only made a couple of mistakes on
fosters, but those have been painful.
We've made a couple of mistakes on adopters.
Those have also been very painful.
So we learn from that and we try to get better and better.
I'm again, very lucky that I have the people.
Um, I think there's some real potential for AI to be able to
make this process more efficient.
One of the big problems is posting your dogs.
By the time you post a dog, especially the way we do it, and put the
bio up, the dog could be adopted.
And so then taking the dog down and putting a new one up right?
Nine new dogs this week?
That means that we would have to have bios, all the vet updates,
and everything and we don't get them vetted until next week, right?
So do we wait until next week?
But in the meantime, I could have an adopter and if they're local in in
Texas, I could, if they're close enough and open, they can actually take the
dog and bring it to the appointment.
You know, so there's a lot of things out there.
A lot of times I have had very deep conversations with two of
my rescue friends and this just goes in one ear and out the other.
I could see one at lunch, her eyes were glazing over.
She's a social worker, right?
And another one, I was explaining it and she goes, yeah, I
just want to save more dogs.
And they just don't understand that this would make the
whole process more efficient.
I mean, that's the
Anke: thing, if it's more efficient then you can save more dogs, right?
So yeah, I don't know, like my little business, my little business mind goes,
Oh my God, this is how this should work.
So where can people get in touch?
So if somebody goes, Oh, I would love to run my rescue in a more efficient
way, or I want to get into this, or, you know, I want to get you in touch
with our local rescue who isn't kind of, Catching on to like needs the education
and get that shortcut to not having to figure it out on all by themselves.
So where can they find you?
You know, how can they get?
Kathy: Yeah, so I want to be careful.
I can't spread myself too thin because running the rescue already
takes a huge number of hours.
I left the house at 7 30 yesterday and I got back at 8 30 at night, you
know, so I was here for a few hours in the middle of the day, but we
had a crisis, two crises going on.
So, um, so the Golden Project.
is our Facebook page, which we have a fair amount of followers
and get more every day.
I have an Instagram page that I started a few months ago, and I do video every
morning of me hiking in the woods, and I talk about what dogs, sometimes I talk
about food, natural flea and tick, etc.
We're very holistic.
And the goldenprojecthearts at gmail.
com is our email address, so that would be the easiest way to reach me.
And I'll obviously pop that in the show
Anke: notes, and it's going to be easy.
I'm going to make it as easy as I can to find you, but not so easy that
you don't have time for the dogs.
Kathy: Great.
Perfect.
Wonderful.
Anke: Awesome.
Well, thank you so much.
I think this is a real, um, this is this glimmer of hope in that world where
it's easy to get discouraged by so, so much misery to actually see how things
can be done better and, Save so many dogs, I think, can only congratulate
you and thank you for coming and sharing what's been happening in the last year.
Thanks, Anke.
I appreciate you having me.
Have a wonderful day.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening.
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That's A N k E at Soul touched by dogs.com.