Our Blog has Moved and We’ve changed Names

Find as as Not Just Animals at http://inmycommunity.com/blog/nja/ . See you there!

Levi’s Love: The Adventures of My Therapy Dog and My Friend

More to follow…..Levi, a 7 year old Boston Terrier, has been my hospice dog for over a year, bringing Joy to so many people he meets. We also visit an assisted living senior residential complex – he brings smiles, laughter and sometimes tears to the lives of many seniors. When they invite him, he will sit with them in their wheelchair, and snuggle in their lap…they both love it! “My Friend” and I have been bestfriends for over 40 years – she is the Godmother of my Kindergarten teacher son. She is a courageous woman, and was recently diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. She received 10 consecutive days of radiation at UCDavis Medical Center. Levi and I accompanied her on several of these sessions. Levi never left her side (or lap) during her sometimes 3 hour appointments, except when the Huge radiation machines were doing their work, and we waited behind leaded walls for safety. The moment it was OK, Levi rushed to her side, and my friend cried tears of comfort and safety, and Levi covered her with kisses and love. The medical staff and Doctors at UCDMC have been keenly aware of the value of Levi’s presence, and have welcomed Levi into the waiting rooms, radiation rooms and examinations rooms. Dr. Lau, my friend’s oncologist, also welcomed Levi into his very small office with my friend. Dr. Lau commented, “How wonderful you have 2 unconditional frirends with you, I can feel them giving you courage and strength during this frightening time”.

May we ALL have the opportunity for this kind of unconditional love and support…in good times and other times…The Gift of “The Animal Human Bond”. The Animal Human Bond is available for us ALL! Honor our Friendships with People and Animals, and help provide this incredible Gift of ….People and Animals Collaborating Kindness….Please support PACKSrescue…any way possible. We treasure your support and comments.

Thank you….Levi and Friends!

SAFE HUMANE CHICAGO: ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF PROGRAMS PUTTING ANIMALS AND URBAN YOUTH TOGETHER

This is an example of a program that PACKS Rescue startup team is studying closely. We want to replicate this work in Sacramento, in order to save animal’s lives.

Chicago, Illinois – People who fight dogs still get respect from some kids on the streets. But the highly publicized conviction and apologies of NFL player Michael Vick last year has had an effect. Chicagoans are seeing more headlines about busts and community efforts to put an end to the barbaric practice. But one group of anti-dogfighting advocates stands head and shoulders above the rest – the Youth Leaders of Safe Humane Chicago. Yes, kids are on the front lines!

A class of 32 high school students at Walter Payton College Preparatory High School and their teacher, Michelle Mowery, has hooked up with a movement called Safe Humane Chicago and are replacing those neighborhood bad guys as young kids’ role models. The Youth Leaders travel to elementary schools all over Chicago and teach kids how to be safe around dogs, how to properly care for a pet, what dog fighting is and why it is cruel and not cool. They are having an amazing impact. By reaching young kids with this positive message, they hope to have a positive impact on their communities. After all, these high schoolers know that in the neighborhoods plagued with animal cruelty and dog fighting, there is also domestic violence, gang violence, drugs and guns. Studies show that people who commit violence against an animal are more likely to commit violence against another person and to become desensitized to all types of violence. These kids are saving the world, one group of kids at a time. I think everyone should know about them!

To see more pictures and another great article about these kids go to: http://news.bestfriends.org/index.cfm?page=news&mode=entry&entry=F6CF3A6F-19B9-B9D5-9D523EAAFDC56299

UC Davis Animal Ambassadors–Bridging Youth and Science!

What a great idea and we can’t wait to find out more. UC Davis has a program called Animal Ambassadors, that studies and implements concepts of using animals as a bridge between youth and science. See http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vetext/AnimalAmbassadors/ for more information.

The Mission of the program is to use the world of animals, both domesticated and wild, as a ‘bridge’ to help youth develop an interest in science and acquire critical thinking and life skills. By building a foundation of care and responsibility toward animals, children develop the same connections to themselves and other humans.

Right now the Animal Ambassadors Program is a curriculum development, training, and dissemination effort that will complement school science courses, enrich and expand the offerings of non-formal youth education programs (e.g., 4-H; YMCA; museums), and enhance outreach efforts by campus and community professionals (e.g., Veterinarians).

The curricula being developed are age-appropriate and designed specifically for three different grade levels: lower elementary, ages 5-8; upper elementary, ages 9-11; and, middle school, ages 12-14. Activities utilize a hands-on, inquiry-based approach, emphasizing animal care and responsibility. Community action follow-up activities and technology extensions are included to promote real-world applications of concepts and family involvement.

To help make the curricula interactive, they are organized into loaner learning kits that include corresponding hands-on materials. Once published, kits will be made available on loan from County 4-H offices, school districts, and California Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA) offices.

The Animal Ambassador Project will be disseminated statewide through school districts, non-formal education programs, and professional associations, reaching audiences in rural, suburban, and urban settings. An accompanying training program for school and community-based educators, university staff and students, and community-based professionals (e.g., veterinarians) is under development to help ensure statewide and national sustainability and institutionalization.

Tell us what you think about these innovative programs as we develop PACKS Rescue to implement similar concepts with youth in Sacramento!

PACKS Rescue’s Web 2.0 Initiative!

IV.  The Importance of Replication and Web 2.0

PACKS see Sacramento, California as an ideal test market to start up and refine our cutting edge animal welfare social enterprise model.  The City is also an ideal environment to create Web 2.0 community and achieve viral outreach and transparency of our start up plans and initial operations. Therefore, we will prioritize creating an easily replicable model that, through transparency, open source learning and Web 2.0, can be imitated throughout the country and scaled up or down, to fit any sized community.

PACKS will invest our intial efforts heavily in building a Web 2.0 infrastructure, capable of creating enhanced community participation and local micro-loan contribution opportunities. Web 2.0 allows the development of web-based communities that are capable of hosting social-networking and video sharing sites, podcasts, wikis, blogs, webcasts and open source learning. Using a well developed Web 2.0 community outreach will allow us to serve the community best by inviting collaboration and information sharing. We intend to be radically transparent. Web 2.0 also allows for constant market testing as we develop our programs, using the inherent feedback loop of the social network presence, to mobilize grass roots community support.

SOCIAL THERAPY/EDUCATION COMMUNITY PROGRAMS SAVING SHELTER DOGS AND CATS!!

FLASH!: UPDATE ON PACKS Rescue development of
social services programs using shelter dogs
and cats in Sacramento.
This is to give you all a progress check!

Board member Deb Cusimano (Deb is PACKS
Rescue's point person
for our social services initiatives task
force) and I (Eileen Gillis) visited
Tony La Russo's ARF Center in
Walnut Creek on Monday (ARF.net)
and observed the All Ears Reading Program.
We even worked with a few children ourselves
(and petted a few dogs!!)  Check it out at:

http://arf.net/people-programs/all-ears-reading/ 

Also, check out these you tube videos, sent via
Piper Crussell,
our Webinar advisor guru, from PAWS S.F. and L.A.
We're going to visit S.F. in the near future to
look at the program design for implementation in
Sacramento. 

youtube.com/watch?v=WdKYPD4fhT0&feature=related

youtube.com/watch?v=HN3m7eYWjws&feature=related

These examples display the programs we want to
develop and build out in Sacramento. These are not
difficult programs to establish and scale up or scale
down.

We ideally will be able to pull animals from local
shelters
to participate in these programs and work to help
people
maintain their pets in their homes, rather than
being forced
to surrender them when they can no longer care for
them.

Look ahead to our intial Board of Director's
meeting in February
where we officially seat our board and move
forward.

Jobs for Shelter Dogs

We all know that dogs can be trained to do just about anything and they love to work so we are looking at ways that Shelter dogs might be used to help people in the community while they are waiting to be placed in their forever home.  In reviewing existing programs, we learned that dogs are being used  to help young children improve their reading skills.

The Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF) offers a program like this at their facility in Walnut Creek called All Ears Reading. Children, ages 3 to 12,  spend 50 minutes a week for five consecutive weeks reading aloud to a dog and their handler.  The children are provided with a selection of books to choose from and they get a prize for every ten books they read.  The dogs belong to volunteers and members of the ARF staff.  Before dogs can participate in the program they have to pass a “Good Citizen” test administered by ARF.  We took a trip to the ARF facility to see the program in session and we were amazed at how well it works.  Dogs and their handlers sit with one or two children and listen to them read stories aloud.  The kids pet the dogs while they are reading which seems to relax both parties.  When kids stumble over a word the handler turns to the dog to get advice on the correct pronunciation and interprets their response for the child.  The room is filled with all kinds of books about animals.  The kids select the book they want to read and when they are finished they run to the shelf to get another one.  Since they get a prize for every ten books they read, they try to read as many as they can in each session.  Dogs make perfect reading companions because they listen without judgment so the children are never ridiculed for making mistakes.  The dogs seem to love the attention they get from the kids and the kids seem to gain self-confidence by having their furry friends beside them to pet while they are reading a story.

A similar program called Reading Education Assistance Dogs (READ) is operated by the Intermountain Therapy Animals (ITA) organization.   ITA certifies volunteer therapy teams (dogs and handlers) to do this work in a school or library setting and they have produced a training video that provides step by step instructions for implementing the program in any community.  We have purchased the video and are anxiously awaiting delivery.  As soon as we get it, we’ll tell you more!

MEET & GREET SUCCESS!!! PACKS Rescue IS ON IT’S WAY!!!

After a huge meeting, including a ranch tour of CETAfoundation.com, we are gearing up to start the work that will ensure there are No More Homeless PETS by 2019! Our initial Board will break down into our 4 task forces, that you’ll hear more of as we go along. We encourage you to follow our progress, give us feedback on what’s working and what’s not! and new ideas. We’re on our way!

III. PACKSrescue: A Hybrid of ForProfit and Nonprofit Businesses

Americans now spend $52 billion dollars a year on their pets – more than the gross domestic product of all but 64 countries in the world. PACKS will compete for a piece of that market share by rejecting the charity model that has left organizations underfunded and failing.

We at PACKS believe that, through a nonprofit business model blending a variety of animal provided therapy and education services, sustained by profit making businesses, we can advance the wellness of people and homeless pets, get more animals adopted, have fun and make enough money to reduce our dependence on charity contributions.

As a hybrid, nonprofit social enterprise business (social enterprise is defined, in this context, as a non-profit that sees a social ill and recognizes a market opportunity) PACKS can still reach out for traditional funding from grans and contributions. But, we can also entice a new class of social venture capital interested in investing in business creating social change.

The for-profit making businesses that will fund nonprofit PACKS include:

• a pet boarding hotel and doggie day care,

• a grooming shop,

• a pet food co-op and products store,

• a veterinary hospital (for fee in order to fund services to low income and rescued animals),

• an economically self sustaining high volume, spay and neuter clinic to lower overpopulation rates,

• animal assisted therapy programs, using a mix of pets pulled from local shelters for training, combined with certified assistance animals capable of providing services to citizens in need. These services range from conducting reading programs for children to aniamal assisted therapy provided to those who are mobility challenged, developmentally or mentally disabled and survivors of domestic violence,

• programs partnering with local hospitals and out patient care facilities to provide in home support to the elderly and ill and disabled, enabling them to keep their pets, rather than surrendering them to a shelter when they can no longer care for them.

• a coffee shop with  closed in play yard and splash pool, providing a gathering place for Sacramento citizens to bring their animals and hang out with like minded people.

• all profit making businesses will employ at-risk young people and the jobless to provide them with benefit from job training and certificatino programs leading to employment in the pet industry as groomers and vet techs.

Over 95% of American citizens never walk into an animal shelter because they are sad and difficult places. These people never have the opportunity to see the wonderful animals housed there. By using PACKS’s programs to funnel foot traffic into our center, the public will be given the opportunity to become acquainted with those they perceive as “ambassador animals,” many of whom come from our local high kill shelters. PACKSrescue (People and Animals Collaborating Kindness Rescue) will be a hotbed of fun activities, including kid’s summer critter camp sessions, birthday parties, pet-people yoga and children’s educational programs. We envision PACKS as family friendly, lively and an exciting center of the community, attractive to all who love animals and truly a sanctuary for the animals housed within.

II. The Solution

We are designing PACKSrescue to model a new approach: reducing animal homelessness by changing public perceptions. Our programs will be designed to elevate the public’s poor image of shelter animals from “used dogs and cats” to rebranding them with a status equal to, or more superior, to animals purchased from commercial breeders. PACKS seeks to promote the concept that homeless pets can benefit our community. Animals provide us with greater meaning, well being and mobility in our lives. Through promotion of the animal-human bond, PACKS programs will focus on marketing the abilities of homeless pets to improve our health, education and welfare. By doing so, we hope to reband homeless pets with a more positive image, increase adoption rates and compete against the the commercial breeders who now sell us the majority of animals found in our homes. In short, the mission of PACKS is to promote the concept of “animals helping people and people helping animals,” in order to reduce the killing rate of unwanted pets and find those that are abandoned or abused, their forever homes.

In order to solve the overwhelming lack of funding animal welfare organizations face, PACKS will position itself in the community as an animal center, easily accessible to our citizens and financially supported by innovative, self sustaining businesses. Using high visibility, our profit making businesses can compete with the $52 billion dollar a year pet industry. By building an attractive physical presence housing our unique programs, we intend to encourage greater foot traffic into PACKS to increase adoptions. Our attached profit making businesses will fund our non-profit programs of assisted animal therapy, education and job training that promote the interdependance of people and animals.

In order to increase adoptions and compete against commercial breeders, we must recognize that a market opportunity exists: to promote the unique skills sets animals possess to enrich our lives. Because of the amazing strength of the animal-human bond, many of our unwanted pets, now dying in animal shelters, can be called upon to fill our children’s, elderly’s and disabled citizen’s unmet needs by incorporating assisted animal therapy and education into our rescue program. By doing so, we hope to change our perception of homeless pets as creatures deserving only our pity and make further inroads into the disenfranchised communities from where many homeless animals come.