The Kindness Matters Podcast
So. Much. Division. Let's talk about how to change that. Re-engage as neighbors, friends, co-workers and family. Let's set out to change the world. Strike that. Change A World. One person at a time, make someone's life a little better and then do it again tomorrow and the day after that, through kindness.
Kindness is a Super-Power that each of us has within us. It is so powerful it has the potential to change not only your life but those around you, too. Let's talk about kindness.
The Kindness Matters Podcast
The Transformative Power of Kindness in Pet Adoption and Care
Have you ever wondered about the impact of kindness on our furry friends? Join us for an inspiring chat with Catherine Stillwell, an author and passionate animal advocate, who shares her journey from adopting her first kitten at age ten to becoming a champion for senior and special needs animals. Catherine’s heartfelt stories about her senior dog, Paulie, and other often-overlooked shelter animals, shed light on the transformative power of compassion and challenge the stigmas surrounding older and black-furred pets. You'll hear about the vital role kindness plays in the adoption process and how awareness can make all the difference for these deserving creatures.
We also explore the critical responsibilities of pet ownership, from the essential practice of spaying and neutering to the lifesaving importance of microchipping. With anecdotes about pets braving the outdoors and the dangers they face, we highlight the necessity of keeping our companions safe. Thoughtful discussions about pet gifting, especially during holidays, underline the importance of informed decisions and responsible care. As we wrap up, get insights into the joys and challenges of adoption from Catherine’s book, "Paulie Finds His Forever Home," a story that blossomed from a community's love for animals. This episode is a heartfelt call to action for pet lovers everywhere to embrace responsibility and spread kindness.
#pets #rescuepets #shelterpets
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Well, hello there and welcome. You are listening to the Kindness Matters podcast and I am your host, mike Rathbun. What is this podcast all about? It's about kindness. It's a pushback against everything negative that we see in the news and on social media today, and it's a way to highlight people, organizations, that are simply striving to make their little corner of the world a little better place. If you want to join in on the conversation, feel free, Go ahead and follow us on all of your social media feeds.
Speaker 1:We're on Facebook, instagram, tiktok. We're even on LinkedIn under Mike Rathbun Check us out. Uh, we're even on linkedin under mike rathbun check us out. And in the meantime, so sit back, relax, enjoy and we'll get into the kindness matters podcast. Hey, welcome to the show everybody. Um, you know we, we talk about kindness on this show, but one of the things in the almost two years of doing this show that I haven't talked about is kindness to animals. It seems like a no-brainer kind of thing, but I think there are a lot of reasons, a lot of ways that we can be kinder, and so I found the most awesome guest to talk about this and, uh, and she's. She's an author of a book and she's been a a pet owner for over 50 years. Over 50 years.
Speaker 2:Not much, though right no, not much, maybe a few months or so.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the show Catherine Stilwell.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to this half an hour podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, I try to keep it. I think they say generally that people will only pay attention and that their attention spans are only limited. I'm so glad this is an audio podcast my cat wandering by. I think generally the assumption is that people will really only pay attention for up to 30 minutes, so that's why I chose that for this podcast. But so you, you have been very, very active in kindness to, to animals and pets in general, haven't you? You've been doing this for a while.
Speaker 2:I would like to think I have been. I mean, our first. My first pet was when I was 10 years old and a neighbor's cat had kittens and the neighbor gifted us a kitten and my sister and I brought the kitten home in a shoe box and asked my mom if we could have a cat and she said that's fine, you got to take care of her.
Speaker 2:You know, I'll take care of the vet bills, because we were 10 years old and and that's pretty much where it all started- yeah well, I'm not going to give the year, but it was when I was 10 years old, okay, um, and ever since then, both my husband and I have had numerous pets in our lives growing up well, yeah, and I mean you and husband.
Speaker 1:You've been married for 37 years, right?
Speaker 2:That's correct.
Speaker 1:So he's kind of been your partner in this whole thing, I mean figuratively and literally. So okay. So now when you got Polly, okay, so now when you got Polly.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry Did that Because Polly was a senior dog when you got him right, he was a senior dog.
Speaker 2:He was eight years old when we adopted him back in 2014. His owner had passed away in the house and the sheriff's department found Pauly outside the house wandering around and they don't know how long he was out there. So that's pretty much all I really know about his back story. But we were looking at the time for a smaller dog because I I had had numerous hand surgeries and having a larger dog, I was deemed not allowed to per the per the doctor because he was afraid that if the dog, if the dog bolted, you know, at the end of the leash, I would be back in surgery again. So he said anything under 20 pounds would be perfect. So Pauly weighed 14 pounds.
Speaker 1:So he fit the bill.
Speaker 2:And he was a Chihuahua Pomchee mix. I mean, he was a little guy, A lot of spit, little spit and fire little dog, and we had him until 2021 where he had.
Speaker 2:He had a massive stroke and he and he passed away the following day. So so actually having him was was great, and he was the one that really got me into the pet advocacy um, even more so than when I was doing this before. We got him and he and I would go on. We would do fundraisers for the senior, senior pets and the funds would go towards getting them up and ready for adoption, to get them out of the shelter as soon as possible.
Speaker 1:Oh sure.
Speaker 2:Because, from what I was taught, senior animals, special needs and black furred animals remain at the shelter longer than any other age group or type of animal, and it's true.
Speaker 1:Is that a psychological thing, do you think?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm presuming with the black fur it's because it's superstitious, like the black hat, that type of thing, which that's what I believe, and then no one really wants to take care of a special needs or a senior dog or a senior pet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, care of a special needs or a senior dog or a senior pet. Yeah, my wife and I adopted a same kind of situation. She was a little poodle mix and she and her brother had gone to Humane Society after the owner passed and we went in. My wife was looking for a lap dog and we found this little ragamuffin. She'd had breast cancer, they had removed the the mass and she was 10 years old and that I think that's exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:You know people will look at that and go oh, I don't know but I kind of have an argument for that, because I mean any animal at any age can come down with any type of medical problem oh sure it's just a stigma, I think, for the senior animals, where they get the bad rap yeah, yeah for sure, and you know, I can see that if you're looking for a family dog or something and you're going, well, I don't want a dog. That's only going to last me another three or four years, right. But we looked at and the name on her card was Churi C-H-U-R-R-I, bumbles, b-u-m-b-l-e-s, and we looked at her and we went nobody else is going to take her. She's going to live the rest of her life in this shelter, because she was 10 and she had had breast cancer and you know all of this stuff, and so I mean it was a no-brainer for us. We had to take her home. But's, that is kind of a, but they make the best dogs, they make the best companions, don't they?
Speaker 2:They do because they're already sitting their way. They sleep a lot, unless you have a really active dog. You know breed. They were perfect for us, for our family. So or he was, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1:Oh sure, yeah, but you had been active with animals from beyond. Was that before Polly? When you would clean, when you would volunteer with the cats.
Speaker 2:Well, I worked in a rescue back in Northern California.
Speaker 2:I went there for my internship when I was in college and then from there we moved out here to Illinois and I worked in three or four different rescues and a county shelter and I learned a lot.
Speaker 2:And I learned a lot and it got me even more so involved after we got Polly, when I was doing the fundraisers for those senior pets. That that's where things really took off. And it was a wild ride, and especially after the pandemic, because people were adopting animals, because they were home and when they had to go back to work then the animals went back to the shelter and now the shelters and the rescues are busting at the seams, just inundated with all these pets, with all these pets. And that's what really made me decide to write the book and add the suggestions that I did in the book to help people try and keep their pets from becoming astray so they don't end up back in the shelter. So it went from a simple little children's book into a lot more, a lot more, because at that point I needed to find a way to try and help the animals from staying out of the shelters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. And when we talked before the show, you came up with five tips to help to be kinder to animals and our pets. So let's talk about some of those. Number one microchipping.
Speaker 2:Microchipping is a biggie and it's one of the best things a pet parent can do to their animal for their animal, can do to their animal for their animal. And I say that because a lot of the animals that are brought into the shelter that come in as strays are not microchipped.
Speaker 2:yeah, now, it varies by cost, you know, depending on where you live. Sure, where I'm at, it's only 35 for a microchip to be implanted into the, into the, into the pet, and they give you, at least down here, they give you a website that you can go to where the chip came from and you update your information, because the shelter or the rescue very unlikely will they do that for you, that's something you need to do on your own, and a lot of people don't know that.
Speaker 2:They think when they bring the pet home, that the pet is good to go, and that is not the case. So it's just like maybe about a 10 minute process. You log in, you type in your phone number, you know your contact info and I think the hardest part is trying to remember, whenever your information changes, that you should really go back in there and update the info.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:That's just not happening. So my, my recommendation would be if you're not sure if your pet is microchipped, then I would suggest going either to, I think, the police department, the vet's office or a shelter or rescue can check for the chip, and if your pet doesn't have a chip, that's the time to go get one.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely If that animal darts out of the house, as I call them darters, or they're escape artists. And if that dog isn't microchipped, the dog is going to be probably picked up as a stray and taken to the shelter or rescue and it will be very difficult to connect the owner with the pet again.
Speaker 1:Right For sure. That's a big one, that's a big stink bomb out here, and it's such a simple thing to do, and I mean in the scheme of caring for a pet. It's not that expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and pet, it's not that expensive. Yeah, and again, it varies from now. Shelters and rescues will microchip the pet automatically and the animal is spayed and neutered before they're allowed to go out on the adoption floor If you go through a breeder.
Speaker 2:I can't speak to that. So I'm pretty much in the shelter community more than I am in the breeders world. So, but it is very inexpensive and when we adopted a dog in July a two-year-old dog in July and the first thing I did when we came home with him is I got on the computer and I updated the microchip and it took me maybe about 20 minutes to do it that's Mr Brutus, is it not? He's good. He's good to go that's Brutus right that's Brutus he's adorable yeah, he's, he's, he's a sweetie.
Speaker 2:So that's, that's the biggie that's number one. If that's the only message I can get across today, then I've done my job.
Speaker 1:Right For sure. Number two it's time to do your best. Bob Barker impression.
Speaker 2:What do you mean? Come on, Deb.
Speaker 1:Wasn't Bob Barker always about the spay and neuter your pets?
Speaker 2:Oh the spay and neuter To control the pet population.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's another one A lot of people choose not to. The problem is by not having your pet neutered or spayed. It can cause it can let me, I'm looking at my notes real quick here it can cause some health and behavior issues with that animal and it. It would make them feel a lot more comfortable if if they were, you know, spayed or neutered than not oh sure and again the shelters and rescues automatically do that.
Speaker 2:If the, if the animal's still intact, you know um they will go and spay and neuter because they want to control the pet population, because they're being inundated with stray animals all the time.
Speaker 1:Right, and they don't need more of those.
Speaker 2:No, so it falls on the responsibility of the pet parent to make sure that that's taken care of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my wife's family lives on a farm out in South Dakota. They don't have any animals out there, but they seem to get several litters of kittens about every spring, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah of kittens every about every spring. Right, yeah, that's, yeah, that's. It's like that.
Speaker 2:Out here too, with yeah kitten, kitten thing, so, um, so it's really, you know, to keep the population down and also because of the, the benefits of, you know, behavior and the health issues that can come, come with that. Now, if you're a, if you're a breeder, a responsible breeder, then you know they, I, I don't again, I don't know how that end of the business works. Um, I'm thinking that maybe they don't do that in case, you know, the pet owner wants to breed, the breed, the animal right just be responsible with.
Speaker 2:With something like that. Um, I mean, I I really can't stress enough on just how crowded these shelters are right now and the, the dogs especially, they come down with kennel stress and when it gets extreme, where now the animal's acting out by biting or whatever, they're going to euthanize the animal. And it's so unfair for an animal to go through something like that because the pet owner wasn't responsible enough to get the animal microchipped, you know. So I'm always going to go back to the microchip, because that's a real problem.
Speaker 1:I wonder and this is completely off topic, but I think about, you know, the hurricanes and the natural disasters that we had down in the southeast. I'm sure the shelters are getting all kinds of dogs and cats. I wonder how many that come in are microchipped and go back to their families, and I don't know that. You know the answer to that. I'm just something that popped into my head, because, yeah, we get all kinds of them up here in Minnesota. We'll get truckloads of cats and dogs after something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have rescues that do those rescue missions. They drive down to the south, like you know, where the hurricanes were like in Kentucky, and areas that they don't have the funds to actually take care of the animals in the shelters, so they ship them out to other locations that can provide the medical care for for those animals. Now I don't know that much about the rescue end. Now I don't know that much about the rescue end, but I do know that I would be surprised if a lot of those animals were microchipped. I could be wrong, otherwise why would they be shipping them somewhere else? If the animal was microchipped and if it was updated, then they'd be able to find the owner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So the sheer volume of pets that are coming in would lead you to believe that they're not microchipped. Correct, correct, got it, got it. Never leave a pet outside unattended, and I'm guilty of this. I do it a lot Because I'm lazy. We have an invisible fence for our dog, which is great because she never leaves the yard, but that doesn't stop anything else from coming into the yard.
Speaker 2:Correct. Well, we had our neighbor behind us before they moved had a golden retriever and Willie. We called him Big Willie because he was a large dog and he had the collar on for the invisible fence. Well, I think because of his weight, his size, it didn't even faze him.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, he was always wandering around the neighborhood, them, oh no, he was always wondering. Wandering around the neighborhood and it happened one too many times, oh boy, to where it was starting to be a safety issue because of the cars on the street. You know, the dog was just wandering around down to the lake, to the pond, come home whenever you know, and the owners were working. They had no idea the dog was doing this yeah so, but a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Just you know, and I know from around here. We have neighbors that um, put their dogs out in the yard and they forget about them, and the next thing you hear is oh my god, my dog is lost because the dog escaped the backyard. Now we don't have a fenced yard in our yard, so when we take Brutus out, he's on a leash and we're with him all the time. Sure, we, we never leave him unattended.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, you know, but it's because he's a hound mix too, and if he sees a squirrel he's going to take off like nothing.
Speaker 1:So that's why we keep him on a leash. Your story about Big Willie kind of reminded me we had at his heaviest. He was 110 pounds, he was a yellow lab shepherd minx, and he had the invisible fence too and he was really really good with it. I mean he never breached that fence except once and he saw a squirrel in the neighbor's yard and he went through and I was watching when it happened. You heard he yipped because he got the shock from going through it Right, and he immediately stopped and he turned around and he looked back in his yard and he's like, well, crap, now I got to go back in and he came back in and he took that shot coming back in too.
Speaker 1:That was the last time he ever had any problems with the fence. But yeah, I know the bigger dogs. They sometimes say he felt it though he knew, and I don't like to see him in pain. Or I know the bigger dogs. They sometimes say he felt it though he knew, and I don't like to see him in pain or think that I caused him pain. But he knew what the fence was and he knew what would happen if he got too close to it or crossed it.
Speaker 2:We don't do that, and especially because we have coyotes that come around Sure. So if you have a little dog, well that could be lunch or dinner, you know. So that's another reason why you know animals shouldn't be left unattended.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because wildlife is getting into it. I mean, if you think you live in the city and you're safe from coyotes, or what have you think again, right, yeah, no, we have all kind of wildlife here, so there's just no way we could.
Speaker 2:Even even if we had a fence and we knew the dog wouldn't run away, I think we'd always keep him or her on a leash.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what we did with Pauly, too, because we didn't know what he would do.
Speaker 1:So we wanted't sure chance so okay, number four gifting. Good idea, bad idea.
Speaker 2:I think it's a terrible idea. Um, I don't think I would like it if, at Christmas time, someone came over with a, with a puppy, and I have no financially or no way of caring for a puppy.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Um, that's a personal choice and that should be up to the actual individual If they want to adopt. It's a big decision, it's a lifelong decision.
Speaker 1:Right and yeah should be it should be.
Speaker 2:I mean it should be now. My husband and I have been fortunate and with all the pets that we've had, we've been able to keep them for their entire life. Um, we had one cat that we had for 19 years. I mean we just I mean they've all lived into seniorhood. I think it's a personal choice, unless you really really know the person well and you got their permission ahead of time, I mean. But I think coming to a house with a puppy and a stocking and you know Merry Christmas well, it may not be very Merry christmas for the receiver.
Speaker 1:So oh for sure. Yeah, because you see these videos right and they're gifting dad or whoever with a puppy and and it all looks so cute and it.
Speaker 2:But you got to make sure that the person yeah, there's a lot more to it than just handing over a puppy. Puppies are a lot of work. They're're like a toddler, but they don't talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, Well, they do.
Speaker 2:But Like I said, it should be a personal choice for the person and not a surprise.
Speaker 1:Never surprise somebody with a puppy or a kitten or what have you.
Speaker 2:Or a rabbit during Easter time.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say that, yeah.
Speaker 2:The shelter, the local, the county shelter here where we got Polly from they're considered an open admission shelter, meaning they can accept any animal livestock. I mean they've had chickens, they've had hens, roosters, a goat at one point and they got to go to rescues that can take these animals. Because it's just a county shelter they can't take care of livestock.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, right.
Speaker 2:And it's just unbelievable. But the worst time is during Easter, when people go out and buy chicks and rabbits. Yeah, and rabbits are one of the hardest animals to take care of. They're a lot of work and many times these rabbits are sent back or sent to the shelter because people didn't realize just how difficult they were.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they're really, they're high maintenance pets. They're very soft and cute and fuzzy, but they're, they're really high maintenance you need to be an experienced rabbit owner in order to really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:It's not something that I would want to do, because I know nothing about rabbits and I'm not at the point in my life where I really want to learn. Fair enough, that's the other thing. Just, if you don't think you can take care of a particular animal, then don't even go there. Yeah, do what you, yeah.
Speaker 1:So Exactly, um, the final tip that you had was to take a pet certified first aid and CPR class. I had no idea that that was even a class that one could take and be certified in.
Speaker 2:I took a class every time we adopted an animal. Wow, it's a two-year certification. On my website. There's a tab there on taking care of senior pets or helpful information, and there's a link to the course that I took earlier this year and it's about a four thing. It's a four or five hour course that you do online.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:And at the end there's I don't know how many questions you have to take and when you pass they give you a certificate, like a little card, like a little library card type of thing, and you're good for two years. And it's taught by a veterinarian somewhere in the United States I forget where she's from. She's qualified. And I've done it for both dogs and cats, because we've owned both types of animals.
Speaker 1:Huh.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm going to have to look at that.
Speaker 1:I'm very interested now in what CPR for a dog would look like. That's I mean, if you want to really be a good pet owner and be kind to your animals, because these are your companions, mm-hmm, supposedly for their life at least, right, and wouldn't you want to make sure they had the most fulfilling, safe, healthy life they could? So talk to me about your book. Oh boy, polly Finds Us Forever Home.
Speaker 2:It is a true story. It's about Polly's adoption. I had no intentions on writing a book, actually a community page back in 2014 that I had started on Facebook. It was just to document his life with us. It was just a fun project and it evolved into something a lot bigger. He had over a couple thousand followers. It ran from 2014 to 2021. And then I took it down because he was very ill and I didn't want to take any more pictures of him because of his state at that time, and then six months later, he passed away. But it was.
Speaker 2:It had really started at the as a the community page and then I wrote a poem called Polly's journey and that was the name of the Facebook page, and then after that, I started doing blogging about the adventures that we went on and the followers on the community page read the poem. It struck a chord and they said you've got to write a book about this. Maybe you can do a series of books or whatever. Yeah, I was able to finish this one book and it's on his adoption. I was able to finish this one book and it's on his adoption and I have in there two pages of suggestions on how to keep your pet from becoming a stripe Nice Because during that time was when all these animals were being surrendered after the pandemic and I wanted to be part of the solution and try to educate pet owners new pet owners or existing pet owners on how they can keep their pets safe from ending up in the shelter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, so it turns into like an educational tool at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it kind of looks like a children's book, but it doesn't really. I mean, it's more than that, right.
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely, definitely. It is a children's book. It's for ages 3 to 7.
Speaker 1:Shoot, I thought you were going to say 3 to 70.
Speaker 2:It's really for anybody who likes senior animals or animals in general, sure, but I decided while I was writing the book and all this stuff was going on at the shelters, with these animals being brought in or euthanized or whatever the case was, it's like no, I got to do something more with this book and that's what made me write the two pages of suggestions to help others not fall into that situation, because there's nothing worse than losing a pet and no you're right.
Speaker 2:It's. It's a terrible thing. I've seen people that never have never gotten their pets back for whatever reason. It's sad and I wanted to be part of the solution, so that's how those pages got in there.
Speaker 1:Fantastic and the book is well. We already said, polly Finds His Forever Home. You'll be able to find it on Amazon and can you buy it through the website.
Speaker 2:You can, I have the link, able to find it on Amazon and can you buy it through the website? You can, I have the link. I have a QR code and the link on my website. Okay, um Amazon, barnes and Noble, um Walmart, you know you, just most online bookshops should have it.
Speaker 1:And the website is senior-dogs-rockcom. We will have a link for that in the show notes, as well as an Amazon link for the book as well. Catherine, so much, I thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thank you. No, I appreciate it. I really I was looking forward to this because, you know, I I look at the shelter page all the time and I see all these animals being brought in and I'm thinking, oh man, you know, and it's, it's definitely not getting better and it's. It's just an influx of just animals being brought in all the time. Yeah, I had to do something about it oh, I hope this helps, I'm sure well, yeah, I do too all right.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for for stopping by today and and chatting with me. I really appreciate it. Um again, we'll have all your links in the show notes that sounds great, mike.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. Follow your links in the show notes.
Speaker 1:That sounds great, mike. I appreciate it. I want to thank you for taking this time to listen to this episode with my guest, catherine Stilwell. I hope that you're able to take something positive from the time that you spent here today. Maybe you'll be inspired, maybe you'll be motivated, maybe you'll be moved. If you experienced any of those positive feelings, please consider sharing this podcast with your friends and family. Also, feel free to follow us on our socials like Facebook, instagram, linkedin and TikTok. This podcast is part of the Mayday Media Network. If you have an idea for a podcast and need some production assistance, or have a podcast and are looking for a supportive network to join, check out maydaymedianetworkcom and check out the many different shows, like Afrocentric Spoil, my Movie Generation Mixtape In a Pickle Radio Show, wake Up and Dream with D Anthony Palin and Stacks Opaques. We will be back again next week with a new episode and we would be honored if you would join us. You've been listening to the Kindness Matters Podcast. I am your host, mike Rathbun. Have a fantastic week.
