Speaker 1: Hey, this is Pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: It's Oh Behave with Arden More, this show that teaches
you how to have harmony in the household with your pets.
Speaker 3: Join Ardna.
Speaker 2: She travels coast to coast to help millions better understand
why cats and dogs do what they do. Get that
latest scoop on famous spaces, they're perfectly pampered pets, and
who's walking goo and rint in Tinseltown. From famous pet
experts and best selling authors to television and movie stars,
You'll get the latest buzz from Wagging Tongues and Tails Garner,
great pet tips and have a dog one fer flying
fun time. So get ready for the paws and applause
as we unleaseh your oh Behave host America's pet edutainer,
Arden Moore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the O Behave Show on Pet Life Radio.
I'm your host, Arden Moore. Hey, on the football turf.
Our special guest is a veteran referee. Yeah a zebra
black and white. Yeah you got that. He somehow manages
to get twenty two huge NFL players to follow the rules,
but most days he scores big for animal welfare groups
all over the globe. Please welcome back to our show.
The CEO and founder of Cudley, the one, the only
John Hussy, Welcome back number thirty five.
Speaker 3: Thanks Hardin. It's always a pleasure when you get welcomed
back somewhere, even as a rep. Right.
Speaker 1: Well, we got to address the zebra in the room,
which is you being an NFL ref and then we're
going to get into the great causes that you and
the team at Cuddley are doing. I'm telling you Thursday night, Sundays,
sometimes on a Monday, I am watching football. I'm an
ex sportswriter and what I always look for number thirty
five on the field. And you have been your alignment
now a referee. You've been in the NFL blowing a
whistle for what twenty three years?
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm going on my twenty fourth season right now.
Speaker 1: Wow. The obvious question is that is a great tenure.
What made you say when you were growing up I
want to be an NFL referee?
Speaker 3: So when I first started, it was really simply about
my sports career ending and looking for something else. And
typically what happens when an athlete figures out that they
can only go so far because of their athletic ability,
they go into coaching or they go into officiating. And
my uncle was a high school, very prominent high school
football official in southern California, and he asked me if
I was interested in giving this a try, and I did.
I went to the new men's new person's class, and
I just took to it. I had really a fond
experience with it. It was not that I set out
to say I want to be in the NFL one day.
That did happen along the way, but that would the
original intent.
Speaker 1: I had that same dream. But I'm a chick in
five foot one, so I don't know think the odds
were against me.
Speaker 3: You should have been an official.
Speaker 1: I can drop kick a football, but nobody does that anymore.
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 1: So what is it about officiating? I mean, it's a
lot of pressure, and you got some big guys sweating
down your throat and you've got to maintain calm and
you got to play by the rules.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think officiating and go back to my early
days in my journey, it's taught me a lot about life.
It does have pressure, it does have accountability, preparation. It
takes a lot of preparation. You don't just what I
always tell the teams when I talk to them at
training camps, it is not our intention to show up
on Sunday and screw up your day for three hours.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 3: We don't just go up to do that. We do
a lot of preparation. On Saturdays in the NFL, we
meet for two three hours preparing for the game if
it's kicking off at one o'clock, and we work very
very hard. And during the week we work very very hard.
Look at film. So you know, there's a lot of
a lot of attributes to officiating that you can transfer
over into just regular life physical fitness. It's important that
you try to maintain that. And the older you get,
the harder that is. That's that is a challenge. I
got started. I just started yesterday. It was day one
for preparing for this upcoming season, and on the treadmill,
running quick sprints and then slowing down, just like trying
to emulate a football.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you, have you ever figured
out how many miles or steps you do in an
average game?
Speaker 3: Yes, they track that. We have little trackers in our shirts,
and so it's been for my position particularly, it's about
three to four miles a game. Wow, I burned about
fourteen hundred calories a game.
Speaker 1: Hey, pet pals, we're speaking with John Hussey. He is
the CEO and a founder of Cuddley, an organization that
is doing tons of great things for animal welfare groups
all over the country. But we're gonna dive into a
little bit more about his cause. But we had to
get the football out of the way.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's like the elephant in the room or the zebra
in the room, right John.
Speaker 3: It is a very popular sport.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love it. But you do a good job officiating.
Let me tell you. I covered one Super Bowl. You
have been officiated?
Speaker 3: How many I've been? You think a line judge in
one and I was in the alternate referee in two.
So I've been a bridesmaid, but not a bride.
Speaker 1: Oh that sounds like me with my writing and journalism
getting that runner up. All right, Hey, we're gonna talk
more with John after we take this quick break. You
know what the drill is. You gotta sit, stay, we'll
be right back.
Speaker 2: Time for a pause for very ones. Actually sit and stay. Oh, behave,
We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2: Let's talk pets on Petlifradio dot com. All Behaviors back
with more tail wagging ways to achieve harmony of the
household with your pets. Now back to your vetching host,
America's pet ed You, Janer Ardenmore.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the old beh show on pet Life Radio.
I'm your host, Ardenmore. I have back one of my favorites.
He is John Hussey. He does a lot of good
for pets. He is the CEO and founder of Cuddley
and he somehow manages to also tweet his whistle at
NFL games as a referee. That's the top one. That's
the top guy. But people want to know what Cuddly
is and is that because you give good bear hugs? John,
what is Cuddley?
Speaker 3: I do give good bear hugs. But in response to
your question, so Cudley was created to help animal rescues
and shelters solve what would be one of their number
one challenges, which is fundraising. Predominantly art in a majority
of these groups, if not all of them, subsidize their
operations through outside donations. We created the business and it
is a it's a privately held, venture funded company with
sole intention to help our partners get a bigger share
of what's given to animals. A lot of our organizations
are the small and the medium size and wall for organizations,
and they don't have a development team, they don't have
a development officer, they don't have the social and email
marketing tactics that a big marketing company that has or
big organization has. They don't even some of them have
a CRM in order to manage their donations and their
donations for their donors. So we've teached them all of that,
we give them free tools to do that, and we've
successfully raised, as you mentioned, over one hundred million dollars
for these small and medium sized organizations, which has helped
thousands and thousands and thousands of pets who in our
particular case, our slice of the universe is a lot
of these animals are abused and neglected. There are some
of the worst cases. The partners take them on. These
animals were typically maybe euthanized, and they take them on.
They help rehabilitate them, recover and live a wonderful life.
And so to be a part of this process and
to help them feel confident that they could take on
these cases. These cases put a tremendous amount of strain
on the resources of these organizations and for them to
know that they can go now rescue those cases or
help these cases and Cuddley will be their backstop is
a tremendous feeling.
Speaker 1: As the CEO, Well, how did you come up with
the name Cudley.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to be transparent. When we started, we
were known as pound wishes, and I had no knowledge
of animal welfare. I win it as an early investor.
Speaker 1: Pound wishes, that's the opposite of weight watchers.
Speaker 3: It is, and the word pound has been they removed
from the vernacular of animal welfare because it has a
negative connotation, but the wish is part of it was
tied back to our early founder with my co founder,
his daughter had to make a wish trip at Disneyland
because she had childhood cancer. He asked them, why is
there not a make a Wish foundation for animals in
rescue and shelters, And so that's hence where the name
came from. Okay, when we were back into a corner
and realize that we had to change the name, it
took me a lot of work, but the ultimately we
found the urlcudly dot com and that's how we became Cudley.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I now know Cudley was Pound Wishes.
That's a new one for me. But you did good man,
that's a good business call. So you've done a lot
of good for a lot of animal shelter groups around
the country, but you are still striving to expand. So
you launched a line of food and part of the
money is toward animal groups, right, tell me about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so along the way, you know, ours is a
donation platform in a unique way where donors could donate food, treats, blankets, leashes,
anything to help in the care and rehabilitation of the
animals as well as monetarily. So we've scaled that to
where we provide food through this donation to donation aspect
to shelters and rescues. Well, during COVID and post COVID,
there were supply chain issues in respect to keeping food
consistent food in our warehouse in order to deliver it
to the partners. And so why don't we look at
making our own food. Okay, go direct to the manufacture,
a co manufacturer if you will, and remove the distributor
from the process, remove and control the relationship. Because one
of the things that happens when you have food instability
is if you switch up foods with the animals, it
provides a lot. It creates a lot of digestive issues.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so a lot of strain. And some cats, you know,
they're very they call them finicky. They are like, no,
this doesn't smell like what I'm used to eating, So
I'm not going to eat now.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get sick for sure, right for sure.
And so we looked at that as an opportunity to
launch our own food. Well, along the way, I noticed
started noticing a lot of rescues, specifically with post camp
Ain's on Cuddy where they were about ready to run
out of food where they were they were going to
have to close their doors or they couldn't keep enough
food in or we needed to raise money quick like
in order to get them food. And so I started thinking, well,
what m's if we launch our food to the consumer
and for every bag of food purchased, we would donate
a pound of food back. And we built that into
our margins. So we're launching this food, cuddly food, and
it's a purchase with a purpose, very similar to Boba's
socks or tom shooting. Okay, yeah, very similar.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So with the socks, every pair you buy or something,
they donate a pair to someone in neat in a country.
I like that. Well, look the pound wishes came back
to the y. That's your subtitle now.
Speaker 3: And you know a lot of brands say they give
back in pet for example, there's a large one that
says they give back a dollar, but really you don't
know where that really that's going to in the real material.
That what we know about our business model today is
we're already shipping to these partners everything that's being donated.
So we completely have solved the logistical back end challenge
of giving back. We know how smart how to give
it back to them, so us giving a pound of
food or you know, for every bag purchase. We ultimately
I want to get them to food sustainability so they
know that through this purchasing community that they're going to
receive X amount of pounds of food every month to
feed their animals, which will create consistency and they will
they can take the dollars that they're now spending on
food and they can repurpose them to save more animals.
Speaker 1: That is bueno bueno, Hey, pet pals. We're speaking with
John Hussey, he's the CEO of Cuddley and we're going
to dive into some things that he's going to share
on how we can help as well. But we got
to take a quick break, so you know, the drill, Sit, stay,
We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Time for a walk.
Speaker 2: I'm on the red car, but of course all behave.
We'll be backing up flash right after these messages.
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Speaker 1: Let's talk past it.
Speaker 4: Let's go petal at Life Radio, Headline Radio.
Speaker 2: Pet Life Radio dot Com.
Speaker 3: Hello everyone, if Marca Allen, I encourage you to tune
in on the Old Behave Show with Arden More on
pet Life Radio. We're back from the lot.
Speaker 2: Just check the paper and we had our record showing
at the box. The letterbox that is now back to
Oh Behave.
Speaker 3: Here's Arden, Welcome.
Speaker 1: Back to the old Behave show on Pet Life Radio.
I'm your host, Arden Moore. Got one of my favorites here.
He is John Hussey. We seem to run into each
other at weird places, like on an airplane at the
Global Pet Expo years ago. We must run in the
same circles.
Speaker 3: Yes, I I when you travel as much as I
do for my Sunday job, it's great. It's actually, honestly,
it's always great to run into a friendly face. It's
it's kind of lowly on the road.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to ask a couple questions about how
people can find out more about Cuddly and the Cuddly Food,
So go ahead and share the website.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so please go to cuddy dot com. Very you know,
it's very user friendly and intuitive. You can definitely donate,
which is really impactful and helps our shelter and rescue
partners in sustaining their operations. Or you can actually purchase
our new food product Curly Food Line and other really
cool items to help your pets.
Speaker 1: Is that online or how do they get it?
Speaker 3: They get it online currently.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay. So in addition, you know the summer's here,
and you know there's a lot of pets. I live
in Dallas. I know you're in Texas too, aren't you?
Speaker 3: I am in Dallas.
Speaker 1: Oh, we should run into each other anyway. I live
in Dallas. You live in Dallas. You know there's a
lot of dogs and cats. Shelters are getting full. What
are some things? Obviously they can purchase your product and
it can donate to a shelter. But do you have
any other tips for people that may not want to
necessarily adapt a dog or cat, but they want to
help out their local shelters and rescue groups.
Speaker 3: For sure, So immediately obviously in the monetary aspect, right
of donating, because again these organizations are primarily relying on
outside funding to sustain their operations. You can volunteer. That's
always helpful. Fostering is even extension of volunteering, which fostering
is very helpful. And so if you can't adopt per se,
but maybe you can foster for a couple, two, three
months or what have you, that's always really helpful. You
can join Covely Club.
Speaker 1: Oh, with Cuddly Club, why haven't I joined Cuddly Club.
Speaker 3: Lovely Club is a group of powerful individuals who donate
monthly and we take those funds then and we repurpose
them into the needs of our shelter and rescue. So,
for example, we have a van we donate it in
Texas that saves thousands of animals a year. We just
donated a van to one of our partners in New
York City who now will go and help save animals.
And we would like to expand more vans on the
road that are helping these partners save more animals. So
Covey Club is a real powerful way to give where
you sign up and you don't have to worry about it.
We'll do all the heavy lifting for you. You can you know,
cudly shop and donate products. So we have a lot
of ways to help our organizations and our partners, you know,
because there is you alluded to their overrun there. Oh yeah,
they're a capacity and so they need all the help
that we can give them. And so to rally your
listeners people and get them into our community. Just please
know that we are finding every opportunity to try to
help and support our partners.
Speaker 1: Can you give me a couple examples. Maybe something in
the United States and someplace elsewhere we're cuddly made a
difference that touched your heart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll go back to our first campaign. His name
was Thor. He happened to be in this particular case.
He was rescued by a US based animal welfare organization.
Through this he was walking through the streets of Tijuana
barely in his legs and Thor received like just a
tremendous amount of support where they had to build a
wheelchair for him. We raised the funds for the wheelchair
on Cudley. He needed aquatic therapy. We raised to pay
for aquatic therapy, and Thor is online. He had almost
like three million views to his story. That is one
of the first campaigns that we ever fundraised for on
Cudley and it is on my business card. Is a
reminder to me of where we came from. But even
go to success stories on cudley dot com. If you
pull down the tabs success stories, there are hundreds and hundreds,
if not more, of success stories where we've helped animals
in their journey. It's heartwarming to go through and read
how a company that we started nine years years ago
has made an impact in this community.
Speaker 1: You know, in football there's stats, and so correct me
if I'm wrong for this. But you have partnered with
over forty five hundred animal welfare groups worldwide, raised more
than a million in less than ten years, and have
one hundred million thank you millions. Now you know why.
I'm not an auditor or an accountant, and you have
over three hundred and sixty five thousand donors and growing.
Speaker 3: Yes, ma'am, bless you. How's that?
Speaker 1: Do you ever have a referee if somebody say thank you?
Speaker 3: You know, very rarely, very rarely. That job is about,
you know that ups to go out every game and
strive for perfection, knowing you're not going to get achieve perfection.
And I call it the zero sum game, right, So
at the end of okay, somebody's going to win and
somebody's going to lose. It's just the nature of it.
And so it's a zero sum game for us. There's
going to be at least fifty percent of the people
watching that game very unhappy with our performance.
Speaker 1: How do you deal with that? It's tough to be
a ref.
Speaker 3: It is, and in today's society, we have a I
don't mean to get off topic, but in today's society,
we have a definite issue in getting enough officials for
the high school because it's very difficult. It's just it's different.
In the NFL, I have kind of a you know,
it's it's sort of a protected environment, and there's the
people and the players and coaches in the National Football
League always surprise me of how classy they carry themselves
and how you know, there's just a respect level to
get to the highest level of the game. Yes, you know,
every once in a while in the stands or of
where you come across, you're going to run into, especially
on social media, you're going to run into some hate.
You pretty much ignore it.
Speaker 1: Well. On the other flip of the coin, I bet
you've met some people in the NFL that do a
lot for animals too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I can't engage with them
on a personal level because the role that I have
and there's a firewall between that. But it is interesting
to me when I come across or I see articles
about certain players, or even in a game where they
have to customize my cleats weekend where they get to
and one of them has animal welfare as their cause.
It warms my heart to see again. I can't really engage,
but it's interesting to me how many animal lovers and
supporters are actually in the National Football League.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the name of the guy, but he
was a top draft pick. He's going into the NFL
and he has a huge dog, and his priority was
to make sure he could find housing so that it
would accommodate his huge dog in himself. And that was
the first thing he said when I went house hunting,
was to find a home with my dog. That made
me feel like supporting that young man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, you can't help but want to not me,
but you root for that person.
Speaker 1: Yes, when I was a sports writer like you, as
an official, I could not root for a team. No, no, no,
you said that firewall. You're perfectly correct, so I can
finally cheer. But I spent twenty years as a reporter
and part of it as a sports writer, and I
could not cheer. That was the rules, right.
Speaker 3: Myself and my crew have to protect the integrity of
the game when we're out there. That's our role.
Speaker 1: So have you sampled the cuddly dog food.
Speaker 3: Yet yourself, I personally have not eaten the cuddly dog
food for full transparency. But the feedback loop that have
many many and this is what's really are or me,
many many people who even people who have finicky dogs
are feeding cuddly food. I just got a review this
weekend where one of our rescues was touting how she's
been able to rehabilitate a lot of dogs that have,
you know, allergies.
Speaker 1: Oh good.
Speaker 3: We didn't just take some food off the shelf, heart
and we spent two years in research into development. We
made sure that we built a food that was actually
very very high in ingredients, quality ingredients. We separated land
and sea. So for example, salmon and rice is not
salmon chicken meal. It's salmon and fish meal. We did not.
If you go and look at some of the brands, no,
that's smart, very smortzing to me. You go look at
salmon as a recipe for some of these brands, and
it's backed up. The second or third ingredient is chicken
by product or chicken meal. Well, that's not really salmon.
Speaker 1: No, that's you need surf versus turf, and we did that.
That's good. That's good. Well, if you ever do taste it,
we'll have you back on and we'll see what your
palette says on that? How that before we go? Because
you do so much good? What have dogs, cats, other
companion animals? How have they made you? John Hussey, CEO
of Cudley a better person?
Speaker 3: I tell this story all the time. When I was
raised my dad and we had dogs around the house,
but they were they were kettled, they were kept in
the laundry room. You know, they were still safe, but
they were not not enriched. Yeah, today current state, they
sleep on our bed. The humanization of animals has transformed
over the last decade or so, and you know they're
part of your family now, they absolutely are. And I
just love my dog Benji. He greets me at the
stairs when I come home every day when I come
home from a long trip. He's wagging his tail and
he's meeting me halfway down the stairs. And have like
unconditional love, you know, and he doesn't you know, And
they have that warm feeling when you come home to
see him there is it's just I don't know. It
touches my heart.
Speaker 1: How old is Benji?
Speaker 3: Was seven years old now he's a Springer Terrier. We
actually got him down the street right, One of the
neighbors dogs had a litter and we got him down
the street. This is way before I really understood rescue
and shelter and stuff. And he might be even a
little older in that, because I think we got him
about the time for Cody. But Benji's living his best life.
And then we have My wife wouldet really mad at
me if I didn't tell you this, But she bought
me a horse. Of course, along with the horse came
two rescue horses.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, how did that work out? Well?
Speaker 3: The rescue where we bought our horse, the horse she
bought for me for my birthday. They said, hey, you
have two more stalls in your barn. We don't want
you to have one horse and him be lonely.
Speaker 1: Let me have some pounds.
Speaker 3: So we have a Dancer and Buddy along with all these.
So we have three horses, we have some chickens. This
is all my wife. Now, this is totally her project,
because good for her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to say her name since you sayed
every pet's name, but your wife's name.
Speaker 3: My wife Paula. And it's really interesting because just really quick.
So Dancer and Buddy, where one of them was a
former thoroughbred racer. It's like thirty times. They were emaciated.
The jump that owned them got dementia and he thought
he had a caretaker, but he didn't. And so when
the children came over and saw this, they called the
rescue and the police, and so they those horses got rescued.
So my wife has nurtured these two. They're twenty some
years old. She has nurtured them. They're beautiful, they're living
their best life. And so a big shout out to
my wife, Paula. She's put in the work.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely well. Bless you all and everyone. Please check
out Cuddy dot com. They are making a difference for
animal shelters all over the globe. I always like the
shelter I donate when they say your donation will be tripled.
I do that a lot too to maximize the income
for the shelters. But thank you for all you do,
John Hussey. And I'll probably be cheering for a referee
at my next NFL game because it'll be number thirty
five and that'll be you.
Speaker 3: Thanks Arden, I look forward to seeing you on the
road somewhere.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's for sure. Hey, pet pals, that's it
for our our show today again, we want to give
a big thanks to our special guests, John Hussey Ofcuddley
dot com, a big thanks for all of you pet
pals for tuning in. We are the longest running pet
podcast on the planet. We've been on the air since
oh seven. Shout out to my producer, Mark Winter. He
is the surgeon of sound and he is the executive
producer of all the shows on Pet Life Radios network.
Check us out and also I'm boosting up my YouTube.
Come on, John Hussey, You've got to subscribe, just go
to ard and more. We have almost nine hundred videos
and all good stuff, nothing snarky. And my special passion
is pet First State of a master instructor, so please
please check out pet First State for you. I do
it with two shelter alums, Pet Safety Dog ConA, Pet
Safety Cat Casey. Everything is veterinary approved and we have fun.
So until next time, this is your flea Free host
Arden Moore delivering just two words to all you two
three and four lakers out there.
Speaker 3: Oh behave coast at coast that around the world.
Speaker 2: It's all behaved with art and more. Find out why
cats and dogs do the things they do and get
the latest buzz from Wagging Tongues and tails and rind
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All behave with America's pet entertainer Ardenmore every week on
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