Speaker 1: This is pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: Welcome to this week's episode of Loving Animals with Robin Gancer.
Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode
on our Pet Life Radio. We are here today and
every day to celebrate our love for animals, and today's
guest is a gentleman who loves animals so much that
he's devoted his life and his career to building a
better world for our furry friends. Stay tuned and thanks
for tuning in to this week's episode of Loving Animals.
We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Loving Animals with your host, Robin Ganzard.
Please join me in welcoming Rich Anderson, the executive director
and CEO of Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League. Rich, Welcome
to our show.
Speaker 5: Thanks so much, Robin, I really appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 2: Well, we're thrilled to have you on. Rich. You've had
an amazing career twenty five years in the nonprofit sector,
really helping to build a better world with the American
Red Cross. I know you've worked with the Humane Society
of Broward County, ASPCA, north Shore Animal League, World Society
for the Protection of Animals. I mean, the list is stunning,
and I know back in twenty eleven. Peggy Adams Animal
Rescue League was so lucky and fortunate to get you,
as the executive director. Tell us a little bit about
your background, and then I want to know when did
you first know you were going to devote your life
to animals?
Speaker 5: Sure, and you're too kind, but yeah, so I've been
in the nonprofit sector for almost thirty years, ever since
I got out of college, went to work at the
Red Cross, and it was just ended up being my passion.
It's not what I intended to be doing after college,
but I just fell in love with nonprofit work and
I'm just fortunate to be where I am today at
Peggy Adams. You know, my first introduction to animal welfare
was at the Humane Society of Broward County at Fort Lauderdale,
and ever since I've been working with animal welfare organizations
around the country.
Speaker 2: As you mentioned, that's wonderful, I mean, such an incredible
work that I have to go back to your early years,
rich What was your first animal that was in your life,
because I know there had to be a very special
first pet that helped.
Speaker 5: You there were sure, yeah, I mean we had a number,
you know, our first pet was well, the cat Jenny
beautiful black cat. Yeah, she says, she was our first
family companion animal. We we way back, so that got
things started. We had hamsters, I've had dogs. I had
a great dog named Hammy growing up. It was probably
in my youth of the animal that I that I
grew most closely to. I really loved that dog and
it was just a great member of our family.
Speaker 2: Rich, I have to ask you, where did you grow up?
Did you grow up in Florida?
Speaker 5: No? No, I grew up in Rhode Island, So, like
maybe many many of us here in Florida, had dreams
of warmer climate and gradually made my way down to Florida.
After about ten years in Washington, d C. Finally made
my way down to Florida with my family.
Speaker 2: That's wonderful. I tell you, it's cold today in Washington,
so it's really nice to be in sunny Florida today,
that's for sure. So I think you made the best choice.
Speaker 5: I love Washington.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it too. I love it too. Rich.
Peggy Adams is an amazing organization here in Palm Beach County.
Can you tell our listeners a little bit about what
you do at Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League and who
was Peggy Adams?
Speaker 5: So the Animal Rescue League now called Peggy Adams Animal
Rescue League started in nineteen twenty four. A group of
women in Palm Beach felt like they needed to do
something to address an issue that plagued a lot of
Florida back in the day of people coming down during
the winter months and then heading north and sadly heading
back north without their animals and leaving their animals behind.
So again, back in nineteen twenty four, these women in
Palm Beach wanted to do something to solve that problem.
They started as a shelter, incorporated the Animal Rescue League
in nineteen twenty five. We are the longest continuously operating
animal welfare organization here in Palm Beach County. And Peggy
Adams A good question, where's the name come from? We
hear that a lot. We get to ask that question
quite a bit. So Peggy Adams was a woman who
lived in Palm Beach, an animal lover animal advocate, passed
away suddenly unexpectedly. Her husband, knowing how much she cared
for and how compassionate she was, and with how dedicated
she was personally to animal Welfare approached the Animal Rescue
League and asked, if he made a significant contribution towards
the organization's endowment, if they would consider naming the organization
after his wife, And so that is when it became
Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League about forty years ago.
Speaker 2: Wow, what a great story and a great tribute to
a woman. I love that it was her husband that
came to the organization to honor her in that very
special way. That's fantastic. Well, I think it's amazing what
you do. Every year. The Rescue League provides services to
over forty five thousand cats, dogs, puppies and kittens each year,
which that's amazing. What problems, what issues are you siving
with overpopulation and with animal welfare in pump Beach County
right now.
Speaker 5: So, like most communities, we have an area where there
still is a challenge of there being too many animals
and the bottom line is too many animals resulting in
too many animals ending up at the government run shelter
here in Palm Beach County where there is a lack
of resources, lack of space to care for all these animals.
And so Peggy Adam's on the Rescue League. Our focus
is to prevent animals from ending up at the county
shelter period and making sure that we are working towards
saving the life of every single adoptable animal here in
Palm Beach County. Peggy Adams has has benefits lives since
nineteen twenty four of more than one million animals in
its history. But I think what's been happening over the
last five six years here in Palm Beach County has
really made a mark here in the community and is
really I think showing other parts of Florida, in other
parts of the country, what can be done if the
local nonprofit animal welfare community joins together with the government
run operations to solve the problem of pedo population in
our community.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful and part of this effort is really reflected
in Countdown to Zero, which is for listeners, an amazing
community collaboration to the commission of endian euthanasia of adoptable
animals in Palm Beach County by twenty twenty four, which
can you share with us? How Countdown to Zero came about?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's you know, Palmage County was, in many ways
your typical community. The nonprofit animal welfare community and the
government run agency had not worked closely together pretty much
at any time over the decades, and so we made
a point to reach out to the county and just
give you a little bit background. The county shelter is
the only shelter that is an open admission shelter, meaning
their doors are always open, and the animal that walks
in that door they take in regardless of its condition.
So they receive a lot of broken animals, animals that
unfortunately are close to death. But all all of our
other animal welfare organizations of Pombage County, you know, when
we are full, we're full, and we can't take any
other animals in. So we approach the county in twenty thirteen,
maybe closer to the end of twenty twelve, and said,
you know, we really want to work together and what
we you know, what we call getting off the hamster wheel,
you know, and just doing the same thing over and
over and over again. Let's see if we can work
together to solve this problem of too many animals being
euthanized every year here in Palm Beach County and the county. Thankfully,
it tends to be a relatively progressive community. The county
government tends to be a relatively progressive government. We have
a very progressive leader at Palm Beache County Animal Care
and Control, which is the government run shelter, and she,
Diane Salva, saw the value in a partnership between the
county and peg gy Amzama Rescue League. And so it
took about eighteen months for us to work with the
county to come up with Countdown to Zero. And so,
like you said, Countdown of Zero is this initiative that
was officially launched in twenty fourteen. February twenty fourteenth, that
were coming up on the fourth anniversary of the official
launch of Countdown to Zero with the goal of saving
the life of very animal in Pombach County by the
year twenty twenty four That was a huge step to
get the county, any local government to commit to a
goal that bold when thousands of animals were dying unnecessarily
in twenty thirteen. That was a huge step for Pombach
County and a step that very few communities anywhere in
the country has been able to take.
Speaker 2: It's amazing, rich what is the what's the secret sauce?
It makes home Beach County and the community partners here
be so visionary because you know, I don't see this
being replicated in too many communities around our country, and
that's an objective.
Speaker 5: One of our objectives is to obviously succeed in our
effort here in Palmas County, but also to educate other
communities in Florida and beyond to think about adopting some
of the practices that we've adopted. Let me give you
a little bit of a sense of to how bad
the situation was. Just just a few years ago, before
we initiated the countdown to Zero initiative, there were a
total of nearly eight thousand, actually more than eight thousand
cats and dogs that were euthanized at the county run
shelter back in twenty thirteen. Fast forward to today, four
years later, we are getting very very close closer and
closer to me that goal of saving every adoptable life
here in Palm Beach County. The euthanasia at the county
shelter has dropped nearly seventy percent in those four short years.
The real number for people to look at is what
does that mean in real lives saved? And from twenty
thirteen to twenty seventeen. That equated to five thousand, five
hundred fewer animals in a one year period of being euthanized.
So five thousand, five hundred fewer animals lost their lives
in twenty seventeen compared to just four years ago.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable. What a victory.
Speaker 5: We're getting there. We're getting there. We still got a
ways to go, but we think we're going to reach
that goal of saving every adoptable animal by the year
twenty twenty four, well in advance of twenty twenty four.
And you asked the question as to you know, what
does it take to do this? And it takes willing partners,
is what I would say. At the bottom line, It
requires collaboration and a willingness to collaborate. You know, when
we reached out to the county tell them that, you know,
we sincerely wanted to work together, I think it was received,
and I had been told it was received with a
great deal of skepticism. You know, decade after decade after
decade of the county and the nonprofit community, there was
no collaboration, and so there was a significant degree of
skepticism on the part of the County, and there was
some skepticism on the part of some people here at
Peggy Adams as to whether or not this was going
to be worthwhile, whether this was going to work or not. So,
you know, it was almost one of those times where
all the stars aligned. I had a board of directors
that supported this approach to the county. I had a
counterpart at the County Shelter, Diane Solve, the director there,
wanted to see real change and knew that if we
kept doing what we've been doing every year, year after
year after year, thousands of animals would keep losing their
lives year after year after year. And then it was
the county government, you know, that was that was huge
that the county had faith in the director of the
County Shelter in Diane, and respected her enough to take
a leap of faith in setting this pretty bold goal
for a community that was euthanizing more than eight thousand
animals each and every year. So, you know, some members
of the Goat County government embraced this initiative because they
are animal lovers. And then there were other members of
the County Commission that, as much as they appreciated the
life saving goal, What really got their attention, I think
was when we laid out to them the waste of
taxpayer dollars to take it an animal and simply euthanize it.
We pointed out to the county government that they were
spending four hundred dollars for every animal that was being
utianized at the county shelter. We're talking millions of dollars
being wasted. And when local governments are struggling each and
every day to allocate tax resources for very important programs,
you know, I think it was really easy for us
to say, Hey, you know, I heard you yesterday trying
to find thirty thousand dollars for a program that you're
passionate about. Well, if we can do what we're proposing
and prevent the euthanasia of the animals at the county shelter,
you are going to be saving millions of dollars every
year that can benefit the community and can be spent
much more wisely. Obviously, that was a really important case
to be made for some members of the county government.
Speaker 2: That was a brilliant case to make. I just did
your fifty five hundred animals that you've saved in one year.
Times four hundred. That's over two point two million dollars.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when you do the math, it's staggering. So you know,
this is not just a question of life and death
for a dog or a cat, and this is a
question that every member of our community who pays taxes
should be concerned about. And so I think that really
made a difference in getting the county to embrace the
countdown to zero effort.
Speaker 2: It's just fantastic. Rich What an incredible model you're building
that I hope will be replicated around the country to
really number one, first of for most save animal lives
and really make a difference in the way people think
about what it is to be humane in communities. We
see such division nowadays, so it's nice to see something
that everyone can agree about. And I think this is
one of those programs, one of those efforts.
Speaker 5: Congratulations, thank you, you know, and I think it's you know,
and it required a lot of people obviously not just
need to be involved in this, but it really has
set a tone in our community of collaboration and that
we're not you know, whether it's Peggy Adams in the
county or it's Peggy Adams and other nonprofit rescues in
the community, of which there are you know, several dozen
other rescues in Pombe's County. You know, we try to
impress upon everybody that this issue of petib population and
this issue of animals dying unnecessarily in our community was
not a problem. It was not strictly the county shelters problem.
This was a community problem that required a community collaborative effort,
and it required all of us nonprofits to see that
and to embrace the idea that this is all of
our problem and we're only going to solve this if
we are working together. And I think that's you know,
I think it has unified, for the most part, a
lot of rescue groups here in Palm Beach County to
to help meet that goal.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful. It's wonderful. Well rich when you think about,
you know, this incredible countdown to zero and all the
work you've done in Palm Beach County. One thing that
I really want to compliment you on, in addition to
that incredible model that you're building here, is what you've
done recently with kittens. I picked up the newspaper the
other day and I saw a kit yoga and I
just had to smile. What a brilliant idea to really
promote ad option of kittens. We're not quite in kitten season,
but I know there's always a cat problem. So can
you talk to us a little bit about how you've
been so creative around cats?
Speaker 5: Well, you know it was you know, it's a case
every day is a case of needing to get creative
when it comes to cats, in particular in South Florida
in particular. You know, the cat problem, cat over population
challenge here in Pomish County is by far the biggest
challenge we have in Pomish County and in South Florida
in general, and so we're always trying to find ways
to adopt out as many cats as we can. So
just to give you an idea, and so why it's
so so important to get creative during the peak of
kitten season typically around June. So we're we're getting close.
It's starting to see a lot of kittens being born
in our community, so we're gearing up for that. But
at the peak of kitten season, we will have over
one thousand cats and kittens in our hair here alone
at Peggy AM's and I'm rescue league.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a lot of catchow.
Speaker 5: A lot and it requires a lot of staff, a
lot of volunteers, it requires an ever increasing foster volunteer
foster program. We launched a kit nursery two years ago
to save the life save the lives of those indy
bitty neonate newborn kittens that have been separated from their
mothers and can't survive without twenty four seven care. And
so we've launched that two years ago and last year
that provided support to nearly six hundred newborn kittens that
were born on the streets here in Pombach County. So,
getting back to your your original question about kitt and yoga,
I'll say that we have incredible support in the community.
We can't do what we do without the generous support
of individuals and businesses and foundations here in Pombach County.
So this is an example of the community allowing us
to do something very creative. City Place, which is a
big retail shopping center in West Palm Beach. We approached
them to see if we could utilize one of their
empty storefronts and we were incredibly grateful when they said yes,
we'd love the idea of you having a what we
call a pop up shop. So in December we opened up.
We opened up what we call a pop up shop
in City Place from downtown West Palm Beach where we
could feature animals available for adoption, cats and dogs, sell
some items, sell all sorts of animal supplies and products.
It's been a huge success, and our staff came up
with this great idea. We had so much space in
this shop that we said, hey, what about doing kitten yoga.
We had a relationship with a yoga instructor and she
jumped on board immediately with the idea, and so on
most saturdays at the pop up shop in City Place
in West Palm Beach, we will have of kitten yoga.
As many as twenty people pre register and they do
yoga with kittens, and these kittens are roaming around the
yoga floor and the people who the people, I mean,
I was blown away by the response the people doing
the yoga, and there these are people who are experienced
practitioners of yoga, and I've just been surprised, pleasantly surprised
that they walk out of these kitten yoga sessions just
beaming and saying how it was the best experience of
their lives, and so people just absolutely eat it up,
and you know, and it promotes the adoption of these cats,
and you know, so we adopt out on average three
or four kittens every weekend that we that were in
that store.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Rich Well, I read about in the paper
and I just smiled. I just thought it was brilliant,
absolutely brilliant, and the photo of the kittens was terrific.
Speaker 5: When you're here, we'll have to sign you up for
a yoga class.
Speaker 2: I think so, I think so. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: Oh, rich Well, rich I have to tell you this
has been just an incredible conversation, as it always is
with you. I want to again offer our congratulations to
you and your incredible successes here in Palm Beach County
as the CEO of Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League. It's
incredible how many lives you're saving every year, how many
incredible lives of humans you're touching by introducing them to
their new best friends. So thank you for all you
do for animal welfare.
Speaker 5: Well, I want to thank you, Robin. You know, Peggy Adams,
we are very grateful for our partnership with American Uniane
the work you do is so important and you know,
saving lives around the country, and you know we're honored
to be a partner with American Unione.
Speaker 2: Thank you, The honor is ours, my friend. Well again
you listeners, you've been tuning in this week to Loving
Animals with Rich Anderson, the executive director and CEO of
Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League. An incredible conversation with one
of the most amazing animal welfare leaders our country, and
countdown to Zero is an incredible again, community collaboration really
designed to end euthanasia of adoptable animals in Palm Beach County.
I hope your community will reach out to Rich and
try to replicate this incredible model so that around our
great country we can save more animal lives. Again, Rich,
thanks so much, and listeners, thank you for tuning in
to this week's episode of Loving Animals. Next week we'll
have another incredible conversation with another animal welfare leader. I
hope you will join me next week and remember this
week and every week, we're Loving Animals. Take care.
Speaker 6: Let's talk that every week on demand only on Petlifradio
dot Com.