- Boomer, where are you? Boy
- Boomer.
Sometimes the unthinkable happens,
but with the help of Love Lost
and its pet image recognition software,
you can upload your pet's photo to our national database.
It's open to all.
So whether you lose or find a pet,
love Lost can help reunite families. At Love Lost.
We believe pets belong at home with those who love them.
- Petco Love Lost. Hello, I'm Jane Goodall.
I've devoted most of my life to learning about
and protecting animals all over the world.
As a child, my dog Rusty was a wonderful companion.
He showed me that animals not only have personalities
but minds and feelings as well.
Shelter Me is a series that celebrates
that beautiful bond we have with our pets.
In this episode, we visit a shelter where young people read
to the animals to help them relax as they wait
to be adopted.
It's asleep. We follow a high school cross country team
as they take their local shelter dogs out for a run
- And they want to be outside.
And here at the school we've got a group
of kids that love running.
- And we feature an organization that train shelter dogs
to do lifesaving conservation work in Africa.
- I just think the dogs are so much faster
that we're being able to shut down poaching cells much
quicker than we were previously.
- Yeah, - Please enjoy these stories
and thank you for caring.
Shelter Me
Give me that one second chance I need.
Ohhh, Shelter Me.
And you will have all my love and loyalty.
- The Sacramento County Bradshaw Animal Shelter is an open
intake shelter, which means that we take any animal
that comes through our doors
and that means that we take in 15
to 17,000 animals per year.
The Sacramento County Bradshaw Animal Shelter has a lot
of partnerships in the community.
The stamp program, which is the Sacramento Teen
and Animal Membership Program is one of those.
It is a volunteer program that is made up
of 12 to 18 year olds.
- Amber, are you done? Go ahead and leave that out.
We're gonna need it. We started with seven kids four
and a half years ago and yesterday we brought in 71
new teenagers.
They participate in a variety of activities.
A lot of it is grunge work where they do dishes and laundry
and squeegeeing floors and restocking.
Is everybody ready? Okay.
But the program we're most proud
of I think is our pages for pups.
We today are going to spotlight our pages for pups
where we read to the dogs
and today we're gonna spotlight the
book Before you were mine.
It's a wonderful story.
It has a huge impact what you do when you read
to the animals, so you have magic in your voices.
And today you're gonna put that magic to work.
So we're going to have you come up, grab a book
and then we'll send you off in small groups.
I think children are looking for ways to become part
of the community to give back
and it gives them a chance to participate
and be part of a group that's become like a family.
- I decided to start volunteering at the animal shelter
'cause I really have a passion for working with animals.
Volunteering is like not only great
but volunteering with animals.
That's even better.
- One of our main goals is
to really educate these kids about the realities
of shelters, the good and the great
and the not so great sometimes even
because these kids are really gonna be the next generation
to change the world of shelters and how we see them.
- So find a kennel, a dog
that looks good, they all look good.
- Hello. The animals,
they have a lot of issues when they come into the shelter.
They're scared.
They're in a place where they've never been before.
They're not used to the surroundings.
And when we come in
and we read to them, they get used
to people being around them a lot more.
- Before you were mine, did you live in a warm house
with warm smells and a rug that was only yours?
- Did you have a boy who saved you the last bite
of his cookie and raced with you at the park?
- Was your boy proud when you learned to trick?
Did he talk about you at recess
or laugh when you licked his chin
- Before your mind was someone mean to you?
Were you kept on a chain with a dusty bowl
and lonely sounds all around?
- Did someone say bad dog even though it wasn't true?
That book was really sweet.
Like it really showcased what an animal goes through
before you adopt it.
Like all the different circumstances it can come through.
So like you can better understand your animal in a way it
can help people learn from it.
- Before you were mine, the shelter told us
that you had been running for a long time
eating whatever you could find, which wasn't much.
Alone and scared like a dog shouldn't be.
- Did you sleep in dark alleys? Did you dream of a boy?
- There you go. Yeah, good girl.
- It's okay.
Before you were mine, you were rescued.
They brought you to a place where lots of other dogs waited.
- They gave you a meal and a bath
and a bed of your own. But you weren't sure
- Before you were mine.
Did you live in a warm house?
When we started reading we only read to dogs,
but we kind of started to branch out after a little while
because there are lots of cats that are frightened
or scared when they first come here.
We read to the animals to help them feel more safe.
It's like magic. Dunno how to explain it otherwise.
- You huddled in the back of your cage, shivering
with your tail, tucked under. The tag on
your cage read "Stray".
- So maybe it doesn't matter what happened
before you were mine, because now you're home.
It's asleep.
It feels really good when a dog's sitting at the back
of its cage and it comes up and it wags its tail.
And just like having the dog go to sleep like
that when you're reading to it,
it just feels like really good.
- Before you were mine, someone must have let you go.
Did you sleep in dark alleys?
At first, my dog, he was pretty nervous,
but as I continued reading he would come to the front
of the cage or lay down on his bed
and by the end he was just totally tired and asleep.
- The dogs are very antsy and barky
and moving around at the beginning
and by the end some of 'em are so relaxed,
they're falling asleep. And some of the kids fall asleep too.
- She has definitely calmed down a lot.
There's animals that deserve something better
and they deserve a home.
But I want to be able to help as much as I can.
'cause they can't always just find a home right away.
- It's cool that we get to help them. They're amazing dogs.
They just need someone to warm up to and have a home.
- I feel like we read her a bedtime story.
She was, she was falling asleep
while we were reading it to her.
She seems very relaxed and calm. Especially in the shelters,
they have a lot of anxiety and they pace a lot,
but she's just really calm and laying there.
- Hi. Hi baby.
It calms me down a lot to come in and read to animals.
Like if I'm having a bad week, seeing them relax
and feel happy makes me happy.
- Hey guys, are you getting Lulu today?
- You bet!
_Awesome. Here you go.
- I see so many benefits from the program.
Dogs who were not as adoptable have become more adoptable.
And we see that by them being adopted.
Whereas they may have just languished in the back
of a kennel, they're now walking out the front
door with the new family.
- My gosh!
Shelter pets are really the best kind
of pets I would think.
All they really need is a second chance.
And when you give them love, they'll open right up to you
and they'll be just like any other animal
and they'll love you so much.
- She got you!
I love the STAMP program. I love the effects on the animals.
I love the effects on the kids
because they see that they're making a difference
and they become more empathetic.
They become kinder.
It impacts their lives and their feelings
and the way they approach the world.
Hi, aww...
And it's just wonderful to see
that blossoming.
- Come here baby.
Look. Look. Feels good to realize that she's now warmed up
and obviously happy.
Probably gonna go to a good home. She seems adoptable.
So maybe it doesn't matter what happened
before you were mine because now you're home.
- So maybe it doesn't matter what happened
before you were mine because now you're home.
- Good morning. My name is Stacy Silva
and I'm the community outreach coordinator
with Santa Barbara County Animal Services
here in Santa Maria.
I have the St. Joseph's cross country team coming in to run
with our dogs again.
They'll be here about 2:30. Oh, okay. Thank you.
Being a public access, open admissions shelter,
we don't have control over the flow of animals
that's gonna come in. And we take in stray animals.
We also get owner surrenders. Here in Santa Maria,
we take in about 3000 animals at this facility alone.
So there are times where our kennels are full
and our outreach opportunities are really what helps us
to save animals.
So this running partnership
that we've developed with the
St. Joseph's High School cross country team has helped our
ability to get these animals out.
It gives every dog an opportunity to be seen
for who they really are.
A dog that just wants to be loved.
- My name is Louis Escobar
and I'm the cross country coach here at
St. Joseph High School.
Cross country is
long distance running and racing
and yeah, we've got a very good group of kids here.
Back in August, Stacey sent me a text,
- Why don't you bring your kids to the shelter
and let's run with some of these dogs?
- And it sounded like a great idea to me.
Stacey has a group of dogs that are in kennels
and they want to be outside.
And here at the school we've got a group
of kids that love running.
On the way back to the shelter, I took out my phone
and I just took a 60 second video of the kids
running by. And that was it.
I put that video on our team Facebook page.
And by midday there was hundreds and hundreds of likes
and shares and comments.
The next morning there was thousands and thousands of shares
and comments and likes.
The day after that, hundreds of thousands,
eventually there was millions
and millions of views of this little video
and it's been shared worldwide,
- Not just worldwide, but right here in our own community.
Some of them didn't even realize that the shelter was here.
And now the kids are coming over about twice a month
and it's garnered amazing support.
Do you remember what her story was?
- Well, Princess came in, I believe it was a stray
and then we found that she had a family.
They didn't show up to get her.
And Princess is still here. She needs a good home.
- She's gonna go out with Jacob again today.
He's been coming and running
with her since we started in August. Oh, nice.
- Does anybody have any questions?
Jacob is a sophomore
and he's been on the cross country team for two seasons
and he's one of our top runners.
He's a good student too. And the first time that we went
to the shelter is, and he met Princess, they hit it off
and they've run together every
time that we've gone down there.
- Cool, thanks.
Our dogs are evaluated
and if I'm not comfortable with that animal,
I'm not gonna let it go out on a run.
It really was about making this a positive experience
for not only me and the kids, but also for the dogs.
So this is Sadie. She is about seven months old.
We think she's a German shepherd, husky cross,
and unfortunately she came to us
with a really rough start in life.
Somebody got her as a puppy
and they abused her pretty badly.
Our officers had to remove her from
that dangerous situation.
She had two broken front legs that required repair,
but she's healed up
and she's been released by the court system
to find a new home now
and having a variety of people treating her nicely is
gonna benefit her as well.
- Claire is also a a junior
and she's been on the cross country team for three seasons
and she's been a big advocate
for the shelter dog runs.
Every time we go
she's very excited. She's always got a big smile on her face
and she's ready to do it.
- We started running with the dogs in August the first time
and we've done it maybe four times since.
- Yeah, you're, you're really like personalizing the dogs,
like humanizing the dogs and making them more approachable.
- This is Balto. He's a 2-year-old malamute
and he is going on his very first run today.
He was found as a stray
and surprisingly enough, this gorgeous dog,
nobody came in to claim him.
- Sequoia is a great kid.
Even before we went down there the first time to run
with the dogs, she had been volunteering there
for a few months.
And so now that the shelter runs have been
so successful, she's really enjoyed it.
She's gone back. She's been inspired to volunteer even more
and importantly take some
of her teammates down there with her.
- My teammates love running with the dogs.
It's definitely a highlight.
Whenever we find out we're gonna go run with the dogs,
we're all so very happy.
So we're gonna run down to the dog shelter
and then we're gonna get the dogs out of their cages
and we're gonna run around with them for a bit
and get them to get all that playful energy out
that they kind of keep cooped up
when they're in their cages.
- So this is Fiona, she's been with us since April.
She came to us as a confiscate as well, a neighbor called
that she was left in a backyard when her owners were
evicted from their home.
And unfortunately despite attempts to contact them, they,
they never came and got her. Sad story for this poor girl.
But she has thrived here at the shelter
and she's been running with the kids since they
started in August.
So we know that she's excited to get out and go today.
All right guys, another exciting day.
Thank you for being here again. There are about 15 dogs
we have harnessed up and ready to go.
There are a handful of dogs that you guys have met before,
but we have a lot of new dogs running today.
Dogs that have never experienced this.
So don't forget to hold tight on the leash.
Make sure they're not running in front of you
so you don't get tripped up.
You guys have a big meet tomorrow, so we want everybody
to stay safe and thank you again for being here.
I really appreciate it.
Our dogs really appreciate it.
You guys are making a huge difference.
Baby, are you ready to see them? You ready to get out?
Come on!
All right, so this is Sadie.
She was really badly abused
and now she's gotten clearance to go
for her first run today.
Aw, she loves you. She's a sweet girl.
- This is Raider. He's really,
really strong and really, really fast.
We're gonna run about two miles today.
- She'll make it 'cause she's a really energetic dog.
She'll outlast me.
- You guys ready? Go for it! Nobody had to do this.
They wanted to do this. Hang on to that!
It's what we do and let's run with these animals
and do something nice.
- This is Princess.
I think this is my fourth time running with her.
A good home for her would definitely be
somebody who will actually take her out, run with her,
walk her play with her.
- It is a great experience for the dogs
and for the community.
These people are thanking the kids for being out here
and spending time with the dogs.
It makes me feel really good that we can do what we do,
plus we can contribute to the community.
It's so awesome, right? I mean it's just a small easy thing
for us to do and it goes such a long way.
So it's just a beautiful, kind,
small little gesture of goodness.
- He definitely tired me out. I couldn't keep up.
I know. We couldn't keep up. He was going so fast.
- This is Fiona. Oh, Fiona. Yeah.
It looks like she had a good time. She did. She was.
It seems like she's happy to be outta the shelter.
Definitely. Now she's just tired.
It'd be nice if we can find her a real home.
Definitely. The shelter's sort of a a hidden place
that people don't know about
and if running with these dogs it creates awareness.
Well, great. That's what it's intended to do.
- So Chance was out here with Paige, they were hanging out,
waiting to get started on the run
and family came in, got to interact with her outside
of the kennel, fell in love and Paige found a home.
- Sometimes they don't have the best personalities when
they're cooped up in a cage for months on end
and when we take 'em outside, it shows them in a new light.
- Today is the first day she's available for adoption.
Got to go out with these guys and look at the end results.
- Congratulations on adopting Paige. Thank you. Thank you
- for giving her a new home and such.
- Thank you. We're so excited. And isn't she beautiful?
I wanted a new doggie and we just fell in love with Paige.
It's a real blessing that the kids are doing this.
I just, I'm looking around at everybody
and seeing them just play with the dogs
and they're doing a great job.
They're great kids. I'm sure that
the community's gonna start coming around a little bit more
because of what the kids are doing.
It's okay to come to the shelter
and look for a new family member.
- So this is Princess, right? Yes. Yeah.
This is the same dog that you've run with
every time we've come
and this is our fourth time to do this.
Yeah, what a nice, nice gift.
- One, two, and three. Good boy.
You gonna find a home today?
So today is kind of the culmination of the hard work
that the cross country team has been doing.
You know, they practice every day regardless
of whether they're here with the shelter dogs or not,
and they have their Santa Barbara County championship meet
today. We're gonna go for a ride, Okay?
So they take their experience running
with the shelter dogs and they share it to help us
to get these dogs out of our shelter,
into our adoption partners and into loving homes.
- The shelter dog run is a very important component to
what we've done this season,
but that's not the only thing that we do.
We're a competitive high school cross country team.
So our focus is on fielding a competitive team.
And this is one of the last races of the season.
It's really pretty cool because it's all
of the schools in the county
and we only race like this once a
year at the county championship.
So all of the schools will be here.
I've noticed that when we go to meets
and we compete in other places that some
of the other students from other schools,
they recognize our team
as this community service project that we've been doing.
So that makes us feel good.
You know, hopefully it's gonna create some exposure
and some awareness about the county animal shelter.
And who knows, maybe we'll get some of these dogs adopted.
- This is one of the dogs that we ran with yesterday.
She's very sweet and kind
and she's very like a family dog.
Sounds very sweet. Look, she's happy Jake.
- So if you wanna take Rocco right there.
So we'll have volunteers handling our dogs.
We're gonna be right next to the finish line,
so when those kids come through, we're gonna be there.
- You have a canine cheering section over there, like
around mile one.
Yeah. So when you go by, you're gonna get some,
you get some energy from the shelter dogs.
We really have four teams in one, right?
There's junior varsity girls, junior varsity boys
and varsity girls and varsity boys.
So we aren't not in the same races, but we travel
and and prepare together.
She is gonna run by the shelter dogs right now.
Maybe that's gonna give her some inspiration. Woo!
Go Sequoia. Woo. She's doing fine.
- Obviously Sophie really loves your kids. Yeah.
So if you're interested in Sophie,
please come to our shelter in Santa Maria.
- Really opened up a whole new door for us, which is
what the intention that I know Louis
and I both had to begin
with was. Let's promote these shelter dogs.
Let's show people that hey, they're not broken or used
or you know, bad dogs.
That they're great dogs.
They just need an opportunity to get out there
and showcase what they have.
You can do the same thing too.
Just go around these boys right here.
- Come on, Brandon!
That's it. That's high school cross
country. It's happening.
- Animal shelters like ours are a reflection
of the community that we serve
and we have to embrace that community just as much
as they have to embrace us in order to be successful.
- Go, go, go. This is the start of the Varsity Girls race.
We've got a hundred yards from the finish line here
and you're gonna see something
special outta Claire right here.
Claire, come on. Come on Claire.
Right here. Close with these girls.
- Use your hands fast hands.
- But today we we're here to see my son run
and we happen to see that the animal shelter was here
and it was a bonus.
'cause now we want take her home with us.
- Good job, Kiki. Good job.
It's pretty cool the way that the kids have really embraced
this program and embraced the dogs.
I couldn't have asked for a better team
to pilot this program with.
- Ready.
- Set.
- Go.
- It was really cool when we came up the hill,
you guys were all lined up.
Yeah, I wasn't expecting it
and then I just saw a whole bunch of blue shirts and dogs
and you guys were all cheering for us.
You were a good cheerleader. You better get adopted.
Yeah, you can have a nice beautiful family.
- Buddy.
- Hi baby.
- Good race and good job. It was perfect.
You know, the sense of community is absolutely here.
The school has supported the shelter dog runs.
The kids want to do it.
It's just been an incredible community effort.
All of us working together.
All of us doing just a very small thing, but doing something
and doing it together and the response has been incredible.
Got a little wet out there.
Was anybody interested in adopting her
- Today?
- You know, she got a lot of interest, a lot of attention,
no applications, but
that doesn't mean it's not gonna happen for her.
- It is a perfect win-win situation for everybody involved.
It's benefited the shelter, it's benefited the animals
that have been adopted and that are continuing to be adopted
and it's benefited the students and the team.
Even though in high school Stacey wore purple,
I know that she was green inside.
Kinghts on three...
One, two, three. Knights!
- Finding shelter pets,
loving homes brings out the best in us.
Communities become stronger when they work together,
benefiting both humans and animals.
During my career, I've spent a lot
of time in Africa doing research
and helping conserve wildlife.
Protecting animals has become a never ending battle.
Today a crisis of poaching exists across the continent,
bringing deep concern about the very survival
of many species.
In particular, both elephant
and rhino populations face the possibility
of extinction in our lifetime.
Several years ago I became aware of Working Dogs
for Conservation, a group that trains American shelter dogs
for work in Africa.
These once homeless dogs are having an enormous impact in
the fight against poaching.
They're bringing a message of hope
to a story I'd like to share with you
- In Africa as a whole,
elephant poaching is on the upward trend,
same as rhino poaching.
But I think what we're finding now in certain areas
where rhinos have almost been wiped out completely,
the new target is now elephants.
We've been facing the greatest poaching crisis for decades.
You know, it's in a way fighting a war driven
by the insatiable ivory demand from from the Far East.
- 30 years ago, Luangwa Valley had the largest surveyed
population of elephants on the continent.
And that has now literally the word decimated, describes it.
It's gone from over a hundred thousand to about 10,000
- Because of greediness, they're busy wiping out
these animals quickly.
- Time's running out. One's elephants are gone. That's it.
- When I come across a dead elephant,
I feel like I'm losing part of me.
- I don't wanna be a person on whose watch
rhinos and elephants fall off the planet. I'll fight
tooth and nail to make that not happen.
- Africa and wildlife is under the greatest
strain it's ever been under.
I'm Megan Parker
and I'm the director of research
for working Dogs for conservation.
To save wildlife, we start by saving a dog.
We take dogs from shelters who have been discarded
or forgotten and we give them a job where they get
to solve some of the world's most difficult
conservation problems.
- My name is Pete Coppolillo.
I'm the executive director for Working Dogs
for Conservation. World Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana.
Shouldn't everyone have their world
headquarters in Bozeman, Montana?
The work started here. The organization was founded
by four women who were all biologists
and who all recognized the difficulties of working
with wildlife and also recognized the potential that
because dogs are a really efficient, really valuable way
to find out information about wildlife and to protect them.
- This is Pepin. He is nine years old.
He's been working since he was about a year
and a half on various projects with us from
ecological monitoring of bear.
He's gone to Myanmar
to work on wild elephant population monitoring.
Africa several times for cheetah, wild dog, lion, as well
as snare detection in Zambia.
Well, he's one of our good ones.
- What we do for a living is different than most anything
anybody has ever heard of.
There's not many jobs where you're sort
of combining two focuses
and you are working with detection dogs, training them,
and deploying with them to find scent of endangered species.
- Come on, Ruth.
Since we began, we've trained 22, 23 dogs.
That's not including the dogs we currently have in training
You ready to go to work?
We were one of the first in the US
to apply using dogs for a lot
of different species targets.
Not only just live animal detection as well
as things like ivory, things that you kind
of wouldn't think dogs might be able to do
- For some of the work we do in Africa,
there's nothing better than a dog
to search a building or a vehicle.
Do it quickly and get contraband. Hey, hold up, come on.
We've got Vicka who is a Shepherd Lab cross.
She comes from a shelter in Elco, Nevada.
- And she was a stray.
So no information about her.
We think she's maybe 18 months old
and right now she's in training for the Zambian project.
If she succeeds through the rest of her training,
like we expect she will,
she'll be searching vehicles for ivory and also firearms.
- When we get a dog from a shelter,
we're actually testing it.
Does this dog really want this job? Is it excited about it?
Does it want to be this kind of detection dog?
- This is confiscated ivory.
We use a, a diversity of samples so
that the dogs can learn to generalize.
So who knows, this could have been a forest elephant,
could have been an Asian elephant.
- I'm training interior searches right now, so I am going
to use their piece of ivory.
This is another bracelet from East African elephants.
In this particular vehicle, there's Marmite nesting in here.
There's fox through here. There's old petrol and oil smells.
They learn to ignore everything except
what their target scent is.
This is a perfect place to train for the anti-poaching
and wildlife trafficking
because it has every variety of vehicles.
So we give them the skills here to search so
that wherever they go they know how to look
and problem solve.
Sit girl.
Oh, I know. Vicka was just a found-by-the-road dog.
She was one of the like millions of dogs
that somebody just picked up.
She didn't have a collar on. No ID.
Somebody dropped her at the shelter
and she's exactly what we all look for in a detection dog,
which is high drive, high speed.
She's got tons of energy. From the very beginning,
she just showed every talent
for becoming a great detection dog.
Yeah, show me. Show.
- Good girl. Nice. Good girl. Woo hoo. Nice.
In addition to the anti-poaching
and anti-trafficking law enforcement work in Africa,
we also do ecological monitoring, scientific work to
to track often threatened and endangered populations.
We were involved in grizzly bear and
and wolf project in the Centennial Mountains.
We stop invasive species like plants that'll take over.
Plants for which there are no natural enemies in an area all
the way up to Emerald Ash Bore, you know, which is a beetle
that affects trees all across North America.
And the endangered Kit Fox in the San Joaquin
Valley in California.
- The Kit Fox project is basically to monitor the effects
of the building
of a solar farm on Kit Fox populations.
- He's asking the question whether dogs could actually find
animal droppings to get DNA hormones and diet information.
- I have some Kit Fox samples
that we collected while we were in the field last time.
The dog's gonna find this tiny,
tiny target within this huge landscape
and that never ceases to amaze me.
- In Working Dogs,
we're all scientists
and we're all interested in exactly
how this amazing thing works on the front of a dog's head,
which is their nose.
They've got millions more receptors than humans
and they can smell in parts per trillion as opposed
to humans who smell in parts per hundreds
or thousands.
Sit! Ready? Let's find it.
There's nothing that humans can make
that matches a dog's ability
to either detect from a distance
or discriminate so they can discriminate between black bears
and grizzly droppings.
How do they do that? We're asking
dogs all sorts of questions.
Can you smell disease in the droppings of an animal?
Can you find fish underwater? Can you find a metal snare?
So I feel like we are just at the very brink of learning
what dogs can do and how we can work together.
- Yes, good girl! Woohoo!
Right now we're in the fifth year of Kit Fox scat surveys
and after this year we'll have an additional five
to seven more years of surveys.
- Seamus, let's find it.
These dogs love their toy
and we train them to associate the scent
of the target we would like to find with that toy.
And that toy is the paycheck.
So for them, every time they're finding a target object,
it's almost like winning the lottery
because they know
that their most favorite toy in the world is
going to appear.
Show me. Yes, it's right there.
- Good boy. Nice. Good job, Seamus.
I think shelters are a great resource for us.
Instead of just some crazy dog that nobody wants,
they're the right kind of crazy for us.
- Yeah. What a good boy. Seamus was in a
shelter because the family
that had him couldn't handle his high
energy and, and his drive.
This dog most likely would've been euthanized.
He found us and we found him
and we're able to communicate, giving him a purpose,
a job that he loves.
You can see the difference in him.
So content, so happy, it just fills your heart.
- The early days of conservation detection work were
ecological monitoring.
We found animals where they lived,
how many of them there were.
And then we started thinking about the threats to wildlife
and, and, and really working on alleviating those threats.
And that has led us into the,
the anti-poaching work in Africa.
- Show me! - You know, as far as the dogs are concerned,
it's all the same game.
You know, find the target and, and get to play with the toy.
- We need more dogs for the programs in Africa.
So we're, we're looking at shelters everywhere.
We're asking our colleagues
and our our friends to go look in shelters
and find dogs that might work.
- I'm running the Rescues2theRescue program,
which is a platform that we've created
with the International Fund for Animal Welfare to help bring
organizations like ours seeking rescue dogs together
with shelters and rescue groups
and having a place that they can say, Hey,
I think I have a dog, and here's its video.
And then hopefully be able to find more shelter
and rescue dogs a working position.
- People love to hear that the dogs come from shelters
because everybody loves to know
that there's a hopeful outcome, not only
to just find a nice home to be in and a and and
and a fulfilling life,
but to really have a great impact
to save the world. It's a great story.
- Good girl. Rebecca. That's pretty, I get the best part
of all of this work because I'll start training a dog
and we train for about eight weeks, then I get
to be there when that light bulb goes off
and they go, oh, I get what you're asking me to do.
I get that you're asking me to find ivory.
Show me! Yeah! Good girl!
Good girl. Atta girl.
So Vicka came out of a shelter
and in four months she will have been trained.
Then we'll take her to Africa
and start handing her over to her permanent handlers.
And so for me it's just watching these dogs
develop and learn
and start loving this job, which is really exciting.
Zambia is right in the heart of East Africa
and southern Africa and we work in the Luangwa Valley,
which is in the middle of Zambia.
It's low-lying and it produces a lot of wildlife
and it produces a lot of poaching.
So we're right in the heart of an area
that needs more protection.
- Go - Getting a dog ready for Africa.
It's a ton of logistics.
Flying with them to Africa, getting all the permits,
it's all new, it's all interesting.
It's exhausting, but you know, none
of the dogs have had a problem.
They just take it in stride
because they just feel like, well I know,
you know, I know what I'm doing.
- When we put dogs out, we, it's a very intensive process.
You know, it's, it's a dog is not a piece of equipment.
A dog is not a technology. A dog's an individual.
Sit! Good.
Vicka has two handlers, a primary
and then a backup handler.
Namabanda is her, her primary handler
and they have a very sweet, extraordinary relationship.
- Put hose on the body, so flesh cools down quickly.
Fine Vicka
- The dogs that we take to Africa will be
there for their whole life.
- So this is 38.1.
- They will live. They've got an amazing
life with these handlers.
At the point when they choose to retire,
these dogs are young.
They'll have the option of either retiring
with their handler if their handler can provide a home
and if not, we'll bring them home here.
- Oh dear!
Yes!
- And then we'll visit the dogs
and the handlers four times a year to keep their training
and to monitor how the dog's doing.
We would like to keep providing information, good training,
good materials
and techniques so that everyone can
work at the highest level.
- The rhino crisis is very real in Africa.
It's a flat out war to save
and keep rhinos alive in, in national parks
and on private ground.
- In 1998,
Zambia declared black rhinos nationally extinct, which is
even to me today is it's hard to fathom.
- Bravely, North Luangwa National Park took on the job
of reintroducing rhino and protecting a small herd.
Once rhinos traveled all across Zambia lived everywhere in
Zambia and now there's nothing except this one
small population left
- They also work very closely
with the government investigations and intelligence units.
So dogs are really sort of part of a,
of a much bigger picture of anti-poaching efforts.
- What we're doing is we're trying to help them.
We're giving them more tools.
Usually rhinos are killed very strategically.
They can take a rhino down, either with a dart
or shoot it, cut its face off, pack up the rhino horn
and be out of there within three minutes.
And even though they have listening devices in the park
and can get helicopters there
to track poachers, they're not getting enough.
- There she is now. Yes, good girl.
That Vicka! She found a, a rhino horn which was hidden.
She did a very good job.
- Vicka, for example, was the fourth dog in into,
into Zambia that that we, we placed there
and there are five on the ground now
and we're hoping to double that program this year so
that both poachers
and smugglers can't really stay ahead of law enforcement.
- Sarah is a little yellow lab cross.
She wouldn't have made it out of a shelter
because she just doesn't have what it takes
to be anybody's pet.
Didn't have any obedience or any respect for a handler.
And over time she's become this incredibly respectful
working dog with a ton of drive
and she just wants to go all the time.
- Zambia sits in the heart of Central Africa is bordered
by nine countries.
So it's definitely a conduit
for illegally trafficked wildlife products.
Having the dogs here is absolutely part
of not just a Zambian and links in the trade,
but also regionally and globally.
- So these are the same nasty folks who are smuggling drugs,
smuggling guns and ammunition and even human trafficking.
- This the number of people who would love
to own ivory.
We actually don't have enough elephants in the world
to be able to supply that demand.
- There's an enormous middle class in China
that's very eager to demonstrate their wealth.
And one of the ways that many people do that is, is
by buying ivory.
- Right now in Asia ivory is more valuable than
platinum and gold.
- A rhino horn could be worth 150, $200,000.
- But we're also worried about the littler animals
that people aren't as aware of.
Like Pangolins, they're a little scaled animal
that are the most heavily traded
mammal in the world right now.
And a lot of them are coming out of Zambia.
- Stop!
Let's go!
- That's what's happening in Africa
where someone can make a hundred
dollars killing an elephant.
It's a lot of money for some African family.
They're selling it to someone who's then selling it
for a thousand dollars
and they're selling it to someone who's selling it
for even more in Asia or the US or Europe.
And as things get rarer, they will become even more valuable
and the market value will drive even more
slaughter of these animals.
Check!
Come on Vicka, check! Check Vicka.
So he tells me to say, there must be something in this sack.
Show me. I do that. Show me. Show me.
- Show.
Yes! Good girl. Nice.
Yes, good girl.
- When they recover ivory, you know, it's double-sided.
It's a bit sad because we know
yet another elephant has been poached,
but it's still a good result.
But we'd prefer to get the guns and everything else
before they actually go out in the field
and are used to, to kill more animals.
- And the first way to do that is
to stop illegal weapons from going into national parks
or protected areas or places
where there are, there are wildlife.
And so all of these dogs, in addition
to being trained on ivory and rhino horn,
they'll also be trained on on guns and ammunition.
- In most places in Africa,
people are really afraid of dogs.
And so having, seeing an officer
or a scout with a dog is a deterrence value in its own.
You know, these dogs have a lot of power just by being there
and by being deployed
- In Africa it's very hard to get guns
and so one poacher might use own a gun,
but he'll rent it out to maybe as many
as 10 other poachers to use.
So seizing just one gun puts a number
of poachers out of business
- And that's where the dogs are becoming very effective.
It's also where things like conservation education
and the community awareness pro projects that we're doing is
to try and engender a sense of ownership
and responsibility for the park
and for the ecosystem so that when those strangers come in,
there's an understanding
that those people are threatening not just Zambia's national
heritage, but also their own local economy.
Come on, check.
- Oh yes!
- I just think the dogs are so much quicker,
they're so much faster.
We're being able to shut down poaching cells much quicker
than we were previously.
- My hope is that we are approaching a, a tipping point
where no one would consider poaching
or trying to help someone traffic ivory.
And for dogs to be able
to help protect those places in perpetuity
and help local people really derive the,
the benefits from that. It's really important.
- Good girl. Now she's getting a treat,
getting a treat for their good behavior.
- And the mere fact that a bunch
of shelter dogs have been taken in, trained
and shipped over to Zambia in Africa
and are being used to protect rhino populations
and elephant populations.
It's a touching story even for, for us
who are involved in the work on a daily basis.
- As the world changes and we go from 7 billion people
to 8 billion people, there are vanishing resources
and the ones we have, we really have to take care of.
So we have wildlife and we leave a legacy for our children
and grandchildren and everything else
that lives on the planet.
- The thing about conservation is you have
to keep winning over and over and over again.
It does feel like a big heavy lift, particularly, you know,
to go find new dogs and start all over again.
But every time we've done it, it you, you, you get closer
and closer to knowing the outcome
and seeing the potential in those raw unbounded energy
bouncing in the, in the kennel.
Good. Oh, good girl, you're so nice.
- I don't think I could have imagined
how many different applications we were gonna be using dogs
for and watching the dogs come from the shelter
and just blossom.
They can't wait to get to work.
Every aspect of it is fulfilling for them.
Oh, what fine dog.
- We are out there saving wildlife,
but it all starts with us saving dogs.
There's no way you could have asked us then
what we'd be working on today.
And so it only sets the stage for what we're going
to be working on 16 or 20 years from now.
It's so exciting
because it's, it's just going to unfold with, with
what we need to understand and,
and what are the next conservation challenges that need
to be addressed and dogs will be right there with us.
- My God! Show me.
Find it. It feels like such a privilege
to just be on the journey with these dogs.
Good to do the best conservation work in the world.
- You're a masterpiece. You're unique.
You are. You're the only one like you.
you are the only one for me.
And there's a million different things
that you might not be.
You are unique.
You are a masterpiece.
You are unique.
- Petco Love Lost.
A National Lost and Found pet database can help
using image recognition technology
so every pet can be back where they belong.
Oh my baby!
Home with the families that love them.
Petco love Lost.