Soul Touched by Dogs

Welcome to the Soul Touched by Dogs
Podcast, the show for dog lovers who

see dogs not as toys or tools, but
wise souls worth our respect and care.

I'm an Herrmann, and I'm your host.

I talk to poor some humans, people who
do great work for dogs and their people.

So come and join us for
today's conversation.

Anke: Hello and welcome, Kathy.

I'm super excited to have

Kathy: you here today.

I'm delighted to be here Anke.

Anke: Well, before we talk about our
favorite topic, let's just give people

a bird's eye view where you're based.

What's the day job?

What's your normal business?

And, um, let's take it

Kathy: from there.

Sure.

So I live in New York.

I live about an hour
outside of New York City.

My office was in New York City for
many years and I actually lived

in New York City with five dogs.

So yes, you can have dogs in the city.

They work well.

Um, and my normal day job is actually,
I have a couple of businesses,

but my main business is succession
planning for family owned businesses.

So I help families that own a business
decide whether they're going to keep

the business, sell the business,
transfer to the next generation.

And it's a unique combination of.

Personal planning.

What kind of lifestyle
are you going to live?

How are you going to sell the business?

Who are you going to sell it to?

Is the business ready for sale?

And then the estate planning around it.

So every day is different.

I'm helping people, which is
part of my passion for life.

And I take very complex
financial, um, concepts and

explain them in plain English.

So that's majority of my day.

Well,

Anke: that's like it.

That's that's topic for another podcast.

I might want to have you back to
another one, but today we talk about,

you know, souls touched by dogs.

So how, when was your
soul first touched by

Kathy: dogs?

Oh my god, I'm gonna start to cry.

I was a dog in another life for sure.

I mean, I'm the oldest of nine children,
and I grew up in Brooklyn, New York,

and my mother stayed home obviously
and my father worked on Wall Street.

And they didn't have dogs.

My mom's one of 11 and my father
was almost an only child and

he knew nothing about dogs and
I cried and cried and cried.

They got me a cat when I was
10 and the cat got run over

by a car on the way to school.

I was in hysterics.

My father had to walk me to school.

So then when I was I was actually,
that year, I was in fifth grade.

I did the grocery shopping for
the whole family, and I came

home from the grocery store.

My father was home early, and
he said, go in the bathroom.

And my father was very strict, so I was
really afraid that I did something wrong.

And I opened the door, and
there's this little teeny puppy.

And he didn't know anybody.

He bought it at a pet shop
and it was a toy fox terrier.

And I then saved my babysitting.

I'm a dreamer.

I'm a visionary.

So I decided I was going to breed dogs.

This goes back, you know, 40 years ago.

So I had no clue, um,
about what we know now.

And, um, I was paid a quarter
an hour to babysit and I saved

65 and bought a second dog.

And, uh...

So I had Punch and Judy, and so I
had those dogs all the way through

college, and then I bought my first
Golden Retriever when I was, um,

just out of college and living
in Boulder, Colorado, and I used

a roller blade to work with her.

So she would go with me to work, I would
tie her up outside the restaurant, I

went to school in the morning with her,
so she went to University of Colorado

with me, and then she would tie up.

So it's been from there.

So my passion for the last 20
years has been helping rescues

market their dogs because they're
not very good at marketing.

Everybody works a part time job, right?

These are full time, part
time rescue volunteer.

And people don't realize that
we do this all volunteer.

And so a lot of things
fall through the cracks.

And then the other thing I do is a
doctor's come to me and say, Oh, I've

been trying to get a dog for two years.

I emailed 40 applications and
no one's gotten back to me.

And the reason is that the rescues
do not operate like businesses.

And I'm a business person first,
so I always look at things

from a strategic point of view.

And if you and I were in business
together, and we had one of something,

but we had a hundred people who
wanted it, as business owners,

we'd find a way to get 99 more.

And what happens with rescue, when
they have a high value target, like

a little foo foo dog, or a doodle, or
golden, they get a hundred applications.

They have no email marketing system.

How easy would it be to say, Hi Anke,
thanks so much for applying for FooFoo.

We'll be back in 48 hours.

And then 48 hours, one
button or the other.

I mean, that's what you do, right?

And boom, we'll be, you know,
FooFoo has an adopter waiting, but

we're happy to get you another dog.

They don't do it.

They discard.

The, uh, applicants and
people get so frustrated.

So, so this year I actually
took the plunge accidentally.

So this is what I've done for years
is I, I know where the rescue owners.

So I cut the red tape and
I know what dogs they have.

So I know who has hounds, who has
shepherds, who has little dogs.

And then people come to
me, I interview them.

So I get a sense of what they are and
then I connect them with the rescue.

So this way the rescue gets to the top
of the pile and they get their dog.

So that's what I've been doing for years.

And so what happened is last
December a friend of mine came to

me as a breeder and I'm not one of
these rescues that's anti breeding.

Breeding is necessary to keep the
bloodline pure and also to keep, you

know, there's a lot of backyard breeders
and puppy mills that take the breed down

and then they get cancer, disease, etc.

So the breeders, good breeders,
are necessary to help improve

the genetics of the dog.

So this particular Golden Retriever
breeder is a friend of mine.

We went to high school together
and his dogs lived till 16.

A Golden Retriever, that's incredible.

So he had a dog he sold to a woman.

She died.

He went back to get the dog and found out
it had been severely abused by her son.

The dog had PTSD.

And he was drop dead gorgeous.

Four years old, you couldn't
touch him, you couldn't brush

him, you couldn't bathe him.

And he had been trying for
ten months to find a home.

So he asked me to help.

So I posted it on Queen of Facebook.

I have 5, 000 friends.

I know how to use Facebook.

So I made a post.

It went viral.

We had 1, 800 shares.

I had 100 people that wanted that dog.

So I interviewed a bunch of them,
I gave Bob several recommendations,

and I had an Excel spreadsheet of 30
people that wanted golden retrievers.

And I went in search of
goldens, and I couldn't get

any goldens on the East Coast.

I live in New York, so none in
Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania,

unless you want to take them
from the Amish, which then you're

supporting the puppy mill industry.

And so then I went to rescues, and
I said, if I give you the adopter,

and I find the dog, can you just...

Do your stuff.

And that was impossible.

So through a commodity deal I'm doing,
a physical commodity deal, I had a guy

in Fort Worth, Texas, who introduced
me to a guy he was at church with, and

Brad was rescuing one golden at a time.

So he connected us, and he has
room for one dog to foster.

So we didn't set out to start a rescue.

We set out to find homes, find
goldens for the homes I had.

And Anke, one thing led to another
because, oh, now we need a foster.

Oh, now we need veterinarians.

Oh, now we need transport.

Oh, now we need clinics.

And so, believe it or not, this
thing just exploded and we started

officially February of 2023.

And by May, we had done 32 dogs, so up
year to date through September, we're

up to 58 dogs, most of them golden
retrievers, but we also have done

hounds and great pyrenees and labs.

That's

Anke: incredible.

I never, you know, you always
think about this whole situation

as if like from the point of view
that there's more dogs than homes.

Like that's like here when I
remember a neighbor of mine, she

had, well, it was an accident.

So her dog ended up with a whole bunch of
puppies and they was like, Oh my God, how

are we going to find seven good homes now?

Well, she didn't, she ended up like,
she found one good home, one puppy

had a home that wasn't that good,
where we didn't actually end up even

knowing where, who they gave the dog
to, and so the other four she just kept

because she couldn't find a good home.

So to have it like, oh, actually, yes,
there are so many people who want the

dogs, but just kind of, but I think that
whole idea that people who rescue dogs

are just doing it on the side, like you
see that here as well, you know, there's

a lot of like, You know, usually kind of
young women who kind of just try and do

their best, but really don't have any idea
of how to do this in an effective way.

I think there's so much, yeah,
that, that, that there's such a hole

in there, that there's such a gap
in the market to, to really help.

Yeah,

Kathy: that's incredible.

Yeah, so the stats are absolutely amazing.

Two dogs unneutered can produce
350, 000 dogs in five years.

Two cats, five million,
two cats, five million.

So spay and neuter is critical.

The problem is we don't have spay and
neuter enforcement and even if there

are mandatory like Dallas actually has,
Dallas, Texas has mandatory neuter spay,

but they have no capability of enforcing.

Yeah.

And I'll give you a couple more
stats that are really scary.

Houston has 1.

4 million dogs living on the streets.

That's ridiculous.

Dallas has 28, 000.

San Antonio has something similar.

San Antonio kills 60
to 100 dogs every week.

Uh, I don't know how many Fort
Worth does, but there were so

many dogs in there the other day.

So, you know, people unfortunately, you
know, all of us in rescue, you know,

we have the commercial, the cartoons
that joke and say, I've decided I

no longer can handle my children.

I wasn't really thinking
when I first had them.

But this is what we get.

It's like, Oh, I got a baby and I
can't take care of the dog anymore.

Oh, I got another puppy.

I mean, I saw a senior dog two weeks ago.

He's 16 years old and they got a puppy and
the puppy was bothering the 16 year old.

So he wasn't happy.

And what did they do?

They turned him to a kill shelter.

Oh,

Anke: that's ridiculous.

I just don't even know how somebody
can even, you know, look in the mirror

in the morning, you know, without

Kathy: getting sick.

It's unconscionable.

I mean, Texas is like a third world
country, uh, in terms of dogs.

They really treat them, um, as
furniture in many, not all Texans.

I mean, I am so blessed to have, we
have 20 foster families in, in Dallas,

and I have a few around the state.

But we primarily, it's easier, so I am
a machine, so I'm very organized, and so

we now have the clinics, the fosters will
take the dogs to the clinics, get the

vaccination, we have an inexpensive vet,
I make appointments a month in advance,

so I have, as soon as I get a dog, boom,
they go in, uh, we have transports that

leave every other week, so we take them
to the east coast, the adopters meet

them, if they're golden retrievers, we
adopt them remotely, because the goldens

have such predictable personalities.

And while we want to save all dogs,
it's really a matter of adoptability.

If I can't adopt the dog, my partner
in Texas has two dogs as a foster

for another local organization.

He's had those dogs for over a year.

Not one application.

Not one.

A whole year.

And because they're hound shepherd mixes,
and there's a gazillion of them, right?

And on the East Coast,
everybody has families.

I live in la la land, you
know, so it's four acre zoning.

It's beautiful, it's green, but everybody
wants, you know, a lab, a golden,

a foo foo dog, you know, doodles.

We have a million doodles, you know, and
doodles aren't purebred dogs, by the way.

They're mutts.

They're a hybrid of mutts.

Hey,

so my passion is really getting people
educated and making alternatives.

So I'm working very hard in
these commodity deals because

they're sizable if they close.

And then I plan to fund mobile spay neuter
clinics and make them 100 percent free.

And so if I can do that, we'll make
a change because if we don't, I mean,

we just took an owner surrender this
week, a golden retriever, gorgeous.

He's one year old.

He's not neutered.

And then she has a Boston Terrier who was
fighting with him and he's not neutered.

So you have two unneutered males.

Right, and she has a little female.

I didn't ask about the female
because I was more concerned

about whether the dog is friendly.

We also went out there.

It's actually five and a half
hours west of Dallas, out in

Lubbock, which is west Texas.

You get into oil country out there, and we
were taking three dogs from another woman.

Um, my fosters were so wonderful.

The husband and wife went out there.

We found out the dogs were feral.

They're all golden retrievers,
like it's an oxymoron.

These dogs are just so level,
they haven't been touched at all.

Do you think the owner could have told me?

That's what it is.

Yeah.

So now it's very complicated,
but my, my network is incredible.

I'm so blessed.

I really believe that the universe
provides and, you know, I just pray

my, my life away, you know, that
things just fall into place and.

We have generous supporters,
people, somebody this morning just

donated to our vet, so I know that
my neuters tomorrow are paid for.

So, we've been funding this ourselves.

It takes a while for your 501c3
in the United States to come.

Um, there's 90 million
dogs in the United States.

44 percent of the households
in the United States have dogs.

There's 97 million cats.

And yeah, so you know, we live in a
society where it's bifurcated, right?

You have the rich and the poor,
and I think that's globally we're

starting to see that, right?

And so what happens is the upper end
takes care of their foo foo, their

little dog, with lots of, you know,
the pet business is incredible.

Dog food is 28 billion, growing at
25 percent, and over the counter

nutraceuticals for pets is 15
billion, growing at about 15 percent.

So the people that the empty nesters.

are, you know, downsizing their dogs.

Half the dogs in the United
States are now under 25 pounds.

And so they're feeding their
food, so all the trends.

So it, you know, it locks in with
business in a lot of ways, but my

passion is to make a difference.

If we can educate people and give them
tools to be able to neuter spay for

free, because if you don't have money
to put food on the table, you're not

spending a hundred dollars on the dog.

You just don't have it.

Anke: That's so true.

Yeah, I love that.

So, I mean, I'm just like, yeah,
the statistics are mind boggling.

You know, I thought, I thought
Spain was bad, but I think

this sounds, this sounds...

Horrible.

It's just, there's so much work to do.

So I'm so grateful that, that you are
on that mission, and I think there

seems to be more and more people
who actually, you know, well in, in,

in the, in the process of, of what
I'm doing with these interviews.

It's heartwarming to see how many people,
there's so many people doing great work.

for dogs and and their people and
that's like really heartwarming it

feels like this hope for humanity
so you know it's really beautiful.

So where can people go people go and
connect with you find out more about

you maybe support where should we

Kathy: send them?

So uh since we're not incorporating
yet our website's not quite done

it'll be done shortly but the the
rescue is called the golden project.

Saving those with hearts of gold.

We started with Golden's.

We will not be Golden Retriever specific.

We want to save other dogs.

It's just a matter of whether we have
homes and the ability to place them.

So we have a Facebook page.

So you can easily find the
Golden Project on Facebook.

And then Kathy Boyle, B O Y L E.

Chapin Hill is my company name.

C H A P I N H I L L.

We're on Insta at Chapin underscore Hill.

I'm on Twitter.

Um, on LinkedIn, so you
can find me pretty easily.

I do a fair amount of TV and radio, so
it's very easy to Google me and find me.

And then I'm happy to connect.

You know, we really are
offering a personal service.

I match up the dogs by personality,
after interviewing the families.

And so I'm happy to help
anybody get any dog.

You know, obviously...

From Texas to New York and Connecticut,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey is easier

for me than, you know, finding a dog
for someone in Minnesota, but I'm

happy to help and I have a very large
rescue circle, so I can refer people.

Somebody asked me for a dog
recently, he's in Tennessee, so I

wanted to drop him off on the way.

And I said, well, I have a Tennessee
rescue, why don't you talk to her?

So I'm a connector and I use those
skills to help animals as well.

Anke: I love that.

And I'll put, obviously, I'll put
all the links in the show notes,

so to make it really easy to,
for people to connect with you.

Thank you so much.

And thanks for all the work you do.

Thanks for taking the time to come here.

And, uh, I really hope
to have you on again

Kathy: in the future.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Anke.

Thank you for what you're doing.

We appreciate getting the
message out to people, you know,

that dogs have hearts of gold.

Thanks so much for listening.

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And if you know a pawsome human
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I'd love an introduction.

Email me at Anke.

That's A N k E at Soul
touched by dogs.com.