Dogs Have Angels Too: Exploring Resilience and Redemption with Sarah Cavallaro

Julie Marty-Pearson 0:00

Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the story of my pet podcast. I am so excited to bring to you a brand new guest to the podcast. Welcome Sarah, to the story of my pet.

Sarah Cavallaro 0:12

Oh, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I'm so excited to talk to you.

Julie Marty-Pearson 0:19

Have you always been an animal lover? Did you grow up with pets or is that something that's changed through your life?

Sarah Cavallaro 0:25

That's a really interesting question because I feel like sometimes I have PTSD background. What I did not grow up with pets and because my father, who is a World War II person and raised four kids. 'cause our mother passed away when I was very young. He worked and he didn't want pets in the house. There were four of us and I had brought a cat home that I found abandoned, a little kitten, and I brought the little kitten home and I put the kitten in my room and he took that kitten out. He put it in a shopping center, near the, where somebody would find that kitten. He just, he put it where many people would go in and out of the entrance of the shopping center. I felt like I loved the little kitten. I wanted to raise the kitten. It was abandoned, it was alone, it was crying, and I didn't get a chance to raise the little kitten. That was taken from me and I couldn't have a pet as a little kid. But when I went to college, they were this in Ohio, and it was in the seventies. It was in southern Ohio and I believe it was in, we were traveling to, it was in at Antioch, but it was Antioch, yellow Springs, Ohio. So Dayton is a city near there. They had a a shelter, but they were euthanizing animals at the time. And I went into one of these shelters and I saw a little puppy. I rescued and I took her, I adopted her, but you weren't allowed animals in the dorm. But I took this little puppy and I put this puppy in my dorm for two years. And of course that was not a, no longer a puppy. Nobody said a word. I walked the dog. Nobody said anything. Okay. I graduate, I moved to New York City with this little dog, which she was tiny, but she was, full grown.

Julie Marty-Pearson 2:25

Not unnoticeable. No,

Sarah Cavallaro 2:28

not unnoticeable. And obviously, I had her as long as I had her until she passed away in New York. But and I named her Athena, which was one of the main character, one of the main character dogs in my book. And she looked like a little fawn. She was so beautiful and sensitive. Oh. And she had severe I think bladder problems and she always peed everywhere. And she never stopped peeing everywhere in my apartment. And I really, I didn't care. Actually when

Julie Marty-Pearson 3:01

we had that bond, I will admit, I yelled at my cat a little while ago. I heard him, I could hear the throwing up happening, and I go, and he's on the bed, and I'm like, you couldn't have got down on the floor.

Sarah Cavallaro 3:12

As long as the dog, Athena would pee in them. I think she had a severe problem. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, because I had, she would try to make it, but she never made it out, in time. But just like

Julie Marty-Pearson 3:23

people, yeah, we all have our things, right? We all have our, it's our pets. So we'll do whatever we can for them.

Sarah Cavallaro 3:30

Yeah. So that was my, some of my experiences, I have so many, but that was, these were the impetus for this book. Athena was my story because in the book I have a couple that fights over a little dog named Athena and the boyfriend makes the girlfriend, put the dog up for adoption. And that's Ms. Pink adopts the dog and she won't give back Cindy the dog until she absolutely knows that Cindy's willing to take care of her. Cindy ends up breaking up with her boyfriend, so it's about a couple, a young couple, and the guy doesn't understand that the dog has peepee problems. He thinks she, it's 'cause Cindy didn't train the dog. Maybe Cindy didn't train the dog perfectly. Maybe she could have done a little bit better, but you don't just surrender. A dog, yep. I don't, but so some people, so that's, it's also about what, when do you surrender a dog? And I, so all, but I built this into the fiction structure and the character structure of the, of the narrative. And so that was one of the right. One of the re structures, one of the narrative,

Julie Marty-Pearson 4:38

yeah. So many of the authors I've had on here, whether they're writing a children's book or yours, which is more of a adult fiction novel, they will say it's not fully based on them, but they have some of characteristics and they're talking about people and humans, right? Yeah. Our experiences, our pets influence the stories we wanna tell, like we do here on the podcast, but like you as an author does. W At what point did you start writing books? Was that all a part of your career or is this something you came to later? Had you always been in your head creating characters around your dogs and your experience and the people you were with?

Sarah Cavallaro 5:16

Okay, so I always wrote, but I didn't. I wrote not, I wrote short stories. I wrote poetry. I had a lot of poetry published, short stories published. I like to see an image in, I live in images, okay. But my career was that I was I founded and was an executive producer and for a TV commercial production company in New York and LA called Emerald Films. And we did for about 25 years high-end Fortune 500 award-winning TV commercial. So my background is that right? My background is production, it's running a business, it's building director's careers. I didn't go back to my writing. Then I started to write and I wrote three novels and I wrote them because they were healing the first novel. Okay, let me talk about Docs of Angels too. I started to write that because I was going through a lot of changes and I was sitting in Central Park with people that I was meeting people, and one woman I met, I based Ms. Pink on. But I think Ms. Pink is a culmination of many women who are going through a lot of financial crisis and also their husbands kind of desert them and they lose their job and they're not as independent, and they go through these incredibly difficult times. And what do you do when you have that? You've gotta find some purpose in your life. And one. Way to find purposes to help animals and also people in need. So I built this character because I needed to go through, I was going through this process, maybe it wasn't like literally, but I was going through a spiritual, process and I was growing. Transformation. Yeah, transformation. Exactly. And I was going through changes and some things had hit my life that were very unexpected. And I was wondering, what was the point in all this business stuff when I needed to get deeper into myself? Yes, you have to earn a living. We all do. And that's important and thank God for that, but, yeah. Thank God really 'cause it, without it, it's very difficult without money in this life, but,

Julie Marty-Pearson 7:25

One thing I have learned from this podcast is storytelling is healing. No matter what you do, whether you podcast your story or write your story or blog it or whatever. Storytelling allows us to work through things, heal from things, reflect on things, but also connect with other people that have something they've gone through or are going through. And we mentioned this before we hit record. In the world right now, a lot of people are going through a lot of what the characters in this book went through at a different time. Losing jobs, financial uncertainty, losing retirement, all these things. I have conversations with my mom all the time. She's stressed out about what's happening to her retirement, which she. Lives on what's happening to her. Social security, oh yeah. Everyone is dealing with something. And also outside of even the outside world, we're all grieving something. We've all lost someone, a pet, a job, a marriage, a house. We're all dealing with stuff, and I have found that storytelling can be so healing because we feel like we can release it. But we are also maybe helping someone else that needed to hear our story. Do you have that experience as a writer?

Sarah Cavallaro 8:39

The storytelling is the most important part period, and it's the part that I learn and I share. I can learn through storytelling. Sometimes I can't learn through reading like a document that is, without that fantasy or without that imagination. I love storytelling. I love to write stories. So part of what I wrote also, I wanted to keep a comedic or a very kind of interesting, more hopeful approach. It wa my book is not. Depressing. It may, maybe, no, it's not those things. I'll say

Julie Marty-Pearson 9:14

that I said it's very descriptive. Like I can imagine everything that's happening, but also there is some, there's like negative things happening, but you don't feel negative. Reading, like you, you still feel there's a sense of hope and all of this is gonna lead somewhere else for her. Even if at the moment you're reading, she's maybe not really in a great place and she's in bed and eating ice cream or whatever. We all do.

Sarah Cavallaro 9:42

Yeah.

Julie Marty-Pearson 9:42

Thank God forbid, and Jerry's is all I can say, this is not a sponsored episode, but it's getting me through life right now.

Sarah Cavallaro 9:50

Exactly. Exactly, and it's about, I also hope

Julie Marty-Pearson 9:55

it's important for women because sometimes we go through transformations. We don't realize how much we're changing in ways and hearing another woman's perspective or experience can make us feel less alone, less afraid, less something's wrong with me. Why is this happening? I have so many. Friends who've gone through divorces, and feel like something's wrong with them because of it. So it was healing for you, but did you have a focus on possibly helping others if they were reading this story? Did you think about that at all?

Sarah Cavallaro 10:27

The whole, totally. It was a channeling. I really, that's, if I help myself, I can help others. It's almost like I have to understand it first in order to communicate it, and then. You can connect 'cause it's authentic. I connect to what's authentic. If you're gonna tell me something and you haven't gone through it we can talk about it when we've, when we're both going through it. So that's, for me, very important to share that.

Julie Marty-Pearson 10:57

That is so true. I've learned that myself just in business over the last five years. We wanna be authentic in podcasting. There's no cookie cutter. Like I tell women all the time, don't be like them, be you. This is about you and your story and your voice, and your experience, right? People can tell when someone on social media, on a podcast, in a book are not authentic and they're pretending to be someone, and that is that authentic. They connects us in stories. We can tell when people are being very open and vulnerable and raw and we can tell when it's like they think they're portraying what they should be. And that's what I really love about your book is you really see the rawness of characters going through hard things and but still like experiencing the world around them. It's how we all have to keep going, but yeah, the authenticity and storytelling is so important.

Sarah Cavallaro 11:49

Yeah, totally.

Julie Marty-Pearson 11:50

So when you wrote Dogs Have Angels too, did you always know you would publish it? Was that your intention as you were writing it, or is that something that kind of evolved as you completed the story?

Sarah Cavallaro 12:05

I start, I started with a play. I wrote it with, and I had it workshopped in New York at the writer's director's lab at the actor studio. And Lee Grant was the director at the time, the actress Lee Grant, so I wrote it. It was a relationship play over the dog, Athena, and he wanted that dog out of the house and she wanted the dog in the house. They, he forces her to abandon the dog. So I wrote that play. It was A one act play. We workshoped it and it was very powerful for me. And the actors went absolutely crazy for it. And I said to myself, I'm gonna develop this more. I'm gonna develop. Who she is, where this dog goes develop other characters and all of a sudden, and I'm talking to, then Ms. Pink evolves and the Ponzi people were losing their money. Yes. And through Ponzi schemes and this woman, Ms. Pink, who I a modeling after the archetype of people who lose. Money they trust other, they trust institutions, so she loses everything. She has her breakdown. And so then I start to write about her and I write a scene about her and I workshop it, and I write a monologue that's almost like 20 pages on how she sees her life. I actually have one page of the monologue. At the beginning when she's talking about, she used to fly first class and she used to have sunglasses, and meanwhile she's literally losing her teeth. Her hair, her hair is not dyed. And it's very hard to find a job when you're in your sixties and you don't have the money to fix your teeth. And you, and especially in New York City it's. Yep. Very difficult. And she had pride. She wouldn't tell anybody. She wouldn't access any of her friends because you, I don't know how many friends you have at that point when you're going through, anyway.

Julie Marty-Pearson 14:12

And our jobs, our careers, our, whatever it is a, it's a big part of who we are, who we, identify ourselves as. And when we lose part of that, for some reason, I've lost jobs. I've, I, I've been laid off. I was fired once. My husband has been laid off probably too many times to count. He's a carpenter, a cabinet maker. It goes up and down and it's just you go through this thing of questioning, was I not doing what? Am I not good enough? Do I, can I not do what they wanted? Or it wasn't enough? Like we're killing ourselves at these jobs. You know what? She

Sarah Cavallaro 14:48

let go because there was the stop, it was a, and there was a recession. And so they tightened the belt and she was a top executive and who gets hit was, in the marketing department. They're not gonna keep everybody. And she got hit. And that was, and

Julie Marty-Pearson 15:04

I love how you detailed the conversation between her and her boss when she was the boss was letting her go, but then. Told her, oh no, I'm staying. Yeah. And it was like, but you've never sold anything. Ever. I'm the best. And they're like, yeah, I'm going use everything you've done and get somebody cheaper to come in here and do it. The, there, there's, that's like a dagger where you were like, I've worked my entire life for you. And now you're like, oh, you're replaceable. We can find somebody cheaper.

Sarah Cavallaro 15:34

Yeah. That happens all the time. So what do you do at that point? So this is her choices were, what happens is slowly she was affected economically. She lost her savings to a Ponzi thing. So it's a slow move down. And then what, so she's there then, and with the dogs? Yeah. And what happens with the dogs? The dogs need me. And I need the dogs and I can do something, I can make an effect. I can change people's a dog's life. Whereas, yeah,

Julie Marty-Pearson 16:06

it's that sense of I can help someone, even if it's not me, I can help these dogs and I can help people understand how important they are and how they should take care of them. It's exactly that search for meaning and feeling like you're contributing to something.

Sarah Cavallaro 16:20

That's exactly correct. And so that's what. That's the soul of her character is. And you look at her life and you say now I know why she really was successful in marketing because she was such a brilliant, she could market anybody. She would market these homeless dogs. She had them doing tricks for people to try to get adopted. I put a little bit, I went way over the top with her. I loved that because she would have, she trained them to be entertaining. Why do you

Julie Marty-Pearson 16:49

it's so funny because as I was reading it, I was thinking about myself and how after COVID I was what do I wanna do with the rest of my life? My old career was literally killing me. I was diagnosed with kidney disease. Yeah. My hair was falling out. All the things and it was till COVID and I had to stop and really think I know my body's saying I can't do that anymore, but what do I do instead? And when I first started podcasting, I couldn't get it off the ground 'cause I just wasn't really sure. And then I said, forget it. I'll just do it for fun and talk about pets. And now. Here I am. It was something that I'm passionate about, I love talking about, and it was my, step into a brand new world I knew nothing about. But the pet part was easy, right? I've always loved pets, I love advocating, I love helping, but it was. Learning a new way to do that. And so I feel like that's how the character was. She knew how to market, she could market anything, but she would've never thought herself sitting in her nice comfy chair in her big office that I'm gonna go volunteer at a shelter and help homeless dogs get homes. It's that huge transformation.

Sarah Cavallaro 17:56

But sometimes I, I believe that's what. Happens in our life. It's all this, what makes us grow sometimes is not to be comfortable because and look how she grew the character. She grew into the number one, like a number one talent agent for all the abandoned dogs. She, she raised money to make a new shelter. She she helped other women who were really on the verge of God knows what very tough situations and, in the end she wins. She wins.

Julie Marty-Pearson 18:28

But it is true. I think, and I can't speak to this. I'm not a human mom. I never had kids. So much of who we are as women often is tied up into our roles as a wife, as a mom, as a sister, as a daughter, as a teacher, as a mentor, as a friend, right? And for a lot of us who have careers, and it's a big part of who we are, when we lose that for one reason or another, it can be devastating. It is devastating. And so you really touched two different aspects of that through your story and. A lot of it made me think yeah, so many people have done this, but so many are going through it right now. And I love the scene where she's in the park where she had been many times before, observing all the people and the animals, and there's the lady with the dog that as she's walking out the cameras and the reporters are all hounding her. And then. She scolds the reporters. You don't talk to a woman that way. And it turns out she was the wife of one of the Ponzi people who had also, she had lost her retirement, but she was still defending that woman don't treat her like that. Yeah. I loved that seam. There's so many layers there.

Sarah Cavallaro 19:38

Yeah. Yeah, it was beautiful. And touching

Julie Marty-Pearson 19:41

on that other woman was going through something too, right? She had lost something. She was losing

Sarah Cavallaro 19:45

all of her. They the fed, the federal government. Took away all of her money, all of her. And it was based on a Ruth Madoff. They thought she looked like Ruth Madoff 'cause she had blonde hair and she was tiny, but she wasn't Ruth Madoff. But it was during that time and there were, so I, but was interesting is she had lived a high life and now she lost everything and she had to take the last vestiges of her. Material wealth. And of course we know what she did. She became, she made the diamond necklaces collar so she could put them on the dock. And Ms. Pink said, I'll help you, but you have to gimme all your money to make a shelter.

Julie Marty-Pearson 20:28

Yeah. And it's so funny, sometimes we end up connecting or working with, or collaborating with people we would've never otherwise if it hadn't been for whatever that. Connection is, or, just like me in this podcast, there's a lot of people I've met that I would've never met if I hadn't started it. And people all over the world, I've talked to people in Australia and New Zealand and Greece and Ireland, all these places that I never expected even when I started, but. That's also the power of storytelling and the power of someone hearing something they relate to, and they're like, oh, I wanna share my story too, right? Someone reading your book may say, wow, I could do this too. I would love to write a book like this. So I just love those touch points when I get to talk to authors and podcasters that, it's helped us some way, but it also has connected us with new people that we were meant to meet.

Sarah Cavallaro 21:22

Yeah, totally.

Julie Marty-Pearson 21:23

So what is your hope for your book, for this story for your characters, for the way that you're able to show the importance of pets and how to help them and save them and help them find homes? What are you wanting to do with this story moving forward?

Sarah Cavallaro 21:43

I would love, my ultimate goal would be to make, to have this made into a scripted television series and use it as a platform for dog adoption. And awareness. And that's what I really would love to do and make it absolutely fantastic. Like a, a beautiful, a very kind of comedic drama. Oh yeah. I could see it. And then train animals, and get them adopted and use it the way it should be used. Yeah.

Julie Marty-Pearson 22:20

Some of the best programs I've learned about through my podcast are the ones where there's need, but the dogs can be used. Like I I've talked about programs where some of the prisons near where I live, they actually have inmate programs. They become certified dog trainers and they pull dogs from the kill shelters and they get to live in there with them. And then the dogs go off and find great homes 'cause they're fully trained. And then the prisoners would. When they're, when they leave, their time is served. They actually have a job, they have a certification and a job they can go get. So I could totally see a TV show created out of your stories, but then the animals used in them could be saved from the shelters or, there's so many layers that could be used to help animals, but also the education is so important. How has that been in your writing in terms of realizing. You could help people understand areas of why you should adopt, why you should, do things when it comes to your pet.

Sarah Cavallaro 23:20

Yeah. Like the puppy farm, re in the book there's a whole story about n not having puppy farms, and. With, and also using dogs for medical research, which they can do. Yes. So I, they still do, I have that in my book. So these are things that people have to be educated about and they don't know, actually, people don't really know. Yeah.

Julie Marty-Pearson 23:46

I speaking to the animals used in TE testing and people really have no idea how much animals are still used. Yeah. One of the amazing organizations that I follow is Beagle Freedom Project. Exactly. And that's their whole focus is getting not just beagles, but animals out of testing facilities. Beagles are a lot of them because the type of demeanor they have. Yeah, they're easy to experiment on, as sad as that sounds. They actually just rescued a year or so ago and created this whole farm in Oklahoma for all the beagles, but also it was a company that was going outta business. The guy was retiring and they convinced him to not only sell his land and property. But to keep all the animals so they could save them. And so they have cats, they have dogs, they're creating places for them, but they're also working on getting them homes. And I think through watching that story. I knew there was animal testing still, but I didn't realize how much, that's why I brought it up in the book, how many souls

Sarah Cavallaro 24:54

Yeah.

Julie Marty-Pearson 24:55

Are impacted by it and it's, it breaks my heart to really think about and sometimes I think we ignore it 'cause we just can't. Fair to learn about it, but through a story like yours, someone can experience it and maybe realize, oh, this is still happening. There's still animals we need to help.

Sarah Cavallaro 25:13

Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm talking about. So you know, all these episodes, God willing, each

Julie Marty-Pearson 25:18

could

Sarah Cavallaro 25:18

have a different. Focus. Exactly. And but it, and they're scripted and they could be very entertaining and they could be very empowering and transformative. It's how it's written, right? You know who the actors are and who's directing it and who's producing it, and you know what network wants to do it and right. Yeah, I love

Julie Marty-Pearson 25:41

that idea. Yeah. I'm a visual person, so when I read, I always visualize in my head, like seeing her in the park or seeing it in when she's in her chair and realizing it's the last time I'll ever sit in this fabulous white leather chair. You could see that in a show like I, yeah, I thought of Sex in the City a lot because it's New York, but it could be a variety of things and. I think the truth of it is, the reason we all enjoy books, watching tv, documentaries, movies, is because we're learning and we're growing, but we're connecting. We're finding, we're seeing pieces of ourself in it. And, but we're also learning and having experiences of people in places we've never been and may never go. And so I could. It, the storytelling aspect when it comes to animals is really powerful because I think we can really help people experience things they don't know anything about. I didn't know I thought I knew a lot about animal rescue and welfare when I started this podcast. I realized I, I only knew about 10 or 20% of the reality of what is happening in our country as well as where I live locally. Wow. And when I say the podcast is for educating, I'm talking about myself too. I'm not sitting here saying I know everything. 'cause I don't. I learn from every guest that I meet. And so I also know, because you worked in media, getting a TV show isn't as easy as saying I wanted to turn

Sarah Cavallaro 27:04

it into a TV show. It's IPOs. It's very difficult. It's a challenge, but it's a challenge that's worth going for.

Julie Marty-Pearson 27:14

Especially when you find the right partners, right? Yes. And you find the right people. They get it right.

Sarah Cavallaro 27:18

Writers, the right producers, the right network. That's the actors. It's I re I'm looking forward to it and I believe it's actually gonna happen. I don't know when, I don't know with who, but. Are my, you never

Julie Marty-Pearson 27:32

know. I have learned, never say never, because you never know where you're gonna end up, especially when you are leaning into your passion, into your creativity. There's gonna, there's different ways to put your story out there for people to get connected to it and learn from it. So I agree it will happen. You. Dogs have angels too, will be a TV show at some point. Thank

Sarah Cavallaro 27:57

you. Thank you. I appreciate

Julie Marty-Pearson 28:00

that. I definitely wanna talk about, because all of this ultimately is you wanna help animals, you wanna help dogs, you wanna help shelters, rescues, those types of things. And so I wanna mention a couple rescues that you mentioned to me. Let's see. The first one was, there's one in Carson City, Nevada. That. Feeds pet, homeless, pets,

Sarah Cavallaro 28:22

Amazing organization. So this organization, because Ms. Pink, this what's really interesting is Ms. Pink is somewhat homeless in, in, in a p in a part of the book. So I reached out to, and this facet, and this is very important, issue. So I reached out to the director of Feeding pets, feeding the home, pets of the homeless in Carson. And she reached back and said, oh my God, I think we're talking. So she has she started an organization seven or eight years ago. Because she saw a homeless woman in New York City with dogs, and I went, oh my God. We are like totally coming from the same place. She now raises a ton of money and she provides food and medicine and anything that the animals need that live with and are own, are with the homeless people in the United States.

Julie Marty-Pearson 29:31

Oh, okay. So it's not just locally? No, it

Sarah Cavallaro 29:34

is all over the country and

Julie Marty-Pearson 29:36

Oh, that's great. She does

Sarah Cavallaro 29:37

not set, they do not the homeless people are not separated from the pets. And the pets are taken care of so beautifully because they have everything that they would, if you could spend, if you paid for it. They get everything. Pet care. Yeah,

Julie Marty-Pearson 29:51

There's a few different organizations or people I follow. One is a vet, I can't think of his name, that his whole job, his whole nonprofit is him going out into homeless areas, encampments, places people live and give their animals veterinary care and talk to them. And give them medicine. And give them vaccines. Because I will say this, people may say, oh, they shouldn't have pets, they don't have homes. But I'm gonna tell you in my little bit of experience in shelters and rescues. It doesn't matter. Oftentimes the homeless people, the unhoused are the ones taking the best care of their animals because that is all they have. Yeah. That, oh yeah. Family is their whole world. They, so it's really

Sarah Cavallaro 30:32

important support. Yeah. So I, so that's an organization that, I feel very strongly about, and then there's so many of them that I have maybe eight or 10 on my website. Because I can't I could have thousands of 'em, I'm picking, I get it.

Julie Marty-Pearson 30:49

I think I follow about

Sarah Cavallaro 30:50

5,000 on it. But I can't, I don't have the bandwidth in my brain to deal with it all. Yeah. So I focus on, just maybe six or seven. So there's one, another one called almost there, and it's really a beautiful organization. And what it does is if you don't have the money to take care of your animal, you don't have to surrender the animal. A lot of people surrender animals for because they have financial issues or it's because the dogs are sick or. They can't and

Julie Marty-Pearson 31:18

they can't afford to care for them so much. I saw that so much.

Sarah Cavallaro 31:22

This organization gives these people the money so that they don't separate from their pets and they're not unwant more unwanted animals. So that's a really important thing.

Julie Marty-Pearson 31:33

It's so important because. I learned so much again by volunteering and being in it that you know, there's, people think that animals and shelters are bad animals. They have bad behavior. They're there for bad reason. They're there because people are evicted. They're there because people lose jobs. They're there because they're sick and they can't afford the treatment. They're there because their owner has been hospitalized or passed away, and there's no one else. To care for them. I saw so many different things that a lot of people don't realize that there are organizations out there to provide pet food, to provide vaccines, to provide. Either no cost or low cost veterinary care. And so I will put the info for both of these organizations in the show notes so that people can learn more about them and follow them. I always say if you can't do anything else, follow them on social, like comment repost. That can make a big difference for us. Small rescue or animal welfare organization.

Sarah Cavallaro 32:35

I think there's thank you so much. That's beautiful. They, there's I think eight or 10 on the, I didn't count, but around there that I, do my best to support.

Julie Marty-Pearson 32:44

And but I get what you're saying too. I have learned that I can't doom scroll on my pet account because it's just one after the other up at risk of euthanasia sick. We need funding. It is overwhelming. So what I try to do person what I try to do personally, obviously I'm using this. This podcast to get some visibility for organizations all over. But personally on mine, not only am I sharing my episodes, but I know the organizations really well now in my own community. So those are the one I do a lot of resharing and resharing because we've seen dogs get saved because of a social media post. So wherever you are, don't feel like it's too much. Find an organization near you that you really like, that you care about, is doing good work and just help, repost, talk about it to your friends. That little bit can really make a big difference. Or write a book about it, and then when people read it, they'll be inspired to adopt or foster or help fundraise, ultimately. Animal shelters and rescues need everything. They don't just need to find homes. They need a, they need volunteer time, they need volunteer blankets, they need food. They need a lot of things. So I always say on the podcast, don't feel overwhelmed. Find a way you can help. That's easy for you to do and start. You never know where it may end up, we can all do something, whether it's an hour a week, or $10 a month or whatever works for you.

Sarah Cavallaro 34:13

Exactly.

Julie Marty-Pearson 34:14

I also think we'll probably have more stories like yours to tell. Now that we're in the economic climate, we're in, I feel like every day is a new disaster. And what it makes me concerned about is how many more animals are gonna get abandoned or left behind or put in shelters. So now more and ever, we're still in an open overpopulation crisis. So whatever you can do to help is. Will help someone. I always say that you have one dog or one cat, or one horse, whatever it is, then it was worth it to do it. And I see that in you too, Sarah, that you really have a momentum behind your storytelling and your book and what you wanna do with it. That's not just about you. It's really is about ultimately helping the animals.

Sarah Cavallaro 35:00

Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you

Julie Marty-Pearson 35:03

so much for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your book with me. I will be passing it on to my mom next. She always loves to get to read the books I do on the podcast.

Sarah Cavallaro 35:13

Thank you so much for having me. I really love talking to you. Thank you.

Julie Marty-Pearson 35:18

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Story of My Pet podcast. I appreciate you listening and supporting the podcast. And if you haven't already, wherever you are listening to this episode, make sure you hit follow or subscribe and leave us a rating or review. All of that helps the podcast grow and get to even more listeners, and help us educate and advocate for animals in need around the world. If you haven't done so already, make sure to check out our new YouTube channel, Story of My Pet podcast. Again, hit the subscribe button, give us some likes and comments on our videos, and that will help the podcast grow thank you so much for being here, and much love to you and your pet