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Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Story of my Pet podcast.
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I am so grateful to have you here, my friend.
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As a fellow pet lover, I know you are going to love this episode and the stories that we share.
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As always, I am your host, julie Marty Pearson, and I am very excited to welcome back a guest who has been here on the podcast before.
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I really enjoy at this point in podcasting for the story of my pet that I get to welcome back previous guests, and so today's episode is all about my guest, connor Long, who works for Marley's Mutts Dog Rescue.
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He came to us a year or two ago to talk about his role in Marley's, how he ended up there in his journey in animal rescue, and today we are going to talk about the new program that Connor has helped to start within Marley's.
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That is called Troops and Tails.
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I will let him tell you the details, but basically it's a great program that they've created to start utilizing shelter dogs to help veterans of the military.
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Animal therapy is very powerful.
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Connor will share his own experience doing equine therapy after he left the military and how that experience not only shifted his life and work with animals but is kind of the groundwork of what he is doing now with Marley's and the new program Troops and Tales.
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So I know you're going to enjoy this story.
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I can't wait for you to hear our conversation.
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I am super excited to do what I've gotten to done a few times now, and that is to do a part two with a guest from.
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So I'm very happy to welcome back to the podcast Connor Long.
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Connor, thank you so much for being here.
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Absolutely.
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Thank you for having me.
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So I'm repping for you with my Marley's Mutt's T-shirt on Perfect.
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I love.
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T-shirts even better when it helps a cause that I love.
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So I'm repping for you with my Marley's Mutt's t-shirt on Perfect.
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I love t-shirts.
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Even better when it helps a cause that I love and the reason Connor is here.
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Many of you regular listeners heard a recent episode of me doing a part two with Melissa Brunson, who is the executive director of Marley's Mutt's, and in that conversation we learned about a new program that was just about to launch when I spoke to her and that is Troops and Tails.
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So Connor is here to talk about that.
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As that is, he is a big part of that program, from what I understand.
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So before we get into that, connor, let's say a year and a half ago, what has changed?
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What is new with you and your role at Marley since we spoke last?
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Oh, wow.
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I think the last time we spoke I was the ranch supervisor.
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I'm now the operations manager, so I'm helping oversee all of the different programs we have going on, Still very hands-on at the ranch.
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You know that's the big hub for the rescue.
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We have seen a lot of dogs come and go in that amount of time.
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I can't even imagine how many.
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It's been quite a lot, it blows my mind.
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Sometimes I'll look at pictures and I'll have completely forgotten about a dog.
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Sometimes they're in and out real quick Dude if you see that photo, you know who it is Exactly and all that memory's fled back.
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Some of these dogs, you know, there's just something about them.
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They come in and a week later they're adopted, Whereas we have other dogs that we have for a year or two years and those ones that go quick.
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I do have to see a picture.
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And then it's oh yeah, I forgot, we have that.
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No, I get it.
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It's funny because year before last I worked part-time at the at Kern County Animal Services.
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I was helping to run and coordinate their dog adoption events all over, and so I would post on my socials talking about the dogs where we are and all of that.
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So all the time now I get one year ago, two years ago, and the pictures of me or the dogs, or me with the dogs, and I'm just like it's this amazing thing to just have, without me thinking about it, this memory of an animal that I was like just a small touch point in, and then just be like, oh my gosh, I wonder how he's doing.
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You know, so I can't even imagine.
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For you guys it's always great having those memories pop up though.
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Absolutely.
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I know that one thing that has been created, happened and is ongoing since I spoke to you last is the new kind of county-wide coalition I can't remember the name of it, my brain isn't working and I know I've seen you post about that and you've been doing a lot with spay and neuter and vaccine clinics.
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Can you talk a little bit about that before we move to the other?
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Yeah, absolutely so.
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That is Kern Safe, and we just all banded together.
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We've got a lot of different rescues, a lot of different volunteers that are involved.
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You know, I think all of us that came to the table together were like each one of us has been involved for Marley's months, has been around for 16 years Right, we've all given it our best, but it feels like we're not making a difference.
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So how about we all come to the same table and understand that each person, each organization, is going to have a different set of resources that they can share, and that's okay.
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Some can do more, some can do less, that's all right.
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We all have different perspectives on how to address the problem, and that's a beautiful thing.
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Instead of that being an area of contention, let's embrace that as a way to do some problem solving and have a multifaceted plan of attack.
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And so we all came together.
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We're pooling resources, we're sharing volunteers, we're sharing social media all big no-nos, media, all big no-nos and you know, it's amazing seeing a group of people come together.
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We're trying to keep the population healthy, offering a ton of free vaccine clinics.
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We saw so many letters of puppies, even adult dogs, coming into the shelter with parvo, with distemper.
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Those are so preventable and that's the first line of defense is get those vaccines out into the area.
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When you're looking at having to pay a hundred bucks between an office visit and two vaccines and you need a series of vaccines that's for a family to take on, you know, being able to say you're here today, here's shot number one, here's where we'll be in three weeks come, yeah, for us to spread awareness.
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You know how many people know how rampant distemper is, or parvo is, or giardia is.
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We can't vaccinate against giardia, but we can talk to owners about what that looks like and about how to protect their pets.
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And again, oh and.
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I can say from my very little bit of experience but doing those events out in the community, I learned a lot of what people don't know, like they don't even understand why you need those vaccines and why there's certain ones for dogs and certain ones for cats, and you know, there were so many things that we would try to tell them, especially if they hadn't had a dog or they were worried about something else.
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It's not even.
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There's the first barrier of having access to a vet and be able to afford it, and then the next thing is to even understand why you have to do it and why they need to be seen on a regular basis.
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Absolutely yeah.
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Yeah, and I think that for communities we have to bridge those gaps between organizations and having been involved and worked in nonprofits in different capacities, I know there can be competition sometimes, you know, because there's a limited amount of funding resources, all those things.
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And here in Kern County we have the Kern County Shelter, we have the Bakersfield City Shelter and then we have.
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So there's a lot of crossover, but they don't always communicate.
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So I can see how important this whole like kind of unity is for all of you.
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Yeah, it's been really great, you know.
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And then we have the SNP bus.
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So again, different resources for different organizations, but we've all been trying to pull and put in what we can.
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The SNP bus has been absolutely fantastic working with us.
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They're out in the community, they're talking to the community.
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They're 60 dogs today, 97 yesterday, 105 over the weekend and they are just out there really putting the work in and getting a lot of pets spayed and neutered and that is huge for our community.
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So important and they are like a machine is what I learned and I, before I started helping with adoptions there, I had fostered for Kern County and we ended up adopting one of the kittens and when I brought her back to do the her spay, it was a snip bus day.
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Her spay, it was a snip bus day and it was really amazing to just watch the process from check-in to in, to prep to surgery, to recovery, and I also handled some of the dogs sometimes when I was helping with the recovery and people don't realize all that entails being able to offer a service like that.
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And the staff is the biggest issue because we don't have enough vets, we don't have enough vet techs and all of that.
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So it's great to see and when it pops up on my feed I'm like, yes, kern County, we are working together when we can.
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Absolutely yeah, and I think when the shelters can work together, when the rescue organizations can work together, when the independent rescuers can work together, our volunteers all work together, it sets a really good example for the community too.
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You know, bickering and having our own, I've just got to worry about me, right?
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We're not really setting the best example for the community.
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Part of what I love to see is all these folks with the different organizations involved and just how well they're working together and communicating, and that's what the community gets to see firsthand, right, and I think that's just a really amazing thing to watch.
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Yeah, because no one's going to be inspired by a group yelling at each other about what's the right thing to help.
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If you do jumping in help, then people are going to be like, okay, I can do that too, so that makes a lot of sense.
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So obviously, marley's is a full-time job and all the various programs that you are now overseeing At what point did you thought you know I have an hour that I don't have anything to do, so let's and start something else um, as far as the current safe stuff goes, I try to stay involved.
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I end up getting pulled in too many directions.
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That one I've really got to hand it to melissa.
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She's, she's in contact with everybody.
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She's helping coordinate things.
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She's really from the marley side of things.
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She's been the one to to spearhead the current safe efforts.
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Again, I'll show up to a clinic when I can, but she's done a fantastic job on our end.
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I think I've just learned, especially in community work.
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But with animals, once you're in you're sucked in.
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It's like you're just finding new ways to go at a problem or help people.
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And so when Melissa first told me about Troops and Tails, I was like that's amazing One.
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You know, my dad was a World War II vet.
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I'm a huge supporter of the military and our veterans and I saw what my dad went through for decades fighting to get disability from what had happened to him and so people that aren't a part of that or have that in their family, they don't realize the complexity veterans go through just to have access to services and even harder, mental health services and having enough.
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So I love when I heard it's the bridge between the animals and the therapy dogs and the veterans and their health.
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So could you talk about where the idea came from or how it started?
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Way back when I got discharged from the Navy, I was really fortunate when I was going to what they call a TAPS class.
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It's a transition assistance program.
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It's a one day class where they give you, like your regional, your VA, regional contact.
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They tell you where the closest medical clinic is or veteran service offices.
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Here you can contact the local DAV, disabled American Vets, they can help you with claims, and then they just boot you out the door.
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In my TAPS class there was this teeny, tiny little blip on one of the handouts we were given.
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That was an equine therapy program.
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Prior to my naval service I had actually lived and worked on a working ranch for a year and a half and my job was to take care of the horses.
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So I thought, okay, I'll check this out.
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Didn't really know what to expect because there wasn't a lot of information.
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But I called him, I made an appointment, was able to go out to Ojai If you've ever been in Ojai, it's just a beautiful setting in and of itself, very therapeutic and I started doing therapy work with horses.
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So we had with that program, there was a certified therapist she was the founder, she was running it and an equine behaviorist.
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What they do is everything we did was groundwork.
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Two of the three horses that I have a hard time trusting people and I have a hard time asking for help and trusting that somebody's actually going to help me.
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I'd walked in and I had said you know, this is one of the things that I'm currently experiencing.
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So they set up a tarp on the ground in the arena.
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They blindfolded me after I haltered one of the horses to work with and said OK, walk the horse across the tarp.
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What?
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Because horses don't like tarps.
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It makes noise, it moves under their feet and now I'm blindfolded.
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And now I'm blindfolded.
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You know the component where I can't see.
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I know I have two other people in the arena with me, I know I'm safe, but it's still scary.
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I have this 1,200-pound animal next to me and I can't see it.
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And you just met it.
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It's body language and having to vocalize and find a way to articulate I can't.
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They wouldn't allow me to just say I need help.
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It was okay.
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But what do you need?
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You know, can somebody come stand on the other side of the horse and help me guide it?
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Can somebody put pressure behind the horse to try to move it forward?
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And I had to be very specific about what I needed.
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Through that exercise I was able to get the horse moved across the tarp, which then just this overwhelming sense of pride and an increase in confidence and trust.
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You know, Sissy trusted me, I trusted her, we worked together, we got across the tarp and then it was after each of those types of exercises, there was a break and okay, what did you feel?
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What did you experience?
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What did that bring up for you?
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When you go sit in an office somewhere, it's hard to really get down to the meat of what is going on.
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But when you're working with an animal who oftentimes will mirror your emotions and your behavior now you can't deny it now it's much easier to understand and it's much easier to put into words.
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I I participated in that equine therapy program for a year and a half and it was life altering and it changed the direction of my life because I started to really realize that, with everything I had, going on around the animals was huge.
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It made me want to be a better person.
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It made me feel like I was part of something bigger again, which was something I had lost coming out of the military.
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I realized that animal people tend to be weirdos.
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I'll admit, I'm a weirdo.
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So you find your people, you know, you find the people that have the same goals and the same values and sometimes you know the same quirks, and so build that camaraderie which, again, when I came out of the military, I lost that camaraderie.
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I lost my family.
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And your community.
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You have to find your place in the world again.
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And so getting more and more involved in the animal world and obviously just for ease of everything, I shifted from horses to dogs.
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I started to find my people again, I started to find my value again, I started to find my purpose again and I worked at the shelter for a long time.
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And then I came over to Marley's Mutts and one of their creeds has always been rescued dogs, rescuing people.
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And we have Miracle Mutts, which is going into hospitals, it's going to libraries to read with kids.
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It's so many beautiful things that they do with the dogs to help people.
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And then we have Positive Change, which is going into the prisons to help people.
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And then we have positive change which is going into the prisons and again taking these rescue dogs and teaching people, helping people grow, helping them develop the skills that they might not have had before problem solving, communication, teamwork being responsible for another being yeah yeah, and you, when that is just such a part of the daily life within Marley's Mutts?
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I was looking at it and we don't have anything that's servicing veterans.
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We do offer free adoptions to veterans.
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We have a partnership with an organization called Hounds and Heroes that will work to pair veterans with dogs and then train those dogs to be service dogs, but they're based in Texas so logistics can be hard.
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Finding really the appropriate temperament for service dog training can be pretty difficult, so we haven't really been able to to like really dig into being there for the veteran community through that program and so I just started keeping it in the back of my head what can we do?
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What can we do?
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What can we do and I didn't want to want it to be.
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There were so many things that popped into my head.
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What can veterans do for us?
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You know we can get veterans to volunteer, we can get veterans to foster, but I want to give back to veterans and you know it was just rolling around in the back of my head for a while and I started really looking back on my time with the horses and really trying to be mindful of my interactions with the dogs and how my interactions with the dogs could evoke the same emotional response that I got working in therapy with the horses and understanding that in a lot of ways I was getting that same therapeutic work, although I didn't have a therapist sitting right there with me to ground.
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For me, it was there and if I pay attention to it, it was helpful, and so I said that's it.
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In Kern County we have 46,000 veterans.
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When you call the VA clinic and you say I'm in a mental health crisis, you're either given the crisis line or told oh you know, we can do a telehealth visit in about a month or you can see our therapist in about three.
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When you're in a mental health crisis that doesn't do anything.
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That doesn't help and so just the sheer backlog in very specifically mental health services, that kind of gave us the gateway to be like, okay, this is what we can offer.
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So I started making some phone calls and I got in touch with a really wonderful woman who's been involved in therapy for decades, really well known in the community, qualified, really well known in the community, very qualified, and he put me in touch with her network of other very qualified, very well connected therapists in the area and we have six or seven that are all set to be involved and to rotate through and to help us and, you know, create a schedule where we can have coverage.
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I I have experience with veterans and first responders.
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They all have experience with trauma, with PTSD, so they're very qualified.
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That was one of the other things I wanted to ensure is that if we were asking veterans and first responders to trust us, we needed people on site who were qualified to help them.
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You needed credibility, but you also needed to make sure that the people that were doing it actually know how to handle those.
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People Not always realize that therapists are trained in different modalities to be specific to different disorders eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and PTSD is very specific.
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Ptsd for the military is, then, also specific right, and that it's so important that not only do they have access to resources, but they're resources that are actually going to be able to help them, because then there's also the side of the veteran having to trust this therapist person that they've never met before with these deep, dark issues that they're having.
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Yeah, and again, for me, when I started going through all of it, I didn't even know how to express what I was feeling.
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There was a certain level of shame and embarrassment that shouldn't have been there but that prevented me from saying some of the things I knew how to say, but so much of it I didn't even know how to articulate.
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And having the animal and the therapist be able to pinpoint and ask the right questions to draw it out and over time then creating the self-awareness in me to be able to pinpoint those things and know how to articulate them, that was huge.
00:23:31.561 --> 00:23:46.201
A lot of the things that came up in those therapy sessions for me I never would have even thought to bring up in a session because I didn't really even understand them Right and couldn't express them.
00:23:47.095 --> 00:23:55.446
And even in mental health there's terminology like triggers and trauma, and general public don't know what those mean, necessarily.
00:23:55.446 --> 00:24:03.626
And also, as you were talking about, I was imagining you're sitting with a dog and you're petting it and you have this physical reaction, like you feel emotions.
00:24:03.626 --> 00:24:10.278
That doesn't mean you know how to explain that feeling and that is a lot of the difficulty when dealing with mental health.
00:24:10.278 --> 00:24:14.840
We don't even know what it is when we're feeling it ourselves, let alone being able to explain it to someone.
00:24:14.901 --> 00:24:16.085
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:16.446 --> 00:24:17.770
The dogs are helpful for that.
00:24:18.232 --> 00:24:19.336
They definitely are.
00:24:19.635 --> 00:24:24.948
Dogs don't make fun of you or say you're stupid or you know there's no negative there.
00:24:24.948 --> 00:24:29.125
And also working with animals is such a therapeutic process.
00:24:29.125 --> 00:24:31.743
But you have to have that trust.
00:24:31.743 --> 00:24:34.124
You have to trust yourself and you have to trust the animal.
00:24:34.124 --> 00:24:41.625
And it takes time, and so I could just imagine the power that this program can have for the veterans.
00:24:42.567 --> 00:24:47.757
Yeah Well, and again, it lends itself to a safe space when you're working with an animal.
00:24:47.757 --> 00:24:53.238
They're not going to turn around and tell every other dog on the ranch what you said when you leave.
00:24:53.238 --> 00:25:01.980
There were plenty of times where I showed up to my therapy session really not in a good place and I said you know what?
00:25:01.980 --> 00:25:03.163
I can't talk today.
00:25:03.163 --> 00:25:16.980
And the response was okay, go grab a brush and go brush a horse, just be with them, watch their breathing, and a lot of it was taking our cues.
00:25:16.980 --> 00:25:32.848
So animals don't hold grudges, they don't think about what happened yesterday, they live very much in the moment and they're naturally very in tune to self-care, which we've been horrible at.
00:25:33.655 --> 00:25:35.883
We act like it's a bonus.
00:25:35.883 --> 00:25:36.644
We don't need it.
00:25:37.316 --> 00:25:43.785
All of a sudden, one of the horses would stop and roll in the sand and they'd okay, do you see what that horse is doing?
00:25:43.785 --> 00:25:45.240
Why is that horse doing that?
00:25:45.240 --> 00:25:56.001
Maybe we had a really heavy session that day and that was the horse going and decompressing a little bit and catching its breath, and okay, that was heavy.
00:25:56.001 --> 00:26:00.500
I'm gonna take a minute for myself like them shaking it off.
00:26:00.642 --> 00:26:22.705
Okay, I helped them, but I gotta let it go yeah, and you know, just being able to watch the natural behavior of an animal and be able to say, look, you know, grace was just in the yard with us and she took this really big breath and then settled breathe, stop and breathe for a minute.
00:26:23.486 --> 00:26:37.968
Breath work, just like I have friends and clients who do coaching online, and some of the best ones of them are the ones that know at the point in a process to say, okay, I'm going to take a deep breath or stretch, you know there's.
00:26:37.968 --> 00:26:40.560
You have to let your body process things.
00:26:40.560 --> 00:26:41.542
Animals do it.
00:26:41.542 --> 00:26:50.236
Naturally, we're always like go, we have too many things to do and that's why we're always so hyper-focused and stressed because we don't roll in the grass like they do.
00:26:51.176 --> 00:26:51.417
Yeah.
00:26:51.417 --> 00:27:02.801
So again, it just presents so many opportunities, for you know, the veterans and first responders tend to put up these walls and I don't need help.
00:27:02.801 --> 00:27:06.588
I don't need somebody to tell me X, y, z.
00:27:06.588 --> 00:27:14.434
When it comes from watching an animal's behavior, you're much more open to receiving it Right.
00:27:14.434 --> 00:27:20.268
So it's just another layer of getting through and breaking those walls down.
00:27:20.268 --> 00:27:27.560
And again, if you just want to go sit with a dog and not say a single word to a person, do what you got to do.
00:27:27.560 --> 00:27:40.924
If that's going to help you today, if that's going to allow you to catch your breath, to decompress a little bit before you go back out into the world, if that's what you need, that's what you'll get from us.
00:27:40.924 --> 00:27:48.605
You don't have to talk to us and just again, give them the freedom to build their own.
00:27:48.605 --> 00:27:53.027
This doesn't have to be a come, sit down and talk to me.
00:27:53.027 --> 00:28:06.606
This is designed to be flexible enough that every individual who walks through our doors can tailor it around what they need and what they want.
00:28:07.536 --> 00:28:10.724
And that is the amazing things about animals is they can sense it.
00:28:10.724 --> 00:28:12.376
They can sense, if you go, what they need.
00:28:12.376 --> 00:28:14.382
You know I've different dogs.
00:28:14.382 --> 00:28:16.247
I had growing up or like that with me.
00:28:16.247 --> 00:28:24.681
I had a lot of illness and it was like I realized now that they always came and sat with me on the days I felt worse or I felt sad or whatever it was.
00:28:24.681 --> 00:28:27.527
And there is that no judgment.
00:28:27.527 --> 00:28:40.420
You can just pet them and that's fine, and they love it, they love you for it, you can talk to them, and so I can imagine how powerful just the space to have that space for veterans is powerful.
00:28:40.420 --> 00:28:43.788
So are you going to be offering this process on the ranch?
00:28:43.788 --> 00:28:45.180
Is there other locations?
00:28:45.180 --> 00:28:46.022
How does that work?
00:28:46.925 --> 00:28:50.234
So for now we're planning on having everything at the ranch.
00:28:50.234 --> 00:28:58.241
We did build a yard on the backside of the ranch, away from all the daily comings and goings, so it's private.
