Insider Insights: Amy Castro of Starlight Pet Talk Discusses Animal Rescue and Adoption
In this episode, we sit down with Amy Castro, host of Starlight Pet Talk and president of Starlight Outreach and Rescue, for an in-depth discussion on the challenges and rewards of animal rescue. From matching pets with the right families to providing essential care and support, Amy shares her expertise and passion for creating forever homes. Tune in to learn how you can get involved in your local rescue community and make a positive impact on the lives of animals in need.
What You’ll Learn:
Insight into the world of pet adoption and fostering
Tips on how to help animals acclimate to their new environment
Understanding the importance of patience and commitment in pet ownership
Real-life stories illustrating the challenges and rewards of animal rescue
Ways to get involved in local rescue organizations and make a difference
Valuable advice on matching pets with the right families
Practical tips for providing essential care and support to shelter animals
How to create a loving and forever home for adopted pets
Inspiration to become a part of the solution to pet overpopulation and abandonment
Resources and opportunities for further education and involvement in the rescue community
Ideas Worth Sharing:
"I think education of pet owners is the key to our overpopulation problem and our stray and abandonment problem." - Amy Castro
"Certain things will happen at certain points, but you definitely need to give it some time before you call it quits for sure." - Amy Castro
Resources From This Episode:
Starlight Pet Talk
Starlight Outreach and Rescue
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Read The Transcript:
Dr. Sugerman: [00:00:00] Hey listener! Welcome to Vetsplanation, the podcast that helps explain to you, the pet parent, how to keep your pets happy, healthy, and safe. I am your host, Dr. Sugerman. Did you know that rescue organizations do much more than just taking in pets? They can be a valuable resource in helping us to keep our pets in our homes.
Today we're going to be talking to Amy Castro from the Starlight Outreach and Rescue to discuss just that. Real quick, if you like what we do, please make sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating. All right, let's jump into our interview.
Dr. Sugerman: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Vetsplanation. I am your veterinary host and podcaster, Dr. Sugerman, and I'm really excited today. We're going to be having Amy Castro on. She is the host of Starlight Pet Talk and then also the founder and president of Starlight Outreach and Rescue. Hi, Amy. How are you doing?
Amy Castro: I'm doing great. Glad to be here.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. It was interesting. We've had a lot of talk around our [00:01:00] neighborhood here of a lot of the humane societies that are overrun with dogs. Like they're just like pretty much having events to give dogs away for free because they just don't even have enough kennel space right now.
Dr. Sugerman: So I'm really excited to talk to you about rescue and like what we can do to help this situation. So, can you tell me, like what is it like to do rescue work?
Amy Castro: It's crazy and nobody should ever consider doing it. It's definitely a labor of love and you can see how easily people do get, over their heads as far as rescues and even shelters becoming overfull because the demand is always there, no matter how full that you are.
Amy Castro: And you either have to say no and leave an animal on the street or leave it with an owner who's going to move and leave it behind, or you say yes, and you overwhelm yourself. So if you're going to survive, you have to figure out how am I going to maintain this balance?
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And it seems like it's an all day, all night thing, not just like a eight to five type job.
Amy Castro: Correct. [00:02:00] Yeah. And again, as a rescue person I've learned in the last, it's, you know, we've been doing this, we started the rescue in 2017. So I think in the last year and a half or 2 years, we've gotten good about creating some boundaries around it.
Amy Castro: Let's shut the rescue phone off at 7 PM and, and, and not be taking animals. There were points where we're taking animals over the fence at two in the morning.
Amy Castro: And it's... I can't, you can't live like that.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. You just, you just can't maintain like that.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. Tell me like, what does a typical day entail for you for rescue?
Amy Castro: It starts off obviously early in the morning with chores. Mondays are my most hated days, which today happens to be one of those, because it's not only, not only chore day, but trash day, and you can only imagine, I'm sure you probably can imagine the amount of garbage that we create around here, but..
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, absolutely.
Amy Castro: Yeah, it's, it's basically prioritizing based on what animals we have. Obviously, if we have bottle fed animals, those are going to be the first ones that we will get to in the morning. We're lucky. So I live on a seven acre piece of property, and we refer to it in our group as the rescue ranch.
Amy Castro: And I live here, my [00:03:00] daughter lives here. And then we have, a couple of volunteers that come and we'll do, what used to be my two car garage has now been converted into a cat room. So I do have volunteers to do that, which is awesome. So yeah, but we'll do anything that's inside the house.
Amy Castro: Cause we're pretty much foster based other than the fact that yes, I do have this garage thing going, but do the animals inside the house and then we have equines, we've got a three donkeys, a pony and a horse. So they've got to be fed and checked on. Barn cats need to be fed and checked on.
Amy Castro: It's, it's not that different than your average person getting up in the morning and doing their normal pet routine, except you multiply it by 40 or 50.
Dr. Sugerman: And having bottle babies on top of that, like I know how hard it is to have bottle babies and how intense that is. They need to be fed constantly.
Amy Castro: Yes. Yes. And luckily we have a really good group of volunteers that are willing to take those on. And obviously it depends on how, you know, if they're newborn, newborn. Now you're looking at 24 hour feeding cycle every two to three hours. If they're, I've got two that are coming probably in the next [00:04:00] hour that have teeth coming through.
Amy Castro: They're a little bit older, maybe they're three weeks, three and a half weeks off to see when they get here, but that is not as intense of a bottle feeding responsibility. But yeah, that, that adds a whole nother level of, of chaos to our worlds.
Dr. Sugerman: And that's true. It's not intensive bottle feeding, but I still feel like it's still intense too, because you have so much cleanup to do when they start eating.
Dr. Sugerman: Cause now they're just like messy constantly.
Amy Castro: Yeah. It's like kids, you spend, you spend a whole lot of time praying for your kids to get out of diapers and now you've got to know where a bathroom is at all times. And it's oh, you almost wish they were back in diapers again.
Amy Castro: But..
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly.
Amy Castro: Yeah. So it's the animal care stuff, but then it's also dealing with people things too, because there's the constant barrage of requests for help from shelters because we do pull animals from shelters. As a matter of fact, these two kittens that I've got coming are coming from a shelter about an hour and a half away.
Amy Castro: They just desperately needed somebody to take these two kittens. So between the shelter requests and then just people that come across our rescue information on the internet and are looking to.. [00:05:00] Either looking to adopt, which is awesome, or looking to surrender a pet and going through those conversations with people about why they're surrendering their pet and whether we can help or not.
Amy Castro: We also try to do a lot of education in that process too, because I feel like through some of those conversations, I've encouraged people to try a little bit harder to hang on to their pet. Maybe they're dealing with some behavioral issues, rather than just saying, no, we don't have room. It's why is it that you want to surrender your cat? Let's talk about it. What have you tried? So we do spend a lot of time doing some of that one on one education.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And that's fantastic.
Amy Castro: It's busy work.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, exactly. I know we really want to keep the pets in the home, so a lot of education is really great for them for you guys to be able to do.
Amy Castro: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. If it's a good home, we'll do what we can, between education and even financially, we've spent quite a bit of money and raised quite a bit of money for owned pets because the people they love their pets. The pets love them. They're very well cared for, but maybe a dog needs a certain surgery.
Amy Castro: That's just out of that family's reach at that time. [00:06:00] And when they call me and they're willing to give up a pet that they love and they're crying on the phone. But it's for the good of the pet because they know the pet needs some type of surgery that they can't afford. If you care that much about your pet, I'm going to try to do whatever I can to help you keep it.
Dr. Sugerman: Absolutely. And also going out of their way to find a rescue to be able to take them, like that all shows that they really do care.
Amy Castro: Exactly. Exactly.
Dr. Sugerman: So where do.. You talked a little bit about this, but where do a lot of these rescued pets come from?
Amy Castro: It's a mix.
Amy Castro: I would say probably 80 percent of the animals that we take in, cause we do prioritize strays. If it's an owned pet and you're moving and you're moving in with your mother in law and you can't take your cat, I'm probably less inclined to jump on that and help out, as opposed to somebody that says, I have this pregnant cat that wandered up into my yard and my dogs are going crazy over it and it can't stay here and then I might lean towards those.
Amy Castro: So probably 80 percent of what we take in in our rescue are strays. And then after that, it would be just on a case by case basis. [00:07:00] Whether it's a, an owned pet that we can take in or something that we're pulling from a shelter like we have right outside this door. I can't believe how quiet they are.
Amy Castro: There's 2 puppies that are sleeping outside this door. And we pulled them from a shelter that was 27 dogs over capacity and getting ready to have to make some euthanasia decisions. So I went there the other day. I think it was Sunday. And just kind of like went down their screen on the wall of what they had.
Amy Castro: And it's, what do I have room for? What can I, what can I manage at based on the space that we have available? So I came back with two puppies.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Amy Castro: I don't know what I was thinking, but..
Dr. Sugerman: Right? I was like, I was like that's what you thought you could manage.
Amy Castro: They're, they're, they're quite small, so anyway.
Dr. Sugerman: Do the shelters usually call you or do you just go through and look at the shelters to determine whether they've been overcapacity?
Amy Castro: It's a little bit of both. A lot of it's following social media because they'll put out posts on social media, saying overcapacity, red [00:08:00] alert, whatever terminology that they use.
Amy Castro: And so we'll look at the pictures and see what we can manage there. But then we do get the direct contact, which makes it even harder when they call you up and they're like, I don't want to have to euthanize something, I really need to get this or that out of there. Or God forbid you go down there.
Amy Castro: I've gone to a couple of smaller shelters with the intent of picking up one animal and basically coming back with two dogs and all of their cats because all the cats were getting ready to be euthanized. And it's so it's kind of comes both ways.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Real quick, how do you, so you talked about like some people want to adopt, like, how do you help people adopt those pets that you've now taken in the foster situation.
Amy Castro: We have an application process, a lot of it is about matching the person to the pet because sometimes people will see a picture of something and they fall in love with the photo and it may be a perfect fit for you, but it also might not be a perfect fit based on the animal.
Amy Castro: So we really try to have a lot of good communication with our potential adopters. Once we get that [00:09:00] application, then we will call them up and have a conversation about what they're looking for in a pet and make sure that it's a match. And then we set up a meet and greet opportunity because we are foster based.
Amy Castro: It's not like a person can just walk in off of the street because they happen to be out and about that day to see what pets we have available. All of our pets are at somebody's home in some form or fashion. We do the screening first before we do the visiting, because there's no point in having somebody, I live in the boonies.
Amy Castro: And there's no point in having somebody drive an hour to come and see a cat and then find out it's not a fit, or, we do have some, I don't think we're particularly strict compared to some rescues, rescues vary in their requirements, but, we do have some pretty basic deal breakers when it comes to adoption criteria. And we ask about those things throughout our application process to screen that out. And one, just as one example is declawing, we will ask a question about whether they declaw pets, whether they plan to declaw this pet, have they declawed past pets?
Amy Castro: [00:10:00] And if the answer to all of those are yes, then that's not a fit for us cause we don't believe in declawing. So that's just one example.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay. And then, so do you have them up on your website or do you do adoption events, anything like that?
Amy Castro: Yeah. So we do a lot on social media. So our Facebook page has like 5,000 followers.
Amy Castro: So we get a lot of word out there. We also have a relationship with a pet supplies plus franchise, one town over from where I live, but actually in the same town where most of my volunteers live and we do have four cat cages there or kennels, whatever you want to call them. That cats do stay in permanently.
Amy Castro: So we do have that one location where people can see our pets. And then once a month on the first Saturday of the month, we do an adoption event there. So we will, obviously the cats that live there are already there, but then we will bring animals from foster and from the rescue ranch and dogs because dogs don't stay up there overnight.
Amy Castro: And we'll do an event there. And then we do a lot of community events. We're going to get ready to start doing a [00:11:00] local farmer's market. And sometimes we'll have pets with us for those. And sometimes it's just an awareness type thing. We try to do a lot of events, but at the same time, we also try to balance it out with what's the benefit of doing it?
Amy Castro: Because it can be stressful, especially if you're bringing cats, because we do a lot of cats. It can be stressful on them to just drag them here or there. So it, it has to be a pretty high rate of return that we're expecting that we're going to get either a lot of foot traffic or a lot of people that are truly interested in adopting things like that before we commit to going everywhere because people asked.
Dr. Sugerman: And this is a lot of things that you guys are doing. So how do you get all the funding for this?
Amy Castro: We are a hundred percent donations from people like you and people like that are listening. It's, it's the, the 5 a month. We've got people that literally commit to a $5 or a $10 every single month, through our website.
Amy Castro: We do a lot of Facebook fundraisers that we get. We just get really good financial support. And every once in a while, you'll get a big donor.. You know, we recently had, and I [00:12:00] won't get into naming names or whatever, but a, a woman who had left in her estate that she wanted her estate to go to animal welfare, and we were one of the groups that were selected for, by that family to, to receive a donation.
Amy Castro: And it was significant. But we run a tight ship too, you know, if we raise, we probably raise, Let's say $120,000 a year. We're a relatively small rescue. There's some people that are doing 10 times that, but when you look at what we raise versus what we've spent, we probably spent, 98 to 105, and when we spend what we get, so it's a, it's a lean operation.
Dr. Sugerman: Wow.
Amy Castro: Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: Absolutely. Especially with so many animals that you have there at the ranch.
Amy Castro: That's part of the decision making process too. Cause you can't stay afloat if you go broke. And we do, as we look at animals coming in needing help, what is it going to take to get it from the time it comes through our door to the time we can make it available for adoption?
Amy Castro: And, and do we have that money to invest? Because that's, I think that's a challenge. And I see [00:13:00] rescues struggle with this, where they're spending thousands... and we've done it too, thousands and thousands of dollars on one animal. But if you take that, let's just say it was a surgery that costs $6,000.
Amy Castro: How many spays and neuters is that? How many bottles of Clavimox for upper respiratory infection is that, and is that a good investment of the funds? And sometimes the answer is yes. And sometimes it's maybe not. So it's, it's tough.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Cause you could definitely, help more animals with that $6,000 than you can with one animal.
Dr. Sugerman: But I know how, how hard that is to make that decision because you get very invested in these pets that you're trying to help.
Amy Castro: Yeah, definitely. We just had a great dane that we adopted out that came in, he'd been hit by a car and he needed extensive orthopedic surgery and it was, we luckily, we got a great deal. I had to drive two and a half hours to another town to get it done. But we just try to look at it as practically as possible. Is this a highly adoptable pet? Is it a friendly pet? If you get a dog that's, aggressive and aggressive towards men or whatever it might be.
Amy Castro: And it's [00:14:00] okay, are we going to spend that kind of money on a dog that's got behavior issues when now we're going to have also spend money on training, but this just happened to be a really good natured gentle 150 pound, gentle giant of a dog. And, we felt like it was a good investment and the family that adopted him shortly thereafter. He, he got adopted really quickly once he was healed up and ready to go. So..
Dr. Sugerman: That's fantastic.
Amy Castro: Yeah, it was a good outcome there.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. So when they do get adopted, do you have tips to help keep them in the house? Help keep them in that home rather than coming back to your rescue organization?
Amy Castro: Yeah. We spend a lot of time in that process of transitioning that pet over. Educating the, and it depends. Some people are very used to bringing animals into their home and some people, maybe it's their first pet. So we do provide a lot of what to do when you bring your pet home or how to introduce your pet to your existing pets.
Amy Castro: We do that in conversation and also with documents that we provide for those pet owners. And we also provide a [00:15:00] lifetime return policy. Luckily, we haven't had lots and lots of people take us up on it, but because we could, yeah, it could be a problem if everybody decided to suddenly bring everybody back, but people have that safety net so that if they're struggling with something, but again, that education piece is a big part of it.
Amy Castro: And oftentimes people are very overwhelmed when they first adopt. Because you're, you're doing paperwork, you're signing contracts, they're excited about the pet, the kids are excited, and then you're trying to say, now, when you get home, do this, do this, do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.
Amy Castro: And everything may go out the window. And so we do, we do follow up with people too. And, and check in and see how are things going. How is this working? But I think, the key thing is when you bring a new pet home is that you can't expect that you're just going to let it off its leash or let it out of its carrier and, and free run your house and expect that that's going to go well.
Amy Castro: The more you can contain the animal and give it a safe space to acclimate, the better off you're going to be. And then gradually introducing other [00:16:00] experiences, other animals, other parts of the house, et cetera, that's, that's our process and it usually works pretty well.
Dr. Sugerman: It's interesting. I was talking to a trainer the other day and she had mentioned that just because a pet knows like what, somebody's house is. Like maybe my pet knows this house and that this is a house and we don't go to the bathroom in it, things like that. It may not go to another house and know that that is a house, that that is rules that apply there.
Dr. Sugerman: So it's, it's a lot of just teaching them what the rules are and also helping them teach you as well.
Amy Castro: Exactly. And I think people, cause people will ask about whether it's about a kitten or an adult cat or, or a puppy or a dog, I think people expect puppies aren't necessarily going to be housebroken, but I think they expect that everybody else knows what to do.
Amy Castro: And so they'll say, oh, does the kitten know how to use the litter box? And it's yes, the kitten absolutely knows how to use the litter box because it's two feet away from him in the kennel that he lives in 80 percent of the day. But, you come home and you let them loose in your 3,000 square foot house, you're going to have poop underneath your [00:17:00] bed.
Amy Castro: So don't do that, start them off in that small space. And you're right. Dogs will come in. I've had dogs that have come from homes and they are potty trained, but my house smells different. And, like you said, the layout's different. The routine is different. I had a dog the other day that got up on my bed and just peed on my bed.
Amy Castro: And I thought, God, Bonnie, I, you're house trained, but I'd had her back in my bedroom because she's not good with cats. So I had to separate her from the cats. And I hadn't yet learned her signals that she had to go out. And so that was my fault, .
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Exactly.
Amy Castro: You have to learn their routines.
Dr. Sugerman: Mm-Hmm. . Exactly. Just like those little things you have to pick up on to know like they have to go to the bathroom or if they're in too nervous of a situation. So it's a, it's, it's a lot of learning from them for sure.
Amy Castro: Yes, and it takes a while, it's always disappointing when people will have an animal for 48 hours and then, or sometimes even less, and, call you up and say, it needs to go back.
Amy Castro: I can't, it's doing this or it's doing that. And people don't realize that the animal is going to need [00:18:00] time to acclimate to your environment. The animal that you see on day one and how it acts in your house. If it's really great, it could go the other way, yes, it might've been really quiet and well behaved and not running around like a maniac because it was scared.
Amy Castro: And three days later. It's flying across the room, jumping on your coffee table kind of thing. It, it, it takes some time to adjust and to really get to know each other.
Dr. Sugerman: How long do you feel like that process usually takes?
Amy Castro: I feel like at least for the animals that we have coming in here, within about 72 hours, you start to see their personality begin to sprout, for lack of a better term.
Amy Castro: But as far as figuring out those routines, I think, it could take a good month to really get into a routine and really see what you've got on your hand. And depending upon the animal, it could be longer. If it's an adult cat, that's very scared, sometimes it takes several months.
Amy Castro: We've had people that have adopted cats that basically spent the first two months underneath the bed and, and took six months before it was out and coming, sitting on the sofa with the person. And then other ones walk [00:19:00] in and they, act like they've lived there all along. So you just have to take it as, as each animal comes along.
Amy Castro: And I know that there's people that toss out that, three days, three weeks, three months, you know, that there's some criteria for that. And I think that's a good, a good guideline to realize that certain things will happen at certain points, but you definitely need to give it some time before you call it quits for sure.
Dr. Sugerman: Absolutely. We have a technician who she had adopted a cat that kind of the same situation, like it took I think four months before she ended up coming out from underneath the bed and then it took another three or four months before they could actually pet her. And then now she's just, she loves everybody.
Dr. Sugerman: She's a great cat. Now she's, they still have a hard time picking her up, but still like everything she can still like, they can still pet her, they can still like interact with her. So it definitely takes a lot of time. Even with my own dog, we like, we rescued her over a year ago and we are still like, to this day, learning some of her cues.
Dr. Sugerman: We, we had to have all of her teeth removed. And so she definitely had some health issues and we had to deal with all [00:20:00] those things first before we could even get to the point of having routines.
Amy Castro: That's true. Yeah. Especially if you do, if you do take in an animal that has health issues.
Amy Castro: And I think part of that for us is that matching process. We try to be very transparent about what our expectations are once they get that animal home. So these cats that have spent months and months underneath the bed, it was not a surprise to the person that took that animal home, because we want you to know what you're getting into.
Amy Castro: And if you, if you get lucky and because you're.. Like, I'm thinking about one cat in particular that I adopted actually, she was a friend of mine from when I was in the air force and she just happened to move to Texas and I was telling her about this cat named Astro who was just so shy and we couldn't get him adopted.
Amy Castro: And so she ended up adopting him, but he was the one that took two or three months before she ever actually even saw him. She knew he was coming out because he was using the litter box and, and eating his food, but he would sneak out at night when she was sleeping out from under the bed.
But she was willing to wait that time and each little step in the [00:21:00] progress was like a big, a big celebration for her. But, but part of that is matching to a quiet home. I think sometimes people will, they'll see a picture of a cat and they'll say, Oh, I really want that one, but it's really super shy. And they've got three toddlers. Like that's probably not going to be, or it's going to take years.. Or the cat may never come out from under the bed. So I think matching to your lifestyle and what your expectations are is, is really important.
Dr. Sugerman: I will say, I do think that's really funny that you got in touch with your friend and you're like, welcome to Texas here's a cat.
Amy Castro: Yeah. You want a cat?
Amy Castro: Yeah,
Amy Castro: I'm always working any angle I can get. If I can get somebody to take an animal off my hands if it's a good fit.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. You're like, we have too many of them here, have three.
Amy Castro: Yes, that's right.
Amy Castro: I will deliver it. We delivered it too.
Dr. Sugerman: Very nice. So how, like, how is it that people can actually get involved in your rescue and like, why should they do that?
Dr. Sugerman: Or involved in like rescues at all in [00:22:00] general?
Amy Castro: I think a lot of times people will see things, they'll see some of the stories that rescues like us and shelters post and they say, oh that's so sad. And they might share the picture or something like that. But, the only way that we can stop this problem that we have. At least, in Texas, it's a problem everywhere, but it's an especially bad problem here in Texas of pet over population, not spaying and neutering and having all of these stray and abandoned animals is by getting people involved in the solution, which is, getting these animals rounded up spayed and neutered and getting them into good homes that are going to take good care of them.
Amy Castro: So I think if you love animals. At least look into what, what is your local rescue doing? What opportunities are there for you to, to get involved? Obviously we'll always take anybody's money. Donations are great. We very much appreciate that. If that's the limit of what you're willing or able to do, then so be it, that's great.
Amy Castro: But, I think if you contact your local rescues, there are a [00:23:00] lot of things, maybe you're not the person that wants to be up or you can't be up 24 hours a day to feed kittens because, you work or you've got other things going on, it might be helping at special events, or it might be helping with social media or taking pictures.
Amy Castro: Pictures are huge. To get good photographs of these pets. It could be fostering an animal for a weekend while, the main foster is away to visit family or something like that. So there's a wide range of things that you can do to help from, something as easy as writing a check or clicking a button to, to taking on an animal in your home for months and everything in between.
Amy Castro: So you just need to ask, what is the need and match the need to your interest and your availability.
Dr. Sugerman: Is there any like a process for becoming a foster parent?
Amy Castro: Yeah, for all of our volunteers, we have an application process. We do a background check just to make sure they're not like animal hoarders or animal abusers or something like that.
Amy Castro: We have insurance. So our volunteers are covered should they get injured by an [00:24:00] animal. We have insurance. So our insurance requires, and we would do this anyway, but our insurance has some very specific training, animal handling training, that they would need to take before they actually started interacting with animals.
Amy Castro: And then from there, we pretty much provide the training. On a one on one basis, case by case, because different animals, like these kittens that are coming in today, we could, we could do a bottle baby class, and we do periodically run classes, but you might need to know specifically, how do these respond to the bottle?
Amy Castro: This one doesn't really like the bottle, or this one's on the verge of eating canned food, so you want to try to start it. So we, when we transfer the animal to the volunteer we provide some pretty extensive hands on instruction. We also gauge which fosters get which animals based on their experience level and their comfort level.
Amy Castro: So we're not going to take.. Sometimes we get kittens that are very iffy, especially kittens, that just, they're very, very underweight, they're preemies, whatever they are, I'm not going to put that in a new foster's hands, [00:25:00] because the odds are not in that animal's favor that it's going to survive, and I don't want them to have that experience if I can avoid it, so we'll usually hang on to those if we get them. But, yeah..
Amy Castro: A lot of kind of one on one training. And we also provide, and not all rescues do this, so this is a great question to ask when you're going to volunteer for a rescue is we provide everything that you need or want. If you say you want a certain kind of bottle or you want a certain kind of nipple, I will get on Amazon, it will be on your doorstep the next day kind of thing.
Amy Castro: So we provide all the supplies. So there's no out of pocket. It's just your love and your, and your time that goes into those animals. We basically would pay for the rest.
Dr. Sugerman: Very nice. That's fantastic. Can you tell me a little bit more about your podcast too? Like how this is helping your organization and your rescue?
Amy Castro: Sure. Yeah. So the podcast, like you said, it's called Starlight Pet Talk and obviously we're Starlight Outreach and Rescue. So it really came about as part of that education. Part of our mission, we, we do a lot of talking with [00:26:00] people one on one. We do some community events where we'll go out and do some training, like what to do if you find a kitten or if you find some puppies or whatever it might be. You're hitting a few people at a time when you do that.
Amy Castro: I think that education of pet parents or pet owners, whatever they refer to themselves as, just in general, is the key to our overpopulation problem and our stray and abandonment problem. So the podcast was just a way to take that message and expand it exponentially and be able to reach..
Amy Castro: I mean, we have people listening around the world. And it's just getting that message out there as to what constitutes being a good pet parent on a variety of different levels. Anything from, we've talked about nutrition, supplements, end of life for your pet and pretty much everything in between.
Amy Castro: So living your best life and helping your pet do that too. But the ultimate goal is to keep pets in homes and to make it a good experience for the pet parents and for the pet. [00:27:00]
Dr. Sugerman: That's fantastic. I really love that you do that because, we have the same philosophy. We just want to educate people so we can do the same thing.
Dr. Sugerman: We just want to make sure as educated as possible.
Amy Castro: Yeah And that's why you've been on my show a couple of times. Yeah, you've you've been a, you've been a great guest and it's, and that, and that helps, to have, I like to have a variety of people on the show that, that have expertise and, and some qualifications.
Amy Castro: And it's not just Amy Castro says you should do this, somebody that's a professional and a veterinarian that adds some credibility to things. So I appreciate it.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And I really enjoyed listening to your podcast, I think that they've been very informative, especially for pet parents.
Dr. Sugerman: I think you definitely break it down to terms that people can understand as well, which I really appreciate.
Amy Castro: Oh, thanks. Yeah. I just try to be like I would be if I was just sitting there having the conversation with the person or, letting them Eavesdrop on an interview, whatever it might be.
Dr. Sugerman: Absolutely. Was there anything else you want to share about the rescue organization or about the podcast?
Amy Castro: No, I would just love for people [00:28:00] to listen to the podcast. And I think, wherever you are listening to Tyler's podcast. Check out your local rescues and shelters and see, see who needs your help.
Amy Castro: One other thing I would just say quickly too, is that we, we get a lot of people that when they come to volunteer, they'll ask, are you no kill? And they don't want to be affiliated with a kill facility. But in reality, if your local shelter is a, either a high kill or, or, does euthanize animals, that's the place that probably needs you the most.
Amy Castro: Because it's, it's volunteers that will help, reduce the number of animals to get euthanized because you're going to be fostering, because you're going to be working with those animals, you're going to be helping get them adopted. I would definitely try to support, cause I don't think anybody that works in a shelter that has to euthanize pets wants to do that.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly.
Amy Castro: It's a necessity. And until we get in there and make it so it's not needed anymore. They need as much help as anybody else.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, that's a fantastic point. I really appreciate that you pointed that out. Yeah, because I feel like they do need a lot of help because there's not as many [00:29:00] people who will do that.
Dr. Sugerman: But if more people foster those pets, then the less number of pets that are going to be euthanized.
Amy Castro: Exactly.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay. Thank you again, Amy. I really appreciate you coming on here and just like talking to us about all of this. And, it's always hard when we have to talk about rescue organizations and stuff, because a lot of people just think about only their pets.
Dr. Sugerman: But I think that it's really important to be able to talk about how we can help all these other pets that aren't just our own pets.
Amy Castro: I appreciate you having me on to share my tales.
Dr. Sugerman: All right, everybody thank you again so much for listening. As always, keep your pets happy, safe, and healthy. Thanks guys.
Dr. Sugerman: I just wanted to give a special thanks to Amy Castro and all of her team over at Starlight Outreach and Rescue. They do amazing things for our pets. I also wanted to say thank you to Shawn Hyberg for doing all the editing. And for Kelly Dwyer for doing the website production.
Dr. Sugerman: We'll see you back here next week. Thank you, guys.