Dr. Holly Dutton, Medical Director at the Tampa and Clearwater locations of VEG ER for Pets--a national enterprise that specializes in providing around-the-clock emergency and critical care services for pets—flips the script on my mention of the countless guests...
Tanya Smith--Founder and President of Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, a 459-acre sanctuary in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, chiefly housing abused, abandoned, and neglected big cats—recalls a precocious first foray into big cat rescue…at age 11. She explains that...
Katrina Shadix--founder and executive director of Bear Warriors United (BWU), whose stated mission is to preserve and protect bears, and all of Florida’s natural resources and wildlife—recalls, as a second generation Floridian, the formative joys of growing up in...
Occasionally, I jettison the chief component of the "Talking Animals" format--a long form interview with a single guest--to give voice to a broader array of animal organizations and leaders, concerned animal advocates, and others who simply care about animals....
Kate MacFall and Katherine McGill—longtime wildlife experts joining me for a discussion devoted to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), specifically, the FWC’s current effort to evaluate existing rules for wildlife trapping—address what for...
Kelly McCormick and Glenn Maresca--co-founders of Florida Rescue Farm, a sanctuary in Duette, FL, devoted to rescuing, rehabilitating, and housing pigs, goats, geese, chickens, ducks, cattle, other critters, and no less devoted to cultivating a strong educational...
Howard Baskin—often identified as Advisory Board Chairman of Big Cat Rescue, and spouse of Carole Baskin, the founder of the sanctuary that operated in Tampa for more than three decades—recalls, as a savvy businessman wielding a Harvard MBA, his reaction upon...
Bobbi Brink--founder and director of Lions, Tigers & Bears (LT&B), a 140-acre animal sanctuary in east San Diego she launched in 2002—recalls living in Texas, planning to open a restaurant (she’s from San Diego), and seeing her first advertisement offering...
Jodie Wiederkehr--veteran animal advocate and Founder-Executive Director of the Chicago Alliance for Animals (CAA)—recounts details of how CAA was formed, in 2015. (She has recalled in a previous “Talking Animals” conversation how her earliest professional animal...
Melissa Zepeda--an attorney and accomplished animal rights advocate, with a notable breadth of interests and topics that have animated her activism—recalls growing up in family that revered animals, then being stopped in her tracks when a fellow high school...
