Translator: Carla Gattone Reviewer: Denise RQ
It's 10 years ago, it's early autumn,
and I have taken a complete leave of my senses.
I've been watching the news
at this point for what feels like 24 hours a day for weeks,
and a fire has been lit inside me.
I'm packing my car to go someplace where I have no idea what to expect
so I'm taking everything: food, camping gear, medical supplies,
and a gas can, so I can fill up before I get too deep into the area.
I drive the 12 hours
from my home in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Tylertown, Mississippi.
My destination's Camp Katrina.
When it was all said and done,
about 600,000 volunteers made their way to the gulf
to help the victims of Katrina.
Most of them went to rescue people; me, I went to rescue animals.
I'd been involved in animal rescue for just a couple years at this point,
and I remember exactly why;
I had ready a story in the paper
about this dog that had been so horrifically abused
that I couldn't stand it,
and I called the first animal rescue I could find and said, "Sign me up."
I thought I had seen the world dish out
some pretty nasty stuff to animals at that point,
but it paled
in comparison to what I was seeing the animals going through in Katrina.
So off I went.
By the time I rolled up-- let me back up.
Camp Katrina was run by the Humane Society of Louisiana
and it was, basically, a hastily thrown together refugee camp
for companion animals displaced by the hurricanes.
By the time I rolled up, it had been almost two months since Katrina,
and the animals were still flowing in.
They were in terrible condition.
So we would get them triaged, get them stabilized, and settled in.
This was not glamorous work;
our daily responsibilities included
picking up a lot of poop and cleaning a lot of litter boxes,
and I can tell you
that if you ever have to clean the litter box of a feral cat,
you are taking your life into your own hands.
(Laughter)
We slept on the ground, if we slept at all;
there was food available, but we would forget to eat;
and showers, no.
So we're tired, we're hungry, we're stinky, but nobody complained.
We had come from all over,
there were people there from as far away as Hawaii and Canada.
All of them like me, had seen the suffering,
had gotten under their skin,
and set them on fire, and compelled them to act.
I made friends for life at Camp Katrina, and I fell in love with a lot of animals.
When I got there, the camp was full of pit bulls,
and I don't mind telling you that made me very nervous,
but I quickly realized that just like all the other dogs,
they were scared, they were tired, they were hungry,
and they were desperate for human contact.
There would be this moment, a couple days after we had an animal,
especially with the dogs,
where you could see this light bulb go on,
and you could see them figure out that they were going to be OK.
Everything was going to be alright.
And they would go from this hunched up position,
and they would open up, and they would smile,
and their tails would start wagging,
and they would become happy, normal dogs again.
That's my friend Shelly, talked to her on Facebook yesterday.
This is Amy;
she was terrified of pit bulls when she got there, she got over it.
But it was beautiful to see,
and it was terrible.
We saw a lot of suffering,
and the whole time that we were there trying to rescue all these animals,
people were trying to break into the camp
and steal them, steal the dogs, so that they could fight them.
It was heartbreaking and infuriating to know that these animals
that we were working so hard to save, and we were falling madly in love with,
that people wanted to kill them for their own entertainment.
We were forced to build razor wire fencing around the camp,
and patrol the fence line from dusk until dawn,
but in the end, we kept them safe.
The Katrina Animal Rescue Effort managed to reunite some families and their pets
- this is Gumbo and his family;
there was not a dry eye in camp that day -
But sadly, a lot of families could not be located.
We didn't know
if it's because they didn't know where to look for their pets
- there were rescues all over the place -
if they were in a situation where they just couldn't have animals,
or if they just hadn't survived.
But the animals that could not be reunited were placed in new homes.
We saved, collectively, thousands and thousands of animals.
Here's what Camp Katrina taught me: people want to help.
We respond to stories that move us,
and sometimes, those stories are so powerful
that they can move us from "Somebody should do something"
to "I wish there was something that I could do,"
to "I am going to do something."
Years later, I attended the conference on service and volunteering in New Orleans,
and like me, a lot of the people there had been on the ground for Katrina.
We were in the shadow of the Superdome, reliving all of those memories,
the good ones and the terrible ones,
and what was amazing was that the people of Louisiana showed up.
I mean showed up.
High school marching bands, politicians, lots of celebrities,
and they kept coming and coming to say thank you.
Through everything that they had suffered,
it was important to them to tell us that what we had done was meaningful.
It took my breath away.
And I realized that while I had gone down because I wanted to help animals,
I actually ended up helping people too.
Animal rescue volunteers do more than move cats and dogs, we help people.
Sometimes, in very surprising ways.
My friends Tim and Donna adopted Sally
and she is such a spectacular creature
that she inspired them to start a rescue that they call Bad Rap.
That was 16 years ago, and they've been volunteering their time ever since.
Today, they are thought leaders in the world of animal welfare.
They were instrumental in helping rescue the Vick dogs,
and in the process,
they changed the way that the legal system views canine victims of dog fighting.
Because of this, a number of the Vick dogs were able to be adopted into loving homes
- that's Tim and Donna and five of the dogs;
pretty scary, right? -
and some of those dogs even went on to become certified therapy dogs.
This is Leo, who worked with a group called Our Pack,
and he passed away a few years ago,
but his specialty was comforting people
as they went through chemotherapy treatment.
Seems to be doing a good job here.
And this guy, his name is Coal, because he's from Kentucky,
years ago, I helped rescue him from a meth house bust
and the woman who adopted him trained him to be a search and rescue dog.
So despite all they had been through,
with the help of volunteers, these dogs found a way to give back.
In North Carolina, through a group called "New Leash on Life",
prisoners train shelter dogs in basic obedience.
Now of course this helps the dogs get adopted, which is great,
but also, participants in that program discovered
their rate of recidivism dropped from 36% all the way down to 6%.
So participants in this program,
when they got out of jail, they stayed out of jail.
The founder of that program went on to start another program
called "People & Paws 4 Hope" [with the] same format,
but this time, she's pairing dogs with teenagers,
and the goal is to keep these young men and women
out of the system in the first place.
Here's one for the cat people:
in Indianapolis, there's a group called IndyFeral,
and they started a TNR program, that stands for Trap, Neuter, and Return,
and they started spaying and neutering all these feral cats.
Well, a few years later the city noticed that the number of stray cats
coming into the shelter had dropped dramatically.
That reduces the burden on the shelter.
So they did some quick math, and they figured out
that over the period of time that they had been doing this program,
the volunteers of IndyFeral had saved Indianapolis tax payers
almost 300,000 dollars.
Not bad.
Other advocates are fighting for anti tethering legislation,
and what that does is it prevents people from leaving their dogs chained up 24/7.
I think it's fair to assume
that this is largely motivated for concern for the welfare of the dogs,
but it has the important side effect of enhancing public safety,
because no matter what you've heard about which dogs bite or why dogs bite,
chained dogs are three times more likely to bite than other dogs.
So if you get dogs off chains, you reduce dog bites.
That idea has caught fire,
and we're seeing anti tethering ordinances being implemented all over the country
leading to safer communities.
I think it's fair to assume
that most, if not all of the people who did these things,
at some point had an experience, or read a story
that moved them to "I will",
and their efforts
- because they like to see cats and dogs getting the care that they need -
had significant benefit for their communities.
So we've looked at animal rescue as a lens into volunteerism,
but you say, "What if I'm not into animal rescue?"
Fear not good citizens,
because volunteering of all kinds is great for you and is great for the community.
People who volunteer are less likely to suffer ill health later in life.
Seniors, in particular, receive both physical and mental health benefits.
Cities or states with higher rates of volunteers have lower mortality
and lower rates of heart disease,
and communities with a lot of volunteers are more civically healthy.
That means those people are more likely to vote,
those people are more likely to go out
and fix whatever needs to be fixed in their community,
because they know they can.
Those communities are more connected and more vibrant.
Sounds good so far, right?
One in four of us gives about 2 hours a week of volunteering.
Doesn't sound like much, but it adds up.
In 2013, 62 million volunteers gave this country
7.7 billion hours of service
The value of that service is 173 billion dollars.
Volunteers gave this country 173 billion dollars worth of their time.
If you pay taxes you might want to go hug a volunteer.
I'm right here.
So that sounds great,
but what kind of skills do you need to volunteer?
When I lost my mind and set off for Camp Katrina,
I didn't have any special skills.
Well, I didn't know I had any special skills.
When I was there I found out I speak dog.
No, for real.
I can read dogs really well, and I can connect with dogs,
and if a dog is feeling frightened or disoriented,
I can use body language and tone of voice to help that dog feel safe.
Also, I can spot a stray dog from about a mile away.
I see dogs that are invisible to everybody else,
and this little gift of mine I call Dogdar
(Laughter)
and believe me when I tell you it is a blessing as well as a curse
because if I see them, I have to go get them.
But I found out I was really good at these things.
I found out I was good at a whole bunch of things
that I never would've discovered
if I hadn't jumped in and started volunteering.
A couple months ago, someone sent me this amazing t-shirt that says,
"I rescue animals, what's your super power?"
Dogdar, I speak dog.
If you don't know, aren't you a little curious? Maybe?
Sometimes, all it takes is a laptop.
In 2014, a veteran named Steven White was attacked by somebody he barely knew.
He was beaten, and he was set on fire, and he later died from his injuries.
The community was shocked and devastated. He left behind a partner and 3 dogs,
and I know this because a mutual friend of ours, came to me and said
they needed some help finding new homes for two of the dogs,
because his partner couldn't manage them without Steven.
This is Tiberius and Momo.
So I had been so moved by this story
that I was very happy to know there was something I could do to help.
So I did what I always do when I find an animal that needs a home,
I get some pictures and I write their story,
and I pop it up on Facebook; Easy, right?
This post got shared, it got shared a lot. I lost track around 4,000 shares.
Because the story was powerful,
and people were moved, and people wanted to help.
I heard from people as far away as Seattle and Chicago,
a veterinarian in Virginia donated
a year's worth of heartworm and flea and tick preventative,
because like me, she was happy to know
there was some small thing that she could do.
I am happy to say that both dogs have been adopted into amazing homes,
and all I had to do was put a story up on Facebook.
So what gets under your skin?
What has the power and the potential to set you on fire?
To move you from "Somebody should," to "I wish," to "I will."?
10 years ago, I left the safety and comfort of my home
to go set up camp in a muddy field in Mississippi
because Hurricane Katrina got under my skin, and it set me on fire.
I knew that there was something that I could do.
And as it turns out, I could do a lot.
Thank you.
(Applause)