Episode 550: How Dogs Saved My Life ft. Zach Skow

Our Hen House: Vegan & Animal Rights Movement | Stories from the Frontlines of Animal Liberation

Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan

Documentary, Education, News, News Commentary, Society & Culture, Self-improvement

4.9 • 579 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2020

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the intro to the show Mariann talks to Jasmin about her new favorite book, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk and what a pleasure it is to read a book that really gets it about animals. Jasmin announces that she’ll likely be participating in The Goat Games, a virtual event that challenges participants to finish a 5-kilometer run, walk, bike, hike, or swim at a location of their choosing between August 8 and 16 to raise funds for Catskill Animal Sanctuary. Recently, Catskill, like many other sanctuaries, has lost 30% of it’s funding due to COVID-19. Then, in our continued effort to support vegan-owned businesses, we’re shouting out Charlie Fyffe and his amazing guide to 70+ Black owned vegan businesses in Los Angeles. Over 70! Then, Jasmin talks to Zach Skow. Zach is the founder of Marley’s Mutts, an animal shelter with a difference in Kern County, California. He turned to his dogs to help him when his diagnosis with end-stage liver disease meant that he had to battle to stay sober to access a liver transplant. When Zach recovered, he was prompted to start the rescue to give back, and, since its inception, Marley's Mutts has now rescued over 5,000 dogs and started a pioneering prison program called Pawsitive Change. In this episode Zach joins us to dive into how his love for his dogs and their unwavering acceptance of him pulled him through the darkness and brought him back to his authentic self. He shares why Marley’s Mutts is not only an animal shelter, but is a positive force for change in the community, and how the Pawsitive Change Prison Program works to take rescue dogs into local prisons to train with inmates and give both a second chance. Zach also discusses how he sees Marley’s Mutts developing and expanding in the future to support vulnerable humans and animals in need.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Our Hen House.
0:07.7	This is Marianne Sullivan.
0:09.1	And this is Jasmine Singer.
0:10.8	And this is the eighth time we've started this beginning.
0:14.6	So we're really hoping to get through it because I'm so hot, I'm going to die.
0:17.9	We actually have a great show and we would like to get to it. So, so let's really try because you have this amazing interview. It's with Zach Scow. And I, I haven't listened to the interview yet, but you were just raving about it. And he has this amazing story. I think I already said amazing. He has this extraordinary story of how he was saved by his dogs. Well, I guess a lot of
0:39.6	us could say that, but his story is a little more dramatic than a lot of us. And then to repay the
0:44.7	favor, he heads up Marley's Muts, which is this very special dog rescue in California and has these
0:50.3	great programs, including one of these programs, which, you know, it's not the only one in
0:54.5	the country, but you do see them here and there. But I really, really want to hear about it, where the
0:59.9	dogs work with prisoners. When you did this interview, you just couldn't stop talking about it.
1:04.9	I know. And I've been thinking about it ever since, especially in the time of COVID where the
1:09.7	prison population is just being
1:11.6	decimated. And obviously, I want to empty the prisons. But as long as we haven't emptied the prisons,
1:18.3	I'm glad there's dogs in there to be part of their communities because I think the dogs get a lot
1:24.1	out of it. The prisoners get a lot out of it. I loved this interview. I laughed. I cried. I did. I
1:28.8	truly cried, like immediately when I started doing it. And this week on the bonus segment, we'll be hearing
1:35.1	more of my conversation with Zach. As always, if you are a flock member, you will get a link to the
1:40.1	bonus segment in your email on the Tuesday after the podcast episode goes up, or you can
1:45.0	always find it on the flock Facebook group. If you're not a member of the flock and you can afford to,
1:49.8	then join us for $10 a month at our henhouse.org slash donate. And also as our special thank
1:56.1	you to our flock community during this time of COVID, we're doing our flock Friday Zoom calls. So they are at
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