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Sept. 1, 2021 - Rudy Giuliani
49:11
Meet the Founder of the Largest No-Kill Animal Sanctuary in the Country | Leo Grillo | Ep. 166
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Hello, this is Rudy Giuliani, and I'm back with another episode of Rudy's Common Sense, and this one, as you can see, is quite different.
We're at Delta Rescue, which is a remarkable place that you're going to fall in love with when you see what's done here.
There are about 1,500 dogs, cats, horses that have been rescued, and if they hadn't been rescued, they would have died in the wilderness, or they would have been killed in a pond.
Instead, they're brought here, And Leo Grillo is in charge, and we'll see Leo in a second.
And let's see what happens with him.
I mean, it's really remarkable to see what can be done if you just have a little caring for God's creatures.
So let's find Leo.
There he is.
Mr. Mayor, good to see you.
Thanks for making the trip.
Oh, thanks, man.
I've been dying to see this place, you know that.
Jerky.
Jerky, OK.
Not for you.
Not for me, all right.
Who do we have here?
All right, this first section, we have a whole bunch of puppies.
There are two mothers, one who had the puppies already in a den, and another one who was pregnant, her sister.
So we got these puppies.
They're little four or five-week-old puppies.
They're about a year old now.
Wait till you see them.
They're huge.
Two sisters?
Two sisters, yeah.
The second one had the puppies here.
And they were all hand-raised, you know.
They're beautiful.
This is a beautiful looking dog.
Yeah, where do you see the rest?
Look behind you.
So this group here, you found the two mothers in the wilderness.
Yeah.
They were both pregnant.
One had the litter and one was pregnant.
Yeah.
So one group was born in the wilderness and then came here.
And the other group was born here.
Right.
But in any event, they've all been brought up here.
Yeah.
So they're very friendly.
But see the way they're standoffish.
The mothers were not household pets.
You can tell that by the behavior.
And they've never been household pets.
So they've been abandoned.
Look at it.
There we go.
This group looks a little reddier.
Two different litters.
Yeah, they are.
That was out there.
So these are cousins, these dogs here?
These are cousins, they're sisters, yeah.
Now these are the ones who were born here, so they're, you see how friendly?
The ones who were born out there are little standoffish.
This is Olympia.
I think we're gonna get muddied up.
Now tell me about Olympia.
Olympia's about 10 years old.
She was in a desert.
Olympia looks like he's having a little trouble walking.
Olympia's getting older and she has back issues, so we've got her on medication for her back.
But you seem to like, I mean she seems to be a nice calm dog.
Yeah, yeah.
That's why we came in here.
Is she, was she found in the wilderness?
Yeah, and she had two puppies with her, and that's one of her pups over there.
Olympia and her two pups were, looks like they were from a house recently abandoned.
Ah.
Whereas the shepherds look like they were out there for a while.
I see.
They could have been abandoned as pups, and they grew up out there.
I know, I know.
You're shy.
She's a beautiful girl.
How long she been around?
We've had her about eight years.
This is Hart's.
Go in here with her.
She looks young.
Well, she'll surprise you.
I have a Christmas mailing that I send out pretty much the same every year.
And there's these little puppies, four little puppies.
They're about two months old and they're all sleeping.
And they have little Santa hats on.
And I say that they're dreaming of what Santa's going to bring them.
This is like 10 years later.
She's one of the only survivors of the four.
She's up there.
Where did she come from?
Oh, the four were desert dogs.
Pardon me?
The four, the puppies were desert puppies.
She was born in the desert?
They were born in the desert, yeah.
You found them there?
With their mom or without?
No, no mom.
Oh.
Abandoned.
Abandoned, yeah.
See that?
Look at hearts.
And your siblings are gone, huh?
We had spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds.
By the way, these were invented here.
These are made with 25 bales of straw and three sheets of plywood, 10 minutes, and you have a shelter.
And the straw will last, if you get rice straw, it'll last 20 years.
We milled the permanent ones here where we stuccoed them.
And inside is a four by six doghouse, but it's four feet by six feet.
Sometime I look for the workers and I couldn't find the workers.
They're taking a siesta inside the doghouse.
How's that?
But then it's warm in the winter, cool in the summer by about 20 degrees.
It's R51 insulation.
This is all straw.
Turn the bales different ways.
And we put this online.
We have the directions online.
And Maneka Gandhi of India wrote a two-page letter saying how wonderful these were.
She appreciates the thing.
For people.
For people.
They were using them for people.
So these are, these are... Straw bale.
Do they generally go in there at night?
Oh, this is their house.
Yeah, this is their house.
So if you come here at night, would they be inside there?
They'll be inside, mostly.
This would be a good time to take a short break.
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Thank you for returning.
Chaos from Afghanistan during the war about 10 years ago.
Forward operating base, 30 miles ahead of the military base.
Woof!
They had all the surveillance equipment and...
So, we got a dog out.
Oh! Oh!
We got him from Kandahar to Kabul, then to Pakistan, then to UK, then to Kennedy.
And after we got banded out, she showed up.
We had no way to get her out.
It took six months to arrange, to figure a way to get her out, but she drove from Kandahar across Afghanistan to Kabul.
Look, she's going to hit poor.
She's a sweetie.
Yeah, I'll give you one more.
So she spent 10 years here, a year in Afghanistan during the war, and then 10 years here.
What I was afraid of was the first thunderstorm.
Are they going to think they're hearing shelling?
Yeah, yeah.
It didn't bother them.
Oh, because of her, by the way, they flew a flag over the base.
And they put together a shadow box for me, thanking us for getting the dogs and the cats out of Afghanistan.
You're a hero!
Look at the chaos.
Yeah, things aren't so good back there right now, so we're glad you're here.
Dogs aren't doing too well there right now.
And that's what they're not talking about.
All those people, all those people who are leaving have to leave their pets behind.
Maxine, her story, all over Afghanistan, wherever the British commandos this unit, this British commando unit picked her up as a puppy and they carried her on missions for six months.
At the end of that time they had to go back to UK And they heard about what we were doing, shipping animals back, so they brought it to Kabul.
And about a month later, she made the trip.
They have to go from Kabul to Pakistan, then from Pakistan to Heathrow, and from Heathrow to Kennedy, and then from Kennedy she came here.
So she's been here, like the rest, about 10 years.
So, Leo, explain to us what we've just seen.
These are the dogs.
This is once you've... When they first come in, they don't come here, right?
You first orient them, and then you... Oh, yeah.
No, we take them to... We have a hospital, and that's where they get an intake, check them out, do all the stuff.
We have a section where they're isolated with other dogs, and they're in each individual yard.
And then once we know who they are and what, you know, and everything's fine with them, spayed, neutered, all the rest, then we'll move them into yards that we know are open out here.
And you try to figure out what's the best possible yard for them?
Yeah, yeah.
And combinations.
And neighbors.
Neighbors that they like.
Now Milo taught me a lesson.
I came in here to get pictures of him.
And I said, you know, I've been doing this.
Come here, Milo.
Let me finish it off with you.
I've been doing this for a long time.
And Milo is proof to me that what we're doing is really, really good.
Now, the backstory is down at the border.
Our desert and the Mexican desert are the same desert.
Here you go.
Here you go.
They're the same desert and what they're telling me is the Mexicans are coming up to the border and they're sending their dogs over the border to get rid of them.
So the border patrol people, the ICE people, the Marines on the border, They feel bad for these dogs and so if they have extra food in their lunch they give it to them.
They give them water.
But then the dogs wander off.
That's the end of them.
And every now and then, one of the dogs hangs around a Border Patrol guy.
This Milo was one of them.
He hung around him.
And then I got in touch because I have a friend down there.
One of the Border patrol people.
If you can catch him, we'll take him.
So he became a desert dog who is, you know, out there and it goes up to 125 degrees.
He's a desert dog, no future, no nothing.
But he hung around a border patrol guy long enough.
Who ingratiated him.
Yeah.
And so we got him here.
Now, here's what he did.
I came here.
He was in this yard for a week.
This one?
This yard.
And he was so happy.
He was showing us how happy he was.
He was in his pool.
He was running around the yard in circles, spinning, making little dust clouds.
And I said, this dog is just showing us exuberance.
Look what he has.
He's the king of his own property.
And he keeps it nice.
He's got a house.
He's got a pool.
He's got neighbors.
He's got food and he's got love.
Look at him, you can see it.
And to come from that into this, this guy, we were taking pictures, my daughter and I, and he was spinning around in circles, just so bloody happy that this is my world.
Yeah.
We'll be back very soon.
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Thank you for returning to the interview of Leo Grill, and it sure is interesting, isn't it?
I mean, we're on our helicopter pad.
I built this years ago when we used to have floods.
One year we had a flood so bad, nobody could get to work.
And I have all these dogs looking to get fed and watered and stuff.
So I hired a helicopter to land about two miles away.
Right.
And I loaded all these guys with wide eyes onto these choppers and flew them into here.
And then they could take care of it.
And they couldn't come out for three days.
We told him, make sure you bring plenty of food.
Last year, no, two, three years ago, we had a big fire here, and the Forest Service finally listened, and they made this, their helicopter pad for the big type ones, and they put a fire out on the other side of the hill.
So how close does the fire get, Leo?
The fire was on the other side of that mountain over there, right where that truck... Don't you have to think about evacuating?
No, you can't.
This is shelter in place.
If you look the way it's laid out, it's carved, it's fire protected.
So this is our, over here, you get a beautiful... You get a great idea of how big it is, Leo.
Yeah, from here.
Now we were, we were down there to the left where the cars are parked.
Yeah, yeah.
That's that one little section we were just in.
And then you see the rest goes up, it goes behind these buildings over here.
You got the old, you know, this this place is in 1986.
Yeah, it's nice though.
So we have some stuff that was built in the late 80s, then the 90s, and then I invented this thing, this was going to be great, called Dog Town.
I got guys from Costa Rica to come up and design this, and I ask everybody on a tour if there's any PhDs, and they say no.
I say good, because I found out what PhD stands for.
Piled Higher and Deeper.
This was flat.
Those dog houses, there's 30 of them, Those are 3,000 PSI concrete.
There's a boiler that runs hot water underneath in the winter and then cool water in the summer, supposedly.
Right.
$5,000 each one of those houses.
Yeah.
These are $500.
The dogs love these.
That's the biggest pain.
But we built it with hills to make little neighborhoods.
So yeah, this, our horses, now the horses are all, there's a few over there, but they run this whole hill up in here.
Right now they're down, they're down that part.
So now we're, Leo has taken me to the cat house.
This was Richard Moore's house.
This house was... Richard Moore was the guy who did the Winnie the Pooh comic strips for 25 years.
This exact house, right in that other room.
So the cats live in Tigger's house.
That's what I tell people now.
So at any rate, they're telling me that when I bought this place and I converted this right away into a cat house, I needed a place for my cats.
Now, are all of the cats indoors?
No, indoor-outdoor.
See the little chutes they could go out?
They go in or out.
They do whatever they want.
Air-conditioned in here.
You can hear the air conditioner.
Yes.
And then outside, when they want during the day, the cats go in and out.
At night, they like to stay inside.
But at night, the feral cats come down.
Because the feral cats right now, cold or hot, they're all hiding up in the cat houses, the cat trees outside.
You can see them walking now.
Those are mostly feral cats.
And they'll come down and mix when the labor goes home.
When the workers go home, they come down.
They don't want to be around people.
Oh, by the way, you see, those are actually mining shacks that they're living in.
Those are miniature mining shacks with sluice boxes.
I went to Calico and I looked at the Calico mine and I saw these shacks and these sluice boxes so I had them recreate them here for the cats.
Do they tend to sleep out there?
Yeah.
The feral cats?
Yeah, the feral cats rather sleep out there.
And the others sleep here?
They'd rather sleep because they're used to it.
When we grew them up, these were born here or close to and they were handled all the time, handled by everybody.
And then they come into a room and we put them in those kitty condos to get used to the cats and have the other cats get used to them.
Then after a while, we open the door and let them come out and let the other ones go in and we do all that.
So they've been inside their whole life.
They haven't been outside until they get a chance to go in and out here, or in one of the other catteries.
So mostly they prefer inside.
That's where they've been.
And the feral cats come in what?
They can do whatever they want.
One point during the day?
They're not here all day?
No, they'll stay outside.
Mostly they don't want to be around people.
So Leo, tell us again how this all got started.
This is a major operation now.
You have how many acres?
115 here.
And there's some others.
This is in Acton.
We have 115 on this property.
And where's the other?
There's some other outlying properties we have.
Around Acton?
Around Acton, yeah.
And most of the animals are here.
They're here.
This is the main center.
Yeah.
Sanctuary.
This is the super sanctuary.
Super sanctuary.
Maximum 1,500 animals.
Up to 1,500, yeah.
Dogs, cats, horses, yeah.
And you said about 800 cats, 800 dogs.
Yeah, somewhere at max it's about 800 or 900 cats.
I think we've been up to close to 900 dogs.
You told us how you got started caring about animals and dealing with them.
How did you get to this stage where you bought a big piece of land and you put in a... Did I tell you it's a blur?
It's all a blur.
Tell me what year this is.
Oh, man.
No, I had to make a decision one day.
What happened was I had all these dogs in the woods.
I was feeding them in the woods.
I'm talking about I drive up and I got 150 dogs I'm feeding in different woods.
They see the car, they come running.
They know me.
They're my friends.
Nobody cared.
Nobody cared.
I never got a license to go out and capture dogs if there is such a thing.
I never did anything by... I never asked permission.
I just did it.
So... And then I find out, you know, this animal control agency is supposed to be doing this, and they're not.
I found out later.
Everybody left me alone, because if anybody said to me, you're not supposed to be out there rescuing these animals, I'll say, well, who is?
And they say, we are.
Well, why aren't you?
So they didn't want that confrontation.
So they just let me do what I want.
And I just kept doing it.
Well, I had 150 or so dogs.
And I needed a place to bring them in.
And I'd asked around, and I had 29 dogs at home in Glendale, in the backyard.
And I had a city attorney that was, you know, always after me.
And he said, I don't want to, I don't want to basically put you in jail because I'm going to look bad.
29 dogs.
So one day I got a phone call from three different people.
There's a kennel in El Monte.
This was a lady who was on the Johnny Carson show.
She claimed that she was an animal communicator.
And she had German shepherds, and she would get cattle prod them at night to make them angry, and she sold them as guard dogs.
And they finally caught up with her, put her out of business.
So they had this kennel, and they said, it's available.
So I went down, and I looked at it, and we had a little tiny bit of money to put down on it and get a mortgage.
I talked to a bunch of people, ran stories in the paper, and I got on TV a lot, and I needed an angel to sign for the mortgage.
And there was a guy, his name was Teague, T-E-A-G-U-E, Teague.
He looked like Alfred Hitchcock, an English guy.
And he made titanium rods to hold people who were paraplegic.
He would hold their heads up with titanium rods in the halo.
So his wife said to him, Derek Teague, she said, Derek, you make the halo already, why don't you be the angel?
So he signed for us and we got that first kennel down there.
And I brought 150 dogs in, in like a month.
And I had them all, here they are.
That was a regular kennel?
That was a regular kennel, yeah.
When did you go to the concept of having this vast property?
Well, what happened was, this was 83 we got the kennel.
So about 84, 85 I have a kennel.
And, you know, I had up to 250 dogs eventually down there.
And it wasn't right.
How could I take them?
They're running around free.
Now, yes, they're not going to live long, but they're running around all this acreage.
I put them in a dog run.
This isn't sitting right.
I said, I need to build something from scratch.
So back then, we had direct mail before the internet.
And I was good at direct mail, so I raised a lot of money.
And I got people to buy shares, deed shares, I call them.
$89 you could have a deed share.
And we figured out how much land there was.
And I broke it down into how much $89 would buy.
And people could buy multiples of $89.
Donate money.
Donate $89 to get a deed share with their name on it.
So we did that and bought this property.
Now I have this land.
What am I going to do with it?
We had a build.
Property meaning the whole 320?
I had 21.
I had 21 acres.
21 acres of Richard Moore's property.
I had 21 acres.
21 acres.
21 acres of Richard Moore's property.
First thing is I put up fences, and then I put up fences here.
And it just organically evolved.
I never planned on... I didn't know how many dogs I was going to get.
Are you at your capacity now?
Dog-wise, no.
We have been, and we've had attrition from... Our attrition is they get old and they die.
You know, we treat them for everything.
We treat cancers in hearts and kidneys.
And we have a hospice program.
We have hospice if they're on the downslide.
And we do everything we can for them.
And then we lose them.
And then, you know, it goes like this.
We have fires, and the fires around here, I'm worried about the direction they're coming in, so I've pulled the sanctuary back into the center.
I've stopped using the perimeter yards that are close to where the fires would be, because we've had to move them during a fire, bring everybody in, you know, and all that.
But now we're in a situation where, with what's going on, I showed you like with Milo, you know, There's a lot going on.
Our desert is now the Mexican desert and our desert.
So they're all mixed up.
So we're helping those dogs get them out of there.
They're ours.
Who knows?
They're a dog.
But where are they now physically?
The ones that need help?
They're in the desert.
South of here.
So that's a group you still have to rescue?
Oh yeah.
They'll be coming in.
A little at a time.
So we'll be building back up to capacity.
You know what I found, too?
When I rescue dogs or cats, and I keep rescuing, people don't dump anymore because they don't see the sign that says, dump your dog here, dump your cat here.
So I said, you know, if I could live a thousand years, we wouldn't have abandoned animals because I'd clean up all the abandonment areas and nobody will ever think to dump a dog.
Right, and they have certain set areas where the dogs are.
They see them, and you know what they do?
They see cats abandoned, and they see cats living well, you know, at the beach especially.
They see tourists come up and feed them.
So, oh, I can dump my cat here.
People are feeding them.
Well, they don't know they're dying.
They're getting sick and they're dying because nobody's, you know, there's no medicine.
There's probably more cats than rodents.
I mean, there's cats everywhere.
I don't know how you help them all.
I really don't.
But you know, I did a thing in 83 for National Public Radio, and I stand by this today.
That I made a deal with the universe some time ago.
That any animal that needs my help, cross my path.
That's what I said, cross my path.
Imagine I did this in 83, I must have been smart.
Cross my path.
A mouse, A cat, a dog, a cow, we have cows over there, crossed my path.
So I helped that animal and I go out of my way to do whatever.
These animals crossed my path.
They all crossed my path.
But when somebody calls me and says, oh, I found a dog, he crossed your path.
Now to save a lot of trouble for you and me, do you allow dogs to be adopted from you?
I did in the old days.
I wrote a book on adopting because nobody else did.
I did a movie with celebrities about adopting.
And about 10 years in, I found out it ain't working too well.
Why not?
I get the best people.
I'm the guy who knows how to adopt.
Why isn't it working?
Why are they not keeping their dogs?
Well, we did a thing.
Cost us some money.
We did a thing, a market research on the pet industry.
And then I got a call from the researchers.
Oh my God, you won't believe what we just found.
What?
In America, people keep their pets two and a half years.
That's it.
Average.
This was back 25 years ago.
Two and a half years.
Yeah.
Now it's probably much less.
So, then it hit me that that's it.
I don't care if I adopt them or if you adopt them or if this, whoever done it, people generally keep them two and a half years, meaning you keep them for life, I keep them for life, they keep them for six months.
Somewhere there's an average of two and a half years.
Why am I, my, after all that they've been through, I'm not gonna trust somebody to give them a full lifespan.
I'm not gonna do it.
The odds are, it ain't gonna happen.
So, I had one dog in particular, I told you, Bonnie.
I had Bonnie, that I had her for years, and these wonderful donors fell in love with her, and I adopted them, and all, and I checked up, everything's fine, she's on the couch at Christmas with their dogs, everything's happy.
And then I called the following summer, oh, we put her down.
What do you mean?
Well, the vet said she was developing kidney problems.
We have a dialysis program we started with UC Davis.
I know a lot about kidneys.
So some shopping mall vet told you that my dog that you adopted is developing kidney problems?
And you put, well, we got in a big fight.
And I slammed the phone down.
I said, I will never adopt another dog to anybody as long as I live.
And I have it.
I will not adopt anybody.
That's it.
Here, guaranteed for life.
My promise to them, this will never happen again.
These cats, these dogs, this will never happen again.
You will never be abandoned.
So this is mostly caused by human beings who let these cats go.
And dogs go.
Originally.
But you can make a case for the fact that dogs all over the world are Village dogs, street dogs, people don't care for them the way we do in this country or in parts of Europe.
Dogs all over the world are in trouble.
Cats all over the world are invisible and in trouble.
And by keeping them apart like that, they don't cause trouble or they don't have trouble with each other?
No, no, no.
You can't have a group of dogs together because, like I said, it's a wolf pack.
So they're all five friendly dogs and then one dog gets in a fight with another dog and the other three jump in and attack the one that's down on the ground like a wolf pack.
It's a kill.
They don't mean it.
It's just, you know, nature.
So we're careful to make sure that two dogs who really like each other We marry boy, girl.
We marry them and they spend their life as companions.
Sometime when we have a litter, you'll see three dogs that are all cowardly.
They're just cowardly.
Keep them together.
So sometime you'll see three dogs in a yard.
Nobody's aggressive.
And they all support each other.
But three's rare.
Three, they have to come from the same litter.
If you see that, that's the same litter.
Mostly two, and then you'll see one.
Now, if it's an old dog and there's one, that means the mate probably passed away.
Right, right, right, right.
But if it's a young dog and there's one, he doesn't want anybody with him.
He's going to be that way all his life.
He'll be that way, yeah.
He's a bachelor.
You put somebody in there, he's... No, there's no way.
Now, again, we don't put him in.
We'll take him out and we'll take a candidate from over here and we'll bring them to neutral territory and let them go like this.
If they're wagtails and they kiss each other and they're happy, okay, maybe they'll work.
If they don't, then we don't put them together.
And if the hair goes up, you know, get them, separate them.
The guy whose hair went up probably will never get a mate because he's gonna always be aggressive.
He will be aggressive to any female.
Any other cat.
Oh, cats?
No, I'm talking dogs.
Dogs.
The cats, we just, you know, we do that.
We put them in the condo.
They get used to all the guys in the room.
And then after we think it's time, we'll open the door.
A couple of these guys will go in and visit the cat in the condo.
Then the cat in the condo will come out.
And he'll either go back in the condo or he'll start mixing.
And then he becomes part of the... So they get like a decompression chamber.
And do they almost all start mixing eventually?
Yeah.
Take just some longer than others?
Yeah.
Yeah, we haven't had any that said no.
What happens when you have very bad, bad, bad weather?
Can the dogs stay out there?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
In a terrible snowstorm or a terrible rainstorm or a terrible... The worst is snow.
Snow.
Snow.
Now, it's been a long time.
It's maybe 25, 30 years even.
We had a foot of snow here And it lasted a week.
And I had dogs.
And I'm telling you, I was worried about my dogs.
And the ones I'd look up and I would hear their icicles rattling in their coats.
They've got a house, they've got a pad, and they've got this thing, and they're sleeping out in the open, in the wet and in the cold, and they get up and the icicles are jingling on their coats.
And I figured it out.
I worry about them more than they worry about them.
No.
No.
Now, a short-haired dog that, right now, if we had a snowstorm tomorrow, no, I'd have, we'd have coats that we put on the short-haired dogs.
We have actual jackets and coats.
We do that all winter.
And if we had a snowstorm tomorrow, we'd be in trouble.
They don't have any protection.
They haven't built a coat yet.
But as the weather gets gradually colder, they build up their undercoat and they're good.
Bless we put the coats on them.
So how do you afford this place?
How do you maintain it?
This is very expensive.
Back in the day, we had direct mail.
Direct mail, I would write letters to millions of people and we would get money.
When we did the UC Davis dialysis program that we founded with them, we had money coming in from direct mail.
I had surplus money.
Because he announced you were doing this?
No, no, direct mail.
Well, direct mail.
I would ask people to send donations and I'd ask enough people that we got extra money than we needed.
So what I do is I bought more property so that we can have more animals.
I did that.
And then one year I found out about the dogs didn't have any dialysis.
There's no way to save them because I had a dog in trouble.
I called UC Davis and they said, well, dialysis.
Oh, where can I bring him?
Well, there is no such thing on the planet.
Why not?
Because there's no money in it for veterinarians.
Nobody wants to do it.
So I said, talk to me.
So we ended up, we built a dialysis center at UC Davis, and they dialyzed hundreds of dogs, you know, and then they learned things.
You couldn't dialyze a cat.
Now you can.
The dog dialysis, they can now get this.
If your dog drinks antifreeze, he's going to die.
If he drinks antifreeze and you fly him to UC Davis, or now they have 11 different ones, San Diego and stuff, if you fly him out here, and if they dialyze him the first day, he will not only live, he won't have any kidney damage whatsoever.
It's like he never drank antifreeze.
So they learned all of this, you know, with the program.
That's when we had money.
As direct mail died, and the internet took over, and my mailing list is shrink, shrink, shrink, now we depend on bequests from people who used to be donors, who passed away, and they left something in their estate planning.
So then I said, you know what, for the long term, who knows what's going to happen fundraising-wise, for the long term, I think, The bequest, the estate planning is what keeps this place going.
So if we get more people interested in putting this organization in their estate plans, then long term this place will go on forever.
But we need to do that.
We need to put estate plans.
That's more important than current fundraising?
Yeah, because you're asking people to donate $25 they don't have.
Right.
But when they put it in their estate plans, they're not going to need it.
So let me give it to the animals.
And that's the idea.
Now, also, when you talk about estates, you know, if people are going to entrust their money to an organization, number one, make sure it's doing what you want them to do.
But make sure they're gonna be here.
Think about that.
So many organizations that did well, after 10 years, they're gone, 15, they're gone.
And I know, because we're in an estate with somebody and they named five other places that don't exist anymore.
And you go, well, how do you do this?
So if you're gonna leave your money, you have to leave it to an organization that's gonna be there.
On the other hand, you get these giant organizations that are super rich, hundreds of millions of dollars.
Your money's like nothing.
So, you know, in the middle you have a sweet spot and I like to say that we are in this sweet spot where we've been around for 42 years so we're going to be here and we're not rich.
Your money coming in here will mean something.
So that's the whole point.
It's really terrific.
It's an unbelievable facility that you've built.
Yeah, it's amazing.
When I look at it sometime, who did this?
When you started your life, did you ever think you'd be doing this?
I had no idea.
You know, I came out here as an actor.
Like I said, I was an actor.
And I found these dogs.
And I fed them.
And then it was bad weather and they were sick and I kept feeding them.
And then the agent called me and said, you keep missing auditions.
You can't be an actor and do this.
You have to choose.
And I just said, look, I'm feeding dogs right now.
I'll call you back.
So she dumped me.
And that was the end of that.
And then I've been doing this ever since.
You regret it?
No.
I really, if I knew back then what I know now, I'd do this.
Do you get anything out of this?
Yeah, look.
You know, look.
Yeah, they are beautiful.
You look at each one.
And you know, you come to this too.
And I play this game with myself a lot.
When I'm trying to save an animal, you know, one of mine, I'm thinking, what would I give up to save this animal?
This is one of my personal ones.
What would I give up?
Would I give up this?
And would I give up this?
And would I give up that?
And would I give up that?
And it always comes back to yes, but you can't.
So how do we keep this going?
This is really valuable.
Does it need to expand?
I tried expanding, and unless you could watch it every day and see for yourself what's going on, this is it.
This is it.
I'm thinking there are other things to do, and I have done some other things.
We've done something in Romania.
We did something in India.
We did a big thing in India for cheap money.
You won't believe it.
We did stuff with dogs in India.
They electrocute them there, too.
But we did a thing with tigers.
They had four big wilderness areas.
Only one had tigers in it because that's where the prey was and the other three didn't have it because they didn't have any water.
Huh.
So somebody said a World Wildlife Fund was there for 30 years.
They didn't have any water.
So somebody said, you know, if we built drainage and built these things, we would get water to the other three.
And so at the time, we had money.
We were in direct mail.
And I said, OK, what will that cost?
Well, they gave me an idea.
So we built it in a month.
We had heavy equipment.
We had these giant... We moved earth and we created these things.
The monsoon came and it flooded the other three beautifully.
It filled the lakes.
The prey went down to the other three out of four parks.
The tigers followed them and nobody poached the tigers because they weren't that many.
Everything worked out and How much did that cost?
About $7,000.
$7,000.
Right.
For the whole thing.
Right.
They work for 35 cents a day.
It's a lot easier to do.
$7,000.
We saved all the time.
And we go, this world is really nuts.
But anyway, but we did it.
Romania, we did something.
We did something in Mexico.
There's another country out there, we did something, I forget.
People take advantage.
You think this is what's happening.
With the beautiful thing of the... What was it?
What's the country we had a war with?
Back in Clinton time.
We had a war.
We were... Bosnia.
Bosnia, right.
Bosnia.
Well, anyway.
These straw-billed dog houses, they sent me a thing.
They opened their first dog shelter.
And they had our straw bale dog houses.
I couldn't read it, it was a foreign language, but it said Delta, Delta, Delta, all through the magazine.
And look at that.
Halfway across the world, the dogs on those dog houses look just like the dogs on my dog houses.
The dogs are all the same.
All these animals are the same as the ones you have at home.
There's no difference.
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Welcome back.
This has really been a very, very fascinating, not only interview, but just seeing all this, it's much bigger, much more expansive than I, than I thought, you know, I've talked to you a lot in the last year now and I talked about it on radio and had a picture of it.
But not quite this beautiful and not quite this big.
Oh, thanks.
And it really is.
And outside, it's remarkable.
We've been sitting here now in the cat house for an hour.
The best little cat house.
They are so calm.
They're so happy.
They're so friendly.
And these cats here, these cats that we're seeing here are cats that are Kind of domesticated in the sense that they were born probably from feral cats, but born here.
This is remarkable, Leo, that you did this.
I mean, so what further work has to be done that's really important to you to really make sure that this continues, it grows?
Is there more of a need now for this?
Is the need growing?
Is it getting smaller?
Yeah, no, there are more.
Well, cats, there will always be.
There's feral cats all over the world.
Dogs, they're in trouble all over the world.
All I could do is, like I said, cross my path.
The ones that cross my path, I have to do this.
Only a lot of them cross my path.
Yeah, sure.
I wish more people would understand that when they see a dog out there, don't just walk away.
Feed them, give them some water, give them some food.
Go back and keep doing it.
That was always the thing.
I think here, What we need to keep going into the future is not to ask people for, like they do on those late night commercials, those poor women that call up and say, oh, I don't want to live anymore.
I see those commercials every night and those animals are suffering and they're suffering all of it.
No, no, no, no.
First of all, those are stock shots.
Those are stock shots they set up.
They got a video camera.
Why is the dog shaking?
Because he's afraid of the video camera.
And the lights.
And you're falling for that crap.
Now look, that's not it.
That's not what's going on.
So don't give up the ship.
The thing is...
To keep this going, this is going to save thousands.
Every animal you've seen today, every animal you've seen would be dead.
You'd never know they were alive and died.
You would never know these cats lived and died.
You would never know, because they'd be dead if it weren't for here.
This is a sanctuary.
It's a sanctuary.
They'll stay, and they'll get everything, and we do everything.
Why am I doing this if I can't take care of them all the way to the end?
There's no point.
I'm not in animal control.
I'm not trying to clear the streets of these cats or these dogs.
But if you look at it all, and the problem is so bad out there, you help what you can help.
You can't help them all, but you can try to tell people, look, I'm going to tell you a secret.
Look what this crazy SOB did.
One crazy man did this.
You can take care of five or six, because a lot of people say, well, I have two cats.
I can't take another one.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Do you know how many I have at home?
Do you know how many, you know?
You could definitely go out of your way and help one or two.
This is a nice little operation they got going here.
And you know what I'm surprised about, Leo?
Like, nobody's in there... I always thought of cats sort of like lions, that'd be one in charge.
One... National Geographic is wrong a thousand percent.
Cats caressing the tiger is A title to sell a show.
It's a different animal.
It's not.
These are not tigers.
They had the theme from Jaws when they played the ads for that show.
The lady, here pussy, pussy, pussy.
Trying to tell you your cats are wild animals.
They're not wild animals.
These cats need you.
These cats cannot live without you.
These cats die out there all the time.
You know, most of the litter dies.
They never reach a year old.
They die.
There's no food.
If they're feral, yeah.
They get all kinds of diseases.
They don't get fed.
They don't have an immune system built up.
No, you can see their body language.
And your dog you have at home and the cat you have at home is the same as these animals, is the same as the animals in Romania, same as in India, they're all the same.
They just suffer more in other countries than they do here.
This has been a very, very interesting and fascinating visit to Delta Rescue.
It is much bigger, it is much more interesting.
It's much more intricate than I realized and I had pretty big projection for it as what it would be like.
It's also remarkable to see the solutions that have been found for these animals so that they can live out what obviously you can just see it.
We saw it with the dogs.
We see it now with the cats.
These are very, very contented, happy animals who at one time in their life were either tortured or Abandoned or left alone or thrown out or terrible life would have been ahead for them.
So it's just wonderful to see that they're being so well taken care of and it just brings much more love into this whole world.
We can do this and boy do we need love and do we need animals to keep us kind of balanced and in perspective.
So I hope you enjoyed it.
I'm sure you did.
If you had any questions, you just get in touch with me at rudyscommonsense.com.
And how can they get you, Leo?
We're at deltarescue.org.
That's easy to remember, right?
Deltarescue.org slash Rudy.
You just do that and find out about them and try to help them continue this because it's a beautiful thing to see, isn't it?
I think having seen it, you're going to have a lot of people that become much more enthusiastic because it's for real.
And sometimes these things aren't for real.
So thank you very, very much.
Thank you, Leo.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Thank everyone here.
Our hero of 9-11.
We're going to be back if you like it here.
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