Every year or two, I jettison the chief component of the “Talking Animals” format—a longform interview with a single guest—to offer a debate or some other multi-guest panel discussion.
As part of that occasional effort to temporarily reconfigure the program, and a parallel desire to give voice to a broader array of animal organizations, leaders and individual advocates, as well as provide airtime to listeners who also may have important animal-oriented information to announce or comments to offer on pending legislation, animal news items, etc.—I invite people to call (or email) into “Talking Animals” and, briefly, become the show’s guest.
For a variety of reasons, today seemed like an ideal time to reprise this segment, which yielded a handful of wonderful calls, and an only slightly smaller number of messages that arrived by email or text.
For example, Maria from the Humane Society of Tampa Bay (HSTB) called in to mention HSTB would be participating in the St. Pete Pride Parade that was to be held June 25, urging listeners to check out and patronize their retail store—the proceeds of which helps fund their programs to help animals…
Mary from Nokomis phoned, noting she’s interested in opening a cat café and seeking people who may be interested in partnering with her on the venture—she can be contacted via her Facebook page: Life of Riley…
Katherine of 411 Raccoon Solutions—a past “Talking Animals” guest and periodic contributor—checked in to inform us about a safe, humane, relatively new method of rat control, called ContraPest. Developed by two women some years ago, but without much of a marketing push initially, Katherine said, ContraPest functions as birth control for rats. Website: https://contrapeststore.com.
Nikki from Largo was lamenting the impact inflation struck her as having at animal shelters and, possibly, on pet owners generally feeling compelled to implement belt-tightening measures. She wondered why people couldn’t reduce their outlay on cable TV and other expenses she deemed less worthy than feeding and caring for animals…
A subsequent caller indirectly addressed Nikki’s concerns by pointing out that many pet store chains have phone apps that offer discounts on food and other products, and for those who can buy in bulk, many stores provide a free bag of food after purchasing a certain number of bags…
Rob from Thonotosassa suggested we do a show about dog nutrition, a suggestion I heartily embraced because I’ve been pondering how best to tackle a program about periodic pet food recalls, and these topics could nicely dovetail…And so on!
