Speaker 1: That was.
Speaker 2: Nice, Steely Heap, All right, we have in studio with
Speaker 2: us this morning some people that I need to talk
Speaker 2: to one on one because it was not none of
Speaker 2: you guys, it was me. Last week on the show,
Speaker 2: we were in the midst of a conversation and I
Speaker 2: said something that I thought was being funny and it
Speaker 2: wasn't funny. After hearing it back probably about five or
Speaker 2: six times, I started realizing more and more that, Okay,
Speaker 2: this probably is not a good thing to say. And
Speaker 2: then after getting a chance to talk to Carrie and
Speaker 2: your sister what's your sister name again, Kelly, or make
Speaker 2: sure you talk right.
Speaker 1: Into the mike.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to get right into about that.
Speaker 1: Carry and Kelly.
Speaker 2: Last night we had a conversation for I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe thirty minutes or something like that. I learned more
Speaker 2: and right now I'm going to use this opportunity to
Speaker 2: apologize to you, Carrie, who was the person who made
Speaker 2: the post that went viral and then ended up I
Speaker 2: got to tell you there's a lot of people that
Speaker 2: support you, guys, because they were all over a lot
Speaker 2: of our posts and then got me to realize that
Speaker 2: I need to make an apology, and I want you
Speaker 2: to know first off, that it was an uneducated comment
Speaker 2: that was made, and I want you to know that
Speaker 2: it was not a red statement. When I put that
Speaker 2: up there. That was from my heart sitting on my
Speaker 2: couch in my living room, and that is from somebody
Speaker 2: who truly does never want to go out and do
Speaker 2: anything to hurt any human or any animal. So I
Speaker 2: would love for you to educate me, but also use
Speaker 2: this opportunity to educate others that may not know what
Speaker 2: you guys do at bark Nation, but you can follow
Speaker 2: bark Nation. Barnation is a local organization, right. You're in
Speaker 2: the area here in Michigan, and you guys are helping
Speaker 2: out dogs that are put through horrible situations of dog fighting.
Speaker 1: So I am sorry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much, Mojo. We really appreciate that.
Speaker 4: Of course, hearing that on air was extremely jarring to
Speaker 4: us day in and day out.
Speaker 3: That is what our mission is.
Speaker 4: Our mission is to help end dog fighting and animal cruelty,
Speaker 4: not only here in Detroit but beyond right, So we
Speaker 4: are the.
Speaker 3: Only nonprofit organization that solely works with dog.
Speaker 4: Fighting and cruelty survivors. So this is our passion this
Speaker 4: is our love. So to hear you say that was,
Speaker 4: you know, it did take us back a bit like, oh, man,
Speaker 4: like we need to step up our education game and
Speaker 4: really show people, Yes, this is a thing, this is real,
Speaker 4: this is prevalent out there. But also on the flip side,
Speaker 4: seeing how quickly you responded to that in such a
Speaker 4: mature manner was.
Speaker 3: Really exciting for us as well.
Speaker 4: And it gave us the opportunity to come together and
Speaker 4: to have that talk and to say, hey, let's let's
Speaker 4: come on here, let's have a conversation that is positive,
Speaker 4: and let's let's have an educational moment here, and let's
Speaker 4: talk about it.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about what we do.
Speaker 2: I have to tell you that I did not know.
Speaker 2: And I told you this last night with your sister
Speaker 2: and your sister can we say what your sister does
Speaker 2: or Noah, she's in law enforcement? Right, So she's in
Speaker 2: law enforcement, and we were I had a friend who's
Speaker 2: in law enforcement also that told me. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, we do investigations and bust you know rings
Speaker 2: of dog fighting that take place in the Detroit area.
Speaker 2: And he said, and I guarantee there's more outside of
Speaker 2: Detroit and Toledo and Grand Rapids, And I said, I
Speaker 2: did not know that. I mean, I honestly thought from
Speaker 2: years back, I thought, after the whole Michael Vick situation,
Speaker 2: I thought dog fighting was was that stopped everything? I
Speaker 2: did not realize the worst thing about not thinking that
Speaker 2: dog fighting is around is now it's probably even crueler
Speaker 2: than what it was back when people were more open
Speaker 2: about going to dog fighting or doing dog fighting. So
Speaker 2: can you explain, first off, who's the dog.
Speaker 1: That's with us?
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's introduce the people.
Speaker 1: Who introduce introduce your team.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, So I'm Carrie.
Speaker 4: I'm one of our co founders, and I'm our current
Speaker 4: our current board president.
Speaker 3: I'm Jenna.
Speaker 5: I'm our shelter manager. So I work alongside Marissa with placements,
Speaker 5: with caring for the animals and kind of running kind
Speaker 5: of our facilities.
Speaker 1: And you are Marissa. I am Marissa Marissa.
Speaker 3: And this is apple Jack.
Speaker 6: Jack he knows we're talking about and.
Speaker 1: Had him in Laxidude.
Speaker 2: Tell me tell me about apple Jack and tell me
Speaker 2: about how you guys found that's.
Speaker 1: A great name.
Speaker 5: So with apple Jack, he's at actually from a different
Speaker 5: part of Michigan. We were called by a law enforcement
Speaker 5: team who was at a property. It was an unexpected
Speaker 5: Sometimes we have their investigations. We work with different organizations
Speaker 5: that are that are putting together these search warrants. This
Speaker 5: was an unexpected situation for this team and they call
Speaker 5: us and said, hey, we've got the situation. We believe
Speaker 5: that it is dog fighting as well as what they
Speaker 5: were there for. We went to the property. It very
Speaker 5: much was and we met apple Jack and several of
Speaker 5: his other friends.
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to ask it to Normally,
Speaker 2: so when you go into a situation like this, like
Speaker 2: you see multiple dogs in a home that are and
Speaker 2: this and that's the purpose.
Speaker 5: So most of these dogs are going to be they're outside.
Speaker 1: We know that all weather, all seasons, all okay. So
Speaker 1: that's a big clue.
Speaker 5: Living on chains, they're in the dirt. They're not living
Speaker 5: the greatest lives. And so that was apple Jack. He
Speaker 5: was on a chain. He was jumping at the end
Speaker 5: of it, very excited to see us. Something a lot
Speaker 5: of people don't know about dog fighting survivors is they
Speaker 5: are their wonderful most ninety nine percent of the time human.
Speaker 3: Social, wonderful dogs.
Speaker 5: And so apple Jack and his friends came back to
Speaker 5: our shelter where we held on to them as evidence
Speaker 5: during their court case.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: And then once we were once the court case was over,
Speaker 5: apple Jack and his friends, we got to figure out
Speaker 5: placement wise, figure out adoption, if they were going to
Speaker 5: a transfer partner to find homes or if we do.
Speaker 5: Sometimes if the world's a little bit too big for
Speaker 5: some of them, we will celebrate them and have a
Speaker 5: sendoff together as a team.
Speaker 2: I'm i carry to be honest, I'm shocked that the
Speaker 2: dogs are so friendly with you, because you would think
Speaker 2: what they're put through would be traumatizing to them to
Speaker 2: they wouldn't trust, you know, people that are around them.
Speaker 2: So when you take in a dog and you are
Speaker 2: keeping that dog safe, how soon can a dog be
Speaker 2: adopted off to a good home that's going to take
Speaker 2: care of them.
Speaker 5: Okay, So it depends on the case. Sometimes there are
Speaker 5: owners who surrender them right away and say, you know,
Speaker 5: it's we want to surrender. We're going to let you guys,
Speaker 5: you know, take ownership of the dogs, take care of them,
Speaker 5: and then find placement. There are some there to tie
Speaker 5: up in the court system for years.
Speaker 1: And they're fighting to get their dogs back, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: wait years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, still in our shelter because they're court day.
Speaker 2: So really, so these people in these people do they
Speaker 2: know that they like they must know when their police
Speaker 2: or you know, whoever goes in there and does their
Speaker 2: arresting or search warrants and all that stuff, they must
Speaker 2: try to deny.
Speaker 1: That they're they're doing dog fighting or what do they do?
Speaker 5: Well, typically dog fighting is never stand alone, so there's
Speaker 5: always other things going on. There are guns, there's drugs,
Speaker 5: there's the Constitution, there's there's so typically it's a whole
Speaker 5: bigger picture than just what it might look like going
Speaker 5: in for dog fighting. So there's typically a whole slew
Speaker 5: of things going on.
Speaker 2: And I ask you, guys, and I know that we
Speaker 2: go from West Michigan all the way to Toledo. Are
Speaker 2: we talking like this is a city thing that's going
Speaker 2: on or is this happened in the suburbs and country everywhere?
Speaker 4: Well, Joy happens everywhere. And I'll tell you because I
Speaker 4: know that you broadcast specifically in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Toledo.
Speaker 4: Out of two out of those three listening areas we
Speaker 4: have assisted in search Warrens and Wow and and the
Speaker 4: third one damn.
Speaker 3: Near close to it.
Speaker 4: It literally happens everywhere, and it's every demographic of person,
Speaker 4: you know, male, female, anybody kidding?
Speaker 1: Women, A dogfighter, yes, oh my god.
Speaker 4: And I think that that's something that is so overlooked.
Speaker 4: People don't understand that.
Speaker 2: It was interesting when I saw your poet and I
Speaker 2: read your post and everything, all the statistics that you
Speaker 2: put up there, and you had the gentleman holding the
Speaker 2: two dogs. I thought instantly it was a guy that
Speaker 2: was the listener that was upset with us. I didn't
Speaker 2: know it was you, and so I just thought that
Speaker 2: it was and I actually was kind of happy to
Speaker 2: know that there was a man that is willing to
Speaker 2: fight against this. It's wonderful to see all these women
Speaker 2: that are like yourselves. How did you guys become passionate
Speaker 2: in doing this?
Speaker 3: Well, let me tell you this.
Speaker 4: As soon as that statement was made, because we do
Speaker 4: have a number of men who are on our team
Speaker 4: and they said, we want to be a part of this,
Speaker 4: and we set up so many photo shoots. We had
Speaker 4: about twelve photo shoots within those two days of the
Speaker 4: men on our team with our dog fighting survivors, so
Speaker 4: that we could show you physical examples of them rescuing
Speaker 4: the dogs and that sort of thing. The picture that
Speaker 4: you saw was a real life picture on scene of
Speaker 4: someone rescuing those puppies.
Speaker 3: But yes, we do have.
Speaker 4: Amazing women on our team as well who are going
Speaker 4: on that scene cutting their chains, making sure that those
Speaker 4: dogs are getting to safety and taking them back to
Speaker 4: our shelter, which is an undisclosed location because if you
Speaker 4: think about it, we are holding live evidence. So just
Speaker 4: like how we need to protect evidence for any sort
Speaker 4: of case, we need to protect dogs like Applejack. So
Speaker 4: we love to call it pitness protection. Oh when they're
Speaker 4: coming into pitness protection and we're protecting them, but we're
Speaker 4: getting them healthy, We're opening up their world at their pace.
Speaker 4: We're teaching them that humans are awesome. We are teaching
Speaker 4: them how to be dogs. Some of them have never
Speaker 4: had a toy before. Some of them, you know, are
Speaker 4: just learning how to just be dogs. So that's really
Speaker 4: what our team is doing is kind of standing in
Speaker 4: that gap for them while they're awaiting those court dates, and.
Speaker 3: Then the dogs can be adopted.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes they can.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah.
Speaker 5: So what many might not even think about is you
Speaker 5: think we've got these big scary dogs who hate other
Speaker 5: dogs and want to a lot of the dogs that
Speaker 5: come in actually really enjoy other dogs. We do have
Speaker 5: some who have been through a lot of trauma. Maybe
Speaker 5: they decide they don't want to uh to be with
Speaker 5: other dogs.
Speaker 3: We will work with.
Speaker 5: Our placement our transfer partners, different shelters throughout Michigan, throughout Ohio,
Speaker 5: Pennsylvania to place some of them so that they have
Speaker 5: more more networking and more adoptions, since we aren't a
Speaker 5: forward facing shelter, but we do adopt out many of
Speaker 5: them ourselves. And then there are some who if we
Speaker 5: think like like we said, there are some who the
Speaker 5: trauma does does trump a little bit, and we want
Speaker 5: to always make sure they're re placing safe dogs. So
Speaker 5: if we do find a dog that we feel would
Speaker 5: not be successful, the worst thing we could do is
Speaker 5: set it up to fail in society and set a
Speaker 5: family up to fail, because that would just be ten
Speaker 5: steps backwards for us. But we do get a lot
Speaker 5: of these dogs love other dogs, They play with other dogs,
Speaker 5: they live with other dogs, and when they get out
Speaker 5: of the situation, they're dogs.
Speaker 7: Let me let me say two things real quick, and
Speaker 7: y'all can cook. First, I'm gonna say something to you, Mojoe,
Speaker 7: then I'm gonna say something to y'all. I think it's
Speaker 7: incredible that you have this platform, Mojo, and you have
Speaker 7: this show, And it could have been easy as hell
Speaker 7: for you to ignore whatever communication came out and let
Speaker 7: it blow over, let it die over, and maybe it
Speaker 7: would have been going a week from now. But the
Speaker 7: fact that you allowed them to come in here and
Speaker 7: you sitting in their face and having a conversation, I
Speaker 7: do want to commend you and applaud you for that.
Speaker 7: For you all, though, I think it is incredible the
Speaker 7: work it is that you're doing.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 1: You are a voice for the voiceless.
Speaker 7: There are some people that are like, man, we just
Speaker 7: got down watching MMA fighting on Friday, or whatever the
Speaker 7: case may be. A lot of those people have made
Speaker 7: the decision to step into that ring. These dogs don't
Speaker 7: have that decision. I think it's incredible what you all
Speaker 7: are doing. And also for the people out there when
Speaker 7: there's an injustice that you that you experience, speak up,
Speaker 7: because had you not spoken up and kept speaking of
Speaker 7: we wouldn't be here talking about the situation. And the
Speaker 7: fact that Mojo has this here shows is where his
Speaker 7: heart truly lies, and he just, you know, says something.
Speaker 7: Whatever the case may be, we know where your heart is.
Speaker 7: That's why they're here. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you guys, though, and this is
Speaker 2: something that's to me really important from this. There are
Speaker 2: going to be people that forever are going to hate
Speaker 2: me for that conversation that we had on the.
Speaker 1: Air, and that makes me sad.
Speaker 2: I hope that the majority of those who are truly
Speaker 2: upset by this, I hope they either give up of
Speaker 2: their time or they give up of their money or
Speaker 2: whatever it might be to help out your organization, because
Speaker 2: I don't want this to just become a situation where
Speaker 2: you guys become known as oh, there's this is the
Speaker 2: organization that you know called out Mojo. I want you
Speaker 2: guys now to be known as Okay, I did not
Speaker 2: know that there was a shelter for these abused animals,
Speaker 2: because there's a lot of shelters that are out there
Speaker 2: that get a lot more talk than you guys do.
Speaker 2: I did not know anything about you guys, So I
Speaker 2: really want to know from your perspective, Carrie, what do
Speaker 2: you want to come out of this whole Last you
Speaker 2: know half week that we've had.
Speaker 4: Well echoing off with what keV said there, like I agree,
Speaker 4: Like I thought that that was top notch that you
Speaker 4: decided we're going to go ahead and address this head
Speaker 4: on with us, Like.
Speaker 1: I told you, I would have done it earlier, but
Speaker 1: I Heeard Radio.
Speaker 4: You know you've got to go through the tape right,
Speaker 4: totally understand that they're so.
Speaker 3: Yes, I totally I echo your sentiments there.
Speaker 4: And all we wanted to do with that post was educate.
Speaker 4: It wasn't to slander in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 3: It was to educate and speak be their voices.
Speaker 4: Because when we heard back in twenty nineteen, so we
Speaker 4: have been an organization for fourteen years now, but back
Speaker 4: in twenty nineteen, we heard a staggering statistic that they
Speaker 4: could do a dog fighting raid every single day.
Speaker 3: They don't have.
Speaker 4: The resources in places to put the animals. And we thought, well,
Speaker 4: we could do this much. We could have one large
Speaker 4: scale shelter and we could take as many as we
Speaker 4: can within the means that we have, right, and that's
Speaker 4: what we do. We work within the means that we have,
Speaker 4: so of course, any additional support, whether it be volunteering
Speaker 4: whether it be financial.
Speaker 3: Support, fighting a home, fosters.
Speaker 4: Finding homes, even like purchasing things off of our Amazon
Speaker 4: wish list to help move forward. We hold live evidence
Speaker 4: for government agencies, but we do not receive a single
Speaker 4: penny from the government to scold their live evidence. This
Speaker 4: is a passion of ours that we keep moving forward
Speaker 4: due to the generosity of our supporters. So we throw
Speaker 4: events we you know, we have monthly. We have a
Speaker 4: monthly donor program so that we can sustain keeping the
Speaker 4: lights on in the building and the food and the
Speaker 4: vet bills. I can probably ask you guys to go
Speaker 4: more into what the vet bills look like. For every
Speaker 4: single intake of a dog, it requires a veterinary you know, exam,
Speaker 4: it requires lab work, all of these things. So we
Speaker 4: can only rescue as much as what we have, you know,
Speaker 4: we can only go as far as what we within
Speaker 4: our means.
Speaker 1: And if you guys talk about the you know, talk
Speaker 1: about the money, the money that it costs.
Speaker 2: I want people to know Bark Nation, Instagram, Facebook, you
Speaker 2: see them.
Speaker 1: You can just go to our social media and you'll
Speaker 1: see it.
Speaker 2: But I will tell you I think it's important that
Speaker 2: we all, you know, learn from this. I also I
Speaker 2: have no control over a lot of the people that
Speaker 2: are making comments. I think I do have a little
Speaker 2: bit of influence on those that are our listeners that
Speaker 2: were defending me for this, and I don't want you
Speaker 2: to defend me. I want you to also be part
Speaker 2: of this too. Don't say it was just a joke
Speaker 2: and and leave it at that. I want you to say,
Speaker 2: you know what, let's not make this become something that
Speaker 2: you can joke about.
Speaker 1: I want everybody to become aware.
Speaker 2: So I want to tell you, tell those listeners, I
Speaker 2: want you to do this for us as a show.
Speaker 2: If you care about the show, I want you to
Speaker 2: take care of bark Nations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll never belittle this as a joke because, like
Speaker 4: to us, it's not funny.
Speaker 3: And every single time.
Speaker 1: That was pretty damn funny karma.
Speaker 3: The fact that you all saw it was.
Speaker 2: We had we had a dog in here from uh
Speaker 2: your society, I think it was everwhere and get a
Speaker 2: full office of people rolling around in its poop. All right, thank.
Speaker 3: You for coming in.
Speaker 5: I also want to say, as far as obviously we
Speaker 5: we saw comments from your listeners, we saw comments from
Speaker 5: the animal welfare world. We want to shout out to
Speaker 5: our our animal welfare world. We have a million people
Speaker 5: in the city. In other states, there are people fighting
Speaker 5: for these animals every day in and out. I do
Speaker 5: want to encourage our animal welfare world continue.
Speaker 3: While yes, we get.
Speaker 5: You know, things get emotional, things get these are animals.
Speaker 5: It's easy to jump at someone, It's easy to say
Speaker 5: you're the worst, this was awful, this is you know,
Speaker 5: and and bash other people. You know, our emotions can
Speaker 5: get the best of us. But I want to encourage
Speaker 5: our animal welfare people in Detroit, in Toledo, in Grand Rapids,
Speaker 5: when something like this happens, take that time and use
Speaker 5: it as a learning Let's not just try to bash everybody.
Speaker 5: Let's try to get more people on our team.
Speaker 3: We work with with.
Speaker 5: Groups outside the state, We work with groups down south.
Speaker 5: Our goal is to have animal welfare groups doing this
Speaker 5: in every state across the nation. And yeah, and this
Speaker 5: is how we do it is we gather, we gather people,
Speaker 5: we gather forces, and we hold each other up and
Speaker 5: we educate. MRSA, do you want to give maybe a
Speaker 5: minute or two about what happens in our fitness protection program?
Speaker 2: If we have I only have a couple more minutes,
Speaker 2: but I but go ahead and please.
Speaker 6: So really, Jena touchbase on our shelter, which is our
Speaker 6: fitness protection shelter, and we have dogs just like Applejack
Speaker 6: who come in and are there during their court cases.
Speaker 6: We have no clue how long, but really we're there
Speaker 6: to show them how much we love them and help
Speaker 6: them be dogs. So really that's what it's about, and
Speaker 6: it's daily care. It's showing up every single day for them,
Speaker 6: making sure they have food and water that they didn't
Speaker 6: know if they were going to have that back in
Speaker 6: their previous life.
Speaker 1: They never knew. So we just have a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 7: Look in front of people in the comments, put your
Speaker 7: money or your tom or your mouth is. Don't be
Speaker 7: somebody that just got Twitter fingers that want.
Speaker 1: To blow up.
Speaker 7: Take an hour of your day, Take one hundred dollars
Speaker 7: and do something with it.
Speaker 1: Take twenty dollars. Yea, Hi Nicole, Hello.
Speaker 3: Hi Okay Mojo, you had me in tears.
Speaker 5: I'm really proud of you and for being a fan
Speaker 5: of you.
Speaker 3: I knew I had a feeling you wouldn't flop this
Speaker 3: when I saw the post last week.
Speaker 5: I was a little worried, but you handled it so
Speaker 5: well and I just really.
Speaker 2: Love you guys.
Speaker 1: Well I've learned a lot and I'm going to learn more.
Speaker 2: Carrie is now going to be getting more phone calls
Speaker 2: from me, and I'm gonna come and see you guys.
Speaker 1: And yeah, all right, just warning.
Speaker 2: I know you're gonna get Carrie by the way, said
Speaker 2: to me on the phone last night, he goes first time,
Speaker 2: long time, literally, So hold on. I appreciate I appreciate
Speaker 2: you guys for accepting the apology because you can apologize
Speaker 2: sometimes people you know it's too hard for them to
Speaker 2: accept it. So I appreciate it. You were you shared
Speaker 2: that video so fast. I mentioned this to you last night.
Speaker 2: There's some place you know, you could have kept the
Speaker 2: algorithm going further so to speak of people being upset,
Speaker 2: and you didn't because you shared.
Speaker 1: And you understood that it was coming from me. So
Speaker 1: what were you with? What are you gonna say?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: But but that was important to us too, Moja, because
Speaker 4: we were never so basically, when you said that, it
Speaker 4: put out the bat signal, put out the bark nation
Speaker 4: signal into the sky.
Speaker 3: And we knew that we had to address it right.
Speaker 3: But we never wanted to.
Speaker 4: We never wanted to come down and make you look
Speaker 4: like you were the worst thing on the face of
Speaker 4: the earth. We wanted an opportunity to educate, right, So
Speaker 4: we were also equally impressed at how swiftly you addressed.
Speaker 4: So I'm thank you for this. Thank you for giving
Speaker 4: us this opportunity. We really do hope that we could
Speaker 4: do some really cool things.
Speaker 2: We have, not partners, but partners. I don't have a
Speaker 2: commercial break for a while, but I want to play
Speaker 2: a quick song. I normally never play any music. You guys,
Speaker 2: by the way, this shows you how much you affected me.
Speaker 2: I'm playing a song, but I want to play a song.