🎙️Podcast: Accessible Pet Care with Ebony Richardson of Atlanta Dog Mom Social Club

Episode #12: Advocating for Accessible Pet Care with Ebony Richardson of Atlanta Dog Mom Social Club

Ebony Richardson has worked in animal welfare for nearly a decade, and she started Atlanta Dog Mom Club as a hobby. But to her surprise, the representation she brought to the dog mom space was much needed and immediately embraced by her community.

So over the past eight months, Ebony has turned Atlanta Dog Mom Club into a full-fledged social club and founded a non-profit pet pantry and thrift store.

In this episode, we’re chatting about how she works to make pet care more accessible for everyone, including:

• How Ebony’s love of animals bloomed at an early age
• What advocacy in the pet space looks like for both animals and humans
• Busting the myth that there’s an ideal income for pet owners
• The prejudices that exist when it comes to adopting dogs from shelters
• Gatekeeping in the pet industry and what can be done about it
• How the Atlanta Dog Mom Club goes above and beyond to make sure all dogs (and their moms!) feel welcome and accepted

Tune in for a conversation that we need to have way more often in the pet space. Then join the Juniper Community to meet more pet parents like you!

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Stream The Podcast Here:

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Highlights from the episode:

• 7:54 — Small changes for a big difference — Pet care does cost a lot of money. I definitely don't wanna downplay that. But I think it is something that we very much feel like, oh, I have to have grants and I have to have funding and I have to have… and it's like, not really. Sometimes you can just say, hey, can you bring some food? And people will do it.
• 10:24 — Discriminating against pet parents — Oftentimes what people will do is say, oh, I'm gonna go rescue that pet from this homeless person. As if the homeless person is in this situation to be antagonistic to their pet. And I think it's interesting to look at a situation like that and go, let me take from this person. This person literally has no home. And I'm gonna go in here and I'm gonna take something away from them because it makes me feel better about what I think is best for them, you know? And so I think it's really easy to go down that path, when you're dealing with animal welfare.
• 12:51 — Discrimination in rescue — There's a lot of different types of discrimination that happens because people think that they're doing what's best for the pet, you know, at the expense of people, by doing things like having restrictions on adoptions to certain areas of town or specifically certain ZIP codes and things like that. ZIP codes are heavily reliant on racism. And if you think about who was allowed to live in certain neighborhoods… who's allowed to historically? Who's been allowed to live in areas that have single family homes? So there's a reason that certain people may live in certain areas of town where it's always just been high rise apartments, and that goes beyond their ability to care for a pet. It's just this is their situation. This is where they live.
• 15:40 — Keeping pets in their homes — I think we should be focused on how can as many people keep pets in their home as possible? How can everyone who has an interest and who wants to, how can we help them afford it? And even if we say, well, pet care is expensive, you have to have the money, we should think about how to make it less expensive and more accessible and not, well, the the threshold of who can afford a pet is gonna keep rising every year. You know, pet care costs are rising every year. And I think the the most effective way to combat that is to think about opening more doors, not shutting doors and gatekeeping.
• 26:18 — Respecting individual journeys — And I do think that it can get hard sometimes when you do wanna support everyone, and I want everyone to feel included. And I don't want to encourage people against the things that that I believe. So that has been a little bit of a balancing act of bringing people together. It's great, but I need everyone to respect where everyone is at on their journey. Because even though I don't use Adversive tools, I don't wanna say that you can't come to the dog mom club because your dog has a e collar on or because you do. I really wanna keep it, like I said, accessible and inclusive so that we can learn together. And even if we're not all in agreement about exactly the same way to do everything, I think it's important to have space for diversity.

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Thanks to our sponsor: Optimeal

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