In this episode, host Penny Ellison welcomes Steve Hughes, founder of Pets in Danger and Youth4Animals, to discuss how young people can become powerful advocates against backyard breeding. Following the strong response to Penny’s previous episode on cracking down on backyard breeders, Steve shares that he wnats to mobilize students nationwide to push for the legislation we discussed in the episode – requiring breeder registration and holding online platforms accountable for publishing puppy ads without proper license information.
Episode Highlights:
- 00:00 Show Introduction & Listener Response to Last Episode – Penny recaps the viral impact of the previous backyard breeder episode and the spirited community debates it sparked
- 00:59 Guest Introduction: Steve Hughes – Meet the founder of Pets in Danger and Youth4Animals, mobilizing young advocates for legislative change
- 02:40 Origins of Youth4Animals & Mission – Steve explains how he connected with Penny’s work and the inspiration behind his dual organizations
- 04:57 Proposed Law Explained – The law to be proposed in Florida named after Steve’s rescued dog, Samson, that would hold online platforms accountable for unregistered breeder ads
- 06:21 Problems with Backyard Breeders – Exposing genetic defects, lack of health testing, and disease spread from unlicensed breeding operations
- 06:44 Youth Engagement Campaigns: ‘Adopt, Never Shop’ – Targeting young people with prevention-focused education about the dangers of online puppy purchases
- 07:32 Misleading Language by Breeders Online – How backyard breeders rebrand as “rehomers” and misuse adoption terminology to deceive buyers
- 09:05 How Youth Get Involved & Earn Community Service Hours – Customized volunteer experiences for middle school, high school, and college students with official verification
- 10:34 Building Skills & Experience for College Students – Digital marketing, public relations opportunities, and forming international ‘dream teams’ for advocacy
- 13:07 Outreach & Advocacy – Becoming Humane Ambassadors – How students witnessing shelter conditions become powerful advocates for animals and policy reform
- 14:12 Local Action and Policy Change – Empowering cross-generational advocacy to create the legislative pressure needed for meaningful wins
Resources Mentioned
- youth4animals.org
- Hand2Paw
- Previous episode: How to Stop Backyard Breeding: A Novel Approach – the episode that started this collaboration
This episode demonstrates how student activism can create real legislative change while providing meaningful community service opportunities. Steve’s model shows how to transform young people’s natural social media skills into powerful advocacy tools that can help pass laws that cut down on backyard breeding nationwide.
Transcript
Penny Ellison:
Welcome back to the Animal Advocate. And if you’ve been following along online, you know that our last episode really struck a nerve. We talked about a straightforward but potentially game changing approach to tackling backyard breeding, and that’s requiring all breeders, even the small ones, to register and get an identification number and then holding online platforms accountable if they publish puppy ads without that registration number. And the response has really been incredible. We’ve had listeners sharing it across social media and some pretty spirited debates in the comments. As you might have seen, it’s clear this idea has people thinking and more importantly, talking. So let’s talk some more about this proposed law and also just generally about raising awareness about unethical breeders, since a lot of people are buying from them without even realizing it. So today I’m excited to have Steve Hughes joining us.
Penny Ellison:
Steve is the founder of Pets in Danger and Youth4Animals. And he’s someone who doesn’t just identify problems like this. He works to solve them through Youth for Animals. Steve is focused on mobilizing young advocates. I love this. To educate others and to push for exactly the kind of legislative change we discussed in the last episode. He understands that even the best ideas stay on the shelf without visible public support. The kind of engagement that we started to see after last week’s episode and hope to grow.
That’s what we need to create the political will necessary to turn proposals into actual laws. So sit back and enjoy our discussion with Steve Hughes.
Penny Ellison:
Welcome to the Animal Advocate, where we arm animal lovers with the information and inspiration you need to become effective advocates. I’m your host, Penny Ellison, and I’ve taught animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. If you’ve ever thought someone should do something about that, I’m here to guide you on your journey to being that someone. You can find us on the web@animaladvocacyacademy.com and that’s where you’ll find show notes and resources, and you can send us your comments on episodes and ideas for topics you’d like to hear on future shows. So, onto today’s topic.
Welcome Steve Hughes, to the Animal Advocate. Thanks for joining us.
Steve Hughes:
Thanks for having us, Penny. It’s greatly appreciated.
Penny Ellison:
Steve, you and I got together because you saw my previous podcast on Cracking down on Backyard Breeders, and I know you have thoughts and interest in that area. But you and I also share the fact that we run organizations that bring young people into animal welfare. So why don’t you start by telling us about Youth for Animals and what it does and what’s your mission?
Steve Hughes:
Well, I’m just going to start first with a little anecdote because the day before I heard your podcast, I was sitting here with a buddy of mine who is an attorney, but he’s a personal friend, and we were talking about this, how are we going to stop this epidemic of pet overpopulation and so on and so forth. And he and I wrote out a little sketch and that sketch was basically a two point proposal. And then the next day, or maybe even that same day, later on the afternoon, I came across your podcast. I downloaded the transcript and it was pretty much exactly what we had discussed earlier that morning. I couldn’t believe the coincidence.
Penny Ellison:
Law of Attraction. You put it out into the universe and it came back to you.
Steve Hughes:
Well, there you go. So, first of all, I’ll explain that we have two organizations. One’s called Pets in Danger on the front end. Pets in Danger is all about preventing the epidemic of pet overpopulation. We all know how many animals are euthanized in the United States every year. We all know that the shelters are overcrowded. We all know that all the shelters and the pounds and the rescues and the foster groups on the planet can’t possibly take care of the pipeline of illegitimate animals that are being bred by inhumane, incompetent, and certainly unlicensed backyard breeders. So Pets in Danger is about awareness, public education and awareness.
Steve Hughes:
It’s all about promoting the Samson’s Law and turning it from a proposal into a reality. Now, Youth4Animals is our marketing arm, believe it or not. We have students, both middle school and high school students, and now college students too, who are earning community service hours or professional development points by sharing our posts and getting involved in a variety of different ways. So Youth4Animals is the marketing arm of Pets in Danger.
Penny Ellison:
So, and you mentioned Samson’s Law, that is the name that you have given to the law about coming down on backyard breeders by going after the online advertising platforms.
Steve Hughes:
That’s exactly right. Actually, we are adopters. We’ve adopted many dogs, my wife and myself, and cats as well. But Samson was the most illustrative pet that we ever adopted because he embodied everything that’s wrong with backyard breeders, everything that’s wrong with what they’re doing. They’re unqualified. They’re breeding animals that have genetic deficiencies, bred right into them. People look at them and they go, my God, they’re cute. It’s a toy mixture of two different breeds.
Isn’t that cute? What they don’t realize and Sampson is the perfect embodiment of that is they have everything from tracheal diversions to hip dysplasia to juvenile cataracts. I mean Samson had it all when he was only a few months old. So we decided to name it after Sampson’s Law because he was a little guy and he was fighting an insurmountable battle.
Penny Ellison:
Because he was kind of a genetic mess. Because as we’ve talked about, backyard breeders don’t spend any money on their animals. So they don’t do any kind of genetic testing and they’re breeding them too close together. And not to mention that they’re spreading disease by not vaccinating.
Steve Hughes:
If there’s a catalog of all the things to do wrong as a breeder, they check all those boxes.
Penny Ellison:
So you’re getting young people to get involved in this by educating their peers, by sharing, you know, basically doing what they’re already doing on social media, but sharing this information to sort of get more young people aware of not finding their next dog by googling for it.
Steve Hughes:
Well, yes, and we call the campaign, we call it Samson’s Law, but the other campaign is #adoptnevershop. And it’s pretty self explanatory what it means. But yes, prevention is the idea of cure is not prevention is. I use that old analogy. What’s less painful and less expensive? Brushing your teeth twice a day or root canal. If we get to the students young and we inculcate them as to the reasons to adopt and never shop. And that means don’t shop at a pet store and at most, most of all, beans. Don’t shop online.
Steve Hughes:
No matter what those advertisers say they are. They call themselves rehomers or whatever terminology they want to hide behind. The fact of the matter is they’re illegitimate, illicit breeders. Stay away from them.
Penny Ellison:
One of my pet peeves there, if I can call it that, is sort of the co-opting of words like adopt by breeders to convince people that they’re doing a good thing when they’re really purchasing a puppy whose parents are somewhere suffering.
Steve Hughes:
It’s a money making business. I’m going to give you a quick, quick story before we get into what we’re trying to accomplish here. But I’ll just tell you that my wife once thought she was doing the good thing, but she went on Craigslist and she saw this little dog and it was cute and she said, oh, this lady up and wherever it is, doesn’t matter, can’t take care of this animal anymore. But I want to do the good thing and drive three hours each way and rescue this animal. And she paid this distressed lady a few dollars and then she brought back this animal. And I said, that is really nice, but what you’ve really done is you’ve empowered this lady. And what she did is she simply went to her local animal shelter, got a tightered, totally vaccinated animal for 65 bucks, turned around and resold it on Craigslist for 450 bucks, thereby giving her enough money, enough profit to turn around, adopt 15 more animals and turn around and sell them puppy flipper, puppy flipping, rehoming whatever terminology you want to use.
Penny Ellison:
So tell me about the young people and how they get involved and what kinds of programs you have. You mentioned that a lot of young people need to have community service hours and you get involved in helping them meet that requirement.
Steve Hughes:
We do, and we started off in Florida because we are vetted by the four main school boards in Florida. We intend to be vetted by more of them as the school year starts in another month, actually, and their requirements for community service hours do change from board to board. But what we do is we issue a letter of completion and then they present it to their school and they get their community service hours. As far as college students are concerned, they call them professional development points, again, depending on what jurisdiction and what state you’re in. But the bottom line is we can use everybody from middle school students, high school students, and college students. And there are a lot of ways that they can get involved because we need everybody, whether they’re a high school student, if they’re a college student, and they’re working towards a certain career path, we have it all laid out. So if you register with us as a volunteer, we’re not going to give you an automated answer. Oh, thanks for signing up.
Steve Hughes:
We’re going to give you a specific questionnaire as to what you want to do, how you want to accomplish it, how many hours you can deliver towards the achievement of that. And they will customize your volunteer experience accordingly. And again, in college, it has more to do with the actual curriculum they’re following and these specialty that they eventually want to graduate with. And I can go into more of that. Depends on how much detail you want.
Penny Ellison:
That sounds great. And I would like some more detail because, as somebody who teaches at the law school level, I often have students ask me how can they get more involved either in a paid way or a volunteer way. And it seems like it might also be an experience that a college student could use to start to get experience in the animal welfare field. If they want to eventually have their career.
Steve Hughes:
Yes, exactly. So I got a call yesterday. By the way, we got four student volunteer registrations between 1 and 4am this morning. So it tells you that students are out there sitting on their computer at all hours of the day looking for volunteer opportunities, not only because they want to earn community service hours, because there are many ways they can do that, but also because they want to earn them while achieving something for a really good cause. So let’s get on to, if you will, onto where college students can work with us. Now, we had a college student, actually, she just graduated from Rhode island, but she’s a Hong Kong international student, so she spends half the year in Hong Kong and she’s a social media specialist. She’s a digital marketing specialist, but she also spends the other half of her year in Rhode island and or New York. So what she’s going to do is she’s going to form a dream team of the students in her, I think it’s called Hong Kong Polytech University there, and she’s going to form an equivalent dream team in New York when she gets back.
Steve Hughes:
What that dream team will be involved in is several things. First of all, digital marketing. Digital marketing is everything from shooting videos at a local shelter, editing them, voiceovering them, et cetera. So becoming a digital marketing content provider, that’s the first thing, and that’s the most important thing, because original content on – doesn’t matter what your platform is – whether it’s Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or whatever, videos and short reels have the most effect. So the first thing they can do is become a digital marketer and shoot videos at their local shelter. The second thing they can do is get into public relations and community outreach. So if you, if a student wants to join a dream team at their school and their ultimate goal is to get into public relations or community outreach, that’s easy. They can get us on every podcast, every vlog, every blog on the planet.
Steve Hughes:
They can connect us with every animal welfare organization and group on the planet.
Penny Ellison:
That’s amazing. That’s great. You know, when you talk about, going in, taking videos, really what they’re doing is witnessing, and they’re witnessing on behalf of other people who might either not have the opportunity or be afraid to go into a shelter and see what’s there. And then they come out. And the way I described it, with the young people that are involved in Hand2Paw, my organization, is that they’re now humane ambassadors, and they know why animals end up in the shelter. They know how we might be able to prevent it, and they can go out into the community and be an ambassador for animals. I think that you and I are both interested not just in animal welfare, but in changing policy. And I think that if you get teachers on board and you get that many students in a room, you can start with adopt, never shop, but then move into, how can we change policy? And how can you have the power, even as a young person, to spread the word and get pressure to get these bills passed? That’s why I started the podcast and the website, because I’ve taught animal law for 20 years, but I can only teach 20, 25 people in the classroom.
Penny Ellison:
And this lets us reach a lot more people because we many, many people out there love animals enough to spend some of their time advocating for them. So I want to get more people involved and teach them how to be effective. That’s why I like to encourage people to think locally. I think there’s a lot of people that feel powerless right now, and I think that may be true if you think about giant issues like factory farming, but I don’t think that’s true for things that you can change on a local level and you can get a quick win that way. I think it would be great to have people working together at all levels. My law students, your high school and middle school students, and college students. That would be great. We need to build that much momentum so that legislators think that their constituents care about this.
Penny Ellison:
And that’s going to be something we’re hopefully pushing in all 50 states. So thank you so much for joining us, Steve. I know you and I will be working together in the future, and maybe we’ll have you back on after we’ve made some progress on this initiative. Bye Bye. That was great.
Penny Ellison:
I’m really looking forward to working with Steve and all the students involved in his organization to tell everyone why they should never search online for puppies and to help us get laws passed that promote transparency and accountability for backyard breeders. And if you’re a student who would like to get involved or a teacher who would want to bring a program like this to your school, check out their website. It’s Youth4animals.org and you can go to their registration page to sign up to start getting involved in animal advocacy through them.
Penny Ellison:
That’s it for today. The Animal Advocate is brought to you by the Animal Advocacy Academy. You can find the episodes and show notes@animaladvocacyacademy.com you can listen to to episodes you missed, leave a comment and start a discussion there. And if you’re really interested in learning more about protecting animals, subscribe to the show so you can get every episode right when it comes out. If you have any questions on this or any other topic related to animal law, go ahead and email them to me@podcastiminaladvocacyacademy.com and remember, compassion is great, great, but compassionate action is infinitely better. Look forward to speaking with you next time. Take care.
