“On Oct. 3, we’re doing our big Guardian Angels luncheon. John O’Hurley will be our featured guest speaker and entertainer.”
We have about 20 people on staff here. Some of those are front-office folks. They get into the surrender applications and the adoption applications, which is ongoing, and because we have such stringent criteria of who adopts a dog and what dogs we take in. One of the things that’s unique about Fuzzy Friends is that we’re a rescue and a rescue is different than a shelter, which is different from a sanctuary. Shelters take in any animal, and they try to adopt out as many as they can. And if they can’t adopt them out, a lot of times they have to put them down. A rescue is different. A rescue will bring in animals that they know they can place.
A lot of what I do will be outside of Fuzzy Friends and that’s why it’s so important that we have such a strong staff that is so self-motivated and disciplined. Virtually everyone here is committed to the mission. They’re not just here because it’s a job. This is not easy work down here and oftentimes it’s emotional work.
A lot of (outside work) will be visiting with people who want to be a part of what we’re doing. That can be organizations that want to partner with us — like a business — through volunteers, or maybe they want to partner as a sponsor. It can be meeting with people who are interested in financially being a part of this. Maybe they are at a point in their life where they have money that they want to give back to the community and this is a cause that they want to be a part of. So I want to help them understand who we are, what we do, how their donations can make an impact. And then it’s also just creating awareness, going out and speaking to organizations, being visible so that anybody, regardless of what their reason is, can find out about who Fuzzy Friends is.
Our building campaign will have serve two purposes. One will be to build a new structure that will house about 55 new kennels. And then we’ll have two new completely separate quarantine areas and that allows us to never get bottlenecked. If something pops up in one, we can shut that one down and keep using this one. And then we’ll have some that are separated so that if something ever pops up on one side of the kennel, we’re OK on the other side. This building we’ve been in for 28 years is an old church.
We’ve got an event coming up on Oct. 3. (Fuzzy Friend board members) Debbie Luce and Camille Johnson are chairing it. Remember J. Peterman on “Seinfeld?” John O’Hurley is the actor that plays J. Peterman. He is also a very accomplished Broadway singer and actor, and he’s also the emcee for the television coverage of the National Dog Show. He has a huge heart for rescues and shelters. He has family that goes to Baylor, and he also has a long-time relationship with (Baylor classis professor emeritus) Tommye Lou Davis at Baylor. He found out through Tommye Lou about Fuzzy Friends. On Oct. 3, we’re doing our big Guardian Angels luncheon. John O’Hurley will be our featured guest speaker and entertainer.
After 25 years in the banking business, Sam Brown recently left his job as senior vice president at The First National Bank of Central Texas and took over as executive director of Fuzzy Friends Rescue. That organization was founded 28 years ago by Betsy Robinson, who served as the director until Brown joined in July.
Brown is married to Nicki Brown, a clinical associate professor in communications sciences and disorders at Baylor University. They’re the parents of two human kids — Sami, a student at Baylor Law School, and Cole, a Baylor senior studying supply chain management — and three fur babies: an 8-year-old cat named Carrie Fisher; Sandy, a 7-year-old goldendoodle; and Hootie, the newest addition to the family. He’s a long-haired German shepherd the family adopted last October.
In the photo with Brown is Lana, a 3-year-old Alaskan husky who is awaiting her forever home at Fuzzy Friends.
