Episode 1: The Origin of Good Dog: A tech guy, a scientist and a lawyer walk into a room….

Co-Founder and CEO Josh Wais, Judi Stella, Head of Standards and Research, and Cat Matloub, Head of Partnerships and Legal Affairs join the host Laura Reeves for a convo on the origin story of Good Dog.

Here at the Good Dog Pod, we are all about supporting dog breeders and responsible dog ownership. Good Dog is on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them through education and advocacy. The Good Dog Pod provides dog lovers with the latest updates in canine health and veterinary care, animal legislation and legal advocacy, canine training and behavior science, and dog breeding practices. Subscribe and join our mission to help give our dogs the world they deserve.

In this episode, Josh shares his vision for creating Good Dog. It all started with a question. 

Josh Wais, Good Dog Co-Founder/CEO:

“How can we use technology in the right way to help empower those who are working so hard to make sure that we have dogs that are sound of body and mind? And empower prospective dog owners who just want to do what's right, but maybe have had a bit of a challenge figuring out what that is.”

“That's what this podcast is all about. It's about putting things out there that we've learned. It's about educating. But it's also our way of listening and our way of having a conversation with the community at large.”

Judi shares her background in the veterinary field and working in collaboration with Purdue University at the USDA overseeing the Animal Welfare Act.

Judi Stella, Head of Research and Standards:

“I love Good Dog’s mission. I saw this as an opportunity to really work with dog breeders and dog owners to interject some more science and some more evidence-based recommendations into what we are doing. I see my role as the scientist that can translate the science to regular people. With the technology we can communicate it on a large scale. We have interviews with experts about behavior and genetics and reproduction. We make these available to anybody. We want every person that we come in contact with to be able to succeed. We want to give them the information they need to succeed. All of our webinars and educational materials are on our site and they're free to everyone.”

Cat Matloub, Head of Partnerships and Legal Affairs

“I saw a lot of people very close to me -- my roommates, my best friends, my colleagues, my law school classmates, and then my parents -- go through just horrifying experiences of trying to get a dog. Wanting to get a dog. Wanting to bring that joy and love into their lives. And just being faced with huge anxiety about how to do that. Is it wrong to get one from a breeder? What does that mean? How do you know what you should do? How do you know you're not gonna get your money stolen online like so many people do? It's heartbreaking.

[After] I connected with Josh and Lauren, who had similarly gone through that experience, I had this kind of life changing moment. I unlearned everything that I thought I knew about the dog world. I learned that we've been hugely successful in decreasing the number of dogs in shelters and rescues. Because we love dogs so very much the demand is huge. Actually, we don't have an overpopulation problem, as Patti Strand likes to say, it's a distribution problem. The truth is we're going to run out of dogs in the future if we don't support dog breeders. Then I started learning more and I started realizing that dog breeders are actually the ones doing everything in their power to produce healthy dogs, to produce well-adjusted dogs. They stand behind their dogs. It was just kind of so eye opening.”

Laura Reeves, Host Good Dog Pod and Pure Dog Talk podcast 

“I am a dog breeder. I have been involved in breeding purebred dogs for 40 years. I was a professional show dog handler. I am an American Kennel Club licensed judge. One of the things that I think the Good Dog Pod can help do is translation. Not translation of the English language but translation of culture. The culture of a dog breeder and the culture of a dog buyer are not always the same. Having people to help share that communication within the community and Josh's ability through technology and Judi’s ability in science and Cat’s ability through legal, all of that comes together in the ability to share knowledge and share experience and empower dog breeders and empower dog buyers and that is a pretty big mission. We are so much stronger together.”

Transcription:

Laura Reeves [0:07] Welcome to the Good Dog Pod! I’m your host, Laura Reeves. Here at the Good Dog Pod, we are all about supporting dog breeders and responsible dog ownership. Join our mission and help change the conversation—because we are all stronger together! Good Dog is on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them, through education and advocacy. The Good Dog Pod provides dog lovers with the latest updates in canine health and veterinary care, animal legislation and legal advocacy, canine training and behavior science, and dog breeding practices. Subscribe, and join our mission to help give our dogs the world they deserve.

Welcome to the Good Dog Pod. I am your host, Laura Reeves. Here at Good Dog, we’re on a mission to use the power of technology for good! Knowledge is empowering, and we’re here to share our experience and our knowledge so we can give you the power—whether you’re breeding good dogs or looking to acquire a pet that fits your family’s needs. Good Dog is on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them, by educating the public and advocating for dog breeders. The Good Dog Pod is going to help us achieve our mission by providing dog breeders and the public with the latest updates in canine health and veterinary care, animal legislation and legal advocacy, canine training and behavior science, and dog breeding practices. Subscribe and join our mission to help give our dogs the world they deserve. 

Welcome to our panel today! Josh Weiss is the cofounder and CEO of Good Dog. Judi Stella is our Head of Research and Standards. And Cat Matloub is our Head of Partnership and Legal. Welcome, team! This is a pretty amazing group of people. I loved Josh’s comment, just a little bit earlier: What happens when you get a tech guy and a lawyer and a scientist together? 

Josh Weiss [2:21] That’s exactly right. Good things are exactly what happens.

Laura Reeves [2:25] Excellent. So, Josh, why don’t you tell us your story? 

Josh Weiss [2:28] Thanks, Laura! So excited for this. This really is a key part of what we do, which is not keeping things to ourselves, but shouting from the rooftops about what we’re learning and how we can help educate from that which we’re learning—both breeders but also, very importantly, the public at large. I’ll share a little bit about my story and how we got to this point and why educating both the breeder community and the public at large is so important to what we do.

In a previous life, before starting Good Dog, I come from the tech world. For me—in my life, just like for so many of the breeders we work with—what I did was second nature. Building technology, building websites, marketing them, reaching wide audiences, making hard things simple and understandable and accessible, and using technology to make connections. After my career in that world, thinking about what I wanted to do next, being a huge dog lover, but really being in the general public (being a consumer), not being from the dog world—it allowed me to have a beginner’s mind and start exploring this world. Really, the first insight I had is, as someone who’s had dogs my whole life, I started thinking about the process of going about getting a dog. Just realizing that as well intentioned as I was, I really didn’t have very much reliable information about what I should be thinking about when getting a dog. What does it mean that a breeder has responsible practices? What are those practices? What should I be looking for? What questions should I be asking? That was the beginning. That was the thread that I started to pull. Along with my cofounder, Lauren, we really began to untangle this sweater of the dog world that we now know and love so much. We began to see how much our backgrounds in the technology world could potentially be used to have technology be a force for good. How can we use technology in the right way, which is so important, because just like anything else, you can use it in the wrong way. How can we use technology in the right way to help empower those who are working so hard to make sure that we have dogs that are sound in body and mind, to empower prospective dog owners who just want to do what’s right but maybe have had a bit of a challenge figuring out what that is? 

What Good Dog was started to do was three things. The first is to understand better what is good. That is not necessarily as easy as it may sound sometimes. Sometimes there are no answers, and that’s where Judi comes in. Judi will talk a little bit about what she focuses on at Good Dog, but that’s where we’re bringing together scientists. How can we actually go and understand what’s the best way to do certain things? How do we bring together people who have immense experience, who have just been doing it for so many years and have had so many different things happen to them that they’ve learned from? How can we bring together people from different backgrounds? That’s number one. Number two is then trying to help point out what’s good, to really help educate, to really help spread that world, to help people understand what to look for. And then the last piece is to connect. That’s really where the technology piece comes in. For us, the technology part is the easy part. For us, creating a website and having there be something that’s really easy to use is the easy part. The way that we look at technology is as an enabler, as a facilitator. We are all about human connections. We’re not about, “I’m getting a dog from Good Dog,” or “Good Dog is in the middle of things!” Good Dog is underneath it all. Good Dog is what’s powering and making it really easy for breeders to spend time on what they care about, which is spending time with their dogs and caring for their dogs and spending time educating and connecting and helping and supporting, both their fellow breeders as well as new dog owners and their prospective owners, current owners, and past owners. That’s really what Good Dog was started for. 

We started about two years ago, with the very seed of an idea. And we’ve been working hard to do two things. One is to bring together the best people we possibly can. You’ll hear people way smarter than me on this podcast, today as well as in future episodes—whether they’re on our team or they’re in our orbit. We really want to bring together the brightest minds. And then the second is really doing the best we can to actually put things out there and learn and listen. How do we try? Because we’re not perfect, but if you don’t try, you’re never going to get anywhere. Fail, potentially—do something that maybe is not the right way to do it—but then listen to the community, who is not shy! We’re really appreciative of that. We hear opinions. We know that this is a world where, understandably so, we’re all really passionate about what’s going on, and we try to incorporate all that learning to make ourselves better. And that brings it all the way back to the beginning of my story. I am not a thirty-year dog breeder. What that allows me to do is it allows me to listen. It allows me to have the humility to learn and bring what I do know to help, to support, but really have the experts in the community guide us in the right direction. That’s what this podcast is all about. It’s about putting things out there that we’ve learned. It’s about educating. But it’s also our way of listening and our way of having a conversation with the community at large. 

Needless to say, Laura, we’re very excited about this. That’s a little bit about my story, and a little bit about our story. We’re very excited to dive into what we’re doing.

Laura Reeves [9:05] Gosh, that is a fabulous origin story. I am so glad to visit with you about it. And now I want to have Judi come in and tell us a little bit about her story, because her story fundamentally shapes how Good Dog’s community is built—the community of breeders and the community of people who are looking to acquire a pet that is a good fit for their family. Welcome, Judi!

Judi Stella [9:37] Hi! Happy to be here. Like Josh said, we’re all happy to be here and start this podcast and to be able to communicate with the community at large. My story of how I came to Good Dog is a little bit different, because I did come to Good Dog with some understanding of dogs. I had worked at a veterinary hospital, and we had a pretty large clientele that were dog breeders. I thought reproduction was fun. It was really interesting, and I liked working with the breeders. You get to see different dogs that you don’t see every day: Saluki breeders and Dalmatian breeders. They were really interesting people. And they took great care of their dogs. They were there doing health testing and getting all of their OFAs done. So I had a great impression of dogs. My introduction to the dog world and dog breeders was amazing. I met with the best of them.

And then after I finished graduate school (I did leave veterinary medicine; I went to go to graduate school), I was offered a science fellowship with USDA in animal care, which is the part of USDA that oversees the Animal Welfare Act. I had some experience there. That was my first experience with larger facilities, with licensed dog breeders. That’s a quite different experience, and how that plays out was quite different. But what I found with these breeders was that many of them were very open to learning. They were very curious, and they wanted to talk, and they wanted to learn about science. I was working with Candace Croney. I also was working in collaboration with Purdue University, so we had the opportunity to answer some of their questions and do some research. 

One example of this is that we were finding a lot of dogs that had dental disease. That can really negatively impact their welfare and their health and even pregnancy outcomes. This has been going on for a while. We knew that it was there. We weren’t really making any progress. We just weren’t making any progress with making it better. I was chatting with a lot of breeders, and it just seemed like they didn’t really have the tools to be able to really understand and identify when they were having problems, and when they needed veterinary help. We just went out and developed a tool, and we validated it, and we made this really simple, easy tool so that they could just monitor their dogs and know when they needed to intervene. And then we also wanted to see what they were doing, what kind of preventative care they were doing and what was working best, so that we could point them in that direction and say, “Hey, this works better than what you’re doing” so that they could allocate their resources appropriately. Turns out, that if you just give a dog a bone to chew on, it’s enrichment, so it gives them something to do. And it also cleans their teeth. This was a really powerful lesson for me, that it could just be something super simple, and you just had to actually get the information out to people and they would do it. So everyone wins! The dogs win! The breeders win! 

When I met Cat and Josh, I loved Good Dog’s mission, and I saw this as an opportunity to really work with dog breeders and dog owners to interject some more science, more evidence-based recommendations into what we are doing. I see my role as the scientist that can translate the science to regular people. Scientists are really bad at doing that. People don’t read journal articles. They’re boring. They’re full of jargon. And let’s be honest: breeders have more important things to do. We want them to raise puppies. That takes a lot of effort. So I see my role as being able to translate that science. With the technology, we can do that. We can communicate it on a large scale. We work at this every day. We have webinars. We have interviews with experts about behavior and genetics and reproduction. We make these available to anybody. We want every person that we come in contact with to be able to succeed. We want to give them the information they need to succeed. All of our webinars and educational materials are on our site, and they’re free to everyone. 

Moving forward, we want to start doing some of our own research. We want to start answering questions that our breeder community has. One idea that we had, one project that we plan to start, is to start doing health surveys so we can follow our puppies and have a better understanding of breed-specific conditions and ways to improve canine health. That’s where I see my role and my origin story with Good Dog.

Laura Reeves [13:45] I love that! I think, once again, we’re always going to go back to knowledge is power. If you know better, you do better. If we, here at Good Dog and on the Good Dog Pod, can empower people through knowledge, it is a win-win-win. It’s a win for the breeders, it’s a win for the buyers, and it’s a win for the dogs—which, I think, is pretty important. 

So, Cat Matloub is our Head of Partnership and Legal. She’s our Legal Beagle! But I’m not entirely sure she likes Legal Beagle, so…

Cat Matloub [14:22] From you, Laura, it’s totally fine! You forgot to introduce, at the beginning of this, that it’s not just a scientist, a lawyer, and a technologist. We also happen to have an amazing dog breeder, professional dog handler, dog groomer—and that is, as Josh has pointed out, such an immensely critical voice, so we’re super pleased to be here and to have you. You can call me the Legal Beagle all day long. I’ll take it.

Laura Reeves [14:53] I think that Cat has a pretty amazing story of being empowered by the acquisition of knowledge. Cat, I think that you should share that with our listeners. It’s really important for people to hear that. 

Cat Matloub [15:08] Absolutely. So, my story is I was always an avid dog lover. I grew up with dogs. If I was anywhere and there was a dog in the room, I was on the floor with the dog—not interacting with the people. I ended up becoming a corporate lawyer. I worked in mergers and acquisitions at Skadden, here in Manhattan, and I’d always known that I wanted to do something different with my life, something that I was passionate about. But that was my area of focus. Over the course of my twenties, I would say, I saw a lot of people very close to me (my roommates, my best friends, my colleagues, my law school classmates, and then my parents) go through horrifying experiences of trying to get a dog, wanting to get a dog, wanting to bring that joy and love into their lives and just being faced with huge anxiety about how to do that. Is it wrong to get one from a breeder? What does that mean? How do you know what you should do? How do you know you’re not going to get your money stolen online, like so many people do? It’s heartbreaking, and I saw my parents go through it. And I was helpless to help them. I’m an attorney. I do research. This is what I do! Why was it impossible to crack this code? 

And then I left Skadden. The most exciting thing about that for me was being able to get a dog of my own. So I started looking online, and I gave up. I spent a month—I remember the month—being horrible and so anxious and stressed and an emotional roller coaster. I ended up giving up, because I didn’t feel confidently that I could know how to get a dog in a good way. It was horrible for me. And then, as fate would have it, three months later, I was so, so fortunate to be connected with Josh and Lauren, who had similarly gone through that experience and been really smart folks. They’d already started the immense learning process when I met them. Basically, I had this life-changing moment, where I unlearned everything that I thought I knew about the dog world and I learned that we’ve been hugely successful—amazingly so—in decreasing the number of dogs in shelters and rescues. Because we love dogs so very much, the demand is huge! Actually, we don’t have an overpopulation problem, as Patti Strand (the expert) likes to say: it’s a distribution problem that we have. If you actually look at the numbers, which I did when I met Josh and Lauren, the truth is that we’re going to run out of dogs in the future if we don’t support dog breeders. And then I started learning more, and I started realizing that dog breeders are actually the ones doing everything in their power to produce healthy dogs, to produce well-adjusted dogs. They stand behind their dogs. It was just so eye-opening, what Josh and Lauren presented to me: the reality that we could change things in such a way that everyone would be better off. The dogs would be better off. The dog breeders would be better off. The puppy buyers would be better off. The  general public would be better off. And the key to it all was supporting dog breeders, supporting the people who were doing all of the good and working so hard. 

And then I dove even deeper when I joined on at Good Dog. What I found was truly horrifying. I discovered how unfairly dog breeders had been treated. I learned about the regulations that were not only not effective in doing what they were intended to do (which is give our dogs a better life, better welfare) but rather had the effect of pushing out the folks who were very essential to us having a good dog world. Not only that, but targeting them unfairly, going after them with no recourse. I’ve heard horrifying stories! One of the stories that we actually experienced recently, and it’s something that really got me thinking wow, this is an area where I can use my legal training to empower dog breeders. It’s the horrifying cases you hear of when breeders are unable to get their dogs taken out of the shelter or are unable to get their dogs back from control officers when they were unfairly targeted with no recourse and everyone was blaming them. 

One of the stories I heard in my first week at Good Dog: A lot of people don’t know this, but breeders have take-backs. They stand behind their dogs for life. Like, they are there. That dog is not going anywhere! That dog is not going to a shelter, they’re microchipped. They will literally fly across the country. In my first week at Good Dog, I heard the most amazing story of a breeder. I asked her, “Do you take your dogs back? Do you stand behind them?” And she tells me a story about how after 9/11, one of her owners called her out of the blue and said, “I’ve been displaced. We don’t have an apartment. I don’t know what to do. Our hotel doesn’t take dogs.” The breeder paid herself, flew across the country and took this dog back. So that is one of thousands of stories that I’ve heard of how inspiring dog breeders are. I think my role at Good Dog is really to be a dog breeder advocate, in so many ways. We submit talking points and explain to local legislature if they’ve got overreaching legislation proposed. We look to Patti Strand and her amazing work with NAIA, and we try to submit evidence to them and say, “Hey, this is how what you’re proposing is going to have such a hugely harmful effect and really do the opposite of what you’re intending to do, and this is what we should do to support dog breeders.” Being there for any dog breeder in our community, we now have hired a team of lawyers. People are joking with me that we are now a mini law firm. They both happen to be Harvard Law School graduates, so we’re really bringing in the A-game to really finally be advocates for dog breeders, people that you can turn to. We provide mediation services and support. We provide help with contracts, because again, law is an area where you can be empowered as a dog breeder to protect your rights to have a contract in place with specifications with your puppy buyers, so it’s fair and you know what to expect, and you know that any of your rights will be protected because they are right there. We’re working on a legal resource database, where we can have a host of contracts and things like template language to include in a will, for instance, if you’re worried about what happens to your dog, or ongoing rights with a co-owner. What happens if the co-owner passes away? It comes back to this idea of empowering dog breeders. So Josh can empower them with technology. And Judi can empower them with scientific knowledge. And I can empower them with the law. That’s what brings us all here together. I think we’re just so excited about you and what all of us can do together, which is an essential piece of Good Dog. In order to overcome the misconceptions, in order to make sure the public knows what I know, we have to come together. We have to stand behind dog breeders. Dog breeders have to unite. Because we have to be strong enough to change the conversation. Otherwise, the future of the dog world does not look good. 

Laura Reeves [22:17] Cat, we can tell the origin story of how I met you! But we probably won’t here on this podcast today. 

Cat Matloub [22:26] That is a great one because Laura, famously, made me cry. It’s a testament to how much we love critical feedback at Good Dog. We then promptly offered her a job. We mean it when we say we’re eager for feedback. 

Laura Reeves [22:40] Here’s the thing that I think that the Good Dog Pod offers for all of us. I am your host. I am a dog breeder. I have been involved in breeding purebred dogs for forty years. I was a professional show dog handler. I am an American Kennel Club licensed judge. So, I bring a different level of experience. One of the things that I think the Good Dog Pod can help do is what Cat and I talked about, and that is translation. Translation of the English language, but also translation of culture. So the culture of a dog breeder and the culture of a dog buyer are not always the same. Having people to help share that communication within the community, and Josh’s ability through technology and Judi’s ability through science and Cat’s ability through legal—all of that comes together in the ability to share knowledge and share experience and empower dog breeders and empower dog buyers. That is a pretty big mission. 

Well, thank you, everyone! This has been a fabulous conversation with our founders. I look forward to talking to you all once a week. We’ll see you each Wednesday. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast. It’s easy to groom a dog, walk a dog, drive a car—almost anything—during a podcast. So, we look forward to talking to you more soon. 

Judi Stella [24:15] Thank you!

Josh Weiss [24:15] Thank you so much!

Cat Matloub [24:16] Thank you so much! Join us! We’re so much stronger together! We can change the dog world together!