Welcome to Reboundog News
Reboundog News is an independent publication launched on September 12th, 2022, by Spencer B. Hodgetts Reboundog's Founder and Tom Van Winkle our Interim CEO. Along with a passionate working-group of members Air Gustafson, Beth Cherryholmes Miller, Billie Groom, Carmen Rustenbeck, Ciaran Walsh, Debra Vey Voda Hamilton, Joanna Dumas, Josh Thomas & Mindy Dutka.
We are pleased to publish not only our own writings, but also those which inspire us. Together they give you innovative news from a globally diverse network, that will inspire you to take action in disruptive & collaborative solutions to the current system that is failing marginalised dogs.
Your opportunity for you to join a community of other subscribers who share the same interests and become part of that change...today.
So who is Spencer?
I believe that marginalised dogs & people have the right to belong in society!
So I help pet advocacy & therapy professionals create the social-impact they desire.
About six years ago someone on social media in the US shared a video about a “prison dog programme”. That video touched something deep down in me about listening, real deep listening….without pre-judgement. I’ve been in too many situations from very young childhood on where I or others around me have not been listened to.
When I went to secondary school in Holyhead, N.Wales in ‘68 I was one of only half a dozen English kids in a school of 1900+ so one learnt pretty quick to fight your ground. An old school friend, now in Norway who has kept in loose contact with a cousin, commented recently that she remembered me as standing up to speak his mind on environmental issues. I’d grown up there on a beach with a rescue English collie as my friend. So I’ve been standing up with my head above the parapet for over half a century!
My working life falls into two blocks of landscaping big stuff such as motorways & logistics truck driving which included union representation of 7k UK employees with the Global Board in Europe. So working with real people who don’t give a proverbial. Oh! 3 years in the middle for a national group for small business owners which lobbied MPs & MEPs based on referendum surveys (great for developing listening skills without your own opinion).
I’ve spent the previous two decades+ since the passing of my brother learning about personal development (not the happy clappy crap), so could see this thing about people & dogs that have never been listened to. In 2015 after the completion of a Medicine Walk my business coach concluded “you have a deeply relational gift of listening to and learning from a living sensate world. That is who you are. Go use it well in service”
So when this video popped up it made so much sense and about which I could see so much potential not just in the prison sector, but in all situations where we have marginalised people from the homeless & those who belong to gangs, the lonely, the elderly to veterans with PTSD. Rather than just have ordinary people train therapy dogs which are given to the marginalised let’s train the marginalised to be the trainers!
Plus surely such collaborations must create a regular solution to a lot of the rescued dogs that aren’t cute….the underdogs.
Of which we’ve rescued several over the last four decades+.
“Among the garbage and the flowers There are heroes in the seaweed” taken from Suzanne by Leonard Cohen which I’ve been listening to for best part of 50 years.
Now I use my unique combination of listening & networking skills to bring people together who can make social-impact happen locally, nationally & internationally.
From my earlier botanical background I see networks as potential symbiotic relationships rather than a social hierarchy.
