Today we’d like to introduce you to Mike Roach. He share his story with us below:
Our Mission: Taysia Blue Rescue strives to save lives by keeping Siberian Huskies and Alaskan Malamutes out of shelters. We provide them with medical attention, socialization, exercise, food, and a safe place to live with volunteer foster families until we can find them forever homes.
Our Vision:
Taysia Blue Rescue envisions a time when all adoptable Siberian Huskies and Alaskan Malamutes have a loving home. Where all have their basic needs met, where all families are knowledgeable of the challenges and wonder of the breeds, and where both humans and dogs become ambassadors of this vision.
Who we are:
Taysia Blue Rescue is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We are a family of volunteers and advocates dedicated to helping local Siberian Huskies, Alaskan Malamutes, and their guardians. We are funded solely and supported by, the generosity of individuals and corporations in our communities.
All of our dogs are located in approved foster homes in the metro areas of Omaha, Lincoln, Kansas City, Des Moines, Denver, and Memphis. Taysia Blue does not have a physical building and does not have set hours of operation.
Our Guiding Principles:
Be Kind. We demonstrate kindness and compassion for all living creatures, we treat others as we would want to be treated.
Respect the Individual. We value and recognize the contributions of each volunteer. We respect each other’s opinions, even when we don’t always agree. We aren’t quick to judge and we listen openly. We respect the privacy and boundaries of adopters and volunteers. We approach each dog as a unique being with different needs. We own what we do and have a sense of urgency. We trust and empower each other to make decisions.
Strive for Excellence. We are open to change, we want to lead by example. We are agile and seek innovation. We strive to make at least one thing better every day. We work as a team and help each other. Act with Integrity. We do what we say we are going to do. We value honesty and fairness. We are objective by making decisions based on Taysia Blue Rescue’s interests and the dogs that count on us.
What we do:
Provide impact on the communities that we serve by taking dogs from crowded shelters and finding a safe place for them in a Taysia Blue Rescue foster home. Taysia Blue Rescue works with the dogs while in foster care to minimize the challenges when moving to their permanent home.
Taysia Blue Rescue works to set families up for success, by setting realistic expectations and matching them with the right dog to share their lifestyle. We support our adopters for life by providing ongoing support and resources.
We provide education and resources about the Siberian Husky and Alaskan Malamute breed to ensure that adoptive families can make an educated decision before adopting. We support responsible dog ownership by educating the public about spay and neutering and promoting good health and safety.
We support and encourage 100% positive reinforcement training technics; believing it is better to teach a dog by showing them the behaviors that we want vs. punishment for what they did. We do not support the use of shock or prong collars. We give back to the community by helping out other animal welfare organizations and supporting other groups in need.
Beginnings: https://www.taysiablue.com/taysia
Taysia Blue was the first dog my wife Jackie and I rescued; she became the inspiration for the Rescue organization.
Taysia Blue Rescue was started in Omaha, NE in 2010 by Jackie and Mike Roach, we now have 100’s of volunteers in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, Arkansas, and most recently Tennessee.
We saved 47 Siberian Huskies and Alaskan Malamutes in our first year of rescue, 91 our second year, over a hundred in our third, and we haven’t looked back. To date, we have saved just shy of 2000 lives total.
We are still a young organization, but we aspire to be the best all-volunteer rescue organization on the planet. We’re a long way from that lofty goal, but it drives us to always be better, to evolve and change as an organization as we identify new challenges and needs. All with the goal to save more lives. Taysia Blue is with us every step of the way. She is the face of the rescue – as we use her to bring some levity and laughter to a very stressful, sometimes sad mission of saving dogs. She is there to remind us of the happy results.
Our founder Jackie, “Taysia Blue’s legacy continues and hopefully, we’ll continue long after I am gone. She will forever be that little husky whose legs were too short, her jaw too crooked, that little husky who was a bit too crabby to take to events. Yet she has left quite a paw print. I knew it the day when someone contacted me about adopting “a Taysia Blue”. “You mean a Siberian husky”? “Well, sort of, one of those Taysia Blue Huskies is what I want”.”
We typically only pull dogs from Animal Shelters as the need is greater there due to the risk of these beautiful souls losing their lives due to shelter overcrowding.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I think the biggest thing that surprised us early on was how great the need was to save not just Huskies and Malamutes, but all dogs that are in shelters. It didn’t take us very long to realize the need was much greater than the two of us could handle. Luckily we had made a lot of contacts with people that love the breed as much as we do and they were willing to join us in helping save these lives.
The hardest thing however is having to decide which dogs you can help in which dogs have to wait for that help. We try to prioritize the dogs in the greatest need in the shelters within our region.
Our greatest need, and it determines how many dogs we can save, is how many foster volunteers we have. Our volunteers that foster for us sacrifice their time their energy and sometimes their couch. We try to make it super simple for them and at no cost to them, but it takes a special person to welcome a strange dog into your home when you probably already have a dog(s) and help the process of finding these dogs a forever home.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My role with the rescue has always been on the marketing and PR side.
My title although we’re not big on titles, is experience officer. what that means is that we really try to pay attention to the experience that not just our adopters have when they work with us but also more volunteers and the public in general. It’s very rewarding when I get told by somebody at a conference or such that they love our organization, and they love our people and they love what we do.
I think the thing that sets us apart we’ve tried to do this right from the start as we run the rescue as a business in every sense of the word even though we are ‘not for profit’ we keep track of data and expenses like any business should. We’ve always tried to do is make sure there’s longevity and growth so that we can help more animals.
And on that note, I’ve never been a fan of the label ‘not for profit organization’ I’ve always preferred to call us a ‘for purpose organization’.
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
I think when you’re networking or looking for a mentor I think you have to look for people that share the same values and work ethic, as well as share a passion 4 their work.
Contact Info:
- Website: taysiablue.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taysiablue/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TaysiaBlue
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq4lXBNnd69Yxyxl_Argrtg
Image Credits
Taysia Blue SHR, Inc.
