Haas Motorsports has fired its former Formula 1 team principal Guenther Steiner. While this is a very sensible decision for Haas as a racing organization looking to succeed in F1 (and after the team finished in last place in the 2023 Constructor’s Cup, it’s probably coming a little late), it’s a devastating blow to fans of Netflix’s Drive to Survive.
While arguably one of least successful team principals in recent memory, Steiner was a godsend for the reality show producers at Box to Box. He’s an absolute character, a true weirdo in ways only European sports can produce. He’s brash, loud, opinionated, full of odd sayings and bizarre jokes, and he seemingly got along great with everyone. (Except, occasionally, his drivers.)
In other words, everything about him is pitch-perfect for a reality series, especially one trying to get off the ground. Even better, he was working for one of the lowest-ranked teams in the sport, so he had nothing to lose by allowing cameras into his paddock and behind the scenes for tons of access.
For most of Drive to Survive’s five seasons, Steiner has essentially remained the show’s main character. Sure, the show has way more access to the rest of the teams now than it did before, with even the top teams lining up to get their shot on camera, but there’s still no character quite like Guenther.
Steiner was also a fantastic entry point into the sport. A careful, eccentric explainer of racing, Steiner has a talent in his talking-head shorts for helping viewers learn more about racing without even realizing it. On top of that, his incredible Northern Italian dad energy provides a nice respite from the young-buck confidence of all of the drivers.
The only problem with all of this is that he wasn’t helping Haas score any points. He became a reality star, but that wasn’t translating to results on the track, which meant his days with Haas were numbered. Steiner will be replaced by Ayao Komatsu, who has been Haas’ trackside engineer since 2016, and has also appeared often on Drive to Survive.
The good news for Drive to Survive fans is that even though Guenther is one of a kind, there’s never a shortage of characters involved in Formula 1. We’ll just have to wait for two seasons from now to find out who, as the upcoming season — likely arriving sometime in February or March — will follow his final year as Haas’s team principal.
Austin Pets Alive! was founded in 2008 fueled by a need to save companion animals whose lives would be lost without our support.
We looked at our community and saw so many animals unnecessarily losing their lives due to a lack of resources and education.
Our mission is to promote and provide the resources, education, and programs needed to eliminate the killing of companion animals. And yesterday, because of our community’s long-held trust and generosity, APA! celebrated our 100,000th life saved. We had city council members Leslie Pool and Kathie Tovo join us along with board members and staff as we read a proclamation celebrating 100K lives saved with the adorable Copper present as our 100,000th life.
This celebration doesn’t just belong to APA!, it belongs to each and every one of you. So many of those furry lives saved are sitting with you now as you read this email, smiling on your phone backgrounds, or being lovingly remembered for their impact on your hearts. We invite you to watch this video showcasing just a few of the 100,000 pets your support has saved.
Thank you, Friend, for being a part of the first 100,000 lives saved by APA! and we know we can count on you for the next. Whether it is our Parvo Puppy ICU, the Feline Leukemia Adoption Center, our Medical Triage & Wellness Clinic, or another innovative program, please know that APA! will always be here for animals in need, just like you have always been there for us.
As this year comes to a close, I’m in awe of the lifesaving love that you have for dogs and cats who have no other chances to survive. You made sure that pets survived a winter storm. You made sure that Austin remained the safest city in the US for pets for the 10th year in a row. You got APA! one step closer to keeping shelter pets in the heart of Austin. Most importantly, this year, you made sure that more than 12,000 pets were saved from unnecessary death in shelters.
This year also marked a big shift, as a result of COVID, in the way that government shelters operate all over the country. For the first time in history, governments are banding together to address the root causes of crowded shelters and unnecessary euthanasia. Although we are not a government shelter, APA! is helping to lead the movement towards a more humane, for humans and pets, way of operating. The gift all animal lovers have wished for year after year finally feels possible- to eliminate the killing of shelter pets in America, forever.
Early in 2022, APA! leadership will be sharing our full 2021 impact numbers and highlights, but as you celebrate the holidays (if you celebrate them, and however you safely can this year) we want to wish you and your loved ones well and thank you for your continued role in saving animal lives.
Let’s take a look back on just a few of the milestones from 2021.
February: Winter Storm Uri & the start of transport
When Winter Storm Uri hit Texas in mid-February this year, it leftover four million people out of power and water for days. Temperatures got down to historically low single digits, and there was widespread loss of internet and cell phone reception.
In our work, lives are on the line every day. When disasters like Uri hit, it takes a village to ensure no companions’ lives are lost — no matter the circumstances. Our dedicated staff and volunteers went above and beyond to keep the animals on-site safe and warm, with some staff even sleeping at the shelter.
With the help of the community, we were able to triage burst pipes and regain power via donated generators. We relied on our community more than ever during this time, and our community relied on us. Our P.A.S.S. (Positive Alternatives to Shelter Surrender) program was in full force, saving community pets from the cold, providing food and water to pet owners in need and so much more.
As we gained control over our own crisis, the focus turned to animals who were losing their lives in shelters that did not have power as we madly transported more than 1,000 of them to other cities that could help. While Austin is the safest place for pets in the US, only a tiny fraction of the 150,000 animals losing their lives each year in Texas can get into Austin. The cold crisis got us to think of Austin as a pit stop in the journey from one very dangerous place in TX to a much less dangerous place in the north, even if that final destination is not at Austin’s level of No Kill success. In doing so, we started to open the door to making Texas No Kill. As of today, 2,228 lives have been saved in 2021 thanks to your support of the transport efforts in Texas.
April: Launched partnership with Austin FC
The first-of-its-kind honorary mascot partnership featured APA! dogs available for adoption as Austin FC honorary mascots at each Austin FC regular-season home match throughout the 2021 season. The best thing about this partnership is that the focus was on dogs who often are looked over in the shelter because they are too big or too old. Since the launch of the community-centered partnership, 15 Austin FC mascots have been adopted!
September: Austin 10th No Kill Anniversary
2021 marked Austin’s 10th year as a No Kill city. When APA! was founded in 1997 as an all-volunteer advocacy organization, Austin Animal Center’s save rate was 15 percent. In June 2008, APA! was reborn as a rescue organization and by 2011, the city reached a 90 percent live release rate, making Austin the largest No Kill city in the U.S.
Ten years later, our city now has a 97 percent live release rate. Together with you, the highest values of the people of Austin are represented in the way we care for our community’s pets.
October: Shelter Re-opening
By late October, after over a year of adopting APA pets exclusively online, we decided it was time to re-open our doors — safely. With masking and other safety measures in place, our shelter is now open Saturday and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. Seeing our community members in person after all this time has been one of the highlights of the year.
November: City Resolution Passes
We pulled off another season of successful lifesaving despite the challenges with our Town Lake facility and restrictions within our agreement with the city. This November though, we achieved a major milestone in working towards a years-long overdue solution. Our agreement, since it had not been updated in over 10 years, did not allow us to fulfill our organization’s mission. We were restricted by the locations in which we could help surrounding shelters while keeping Austin No Kill. And we were restricted to an arbitrary number of animals that we must pull from Austin Animal Center, which has the largest municipal budget in the country, even if it meant we were duplicating their work.
Without a new agreement, our home in the heart of the city and our bold vision for the future of animal welfare was in jeopardy. On November 4th, City Council voted to allow us to take in animals from anywhere and remain at home in our current location. We still have to finalize an official lease agreement, which should reflect the value of the land use in terms of donated dollars we spend to adopt out animals in their charge. But we are thrilled that one of the two major roadblocks to a successful legal partnership is now out of the way. It would NOT have happened without you raising your voice and telling the council that saving our four-legged, and sometimes three-legged, family members’ lives, responsibly, matters to you.
Today
We are proud of the progress we’ve made on our new strategic plan we announced last year. We’ve completed and are implementing a variety of programs to be a sustainable organization and to invest in our people. We’ve also opened our Human Animal Support Services (HASS) project so any organization can be a partner and, in doing so, exponentially grown the work underway to change the way government shelters operate- by shifting the focus from just animals to families- both human and nonhuman. Today we have 104 HASS partner organizations. Here at home in Austin, we’re continuing to find better ways to save the lives that we encounter in need, no matter what challenge or trauma they have to overcome.
As we say goodbye to 2021 and hello to 2022, we’re nearing 100,000 intakes of animals since 2008. That’s nearly 100,000 that would’ve been killed for behavior quirks, medical issues or even just a lack of space at partnering shelters. Together with you, APA! continues to be the safety net for pets who have nowhere else to turn.
As we start to see the light of normalcy return with the release of COVID vaccines, we have a little break from what has felt like back-to-back emergencies to share our plans for the future at Austin Pets Alive!. Our board of directors and executive staff have been working hard on creating and starting to implement our 2021-2023 strategic plan.
This plan brings our mission sharply into focus. If you need a refresher, our mission is to promote and provide the resources, education, and programs needed to eliminate the killing of companion animals. We recognize if we tighten our efforts, forget what we know as our “status quo” and really drill down on all the ways we, as a large lifesaving organization, can physically intervene in the deaths of shelter pets, we can actually find even more ways to save lives with what we have and know. Our eyes are set on making Texas No Kill and we’re not stopping there.
After the recent snowstorm, we got a taste of what the animals are like who are still losing their lives in Texas as we madly transported more than 1,000 of them to other cities that wanted to help. These are sweet cuddly little kittens, small fluffy dogs, labs, huskies and so many more deserving lives that we know from our experience in Austin are among the easiest to save. One story in particular hit home–a sweet little chihuahua mix named Hamilton in Laredo who was scheduled to be killed. He was scooped up for this transport and now is happy and safe in a home in Jackson Hole, WY! We had never thought we could save thousands more per year until now, and dogs like Hamilton deserve our brainstorming and reassessing so that more lives are saved.
Here is some food for thought:
It is estimated that 150,000 animals are still needlessly dying in Texas shelters every year.
In most northern U.S. communities, there is an overabundance of adopters, which is keenly felt by organizations which scramble to find adoptable pets to meet demand.
It costs a fraction of our total per animal to serve as a distributor to shelters and rescues as it does to take them all in and do all the work ourselves before adoption.
So why haven’t we transported out all along? Over the last 12 years, we have steered clear of transport, except during Hurricane Harvey and then only for non-Austin animals, because Austin is the safest community in the country for pets. Sending pets from Austin to anywhere else is inherently more dangerous for them. Unfortunately, that thinking has gotten in the way of us taking a hard look at how we might be able to help pets still dying all over the state. While Austin is safest, only a tiny fraction of the 150,000 animals losing their lives each year in Texas can get into Austin. If we start to think of Austin instead as a pit stop in the journey from one very dangerous place in TX to a much less dangerous place in the north, even if that final destination is not at Austin’s level of No Kill experience, we start to open the door to making Texas No Kill.
You might be thinking, “But taking some of your attention off of Austin-only animals makes you less effective for Austin!” We believe the opposite is true. We know that if we are able to save the masses of Texas lives more efficiently, we can ourselves focus on saving the few that truly need our specialized support more effectively. By helping more cities stop killing, we help more animals join homes both in Austin and beyond. By solving for the reasons animals die on a grander scale than just our own backyard, Austin continues as the beacon of hope for other cities and states. By ensuring that the money entrusted to us to save lives saves as many pets as possible, we give every animal, no matter its lineage, an equitable chance to not die in a shelter without the benefit of someone trying to help.
Transport is one small piece of our strategic future. We will be sharing a lot more in the coming weeks. Thank you for being on this journey with APA! as we continue to push the lifesaving needle.
