Utah’s path to the College Football Playoff narrowed on Tuesday night when the Utes dropped from 12th to 13th after rallying last week for a 51-47 home win over Kansas State.
To earn a spot in the Big 12 Conference title game and a potential berth in the CFP, Utah will have to win Friday at Kansas and then get help from three other Big 12 teams.
Even if the Utes (9-2, 6-2) take care of business in Lawrence against the Jayhawks (5-6, 3-5), they’ll require an Arizona victory at No. 20 Arizona State on Friday night, a West Virginia upset of No. 5 Texas Tech on Saturday in Morgantown, and a UCF stunner at No. 11 BYU that same day.
Those are some long odds but at least Utah still has a chance, thanks to Devon Dampier’s 1-yard touchdown run with 56 seconds left last week that salvaged a win on a day when it allowed a whopping 472 rushing yards.
‘There’s no real easy explanation to it,’ Utes coach Kyle Whittingham said about his defense’s poor performance. ‘We just did not play the run game in any way, shape or form with any consistency. It just wasn’t good. Everything we could do wrong, we did.’
Fortunately for Utah, its offense picked up the defense by amassing 32 first downs and 551 total yards. Dampier passed for 259 yards and ran for 94 to continue another banner season. He has thrown for 1,927 yards and rushed for 637 while accounting for 26 touchdowns (19 passing).
His performance has helped the Utes go from being one of the weakest attacks in FBS to one of strongest. They rank in the top 10 nationally in four categories — points per game (42.0), yards per game (484.5), rushing (279.6) and third-down conversions (53.1).
‘Outstanding,’ Whittingham said of Dampier’s latest effort. ‘Settled in and really played an excellent game.’
While Utah tries to maintain its slim chances of a CFP berth, Kansas needs the win to become bowl-eligible. The Jayhawks missed on a chance to do that last week with a 38-14 loss at Iowa State.
Kansas trimmed a 17-0 halftime deficit to get within 24-14 but wasn’t able to get a stop when it really needed one, which has been an issue most of the season. Its defense has allowed at least 37 points in five of the six losses.
Jayhawks coach Lance Leipold is stressing the need for his players not to try to do too much with bowl hopes on the line.
‘It really goes for everyone in the building,’ he said when asked if he had to deliver that message to specific players. ‘As coaches, that’s our responsibility to help our players. There’s times when a guy tries to go make a play that’s out of his responsibility. We want to make sure we play our best football.’
Kansas will need a big game from quarterback Jalon Daniels, who has thrown for 2,344 yards and 21 touchdowns with just four interceptions. The absence of Utes pass rusher John Henry Daley, whose 11 1/2 sacks are tied for second in FBS, should help Daniels. Daley is out for the season with a leg injury.
The teams are tied at 2-2 in their all-time series but this is their first meeting since 1996.
Discworld is one of those strange series that you simply cannot explain to somebody who has not read it before. Sir Terry Pratchett was the greatest fantasy writer of his time, perhaps of all time, and reading his books while I was homeless was one of the few things that brought me enough joy to keep going some days.
We’ve reported on our fair share of break-ups and make-ups over the years but this is truly a first.
39-year-old Gilberto Nogueira should probably be in prison and somehow 34-year-old Daiane dos Santos is still his girlfriend. According to the Daily Mail, Nogueira got caught cheating on Dos Santos on her birthday…with her 15-year-old niece. One might be inclined to think that a person would react impetuously upon learning such news, but Dos Santos maintained her composure and played a long game.
In December 2023, Dos Santos set up a night of romance for Nogueira that involved a decorated bedroom and a spicy lingerie set. Once he took off his clothes and get into bed, Dos Santos tied his penis with a rubber band, cut it off with a razor blade, took a photo, sent the photo to the family WhatsApp group text, then, flushed it down the toilet of their home in Brazil.
Despite all of that, an O Globo reports that Nogueira shared handwritten reconciliation letters that the couple recently sent to one another.
“If I hadn’t had sex with (her) niece on my partner’s birthday, none of this would have happened,’ Nogueira told the outlet. ‘Daiane is a wonderful, loving woman who loves me. She didn’t deserve to be betrayed like that. She was exposed to the whole country. … I don’t care what others think. What really matters is how I feel about her.”
In the letters, both parties reportedly expressed that they have forgiven each other for their transgressions and hope to reunite when Dos Santos is freed from prison. She was initially looking at 50 years behind bars but the judge in the case set the maximum sentence for 12 years. Her trial is set to begin on April 24, 2024.
Nogueira is currently awaiting a penile implant prosthesis that he was gifted by a urologist who will…install it once Nogueira has fully recovered from his multitude of surgeries.
This console generation has been pretty short of “next-gen moments” — those dazzling, techy epiphanies when you see a game do things that were inconceivable on earlier hardware. You can make a case for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s lightning-fast loading or Starfield’s potato physics, but there have been relatively few instances where you can watch the future arrive in real time.
There are a few reasons for this. One is that console supply issues and pandemic-driven development delays led to an unusually long cross-generational phase. Until last year, most games were still being released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well as their successors. Another is that Unreal Engine 5, the latest iteration of Epic Games’ ubiquitous graphics engine, lagged a little behind the new console generation, and large-scale UE5 productions have been slow to appear, with a couple of exceptions.
All of this is why I wasn’t expecting to experience a next-gen moment when I traveled to Cambridge, U.K., to visit the Ninja Theory studio and play Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. But I got one. It’s an astonishingly lifelike narrative action game that applies UE5’s tech, Microsoft’s resources (the company owns Ninja Theory), and the unique processes of a smallish team of technical artists to create something at once grounded and vividly hyperreal. There’s nothing else quite like it.
This won’t come as a total surprise if you played 2017’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Both Hellblade games blend horrific, quasi-mythological action with a realistic approach to the psychology of their heroine, Senua, an eighth-century Celtic warrior with psychosis. Both games have a photoreal visual style with heavy emphasis on performance capture — an area Ninja Theory has specialized in since collaborating with Andy Serkis on its 2007 action game Heavenly Sword.
Quite a lot has changed for Ninja Theory since 2017, however. In 2018, the studio was acquired by Microsoft. It hasn’t grown much since — with 100 people, around 80 of whom are working on Hellblade 2, this remains a modestly sized team — but Microsoft’s investment is evident in beautiful new offices with a large, dedicated motion capture studio (and, at the insistence of some extremely British local planning regulations, an in-house pub). On my visit, there was no sign or mention of Ninja Theory’s flamboyant founder and Hellblade writer-director Tameem Antoniades. An Xbox spokesperson later confirmed to Polygon that he is no longer with the studio. Antoniades was involved in Hellblade 2 in the early stages, but the game now has a trio of creative leads: environment art director Dan Attwell, visual effects director Mark Slater-Tunstill, and audio director David Garcia.
You would expect a dedication to craft in any game led by three technical artists, but that still wouldn’t prepare you for the extraordinary lengths Ninja Theory is going to in its pursuit of realism. In Hellblade 2, Senua journeys to Iceland on the hunt for Norse slavers who are decimating her community in the northern British Isles. As press toured the studio, Attwell explained that the route of her adventure had been plotted in the real world, and locations were captured using a mixture of satellite imaging, drone footage, procedural generation, and photogrammetry. The team spent weeks on location in Iceland, studying the landscape, photographing rocks, and piloting drones. They also studied building techniques of the time and virtually constructed doors out of 3D-scanned planks of wood, rather than modeling them. They even made their own rough wood carvings and scanned them in.
Character art director Dan Crossland showed us real costumes that had been made to fit the actors by a London-based costume designer using period-appropriate techniques, and then scanned in by the studio. Behind Crossland’s desk there was a mannequin plastered in mesh, putty, feathers, and deconstructed scraps of fabric — a spooky, hand-sculpted prototype enemy design.
Image: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios
Over in the combat team’s section, principal action designer Benoit Macon, a very tall and ebullient Frenchman, explained that the game’s fight sequences weren’t traditionally animated, but 100% mo-capped. I watched stunt professionals act out finishing moves on the performance capture stage while animation director Guy Midgley shot them in a close, roving handheld style, using a phone in a lightweight rig.
The playable results of this fully mo-capped fighting system are quite unique. Combat in Hellblade 2 is one on one only, slow-paced, and very brutal. In the fight scenes of the demo I played — which also featured pattern-spotting puzzles and some atmospheric, grueling traversal — there’s a heightened sense of threat as Senua faces hulking and aggressive opponents, and the characters loom large in the unusually tight camera angles. This might not be the over-the-top combat of DmC: Devil May Cry, but it’s still very effective.
In a small, soundproofed studio on the top floor, Garcia worked with the two voice actors playing the Furies, which is how Senua thinks of the voices in her head who keep up a constant commentary on the action and her state of mind. (As with the first game, scriptwriter Lara Derham has worked with psychology professor Paul Fletcher and with people who have experienced psychosis on the portrayal of the condition’s effects.) The actors prowled around a binaural microphone — essentially a mannequin head with microphones for ears — hissing and murmuring their lines as if at Senua herself. Garcia, a Spaniard with an infectious sense of wonder, is called a “genius” by his co-workers. His growling, chattering soundscapes are players’ principal point of access into Senua’s state of mind, and they’re as overwhelming now as they were in 2017.
Image: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios
The lengths to which Ninja Theory is going to ground this digital video gamein physical reality might seem quixotic — even contradictory — but the proof is in the playing. The game, which I played on Xbox Series X, looks stunning, whether it’s rendering the black, smoking slopes of an Icelandic volcano or the pale, haunted eyes of Senua performer Melina Juergens. But beyond that, Hellblade 2 has a tactile immediacy that seems to operate at an almost subconscious level. Ninja Theory’s artists are seeking an emotional connection with the player that, they believe, can only form if the player thinks that what they are seeing is real.
“I think that the human mind does [a thing where] you think you know what something looks like, but then actually, when you look at what that thing is, in reality there’s way more chaos in it. It’s not quite the same as what you picture in your head,” Slater-Tunstill said. “If you were just sculpting off the top of your head, the environments or the characters or whatever, it just is going to lose some of that nature, some of that chaos.”
Attwell said that Unreal Engine 5 has made this realist approach more more achievable, both because of the level of fidelity available in the engine’s Nanite geometry system, and because “the turnaround between scanning the thing and putting it in the level is drastically cut, and you can spend that time finessing.”
“You can think more about the composition,” Slater-Tunstill agreed. “And with the kind of lighting volumetrics we can now do, everything just beds in much better. It’s more believable.”
Overall, the sense from the Ninja Theory team is that UE5 has removed a lot of barriers for video game artists, and that players are only just starting to see the results. “It feels like the graphical leap that we’ve managed with this is like… We’re on the trajectory we wanted,” Attwell said.
Image: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios
You only need to lay eyes on Hellblade 2 briefly to understand that you’re seeing the next evolution of game technology. It’s not just the engine, though — there are a bunch of factors aligning to make Hellblade 2 a tech showcase. For one, the game design is extremely focused. This isn’t some wild open-world simulation; it’s a linear, narrative-first action game. As an Xbox first-party studio, Ninja Theory has the luxury of building for fewer formats. Also, it’s been given the time to experiment. Touring the studio, Microsoft’s investment in Ninja Theory starts to make a lot of sense. The tech giant hasn’t just acquired a boutique developer, but also an R&D unit that explores the technical and artistic frontiers of a specific game-making process.
The result is a game made with an unusual degree of focus. Hellblade 2 won’t necessarily be to everyone’s taste with its slow pace, deliberate inputs, and highly scripted, cinematic presentation. It struck me as a modern successor to something like the 1983 interactive animation Dragon’s Lair. As intense and dramatic as the section I played was, it remains to be seen whether the game’s story — a more outward journey for a more mentally balanced Senua — can connect as deeply as Hellblade’s trip into her darkest fears. But there’s no doubting the craft on display, or the immersive sense of presence this game has. It may be a sequel, but it feels like the start of something — like a true next-gen experience should.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 will be released May 21 on Windows PC and Xbox Series X.
Jake Paul will square up with Mike Tyson in a live-streamed Netflix boxing match this summer. Yes, you read that correctly.
Source: Gilbert Flores/Alexander Tamargo / Getty
According to Variety, the bout is scheduled to take place at the AT&T Stadium in Texas and will be available to Netflix subscribers and people with a password hookup. The last time Paul faced off with an iconic boxer, Floyd Mayweather sent him running like Forest Gump a year ago.
More details about the co-main event and the undercards will be revealed at a later date.
More from Variety:
“This will not be the first time Paul and Tyson have appeared on a boxing card together. Paul fought in the co-main event of the pay-per-view that saw Tyson fight an exhibition match against Roy Jones Jr. in 2020, which was Tyson’s first boxing match since 2006.”
Mike Tyson, 57, is obviously one of the greatest boxers of all time. He only lost 6 fights from 1985 to 2005, when he retired. Jake Paul, 28, started boxing in 2018 and turned pro in 2020. The former content creator has nine wins and one loss under his belt thus far.
Jake’s record is nothing to play with, either, so he might stand a chance. Jake clearly feels froggy, as evidenced by his recreating some of Mike Tyson’s greatest (and most disturbing) media moments:
In case anyone was confused, Unc still got it, though.
Tyson sounds as curious about how Jake will survive the fight as everyone else. However he seems pretty confident about how the fight will inevitably end.
“I’m very much looking forward to stepping into the ring with Jake Paul at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas,” Tyson told Netflix in a statement, according to People.
“He’s grown significantly as a boxer over the years, so it will be a lot of fun to see what the will and ambition of a ‘kid’ can do with the experience and aptitude of a GOAT. It’s a full circle moment that will be beyond thrilling to watch; as I started him on his boxing journey on the undercard of my fight with Roy Jones and now I plan to finish him.”
This could go either way, but it would be crazy to be a GOAT and lose a boxing match to a YouTuber-turned-boxer. Who you got your money on?
Palworld, the game that looks like, “Pokémon, but with guns,” was released Friday and is already one of the biggest releases of the year.
According to its developer, Pocketpair, the game has sold over one million copies within “about” eight hours of its release. Pocketpair shared the impressive sales number via X, but did not add any further clarification as to what that sales number included. Palworld launched to both Steam and Xbox Games Pass, so it’s unclear if that number includes copies of the game that Xbox Game Pass subscribers download as part of the service.
Polygon reached out to a representative of Pocketpair and asked the team to clarify what the sales number included. We will update the article as we hear back.
Regardless if the sales number counts the Xbox Game Pass downloads or not, Palworld has had an absolutely massive release day. According to Steam Charts, the game has over 340,000 concurrent players on Steam on Friday afternoon, beating out other popular titles like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Baldur’s Gate 3.
Palworld has been drumming up buzz for a long time now. Basically it stuck out for the contrast between its cute creatures and brutal conditions — previous trailers have shown its adorable monsters fighting with military-grade machinery and creatures toiling away in factories. It basically looks like a militarized Pokémon game, but with additional survival elements as well.
I know it’s not really a big feat but I’ve not gone a full week without drinking in about 2 months. I’m shooting to stay sober all of January, and maybe February too. So far, so good. Will see how it goes but I kinda wanted to tell someone because I’m proud of myself
Demián Rugna’s terrifying possession movie When Evil Lurks — now available for streaming on Shudder — breaks the rules of the subgenre in all sorts of startling ways. For one thing, it isn’t a religious movie at all, even though most exorcism movies are. For another, the victims facing down a demon in his film aren’t struggling with faith, or with something they don’t understand. They all know the rules for dealing with the hideous, bloated creatures that result from demon possession — the encarnado, or as the English subtitles put it, “the rotten.” There’s even a little teaching song about the rotten, presented in the film as something akin to a children’s lullaby.
So if everyone knows how to safely deal with demons, why is the movie so frightening? Because the rules — including “stay away from electricity and electrical appliances, demons can travel through them” and “only kill the possessed in certain specific ways” — take effort and self-control, and people are often greedy, lazy, or impulsive. “It’s too hard,” Rugna told Polygon at the 2023 Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. “You need to comply with the rules because the demon wants to be with you, but it’s too hard for us to run away from cities, trying to avoid electricity, to avoid even thinking about the devil.”
When Evil Lurks is a tremendously frightening movie, in part because it’s as much about the power we give our personal demons as it is about any sort of supernatural force. Unlike in films like The Exorcist and its many sequels and reboots, Rugna’s characters can’t expect any help from organized religion or from God. “I have no religion,” the director said. “And I hate religion as a business. I love religion as faith, or for helping people. But not as a business.” Instead, the characters in When Evil Lurks have to rely on each other, and on their own courage and discipline. That goes poorly, to put it mildly.
They’re also meant to rely on institutions put in place to help them. At the beginning of the film, it becomes clear that the government has systems in place to handle the encarnado, and those systems have failed entirely because of bureaucratic indifference and laziness. Rugna’s inspiration for the movie explains a lot about where that theme came from: As he told the Fantastic Fest audience in a Q&A after the movie’s premiere, he got the idea for When Evil Lurks from a series of news stories about farm pesticides in his native Argentina causing widespread health issues.
“The owners of those lands contaminate those fields with glyphosate to kill bugs — pesticide,” he said at the Q&A. “There’s a lot of people who work in those fields, and they get cancer. You’d probably see a little kid with cancer, because they are workers. They didn’t say anything — or if they say something, nobody knows.” He suggests that corporate apathy about the workers’ health, and the way the issue occured “out in the middle of nothing,” where it’s easy for profiteers and city-dwellers to ignore the impact of their choices, started him thinking about the idea of lurking evils given free rein to spread.
“The pesticide infected them,” Rugna told Polygon. “Kids were born with cancer. Sometimes you see something in the news, but then there’s nothing more to say, and you forget the image. They’re in the middle of nothing, the middle of poverty. They must do work for less than a couple dollars, and they’re all ill. After you turn off the television, you forget, but they are still there, they are still probably gonna die.”
He said it happens too often, that “people who work the land” get “abandoned” by the system. “When I decided to make a movie with some kind of exorcism, I thought, OK, but what happens if the people cannot reach a priest? All the Exorcist movies happen in the city, in a big house. But what if we’re in the middle of nothing, in a poor house, with poor people who nobody cares for? Even the owner of the land wants to get rid of them, to burn their houses. It happens in my own country all the time — not the demons, [but the rest].”
All that said, while Rugna emphasizes how important realism in the acting, relationships, and setting was to him in making the movie, he laughs off the idea that realism in terms of reflecting the real world is important in horror. “You can see a movie just for fun,” he said. “Being entertaining is most important for me. If you have the chance to have reflection, that’s a double goal. But for me, it’s not fully necessary.”
He said the social inspirations just worked their way naturally into the writing because they’re part of his background. He didn’t set out to make a message movie, just one that would scare audiences. “I’ve noticed for myself in my movies, for a greater horror story, I want to make you suffer,” he said. “And the social element just comes along with my culture.”
Photo: Shudder/IFC Films
Ironically for a movie inspired by bureaucratic indifference to the suffering of children, though, one of the biggest limits on his film was bureaucratic regulations about how he could handle his child cast. When Evil Lurks is unusually brutal to its kid characters, with graphic scenes of child distress, mutilation, and death. In response to an audience question at the Q&A about how he protected the child actors, Rugna grinned and explained how his production walked the actors’ parents through their safety plans.
“I’d need two hours to tell about the process of working with the parents,” he said. “It’s too funny, because we did take care with the parents — we thought, OK, we want to share the entire script. We were scared about the reaction of the parents. […] The parents were too excited to put their kids in our movie. You can’t imagine. […] When the parents read the script, and we’re like, The kid’s gonna be bit by a dog and crushed with a car — ‘Oh, I love the script! Got it!’”
But the government was much more limiting, Rugna said. Among other things, in spite of the violence of the scenes involving children, they weren’t allowed to have artificial blood on the kids’ skin at any time. In another scene, a teenager wasn’t allowed to hold a gun during an emotional monologue. “All the time, it was horrible to work with the kids,” he said, laughing. “Not for the kids, for the rules.”
Large breed, adult dogs have a lot of love to give the right human, but they are often the last to be adopted, placing them at risk for euthanasia. The Dog Behavior Program at Austin Pets Alive!, however, may be their lifeline. The program has successfully supported thousands of large adult dogs in need of grace by providing the precious pets with tools to cope with past traumas as well as the gift of time to heal and learn.
Hudson is one of them. He entered our care in 2021, coming to us from Dogs Playing for Life. Our team has worked diligently with Hudson to create a path to adoption by learning his personality, how he interacts with other animals as well as humans. Our experienced staff has created a customized “Hudson Plan” that provides the tools that he needs to successfully, safely and happily navigate a full life. This plan, as does Hudson, relies on someone willing to advocate for him and confidently guide him through situations that make him nervous. Given an inch, he’ll go a mile, but ultimately, he’s a rules boy and really appreciates when everyone is following them – always!
Hearty and fit, Hudson looks like he’s up for adventure, however this pupper is more of a homebody. Simply seeing strangers is triggering for Hudson so going out into public is not a safe-zone for him. We suggest any walks take place in the early morning hours or later evening hours — just anytime foot traffic is lightest! And walks must always take place on leash. Even having “strangers” in his home can be hard for him so our behavior team has identified a safe routine for his future family to host guests and eventually introduce him to new people.
Sure, he’s got a lot of “don’ts” to follow. On the other hand, Hudson is really into couch snuggles with his very own trusted human, a warm bed and his own yard where he can get exercise and play a great game of fetch. He keeps a tight circle of friends and when you’re in, you’re in! In fact, he has his own dedicated team of people, staff and volunteers, who have pledged to support Hudson and his future family for life. Hudson needs a win. He’s done the hard work to find ways to trust the humans he loves and now deeply needs to find a home that will offer him structure, time and care.
Once Hudson finds the human(s) and home that will offer him the structure and care he needs, the adopter can guarantee that Hudson comes with a cheerleading section. Not only does APA! offer behavioral support for life, Hudson’s (human) pack of friends — staff and volunteers that have wiggled their way into his heart through trust and consistency, are pledging to be just a phone call away to support their “Huddy” and his family.
Saving the lives of dogs and cats has always been APA!’s goal. The Dog Behavior Program is one of the programs that has contributed to keeping Austin’s save rate well above 90%. Through focusing on treating the whole dog — mind, body and spirit, paired with seeking out homes appropriate for some of our more challenging dogs and offering tools and support for life, this program has successfully placed hundreds of dogs into loving homes and continues to innovate to give all pets their deserved chance at life.
Large breed, adult dogs have a lot of love to give the right human, but they are often the last to be adopted, placing them at risk for euthanasia. The Dog Behavior Program at Austin Pets Alive!, however, may be their lifeline. The program has successfully supported thousands of large adult dogs in need of grace by providing the precious pets with tools to cope with past traumas as well as the gift of time to heal and learn.
Hudson is one of them. He entered our care in 2021, coming to us from Dogs Playing for Life. Our team has worked diligently with Hudson to create a path to adoption by learning his personality, how he interacts with other animals as well as humans. Our experienced staff has created a customized “Hudson Plan” that provides the tools that he needs to successfully, safely and happily navigate a full life. This plan, as does Hudson, relies on someone willing to advocate for him and confidently guide him through situations that make him nervous. Given an inch, he’ll go a mile, but ultimately, he’s a rules boy and really appreciates when everyone is following them – always!
Hearty and fit, Hudson looks like he’s up for adventure, however this pupper is more of a homebody. Simply seeing strangers is triggering for Hudson so going out into public is not a safe-zone for him. We suggest any walks take place in the early morning hours or later evening hours — just anytime foot traffic is lightest! And walks must always take place on leash. Even having “strangers” in his home can be hard for him so our behavior team has identified a safe routine for his future family to host guests and eventually introduce him to new people.
Sure, he’s got a lot of “don’ts” to follow. On the other hand, Hudson is really into couch snuggles with his very own trusted human, a warm bed and his own yard where he can get exercise and play a great game of fetch. He keeps a tight circle of friends and when you’re in, you’re in! In fact, he has his own dedicated team of people, staff and volunteers, who have pledged to support Hudson and his future family for life. Hudson needs a win. He’s done the hard work to find ways to trust the humans he loves and now deeply needs to find a home that will offer him structure, time and care.
Once Hudson finds the human(s) and home that will offer him the structure and care he needs, the adopter can guarantee that Hudson comes with a cheerleading section. Not only does APA! offer behavioral support for life, Hudson’s (human) pack of friends — staff and volunteers that have wiggled their way into his heart through trust and consistency, are pledging to be just a phone call away to support their “Huddy” and his family.
Saving the lives of dogs and cats has always been APA!’s goal. The Dog Behavior Program is one of the programs that has contributed to keeping Austin’s save rate well above 90%. Through focusing on treating the whole dog — mind, body and spirit, paired with seeking out homes appropriate for some of our more challenging dogs and offering tools and support for life, this program has successfully placed hundreds of dogs into loving homes and continues to innovate to give all pets their deserved chance at life.
This is the week! Austin City Council will vote Thursday on the future of Austin Pets Alive! at Town Lake Animal Center.
The animals depend on the support of the greater Austin animal-loving community and we are asking if you will take one more quick action to confirm your support for our resolution, agenda item #38.
We want this resolution to pass, as it clearly removes the restriction that would prevent us from saving the lives of those on death row all over our state. This is important because we have long demonstrated that we can save lives in need while also maintaining that Austin’s No Kill status is first and foremost.
We are grateful the resolution also directs City animal services staff to negotiate with APA! regarding the percentage of animals we are responsible for pulling from the city shelter and clearly indicates those animals should be based on those at risk of euthanasia. This has always been the intent of our partnership with the City and we are eager to ensure our contract reflects that.
Check the first box for the regular Austin City Council meeting,
Select item #38 from the drop-down menu,
Click “no” that you do not wish to speak,
Click “For” for your position,
Fill out your identification information and in the box for the topic, please type, “Vote Yes on Item #38.”
That’s it! Your voice will then be counted in support of Thursday’s meeting!
Just as you help us every day by fostering, adopting, volunteering, and donating to find homes for animals, we really need you to act now so APA! can land safely and continue our important work with as few interruptions as possible.
We are incredibly grateful to Council Member Leslie Pool for her leadership on this resolution and to Mayor Adler, Council Member Kitchen, Council Member Fuentes, and Council Member Casar for co-sponsoring. Please join us in thanking them for their support for APA! and No Kill. We know the Council offices are keeping track of people who email/call in favor of agenda item #38, so it is very important that you fill out that form before noon on Wednesday!
Thank you for being here for the animals, all the animals, and ensuring that APA! continues to keep Austin No Kill.
A: Bernese is 9 years old and she’s from the San Antonio shelter. Back in 2012, she was part of a litter that was there and her littermates all got adopted and she didn’t for a year. She grew up in a kennel. Not a good situation at all. She was so fearful of people, that’s why she didn’t get adopted. She kept cowering in the back. And so when they were going through a space crisis, I asked if I could foster somebody that would help save them space and would help them save lives.
Bernese and Buster
Back then we were trying to do San Antonio Pets Alive! and trying to help that city and they gave me her. She was untouchable for several months so we just adopted her thinking she’d never warm up to people. But she’s done a lot better. Now she’s 9 and she’s mostly chill. Her biggest problem is that she’s terrified of people.
Q: Is that because she was alone in her kennel during that time?
A: Yeah, she’s tricky. She definitely has some dog/dog issues and some dog/people issues, but she’s my most normal.
A: Buster was in Hurricane Harvey. He was in rabies quarantine in a Houston shelter. At that time they weren’t vaccinating for distemper because they thought they weren’t allowed to since the law says they have to wait for the rabies vaccine at the end of quarantine, but it’s not true that it’s illegal and we’ve since worked with them and they now vaccinate every dog that’s going through rabies quarantine. He was really, really sick.
He was paralyzed for a month. He lost all of the muscles in his head so he can’t open his mouth. His esophagus didn’t work. He’s a total disaster. He has a stomach tube on the side of his stomach where he still gets fed because he can’t open his mouth. It’s been 4 years and it’s taken him this long to start licking food out of a frying pan after he gets his medications to get his esophagus to work. He’s come a long way. He’s not paralyzed anymore, but he can’t open his mouth. He can get his tongue out a tiny bit and he’s so sweet. He’s a miracle dog. We don’t know exactly how old he is. We thought he was maybe 2 when he came into the shelter so he’s probably around 6.
A: Echo is the little brown one and she was right before Hurricane Harvey.
Echo
She was a distemper puppy pulled from San Antonio that came over to APA! that was in a foster home with her brother. Her brother died immediately and she got really sick and became paralyzed. She was 8 weeks old when that happened. She was paralyzed for 2-3 months. Me and Pam Martin shared custody of her when I was going back and forth to Houston.
This happened right when Harvey hit. She has a ton of developmental issues because she couldn’t move during her growth phases. She has one arm that goes to the side. It was the only one she could move for a few months so that one’s become her most muscular arm, kind of in a weird position which then made it hard to fit her for a cart or to get anybody to help with her because her limbs go in all different directions and her back legs don’t really work. So she’s permanently paralyzed and she’s mostly continent. When she scoots around, she goes to the bathroom. She’s kind of the highest need dog we have even though Buster has a lot of problems. She’s really sweet too. She’s very loving but because she was going to die when she was a baby, she never got exposed to people except for me and Pam. So she hasn’t developed any socialization skills which is why she barks like crazy. But she warms up pretty quick.
A: Bullfrog is also from San Antonio. He was born in 2012. They were going through a massive distemper outbreak.
Bullfrog
When shelters go through the evolution of massive killing to saving more [lives], that exposes all of the problems. So shelters like San Antonio and Houston that had really high death rates, never knew they were spreading distemper everywhere because all of the animals died so they didn’t exhibit symptoms. So as you start seeing that trajectory upward of live release rate, distemper comes out in an outbreak because they’re not vaccinating at intake. They’re not keeping anyone separate. They’re not doing any of the things to help the disease spread. So he was exposed as a baby. His whole litter died. He also had Parvo and I had all of the Parvo puppies from San Antonio for a year. He got over Parvo and got really sick with distemper. He couldn’t lift his head off of the ground for 2 years and couldn’t open his mouth for 2 years, so we also thought he was going to die because he was in such bad shape so we didn’t socialize him either. Now he can run around and bite people which is not great. At least he’s controllable because he only has 3 legs.
Q: How do they all get along?
A: Ehhhh. Echo is the biggest problem because she’s a bossy bee. She’s always growling…so we have to keep her separate when we’re not home.
Q: Can you share the story of how the Parvo ward started in your bathroom?
Dr. J looking back at the bathroom where it all started.
A: It started in that bathroom [points]. It’s all tile so it’s a great place to have Parvo. I took home the first litter and it just kept being the Parvo ward after that. The upstairs bathroom wasn’t finished when we moved in so I painted the floors with sealer so we could put puppies up there. We didn’t have enough money at the time to finish it. The upstairs and downstairs are where I tried to segregate the dogs.
Q: When did that start?
A: The first litter of puppies was Thanksgiving 2008. That was the first litter we got that was really sick. I went to pick up healthy puppies to transport for somebody and the shelter said, “I don’t think you want those puppies, they’re pretty sick.” I went back and looked at them and I was like I can handle this.
Q: Did you know how to treat Parvo at that time?
A: Oh yeah, you learn that in vet school. All vet clinics can do it. We treated it in every vet clinic I worked at – it’s common. That was the real epiphany, why can’t shelters treat it? There was an unspoken rule that shelters aren’t allowed to treat it because of potential spread throughout the shelter. Even when we started treating it, shelter professionals came out of the woodwork to shame us. It really helped that I was a vet and I could be like, “That’s ridiculous.” It takes one person to really damage your reputation.
Dr. J holding one of the parvo puppies in her home
A: They were just killed hand over fist. All of these purebred pugs and basset hounds, all sorts of things that come through the shelters because they have Parvo and they’re surrendered. Somehow people know to do that, and that still happens all across Texas. It is kind of sad to think that people have purchased these dogs and I assume they love them. Some of the bills they’re quoted are like $10K. That’s part of what I’m really excited about with the future and HASS. If we can start helping people when their dogs get sick, then it helps prevent them from just getting another one, because who’s telling them not to bring another puppy into that environment where it’s all over the place? Nobody.
Q: What was it like having all of those puppies in your home?
A: When all of the San Antonio puppies were here, it was the most. It was 25 at a time. Our whole guest room was filled with crates and the bathrooms were filled with Parvo puppies. I probably spent 8 hours away cleaning and treating dogs.
Obviously, it needed to be more sustainable and San Antonio has their own Parvo ward now. After that first year, they didn’t need help in someone’s home anymore. It’s a horrible odor.
Q: Was it just you? (photos below are some of the parvo puppies she saved in her bathroom)
A: Yeah. I didn’t really have anybody to help. It’s really hard to come into somebody’s house and help with that. So yeah it was just me. It’s all of the goal to never do that again. It’s sad to think that those 25 puppies were just fine.
Q: What does the 10 year anniversary of No Kill Austin mean to you?
A: I think that it’s awesome. We’re the longest-standing No Kill community. It’s really exciting. It’s amazing that when we started everybody said it’s not sustainable, it’s not going to work, you guys are going to be overloaded. You can’t possibly keep up with all of the animals that need to be saved. I think it’s good that that has proven to be untrue. It is sustainable in a way. I think what we’re trying to head towards now is more sustainability that doesn’t rely on APA! having to do acrobatics to make sure every animal is safe. It should be more institutionalized in the government system. But as long as we’re here, it’s sustainable. It’s inspiring.
Dr. J at examining a dog in APA!’s trailer at Austin Pizza
Q: Why do you think people are still so hard-headed around the idea that No Kill is impossible?
A: It’s not people outside the system. It’s typically people inside the system. And when you’ve been doing it for so long…I can see the change of people who join the movement in an organization that has a high rate of killing. I can see the psychological change that happens. They cross the line and they recognize that they can’t do it [become No Kill] and they’re okay with it. I don’t mean okay, it’s still damaging. There’s a shift that happens. I don’t know if you can ever get back from that.
Q: Do you think it’s going to take a younger generation to have new ideas to make a change?
A: Yes. I think there has to be a changing of the guard. There has to be an expectation that it’s not acceptable to kill animals. And then things start to change. The system is rooted in this powerless feeling of “Well we just have to clean up the mess from the irresponsible pet owners.” Anytime the language is used that way, it’s outside the power of the org, people’s irresponsibility is outside the power, as soon as the conversation shifts to that, you lose the ability to change things you can’t control. When you talk about it in terms of things you can’t control, you can’t do it. When you talk about things in terms of things you can control, then you can do it. But I think it will take more people to be aware that it’s possible and that it should be done in order to remove the expectation that it’s okay not to. All governments have accepted that that’s okay.
Q: What are you most proud of over the past 10 years?
A: I’m so proud of the organization. We’ve done so much as a group. It’s incredibly difficult work. It’s not easy. It’s not always fun. It causes burnout. I’m proud that we’re at the point where we are. We’re having discussions on how to make things sustainable.
Dr. J in the early days of APA! at Town Lake Animal Center
We don’t rely on people who are burning out and then passing the baton to someone else to burn out. I’m proud that we’re here. I’m proud that we made it happen and I’m proud that we’re still doing it and I’m proud that we’re looking to make it better.
Q: Where do you see the movement in the next 10 years?
A: By starting to crack the nut of animals not dying in shelters, it starts to show that there can be some systemization to anything in the shelter. The only systemization that existed forever was to take them in for 3 days and kill them. That happens over and over everywhere across America. So clearly it has some roots in institutionalization. By being able to automate lifesaving to a degree, we’ve got the Bottle Baby ward where kittens go, there’s a place for every type of animal to go so they don’t die. What we need to do next is create that same kind of pipeline for animals that aren’t going to die, even in our own shelter. The pipeline needs to be clear of how they’re getting out. A big dog that’s rowdy at the city shelter comes to our shelter and there needs to be a very clear path on how it gets out. Instead of focusing on the care in the shelter, maybe in addition. So that’s step one, making sure the whole system is automated.
A: The next piece is trying to untangle why animals are coming in, to begin with. It’s always this assumption that pet owners don’t care and animals are just stray and have no owner. And probably none of those things are true. We have to start looking at the things we can control and can be changed and that’s never been done before. It’s just astounding for this time and age. I think it goes back to if you think you can’t control it, you don’t try to. It’s a mindset.
A: Hopefully we will spend the next 10 years making Austin the epicenter of lifesaving for not only Austin but for everywhere else. Austin is on the brink of going one way or the other. Either we’re just a mediocre shelter, in a mediocre system, in a city with a good live release rate, which many cities have caught up to. Or we’re going to continue leading the charge and revolutionize the ways shelters operate. I hope we will spend the next 10 years making Austin the place people can come and learn, people can come and see it in action. The whole city understands how the intervention part works, how the care works, how the live outcomes work and it’s not just magic.
Q: How do you feel about Austin being the epicenter of lifesaving and then Texas and California killing the most animals?
A: I think we can change that dramatically. We already work heavily outside of Austin in Texas shelters. By focusing more on government laws and budgeting, giving governments the tools to make the changes even if they don’t have the right personality at the shelter or they don’t have the right city council. It shouldn’t have to be a perfect set of circumstances that causes No Kill. It should be a turnkey process. I think we can help a lot. One of the things we’re working on with HASS is a benchmarking system. Anyone in the public can compare their community with other communities which are then compared to what people want, not how shelters operate. People can use the public’s expectations to drive change. They’ve never had the tools in the past, and they still don’t have them, but if we can build those out for the average animal lover to make a change and drive that apathy then that’s a game-changer. I don’t think anyone wants pets to be killed in shelters.
With Dr. Jefferson at the helm, the trajectory of APA! has exceeded anyone’s expectations. With her leadership and your support, we can ensure Austin will remain No Kill for more than 10 more years and counting.
Want to share your experience with Dr. Jefferson or APA!’s early days? Whatever your APA! story is, we want to hear it. Interact with all of our social posts this week to tell us your story using #NoKillDecade.
An absolutely adorable pup, Zucchini was heartworm positive and shy around people when he first arrived at APA!.
Despite his timid nature, he displayed signs of wanting to be close to people. There were clear signs when he was in playgroup that he wanted to give his love to someone, he just had to find the right person. Before Zucchini could be ready to do so, he needed a home to feel safe in. Shelter staff determined that placement in a foster home could really help Zucchini open up and manage his anxiety, so Zucchini found a temporary home with Bailey!
Bailey is a seasoned foster, and she wanted to help Zucchini adjust to living with people and grow his confidence. Bailey shared that, when considering potential adopters, she knew “he needed a low-traffic household with adopters who would be patient with him and give him time to settle in.” With this in mind, Bailey “made a point of selling his potential because he hadn’t quite fully opened up to [her] in the home” by showing adopters videos of Zucchini playing with toys. This sold his adopter, who was determined to give Zucchini a home and everything he needed to thrive. Zucchini has found his forever home and is now receiving treatment through APA! for his heartworms. He has opened up and continues to work through his anxiety with the help of his people.
When asked why she decided to foster, Bailey explained that fostering gives her a way “to help save these dogs, especially the undersocialized and fearful ones, and give them a safe and less stressful place to learn that people are not all bad.”Fosters are essential to helping the dogs at APA! overcome their behavioral challenges and match them with their forever home. Thanks to Bailey, these days you can find Zucchini basking in the sun at his forever home.
Do you have it in your heart to open up your home to a pup who just needs some time to recover? Become a foster today to help improve the lives of dogs just like Bailey: https://www.austinpetsalive.org/foster/dogs
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