Welcome to Day 9 of Ken Foster’s interview here on Dogster! If you are just joining us you may want to scroll back to Day 1 and read it from there.

Joy: You’re saying earlier that you get to change the world of not just the dog, but the person whose going to be getting the dog on down the line. How does that make it better for you that you can change the world in this way?

Ken: It’s so much better to change the world than not change it, I guess. I think a lot of people come up with a million excuses, especially when you’re dealing with animals. “There are so many more important things,” they’ll say, “than just saving the life of an animal. There are so many more important issues in the world that we need to address.” And yet those people that talk like that, I never see them addressing any issues whatsoever. If you have the chance to very simply make a difference in an animal’s life or a person’s life, why not do it? Why not spend the couple of minute’s or the couple of dollars or the whatever it’s going to take to do that instead of not doing it? Why would not doing it be a better choice? I just don’t see that, even though I was one of those people who would see a dog on the street in New York City looking for food in the gutter and think, “someone will find that dog,” or, “There are animal control people. That’s their job.”

Joy: What’s different about you now?

Ken: Part of it is that I have dogs so when I see a dog I have an empathy for them that I didn’t have before, cause it could be my dogs because my dogs came out of that same situation and somebody was there for my dog to save it so eventually it could become my dog. So I want to return that favor in a way, even though it’s not a direct return of the favor. And part of it too is that my dogs have made me appreciate more about everything in life so I can’t walk by a life that needs assistance and keep walking because my dogs wouldn’t do it. My dogs wouldn’t walk by a stray dog and not notice that he was there. They would stop and wonder what was gong on. So I stop too. It’s really simple to me. I don’t know why other people puzzle over it quite so much.

It seems so simple, Ken, but it’s amazing how many people don’t stop! Come back tomorrow for the 10th and last day of Ken’s interview.