At the lowest point in his addiction journey, Evan Jandl said the only living beings who “didn’t look at me with disgust” were his two beloved dogs, Buck and Maggie. Jandl was so connected to his dogs that, even though he realized he desperately needed residential treatment, he couldn’t imagine sending the pups to live somewhere else for the months he’d likely be away.
“I’ve been in and out of AA for three years,” Jandl said. “I really needed help. Still, I didn’t even entertain the idea of going to an inpatient treatment program because I cared so much about my dogs. I didn’t want to let them go — and I couldn’t think of a place that could take them.”
Then the decision was made for him when Jandl was arrested for driving under the influence.
“I got another DWI,” he said. “I ended up in jail. Somebody had to take my dogs. I knew I was going to go somewhere bad. There was no positive outcome that would’ve come because I wasn’t willing to let go of the dogs.”
Then, at the last minute, the owner of a kennel where Jandl had boarded his dogs in the past agreed to take Buck and Maggie for the 30 days he’d be in treatment. It was a lucky break, he said, but he knew he’d likely need more: When his 30-day treatment was complete, Jandl moved into a sober home, extending his time away from his dogs for six more months.
Determined to get her son help, Jandl’s mother called the kennel owner and pleaded his case.
“She agreed to keep them for another six months so I could do the whole time in the sober home,” Jandl said. As the arrangement fell into place, the kennel owner’s generosity felt miraculous: “The only reason everything happened was because she was the angel that said yes.”
Knowing he had a safe place for his dogs to stay made all the difference in the world. “I wouldn’t have gone to treatment had I not had somebody I trusted that was able to take them,” Jandl said. “Being able to focus on my recovery and not worry about my dogs changed my life.”
A much-needed resource
While he was in residential treatment at The Retreat, an alcohol and drug recovery program based in Wayzata, Jandl met Frank Schmidt in his men’s recovery group. Schmidt also had a much-loved dog — Mia, a mixed-breed who has lived with him for three years. “They say she’s a Jack Russell Beagle mix,” Schmidt said fondly of Mia. “I just call her beautiful.”
Schmidt found a friend who was willing to care for Mia during the 30 days he was in residential treatment. When Jandl told him about his struggle to secure long-term lodging for Buck and Maggie and how much their extended stay at the kennel would cost (he’s now slowly paying the kennel owner back with regular deductions from his paycheck), the two put their heads together, hatching a plan to one day create a new kind of pet-boarding facility, a safe place where dogs could go while their owners spent time in residential addiction treatment programs. There clearly seemed to be a need.
Jandl and Schmidt decided that the facility of their dreams would be called Serenity Kennel, a dog-boarding program designed to meet the unique needs of pet owners in recovery, with low-cost and sometimes free or subsidized boarding rates. While some recovery-friendly pet fostering programs already exist in Minnesota, the friends knew they wanted Serenity Kennel to be different.
“The end goal is to have it be an actual physical kennel,” Schmidt said. “We want to have a place where people can bring their dogs immediately if they have a crisis.” Securing a foster home for a pet can take time, he explained. He and Jandl want to open a kennel that could accommodate more emergency situations and longer stays.
“I think the main thing is how fast we can get these dogs into care,” Jandl said. “For a lot of people, that window to make the decision to go to treatment and actually going there can close really quickly. You could have a terrible night and think: ‘Im going to do this.’ Then, all of the sudden, a week goes by, and you’re still trying to find a place for your dogs.”
Schmidt agrees. For some owners, finding a kennel that could take their dog at a moment’s notice would make all the difference in the world.
“From personal experience,” he said, “any barriers you face you can find excuses not to get into treatment. I don’t want to have any barriers for people. I want to be able to say, ‘Yes. We can take your dog here. Go take care of yourself and get right. Once you get out of treatment, you’ll be a better pet owner.’”
Jandl and Schmidt also know how helpful it would be to board dogs at a place where the people in charge understand what it means to be in recovery — or are maybe even part of the recovery community themselves.
“In this day and age there is still some stigma around people who have chemical dependency issues,” Schmidt said. Because of their own personal experiences, he continued, he and Jandl feel they are, “uniquely positioned to help people, because we’ve been through it and we know not only the physical issues and pain but also the mental pain that goes with recovery. We’ve been down that road, so I think we can tell a good story that will help soothe people and take away that barrier.”
Now 10 months sober, Jandl and Schmidt have been talking about Serenity Kennel to anyone who’s willing listen. So far, they say, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. On the advice of a mentor, they met with Larry Castriotta, a fellow Retreat graduate and retired business owner, who joined the effort as a Serenity Kennel board member. With Castriotta’s help, they completed the 501(c)(3) process, registering the organization as a nonprofit. This designation makes Serenity Kennel eligible to receive tax-exempt donations.
Travis Winship, founder and executive director of the Pink Cloud Foundation and Pink Cloud Pets, has met with Jandl and Schmidt. He believes that the program is needed and hopes that other donors will come forward to support their effort. “Serenity Kennel will be a welcome partner and asset to our community,” he said.
With an aim of drumming up financial support for the project, Castriotta began reaching out to friends in his recovery network, and he said he was “blown away” by their response. “The more we talked to people about this, particularly people who were running rehab centers, they’re saying this is a big need. They’re having people put off going into treatment because of their pets.”
Donors are needed, the team says, because establishing and running this kind of program won’t be a low-cost proposition. Because they aim to be able to offer scholarship support to pet owners in recovery who can’t afford boarding fees, Castriotta explained that they will need to establish an endowment of around $30,000. Then there’s the cost of acquiring a physical kennel space, and all the other things that go with running a business.
“We are probably talking about half a million dollars or more,” Castriotta said, explaining that he’s set up meetings with potential donors he thinks might be willing to be “angel investors.” “My first ask is going to be for $25,000, That’s going to be for stuff like legal fees, accounting. Then operating costs will be another $50,000.”
Though these numbers seem high, Castriotta feels confident that he, Jandl and Schmidt will be able to pull the needed funds together. “I think once we’ve proven the concept it will be easy to raise the money,” he said. “I think money’s going to be OK. The AA fellowship is an amazing, amazing force. We’re going to fully tap into it to make this thing work and get it up and running and start helping people.”
More than a kennel
Jandl and Schmidt say they want Serenity Kennel to be more than just a dog-boarding facility. They’d also like it to be a place where members of the recovery community can spend time, working volunteer shifts cleaning, walking or feeding dogs, and maybe even attending recovery meetings.
“We’d like to host monthly or weekly meetings,” Schmidt said. “Maybe people could bring their dogs and even place them in the kennel during the meetings.”
Another way Serenity Kennel could make money would be if, alongside the nonprofit arm, organizers could establish a for-profit program where people could send their dogs for regular care.
“We’ll run it like a regular kennel and all profits from that will go into the nonprofit side,“ Castriotta said. “We think the AA community will support that. People who are sober now, if they are going to go on vacation, they’d just as soon send their dogs to us.”
Because it can be hard to find longer-term pet care when owners are in residential treatment and sober living programs, the Serenity Kennel team also dreams of building connections between treatment centers and places where people could board their pets. It could take the form of a database, with names and contact information for kennels and pet-foster programs.
“What would be really interesting to do is helping treatment centers have information on their site so they can help you place your dog while you are in treatment,” Schmidt said. “If a center could say, ‘We could help you place your dog so you could come in right away,’ that would make a big difference in getting them into treatment. It would be a huge help for everybody all the way around.”
Castriotta, Jandl and Schmidt said they would like to have Serenity Kennel up and running by early 2025. Though that seems like a stretch, they continue to feel optimistic. The need is there, and they think that the financial resources are, too.
“We think of it like the movie ‘Field of Dreams,’” Schmidt said. If they build it, “People will come. There’s just so much support out there in the community. It is just tapping into the right people and foundations and corporations and angels that want to help with this.”
Jandl knows first-hand how much knowing that his dogs were being cared for helped him in his long recovery journey. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Buck and Maggie were able to come home to live with him again.
Being reunited with his dogs has been, Jandl said, “phenomenal. My springer does not leave my side. I’ll never need a leash for him again. My other one as well was right back with me.” Though he didn’t see his pups for months, he said, “It was good for me to focus on my recovery and know that they were OK. Now that I’m in a situation where I can have them back full time, they jumped right into it. We all feel great being back together again.”
Serenity Kennel organizers have set up a GoFundMe page to support the project.
Andy Steiner
Andy Steiner is a Twin Cities-based writer and editor. Before becoming a full-time freelancer, she worked as senior editor at Utne Reader and editor of the Minnesota Women’s Press. Email her at asteiner@minnpost.com.
