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[ FILM PROJECTOR SOUND ]
Louise Epstein >> I made my life in Austin
at a time when people were getting their MBAs,
which is something that I did.
And everybody went to New York or Boston or Houston or Dallas,
and I said, "I'm staying right here in Austin."
And I worked in government.
I worked in the legislature in 1975.
Something that was a big factor in me being named
the entrepreneur-in-residence was, both my public service --
I was on Austin City Council from 1990-1993, as well as the
success of a dot com that I established and ran for 10 years.
I established Charge-Off Clearinghouse in 1997,
using my MBA degree in Information Systems.
I built a model to value distressed debt,
and with that model, I valued and then purchased and sold
almost a billion dollars worth of distressed credit card and consumer loan debt.
As an entrepeneur-in-residence at the McComb School of Business,
I mentor students across the university.
Some students know exactly what they want to do.
Some students are choosing between several careers.
Some students don't know what they're going to do,
but feel a strong presence of a parent or other very influential person
who's told them what they're supposed to do.
It's my hope that I can help students get in touch with
the things that they love to do, because that's how
they'll be successful, happy, fulfilled human beings.
OK. OK.
Take a break. [ BARKING ]
I got it. I got it.
Okay, there you go. Good boy.
Okay. [ LAUGHING ]
You got it all? You got it all?
I have always loved animals.
Leno's full name is Lenogralia.
He's actually named after a law professor at The University of Texas.
It feels like a very magical household
where everybody gets along.
I found Toby online at PetFinder.com.
I contacted the rescue group and learned his story.
Toby lived in a cage his entire life.
He was used for breeding.
When he was too sick to mate anymore,
he and a handful of other dogs were dumped at a kill shelter.
I found that this one man in Brownwood
dumps 72 dogs a year at a kill shelter.
That's how many are too sick to go on with their lives.
Toby was going to be dead at the age of 6.
There was a bill during the last legislative session
that would have regulated large, commercial breeding facilities,
and it got killed in committee.
So, I was very familiar with the legislature.
It was a no-brainer to me. You go down to the Capitol.
You find out who voted against it. You sit down with them.
And you explain it to them and show them how there was nothing
onerous about the bill, nothing anti-business about the bill.
And I told them about Toby.
That's what I did. I said, "Here's what happened to me.
I got a dog who was starving, who had to have 20 infected teeth removed,
and who was afraid of butterflies and every sight and every sound."
He had never been a dog as we know them.
He only knew life inside a cage.
He walked funny, because he was used to distributing his weight.
He would walk onto a boulder and fall off the other edge
because he had no appreciation for what height or depth was.
If any Austinite, student or non-student,
hasn't gone down to Legislature and, at least,
looked down during the session or walked the halls
and poked their heads into the offices of their representatives,
they're really missing a wonderful opportunity
and one of the best things that Austin has to offer.
The bill proposed by the Texas Humane Legislation Network,
that has been endorsed by the Veterinary Medical Association of Texas
and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
and the Humane Society of the United States,
only covers commercial breeding facilities
that have 11 or more breeding females,
and it merely requires that the dogs live
not in caged bottoms, but with a solid bottoms,
get nutritous food, get let out of their cage
at least once a day and see a vet.
We're talking about a minimum standard of care.
Merely humane treatment, not excessive regulation.
There've been a large commercial breeding facility regulations
passed in about 13 other states,
including some of those bordering Texas,
and if we don't pass some kind of reasonable minimum standard,
then the puppy millers from the other states are going to move here.
It's okay to make money breeding dogs. That's OK.
But it's not OK to make animals suffer.
There is a Facebook cause. Support the Texas Puppy Mill Bill.
We call it a puppy mill bill, even though it pertains to dogs and cats.
I would ask everybody to "like" that cause.
If they're not on Facebook, they can go to Causes.com,
and go to Support the Texas Puppy Mill Bill.
I want people to know that they can get a pure bred dog in rescue of any age.
25 percent of the dogs that go into animal shelters
are pure breds and they need homes.
So I hope people will think about that the next time they're
thinking about adding an animal to their family.
My name is Louise Epstein.
I'm the entrepreneur-in-residence at The University of Texas at Austin.
Hook 'em Horns.
[ MUSIC ]