DOGS BOND Makes A Forever Home Possible. Alex Lu

I share a special bond with my rescue dog Maka.

She is a family member who shares time, vacations and our home with us.

Maka I love dearly and Mike and I are responsible for her wellbeing.

My guest today crosses international borders to rescue

animals out of facilities and out of not so great situation.

He and his team of two others developed a board game for you to play

and to also support animal welfare organizations,

world wide, listen to this sound.

Did you recognize it?

Well, I have super happy memories of playing board games

with my siblings and friends.

I can hear that sound and it just brings back the memories

will Alex Lu loves board games.

This one, Dogs Bond he has many emotional capital invested in it.

He's passionate about the success of Dogs Bond board game, because he wants

animals to find their forever happy home.

Alex, Lu, thank you so much for joining me here on your positive imprint.

thank you so much, Catherine.

It's really great to be here.

I'm super excited to talk to you.

Oh, thank you so much.

Well, I want to just get started on how you came up with this idea.

Dogs Bond game.

Absolutely.

Dogs Bond is a board game about rescue dogs, finding their forever homes.

It came together.

It came together because I do a lot of work with and volunteer with local rescue.

And because I'm not very shy, I talk to everyone.

And so they'll put me in front of an adoption fair adoption day.

I'll ask the question.

What has been your thought process around becoming a responsible dog owner?

What does it mean to you to change your life?

To be a good Dog parent.

And sometimes that's the first time a family or a child

has really thought about it.

They may have seen a dog on TV or a movie and just think, oh, well,

that's just going to be how it is.

But when you're rescuing a dog, there are oftentimes preexisting conditions and

experiences that come with their own sets of challenges, but also to their joys.

And that was something that I really felt needed to be built into our

collective consciousness and to your show, a PAWSitive change to the

way that we have the conversation about rescue and adoption.

And I'm a big board game fan, big board game lover.

And for me, many of my memories growing up are of myself and my family

playing board games together, building those real memories and bonds of

both friendship, love and antagonism.

And these are the stories that I still tell at holiday dinners at

birthdays, where we laugh and cry-laugh about something that happened.

When I think about my nephews and nieces now, there's so many

distractions with a cell phone.

And with the screen time that how do we build those relationships,

those bonds with each other across generations and dogs bond was my

answer to both of these challenges.

That is so amazing.

And I so agree with you.

Wow, well, that is phenomenal.

And I love so many of these things that you're saying and the

transformation that a person goes through when they adopt a dog.

And in this case, we're talking dogs, but you can adopt cats.

Dogs, horses, Potbelly.

Pigs.

Yeah.

Birds.

Yeah.

And in the beginning you heard the little life, little game that I had in

the introduction of the little spinner.

Well, when I hear that sound, I always remember us sitting around the

game life and spinning that thing.

And sometimes as kids would spin it and then it has these colors and we would try

to make it rise and then it would just go plop right back in down to the bottom.

Yep.

Well mentioned something that definitely those types of games

really resound in us memories.

Sometimes we were learning to count money in the game.

And in some of the games, there were many times of family bonding.

Yeah.

And aside from you playing board games as a child and just loving the

memories, what other type of background do you have that would help you to

build a board game and all of the marketing and pieces that go with it?

Sure.

So my day job is I do independent management consulting for a big

technology firms here in the San Francisco bay area, Silicon valley.

Companies like Cisco, eBay, PayPal, those are my clients.

And my day job is project manager focusing on mergers and acquisitions boring.

No, I'm

Yeah.

It is very fulfilling.

But what I, what I found here was that my skillset around developing timelines

around leveraging and finding the right team of, for me many times it's

engineers or facilities managers, and they work together to complete a project,

bring a team, an organization online.

And I really wanted to try my hand at product management.

Something that, could be a tangible kit, a tangible piece

that would go out into the world.

And, for our project, since we are a mission driven project, be a fundraising

tool for animal rescue anywhere in world.

Cause I know for me, finding time to give back is often challenging because

there's so many great organizations, so many wonderful people that you want to

work with and connect with, but you've only got so much time on that Saturday

when you can donate your time you can always donate your money.

That's easy.

But donating your time.

And so I wanted to try to figure out a way that where I could almost replicate

myself and duplicate myself because many rescues will ask me, Alex, you were great

at talking this up or speaking to this group or event or managing this and that.

Can you do it again?

Only one person.

So that was a really big catalyst for me to try to create this game.

And I used what skills that I have in the corporate world to apply

them towards this board game.

And many of those skills apply, right?

Perseverance communication, vision, strategy, timeline,

resource management, budgeting.

And all those things really do come together.

But there are many things that, that I had to explore that I

had to learn on the, path.

And certainly things like working directly with talented illustrator and

a graphic designer, Sarah and Kiki, who I'm very pleased and proud to have

as my partners in this project, I had to learn to speak a new language about

art, about what is the goal of the art?

What are the emotions we want to evoke in our players and people who are just

passing by walking past this box on a shelf at a store ? Or in a virtual store,

how do we make it interesting for folks?

Why are they going to look at dogs bond?

And so these kinds of questions and challenges are what we as a team

really collaborated and and took on.

And now we've been successful.

We did it through Kickstarter, which is a crowdfunding platform

and we raised over $20,000 there and we've since raised another $10,000.

So $30,000 to make this board game come to life.

And of course, spread that positive message around dog adoption

and responsible dog ownership because our game asks players to

take on the role of a rescue dog.

And once you've played through that game, once you've experienced kind of

metaphorically, what it's like to be a rescue dog, just being the best dog you

can be trying to match with these humans.

A lot of empathy comes in.

A lot of compassion comes into the conversation and delighting

us, certainly both in-person and in virtual playtests and demos.

After playing the game, someone's always going to tell me about their

dog or their rescue or how rescue impacted their life in a positive way.

And that to me is how you really get to talk to people, cause they open

up their soul and these kinds of conversations are the ones that are going

to stick with you . I don't care about the funny name with the funny caption

. That's not how we're building a bond.

That's not how we're building a true friend.

So that's what I think board games do.

And of course, what dogs do.

Wow.

I love those type conversations and obviously you want to make some money

at this, but what you're really wanting to do is to take your positive imprint.

And as you said, turn it into a PAWSitive imprint.

Yup.

Yup.

And for the relationships between dog and human to build and for

people to have their heart and to be good dog parents, I think,

well, oh, look, you can see her, but she just walked in.

My rescue dog.

Yeah.

Well that's my little rescue dog Maka.

She rescued us.

And when we went to the dog shelter to adopt her, she saw my husband and

she came over and put her cute little darling, Australian cattle dog head

in-between his legs and looked up at him and we said, oh my gosh, we

have to adopt her into the family.

Yeah, it's out.

You you've been chosen.

Right.

So.

Yeah.

exactly, exactly.

And I think that these kinds of stories are what you do

experience through the game.

And then also come out when you're at the game table, having a great

conversation and again, learning and bonding with one another.

And that's important and learning and bonding,

and we have certainly bonded.

Well, this is Maka.

So her name is Mele Kalikimaka is her full name if you talk about birth

certificates, adoption certificates.

And yes, I do sing the song to her every day.

Oh, wonderful.

But her name is Maka and she is 15 now.

Well, a senior dog.

Yeah, my wife's dog Smudge.

He was a Jack Russell terrier.

Also a rescue.

He is 14 and he's, he's got a little bit of that, like senior, senior dog

hitch and stuff, and we're, learning how to care for a senior dog, but

also too, he still loves to play ball.

He'll still come up to you and just, jump on you . So yeah, it's, it's great.

Love, love these dogs.

And that was really too, what got me inspired was I've had

more experience with dogs.

And so that made it a much more genuine and authentic way to

build in the characters and characteristics in the, in the game,

because I had experience with them.

I would say actually for this project, the number one question is

how come the game is not about cats.

Delightfully.

So, but I just didn't have as much experience with cats.

Our plan is once this game takes off, dogs bond the bond system will be

kind of the baseline so that, you know what you're getting into

when you talk about board games.

Right?

So if I said, Hey, Catherine, let's sit down and play.

I don't know, star wars clue, or, Sesame street monopoly, you know what we're

getting into cause I said the game name and the system name, similarly

bond, I hope will be synonymous with, passion projects doing good work,

improving the lives of animals and whether you're picking up dogs,

bond, or cats bond, you kind of know what you're getting into.

Yeah.

And improving the lives of animals is certainly well, that is commendable.

And that is something, obviously that is international.

So tell me, have you learned much about some of how the rescue, the dog

rescue animal rescue is in general?

In other countries?

Absolutely a hundred percent.

So one of the things that fascinated me as I was doing the research for

the game is that rescue is done the same way in most countries.

You'll have a municipal, maybe animal control, tax funded,

shelter system, essentially what we used to call the pound.

And then you have these volunteer run.

Mostly out of people's homes.

Maybe they've raised enough funds to have a facility, but yeah, a lot of times it's,

People with huge hearts who say, you know what, we're going to rescue these animals

and we're going to rescue them out of those facilities out of those situations.

And, rescue animals can be there for all manner of different reasons and they

just need that second chance at life.

And that's what these fosters and that's what these rescues are really doing.

And it's international.

It's done the same way in the U S, Canada, the UK, Germany, Japan, Taiwan,

Australia where, you've got a core group of passionate volunteers who

really care for the animals and they administrate do all that hard work.

And then, even do some personality kind of training and observations so that they

know , Hey, this dog is great with kids or maybe not great with kids or great

with cats, not great with cats right.

Wants to be a single dog, or wouldn't mind being with a

lot . These are these questions.

that only get discovered through these wonderful organizations that

I'm really proud to partner with.

And so, Yeah, we're w it was just fascinating to learn that it is done

exactly the same way across borders.

And I think that that's one of the few things that I've ever experienced

where it didn't matter what country, language you're working with.

If these are big hearted folks out there to,

find these animals forever homes.

Yeah, forever homes.

It's truly a key phrase or key words.

So in your opinion, do you think that the process of caring for dogs that are

abandoned or whatever the case may be, but that they need that forever home?

Do you think the process needs to change worldwide and become more funded

instead of trying to rely on volunteers to go in and work with these animals?

I can't remember where I heard it, but it's, it's a, it's an easy

quote that charity is a community's way to make up for a government's gap.

It's filling a need.

It's fulfilling that, that gap.

And most of the time it's that, big heartedness and it causes

people to jump into action.

And That can happen too, that can happen.

Or people have the space in their lives for that sometimes when they're

younger or sometimes when they're older.

Right.

One of the icebreakers that I use at work is what would you do if

you didn't have to work for money?

And many times people will mention, oh, I really love to run a nonprofit, contribute

to, solving some of these challenges that we have in our society today.

And for me I definitely think that that would be animal rescue, if I didn't

have to go and go working nine to.

Well, seven to seven or whatever the case might be.

There's a lot of opportunity there and a lot of things

that I would like to see done.

So yeah, it would always be great to get funding.

That is the item that is maybe in the shortest supply at this moment.

And that's again, why I wanted to create something that I could provide to

rescues, to leverage in their fundraising to use annually as a raffle prize or

a giveaway or some kind of auction.

Use it however you want.

I've done some work and would love to provide it out to the world.

Oh, man, that is so rad.

Well, now let's go to dogs bond, by the way.

Congratulations on your Kickstarter campaign.

And it works.

If you have an idea and the public likes your idea, you will get funded.

And I think that that's just awesome.

And absolutely.

So now let's look at dogs bond and the actual playing of the game.

What can you share about some of the pictures or maybe the game pieces?

Sure.

Sure.

Um, yeah, I'll start off with, you know, some of our, you know, kind of

favorite components here, which are, and do any of those pieces look like Maka.

Let's see.

So we've got, um, we've,

we've got, I'll show you what gate what breeds we do have.

And of course, all of these are mixes.

But as you have to do with a regular rescue many rescues have to identify a

breed in order for them to be posted to, your favorite animal adoption website.

You must post a breed.

it.

is a requirement.

So, the breed, the the rescue has done their best to try to

identify what these mutts are mostly . So there's the Jack Russell.

The Pomeranian, a Basset hound.

A Labrador.

German shepherd have the border Collie.

We have a golden retriever and a Boston.

Yeah.

These dogs again, are the, breeds that I just had

had the most experience with.

And then actually through our Kickstarter campaign, we were able to unlock

two additional dog breeds in here.

So there's a total of eight.

We would love to expand the types of dogs that we have represented in the game

so that we can, have additional breeds.

Of course they all have their different superpowers in the game, and we'd be

really, really excited about that.

An expansion pack.

Yeah, absolutely.

Exactly.

Right.

And it works so well because it's, the expansion.

dog pack.

And then, for us, we also too wanted to make sure that there was a diversity and

kind of, inclusiveness in our adopters.

I didn't want to say, Hey, a a,

Multicolored.

Yeah.

absolutely.

Didn't want to say, an Asian American person, male who works in technology

is the best kind of adopter.

And that's how you get the most points.

And I, and I really felt it was very important for me to be able to share with

the community, the board game community these are people, and having that

inclusion and representation and diversity in the game, but naturally, right.

A lot of games will try to force diversity into the game structure.

If you can imagine, and there are certain archetypes that come with it.

So if you look at many games, popular games now, If you have an Asian

character by and large, they're going to be a small and fast character.

So if you think short round from Indiana Jones, that's the

archetype you're playing with.

And if you've got a, an African-American player or character, you've got

this archetype of football player, really high-end strengths, but

maybe not high intelligence.

And these are just archetypes that I think don't really need to be

the only exposure that we have to the diversity of characters,

that we have in our society.

very much important to me because I've got such a blended family.

And we would just never see anyone that looked like us in the board games.

And so putting that in was really important to me since I was designing

to start to see one another as just, Hey, that's a person who loves dogs, too.

What, great, awesome.

They're going to rescue a dog, just like me.

Fantastic.

And I think it's the commonalities that we need to find rather than the differences

and the otherness that that really excites me about being in the board game industry.

And and having that, so, Yeah.

Well, and finding those commonalities and actually going towards

that definitely is another part of positive imprints, because as we all

and there are no borders when it comes to games or technology or podcasts.

Yeah.

So in your expansion pack, I can see an Australian cattle, dog breed.

Right.

, when we get there and hopefully that'll be soon, I'll call you up and I'll say, okay.

What's the special power.

Right.

As an example I always pick on Smudge because he's my, he's my boy.

And so as a Jack Russell, Smudge is always digging in the garbage, it's just how they

were bred , what they were born to do is to be root, kind of like working dogs that

root out , critters or, or whatever pests.

And so they're always looking at, whatever is in the hole.

And so when you open up the garbage can and you throw something in

the hole, he immediately wants to know what did you just throw in?

Let me go see, and if he can he'll knock over the trash

can to, go root around in it.

In the game, the special ability for the Jack Russell terrier is that

they may draw from the discard pile rather than the blind draw pile.

So that's my omage to Smudge that he's always in the garbage and

he's always finding the best stuff and he's pulling out something.

We've got we've got game mechanics where, a card may say, oh, you

can take another player's, card.

And

Maybe Australian cattle dog just says 'no' all the time.

Right.

Just no, I'm protected.

Nope I'm protected.

That's my special ability.

Right.

So that's so cool.

I've got a border Collie in here too.

And the Labrador, so yeah.

Yeah.

If you'd like to adopt eight dogs, I've got them in the box.

So funny, Alex.

Well, you're doing such a great job of bonding and bringing empathy to

the game players about a dog's life.

But you're also bringing that conversation to the table outside of the game.

And that's important and people might not be in a place to adopt right now,

but they can still provide volunteerism.

Absolutely.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

And, after the game is done, you find out who got adopted by whom.

And you get adopted and, and that's really great.

And then of course we do celebrate every adoption.

And so at the end of the game, all players who got adopted, they get

to go ahead and turn over their their dog card then see how they

adopted with, we got adopted

Their forever home.

And yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

. Catherine: Oh, my gosh.

that's the note that we end on.

So, at the end of the game, you're seeing this and all the other,

completed successful adoptions that you've gotten in the game.

And because we do support animal rescue, every time you play, every

copy you buy, you are contributing to animals having that moment in real life.

Oh, Alex, that is so amazing.

Say that one more time.

About real life.

Yeah so because every adoption is special, there's a winner

based on points, but everyone that does get adopted, you get to turn

over the cards and then see how they matched up in their forever home.

And because of the way that we structured the project as a passion

project mission-driven project, every time you play the game

every time you buy a copy or recommend it to a friend, you are

contributing to real life animals, having this exact moment in real life.

Wow, this is just so fantastic.

Such happiness there.

Yeah.

And we wish that every ending could be as happy as the ending there in Dogs Bond.

I just, I just love this idea with the fact that you are partnering with

the organizations that are out there defending these animals and finding their

forever homes and also fostering them.

That's right?

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so you are immersing yourself in not just the game, but of course

the reality changing, trying to transform the reality for dogs.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Wow.

Well, of course come visit us.

We are online and on all of your social media platforms DogsBondGame.com and

all of our social media handles are Dogs Bond Game just to make it really easy.

And you can kind of get to know me, Sarah, Kiki it's just the team of three

that made this truly come together and we're working to bring it out.

Which is coming right up.

And if you know of a rescue that might benefit from this project have

them reach out to us, same place dogsbondgame.com they can sign up

as a rescue.

We'll work with them.

We do all the packing, the shipping, the ordering, we take care of

all of that.

All they have to do is tell us that, That they are doing good work with

with the animals and we'll take care of it and handle the donations.

So there's really no additional work for a lot of these volunteer organizations.

Cause I know that's one of the biggest challenges for them is they're already

so, strapped for time strapped for volunteers for, new ideas.

That's why we want it to be able to put this all into a box for them.

So, yeah.

Come join us.

www.dogsbondgame.com.

We would love it if you adopted us to your game table.

Wow.

I love that.

So dogs bond that's D O G S B O N D.

Dogs, bond game.com.

So this has just been really interesting awesome, and inspiring hearing your

journey from going from your own board games, growing up and feeling the absolute

family bonding time and the friends that you bonded with during those games that

brought you to this place that you yeah.

That you wanted to do a game, but then you went first.

You went further, you went deeper into the world of positivity.

And I mean that in POSIT and with PAWSitivity, PAWS with your

play on words there, but you went deeper and you immersed yourself

in joining those organizations that are doing such good worldwide.

So we're coming to an end here and you've been extremely inspiring,

but are there any last minute inspiring words you'd like to share?

Yeah, I think that, yeah.

This project opened up more doors than I could've possibly imagined.

Even being so, so, so thankful to be on a podcast like yours, Catherine.

If I hadn't had done this, we wouldn't have nearly as much to talk about.

You probably wouldn't ask me about, what's it like to be a program management

professional for a fortune 500 company?

Like it just wouldn't happen.

Right.

But through this project and making sure that it's mission

driven, not a side hustle.

And I think that that's a really big distinction, a passion project

for me is something that you're doing because you care about the

outcomes that can be delivered and really help lift up your community.

Maybe the society.

And a side hustle is kind of just and don't get me wrong.

Money is a fine motivator for folks, but it's a, it's something where

you kind of look at it as a way to supplement income . And if it went away,

you wouldn't feel an emotional loss.

Whereas the passion projects, things that people truly believe in like rescue,

like a board game about rescue dogs.

That's really tying it to your own emotional capitol and sharing that with

the world, which can be very frightening.

I mean, talk about being vulnerable on the internet saying I have a dream.

Do you like it?

Maybe you support us.

Very frightening.

But do it.

I think that a lot of people are willing to help you do good things in the

world in this time and, going forwards.

I think we all realize how yeah.

very much we can influence one another and lift each other

up or tear each other down.

And if you, me, all of us focus on making a positive imprint then I think that

we'll be in a much nicer world to live in.

Yes, that would be great.

Alex Lu, it has been incredibly wonderful chatting with you

and learning about Dogs Bond.

I can't wait to play the game now.

Your work is commendable in providing a positive outcome for dogs to

find their forever happy home.

Thank you so much for being here on your positive imprint

thank you, Catherine.

Thanks everyone.

Your positive imprint.