Pop-A-Lock - October 2020

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KEYSTROKE MONTHLY THE

OCTOBER 2020

10 REASONS YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT ADOPTING A SHELTER DOG

YOU GET TO CHOOSE FROM A GREAT VARIETY OF DOGS AND PUPPIES. You don’t always know what kind of dog you’ll end up getting from a shelter — and that’s exciting! The dog you connect with most could be anything from a purebred puppy to a lovable old mutt. You may choose your dog, but at the shelter, they also choose you. YOUR NEW DOG WILL HAVE RECEIVED GOOD CARE. At a good shelter, dogs will have received all their necessary vaccinations and shots. So, when you go to pick out your new good boy or girl, all the hard work is taken care of for you. YOU SUPPORT A VALUABLE INSTITUTION IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Almost every substantially sized community in the country has an animal shelter. These organizations keep stray animals off the streets, spay and neuter them to prevent further overpopulation, and give your family a new dog for you to play with and pet for years to come. YOU PAY LESS. Would you rather pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a purebred puppy, or a small adoption fee for a dog from the shelter? After all, you’re still getting a lovable canine companion either way. Why put profits in the pockets of breeders when you can save money and get a wonderful dog as well? YOU GET OTHERS TO LOOK INTO ADOPTING A DOG. When you tell your friends and family you got your adorable four- legged friend from the local shelter, that encourages others to find their new dog there, too. At Pop-A-Lock, we wholeheartedly support adopting dogs from the local shelter. In fact, our office dog Hanz, our office manager Dodie Wilburn’s German Shepherd, is from a shelter. You can read a little more about Hanz on Page 3 of this newsletter. And for all of you reading this and thinking of adopting a dog, there’s no time like the present! -Doug Barnes

For Adopt a Shelter Dog Month

All dogs deserve a good forever home with loving owners who take care of them. That’s the idea behind Adopt a Shelter Dog Month, which happens throughout the month of October every year. So, if you’ve been thinking about getting a furry companion for yourself, here are several reasons you should think about adopting one from a shelter, according to the Helping Hands Humane Society in Topeka. YOU GIVE A DOG A SECOND CHANCE. Any dog that’s in a shelter has been lost, given up, or abandoned. When you adopt a dog from a shelter, you give it a second shot at belonging to a loving home and a loving family. YOU HELP REDUCE PET OVERPOPULATION IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Every year, millions of shelter dogs, which are perfectly healthy and in need of good homes, are euthanized because shelters simply do not have space to take in every dog. By adopting from a shelter, you save at least one dog from being euthanized. YOU DON’T SUPPORT UNETHICAL BREEDING FACILITIES. While there are millions of dogs just waiting to be adopted from shelters, still countless breeding facilities and backyard breeders produce millions of purebred puppies every year. Many of these facilities continually force the dogs to keep producing litters, and they never experience any human companionship. By adopting from a shelter, you ensure you’re not supporting these cruel practices. YOUR DOG ALREADY COMES (AT LEAST PARTIALLY) TRAINED. Since the dogs you might adopt from a shelter are most likely at least a few years old, many of them can join your family already house trained. Some of them might even understand commands like “sit” or “stay.” You avoid dealing with the annoyances of the puppy phase, like the biting and chewing, and you get to know their personalities right away! YOUR LOCAL SHELTER CAN HELP YOU ALONG THE WAY. Shelter staff members are a wealth of information with regard to your new pet. They’ll help answer any questions you may have about how to best take care of your new canine.

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COULD A LLAMA SAVE US FROM COVID-19? Meet Winter, a 4-Legged Hero of Vaccine Research

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Llamas? Really? What will these scientists think up next?” But in fact, Winter wasn’t an outside-of-the-box discovery during the COVID-19 vaccine scramble. Llamas have been helping scientists battle viruses for years. That’s because, along with her fuzzy brown coat and long eyelashes, Winter has a unique virus treatment hidden in her blood: llama antibodies. According to The New York Times, Winter has participated in past studies for both SARS and MERS — diseases also caused by coronaviruses — and her antibodies fought off both infections. Llamas have also helped out with research for HIV and influenza. It turns out llama antibodies are smaller than the ones found in humans, which makes it easier for them to wiggle into the tiny pockets in virus- carrying proteins. This superpower gives them the ability to “neutralize” viruses, including COVID-19. Studies are now showing that

using these llama antibodies in humans could potentially keep coronaviruses from entering human cells as well. At least two separate llama studies have shown the effectiveness of these antibodies on coronavirus infections. This summer, a team of researchers from the U.K. discovered that llama antibodies “have the potential to be used in a similar way to convalescent serum, effectively stopping progression of the virus in patients who are ill” when given to those patients in a transfusion. They also suggested that a cocktail of llama and human antibodies could be even more successful at temporarily blocking the virus. Studies of the latter are in the works, and scientists around the world have their fingers crossed for success. In the meantime, Winter will continue peacefully grazing in Belgium, unaware that she just might play a role in saving the world.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, people have turned to their four-legged friends for help and comfort. In Nebraska, an 11-year-old girl and her pony, Peanut, cheered up nursing home residents through their windows this spring, while in Pennsylvania, an award- winning golden retriever named Jackson starred in videos that kept thousands laughing. Pets like these have given the national mood a boost, but another four-legged critter deserves just as much recognition. Her name is Winter, and she’s the 4-year-old llama whose antibodies could help us beat the coronavirus.

How Panera and Taco Bell Have Weathered the Pandemic

And Shown Businesses How They Can Thrive in Adversity

When COVID-19 first struck the U.S. back in late March, restaurants were among the businesses hit the hardest. Americans were all of a sudden out of work and without the extra income they once used to enjoy eating out. However, it hasn’t been all doom and gloom for the restaurant industry since then. Some franchises have discovered how not only to survive but also thrive in these uncertain times — and they’ve shown other restaurants of all sizes how to do the same. It all comes down to generating customer loyalty. Customers become loyal to a brand when they feel a brand offers them products and services they can get excited about — something that they can’t get anywhere else. Take Panera Bread’s coffee subscription program, for instance. Started shortly before the pandemic hit, the program added value for loyal Panera customers, and so it continued to grow well into 2020 despite all odds. It currently has around 40 million members, and according to Panera’s CEO, these customers generate 6–10 times as much value as other customers. Taco Bell, however, went beyond just loyalty programs to personalize their customers’ online experience. More and more people, if they’re eating out at all, are ordering their food online. Taco Bell has taken advantage of that to message their loyal customers about new products, new safety measures, and business insights.

So, with all that in mind, what can a local restaurant learn from one of these two huge franchises? Well, it’s business 101 that it’s much cheaper to keep an existing customer than to find a new one. That’s why creating a loyalty program to retain customers can be a help to any restaurant, whether it’s a corner hot dog cart or a fast-food joint with thousands of locations. Plus, really focusing on your existing customers will let them know they’re cared for and make them more likely to tell their friends about your exceptional customer service. They’ll keep coming back, even when times are tough.

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SOME OF THE MOST SECURE PLACES IN THE U.S.

That You Might Not Know About

While most of you could probably guess that the Pentagon, Fort Knox, and Area 51 are some of the most secure locations in the country, it turns out that there are quite a few other ultra-secure locations, designed to keep a diverse array of assets and people safe and secure at all costs. Here are a few ultra-secure locations you might not have known existed.

to preserve these records, they have recently started digitizing and indexing them to share them more easily with the public. AIR FORCE ONE Okay, you probably know about Air Force One. However, you might not know

CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN If you’re a film buff, you might be familiar with Cheyenne

Mountain from movies like “The Terminator,” “Dr. Strangelove,” and “WarGames.” Embedded under 2,000 feet of granite and sealed behind 25-ton blast doors, Cheyenne Mountain houses operations for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) as well as Air Force Space Command, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and others. This military operation has its own self-contained power plant, water supply, hospital, and more. It was designed to operate even in the middle of a nuclear war. GRANITE MOUNTAIN RECORDS VAULT Protecting a very different kind of asset, this massive vault in Utah was built by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the “Mormons”) to house billions of genealogical records. The doors can resist a nuclear blast, and the halls are lined with concrete and steel. Even though the church has endeavored for decades

that it’s actually the most secure movable location in the world. As the POTUS’s primary vehicle for long-distance travel, it can refuel mid-flight, jam radar, repel missiles, and fire flares as a means to keep its most valuable passenger safe. You won’t find a more secure location at 30,000 feet. While we might not be able to turn your house into Cheyenne Mountain or Fort Knox, we at Pop-A-Lock can definitely make your home as safe and secure as possible. For details on our home security audit, visit our website at PopALock.com or call us today!

TAKE A BREAK

MEET HANZ

Pop-a-Lock’s Dog of the Month

If you’ve known Hanz since we’ve had him, you wouldn’t have guessed that the event that brought him into our family was him killing a pet duck as a puppy. He didn’t know any better at the time, but suffice to say his owners no longer wanted him. Through a series of connections, Hanz ended up with us. We just fell in love with him and his floppy ears. Hanz has been a part of our family for 10 1/2 years now, and he spends every day in the office with me. He is a very good boy. He’s getting old, and he doesn’t have as much energy as he used to, but he still loves walks, squeaky toys and greeting whoever walks through our doors.

custom-made ramp onto our sectional at home and curl up in his favorite snoozing spot.

When he’s not at the office, he likes nothing better than to walk up his

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE 10 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD ADOPT A SHELTER DOG PAGE 1 COULD A LLAMA SAVE US FROM COVID-19? LESSONS ON CUSTOMER LOYALTY FROM PANERA AND TACO BELL PAGE 2 SOME OF THE MOST SECURE PLACES IN THE U.S. MEET HANZ: POP-A-LOCK’S DOG OF THE MONTH PAGE 3 3 MIND-BLOWING FACTS ABOUT TACO BELL PAGE 4

Did you know that Oct. 4 is National Taco Day? Corn or flour tortillas, hard or soft shells, we really love our tacos here in the USA. According to NationalTacoDay.com, Americans ate more than 4.5 billion tacos last year. End to end, that’s 490,000 miles of tortilla- wrapped beans, meat, and cheese. By far, the biggest peddler of light-speed tacos in the country is Taco Bell, the fast-food scion of Americanized Mexican cuisine. In 2012, Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco went the food equivalent of viral, selling more than 500 million tacos in just 14 months. It seems like there’s a Taco Bell on every street corner, but how much do you really know about the chain? To celebrate National Taco Day, we’re serving up three Taco Bell facts that will blow your mind. 1. Home Depot helped bring Doritos Locos Tacos to life. After Frito-Lay reached out to Taco Bell to suggest a collaboration, the development team turned to a hardware store for help. To create the famous snack, they “basically went out to Home Depot to buy a paint-spray gun” and blasted a taco with Dorito dust, according to Grub Street. 3 MIND-BLOWING FACTS ABOUT TACO BELL The Secret Link Between Home Depot, the Government, and Fast-Food Tacos

2. Taco Bell killed Taco Kid. Before it bought Taco Bell in the 1970s, PepsiCo tried to compete with it. The company launched a restaurant dubbed Taco Kid under its Pizza Hut banner. According to Mental Floss, Taco Bell swiftly stomped out its kid brother. In response, PepsiCo opened its wallet and bought the chain for $130 million. 3. The U.S. government was behind the Quesalupa (sort of). In February 2016, Taco Bell launched the Quesalupa, a taco featuring a shell stuffed with melted pepper jack cheese. It was the chain’s cheesiest offering to date, perhaps because it got a boost from Dairy Management Incorporated, the branch of the United States Department of Agriculture in charge of unloading the country’s 1.4-billion pound cheese surplus . That’s right: The Quesalupa was (kind of) a tasty government conspiracy. This is just the tip of the Taco Bell iceberg. To learn about the chain’s wacky endeavors (including putting a bullseye in the ocean for astronauts and flying 10,000 Doritos Locos Tacos to Alaska by helicopter), visit TacoBell.com/History.