Did you know turtles and tortoises can be fast, their beaks can grow into overbites if they aren’t trimmed, and their shells are actually bone that is part of their spines?
Turtle Organization of San Luis Obispo (TOO SLO) member Denise Boddeker and fellow aficionados of the reptile have been collecting these tidbits of knowledge throughout years of looking after them.
Residents of SLO County can glean from them, too. They just need to show up for TOO SLO meetings at 6 p.m. at the Ludwick Community Center on the fourth Tuesday of every other month. It’s the local chapter of the California Turtle and Tortoise Club, and the next gathering is Nov. 25.
Boddeker arrived at the September meeting in a beige TOO SLO T-shirt, accessorized with turtle earrings and a tote bag printed with blue and green turtles.
Or are they tortoises?
“All tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises,” she said at the end of the meeting.
Part of the club since the early 1990s, Boddeker, 72, is possibly its longest standing member.
“I don’t know what it was, but I just always liked turtles as far as I can remember,” Boddeker said. “We took a trip to Oklahoma in the middle ’60s, and that was where I discovered box turtles.”
She remembers getting her first turtle when she was 10 years old. The grown-up Boddeker’s Los Osos front yard is completely devoted to two desert tortoises, 10 to 12 Russian tortoises, and 15 box turtles. The oldest, a desert tortoise, is around 40 years old.
“My box turtles are in a 10-by-10 [foot] enclosure with a house of their own, the desert tortoises have another area where they can roam around, and the Russian tortoises, they have a second area where they can run around,” she said.
She’s currently the chairperson of TOO SLO’s annual educational show. The main source of the chapter’s funding, an annual show at the SLO Vet’s Hall drew more than 500 people this year.
Packed with educational booths, there were also tables set up for kids’ activities like coloring, word searches, and crossword puzzles. Boddeker even drove some of her turtles to the show in moss-lined Rubbermaid totes.
“I have a couple of little kiddie pools,” she said. “I took them out of their boxes and put them in those little pools so that they’d have room to run around, and people could see them better.”
But the club has shrunk in recent years. Attendance during September’s gathering was down to five people.
Boddeker remembers a time when 40 people would come to a TOO SLO meeting at the club’s peak when it contained close to 150 members.
“Now, we’re lucky if we have 10 or 12 [meeting attendees]. People got used to staying at home, and it was harder to go out and then things became more expensive. So, COVID had a big impact negatively,” she said. “One of the problems with our chapter having gotten so small is that we don’t have as many club members bringing animals to show.”
Still, TOO SLO has loyal supporters, like Jeff and Tammy Dobbs who run an Arroyo Grande animal sanctuary called Turtle and Tortoise Rescue.
Not only is the sanctuary the adoption and rescue arm of the chapter, but also its late founder, Bob Thomas, was the person who started TOO SLO.
“I dug up a box turtle in Edna, brought him home, and he was getting real friendly with a stone. So, I thought I’d look up how to get him a friend,” said Jeff Dobbs, who previously worked 40 years in construction. “I came up to the sanctuary to get Jacques a friend and ended up saying in the driveway, ‘Bob, you’re living my dream.’”
Well into his 80s, Thomas sold his 30-year-old ranch-sanctuary to Dobbs seven years ago. Since then, the Dobbs family has been taking care of 450 animals—a menagerie of turtles, tortoises, goats, emus, alpacas, pheasants, ducks, chickens, and bee colonies.
Every week, educational tours of the sanctuary involve school field trips, Court-Appointed Special Advocates and their clients, Board Certified Behavior Analysts and their clients, occupational therapists and their clients, Girl and Boy scouts, college students, and even a psychologist and her clients.
People have come from Maine, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Hawaii to bring tortoises to the sanctuary. Last summer, Dobbs even took in 33 turtles from South Korea that were caught in illegal trade in the Philippines.
What the Dobbs family does is getting rarer.
“People who started sanctuaries are now in their 90s and hundreds. They’re aging out,” Dobbs said. “Nobody’s foolish enough because it is a tremendous amount of work.”
But while people get older, turtles and tortoises surpass them—often growing to be third- or even fourth-generation pets. It’s a reason why many of them end up in sanctuaries or need to be rehomed.
In TOO SLO President Brandon Froelicher’s case, his pet box turtle Flash has been with him since he was 6 years old.
“He’s pushed over 30 years,” Froelicher said. “He’s probably the size of a large baseball, like a softball, probably.”
The Paso Robles native first heard about the club when he was a little boy. He took the leap and joined the group as an adult when he moved back to SLO County from San Diego.
He’s been chapter president for the past decade. Froelicher, the senior brand manager for ITW Global Tire Repair, said he has another year left in him. But he worries about the future of the shrinking club.
“That definitely keeps me up; I think it’s just clubs in general,” he said. “I think we’re running into a problem of just getting younger people into these organized groups, especially ones that are focused on niche interests.”
At one point, there were 14 chapters of the Turtle and Tortoise Club around the state. Now, they’re down to around seven. The SLO County and the joint Santa Barbara-Ventura counties’ chapters are the only active ones on the Central Coast.
For membership fees of $15, $25, and $35, for students, individuals, and families, respectively, TOO SLO offers access to turtle and tortoise care and adoption information at the meetings along with programs featuring guest speakers. Members enjoy shows, exhibits, and field trips.
They also receive a subscription to the Tortuga Gazette—a newsletter featuring articles on turtle and tortoise health, care, conservation, club activities, and other turtle-related stories. Email tooslochapter@gmail.com with membership requests.
Since turtles can outlive their owners, Froelicher added, TOO SLO even helps people connect with turtle insurance that aids with the pets’ transition after their owners die.
“It’s just being an advocate out there for these animals as well because honestly, unless you go to the rescue, you really have limited options to have one of these animals,” Froelicher said. “It’s either go to Petco and go down the traditional route or go to a traditional reptile show and buy and animal.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Pets 2025.