Shawn Ryan Show - #5 Mike Ritland - Navy SEAL / K9 Dog Trainer (Part 1)

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

In episode #005 of "The Shawn Ryan Show" (a 2 part series), Shawn sits down with Mike Ritland. Mike is a former Navy SEAL who responded to the USS Cole, participated in one of the largest SEAL Team operations that has ever occurred with SEAL Team 3, and kicked off the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. He later became one of the world's most recognized protection K9 dog trainers, a New York Times best selling author three times, and amongst many other accomplishments, he founded the "Warrior Dog Foundation" which is a not for profit organization that rehabilitates and gives attack dogs returning home from war. SimpliSafe is award-winning home security that keeps your home safe around the clock. It's really reliable, easy to use, and there are no contracts. Check out SimpliSafe here: http://simplisafe.com/VE Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit us online at WoodhouseHundayOfOmaHaw.com This episode of the Sean Ryan Show is brought to you by Simply Safe. We took a guy that Missile Cruiser jumped on that and hauled ass all the way to Bahrain. We were in Bahrain for a little bit and then we were scheduled to go do some other shit and then that's when the cold got hit. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. A total of six sets of remains have been found on board the cold during the course of today. Hey everyone, it's 2020 and the need for security is increasing every single day. Simply save is monitored by professionals 24 hours a day,

seven days a week, they will call the police if necessary. It's super affordable, 50 cents a day. There's no long-term commitments, and the best part, it's ship right to your front door. The first thing I did was beef up all of the entry exit points, starting with the main entrance. I used the doorbell cam to catch porch pirates. Trust me, there's a lot of people that want to grab my package.

The next thing I did was use the window and door sensors on every opening window, on every opening door throughout the office. I used the motion sensor to track motion. If the motion sensor is track motion. If the motion sensor is triggered, it alarms my phone. I get a notification. I know if something's moving. I use the glass breaking sensor on all the windows. If the glass is broken, it notifies my phone. It alarms the base station. It notifies everybody that there's been a break in. For the interior, I use the Simply Cam.

It's triggered by motion. There's a carbon monoxide detector. There's a smoke detector. There's a freeze detector that you can put on your pipes. There's a panic button for when I get scared. And there's a water detector. Let me let you know if your washer is overflowing or maybe there's a water detector. The election of your washer is overflowing, or maybe there's a flood.

All of which will notify my phone if there happens to be a problem. If you want to boost your security, whether it's home at the office or anywhere else, go to simplysafe.com slashve oh by the way you're also supporting the Sean Ryan show so thank you simply safe for supporting the show and you all be safe As you're walking, you could actually see a fucking dungery and a boondocker from about the knee down, hanging out of the fucking...where now it's a ceiling. It was a floor now.

It's a ceiling. Somebody's fucking leg just hanging there. We had a 60 gun and a couple of snipers on a law rocket. Clint Emerson and I actually were the two guys that zeroed in on him and fucking just swarmed him and backed him up and he was like, oh shit, you know, had MP5s down as fucking throwed in. I mean, just the smell of 19 semi-submerged, blown up dead bodies trapped in a fucking boat. The bodies were in there still.

You had a fucking Navy SEAL operator quit on target in the middle of a fucking operation. All of a sudden all fucking hell breaks loose, like gunfire just erupts and it's every fucking way. Like an Iraqi flag like coming down and crushing the fucking skull apart. Fucking insane, I mean you kicked the fucking goddamn war off. Welcome back to the Sean Ryan Show. This is episode 005. We've brought you a very special guest, but for starters, I want to thank everyone who's become a member in supporting the show on Patreon.

You're going to see the benefits of that support. We've hired an entire film crew and we're hoping they stick around. I would also like to thank all of you who took the time to go over to iTunes and leave us a review. We now have 5,300 reviews on iTunes. We continue to be a top 100 show in the category and that's because of you If you haven't done that yet, please go to iTunes, leave us a review, type in a word, even if it's just one word That's what we need to make this show rank and lastly Ladies and gentlemen, every single guest that has been on this show is the

definition of an American hero. We want to bring these heroes the most exposure possible. We want to take this show to Netflix. I've posted a link. I put it at the top of the comments. Click the link. posted a link, I put it at the top of the comments, click the link, request the Sean Ryan show, hit submit, that lets Netflix know who we are. Let's take this thing to the next level. Which brings me to my next guest, 0-0-5. Ladies and gentlemen, he is a world-renowned canine trainer. He trains dogs for the SEAL teams, for the SWAT teams, and just about every other government agency you can think of. He's been on the New York Times bestseller list three times.

He is a vetra-brenuer powerhouse that I personally look up to. He was on the initial invasion of Iraq He responded to the USS Cole We've broken this into two different shows the first part all of his combat time as a seal the second the life of a canine warrior overseas back in, the life of a canine warrior overseas in combat, what those dogs go through, and what they deal with when they come home. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very proud to bring you my next guest, Mr. Mike Redland. Mike, Sean, Svagatum to the show and ranch show. Did I butcher the shit out of that?

I'm gonna have to set a Norwegian fucking... That's my best attempt to say welcome into Golly. Okay, where the fuck did you learn to Golly? I learned to Golly at North Island Naval Base or Naval Air Station, I guess. And it was after my, it was after deployment and it was during the whole Force 21 thing. And so our platoon got back from deployment like in mid-February or so. And we weren't forming up until the following January because of the whole reorganization bullshit. And so it was kind of like everybody had to go find shit to do. I had re-enlisted prior on that deployment for Arabic.

But when we got back and all of the shuffle and reorg stuff, this was right before 9-11, was that they said, turns out you guys are now a Southeast Asia platoon. You're going to Guam and the Philippines. So if you're not going to Arabic, you're going to Tagalog. And I was like, but I, it's in my contract. I re-enlisted for fucking Arabic. They're like, yeah, tough shit.

You're going to Tagalog. You're going to Tagalog. So I spent about, I don't about, I think it was five, six months of all day, every day Monday through Friday. Like that was my job. Me and there's, I don't know, seven or eight other people, mostly team guys. There was a couple other, I don't know why,

who the fuck they were, why they were in there. But yeah, we sat there all day, every day, from this older Filipino lady that was teaching us fucking Tagalog and of course like The the true team guys that we are we you know Con turn to teach us all the shit that she wasn't supposed to teach us the important stuff and making her blush and feel uncomfortable How do you how do you say ass fuckery and integral? Can you teach us how to say that?

But yeah, so that was the story behind it. We did end up going to Guam and then ultimately to the Philippines for about six weeks, which was neat at the end of that. I wouldn't say that I was fluent in it, but I was conversationaly. For basic conversation, I was pretty close to fluent. As long as it's been, I have forgotten a lot of it.

I could probably pick it back up in a matter of weeks if I really tried, but a lot of it I don't remember. You never knock the dust off, see if it's still there. Not really. I mean, once in a while, like, I'll run into somebody that you can tell speaks it by their accent or they tell you they're from wherever and all string together, some bullshit, and then they'll laugh. Because I probably butchered half of it or insulted their mom or whatever. But yeah, no, I mean, we are you going to use it in Texas,

right? Yeah. Well, man, I'm really excited about this. And I've been wanting to have you on for a long time. And I think we canceled two or three times. But I just want to say, I'm fucking ecstatic that you're here sitting in that chair. And props to you, man. You are a great role model for people. And I think you're a huge inspiration for guys

that are starting businesses that are coming home, especially in the veteran community and the combat spec ops guys coming home. And I mean, you're one of the guys that honestly that I really look up to in the business world. You've kept your business all class, you know, and a lot of these vet companies, it's all fucking tits and ass and fuckery. And that's all cool, but when your entire model

is based over that, I mean, we've seen it, they come and they go. And even in business for quite a while, and it's still the test of time, and you just continue to grow. And I think anybody that's in the business world, especially the guys coming back, they got a great example by looking at what you're doing,

and it's fucking amazing what you've done. And I can't wait to dig into it. Yeah, so I almost don't even know what to say to that, other than I appreciate it very much. It's certainly not anything that I feel like my level of competency has contributed to it. I think I'm just stubborn and have tried to always do the best I can with what I have and look at it from a long-game standpoint. But I would say I feel that exact same way about you and yours. It's really neat to see guys that I know and trust and like doing well and being successful

and trying new things. You've really set the bar at such an immediate or early phase with your show. And it's just to me, it's really neat to see. I love seeing guys that I know love trust and like succeed. So hats off to you right back. I appreciate it. Oh, thank you, man. Yeah.

Well, I always kick this thing off and I love to give presents. So if you look right over there, I'll have some Johnny Carson shit right there. Hey, you know, any guesses? Well, I see my book in there, so... Is that your... I wanted... that was just a recommendation. I thought you might like to read that, so I know the guy that wrote it.

Yeah, who's this asshole? That's fucking classic. There's two other ones that guy wrote, but they're, believe it or not, they're fucking hard to come by on Amazon. Yeah, I know. They still have an arrived. I must admit, I have cracked into these and Jesus Christ, they are good.

Everybody that says they're the best they've had. I was like, yeah, whatever, they're fucking gummy bears. But on the noble shit, these are a phenomenal fucking gummy bears, thank you. Those will be gone before I leave here, probably Right on. The ass blaster. Now that is the ass blaster 4,000. So that's fucking great. God damn. So the next time we all run out of toilet paper, we're good to go. Yeah. But that's fucking great.

I'm sure there's some people that like the fuck does that mean that didn't watch our fucking quarantine Zoom call that we all had, but that's fucking great man, I love it. That's why I'm going to roll the clip right now from that video. So for those of you that don't know, there it is. Flow for your. You have two ass blasters, Sean. Yeah, we did. That's the first thing I did. When I saw there was no shit paper. I was like, all right, we're getting. Mike, he actually sent me the link for like the homemade bidet thing. Yeah, bro. Maybe it's a maybe I've been watching too much porn during this quarantine, but ask last or something totally different

Can I crack into these now or what if you want to open Get him eat him on camera even So I checked out your Wikipedia page There's some interesting shit on there. So they give you credit for kind of starting the Epstein didn't kill himself. Really? Yeah.

On there. You didn't know that? I didn't know that. Yeah, it's right there on, I think, the second paragraph. So... I also, for sure, didn't kick that shit off. Well... You killed Joe Rogan, didn't you? Didn't?

To my knowledge. Well, they gave you creates on your Wikipedia page. didn't kick that shit off. Joe Rogan did. Did he? Well, they gave you creates on your Wikipedia page. So, do you want to make another statement? Because his right hand woman is just got picked up. I'm assuming Maxine Gizwell didn't kill herself either, but... Not yet. Yeah, that's amazing.

What do you think? Is she going to make it to court? Um... Yeah, I, that's amazing. What do you think she's gonna make it to court? Yeah, I think so. With her, I think it's maybe a little different in that I think they have far less on her. Obviously they have enough to arrest her and all that, but I don't think it says slam dunk probably as it is with Epstein. So I suspect that with that, you mean, she for sure has dirt on people,

but I think it seems like for everything that I've heard, preliminarily, is that it's more like he said, she said, it doesn't seem like they have near as much of a case against her, again, not that they don't have one. But so I think it's largely going to depend on how that that shakes out. I think, you know, she's probably not in as much danger as he was, but you never think it's largely going to depend on how that shakes out. I think, you know, she's probably not in as much danger as he was, but you never know. I mean, I don't, you know, pretend to have any knowledge of the inner workings of that whole, you know, fucking clown show. So I will say this, like if something did happen and the country doesn't fucking explode because of it, then we're fucking doomed.

You know, I mean, so I do find it odd that they sent her to the exact same fucking place. I saw that, you know, I couldn't believe that shit either. Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, I don't know if that's like rubbing her face on it or what, but I honestly thought that was a fucking meme when I saw that. But, I'm still a fucking surprise with that's on the Wikipedia page. I didn't know that. Check it out. There's some interesting shit on there. Maybe I don't want to look at it.

But all right, well, I did a lot. I honestly, I thought you were going gonna be really easy to research because there's so much information out there on you and it turned out to be the exact opposite. There's so much information out there on you that I just, I wish I could have covered it all but I couldn't and I wish I could have a hear for a fucking week to dig into that head of yours. So I think we're going to break this up into two podcasts actually. I'm going to do this one, which will be all your personal stuff, and then the next one to be

all the dog stuff, which is phenomenal information. But I just kind of want to start with and I just kind of want to start with, you know, quick overview of your childhood. I know you grew up in Iowa, and, um, but just a brief overview, overview of your childhood, and we'll kind of go from there. So, sure. So, I was born in Northern Iowa

in the late 70s, and, you know, it's weird looking back on it now. I think a lot of people have feelings of nostalgia towards their childhood, kind of almost wherever they're from because that's what they know that's their childhood or whatever. But for me, it's become increasingly so that way with the things that are going on now, like I find myself kind of longing for that 80s childhood of no cell phones, no internet, you know, riding your fucking bikes everywhere watching Maghiver, Nightrider, A-Team, Rambo, playing guns, fucking listening to ACDC and fucking guns and roses.

And it was just like life was so much fucking simpler, and not just because we were kids. You know, just I think America was much simpler, I think the world was a simpler place that way. I think that's one of the double edged swords to the internet. But growing up in that environment was, it was just a really neat time and place to be at. The town that I'm from, Waterloo is not a big town, but it's not a town of 300 either. There's 60 or 70,000 people, and so you have all the amenities that you would like, but it doesn't have that big city feeling.

You can drive 10 minutes in any direction and be out in the middle of Fuckin' Cornfields or be isolated and away from everybody and whatever. So it's a pretty slow-paced area. It's not too dissimilar to where you're at here in terms of kind of the pace at which people operate and how they take care of things and how they treat each other and what have you.

So I liked that growing up, but it was just just a fun time to be a kid. I swam competitively. I had two older brothers, a younger sister, and our family, it's weird. It was like, fucking leave it to be, or honestly. I mean, my parents never fought. To this day, I've never heard my parents argue, not one fucking time. So they're still together? They're still married. They've been married for almost 50 years. And I've never heard them raise their voice at one another, not once. Never argued about anything, never fought about anything.

They get along great. They had a, and I will say, as a father, I look to them, honestly, and awe at this fucking point, now that I have kids that are teenagers, and I don't know how they they parented the way that they did. They did a far better job than I'm doing for sure. It's just, you know, I'm marvel at their ability to be strict enough to raise good kids that are well behaved, but not so strict to where your kids are doing shit despite you. And that's what I've kind of struggled with. But, you know, so looking back on that aspect

and my childhood, my parents were fucking amazing. My family was amazing. You know, the school system in which I grew up in was mostly good. High school had some bumpy parts. How big was your class graduating class? Graduating class, I think was just shy of 400 maybe. The school itself had, I think, 2,000, 2,500,

is a pretty big school. But at that time, it was the early 90s, 92 to 96 is when I was in high school. And race relations then were fairly tense, kind of similar to where they're at now. They got better and now they're worse. It's fucking weird that way. But my high school, there's only two public high schools in my home town, there's East and West. And the East side of town is more predominantly black and the west side of town is more predominantly white.

There's a river, the seater river that splits the fucking town in half or thereabouts. And so there was a lot of busing. That was a time in different states where experimenting with busing a bunch of kids from one side to town to the other side in vice-versa. And so there was a fair bit of that going on, and it just caused fucking problems. You know, there was, like I said, some racial tension that was pretty significant. Rodney King riots, when they happened,

there's when I was a freshman in high school, and there was some writing that happened in our high school where I got the fuck beat out of me. But, and so my high school where I got the fuck beat out of me. You know, but, and so my high school experience, you know, that's a elementary and junior high was pretty, pretty fond of look back on high school. I didn't particularly fucking enjoy. It was kind of a mess.

I was glad to be done with it, you know. Well, on just about every, everything I've researched, you always bring up an incident that happened high school, I'm correct if I'm wrong, but it's one of the things that actually, it was a major motivator for you joining the SEAL teams that I remember correctly. And so what kind of happened there?

I know you got fucking jumped. Yeah, so I was a freshman in high school and I was fucking small. I was five foot four and 105 pounds. It was a Friday and it was during the swim season and as a freshman swimmer, they do these initiation. They did, but they probably don't do them anymore because I'm sure it's considered hazing or something fucking dumb like that. But, you know, we had to do stupid shit like where your speedo is over your clothes, you know, and where goggles, and you know, just dumb little things

like that on Fridays, they would fuck with you and make you wear stupid shit or whatever. But my second oldest brother was a senior when I was a freshman. So we went to lunch together. He had a, had his license and drove my, my dad's car. To lunch, we came back. We were running a little bit behind in true fashion of my second oldest brother. Love you, Jake, but let's be honest, you're always fucking a little behind.

Yeah. Is that the, the halls were relatively empty and, and it was a three-story, uh, high school. And so I came back and I was on the third floor. I was running down a hallway. And I remember, uh, a good friend of my dad's actually was a chemistry teacher and he was like nodded, you know, tipped his cap or whatever to me as I was running past and kind of shook his head like, you know, there's fucking George's son running behind, you know, laughing or whatever.

I went open these two double doors to go down a set of stairs all the way down to the first floor because those go into Spanish. And as soon as I swung the door open, I was like holy shit. And as I'm getting ready to step down the first step, I just see just boom, I just get fucking blindsided. And there was two, two single file column rows of, there's probably between 40 and 50 black students that were, you know, taking up the entire stairwell because there was that many of them running up and they were just running through the hallways, beating the fuck out anybody that was white and they were, you know, throwing trash cans through fucking windows and knocking water or drinking fountains off the fucking wall. I mean, just trash into place and beaten up

white people. Oh, so this was like they were fucking kicking the shit out of everybody. Yeah, wasn't just me. It was, it was like a race riot almost. There was a bunch of people that got fucked up. Oh, fuck. And so I start walking, or I start running down the stairs. And again, I was like running a gauntlet. I mean, textbook gauntlet scenario. I'm trying to make my way down. And as I'm going, it's just, they're all taking their fucking turns while they're running up and I'm running down. And luckily, they didn't stop and corner me.

And probably would've fucking beat me to death, honestly. But I managed to make it all the way down, just again, getting pummeled the whole way down. By the time I got down to the bottom, every time I got hit, again, I was a little fucker. So I'd run in, it was a brick wall going down and so on. The whole right side of my face was all fucked up. The whole left side of my face was all swollen and fucked up. I kind of stumbled into Spanish class. And the teacher,

the teachers at that point, they knew what was going on. And even then, like our administration and the staff, they were scared of, like, they didn't know what to do, you know, like, they didn't want to stop them because, you know, they would probably be considered racist. You know, and they didn't want to discipline them. So nobody got in trouble at that point. There were no security cameras either back then They so they didn't do shit, you know, they did absolutely nothing about it. You know, and I stumbled and I sat down and I'll never forget You know, I was sitting there and there was three or four black guys that came in several minutes after I did breathing heavy I knew they were they were in on it and You know, just that that was a very pivotal moment for me,

for a couple of reasons. Number one was that the way that my dad responded to it was not what I expected, looking back on it, I thank fucking whatever universal power you believe in that, that he handled it the way that he did in much more of a tough love scenario and that a lot of parents and I think even putting myself in his shoes would, you know, storm down to the fucking high school and demand some sort of consequence and that action be taken and whatever and He didn't have the, you know, I'm scared policy at all. It was Life's not fucking fair. People are gonna fuck with you. People are gonna do mean shit to you,

and you've got to figure out how to fucking deal with it. I know you're fucking scared. You probably don't want to go back. You're gonna go back tomorrow, and you're gonna face whoever the fuck did it, and you're gonna deal with it. Sure. And for me, like at the time, I was like,

what the fuck? It was like, why are you not going and fucking doing something about it? And again, I'm looking back on it now. I'm really glad that he handled it that way because it forced me to do that. It was the shit or get off the pop moment for me as a 14-year-old of realizing that if I can't fucking figure it out, like nobody else is going to hold my hand and make sure that everything is fucking perfect.

For me, that was especially going into the community of naval special warfare. That was an incredibly valuable fucking lesson I learned at that age that don't depend on any motherfucker else to make sure that your shit's taken care of. You figure figured out. And so, I was, the other kind of part of that, I think, that was pivotal, is that the motivation, that that just instantly fucking instilled in me was huge. I was already a pretty competitive athlete, and I hated to lose, and I worked really hard at sports, and everything that I gave a shit about. I was really hyper competitive, but this took it for sure to the next level because I just

kept thinking about that. And even there were times I can hell weaken and buds training where I kind of flashed back to that if I was wavering a little bit in motivation or whatever. The second I thought about that, I was fucking pissed and it put me right back on track of saying, fuck that. Like, I'm gonna do this, you know. Does that still fire you up to this day when you find a man? Fuck I haven't thought about it since the last time somebody asked me about it. I mean, it's for sure not something I think about anymore and haven't for a while, but

early on as a young man kind of coming into manhood, it absolutely was impactful that way. How did that create the motivation for you to go into the SEAL teams? So I wouldn't say that that necessarily motivated me to do it. It for sure played a role. It was a combination of that coupled with just being a competitive swimmer growing up, being pretty competent in the water, and just being drawn to military service because of my grandfather's both of them were in World War II, And I was always really fascinated by their service

and that generation and that war and was kind of a history geek that way growing up. And I was just always kind of motivated to want to do something like that. And for me, it was, I read a popular mechanics article and saw this story of who the Navy seals were and conjunction with watching the movie with Charlie Sheenon. And I was just like, man, these guys sound fucking awesome. So, you know, all of that kind of combined was really what drew me into doing it.

And I spent, you know, the last several years I was in high school being pretty laser focused on doing nothing but that. Yeah. What, so I know you enlisted or signed up in the delayed entry program at 17 and then went into 18. What year did you join? 96. So I graduated high school. I was still 17 when I graduated so I did the delayed entry program right at graduation. I didn't turn 18 until later that summer and then I went to boot camp, you know, two weeks after I turned 18. But hardest thing for you, but it's San Clemente Island. No shit. Unquestionably. Why is it?

It was El Nino. I was a summer hell week. I actually went through hell week. It was my 19th birthday. I wanna say two days after we finished hell week. And, but that was in July, right? It was fucking warm. And they're going out to San Clemente Island

in February, January, February. It was an El Nino winter to boot. So, it was kind of extreme weather conditions. It's cold as fuck. And I just, you know, it's kind of like, all the things that I'd read and whatever, was that, you know, that's where you actually learn stuff. And, you know, you get the fucking blow shit up

and shoot guns and, you know, patrol and kind of start to learn real frog man shit. And Jesus Christ, we went out there and it was like, the staff just hated us like the third phase God read just fucking murdered us over and over. Yeah. Part of it too was that I got rolled. I started with 214 and I got rolled six days before they went to San Cominny Island.

Oh damn. And so I got rolled back, spent seven weeks and fucking rolled back land and then joined up with two 15 day one of third phase. And so that certainly didn't help enjoying it. But yeah, they fucking hated us. And I mean, we got about two and a half hours of sleep every night there and just got the fuck beat

out of us. Nine-stop. You know, so I didn't make it easy on myself either. There was one night where we patrolled. We did a patrol gig where it was, you know, cold and rainy and, you know, cactus and fuck, it was just miserable. And we got back at like two in the morning and admittedly it was a total shit bag move on my part. Like we get back, we're in the armory cleaning guns and taking care of our shit and me and

two other guys ran to the fucking gal, like quick to get like hot chocolate because we were just fucking freezing, right? And so while we're in there, I don't even remember what fucking instructor it was, walked in there while we were fucking getting hot cocoa while everybody else is cleaning their shit, you know. And so of course he's like, you've got to be fucking shit in me. You know, he's like, out on the fucking beach now. You know, and so we run out there and do it. I'll tell you, it was probably the worst beating of my entire time at Buds is that they took our M4s and broke them down in the to the lowest fucking forum possible. We completely broke them down and put them in five gallon soda-sour buckets that were half

full of sand and salt water. Oh, shoot. And buried them in there and made us fucking and beat us while they were doing that. We had a disassembly. It was like buddy carries down to the beach, fucking surf towards your back, push ups, monkey fuckers jumping jacks, buddy carries, you know, just, it was like three hours of just getting the fuck hammered out of us. Oh, because of you? Well, because of me and the two other guys, me and those three of us. Fuck. And so they took all three of our guns, right, and put it in one bucket, right? So, mean down to the fucking seer, the firing pin you name it all all the way fucking down three weapons in a bucket full of sand and saltwater.

And after several hours of getting the shit beat out of us, hand us the bucket and we're like, we'll see it fucking 0-6 for weapons inspection. Shit. And so we, you know, we stayed up the whole rest of night the night, and we were sitting there, hands all fucked up, and frozen, digging through, pouring shit out on the grinder with flashlights, trying to find our shit, because they made us sift through it there before we could take it back. And it was fucking miserable.

But the whole island was that way for us. I mean, it was just, it was like a non-stop kick in the dick the whole time we were there. And it was cold. I mean, the water was like 48 to 52 degrees the whole time we were there. And it was just, it was shitty. Yeah. What was the rest of the class dome when you guys were didn't you're asked to eat? They finished cleaning their weapons and went to bed. So yeah, I mean, we, like, we're, as we're getting the fuck beat out of us, we see them, you know, trickling out of the fucking armory

after all their shit's done hitting the rack. And I mean, we deserved it. Like it was again, it was a good lesson learned. Like even though we were just gonna run and grab hot cocoa, bring it back and try to warm up while we were doing our shit, it was like just got caught at the wrong place, the wrong fucking time and it happened to be. I think it was a worn officer.

It was one of the more senior guys walked in and was just like, hell no. You know, we kicked the door open and just fucking trashed us. But damn. So moving on, Pax Buds, you checked in to what team? So I went to Fort Benning for jump school first. We went there right after we graduated before we even went on leave. So went straight from graduation, Fort Benning jump school, then we had 30 days leave

and then I checked into SEAL team three. You stayed at team three the entire time until you became an instructor? Yep. What was going on at that time period? So this was, you know, before 9-11, this was a graduated from Buds in February of 98. And so, you know, it was still, you know,

Bill Clinton was still a fucking president. You know, funding was not great. Moral was okay. And, you know, it was kind of the old school, 80s and 90s teams back then still. In terms of the way the teams were structured, the old team 3 was the scent calm or desert warfare platoon. Team 5 was jungle. I'm sorry, Team 1 was jungle, Team 5 was Korea and Cold weather. And so we all had our niches, if you will.

We were the only ones that were our working uniform was desert camis, you know, a whole community. We were the only ones wearing desert camis back then. And so everything was kind of structured toward desert everything. I mean, whether it was

reconnaissance stuff or you name it is that everything was kind of geared towards long range desert type of operations. And I went through SQT and did the whole back then it was six months of getting all of your qualifications done once you graduated, you had that probationary period and so it took a while to get your try and you had to take a chiefs board and they fucking grill you for hours

and ask you every question under the book. And it was a pretty painstaking process from the time you graduate buds until you actually got your try it. It was almost a year. So I kind of prefer it that way. I think it did a better job of kind of policing the the new guys coming in and making sure that they kind of earn their try it at the right way. That's my take on. Of course, I'm a little biased, but yeah, so I checked in there and jumped into a platoon and it was an arg alpha platoon, which is amphibious readiness group. Which means we were on a ship. We had an almost two year workup and then a six-month deployment and we spent a lot of that time on ships. So I actually spent a pretty significant amount

of time on a lot of different Navy ships, which at the time kind of sucked, but I'm glad I did because it was good experience. You know, getting to, you know, most team guys, now I've never been on a fucking boat. If you came in, you know, in the last 15 years, you know, you probably have never even been on a fucking ship. I'm one of them. Yeah. I think the last time I've ever been on one was doing VBSS training, much for those of you that don't know that's boarding ships

and taking them down. Yeah. But so that's a rare day nowadays. But rewind didn't just a little bit. You would mention that you really liked hearing the stories of your grandparents serving World War Two. If you could serve in any war and to include, you know, the ones you did serve in, would you have changed it? Is there any particular war that you would want to serve in? I mean, part of me says World War II, just because of the gravity of the impact that

it had on the entire planet. To me, that war, not that Afghanistan wasn't justified, but it just seems more justified. Like the entire fucking country was behind it. And there is a part of me, I think, that is almost jealous of that time in our nation's history, where, I mean, literally, it was like 9-12, but for five fucking years straight. And so to And so to me, like that kind of jumps out as being, maybe it's over romanticized because, you know, the way that the press was back then was very different and very filtered

and the American public did not have access to a lot of the same things that it has access to now as it relates to what goes on and war and things of that nature. But I still just think that, you know, there was a pretty clear cut line in the sand of good versus evil, or at least it sure fucking seems that way, more so than it does now, even, you know, not that fucking terrorists aren't evil.

It's just those lines seem a little muddier now. And again, maybe it's because we're living in it. World War II, we're looking back and we're in a part of it. But it just seems like such a powerful moment in mankind's history. I think that would have been what would have been pretty neat to be a part of. Yeah, as fucked up as it sounds, it's a, from United States modern day history, that was definitely our high point. And it seems like it's been kind of slowly, you know, watered down, yep, ever since that point in time. But moving past that, a lot of times,

guys have like an area of operation or something that they where they want to serve. Did you guys have dream sheet when you were coming out? Yeah, we did. I actually picked SEAL Team 2 was my number one choice. SEAL Team 8 was my second choice, and Team 3 was my third. So I did get one of my choices. But I think a lot of us, I know for my class, or at least that kind of era, it seemed like the instructors played a huge role in inspiring guys where

to go, what they wanted to do. We all wanted to really emulate the cadre, especially our third phase guys, but most of the seal cadre, when I was a student, were East Coast guys for whatever fucking reason. And so most of us picked East Coast teams because, you know, they talked finally and talked shit about, you know, West Coast Hollywood fuckers and whatever. And so, yeah, I mean, we all kind of picked that. But there was an element of even back down. This was, you know, prior to 9-11, there was something about team three and then just the whole Middle East fucking component that was intriguing to me. And so that's why I

put it on the list also. But all fucking work down. I mean, out of all the teams, you know, mine is dev group. But to my knowledge, it seems like team three probably throughout the, at least the earlier years in the war, got the most experience. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we were just, you know, again, like with most things right place the right time. And, you know, to be the team that kicked the Iraq War off, you know,

in the operation that we did with the GO Plats and the manifold and metering station, I mean, the entire all of SEAL team three did an operation together. You know, it's never been done before or since. Yeah. together. It's never been done before or since. So to have all fucking every platoon at SEAL team three on one singular, huge fucking mission at once was pretty fucking cool. We'll get into that in a minute, but why team two? That was UCOM, correct? Yeah, it was just again, like UCOM is Europe for those of you that don't know. again, like you come as Europe for those of you that don't know a bunch of a bunch of the first phase instructors were team two guys and a couple of our third phase instructors that that just you know

really had a huge impact on me were were team two guys also and so I think you know as a fucking 19 year old it just I was very impression was like well fuck these guys seem like bad asses and have cool stories I want to go where they went. Yeah, I'm sure that's simple Interesting. I was at eight and then went to two. Oh, yeah, yeah but all right, so you had team three and What was the check-in process like for it? Were they welcoming or did they fucking hate your guts? It was actually, it was kind of underwhelming.

I was expecting it to be more prevalent than it was. I think they were all busy and it was kind of three sheets of wind. So it was a lot of like, this is the fucking seal team. Where is everybody? Everybody was fucking gone. Training and I actually had, when I was home on leave, I got a call from Master Chief Huey, who Al Huey's son, who camp Al Huey,

which is the camp that the Santa Comet Island compound is named after was, and it's his son was a Master Chief at Team Three, crusty old fucking guy. He actually called me on leave. I was like, are you fucking common? And I was like, what? You know, I was like, I have 30 days leaves, I don't give a fuck.

And over here. I was just like, okay. So if I can, I was like, I guess I gotta go. And I go and check in. And even then, like, he wasn't there, like finally you're here. Like, he just called the whole list of guys that, you know, that were gone.

I was like, fucking get your ass here. And like, SQT was starting up. And so they were just like, there was very little of it. I mean, they fucked with this a little bit of the training cell guys would pull us in the office and be like, sit down. You'd sit down and be like, no, not there. Get out, just fucking with you like that. And fill out your school's request sheet and you better have underwater knife fighting

and fucking basket weaving on there. And we're just like, okay, and it's not even a real form. Just stupid new guy on the job type shit that they would fuck with this, but there was a little bit of that. But otherwise, it was really like, I was just like, Jesus Christ, like what are you guys doing? And so there wasn't a bunch of cool stories about all sorts of crazy shit like a lot of guys have. It was very, like I said, under whelming, and I was only there for a matter of a couple of days and then started SKT, which at that time, it was STT, seal tactical training and it was basically all, similarly, it was right as they were starting all of

the new Buds graduates were going through STT together, whether you're going to an East Coast team or whatever, because right before that, you actually did STT at your own team, like each team ran their own little STT where they're training cell guys, you know, on top of training the platoons would train the new guys and put them through a little pipeline, with just a handful of them. As you can imagine, that's not really efficient or effective, but there were some pros to it, I think. But so, we were one of the first full class,

all Buds graduates, irrespective of team that you're going to go through STT together on the West Coast. And then once we finished that, then we went back to the team. And then it was more structured. But then I'd been through STT and was assigned to a platoon. And so I kind of jumped right in there fairly quick and we got started. But I don't know what it was like for you as a new guy.

For me, in the late 90s as a new guy in a steel team, non-war time was fucking brutal. Yeah. And having an almost two year workup, I mean, we got the fuckhase. of us all the time. You know, shit. Oh, yeah, we got, I mean, fucking taped up and the shit beat out of us and many blast machine getting electrocuted. I mean,

fucking you name it. Like we got, we got fucking hammered all the time because they were bored, you know, and we had a long time together. So how many new guys were in there with you? Half the fucking platoon, there was eight of us. No, eight, eight new guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Glenn, Glenn Dordey was one of them. You know, so, you know, there's a million fucking stories with him. God rest his soul. It's actually his 50th birthday today, but yeah. So eight of us, and it was the one I guess benefit to that is there was so many of us, it was harder for them to haze all of us. They'd have to get us, you know, one or two at a time, because if all eight of us were together, they'd have our time with us that way.

But I will say this. Again, it's kind of like the speech that my dad gave me about going back to high school is at the time. It was kind of miserable and sucked, but looking back on it, I don't think you could pay to put yourself in a better circumstance as a young man, to be surrounded by barrel-chested fucking pipe hitters that teach you how to be a fucking man, and how to handle things, and how to live your life, and how to get things done, and how to adapt, and how to not make fucking excuses, and how to hold you done and how to adapt and how to, you know, not make fucking excuses and how to hold you accountable and really, you know, teach you how to fucking kick ass, you know, I mean, you just, to me, I wish every fucking young man that as a 19 and 20-year-old, you know, had the ability to be surrounded by 180 fucking guys like that the way I did.

I mean, I will be forever grateful that I was able to finish growing up in the SEAL teams. My parents laid a great foundation and did a stand-up job. The SEAL teams absolutely fucking finished their job. And I would not be where I am at today and know where near it had not been for those guys. They really fucking showed me how to do it. Yeah, I'm right there with you. I mean, that's definitely a fucking lost art these days. And if it teaches you anything, accountability,

and if you've in fucking consequences, which are few and far between these days, sort of find people to take accountability. And the consequences are fucking so minimal now that I think it's ruined entire generations. I agree. And it's also motivated slash inspired me to try to be that for whoever I can. You know, male or female.

There's, you know, in the canine world, there's a lot of, you know, female potential canine hallers or people that have questions or whatever, and writing the books has had a tremendously rewarding impact on me also that way, and getting letters from people and like, hey, I read your book, and I just joined the Air Force, and I'm slated to be a handler, and it's because I read your book, and whatever. To be able to do anything even remotely close to what the generations before us did for us in the SEAL teams. If I can accomplish a fraction of that,

I'll be glad that I at least was able to do something. Because if people don't take the time if they're selfish with their time, you just focus on them and not try to put that back into the following subsequent generations, then we as a nation are completely fucked. So. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.

So kind of moving past check in and you're beginning time there. What year was that? What year did you finally check in? 98. 98. What was your first real app? First real app was the USS Cole. No shit. Yeah. So you went for what two years before you did anything real? Yes, I mean, so you know, when I checked in, like I said, we had a two, I mean, it was like a 22-month workup, right? So, you know, we were training for almost two years before we deployed, and then when we deployed, we deployed on the USS Duluth part of an M-Fib deployment.

So there's a big group of amphibious ships, you know, all leaving from San Diego, steam all the way to the Middle East and sit there for six months and come back. And we flew actually on a fucking C-130 from San Diego to Hawaii. I've gotten Hawaii for a few days, met the ship there, did some training, and flew from Hawaii to quadrillion Guam, and then ultimately Hawaii or Australia, and spent about a month in fucking Australia, which was awesome for all the reasons you can probably imagine.

And what is a bunch of board team guys doing Australia? Everything you can think of. We actually did a bunch of dumb shit. We had a couple days up. We were training with the North Forest guys and Northern Forest guys up, and we were in Darwin, which is the outback. I mean, it's not like the rest of Australia.

It's much more the McDon DeFuckin, outback type of experience, but it was still neat. But we had a couple days off, and we actually told our officer in charge that we were just gonna go camp at Lichfield National Park, which was like an hour away right there in the outback. And we jumped on Qantas Airlines and flew all the way to the fucking gold coast without telling him and flew there. There was four of us, I think, and Dove on the fucking Great Barrier Reef, and Pub Crawled, like for three days,

just we were staying in hostels and scuba diving and getting shit-faced and just totally fucking going nuts. You know, and he thought we were camping an hour away, and we were like a fucking five hour flight. But anyways, we came back, had a good time, and then ended up going from there. We took a guided missile cruiser, jumped came back, had a good time, and then ended up going from there. We took a guided missile cruiser, jumped on that, and hauled ass all the way to Bahrain. We were in Bahrain for a little bit, and then we were scheduled to go do some other shit,

and then that's when the coal got hit. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A total of six sets of remains have been found on board the coal during the course of today. We are working to identify the remains and to contact the next of Kim of those individuals and that notification and identification process continues as we speak. My prayers are with the families of those killed and injured and with all the brave men and women in uniform who serve our country

every day around the world. So we jumped on the USS Tarla and steamed down to the coal and then we sat on the coal for two fucking months. We're a wind rope book. How much note, how many days passed between when the cold got hit and you guys arriving on the cold? It was like a day and a half, two days, I mean, it was quick. How fucking fired up were you guys to do that? To do that.

I mean, it was nerve wracking and fired up at the same time. You know, jumping on a ship that's doing 12 miles an hour, kind of, it's almost like the Austin Powers or getting ready to run the guy over and he sits there screaming for fucking two minutes, like, you know, there was an element of like, Jesus Christ, we need to get there, you know, and it was a few days, you know, it wasn't as quick as, you know, jumping on a plane and being there that day, but, you know, they weren't hanging out like dogs balls for too long.

Yeah, it was nerve-racking because, again, it's hard to even put people in that frame of mind of this was still before September 11th. Knowing that even the name of Osama been like, it was like, who? Yeah. Even that was like al-Qaeda with the fuck is that? You know, like, I had a little bit more inclination on who they were and what they were about because I was the intel rep for the platoon and we were going to the Middle East. So I was a little more read in than most people, but it still, it wasn't obviously anywhere near like it is now.

And so it was a bigger deal in that respect than that the US warship that suicide bombers fucking pulled a tug laden with explosives alongside and blew themselves up. Interestingly, they tasked a guy to videotape that whole fucking thing and he fell asleep and didn't get it on film. You know, they're propaganda wing of Al Qaeda. I mean, I think they, I don't know if they executed them,

but you know, it came out years later that they had actually tasked a guy to get that on film. Like, I kind of wish they had, you know, maybe that's a just a creepy thing to think, but, you know, for their uses, you know, the propaganda tools are pretty powerful. That killed like 15, 19. 19 sailors, and then a lot of casualties. Yeah, and it was fucking creepy for us because coming on board, obviously the crew was to

say that they were rattled as a fucking huge understatement. Because the goal of the entire mission was to actually sink that fucking ship, it wasn't just a debomb it. The whole reason that we were there was because they threatened to sink it. They came over the open air wave Marband radio and threatened the captain and they were like, you know, this is fucking alchydah. Your ship is not leaving our fucking harbor. You know, we like, we will sink it or whatever the fuck they said, something to that effect.

And so that's why we went down there. And so we sat there for two months and from sundown to sun up every fucking night, we had two ribs, two boats floating around with a couple guys on it, and then we had a 60 gunner and a couple snipers and a law rocket guy on the bridge of the ship kind of keeping, you know, overwatch and we were out on the boats. And there was a number of times where small boats would come, you know, test the perimeter and see what they could get away with and whatever, and we were always right there. Never mixed it up with them, but a couple of fairly close calls where if things had gone maybe a little different, it probably would have gone pretty

bad for the boats that were trying to come any closer. Any shots, far? Nothing. At least nothing from any of the boats I was on. I don't recall any of the other guys having any. There was a couple of close calls where again, they went a little too close and guys had haul asked out there and maybe draw down on them or the fucking 50-cal guys on the fucker, you know, or whatever. But so they never really tried anything past that because I think they knew, you know, that it wasn't going to fucking pan out well for them. But where it was fucking creepy was going inside, you know, the first couple days we were there, we actually, you know, we stayed on board the coal. And, you know, they had 19 empty racks. Well, guess where we fucking slept, you know, so we're sleeping

in these sailors' bunks that were just fucking blocked. And like, you know, there's USS Cole fucking coffee mugs with fucking like powder blasts on them in the galley and people's personal effects. And a lot of the crew, like, you know, you're laying in some dude that, you know, the rest of the room is fucking devastated. And you're like laying in his bunk jerking off. And I'm kidding. But they're looking at you, you know, they're just, they're looking at you like,

what the fuck, you know, they just can't wrap their mind around it, you know, and it was, we didn't know any of them, so it was just very different for us coming on board. But, but, you know, it was a powerful fucking moment for us because it was the first, you know, kind of like holy shit, you know, this is a real, a real fucking deal and they're testing the water. And so there was also the stench from, you know, being in 94 degree fucking water, salt water,

and having now a ship that has no running power on it in terms of AC and stuff. I had flood lights and stuff in some of the barracks rooms enough generator power, but nowhere near enough because of the damage to the ship to actually keep it cool. And so, I mean, just the smell of 19 semi-submerged blown up dead bodies trapped in a fucking boat, you know, in that kind of water and that kind of heat day and day out for a couple of months was fucking brutal. And the bodies were in there, so?

Yeah, they couldn't get them out. They were just running. They were running since we're from about the knee down in the galley. So the witness reports were when the blast hit it hit during lunch and it was right at midships, which is where the galley was located in that area. So everybody that was in there said that it was like a, the floor was like a, a, a fucking sine wave like the floor went like that, you know, metal floor moving like a fucking wave from the blast. And so there, there was a section of the, of the ship where the floor became the ceiling,

and it just fucking meshed up. And then that was it. And there was one spot where as you're walking, you could actually see a fucking dungery and a boondocker from about the knee down hanging out of the fucking where now it's a ceiling, it was a floor now it's a ceiling, somebody's fucking leg just hanging there, you know, right there fucking plane is day and then the other 18 people were, you know, in different parts of the boat fucking mangled and dead, just sitting there, fucking rotting.

But fuck man. Yeah. So you get, damn, how long are you guys on there? Two months. Two, that boat sat in that harbor and ate in for two fucking months. Two fucking months, yeah. So you can imagine like the smell didn't get any fucking

better. And the bodies were there the entire time. Yeah, what How did you guys get the boat out? So the the USS Marlon spike which was a floating die-druck came from Louisiana and came all the way out And it took you know between spinning them up and Outfitting it to accommodate the coal and all that it took two fucking months to get their 63 days and They came about 12 miles off the coal and all that. It took two fucking months to get their 63 days. And they came about 12 miles off the coast. And then they took tugs and bumper boats and shit and drug the coal out to it. And then the way the floating dry dock works is it's this monster fucking boat, right? And it has the ability to sink itself.

They drag the boat on and then it raises back up. And so you can Google pictures of Marlon's spike and coal and you'll see this fucking ship that has a USS warship that looks like it's a fucking toy on and it's that much bigger, you know, so it fucking dry-docs the coal on a boat and then it's steamed all the way back to Louisiana damn took him a couple years to Completely re re-furbish the ship, but they did they completely repaired it and into my knowledge. It's actually back out Back out at sea and doing deployments again, but one thing While it was being drug out there because it took you know a couple of days You know because it was the one thing it was it was severely listed. I don't know how

the fuck it didn't say, honestly. I think it speaks volumes to the crew for doing such a good job, damage control lies of having all their ducks in a row and handling their processes the way they were supposed to because they kept the boat from saying it's a monster fucking hole in it. So it took him forever to drag it out. Well, while it was being drug out, we actually got spun up to do a ship boarding. We had thought like finally, 63 days of night after night, fucking garden, this goddamn thing,

it's dragging out and now we can kinda relax. Well, on its way out, there was a fucking boat haul and ass straight towards it, that our ship picked up on the radar. So they spun us up. We get all our shit on, hop in the ribs, go fucking assault this little miniature fucking tug tanker thing that was, it turned out it was just bringing oil out to the Marlin Spike.

I guess there was, you know, it didn't de-conflict or whatever, but there was a Yemeni army officer with a fucking barretta on board, and then the rest was just a crew. And of course, we assaulted it like, like it was al-Qaeda coming back. Yeah. We almost shot and killed the fucking Yemeni guy because he kind of had an attitude

and started to put his hand on his fucking pistol and Clint Emerson and I actually were the two guys that Zeroed in on him and fucking just swarmed him and backed him up and he was like, oh shit, you know at MP5 Down as fucking throwed and and he got his hand off as gun immediately and decided he didn't fuck around but So you know once we finally got that done then we actually did a follow-on up with because of that is so at the time you know US ships were pulling in everywhere and that's what was happening with the coal and Yemen as they were

just pulling in for a resupply and so once that happened the US Navy said no more resupplies anywhere other than Dubai. They're actually Jabbal Ali, which is just south of Dubai. And so we went to Dubai. We jumped on a USNS fucking merchant marine ship and hauled ass to Dubai. And we were in plain clothes, relaxed grooming standards, fucking cover stories the whole bit. And every fucking Navy ship that came in, we would dive on the tugboats and ensure that they didn't have any bombs on them or explosives or

whatever. Went through the whole warehouse personnel pallets, we had a sniper overwatch on one of the towers. I mean, we had a whole fucking thing going on of every time a ship pulled in. We made sure that that ship wasn't going to happen. So we spent about a month and Dubai doing that. Do you remember what your cover was? It was fucking lame. It was just like we were government contractors doing like electrical work or something stupid like that. It wasn't anything fancy.

Of course, if we were out in town, we were a fucking American rugby team or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Well, did you, you know, Yemen is a very fucked up place and I deployed there several times. And you know, probably doesn't mean shit to you, but I got to see where the, you know, coal happened. I used to drive by it every fucking day. Oh, shit.

Yeah. And being Glover had a couple incidents there and there was always shit going on in Yemen especially in aided. Did you guys get to go out and town at all or? Nope, we we were on the ship or in that port area and that was it Okay, so we had very limited Exposure experience to any of the actual local populous mean a little bit from exposure experience to any of the actual local populous. I mean, a little bit from people coming and checking it out or interacting with people on board or whatever.

I do remember, it's just kind of flashed in my memory. At that time, I just turned 21 right before we deployed on that. And so, I was a 21-year-old, like I'm still pretty young by parents, standards, and whatever. And so anyway, on that. So, you know, I was a 21-year-old, like I'm still pretty young, you know, by parents, standards and whatever. And so, anyway, on a sat phone, I scared the shit out of my parents, you know, because they heard about it in the news and they knew I was overseas and they hadn't heard from me in a while and all of a sudden I call them.

And my dad, like, had gone home, like, he'd forgot something and went back, you know, after lunch and went back into the house. And, you know, because even this was before, really, people had everybody had cell phones. And so I call him on a sat phone, I get the house phone and he picked up, and he hadn't heard from me in weeks. And I was like, guess Rob's standing.

And he's like, where? I was like, on board the fucking USS Colt that's not in the line. He's like, what? And he's like, Jesus fucking Christ. Like, you know, he's having a heart attack. Like, what the fuck are you doing there? Are you okay?

All this other shit. But yeah, it was just one of those moments where almost like fate, I wouldn't have gotten ahold of him otherwise, but I had the opportunity to call him and just kind of neat. We looked back on that in my half once in a while. Just a back track a little bit more to, even though there was no shots fired,

just for the audience, I think that always kind of surprises me because there has been shit going on, you know, and you spent two years at the fucking team preparing to go to war. And like when I showed up we knew what we were going to do. And there was nothing going. And then this happens, which gives you the adrenaline. And I'm assuming the entire platoon was hungry as fuck to get some action. And I guess where I'm going is the discipline that it takes to not shoot potential threat. When you know you can fucking get away with is it's there's something to be said about that, you know.

And a lot of units don't have that fucking discipline and that's one of the things that separates special operations units from conventional units. So I just want to kind of reiterate that or bring awareness on how much fucking discipline that actually takes. I mean, yeah, I appreciate it. I think, I agree. I think half of it is what you're talking about in terms of, you know, having clear thinking, you know, not overly aggressive people, aggressive people, knowing when to use aggression, how to apply it, and also when to turn the fuck off, when it's appropriate, when it's not

being clear-headed to know the differences is necessary. But I also think there's an element of leadership that exists, at least within our chain of command at that time, it did where we knew absolutely what the fucking right and left flank were. It was. You know, there was a... Here is our fucking bubble, and nobody comes inside that. I don't care if there are five inches from it, you don't fucking engage them. You know, and so they were smart enough to see and test our perimeter and see if we go here, what

happens if we go like it. And so we would ratchet it up where if they were getting close, we'd start heading that way. And they'd get to a certain point and they'd fucking full throttle it out to the edge. And so they honestly, like a fucking dog that is testing a goddamn electric fence, you know, that that's basically what they were doing. And so, you know, they they were measuring our response as it relates to their behavior and figured out how far they could get and then what we're going to do. And yeah, there were a couple of times where, you know, we made it abundantly

clear like any fucking further and your fucking history. Yeah. And I think they just recognized that and decided, you know, what will live to fight another day and this isn't worth it. Yeah. I mean, even just the revenge factor, you know, I mean, fuck your eating chow with fucking decaying legs hanging through the ceiling and, you know, which are Americans and our brothers and sisters, you know, that are servants, so fucking kudos to you, man,

and your team. And Clint. Yeah, I thought, you know, it's fun. I talked a little bit about this with Nick and Remy talking about race and policing and not to get too off on a tangent, but I think one of the starkest contrast between the US military and US police forces is that.

There's elements of police and granted not all of them. There's plenty of them that aren't that way. I think that there are too many holdovers of when things happen. There's times where cops get away with shit that they probably shouldn't. There's almost never a time where that happens in the military. You fuck up this mids like the top gun, you fuck up this much, you're going to fly a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong, right? You fuck up that much and you're going to be breaking big rocks in the little rocks at level and worth and everybody fucking knows

that. And so to me, that's really the secret sauce. It's not even in selection or training or whatever that's going to take years of revamping and billions of fucking dollars in funding. It's like, have an accountability system so stringent that people know absolutely. Like, you fucking, this is okay. This isn't okay. Have the leadership with enough know, with enough directive and balls and ability to communicate

what, you know, the black and white contrasted right and left flank ours so the guys understand what the fuck they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do, you know, and I think the military just does a way better job at that. Yeah. Well, let's take a quick commercial break and when we come back back we'll move on.

This episode of the Sean Ryan Show is brought to you by Vigilance Elite Patreon. Vigilance Elite Patreon is how you support the show. It also has an entire library of tactical training and behind the scenes footage of the Sean Ryan show. Go to VigilanceElite.com, click the training tab, it'll take you right to Vigilance Elite training on Patreon. Get a subscription, support the show. Thank you. Let's get on with it. Alright Mike, so we're back from the break. We were just in Yemen, USS Cole, and you said you were there with Clint Emerson, so I just happened to have Clint on the line here. So that's

back in grade. Hey Clint, how's it going man? Hey, how you guys doing? Doing pretty good. So I got your buddy Mike Ritland here and he was just talking about Bordenay, small boat and shoving some MP vibes in somebody's face so I wonder if I get you guys to kind of relive that. Yeah, I'm all for it. There's only one part of that I remember and that's grab it. That's what it's all over with. Where they where they did they have bigger nuts than Mike does. Mike big balls Rutland. Yeah, they were there. I don't remember, you know, size, consistency, whether they were full firm or soft,

but I just remember that it was the highlight of the whole thing. And it's grabbing his nuts and saying, hey, wasn't that fun? Actually, do remember that. Yeah, we were just getting, like we were on the loading bay or whatever, you know, like where you climb back up on the ship and I was like, what the fuck are you doing? So that's no shit, he's not even going out. You did grab my fucking message. I don't like any of those serious situations with humor, you know, I tend to laugh when

I get nervous and so uh... i think it only gets worse over time at least for me with uh... just stupid antics to kind of like not sometimes the most serious moments oh you grab mic's nuts i grabbed his nuts and then went that fun oh shit i thought you grabbed the uh... you have an e's nuts the him and he guys that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that uh... you know he's not still you know you know you're the you know you've got decided he didn't want to uh...

play then i was like that all just play with my consent that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that remain, you know, I've told people time and time again. If there's one thing that'll take your level of patriotism up a couple of notches, is rolling up on a really advanced destroyer like that listing in a Yemenis harbor, you know, is like holy shit, you know, this is actually real. And there's that little overwhelming feeling like, wait a minute, these guys are this capable. It was just a surreal experience when we first arrived there. And then everything after that was a doubt, kind of, first time for a lot of stuff. And we were all just figuring it out as we moved along. Well, yeah, I was telling him, especially because it was pre-9-11. So just the mentality of the seal teams and the country

and the world at that point was very different. And so it was even more impactful that way, not that it wouldn't be if it happened today again, but just because it was so out of the blue and you know, Al-Qaeda was not a household name at that point the way that it is now. And the crew was pretty rattled and we were all kind of sobered up real fucking quick coming from Bahrain hanging out fucking off. You know, on the tail end of a month in Australia doing the same shit, it It was kind of a slap in the face of like hey, this is pretty fucking serious How bad did you guys want to go back to Australia when she was we're on that ship for about a month Yeah, yeah, when we were and we're running out of food and Mike Mike's memories far better than mine

He's got to remind you some of this and then I go oh, yeah But like, you know, food wise, I mean, we got down to these rations that basically said, you know, what was it that said, Mike? Does it stand on there like for animal use only? It's said for every day. It's said for veterinary and military use only. So, yeah, that's what it was. every day that said for veterinarian military use only so yeah that's what it was it the fucking animals I guess but nice yeah well uh we're gonna wrap this up here real quick but you got to think they're say to Clint oh just uh you know keep it keep it clean over there and then I'll be I'll be

home soon okay I miss you honey keep it here them soon. Okay, I miss you, honey. You take care. We're coming home. Right on, man. Well, hey, Clint, thanks for the call, man, and we've got to get you on here. Oh, yeah, I'm standing by and waiting. All right, you guys take it easy and, yeah, wear your mask, wear your gloves, put your butt plugs in place. All right. All the plug is in place. Be safe, man. All right bye bye. Yeah it's classic. Well fuck man if I would have known you guys were together then they would have been playing a

little better but yeah I was gonna bring him with but you know he didn't want to announce it on the show I guess the cat's out of the bag now. That's cool man that's cool that you guys got that history. Yeah. But so anyways, let's just keep moving forward. So we're out of Yemen, and I kind of want to get to the invasion or the oil rigs, which everyone's first.

I've heard you talk about both of them, and one of your books. And I heard you talk about the both of them and one of your books. I heard you talk about the oil rigs and one of your books and the invasion on several of them, podcasts. But I'd like to go in depth with whichever one of those came first. Yeah. So the deployment that the coal was on was prior to the Iraq invasion deployment. And it was, you know, we did the coal we were in Dubai for that, you know, a month or so, and then scattered around a little bit after that and then made our way back home.

Got back in February. Platoon didn't start up until that following January. We got home in February of 2001 though. So I went and did a couple different schools, went to Tagalog, we were slated to go to Southeast Asia, which we did, but then 9-11 happened. And I actually did a six week exercise in Jordan right after 9-11, which was treated much more differently than just an exercise because of what happened. They almost kind of treated it like a,

kind of a forward staging area. And in case they wanted to, you know, send some guys straight, straight from there. So we took that exercise quite a bit more serious also. I ended up not doing anything other than just working with Jordanian special forces and seals there. And then ultimately platoon up, did about a year work up and then deployed.

We still originally went to Southeast Asia. We based out of Guam, went to the Philippines, went to Singapore, went to Thailand, and then kind of got the hay where we're gonna be moving you over to Kuwait. Iraq is probably gonna happen, because we deployed in September October of 2003, too, rather. And so early 2003, they said, you know, I were sending you

to fucking Kuwait and you guys are going to stage out of the Kuwaity naval base in case our act kicks off, which we expect it to, you know. And so at that point, you know, we didn't have any of our desert desert anything like we had to have all sh- you know, sh- sh- shipped over and were painting guns and robbing Peter to pay Paul, trying to get desert stuff together and went over to Kuwait and we staged out of there for about six weeks. And you know, hearing the stories of the staging for the bin Laden raid is actually kind of similar in that we had a solid almost two months and we had the whole oil platform staked out

in the fucking sand because it was 1,600 meters long, which I don't think people realized how big of a fucking target it was, it was 16 football fields, that this whole target consisted of that we had to take down. And so we practiced, you know, the actions on the objective for that over and over and over for six fucking weeks before we hit it. No, shit. Yeah. So we were, you know, to say we were, you know, from a CQB and room clearing standpoint,

Arplatoon was as well-oiled as any fucking seal platoon could have been. Yes, every fucking detail contingency at all of it was mapped out. For the most part, where it was a little shaky was the intelligence coming in for that mission was, and I was the intel rep, it was not very easy to corroborate what was accurate or what we thought was accurate or not because it was very conflicting. Some reports said, there's a handful of people on board, and there's basically there's no intelligence that indicates that there's going to be any resistance on one end of the spectrum.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's over 100 people on board. It's rigged with explosives. They're going to clack it off the second you guys fucking step on. And every fucking thing in between, you know, so there was a lot of conflicting intelligence. Do you have any idea how many different sources they were running for that or? It was mostly four, which I can't name which four, but there were four that we were working with predominantly. And even within those four, it was changing.

One day it would be this this and it's like, no, there's more people, there's less people. There's, they've got, you know, anti-aircraft artillery pieces on board. They have fucking, you know, we see that there's, there's pipes rigged with explosives. My, my AOL I see the assistant officer in charge or second in command and I jumped on a helicopter and flew above it,

hanging out the fucking window, taking pictures with our most powerful digital cameras at the time, which again, this is 2003. A lot of technology has transpired since then, so it wasn't great. And it was super fucking overcast, so we didn't get great intel, but it was kind of a neat,

a neat op you know, neat, uh, op that way and that it was, you know, a little bit of an offshoot from some shit that we would normally do. But so we took a bunch of pictures of that, came back and really ultimately determined that there, there are at least a few dozen people on board, uh, and we've had multiple reports that, that there are explosives on board, and that there's a good chance that certain pipes are rigged to blow if we try to take it down. So that was kind of the final picture that was painted for us as we were getting ready to take this thing down.

Now, at the same time, there was a manifold and metering station on the coast, which was about 25 miles away from where the go plat was. And all of the rest of SEAL team 3 was tasked with taking that down at the same time. There was a problem with, you know, this 26 miles of pipeline. There are 48-inch pipes, and there's's four of them and they're filled with oil. So if they were to blow either end or the pipes and that amount of oil spilling, it would have been like 30 Exxon-Baldese spills worth of oil in the Gulf and we would have been the bad guy because it was our fault and blah, blah, blah.

So it was imperative that the entire team was working you know, working in cooots with one another to be able to take all of it down at the same time. Yeah. Which, as you can imagine, is a hell of a logistic undertaking. Yeah. But so we managed to, you know, we get ready to do it. We took Mark V's out for four ways, and the ribs followed us.

So we were hanging out in the Mark V just kind of relaxing. And once we got about, I don't know, three or four miles out, maybe we jumped in the ribs and got all of our shit on and got ready to go. I mean, we were basically stacked on the ribs, you know, fucking rock and rock ready to go and haul ass up there. We had practiced diving, we had practiced fast roping. Ultimately, we ended up just taking a boat and fucking hauling ass up, jumping off the boat and just taking it down in kind of a swarm type of fashion. Climbing up? Yeah.

I mean, basically just jumping off the boat onto the lowest platform. Okay. And then taking it down bottom to top. Now, at one one end there was a birthing section. And the rest of that 1600 meters there were little stations every couple hundred yards. You know where there was a little office or you know kind of a building that was an observer observation deck or something like that for the ships pulling up or whatever, but the

majority of the concentration of people and things that we were worried about were at the birthing at one end. So we jump on board. Real quick. Let me interrupt you. So how many different elements are there between the pipeline and the platforms? I mean, it was really all one big fucking thing. So, you know, it was like, I mean, it was almost kind of,

it kind of looked like a long tanker in and of itself, but it could accommodate up to four oil tankers two on each side at the same time, and it loaded them with oil. And the reason why there were significant, strategic significance is that it was that, what was it, Maybot and K out, it was the Minna Al-Bacher oil terminal, was the name of the facility, how the fuck I remember that, I don't know. So four tankers would come up there, and that's where Saddam was fighting or going against the embargo and smuggling oil,

even though there were sanctions against his country to be able to sell oil. That's where they were doing it from. It was from that terminal. The K-Op, the core alamaya oil terminal was completely empty. And the grime guys took that down at the same time that we were doing it. But we knew that there was nobody on there, and that's the target. They just wanted to make sure it was secure so nobody could come on and fuck with it. So we, uh, we jump on board, and, uh, there ends up being, I want to say, uh, 26, um, you know, whatever you want to call them, enemy fighters on board that were a mixed

bag of Iraqi intelligence, special Republican guard, Navy, you know, and kind of a handful of other people that just had different roles in Saddam's military. There was a couple of Navy divers and there were a significant amount of explosives on board. And they threw interrogations afterward, actually revealed to the interrogators that they were instructed to put the explosives all over the pipes and put them in certain places and blow it when we came on board. But so they were expecting you guys. Yeah. Because do you think it's because of the Hilo app? For our Pulitzer valence.

No, I think it was two reasons. The Hilo app, we were at like, I mean, we were stupid high. We were almost, oh, two levels are close. I mean, we were thousands of feet above. And I don't think that that tipped them off. We took it down in the first goal for and from a strategic standpoint, you know, it was kind of a no-brainers that they knew it would because that was the only operational oil terminal that Iraq had at the time and the Gulf that they could load tankers

with oil. So it was kind of, they just, they knew we would come secure it. It was Saddam's goal, again, learning well after the fact that, like we anticipated, that it was his goal to to blow that and frame us, or pin it on us for, you know, having a huge ecological disaster, because we fucked with it. Just like they did with the Kuwaiti oil rigs and the first Gulf War of Sutton-A-Monfire, they wanted to accomplish that same thing. So it was a pretty high-value strategic target for sure. But we managed to get on board

without most of them knowing anyway is that most of them were asleep. And so we didn't really have any resistance Most of them knowing anyway is that most of them were asleep. So we didn't really have any resistance in terms of them firing or putting up a huge fight. There were some of them that were hiding or that were locked in different rooms. We went through and breached all the fucking doors. Shotguns with no ear pro.

And you were the breacher. That was one of them. Yeah, Shane and I were the two shotgun breaches. So we breached the fuck down of doors, caught guys in rooms, and a lot of them had guns and then whatever. We were very fortunate and we were able to capture 20, 27, 26 prisoners and not have any casualties on our end, so whatever.

Holy shit, 27 fucking prisoners. and you know, not have any casualties on our end whatsoever. So, holy shit. 27 fucking prisoners. Yeah. Um, did you say you rolled up in a rib? We did. Yeah. So rib is kind of like those either don't know. It's looks kind of like a zodiac, which is a rubber boat,

but it has a metal bottom. And a lot of times they have a canopy over the, it's a center console. Yeah. But um, and then I'm just curious, it's kind of a weird question, but what were you guys wearing? Were you wet suits or? No, it was all flight suits and MP5s. I mean, it was shit. That's like old school recording video. Oh, shit. MP5s. Do you guys run an optics? Yeah, yeah, yeah, MP5 three guys running optics. Uh, just, um, what was it? Uh, it was the Trigicon reflex reflex sites on pretty much everybody's rigged. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, and again, that, you know, that, that, uh, platform there was, was appropriate

because it was, you know, mostly metal, uh, everything. I mean, if I can, everything was made out of metal, close quarters. So, yeah, MP5's, even looking back on it, I would use those again. I mean, what we were wearing, I think, was the right call for it. We did have body armor and helmets on, but we had a classic visit board search and seizure type

of kit and set up nighttime. So that again, was it at nighttime? Yeah, it was. It was, it was probably around midnight, one o'clock somewhere in there. And it took us about four and a half hours to secure the whole fucking thing. Obviously, most of that time was down at the burying area dealing with all the people. I mean, we hogged tight them and put fucking sandbags over their heads and corralled them all into one area.

Even some guys were crying, some literally shipped themselves and pissed themselves. Some of them were in a man pile to begin with, all over each other and like, what the fuck? But, yeah, it was a filthy fucking burning area as you can imagine, you know, out, out that far with no real resupply other than kind of the bearing necessities. So, but, you know, ultimately, they, you know, we were able to get on there before they could do anything, they didn't blow anything up, and we managed to capture all of them. So, how many operators were there?

There was I think 31 or two of us. We had an SDV platoon with us also. So it was two CO platoons. Did they roll in with the sub or were they on the ribs? So they did an op or with an SDV that prior to that They did an op with an SDV that prior to that from an intelligence gathering standpoint to try to fill in some of the gaps also. Really weren't able to provide much more intel than we already had. They weren't able to confirm any of the suspicions of pipes laden with explosives or anything, because ultimately

there wasn't. They had the explosives on board, but they weren't rigged the way that they would have need to have been to actually blow everything up when we stepped on. So they got fucking lazy now. Well, there was one guy that made a comment in post interrogations that said, they told us to do that, but we all kind of looked around and realized, like, well, what the fuck are we supposed to do then? You know, we're 25 miles off the coast with no boats and you want us to blow this up.

Like, well, that's going to fuck us up too. So I think that's probably most of why they didn't do it as it is. They didn't want to turn into fucking suicide bombers, you know, because they had blown themselves up. But I've never heard that before. Everybody's always seems to be pretty willing to volunteer for that. Yeah, you know, again, I think, you know, when you're talking regular Iraqi military, even the special Republican guard guys, it's more mafia style than it is, you know, hardline Islamic terrorists, you know,

so in dealing with with the actual Iraqi military, most of those guys have no interest in dying, you know, so, or scared of it at least enough to not do something like that. But, yeah, were the prisoners pretty compliant? Or, yeah, they were scared, Chilis. Yeah. You know, they didn't really fight at all. I mean, some of them a little bit of scuffle here and there, but you didn't get the impression that they wanted to fight. That's for sure.

Were you guys on run-of-nots then? You were in a white light? I mean, there was enough light there already that we just didn't need them. We did have white lights and there were parts of the birthing where we used it like some bathrooms that were dark or some sections of it that were lower lit that we white lighted a little bit. But I mean, then not even all of us had fucking nods in terms of a two or a binocular setting

like I had a fucking, I think it's what is it a PBS? 14. The monocular fucking, yeah. I had to do some driving with a fucking monocular for a while, you know, so we were, I think, underoutfitted a fair bit, but damn, it's fucking crazy how far off. Yeah. Everything's come, you know? yeah, really short amount of time. Yeah, I mean there were you know once we went in country We were in in four humbies none of them were armored

Two of them didn't even have fucking doors on them, you know So the two that did they were those just thin skin like vinyl Doors that we hung body armor on the fucking doors to give us something something extra like we'd throw our body armor on the fucking you know out the window over the door to give you some kind of fucking protection on the doors but damn it yeah so is that where that op-ended door yeah so we we finished that and then there was a kind of a turnover team. There was interrogators and I think a marine fast group came on to basically hold it for

however long until they brought contractors to operate it or what. Yeah, we took it over and when we finished it was right when the sun was coming up and so our replacements showed up on a Hilo and we jumped on back on the ribs and then ultimately we loaded the ribs onto a fucking fast cat, like a big fast catamaran and rode that back to back to K&B Kuwaiti naval base. So we get get back there do the whole debrief thing and at that point I mean that's basically what started the war right that happened the night before the invasion so we went from Kuwaiti naval base up to a

northern part of Kuwait and Loaded all of our shit up. We had to steal a hum be from the Air Force because we only had three of them and it was green. So like overnight we had cans of paint and a couple of paint brushes and our new guys fucking hand painted a green humbie tan and we loaded all of our shit up in it and then drove across the border up and drove all the way to Nazaria in one one fell swoop. Well, before we before we go there, I want to go back. So that op that we just discussed, correct me if I'm wrong, but was that your first interaction with taking something down with dogs? No, we didn't have dogs on that at all.

You didn't have dogs. Okay, no, the first time there was even mention of them No, we didn't have dogs on that at all. You didn't have dogs. No, the first time there was even mention of them was towards the end of that deployment up in the northern part of the country and to Crete. There was a marine contingent that had an explosive detection dog by where we were at. Okay. Okay, so we end up going up to Olaoslem and there was the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit was taking some pretty fucking heavy casualties in Nazaria along a main supply route. A lot of the Saddam Fettine guys were heavily concentrated in Nazaria and they were given given them all all they could

fucking deal with and so Mattis who was the SEO of the first marine division at the time asked Commodore Harwood if he would let some of our guys come up and ambush the ambushers that were fucking with his supply route. So we went up into Nazarean, spent a couple weeks there disrupting every fucking thing we could. And we spent kind of a blue gold, and we spent that time doing kind of a blue gold thing with another platoon from Team 3. And so we would go out one night and do operations, and they would be our QRF. And then the next night, we'd flip flop. We did a couple of, a couple of ops where we went out together, and they would be our QRF and then the next night we'd flip flop. We did a couple of a couple of ops where we went out

together and you know we would drive or they would drive, you know, and kind of all go out as a group. We hit a train station as a group. That was one of the times where I had to drive on Nod's totally dark for like three and a half hours in the insert. And we pull up and hit the train station, we establish a perimeter and whatever. It was on, that was the first mission where we found, actually found like CBR, the chemical biological, radiological suits and two-pan chloride pens and bags of white powder and all kinds of chemical weapon training suits and a bunch of shit in there that we turned over and never heard anything more about it. What was the puffer-fucker-fucker-fucker-league?

Yeah, I mean, when you're coming across that shit, you're just like, holy fuck. You know, like you're re-stepping into a fucking, you know, cash-a of goddamn, you know, chemical weapons are what the fuck is this, you know? But so we spent two weeks there just again trying to disrupt operations, spend a lot of time blowing up fucking like we'd find caches of weapons of crates of RPGs and shit like that. We had a UAV guy at the time that that program was just kind of starting to come online and so As a team guy UAV operator that went with us and we'd launch it from the Humvee and It was awesome because like we would drive along and and it would be up above and you know at a certain level

On the ground unless you kind of really know what you're looking at you can't tell if that's a real fucking plan or a UAV If it's high enough, right? So you could draw out you know the fucking insurgents because they'd start shooting at it. You know, and so we would use that as much as a fucking decoy as we would, you know, actually getting the real time intelligence of what's ahead is that you draw out people to start shooting at and stuff. So, you know, we would, you know, like I said, spend a couple

weeks just doing tip for tat trying to disrupt the network of people that were fucking with the con boy routes for the Marines and it seems like we did at least an adequate enough job to keep them from getting fucked with anymore. So, what was the resistance like? Were they not pretty dedicated? No, it was real mixed. Most of it was, again, this was at the start of the war. So I think just my kind of assumption was that they didn't really understand. It was kind of like the guys in Yemen is that it was more like testing

what they could get away with or not. It was much more cat and mouse kind of shit. And because of that, I think they based a lot of what they did after that as, you know, teams came in and established fobs and whatever, is that, you know, that kind of set the tone, I think, for what they knew they could start to get away with or not, how much of a fight they could put up with before they had to, you know, retreat or bound back or bagass and live to fight another day. So, a lot of it was, in for us too, some of it was us feeling them out, is if we shoot through

these windows and we take fucking shots from here, how we respond, what does that dictate in terms of their response and whether or not we use the UAV if we blow up casheys, do they come to see what the fucking explosion was? If we blow up vehicles or shot water tanks like we'd come across little areas that we knew people had just been there. Like there was fresh food and little like almost campsites at different checkpoints and places,

you know, or you take shots from somewhere and you go check it out and they would leave and you'd find, you know, crates of fucking ammo and AKs and RPG rounds and fuel tanks and vehicles and shit. And so we would swoop in there and just place fucking standard charges on everything and just blow the fuck out of it, you know? And then sometimes we would probe in further, sometimes we would go back and see if they would come back. It was just, it was a lot of that kind of, you know, back and forth cat and mouse bullshit of figuring out, you know, what the fuck they're gonna do

based on what we do in vice versa. Yeah, but you guys were fucking engaging. In some cases, yeah, It was pretty light though. It was very, I guess I would call it, it was more reconnaissance driven on both ends, both in fire and effect and everything else. But it wasn't until we went up to the northern part of the country where it was a legitimate fucking,

like holy fuck gunfight, you know, where there was bullets flying every which got damn direction, you know, into the humvees and right past your fucking head and in the ground next to you. I mean, it was like kicking over a fucking horn. It's nasty when we went up there. But between Nazaria and the northern part we did hang out. We were in Baghdad, we took down a scud base. That's fucking awesome, which was pretty neat, especially growing up in the first Gulf War and saying how big of an impact scuds had on everything. This was the Iraqi army's main scud training facility base. I took pictures of, they had murals,

he's crazy like anti-American murals, it had all sorts of twisted shit. Like, they have like a blonde hair blue-eyed muscular guy on his knees with his hands behind his back and like a muscled out, I rack you looking guy with a shirt off, with an Iraqi flag wrapped around the Americans neck, like choking his eyes until they're bulging out

and falling out of his head. And no shit, you got pictures of this? I do. I'm gonna put them up on screen. Like a skull painted like an American flag with a fist painted like an Iraqi flag like coming down and crushing the fucking skull apart. Just weird shit like that.

And like, but again, thinking of it, like if you were to go to, you know, NAB Coronado and like, that's what it was, like, there'd be crazy anti-American murals like all over the base, you know, just was weird. But, you know, people don't fucking realize how anti-American it was over there and how much they wanted to fuck us up.

And, and Afghanistan too, I remember seeing the rugs with, did you ever get those? They had the little prayer rugs with the twin towers. Oh, no, I never got those. But yeah, they had rugs with twin towers on them. And it had the plane, the plane's crashing into the fucking twin towers. I used to pray on them.

OK. Yeah. But anyways, yeah, it's weird to see that. I mean, when you're in a foreign country and you're on military bases, you know, but anyways, yeah, it's weird to see that. I mean, when you're in a foreign country and you're on military bases, basically fighting their military and taking their facilities down, seeing that shit, it did again.

It's kind of like the same sentiment as being on the coal is that it makes you realize exactly that. It's like these people fucking hate us. Like it's ingrained in their culture. It's pervasive in their military, like it's just, it's ever present. So similarly there is that, you know, as soon as we would roll up a lot of times,

they would just bagass and, you know, they'd take pot shots and it'd be a little bit of back and forth, but they ultimately didn't want to fight a whole lot. That was in the northern part of Baghdad. So we spent, you know, some time in in Baghdad doing a few different things like that and then went up to the northern part of the country and for reference that the entire Iraq campaign originally was supposed to be, I want to say it was the third armored division and the first armored division were In the first armored division, we're supposed to come

together. Basically, the third AD was supposed to come down out of Turkey and take Mosul and to Crete, and even the Sunni Triangle, and then ultimately set up shop on the northern part of Baghdad. The first armored division was supposed to come out of Kuwait and do the same thing, go through Nazaria and end up at the southern part of Baghdad. And then that was going to be like the meeting point where they kind of crushed Baghdad together from the north and the south at the same time. And so you had a shitload of army troops that were on ships going through the fucking straits that were going to go through Turkey and Turkey at the last second decided you can't use our fucking country to assault Iraq from like right before we were supposed to launch it.

So you know in true Murphy's law fashion it was all right well I guess you know change a plan we're going to go south to all the way to fucking the Turkey border. And so it was the first AD in the first marine division, you know, about half of the amount of troops as we had planned on using and just swept from this other border all the way to the northern border. So it was literally, it was like a front line just moving, you know, similar to, you hear shit about World War II, and you watch, you you watch documentaries on this front was here and whatever was very much old school conventional military planning that way and front lines and whatever. So we were with the first marine division specifically with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit most of the time and we would go ahead of their con boys and scout out bridges and routes and make sure areas were cool for

them to come through or whatever. So that's most of what we did. You know, from when we left Nazaria, moving up North as we accompanied them and just kind of did that. Were you still in shithumbies? Paul, what kind of sense for them? We weren't in low-pro vehicles or anything like that. Nope, shithumbies, we're fucking no armor.

Jesus Christ, dude, that's fucking bossy. Yeah, damn. Yeah, no, and also, mind you, we were going ahead of where the armor was. Yeah. So you've got these front lines of tanks and LAVs and LARs and all this heavy fucking shit. And we're in these thin skinned fucking Humbees

with nothing but small arms and a couple of goose-dough rounds fucking driving 20, 30 miles north of where the fucking most northern American troops are out scouting out their fucking routes like a bunch of dumbasses. Damn, you know, when we just, yeah, we just fucking pulled it off. I mean, did you guys get hit or no IDs? No, I guess it's brand news. So that they're really weren't any IDs, any ID threats. There were, you know, potshots here and there, you know, similarly like people trying to figure out, I mean, it was almost like hiding in plain sight as it was so unexpected that it was kind of like catching with their

pants down because they're just like, are those our guys, or who, like, they would never expect for humbys by themselves, to be 20 miles fucking north of where American forces are at. So I think a lot of times they're just kind of looking around not knowing who the fuck we were, which is dumb, you know, on our part, but anyway, so that's what we did.

How far ahead are you? How far, how far ahead of the, the Marines were you? It depended, you know, it depended on the route, the terrain, how, you know, what direction they were going, you know, we did it multiple times and we would usually do it at night. I mean, we always did it at night. Five minutes out, 24 hours out. No, I mean, it was, it was usually a few hours, you know. So if you got into a tick and you took some heavies, you're looking at two hours fucking time

before anybody's coming to get your ass. On the ground, yes. The one saving grace that for sure made us all feel better about it was we had an Air Force fucking CCTV guy with us as well as our com guy was fucking shit hot. And we did have a dedicated fucking AC 130 above us that if we needed and we did, we called them in once and those motherfuckers were on station. I'm not shit in like 45 seconds.

No shit. Just they were fucking right there, you know, so it was awesome. I'll get to that in a minute. So yeah, we had them on the line, you know, basically accompanying us when we were doing it most of the time, or at least to my knowledge. Who knows, maybe our OAC and ALIC just said that to make us feel better if I got out of the... But like I said, we did have to call on them once and they were right there, so I'm assuming it's legit. But as the Baghdad falls, and so now it's like, okay, well, this is the kind of, that was the big push that we were worried about. Now it was, we've got to create an Mosul, to

create a Saddam's hometown. So we end up with the entire first marine division, right? It's like 25,000 fucking troops and it's a couple miles of tanks and LABs and LARs and, you know, fucking humbies and you name it. As far as you can see all the way forward and all the way behind, you know, I mean, miles of convoy and steel team three acoplet echo platoon right 16 fucking team guys and 25,000 fucking Marines so we're a convoyant up to decreat and the we're planning on taking it down the next day so it's getting to be nightfall we pull up and we're on the southern edge of the city and it's basically we're on this main highway that runs into town and then there was like a you know commuter ring kind of road that went around the city. And we stopped at that intersection.

And when we pulled up, there was, you know, a number of head shed Marines that were sitting there kind of planning out the next day. And when we pulled up to kind of dirt die the next day's operations with them, you know, the first thing we asked was like, Hey, did you guys fucking secure this area? Like have you probed out and oh, yeah, everything's fucking good. Okay. Sweet pull our humbies up and, you know, like a bunch of assholes take our boots off and fucking start eating chow and fucking white light head lamps on. And, you know, like we're on a fucking SNR mission at four or one in July,

you know, like just totally fucking no, no discipline, you know, really. And like we're on a fucking SNR mission at 4-0 in July, like just totally fucking no discipline, really, because again, we're like, dude, we're with 25,000 Marines, and they've been here for the last two hours. Like, I think we're good, right? No. So we're literally like maps on the hoods,

fucking talking over what we're gonna do, and they're saying, tomorrow we're going to have this fucking group take this part, this group take that part. Seal team three echo, you guys are going to come in from the east with this group and you're going to circle up and take this route and hit the fucking palace and take it down. As we're planning this, all of a sudden all fucking hell breaks loose, like gunfire just erupts and it's every fucking wear.

I mean, you know, there's explosions and looking back on it now, the road that we were on in that ring, there was a kind of a little nest of trees and then a tree line that followed that road heading east. And there was a group of insurgents that were in that fucking tree nest literally probably 20 yards from where the fucking con boy paralleled just sitting there, fucking ski mask, trench coats, AKs, fucking a little, you know, cash aid nest, the fucking stuff. Right behind that, they had a couple of vehicles with a couple of technicals that had anti-aircraft fucking pieces on the back and the beds of the trucks were filled with fucking shells. And so what ended up happening is two Marines walked out into that

field to take a shit and fucking literally bumped into a group fucking all on their knees in the dirt fucking dirt, how they were gonna ambush us. So these guys, you know, like, hey, well, you know, not the most brilliant fucking plan, but like they walk out and they startle them instead of just fucking shooting them right there while they're not paying attention, like they confront them. These guys jump up and fucking zipper the fucking marines up

and that kicks off. Now marines are fucking shooting at them. They're shooting at us. And we're caught between both the insurgents and the Marines fucking shooting at each other. Shit. And so there was a Marine AT-4 round that hit one of the fucking technical trucks,

and it blew up. And again, we had no idea that the guys were there or that the trucks were there at the time. We're sitting there just, I mean, I jumped into the front seat. I'm trying to throw my fucking shit on and I mean, there's rounds coming in the fucking dash, zipping past my fucking head, you know, hitting the fucking engine compartment, hitting the dirt right outside where my feet are at. I mean, hitting the fucking windshield, you name it all over the fucking place. And so, you know, we get

all of our shit on, we get into like a lazy L ambush facing the contact to try to figure out the fuck's going on because we also know, hey, there's fucking blue forces right there, like where the fuck is going on? And so, when that AT4 around hit that technical with all the rounds in it, well, it sent, you know, dozens of fucking anti-aircraft rounds scattered, half detonated all over the fucking place and they start blowing up sympathetically like and intermittently making us all think that there's this monster force

ambushing us, right? Because all we see is it's like artillery's fucking going off. And so we get on our fucking night vision and we start to identify, you know, what's what. And there's a fucking dude that's like, he's probably 25, 30 yards away, crouch down, a ski mask on trench coat, fucking 8K. And he's just like sitting there, crouch down, just kind of turning the said, looking like this, cool as a fucking cucumber. He doesn't have nods at that point. Most of our guys did. And so we get them on, we get in the cell shape ambush, we

de-conflict with the Marines. We all had suppressors on, so they actually didn't even realize we were taking care of that guy and then the nest behind him. But so most of our guys fucking engage this dude. So most of our guys fucking engage this dude. What was interesting is there was a six or seven of us, I think, that all took shots. Basically at the same time, fucking center mass and drilled them. And that motherfucker dropped his gun and ran for probably 50 or 60 yards before he fell down and fucking died. What, this happens a lot. What kind of rounds were you? Agreed to. Fucking green tips.

You know, we had that same shit happen to us. And it still blows my mind that after all the after action reports that were coming out that we didn't fucking change from green tip because it was just a zip and right through. Yeah. And a lot of times guys didn't even know they were being fucking shot. Yeah. I don't. It's good for 300 blackout. Yeah. Yeah. But especially if I can 1204 grain, not a 205 grain. But anyway, so, so we end up neutralizing that guy. He goes, and there was, there was some interesting things. Once, you know,

everything fucking dies down, the two Marines that got zippered up, one of them, I think ended up dying the other one got metabacked out and was actually saved by, you had like a fucking time, time, time, clancy novel shoved down as in between his flat jacket and his fucking chest and one of the rounds, fucking stopped halfway through the fucking book. And had like his half of his ass shot off too. Like he took an AK around and his ass and blue, you know, most of his ass cheek off. But our our corpsman fucking helped him out and got got them as as patched up as they could and what have you. But upon further investigation, once we got the

Marines to stop shooting the sympathetic detonations from the from the technical fucking artillery pieces stop going off and we kind of get in a leapfrog forward moving through the area where we were ambushed from in this nest and similarly like these guys were set up for you know several days worth of food and you know lots of ammo and you know explosives and fucking RPG rounds and all sorts of shit. But when we finally came across the one guy that that we shot and took off running, he had some really weird fucking personal effects. He had absolutely no

identification on him whatsoever, like not a wallet, not a driver's license, nothing. You know, no papers whatsoever, but he had on like a fucking John Wayne gun belt, like a legitimate, like something you would buy out of a fucking store, like a toy, and it was a plastic fucking pistol in it. You gotta be shitting. You had a toy plastic pistol in a cheese dick,

fucking John Wayne gun belt. He know, you had a toy plastic pistol in a cheese dick, fucking John Wayne gun belt. He sure was fucking out of real AK. And when we found the AK and looked at his hands, this was totally by fucking luck. But both of his hands had bullet wounds right through the meat of his hands. And both the pistol grip and the forward grip of the AK had bullet holes and blood on the fucking gun

where he dropped it and took off run and then let us go again totally by accident but shot the fucking gun out of his hand and then he had a number of rounds in his fucking chest cavity but was again he was about 60 yards away when we actually found him. So he was to say after that, you know, trying to get some sleep and get ready for the next night, it wasn't the easiest thing. I mean, at that point, again, there's no fives. Like the entire time we were there, we were, we were sleeping in little two-man tents that we brought with us. Most of the time, we would just throw a ground pad underneath the fucking hum be and sleep under it, you know,

and that's how we slept 90% of the time. And so no different there. Same plan moving forward, we're gonna take down the palace the next day and take down the entire town to create with 25,000 fucking reans. And so we did. And we got up at sunrise, fucking, you know, just a mass swath of fucking US forces

swept through the entire town to create and took the whole fucking thing down in a matter of about a half a day. Damn. There was resistance. There were pockets here and there. It wasn't, you know, Saddam's last stand by any stretch. I think again is that, you know, they knew how outgunned they were, you know, and they put up fights and tested certain areas here and there and got handly defeated pretty quickly and decided, you know, we need to figure out a more guerrilla

warfare insurgent style tactic if we're going to have any fucking, you know, potential success against these guys. And so, you know, they're, again, there were pockets of resistance, there were gun fights here and there, some rooftop shit here and there. So we go to the palace and same thing, like it took us a couple of hours to take that down. And it was just, I mean, that's about a fucking episode

in and of itself in terms of just what the palace was like. I mean, it was just the opulence that existed in that fucking place was a biblical proportion. Like, it was just crazy the amount of fucking nice shit in there, I mean, from the hand in lead tile ceilings to fucking everything's made out of gold, to marble floors, marble pillars, fucking, you know, you had gold soap dishes

and gold toilet brushes, and I mean, it's just, it was fucking nuts. Before we go into that, I can't wait to get there. I'm just curious. So you guys had pretty fucking shitty living conditions, sleeping under fucking humbies. And yeah, no running water. But what I'm curious about is the morale.

I mean, you guys were working your ass off and it was high. We were fucking loving it, you know, because it was, it was like, it was finally the fucking big show, you know, because we were at team 3 when 9-11 happened. We didn't go to Afghanistan. And so, and then they're like, yeah, Afghanistan's going off, but you're going to the fucking Philippines. Like, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. So then our act kicks off and we finally, you know, we trained for almost two months to hit one fucking target where we take down fucking, you know, 26, 27 dudes with, you know, very little resistance. And so, yeah, it's like now we're finally fucking doing it, you know. It's, it's fucking crazy because you take the gunfight out and, you know, I'm

betting that morale would have been at an all time fucking low. And, you know, I'm betting that morale would have been at an all time fucking low. And, you know, I've heard you say at a hundred million fucking times about, you know, a dog's not happy unless he's working and you direct, you relate that directly to humans and you guys are doing exactly what the fuck you are trained to do. And if I was a bet man and I am, I would bet that there is nowhere else in the world you would rather be than ducking down in a ditch, taking gunfire and fucking returning

it. Yeah. Yeah. It was the finally, you know, feeling. Yeah. So it was a neat, and it was, it was really neat from a historical standpoint, and that it was a very tangible existence in terms of the front lines and the historical, I think, relevance of what we were doing and where and when.

It was the initial invasion of the Iraq war. It's fucking insane. You kicked the fucking goddamn war off. That's pretty neat for sure. For the fucking insane. I mean you kicked the fucking goddamn war off. Yeah, that's pretty neat for sure. For fucking badass. Yeah, just, you know, again, it was right place at the right time and, you know, so yeah, we enjoyed it. It was, it was a neat, neat, to not to counter that thought process, but just to make people realize, even in those circles, there's people that decide, what this isn't fucking for me. We had a guy that, yeah, he even leading up to the go-plat, it was his first platoon, and

he was fucking scared, and was basically like, hey, at what point is this just fucking too dangerous and we're not going to do it? And we're like, it's not motherfucker. We like we have to fucking do this. You know, like, yeah, I know that the last report I gave you was that there's 115 people on board and and there's four or 48 inch fucking oil pipes rigged with explosives to blow up and we step on board, but guess what, we're still going on it. So, you know, grab a hold of your nuts and that's what's happening. He froze. Like, when we got on there, I remember I, in fact, that the very first room that I entered on there was a fucking dark-ass bathroom. And he was, we went through like this small little

corridor and then he was supposed to be the number one guy and he froze right in the fucking doorway. And I grabbed him and fucking just threw him to the fucking side and me and the two guys behind me finished clearing that bathroom. I mean, he was like a deer in a headlight, just completely fucking frozen. You had a fucking Navy Seal operator quit on target in the middle of a fucking operation. Yep. And so our OIC grabbed him and just said, getting the fucking back and hold rear security and stay with me. I mean, at that point, he was a fucking liability.

A huge liability. Might as well be a fucking prisoner. Yeah. And so, he stayed in the back, fucking, you know, scared out of his fucking mind. And then when we got back You know like I said we went right up tolly oscilling air force base We were getting in our vehicles you know getting ready to fucking go go in direct to drive across the fucking border And do I rack loaded down to the guilds to go ambush the ambushers so to speak and in Nazaria and he and he stood there right there

And said I can't do it. I'm sorry guys, I can't fucking do it. Holy shit. I got a wife, I want to have kids, I just said, I'm sorry, I can't fucking do this. We were all like, you motherfucker. He was a 60 gunner for us too. And so no shit. And this guy is now a team guy. I think he's still on active duty, so I'm not going mention his name, but. As a fucking hot, as, I don't know, not this guy, the guy that I'm mentioning now. So he left, he went home and fucking got out,

you know, separated and was fucking done. I'll get to him in a minute. The guy, we had an Intel rep, right? It's guys in IS 3, like 2021 years old. It's been through fucking bootcamp and IS school and has been an intel guy for, you know, group one or whatever the fuck for a couple of months. And he's at that same base. And I'm not shitting you this dude's like, I'll fucking go and we all kind of looked around and we're like, you know how the fucking shoot is saw? He's like, nope, we're like, well, here's the fucking belt.

And here's the trigger, you're fucking coming with us. Oh, yeah. And we drug a fucking IS-3 that hasn't been through buds, hasn't been through SKT, hasn't been on a fucking range with us, hand him a fucking saw, and we go in country with him.

And he fucking accompanists the whole goddamn way. And he and I actually sat on the rooftop, I talk about this in the Trident book, sat on the rooftop of Saddam's Palace and almost got fucking mortared. That's a whole nother story, but this guy, again, and he ended up going through buds after that. He came home after that deployment

because he stayed after we left because he was on a different rotation, did his fucking pole there, went to Bud's, graduated, and it has been a steal for the last fucking 20 years. I think I know this fucker. Yeah. Was he a Russian descent? But he's a...

I don't think so. Maybe, okay. Yeah, I don't think so. I'll tell you his name off camera, maybe you know him, but fucking great dude, you know. I mean, you're talking about balls of fucking steal. I wasn't even knowing he's doing it. He's like, fuck it, I'll sit you're talking about balls of fucking steel like I was even always doing is like, fuck it, I'll sit in this fucking spot with the gun out the window and yeah,

you fucking went with us. That's awesome. Yeah, he went with us, you know, for, I mean, he went with us on the, to take the palace down too, you know, I mean, he sat in the fucking back right. I don't know, sorry, the back left fucking window with a saw out the fucking window, pulling fucking vehicle security while we were driving through the town to get up to the, to get up to the palace. Damn, good olds that dude. Yeah, fuck great, great fucking dude.

But when we ended up getting back, nobody would talk to the guy that quit. I mean, nobody would even fucking look at him. He tried to, hey would even fucking look at him. You know, he tried to, hey guys, fucking welcome back. He was still at the team for like, I don't know, 10 days, a week, two weeks, maybe something like that while he was out processing

and whatever, and nobody would even fucking look at him. You know, wouldn't talk to him, nothing. Yeah. I say, I almost feel bad, I don't. I still don't, fuck that guy. Yeah. I mean, he fucking left us hanging. He can go fuck himself. Yeah. And I have no, I still don't, fuck that guy. I mean, he fucking left us hanging, he can go fuck himself.

Yeah. And I have no doubt that he'll spend the rest of his life living in a world of regret for doing that. But he should. Yeah. So that's, I've never seen that fucking happen. Well, I have seen that happen, but not in a unit. Like the fucking seal team.

Yeah, never. Not once. Yeah. Well, so the palace. So the palace. The palace again, it was everything you would think, in terms of just how it was made and how fucking big it was and the attention to detail that was put into constructing that fucking thing was mind-boggling. Now, did you get any, uh, souvenirs by chance?

There were no souvenirs to be had. Ah. Yeah, zero. All right. It's completely empty. Nothing to it. Nothing to see here. Nothing to see here. Nothing to see here.

And so, I mean, in all seriousness, it was mostly vacated. And that, you know, that was, while it was his hometown, it was not a palace that he spent a lot of time in, so it wasn't like filled with Saddam's personal effects, like the Baghdad palaces were. There was stuff in it, but not, you know, again, not like he was living there all the time, like the ones that he did in Baghdad palaces were. There was stuff in it, but not, again, not like he was living there all the time like the ones that he did in Baghdad.

But I know, I mean, I don't, there was a lot of good shit in some of those palaces. Like, so I've heard. Yeah. But yeah, so the, yeah, the palace was, it was again, it was was in terms of actually taking it down. It took a couple hours. It wasn't, you know, some heavily guarded fucking institution. At that point, it was, that part of the town was a ghost town. Again, I think there were

indicators that, you know, that people had been there recently, just like a lot of the other places, but had just left. And thinking of it now and looking back on it is that to have a crew of almost 30,000 US soldiers, many of whom in armored vehicles rolling up towards, I don't care how many of you are, there are in a palace, they're either going to knock the palace down or whatever, you're not going to stand a chance. And so I think the pockets of resistance that we did run into were you know we either caught them off guard or they were just seeing you know how how hard we would fight back or go after him or or whatever but there weren't these like epic fucking four-hour gun battles you know they were they're shots here and there and it was no you know no real fucking

dug in and you know pulling fucking grenade pins and dragging people out of buildings. It just wasn't that for that. Once we secured the palace, then we set up shop there and at that point, we were finally done moving through the country. We had spent that entire time in country constantly bumping forward and coming back and bumping forward and coming back, moving our way from the southern edge

of the country all the way to the north. So I mean, in that respect, it was kind of neat to have fought our way, the entire way of the entire fucking country during that initial invasion period. But once we got to the palace and took it down and set up shop there, then we were static and that's where we were the static for the most and for the longest. And so we started doing like some sniper overwatch shit.

We'd go out in town from there and set up similar operations of kind of what we were doing down in Nazaria and in the southern part of Baghdad of just kind of going out, getting our own intel and figuring out what the fuck's going on. And if if anything was to be had or to be done, then then we did it. But there was a 24-7 watch on the rooftop because it was the highest point in the city. And I remember the Air Force had bombed the shit out of the air field and to create which underneath it had a cache of, how would it even call it a cache?

I would say it was a weapon storage facility of like legit airplane munitions and big fucking explosives. And so at night time, because they bombed it, all the stuff was going off sympathetically for like fucking two weeks, shit was blown up, nonstop. And if you looked at thermal or even on night vision, it looked like you were staring at the surface of the sun during a solar flare flare up.

It was just like shit was blown up, fucking nonstop, all over the place. So it was almost like watching this crazy fucking, you know, a poca-liptic, you know, firework show. Yeah. But as we're fucking around, and me and this guy that, you know, again, was the IS that accompanied us, we're sitting there and all of a sudden,

just off to the left and probably five or 600 yards away, you see three little flashes of light. And I was like, did you see that? And he's like, yeah, it's like the fuck was that? He's like, I don't know. And all of a sudden, straight south of us about 300 yards, boom, boom, boom. And I was like, we both kind of look at each other

and you see three more blips. And then about fucking 200 yards south of us, fucking three big explosions. And then three more blips. And then now it's just yards south of us, fucking three big explosions. And then three more blips, and then now it's just fucking south of us, three more big explosions. And as soon as we look at each other like, dude, we gotta get the fuck off this rooftop.

Yeah. Just as we're starting to go bail down, all of a sudden, on the other side of, I can't remember if it's the tiger, or the afraidy's, whatever the fuck river that his palace is on, into Crete. All of a sudden, from the other side of the river, it sounds like a fucking transformer is having a seizure,

right, and like Optimus Prime has gotten, has asked Pushed in, I don't know, like it's just weird fucking rumble and whizz and fucking metal moving, and then you just hear, boop boop boop boop boop boop, like in all these flashes of light from across the river, and where those threeop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, And it took three iterations for them to pinpoint where they were and then they just fucking nailed them. We had no comms with them, like I said, we didn't even know they were there. I mean, I wouldn't be fucking sitting here, 100% if they hadn't been there.

Because we couldn't have got off that rooftop the way it was situated in the way that we were up there. It would have taken us probably 30, 40 seconds to even get just on the first part of the stairwell to get down off of there. And we'd have been fucked. Yeah. You know, but yeah, just one of those fucking lucky moments, I guess. But a lot of those. Yeah. Damn.

Well, let's go back to C130 and Scud's. Yeah. So where the C130 came into play was during that ambush that I spoke of, or combat control and Combs guy got on the radio and had a C-130 on station fucking right away during that. The downside was, is for that specific scenario, while it was awesome that they were right there, where the contact was coming from, was 25 yards away. It was just way too fucking dangerous, close to doing anything about it. So we weren't able to use them in that scenario, but they were there, you know, and there were a lot of other times where when we were out and about, if we had run into anything

like that and not had 25,000 rains with us, we would have been able to use them, I think, probably a little more effectively, but there were just too many fucking blue forces everywhere for them to be able to engage comfortably, especially then. Yeah. But what were you guys marked with or were you marked? Were you using strobes? If I remember correct, I think we were just using little fucking squares, a fucking IR tape on our helmets. That's it.

That's a rolled school. Oh, damn it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, at that time, like a lot of the mechanisms and kind of protocols put in place were put in place because of how little were there when it first started. Yeah.

So, well, just for the audience, the reason I asked that is because that's how air de-conflicts, that's how they know where the good guys are. They have an IR strobe that blinks on top of their helmet or on the vehicle or wherever. And so that is how air assets like I see 130 knows where the good guys are. And that way they can be sure they're shooting the right fucking people and not their own. So to not to just have some glint tape is that that could go bad pretty easy. Our calm guy may have had an IR strobe and a fucking in his litter or something. He has a little bit of a fucking green bean. Peck five or something.

I mean, I don't know something. I just, you know, I wasn't the comms guy. And so I don't know what the fuck they had or didn't have. I just remember, I think we all had going tape on our helmets, you know. No good. Yeah. Well, let's move on.

Yeah. So from there we spent several weeks in to create again just basically You know solidifying our presence there which was You know the the start of setting up forward operating bases and and the way I understand it is that that that fucking Palace ultimately ended up being like a state department office or an Intel building or something like that.

And I think it's still manned by US forces today, I believe. But so we basically just kind of handed it over to them and then from there made our way back down to Baghdad. And at that point, Seal Team 5 was coming in to relieve us. At that point, we had been on deployment for eight months. SEAL team 5 came in and we did about the most half-ass turnover with them because it was just a quick turn and burn. We didn't have, this is the five we've been in for the last six months and here's all

of our target until packages or whatever, they're running. You know, we had just finished basically taking the entire country over, and so it was like, okay, now you guys, you've got it high five, and that was it. And so from there, we made our way back down to Kuwait, and then flew commercial air out of Kuwait back to the United States. But damn, yeah.

So that was a rough but a good deployment. And you guys didn't take no casualties. No, no. We had, you know, one guy got injured and it was nothing serious. It was during the go-plat. Actually, he fucked his hand up during, I think it was breaching one of the doors and windows that he fucked his hand up fairly well. I mean, he stayed for the rest of the deployment, but that was it.

You know, everybody had little things here or there, but nothing, nothing that was,. Everybody had little things here there, but nothing that was deployment ending. So we were pretty fortunate. We'd been in a number of gun fights, had taken a number of enemy fucking KIAs with us and had no real fucking problems of any of our guys other than the one that quit. That was the one casualty we had, I guess, but yeah, we were pretty fortunate. Damn. I can't believe that fucking guy quit. Yeah, that's, yeah. Wow. That's weird. I mean, I actually got a message from him not that long ago on Instagram. I didn't respond. But it's just like, you know, good to see you're doing so well, fucking cheers or whatever. And I was just like, fuck this guy, man. It's just like,

I had that same reaction that I did, you know, when I first saw him and we came back, I was like, dude, fuck you. Wow, you know, just the fucking reach out. Like, I mean, I can't put myself in this position, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't reach out to me if I was that guy. Like, I would, I just wouldn't do it, you know? But, I mean, I don't know how you don't feel, you know, the amount of shame to just say, like,

I'm not gonna fucking talk to these guys, you know,'t know but probably is where you're trying to make good one way or another but well fuck man Let's let's just take a quick commercial break and we'll pick up on coming home. Right. Hit pause, go over to vigilancelead.com, pick yourself up one of these sweet shirts and if you're lucky maybe these hats will be in stock too. Alright, so we're back from the break and you just had a eighth month deployment that was fucking completely full of action. You kicked off the war in Iraq, which is something to be said about that for sure. That's fucking incredible and so now you're coming home and let's go there what are you doing when you get back?

So it was a quick transition really I mean when I got home it was it was kind of surreal and that you know they're especially then there was no transition time you know so it was literally then there was no transition time. You know, so it was literally like when I was, I remember actually getting pulled over, my parents came to surprise me, you know, to welcome me home and it's my wife at the time. And then, you know, I spent the first, you know, night with the wife and then the next day, my parents, you know, surprised me at the house and then we all day my parents surprised me at the house and then we all went out to dinner and on the way I got pulled over. I don't even remember what the fuck for but you know the cop you know it was giving me shit about either my license was fucking expired or one of the tags was or whatever and you know I was like 36 hours ago I was in

fucking Baghdad and like now you're pulling me over because I was like, I just got home from an eight month fucking deployment or whatever, he was super understanding, but it was that moment that it kinda hit me. It was like, there should be a better process for integrating back into civilian life after deployment. You know, I know that there is now, at least it's better to what I understand, but, you know, for me, that it was weird going from that environment just being shit right into

Southern California, civilian fucking life, you know, and having a couple of weeks leave, and then I had to check into a SQT seal qualification training as an instructor because my time at team 3 was up. So it was a quick turnaround. There wasn't a lot of fiddle fucking around, which I think ultimately was good as I didn't have a bunch of time to just fucking sit around. That couple of weeks was filled with doing shit around the house because having been gone for eight months and we owned the house and it was an older house I'd shit to do around there and then get ready to check in to ask you to and in my plan from there was to screen and hopefully go to to a dev group and when I was about seven or eight months into being an instructor I developed Valley F, which I've talked a little bit about. It's a lung, fungal lung infection, where it spreads through your lungs like mold, and I lost about 40 percent

of my lung capacity. And so I was on convalescently for about 10 months. And then from there, 10 months. And then from there, it was basically they the infectious disease captain at Valboa tried to medically retire me at that point. And I had a meeting with him and I just said, you know, Hey, my first child is on the way. I don't have a college degree. I was planning on staying in and going this route. Can we fucking figure something else out? Like I don't really wanna get just medically booted out of the fucking Navy, all of a sudden. And so, you know, he said, well, you've gotta go somewhere where you're not around

long year attends, you know, for a while, for a couple of years, and try to let your lungs heal up as best they can. And I was like, well, fuck everything we do is irritating to our lungs. You know, so the only other place to go where, you know, it was minimal exposure to lung irritants was being a buds seal instructor. And so the master chief at at SQT and the master Chief at the basic side got together and just worked a fucking deal to send me over there.

I spent my last three years there. I got a college degree, had both my kids and then fucking jump ship out of there. While I was there, it was you know really focused heavy on dog training you know from the end of the deployment to Iraq to when I was first kind of exposed to them during that time being sick I you know was like set on countless leave for almost a year with a lot of free time to focus on training and things of that nature. And then while I was an instructor, I kind of got to where I was working a little bit with the West Coast, K9 guys, and went to some training with them and was offered a position there as a handler, and then turned it down and got out and started my own company.

And that's where that kind of started. What did the lung disease, what did that come from? You know, or my best assumption is, is N Island, because it was just based on the incubation period and kind of where they caught it. It was determined that, you know, yeah, I got it. I picked it up somewhere out there. But yeah, I bet that was so you went to you went to training and then you wanted to fucking screen to go to damn neck to go get some more and then and then you find out that's slumdened chance. Yeah, I mean, you know, from the guys that I knew that that I'd done platoon's with or knew from the community that had gone there and done well, I'm talking with them about it. It seemed like, and I think for a lot of them too, it seemed like what you thought the

SEAL teams would be before you joined. It was more like Dev Group than the regular SEAL teams, or not that there wasn't good shit going on in different pockets of the SEAL seal teams, but you're always kind of hamstrung by the influx of new new guys in your platoon kind of resetting that That lower standard right out of the gate every platoon, you know, so you just can't you can't grow that much I think in a regular seal platoon the way you can at damn neck and so My thought process was if I go to SKU T as an instructor because my time at three is up, I could use that as a springboard to still be within the kind of relevant

scope of tactics and training and teaching. The guys getting ready to go to SEAL teams and while I'm there, screened to go to Dev Dev group I could get in good shape and it's one thing I will say the time spent in Iraq, you know, did wreaked havoc on on all of our physical conditioning because of the conditions were so dire. I mean we were eating two MREs a day and that was it, you know, no weights and no fucking, you know, it was wearing, wearing kit around and whatever but it was, you know, it was wearing kit around and whatever, but it was, you know, like fuck, I dropped about 30 pounds and it was in pretty bad shape physically at the end of that.

And so I wanted to, you know, again, getting really good shape and get ready to screen and then go, but at least while I was doing something still somewhat relevant or felt more relevant in the community while I was getting ready to do that. But then once I picked that up, it threw a wrench and fucking everything. Yeah. Well, I mean, definitely, I mean, would you say it turned into a positive? Yeah.

I looked at it. And even when I was at the crossroads of whether or not to get out or stay in and be a handler, that was a tough, really tough decision because I wanted to be a handler. It was a fucking really kind of enticing and attractive offer to stay in and do that. Where I struggled with that is in twofold is that physically, I knew that I was not at the capacity that I was used to operationally physically. Is it, I honestly, I was fucking scared that I wouldn't be able to fucking operate at a level

I needed to to not be a fucking liability to everybody else. To be at a point where your lungs are fucked up enough in the seal teams to get offered a medical retirement. That doesn't happen for a fucking chest cold. For me to be at that level, I was scared and slashed worried that I wouldn't be able to pull my fucking weight and I didn't want to be that fucking guy that people have to make accommodations for.

So that was part of it. The other part was just realizing that, you know, from an impact standpoint, I've always tried to look at every decision I make in the long game of most bang for your buck in terms of what impact that's going to have on my life big picture. That's why I joined the SEAL teams. That's why I, you know, took the route that I took. That's ultimately why I got out as I felt that, if I imported dogs and trained dogs and handlers and was a trainer at the NPC command on the West Coast

and all of the other things that I've done to me, that's gonna have a much broader reach and impact than me with one dog going overseas doing deployments. So it was a for sure a tough decision, like I said, but ultimately between those two factors, it just seemed at the time like it made sense. And, you know, I'm absolutely glad that I did. I wouldn't change anything. I wouldn't be where I'm at now had I done it different, you know, and I am really happy

with how my life's turned out. So, you know, I think it was for the best. Yeah, I mean, well, I definitely would say they made the right decision considering, you know, you got dogs at the teams and agencies all over the fucking world. And so, you're definitely making the aim major impact but um so so um how was uh did any like real dark spots coming home from that being addicted to combat or any of that you know i never did.

I never, you know, it's one of the things where I've seen a lot of guys that I know really well and respect the hell out of have a lot of fucking trouble with things. I never did. You know, it never, there was never a time where I felt like, you know, either I was missing out or that I felt bad about any of the things that we did or or saw or or whatever It just you know, I don't know why like I don't know if I'm fortunate if I'm fucking oblivious If it's a combination of the thing. Yeah, I really have no no grasp of why You know, I what again, whether it's things that you saw or did or whatever

or the missing that, you know, being in camaraderie and feeling like, you know, you're not in the fight anymore or whatever, I think, for me, I would count myself as really fortunate in that. I was able to transition into a career that still had a lot of adrenaline in it. You know, when you, as you'll find out here shortly is when you jump in a bite suit and have a dog fucking coming after you, like that, that will give you the same fucking rush that a lot of things that we've done in the SEAL teams will do for you. Being around high drive dogs that make your asshole, Pucker, when you just clip a leash to them and they look at you like fucking, you know, you want some chief, you know,

they give you that look and it, and it, it's exhilarating for sure. Plus, you know, coming back as a trainer for the West Coast multi-purpose canine program a couple years after I got out, like I was working with guys that I was, that I had been in with, guys that I was instructors with, guys that I'd, you know, been to war with, like I was working with guys that I had been in with, guys that I was instructors with, guys that I'd been to war with, like it was really the best of everything, you know, it was because I was doing what I was passionate about in the dogs, so being able to select dogs from anywhere in the world, you know, of the highest caliber and working with guys that I know love and trust and consider brothers and arms, and marrying those two things up together and sending them overseas to operate.

To me, it's like, how do you fucking get any better than that? Yeah. So there's no question that played a huge role in me never sinking into that kind of depressed. Fuck, I'm not part of the community anymore or, you know, I'm not associated with the teams. I don't feel like I'm a seal or whatever. Like, I just, whether it's that or working with police departments and, you know, SWOT teams or, you know, taking in retired Warrior Foundation dogs or whatever, I still feel like I'm still kind of part of it enough for me to not just not have that feeling of darkness or depression. Did you have any, it sounds like you pretty much stepped out and it doesn't sound like you

had a whole hell of a lot of downtime when you did get out. So did you kind of step right into your business? Not exactly. There was about a year period that I did a little bit of contract work here in the States teaching basic pistol and rifle to some army guys as a warfighter focus contract through a company in Arkansas. I did that for about three or four months and then transitioned into a job at ExxonMobile as a drill rig supervisor company man for for about six months where I went to I was the drilling rig supervisor on a fucking on a natural gas rig in Northern Colorado for two weeks on two weeks off.

And you know, my experience with oil rigs at that point had been taking them down. That was my knowledge of fucking oil rig. So I had no fucking clue what I was doing, but Exxon takes a neat position and that they hire the type of person that they want and then they teach them what they want to know and they're very, very good at doing that. But at any rate, I did that for about six months and then there was a security supervisor

walking through, doing rounds and kinda got all the specs on everybody who was there and he came to me and he's like, what the fuck are you doing here? And I was like? I mean, I didn't hire me. You guys hired me. You know, and he's like, you should be working for me in security. Do you want a job in being a security advisor? I was like, yeah. So I went and tried to do that. That was an executive position. And for me, I realized very quickly

that that was not my fucking cup of tea. They wanted to send me to Papua New Guinea to work on this multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline project between China, Papua New Guinea, and Australia implementing security protocols into this pipeline project being built. And once I started kind of looking at what they were trying to do and the security protocols

that they wanted to implement. I realized that some changes needed to be made and they didn't want to hear what my changes. They had no interest in what my opinions were. They just wanted me to do what I was told. For me at that point, I was at the point where I had my dog business about ready to start anyway. I'll be the first to admit, I mean, my entire plan the whole time with taking that job was a springboard out of the military while I was setting the dog business up.

So, you know, my intention was never to be there for very long anyway. But at that point, it just made sense to bail out anyway. It was a little earlier than I wanted to in terms of my kennel facility wasn't built. I just had a couple of slabs thrown down with some cheese dick kennel paneling up and so for the first year or so my kennels were pretty rough elementary kennels with not a lot of creature comforts but like with anything, that's how you start and you build from there. That's how I did that and then started the business right after that.

Not a lot of downtime, but I didn't start the dog business right away. I did that for about 10 months, 11 months. We did have a conversation the other night about, about Boosen and, you know, shit like that. And so, and I kind of want to revisit that here because this part delts a lot of guys. But we both, I think, were, I mean, I definitely was full of the whole fucking alcohol up raging, alcohol up bar fighting and ruined all my relationships, whatever, I've said it a million times, but how long after you left did you kind of, I mean, kick that, you've kicked it

now, and that's not fucking easy to do. Yeah, I mean, so for me, I would say, it never seemed like it was a problem for me in terms of it causing any issues, is that what I found for me was that if I casually had a drink, which is typically how I've always been, I've never been a big drinker, but in getting out, what I found had a drink, which is typically how I've always been, I've never been a big drinker. But, you know, in getting out, what I found myself doing was, you know, especially like in the winter time and living out the kennel facility,

and, you know, having a fire going is like, most nights, I'd said, when I have a glass of bourbon, and then it was, I found myself like, every night wanting to do that. And for me, like, that was enough for me to say, I know where this is going to lead. Like I never, you know, would get drunk or, you know, it was never a problem like that. It was more of a, I can see this pattern in going from, you know, having a couple drinks a month to a couple a week to now. I just, like subconsciously find myself having a glass of bourbon every night, you know, after dinner or whatever. And to me, that's when it was like, I've seen too many guys go down this fucking path and I know, you know, I have a very OCD personality that

way or addictive personality, whether it's chewing tobacco or cigarettes or, you know, fucking fast cars or whatever is that, whatever is that when I do something like it's just, you know, it's never enough. You know, like if I'm driving a certain car or whatever, like it feels fast and then it doesn't and then I need something faster and then that's cool for a little while and then it feels normal and then now I need faster and it's that way kind of with everything. And so again, I think just seeing so many guys go down that path for me was enough just for me to realize that it would turn into that if I

didn't just stop doing it. And so that's why I mean, it's been, I mean, I mean, I've been out for over 10 years now. And you know, I just, I mean, I can say probably in the last eight years, seven years maybe, you know, I just, I haven't, I haven't drank hardly at all, you know, it's a couple times a year and that's really about it. Yeah. You know, so, but my personality is very much that way. I think where, again, I just feel very fortunate in that the things that I've allowed to become addicted to, you know, are mostly chewing tobacco,

which we talked about that. I haven't done that in a few years because it was causing problems with my mouth, sweets, same thing. And so I just don't keep them in the fucking house. As an example, I open this, this is gone. Yeah, so, you know, in a whole fucking bag, you got me there sitting here like, you know, sweets and nicotine and caffeine, you know, things like that.

I know how I am with stuff like that. And I, if it's there, I will fucking take it. So I just stay away from the things that I know if you do consume a lot of that. It's going to cause serious fucking problems. I just stay away from it entirely. So you just, you know, you do not know moderation. Not, yeah, I mean, not with the things that I enjoy. It's like, I just, I want as much of it as I can fucking get, you know. So, so yeah, I just, for the things that I know that if you take that,

it's going to cause life changing implications. I just fucking stay away from it all together, you know, including fucking booze, but that's some fucking discipline. Do you think you replace that with your business? Do you know moderation when it comes to business? Yeah, I would say there's probably a healthy, healthy, maybe not the right word to use, a heavy dose of that, and that I don't take vacations, I don't take time off. I get a lot of people that are close to me regularly telling me, do you need to take a fucking vacation or like you need to take some time off,

you need to find something to relax and put that, turn the fucking business mind off and work on nothing for a little while or whatever. So, if you've been, I'm curious, because I have that problem. But have you found any success and fucking turn it off? Not really. What I have found is, at least for me, and maybe I'm lying to myself,

of course I'm a little biased in thinking, maybe I've struck a decent balance. And I work out, out a swim and I like to drive. That's kind of a good decompression or go to movies, which even that hasn't happened in a few months now. They're being fucking closed, but or a good meal out to dinner similarly. Those two things have kind of been turned off the last few months. But to me, instead of trying to carve out days or a week of time to relax and vacation and get away from, you know, running my dick into the ground business-wise, I take shorter breaks because for me, it would be almost torturous for me to go on a vacation where like my phone was off for a week.

Like I would probably lose my fucking mind, you know, because I would constantly be worried about, well, you know, what if something happened out of the kennel with one of the dogs or one of the employees or one of my client dogs, what if there's a problem? Like it's just not being able to be gotten ahold of is a kind of a problem for me mentally, I think, just because there's a lot of people that depend on me, you know And it's not uncommon to get a call at any fucking time a day by you know a client that has a question about a dog

Not necessarily a problem, but maybe the dog got hurt and they don't know what to do. You know, whatever it is You know or with with my kids, you know or my ex or whatever is that I just I can't always have that. I'm almost panicky feeling of, if I just unplug and nobody can get ahold of me, there's too many people that depend on me that I don't want to fucking let them down. And so, one of the downsides of having a kennel with fucking almost 30 dogs and it is that is that you kind of feel indefinitely chained to the kennel in a way and that it's always there. If the employees decide, I'm fucking tired of this, you're one person being tired of

cleaning up dog shit away from meeting to be out there doing it day and day out. It just makes it really hard for me to completely unplug. So for me, again, the kind of the way that I've kind of tried to take the middle ground with that is movies and driving and working out and swimming and just taking maybe a half day here or a few hours to go fuck off and do whatever I want or whatever and try to mix that in a few times a week. But yeah, that sounds like pretty sound advice,

maybe I should thought to take it. But I mean, had it not been for, you know, business and you're not passionate with dogs, do you think the drinkin' would have been a different story? Probably, I think I'd be a fucking miserable rich if I hadn't started my own business and done what I've done. If I had to work for somebody else doing some other fucking job or like stated exon, I can't even fucking imagine how just much of a miserable piece

of shit I would be to be around if that was the case. I'm a big enough pain. It has to be around as it is. So yeah, I think a lot of things probably would have panned out pretty shitty had I not followed what I'm passionate about. And for anybody listening, I can't stress that enough. His money isn't going to make you happy. Stuff doesn't make you happy. If I can, women don't make you happy. Drugs won't, booze won't, fast cars won't. All those things, you know, maybe satisfying here and there or, you know, augment your life to a certain extent. The only thing that's gonna truly make you fucking satisfied and happy is if what you do is something you truly fucking believe in. Yeah. You know, because if it's not, you're gonna be fucking miserable,

your whole goddamn life, you're gonna be chasing the next fucking thing, the next paycheck, the next job, the next gig, the next fucking check, whatever, is that you're never gonna be satisfied and never gonna be happy. If you don't, if you don't strongly believe in what the fuck you're doing. Yeah.

And I can't fucking stress that enough. Yeah, I definitely't fucking stress that enough. Yeah. I definitely would agree with that. I think starting a business is actually probably saved a lot of lives because it becomes, especially for guys like us coming home, it becomes the new addiction that never fucking ends and it's a positive addiction because you have fucking purpose now. And I've seen a lot of guys to include myself that have pulled themselves out of pretty deep rut and once they kind of get going in their business and they see that the whole is shit this is possible, they see guys like you, you know, who started at the

ground level. It's like I said at the beginning of the show it's fucking it's very inspiring and so I would encourage anybody, you know, who's in that fucking rut too, that's listening to consider becoming an entrepreneur and making something of themselves. But to me, if you don't, you can almost guarantee being fucking miserable. If you think about every great product that's ever been made, every big fucking decision that ever fucking panned out, right? Or any moment in history that was worth fucking writing down, right, is that prior to that,

there was a choice to be made. And there was a bold fucking choice to be made that somebody said, you know what, I'm gonna grab ahold of my fucking nuts and I'm gonna goddamn do this and they went and did it. And had they not, it would never have become a historic event. That shit doesn't happen by accident, it doesn't fall on your lap. You don't just walk out the door going for a fucking stroll and shit like that happens.

You got a fucking get after it. And a lot of times it is fucking scary. A lot of times there is no guarantee. You don't know what the fuck's going to happen next and you can't control a lot of times there is no guarantee. You don't know what the fuck's gonna happen next and you can't control a lot of the intangibles that are gonna add stress to your life. But if you believe in what you're doing and you give it everything you have, that fucking struggle will fuel you to be successful

and ultimately to be fucking happy with whatever it is that you're doing. Byron on the money, man. Right on the money, man. Did you, were you always in Texas? Did you start your business in Texas? I did, yeah. I, you know, growing up and I went to San Diego and was on active duty there the whole time. And then as, as I was getting out, moved to the Kennel facility property where, where

I'm still at. I have a different residence that I live in that's not co-located with the property anymore, but I own both of them and I've been here ever since. So it's been 12 years and almost 12 years now. And on. So how did TriCoS start? TriCoS was their first company, correct? TriCoS is actually my second company

Is there a second company is yep, so the first company I started I'm not gonna mention the name of it I I had two business partners one of which was a ranger one of which was a seal and It was kind of the perfect trifecta on paper in terms of you know, I had the dog knowledge in contacts within the industry back to on paper in terms of, I had the dog knowledge and contacts within the industry. One of the other guys had a lot of high level government connections and contacts and knew all the right people in the right places. And then last guy was an officer, he was a seal officer that was a pretty decent business mind and had some good connections in investment banking and hedge fund managers and start up funding and shit like that.

And so, again, starting out, it was like, this is a perfect fucking relationship. We'll do dogs and contracts and we kind of have all bases figured. And I'm not going to get into all all the details. It was a pretty shitty fucking scenario for me and the other guy. The third party just frankly fucked both of us over. And so at that time, basically fucking disbanded a bunch of shit happened. And I just, I had to completely fucking start over after building a seven figure dog company in a matter of a few years. Holy shit.

And having to completely fucking start over. So Trichose is 2.0. So when I talk about picking your fucking nuts up and just doing it and not letting anything discourage you, I don't say that from a perch of not having been through any of that, you know, and at that time, I mean, I was coming back from the West Coast with about $2,300 in my bank account and a brand new fucking Jeep Grand Cherokee that I leased like a fucking idiot with no job and no fucking company and absolutely no revenue coming in, going back to a family of four with two young fucking kids,

the mortgage, the whole fucking ball, I accident no goddamn idea how I was gonna fucking make it. And a good friend of mine, who we went through Buds with together, and a guy in Colorado that I will say his name because I would not be where I'm at without him, his name is Harvey. And, you know, he, he in conjunction with my buddy Sean, both of them, you know, I kind of told

them what was going on because just coincidentally, he wanted to buy a dog from me. He wanted a personal protection dog. And Harvey was his business mentor. And so, you know, just coincidentally at that same fucking time, you know, he was just like, hey, I want to get a dog, how's things going, whatever. And I was like, dude, fucking terrible. So, like, here's what happened. He's like, Jesus, fucking Christ.

He was like, let me talk to Harvey. Let me see what's up. And so, they basically helped me get started, to at least get the business formed and help with some startup funds and buy some dogs and start selling them. And just at that point, it was just me doing it. But so the work had now tripled. But there was at least some assistance.

And to this day, had it not been for his help, I had no way I would have made it. I don't think. Yeah. So he helped me out to get back on my feet, get started, and then I just ran with it from there. And here we are, if I can eight years later. Yeah.

And it's back far more successful in my first dog company. And it's just me that owns it, you know. So without a doubt, the trials and tribulations and difficulties that exist are not unique to just you. I don't mean you. I mean, anybody that's listening that thinks like, hey, I got fucked over or whatever, like, you know, there's always a fucking way you can figure out, you know, way around it. There's somebody that, you know, that can help you or even if it's just having to rely on you and getting a second fucking job or doing something else, you know, while you set that business up or whatever, there is always a way that you can get to where you want to be and ultimately fucking be successful if you just never fucking give up.

I'll be the first to admit, there were times where it was a fucking struggle. It was putting bills on credit cards and fucking moving money around from this credit card to that credit card because it was a lower interest rate or what it was as zero interest for three months. So, you know, we put three credit card balances on this one because it was a lower interest rate. I mean, there was several years of of it being that fucking tight, you know, and not knowing, you know, how I was going to make fucking shit happen this month and next month. And then that's the that's the rub with own a business. It's not a guaranteed paycheck. And not only is being an entrepreneur, not for everybody.

Fuck, it's not for most people. Because that stress of never really knowing, if you're going to fucking make it that month, that usually is present for a while before you get to a point where you're financially can kind of take a breath and say, you know, even if I didn't have money coming in the rest of the year, we'd still be just fine. Like, it takes a while to get to that fucking point, you know.

And so, you know, to me, again, the lesson is just no matter how bad it seems, just don't fucking stop. Just keep grinding it out. And that is the one thing that I've noticed in all the people I've met in the last 12 years of owning my own business and networking and selling dogs to incredibly fucking successful people. And that's the one common denominator with all of them. They've all been through bankruptcy and nasty divorces and getting fucked over by business partners and losing everything and having to start over and in the one fucking thing

that all of them have in common is they just never fucking gave up, you know, and they fought with everything they had all the fucking time when they were struggling and when they were down. Yeah, you know, I wasn't expecting to go down this road at all, but I'm glad we did. And, you know, I mean, you'd mention that nothing fucking falls in your lap. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, they see where you're at now, or, you know, even me, they see, they think they see where I'm at now, but it's a shit's fucking hard, you know. And you get a lot of the, oh, that must be fucking nice shit.

I did that shit. But, you know, they didn't see the fucking sacrifices that you made to get there. They didn't see, you know, everybody's getting fucking paid from your business except you. And I can totally fucking relate to that. I mean, shit, I've been, Vigil and Salis been going for five years and I just took my first fucking paycheck ever last week. Yeah, well congrats, God damn. Thanks, but yeah, you know, it's easy for people to write it off and say, oh, I can't fucking do it. Or, you know, that guy's fucking, you never know what the fuck's going on behind the scenes.

And, you know, I said it once, I'll say it again. Like, it's awesome to see how, I didn't know that you got fucked over like that and to start all over from scratch and to see where you're at now. I mean, I think a lot of people are probably jealous, but I think it's just fucking incredible, you know. And I appreciate it.

Like I said, to me, I see some of that sometimes of the underhanded fucking comments of, you know, must be nice, you know, like something as dumb is like posting a picture of an inexpensive stake or something and like, well, I wish I could afford that or whatever. And it's like, if you've got the time to post that, then you're not working hard enough. If you've got enough time to sit on your phone

on a fucking social media platform and bitch on somebody's feed about how you can't afford something, then you're fucking wrong. Then you're not working hard enough. Like you shouldn't be on your phone, bitching about how you can't afford something if you can't afford something that you wanna buy. Yeah.

You know, so I can't stand that shit. You need to enter. But it's there and it's always gonna be there. And to me, it's just important to ignore it. And let your success do the talking A, and if there's any wrongs that have been done, I mean, to me, there is no fucking better revenge than success. I don't need to fucking say anything to the people that either doubted me or tried to fuck me over or even still to this day. Don't like the fact that the success that I've had,

that I've had, and I've had, and, you know, I don't need to argue with them about it, I'll just keep doing it, you know, because it's fucking pointless and it's counterproductive, so, but yeah, I hear you 100%. Yeah, I mean, maybe moving on with your business, there seems to be what I'm learning is there's turning points in business. And I'm kind of wondering if you've had turning points and what I wanna know is was your book

a major turning point for your business where you felt like maybe you cleared a hump and took it next level. Yeah, strangely enough not really. I think most people would probably assume that and I certainly understand why. And I think, you know, to a large extent, I would have thought that it would have felt that way more than it did. It really didn't. It was cool. You know, it was a great experience. But in terms of all of a sudden feeling like, wow, I made it, even hitting number four on the New York Times bestseller list, what does that really fucking get you? Nothing. If that's not accompanied by a revenue stream that's recurring, that gives you the

ability to have the freedom and flexibility to retire early or invest in somebody else's business or whatever, then what good does that ultimately do if being an author isn't really what you do for a living. It really doesn't mean a whole lot. As far as the reality or the tangible application of writing a book that does really well that way. So when it's with a major publishing house also similarly, monetarily, there's not a lot to that for the author. Really?

No. If you're a self-published, you're making 97 cents of every dollar that's spent on that book, and that's a different story. But when you're making 15 cents, you know, of every dollar spent on that book, then it's very different. So, you know, what I would say is that, and this, I think that this kind of really highlights my point of tenacity as it relates to businesses, that there wasn't any one like no shit turning point, even being on 60 minutes. Like there was a nice little bump of interest

in whatever same with the book, same with different interviews that have come along, or big magazine articles that I've been in, or whatever, it gives you a little bump, but that swell goes away real quick. To me, what it's been, it's been a nice natural fucking linear progression. There hasn't been a whole shit here where I'm now over the hump. It just eventually got to that point for me.

In a large part, because I just kept doing it, you know, once I got to this point, I would take some of the revenue from this stream and try to create another one and some of them have completely bombed. You know, there's been products or services or things that I've said, let me try this, I'm going to dump a bunch of time and money and resources into trying this for a little while and it just doesn't fucking pan out We've been there's been a number of them. You know, you can't let that get you down You're not gonna knock everyone out of the fucking park. I think business is largely about base hits

Just like the fucking game of baseball is I mean everybody wants the grand fucking slam But base hits and and our be highs and shit like that or what when the game, you know and just being consistent and base hits and RB highs and shit like that are what win the game, you know, and just being consistent and in a steady state of moving forward and pushing and driving and going for the small wins. You know, if all you ever do is swing for the fuck offenses, I think, as I know, you can attest to, you're probably going to strike the fuck out, you know. So, yeah, it's just been that natural progression pretty much the whole way, but slowing steady ones the race.

Well, I mean, your books, they were all best sellers, correct? And so, I mean, did you feel like a huge, maybe it didn't benefit you that much financially, but was that a huge job? Did you get a great sense of accomplishment after that first one? I mean, to a certain extent, yes. Like I said, I mean, for me, the way I looked at it, it was an honor to have that as an accomplishment. And so for a little while, it was kind of that holy shit.

Like, I'm a New York Times bestselling author. That's fucking weird to even say that. Yeah, you know, and then the second book the same thing and then the third book the same thing You know, so yeah, I'd have to have three New York Times bestsellers is even more fucking weird But again, I've always you know with most things like that. I've I've always kind of Tampered my enthusiasm with what is that really fucking translate to? that tampered my enthusiasm with, well, what does that really fucking translate to? And if it doesn't translate to anything that I can tangibly fucking wrap my arms around, then I'm not going to spend very much time dancing in the end zone over it. And I really feel that way with what everything is that take the wins, but use what you get

from that to now help you try for the next one. Within reason, to me, you get to a certain point, and I'm certainly not in a position where I've not enjoyed things or treated myself in certain ways. You can't just put every fucking dime back into the business for the rest of your life, and to me, what's the fucking point? Yeah. But to me, you shouldn't start treating yourself until you're at a point where it really fucking makes sense to.

There's a difference between being able to buy something and being able to afford something. And I think, once you realize where that fucking contrast is and where that line goes from, yeah, I can actually afford this. That's when you start, whether it's buying a watch or a car, a fucking new house or whatever it is. Like enjoy the fruits of your labor and hard work just don't be a fucking idiot about it.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's cool about the books and everything you've done is, I mean, you're, you're, this is important to me. And I'm sure it is to you too. But I mean, your name is fucking stapled. of a lot of people that can fucking say that. So I think that you know There's very self gratifying to know that When you're gone, your fucking name is going to be wipe on the ass with the pages But and yeah, so I think that that shit's fun. Cool as fuck man, but um, but in yeah, so I think that that shit's fun. Cool as fuck man, but how did how did you kind of start with business? I mean, it seems like you have kind of fuck I can't even count all the components uh, over your business, but you've got TeamDog.pet, which is a training, online training. You've got Turingos, which is the real training

and products, correct? Then you have the Mic Drop podcast, which is a fucking huge success and also a staple that will always be there. And you have the Warrior Dog Foundation. So, am I missing anything? And I'm a dad. To me, that's a big part of my life.

And something that is as hard as it is and has been. It's something that I take very serious and have a lot of pride in seeing the kids grow and hopefully turn into productive members of society. But other than that, that's more on the personal side. But on the business side, that's pretty much everything. I'm always thinking of new avenues or revenue streams, whether it's products or product-based business, implementing new things into the team dog training site or adding another product or things like that.

To me, I feel like I'm kind of at a point where I mean, I don't want to say I feel like I kind of have it figured out, but I at least feel more comfortable in what I'm doing. And I don't get up every day thinking just like, holy fuck, I'm overwhelmed. And I don't know which goddamn direction is up. I don't feel that way anymore. I feel like I'm in a pretty good rhythm and the different components of my business are all operating fairly efficiently and successfully.

But I also feel like that's about as much as I can fucking handle too. You know, there's not really a whole lot more I can add. And the bitch of it for me, I think, is I have a lot of good ideas. But I'm realistic to the fact that I can't implement any of them without just half-assing the shit out of them. And ultimately them not working. There's times even right now where I feel like I probably have more things going on

than I should. Yeah. And feel a little behind the power curve scheduling wise on a pretty fucking regular basis. But yeah, I think, I don't know, maybe part of that might be, I think some of us with our background, we kind of create that pressure because we work well under pressure. So consciously, yeah. But, you know, where did you start? You started with three dogs, the second time around, correct? You said, your friend helped you and you got three dogs. Oh, well, so I got a few dogs.

I don't remember even exactly, I think it was maybe five, but it was a combination of three main things, which was breeding importing dogs for whether it was police departments, military groups, or personal protection candidates, clients rather, and then the actual physical hands-on training, whether it's doing seminars or working a contract for police, military, what

have you. So those were the main three things that I started working on, and then shortly thereafter the book opportunity presented itself. And that's when I tried to capitalize on that and did. And then years went by. And the word dog foundation was a component early on then too. But that was not something that I came up with. It was just there was a couple of dogs that needed a place to go and nobody would take them.

And they were tier one fucking pipehead or dogs that had been on a number of deployments saved a bunch of fucking dudes lives. You know, and I was like, well, if nobody takes them, what the fuck is going to happen? They're not going to go out and probably put them down. I was like, fuck you, send them. I'll do them. Yeah, not accident. But, you know, so because of that, you know, I was pretty singular focused on, you know, from a business standpoint, all service-based industry stuff. You know, it all required my fucking time. And so after years of that, and this was probably the hardest lesson I learned, the no-shit

hard way, was that, you know, not only people talk about time being money and fuck you, time is way more valuable than money. Yeah. Because you can't make any more of it, you know, the time that you and I are spending that's gone. You know, today is gone. Tomorrow when it's done, it's gone. Like, you can't reinvest it.

You can't make more of it. You can't give some to your kids. You know, so because of that, you know, I got to a point where I was like, I'm gonna wake up when I'm 60 years old, scrubbing dog shit off of fucking kennel walls, road trip and seven fucking ass eaters from Texas, the fucking New York or whatever, just running my dick into the ground. And I'm gonna wake up and my life is gonna be behind me

financially in the same fucking boat I am now if I don't do something different. And that's when it was okay. I need to figure out how to have a more product-based, at least, equilibrium business-wise. There's always going to be a service component to what I do, whether it's, you know, protection dog or a seminar or a fucking phone consult, I mean, whatever. Like, people are going to take my time up, but it can't be just that. And so I've kind of crossed over into the more mainstream,

that's where teamdog.pet really comes into play is that that's for your average everyday dog owner, as well as a lot of the products that I have the dog create the collar and leash the CBD oil, the food and treats. They're all for your average everyday dog owner. And so it's kind of, you know, heading into that realm of, you know, where, you know, it's a product, it's a tangible product that people can buy and they don't need my fucking time to do it, you know.

And so I've kind of spent a fair bit of time bolstering that and trying to get that to where it's a much more relevant aspect to the business. Speaking of team.deog.pet and I'm getting ready to dive into that as soon as you leave with Tony. But how many with Tony. But how many how interactive are you in that and how many videos are in there? How much content is in that is in that portion of your business, which is which is for those of you that don't know it's online dog training again team dog dot pet. And it's all like, yeah. So really what it is is that, you know, the last book that I wrote team dog.pet and it's all like, yeah. So really what it is is that, you know, the last book that I wrote, Team Dog, you know, it's the video representation of that. And so all of the concepts that I talk about in the reason why it's called Team Dog, how to train your dog, the Navy Sealway is not to teach a laverdoodle how to be a fucking bite dog. It's the reason that the Seal Teams have, and this is my bust for being this complicated in a fucking book title. That was a lesson learned as I shouldn't have gone that deep in it because most people

don't give a fuck. But the Seal Teams have the reputation they have, not just because Seals are good operators. If you think about all of the other components that go into seals being good operators, it's a hard selection course. It's crazy fucking consistent training and lots of it. It's good funding. It's great fucking intelligence assets. It's high speed equipment. It's great fucking leadership. It's all of these other environmental factors and intangibles that all in conjunction set us up for success to be as good at what we do as we are. And with training a dog, it's no different.

Is that if you just focus on training, you're really cutting yourself off the heels. It's, what do you feed the dog? How much mental engagement do you interact with the dog? What is their body composition? Are they a fat fuck? Are they malnourished? Are they getting enough sunlight? Are you utilizing the different tools

that they have genetically to aid in your training, i.e., you know, a dog that could fucking care less about a tennis ball, then you shouldn't be using a tennis ball to train the dog. If the dog likes attention versus not liking it, it has high food drive versus not, all of these different things that kind of go into it, or what contribute to you being able to teach your dog

whatever the fuck you want, relatively easy and pretty quickly. And so I found myself having a lot of these conversations with people at speaking events or wherever I was going, traveling, people say, oh, I have a dog that's doing this, how the fuck do I fix that? And there's not. It's kind of like saying, hey, I've got a fat gut. What crunch can I do to fucking fix my abs? It's more in the kitchen than it is in the fucking crunch, honestly. And with training, it's that same way well it's not it's more in the kitchen than it is in the fucking crunch honestly like and what training it's that same way like there's not this magic bullet little technique that fucking fixes everything it's like you've got to put the time in be consistent and set all of the

other intangibles up for you to be successful or for the dog to be successful for you to be successful training the dog and so that's what it is. In terms of how interactive I am, I get in in the message boards every every Monday morning and I answer questions. Sometimes depending on my schedule I may pop in throughout the week here and there, you know, grab a question here or there, but most of the time it's it's Monday mornings. It's 99 bucks for unlimited access to all the content. There's about 900 minutes of videos right now, and I just finished filming a puppy series and a couple of adult supplements

that are gonna get added here shortly. And my goal is to just drop in new content when it makes sense when I need to regularly so that there's kind of a fresh and steady stream of you know, of new things for people to watch. The goal with it, and it may sound like, you know, pie in the sky or, you know, unreasonable, but it really is to transform, you know, western society in terms of how they communicate with their dogs, is that there are so many dogs out there that are just poorly trained or completely fucking untrained and where I

take it personal is the shelter stats. Is that 3.3 million dogs every year are surrendered to shelters. That's a lot of fucking dogs. About 800,000 of them are euthanized every year. That comes out to over 2,000 dogs every fucking day in this country are getting the blue juice. Damn. You know, over 2,000 fucking dogs every fucking day are put to sleep in this country and most of them, not all, but most of them are because of we teach them inadvertently

behaviors that we don't like and condition them to do things that make them a pain in our ass, throw them in a fucking shelter and they end up getting fucking killed for it. And to me, that's a shit fucking deal on human beings part. And so, you know, if I can reach, you know, the bulk majority of the 90 million dog owners in this country that, you know, could use a little bit of assistance and help and teach them how to do it themselves You know not that you need to you know go spend fucking five thousand dollars on a board and train and have a professional trainer train your dog Yeah, there are cases where that makes sense and I recommend it but for most people

You can do it yourself and frankly you should do it yourself You know it's it's good from a discipline standpoint It's fantastic from a discipline standpoint. It's fantastic from a relationship standpoint with the dog because now he's going to view you as this is the motherfucker that trained me. Not this is the guy that's upkeeping the training that some other asshole did. It's that this guy taught me every fucking thing I know.

You'll be proud of it. Your dog will think of you higher for it and your life will be much easier with all your dogs. You know, that way proud of it. Your dog will think of you higher for it and your life will be much easier with with all your dogs You know that way because of it. So I Really do, you know, it's not just a fucking business idea for me. You know for me. I truly want to help You know get that number of of 2000 plus dogs every day being euthanized down to you know as close to zero as possible Yeah, and I think you think it starts with you.

It starts with you as an individual of putting the fucking time in, being dedicated and being consistent and giving enough of a shit to try to train your own dog and learn how to communicate with them because it's not complicated. It's really simple stuff. It's just most people are lazy and consistent and just don't know any better. 2000 dogs a day. That's pretty disordering. Yeah, you know, I mean, the good news is that, you know, if you do the math on that, that's two and a half million that aren't. But the problem is, is that, you know, what you don't want is for that 2.5 million to

be a considerable contributing factor to the 3.3 the next year, and so that the dog is in our fucking hamster wheel, turn style revolving door in and out of a shelter because people don't know what the fuck they're doing and create more problems. And then, you know, the dog's in and out with three or four different owners over a couple of years. And then ultimately gets you the nice because everybody does the same dumb shit with them. You know, so to me, when you actually look at those numbers

and realize like that's a lot of fucking dogs being killed every single day. And there are some of them, you know, admittedly that that's probably the better option is as euthanasia. But I will say that it's a fraction of the number that actually are euthanized. You know, most of them didn't start out that way. They weren't abused. They weren't fucking abandoned. You know, they were they were owned by people that just didn't know what the fuck they were doing and it was a dog, you know, it probably has some thin nerves and it's maybe a little environmentally weak and and when you couple that with inconsistent confusing unclear communication, it's a recipe

for fucking disaster. Yeah. And that's that's unfortunately where a lot of dogs end up, you know, in that position because of... Yeah, did that play a role in you starting the Water Dog Foundation? Sort of, I mean, in a matter of speaking in terms of... I didn't want the same fate, especially for dogs that have served this country, yes, absolutely. And that it was born out of necessity is that, you know, there is no federal funding

for retired working dogs, whether it's military police, you name it, you know, Customs Board of Control, there is no funds set up, no grants, no facility that they can go to. There's no K9 VA, there's nothing. And so if the handler doesn't adopt the dog out, then the dogs get euthanized. Would you say the majority of handlers do adopt the dog? They do. The overwhelming majority do. That's good.

For those of you listening to say, hey, I want to adopt one of those dogs. I love you for wanting to do that. Realize though that, you know, of the 50 or so thousand working canines in this country at any given time, you know, 49,000 in change are adopted to their handlers. And those are the dogs that you're thinking of when you say, I would adopt one of those dogs. The dogs that we get are the dogs

that their handlers can't take or won't take or that even get washed out before they're even of a retirement age because they've bit too many people, too many times and just have too many fucking issues for that department to deal with and realize for a department to get to the point where they're gonna wash a dog that they've got tens of thousands of dollars plus a

handler salary and all the equipment and a couple of years of their time into like they're not going to get rid of that dog at the drop of a hat. You know, it's got to get to a point where that dog is such a liability to where it's it's you know, it's better for them from a liability liability mitigation standpoint to get rid of the fucking dog even if it means euthanizing it than it does to keep it on board Those are the dogs that we get. Okay, so these aren't the dogs that like oh, I've got you know nine grand babies and Fortua was and I'd love to take one of these dogs and I got you know again, bless your heart But you know these dogs are are nasty frankly. I mean two of my three kennel staff have been put in the hospital bit in the last fucking

week and a half by two different dogs, and that happens fairly regularly. So these dogs are used to doing that. They're very confident and comfortable fucking people up, and they enjoy it, frankly, most of them. And so we're taking them understanding that that liability exists and be that it's our job to try to rehabilitate that out of them to the best of our ability. And with some dogs, we're successful.

There are dogs that we get in that we manage to spend several months with or even over a year in some cases and get them to a point where we can actually rehab them sufficiently enough to live a normal house life in a civilian home. And we've got a number of dogs, we've done that with, we've got a lot of dogs that we've not been able to do that with, that we're just basically a sanctuary for them and give them an opportunity to live out their life, you know, indignity and grace as best as we can, you know, to avoid having to just put them

down like they were going to. I remember being at your place with, I think we're going on two years when it came down to do your podcast and you showed me the dogs there. And I never had the opportunity to work with a dog like that, but to see, to see it's fucking nearer going in there. I'm not going to bullshit. I'm not used to that being around them. And we're going to get into a lot more of this dog psychology

and kind of what they go through with their training and what they're actually capable of tomorrow. But when we do part two, but that was a real fucking eye opener for me because I was the asshole that you talk about that's like, uh, yeah, for dogs fucking bite me. I'm just going to punch the shit out of it and get it off me and the minute we walked in there and I saw those, um, those dogs, which have, uh, you know, probably seen more fucking combat than me and you both. It was, I came to the realization that, yet that's not gonna happen.

So, and you know, and you know, it's fucking crazy, is to know, you know, those dogs have done more than 99.9% of the people in this fucking country. Yeah. That sit at home and enjoy their pretty little fucking lives. And then for you to say that they're getting euthanized after services. Yeah, it's cruel. Yeah.

And so, I mean, that's, again, that's fucking. Yeah, you know, and so I mean, I mean that's Again, that's fucking amazing that you started that and and I can't fucking wait to breach into that subject tomorrow What the word dog foundation and everything that those dogs do because it's too remarkable for you. Yeah, yeah. But we'll make, I kind of want to wrap this up for now. And then we will pick back up tomorrow and it's going to be all dogs. But if you don't mind giving us your handle on the IG and YouTube and your websites. Sure. So, on Instagram, just at emrilland, the biggest thing is go to micro-itland.com or team-dog.pip.

That's the online training that I encourage everybody to sign up for if you have a dog. Twitter, it's same at emrland, micro-itland on Facebook, two websites, or again, micro-itland.com and tricost.com. That's both of those websites. You can get all the things that I have going on, including stuff on mic drop podcast, all the products that I have, dog sales, speaking engagements, you name it.

Worriedog Foundation is wor Warriordogfoundation.org. And again, we've got 26 dogs right now. I've got another one coming tomorrow and one or two more coming in the next probably month. So no federal funding, I can't thank those who have already supported enough for your support, but also realize that there are no days off in taking care of them. It's a 24 or 7 gig, and we constantly have dogs coming in. So any support from folks

out there is greatly appreciated. That's just... Well, I think you're going to be getting a lot of support after this podcast. And for those of you that do have pets that are dogs, go to teamdog.ped and by the time this episode airs all already be deep in the middle of it and probably talking all kinds of shit to Mike. Why I... how much my pets have improved. And donate to donate to the Word Vogue Foundation, if what you just said isn't enough, then I guarantee you part two of this podcast will strum your fucking hard strings and force you to open those wallets and fucking make a donation like you should. So, with that being said, Mike, you've got a hell of a fucking story, man, and, um,

um, I really wanted to cover your story and not the dog story yet because I haven't heard, I haven't heard it, and I don't think anybody's heard it. And, uh, I just, I mean, you're a fucking lawyer and your story is fucking incredible. And everybody that comes here, you know, just like we were talking downstairs, a lot of people don't think that, you know, their story measures up to some of the other guys, but I'm here to tell you that your fucking story definitely measures up. So I appreciate very much and I can't thank you enough for having me in the show that you've created

in such a short time as nothing short of fucking mind boggling. So I couldn't be proud of you and happy to see not just the success you've had, but continue to just blow out the fucking water. I can't wait to see where it goes. That was really broke. Thank you, man. Amen. Pick it up tomorrow.

All right. Ha! Let's go. 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc

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