The Oprah Podcast - Do Dogs Really Love Us? with Oprah and Dr. Carl Safina

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@Oprah?sub_confirmation=1 Oprah sits down with renowned ecologist Dr. Carl Safina, author of the New York Times bestseller Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, to explore our sacred connection with the animal world—especially our tight-knit relationships and bonds with our beloved dogs. Joining them is author and neuroscientist Dr. Gregory Berns, whose groundbreaking MRI research offers scientific proof that our dogs really do love us. Dr. Berns discusses his eye-opening books How Dogs Love Us and Cowpuppy. The episode also features extraordinary true stories of hero dogs who saved their owners’ lives. BUY THE BOOK! https://wwnorton.com/books/alfie-and-me https://books.apple.com/us/book/alfie-and-me/id6445787372 Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Oprah podcast. I'm so glad you're spending your time here with us. I'm really, really excited for this episode because we're exploring an idea that I've wondered about, maybe you have to, but I've wondered about this for years. Do our dogs share the same love for us as we have for them? Do dogs and other animals experience joy, grief, loneliness, even hope? Over the years, I've had 21 dogs, each one a unique member of my family who gave us So much love and so many memories. My guest says that dogs help make us the people we would like to be. Isn't that the truth?

Carl Safina is a world-renowned ecologist and conservationist who writes extensively, and may I say exquisitely too, about the interior lives of animals, including his New York Times bestseller, beyond words, what animals think and feel, which is just an absolutely fascinating read, highly recommend. and your newest book, What Owls Know and What Humans Believe. Okay, can I tell you, welcome, first of all. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for being here.

It's fantastic to be here. Well, when I read, after reading this book, I had the most interesting dream about my former Cocker Spaniels that I had for 13 and 14 years in the 90s, Sophie and Solomon, that I took to work every day with me. uh during the opera show and no matter where i was they were either in a green room waiting if it was oscars they were waiting backstage anyway they passed away years ago and i hadn't had a dream about them and after reading this book and i had a dream that something had happened to sophie had been

injured she was the black cocker and solomon was my brown cocker sophie they were together Sovi had been injured. In the dream. In the dream. And I could see that she was injured. And I came up to Solomon and I said, tell me what happened. And he transmitted what had happened to me. And in the dream, because I have lucid dreams, in the dreams, I said, oh, I'm dreaming this because I just read about elephants communicating.

Dr. Carl Safina is a renowned conservationist and passionate defender of animals. in the natural world? Do they have their own consciousness? His work has earned many honors, including a MacArthur Genius Prize. Carl's beautiful writing encourages us to better understand our relationship to animals and our shared planet.

If we're so powerful, why aren't we taking care of the miracle of the world that made us and maintains us? Our conversation about dogs included some truly heroic stories of dogs coming to their owner's rescue. so get chills thinking about it.

My house was filled with black smoke. Carl also deles deeper into the relational bond that connects all living creatures. That is powerful. That is powerful. You know, one of the things I loved when I was reading beyond words is that it's very clear that you recognize, not only recognize, but say that you believe

that animals are different, but not less than us. What do we need to unlearn about our relationship to animals? Yes. Well, in a way, that is the exploration I went through when we raised this baby owl and in this book. Which brings us to Alfie and me, yes. Right? And so I've been with animals my whole life. I've had them, cared for them, trained them, been with them.

And we raised this little wild owl. And I was so surprised at her relational capacity. She would sometimes come over and want to be stroked and lean into it just like our dogs do. And I was saying, of all people, why am I surprised? Why don't I know? I think I'm tuned in. But why don't I know that these creatures have these capacities for relationality, which they have.

They have that with their own families and their own. You knew that because you wrote, you had written beyond words. Well, I thought so. I thought so. But this was an, the proximity, the closeness, the mutual seeking of the pleasure of physical contact with me and a baby owl that we raised. Yeah, I saw that moment where you first touched her and she goes. Yeah. It's unbelievable.

Yes, yes, yes. Oh, it's nice, right? Oh, yeah. So I thought, well, why did we alienate ourselves from? from the whole rest of this living planet. And I thought, well, are we just not intelligent enough beings or are we taught our disconnection? We're taught that we have dominion over the animals

and therefore we think that. That's a huge part of it, but, well, therefore, we think that we're more powerful and we're better. Yes, definitely think we're better. There is more value to us than there is to the rest of the world. The whole rest of the world is here to serve us, to yield to us. Instead of we're all a part of the animal kingdom. We are in a huge network of relationships on a miraculous planet. So why don't we know that? So I said, well, some cultures

do though. Right. Some cultures do. Right. And that's what I explored through this book. What do what what do other cultures teach about our relationship with the world? And it turns out that all indigenous cultures teach that we're all one family. All the South Asian religions, all the Darmic religions teach that the soul goes equivalently through different lifetimes in the reincarnation process and in the process of karma, right? The Eastern religions teach that the world is run by these balances of necessary opposites. What might look like opposites, they're necessary to balance. And the human role is not to disturb the balances.

So every other realm of human thought over thousands of years were that all life is family, the world is a set of balances. We should maintain the balances and respect basically the holiness of this sacred world. But the West is a total outlier because in the West we came up with this idea that the whole world is here to serve us and we're better than everything. And that is the root of our disconnection. We are taught that. It's not a natural thing. It's just a different way of looking at things and it's it deprives us because we've written the miracle out of our script but what has alfie taught you well really she has taught me that all these other creatures that are out in the wild that they really have wild lives that she knows like for instance

she knew our dogs but if a if a friend came with a strange dog that that dog would freak her out she would react like oh that's a potential predator i'm afraid of it i'm going to to get away but our dogs she just go and sit next to them so she knows who she is by where she is and who she's with and how do we know who we are by who we're with and where we are yes it's the same thing wow that's fascinating absolutely fascinating and it makes my feeling of you know i used to think animals are really cool i used to think animals are really beautiful i used to think nature is really peaceful but more and more i really feel like it's it's an absolute miracle is what it totally is life is a miracle the definition of miracle is it's something that breaks the laws of physics you know

like in in literature and movies where you have a miracle it's where something happens that really can't happen right right and energetically the laws of physics second law of thermodynamics says everything tends toward disorder you put a drop of ink in a bowl of water it will spread out the water will turn great it will never become a drop of ink ever ever right but you take an egg that's laid you know what an egg looks like on the inside we've cracked enough of them open and it makes itself a bird okay that that violates the laws of physics it's a negative entropy that maintains itself in a state far from equilibrium the entire universe is going toward equilibrium living things maintain themselves in a state far from equilibrium.

And that's not supposed to happen, but that's what life is. We ask you, our podcast listeners, to send us pictures of your precious dogs who I know are really your family members. I know. I'd like to read a passage from Carl Safina's remarkable book, Beyond Words. So, do other animals have human emotions? Yes, they do. Humans have animal emotions. Yes, they're largely the same. Fear, aggression, well-being, anxiety, and pleasure are the emotions of shared brain structures and shared chemistries

originated in shared ancestry. They are the shared feelings of a shared world. So this from page 34 beyond words, do other animals have, you say, human emotions? Yes, they do. They do? They have, well, do other animals have emotions? They have emotions and humans have animal emotions because humans are animals. So there's a lot of analogous things. Yes. And there are a lot of things that I think are very much the same, not all the same.

Like, you know, I mean even among people, people's emotions differ, and motionality differs. And I think that's the same among species. It differs. But they have the same kinds of emotions that we have because they have the same nervous system that we have, the same neurotransmitters, the same hormones, exactly the same molecules. Those chemicals are the same. And so if a dog seems happy, they're happy. And they do smile.

And they do smile. Oh, my goodness. I was running with a day the other day. She was smiling. Yes, definitely. Yes. Yeah. And do they have their own consciousness?

Well, what do you mean by consciousness? The way I think of it is when we have total anesthesia, we're unconscious. That means we're not connected to our senses. So they have that kind of consciousness. They see with their eyes, they hear with their ears, they smell with their noses, they play and have fun. They're afraid of danger. They're fierce in defense of their territory or their people if they're dogs in our family. And all of that stuff is very relatable because it's basically the same thing.

Thank you all for joining the Oprah podcast. We need to take a quick break. we come back, we're going to hear from a neuroscientist who train dogs to stay still inside an MRI machine to answer this question. Do our dogs really love us? Lowe's knows how to get you ready for holiday hosting with up to 35% off select home decor. And get up to 35% off select major appliances. Plus, members get free delivery, hallway, basic installation, parts, and a two-year Lowe's protection plan. When you spend $2,500 or more on select LG major appliances.

VALA through 10.1, member offer excludes Massachusetts, Maryland, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Florida. Installed by independent contractors. Exclusions apply. Cilows.com for more details. This episode of the Oprah podcast is brought to you in part by HelloFresh. You may have heard of HelloFresh. They send chefcrafted recipes and fresh ingredients to your home, but they have made their biggest menu upgrade yet. It's bigger.

Hello Fresh has doubled its menu. Now you can choose from 100 options each week, including new seasonal recipes, from around the world. It's healthier. Feel great and eat greener with a menu filled with high protein and new veggie-packed recipes. You know, 91% of customers say they feel healthier eating HelloFresh. That's a stat I can get behind. This week, I tried the sweet chili, pork, and cabbage stir fry, and wow. The flavors were bold and well-balanced, just the right mix of sweet and savory goodness, and I couldn't believe how easy it all came together. The best way to cook just got better. Go to Hellofresh.com slash Oprah Podcast 10fm now to get 10 free meals plus one free

item for life. One per box with active subscription, free meals applied his discount on first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. That's hellofresh.com slash Oprah Podcast 10 FM to get 10 free meals plus one free item for life. Welcome back to the Oprah podcast. I am here with Dr. Carl Safina, the author of numerous books about our relationship to dogs, other animals, and the natural world. So I know you're a fellow dog lover. Do you believe or know that our dogs love? us. Do they love us or they're just looking for a treat? That's another thing like consciousness is that we use the words so differently. We say, oh, I love my mother, I love my children, I love ice cream, I love shopping for shoes.

Right, right. We use it for everything. It's the same word. But if you think of what love feels to us when we love someone, we feel that we want to be close to them, right? And so just for instance, in our house, our dogs are never given any kind of a treat or fed or anything like that upstairs in the bedroom. But at night, they come upstairs. Why? Because they want to be near us. When I'm in my riding cottage, our dogs frequently leave the house, come up the little path to the riding cottage.

They hang out. Why? Because they want to be near me. I want to be near them, too, because I love them. That's what love feels like. And, yeah, that's love. And that's how you know it's not just looking for a treat. Yes.

Exactly. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So you say that our pet, us how to be better than we are. What does that mean? Well, I think, you know, because people are very complex and people are sometimes a little duplicitous and people are not always honest with themselves or each other. But our dogs

are there. What you see is what you get. They are loyal. They are forgiving. They always want to get past it and get beyond it. They always want to make up. They are very fierce when they feel that we are being threatened. And, you know, if we could just be straight shooters, loyal, always want to get past our troubles, defend what we love and defend our people in our place, I think that we would be a little better for it. And the dogs in that way show us a way to do that.

Well, you not only, you know, I know you have dogs. You recently lost your dog, Jude. Yeah, we did lose one, yes, Jude, yes. How old was Jude? He was 14. Yeah, 14's about the age for big dogs. Yeah. I lost a lot of dogs at 14.

He faded very peacefully over about a day and a half. I think we were in a way lucky. He went so peacefully. He just drained away. And he was just lying in his bed. You could feel the life force leaving. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Yeah. Yeah. But he didn't seem in pain or uncomfortable or even really particularly unhappy, actually. Yes, because dogs are just... What I've learned about being in the present... moment is that dogs are always just in the present moment. That's another, that's another thing that they show us, yes, right? Just be there with all four feet in the... Yeah, and they're not worried about what they did, or did they knock over the water bowl or what they did. They're certainly not worried about

whether they're going to get into graduate school or get the promotion or the next job or what their sister-in-law said to them or anything like that. Did you grow up loving animals? Is that how you came to write about animals? I did absolutely grow up loving. animals but the but the funny thing is i actually up until 15 years ago i would have said i don't really like dogs isn't that weird that is very weird and the reason is when i was i i like dogs that i had i love dogs that i had but in general the reason is that a lot of the interactions with people and their dogs that you see is not very pleasant it's not very pleasant to be around and because Because dogs have such complicated minds and emotional systems, they can be traumatized, they can

be hurt, they can be very uncomfortable around a particular person that doesn't understand them well or treats them badly, right? And you kind of see a lot of that. Because once they were treated badly, they live in fear of that person forever, yes. Sure, yeah, they can live in fear and they can be traumatized, you know. And when I see people, a dog is trying to sniff on a walk and they're just yanking on the chain or they're yelling at them or they're holding them tight on the leash. It's just unpleasant.

And somebody who, a friend of ours said, one thing I love about you is you always let your dogs be dogs. And I never thought of it that way before, but that's become sort of like my guiding principles, to let them be dogs. And how do you do that? I let them show us what they kind of would like to do. We provide guide rails that if they like you a lot,

the guide rails just have to be very gentle. be often i whisper my commands because if you whisper they have to make sure that they're hearing you instead of yelling at them all the time if you have a little puppy and you want it to follow you you walk away from it instead of you know dragging it around on a leash you take it off the leash and you walk away and it's like oh wait i'm here alone no i don't want to be here alone so i mean it's easy it's actually easy because their evolved social behavior is more like people than and probably any other animal. So you said up until about 15 years ago.

So 15 years ago, what happened? So 15 years ago, what happened was... So this is a slightly complicated story, okay? So I thought, well, one thing about dogs is they're kind of designed animals, and I'm really interested in nature, and I'm really interested in evolution, what life really is and how it really works, right?

And dogs are sort of designed. Like, you want a little lap dog, you make one. You want a hunting dog, you make one. you want a guard dog you make one all these different breeds you want something that's going to go swim in the water and retrieve things you make one so i thought you can't really learn much about nature and real life what it really is from dogs then two things happen because our culture has domesticized dogs domesticized and just made them what we want them to be like we make everything like we make chairs the way we want chairs the way we want cars the way we want cars i think we made these animals the way we want them yeah so then what happened was kind of of odd. First of all, we had a baby raccoon whose mother had gotten hit by a car. They had a den in a tree in our yard, this emaciated baby raccoon fell out of the tree, and we were raising

this baby raccoon. And they're very, very playful. They're bad pets. I don't recommend it. You need to know a lot about animal behavior to be safe around raccoons. So I don't recommend it, but they're fantastic animals. And as soon as this little thing got healthy and got to the point where it was very playful, it started to do the exact same play bow that dogs do. Front paws down, rear end up in the air, inviting you to play.

And I thought, whoa, that's not even a canid. That's the same behavior dogs do. That means that these dogs have a lot of really ancient stuff still in them. Oh, I better pay a lot more. attention to dogs the same oh really so that position is a what do you call that position when the the play bow yeah the play what i really it's so ancient that it predates even the canid lineage okay then the canid lineage so so there are carnivores raccoons are one among many and then there are canids like foxes and coyotes and wolves and then there are dogs dogs only ancestors are wolves right right

Okay. So this playbow predates all of that. It's this ancient thing. And I realized, whoa, these dogs, there's a lot of really genuine, authentic stuff still in there. I better pay a lot more attention to the dogs. That I have been. Yes.

Because I pay a lot of attention to wild animals. Yes. But I was paying. Yeah. You thought they were too domesticated for you paying attention to. Right. Right. So then I went to Yellowstone because I was going to write about wolves. And I see wolves.

And what I realize is that wolves live in nuclear families, what we call a pack. It's mom and dad wolf and their young ones of maybe the last two or three years. After that, when they get to be adolescence, late adolescence, young adults, they leave to go find their footing in the world, just like our children are supposed to do, right? Like we did. So the young wolves look to the mom and dad wolves. What are we doing next? what are we doing now? Are we sleeping for the next six hours? Are we going to go hunting? Are we going to move over the ridge to the next valley? Mom and dad, tell us what we're going to do now. The young wolves

are always looking to their parents and they play, they wag their tails, they do with each other so many things that dogs do in our homes and in our families. And so what I realize is that what dogs are, really, they're wolves in arrested development. They never, quite become full adults to the stage where they say, I have to leave. I have to go find my own place in the world. Yes, because they're dependent upon us for food. So they stay dependent on us. Yes.

Whereas if you raise other wild animals, really wild animals, like that raccoon, for instance. Or if you took in a wild wolf. Or if you took in a wild wolf or if you raise wild cats, they get to adolescence. Before adolescents, they're playful, they're friendly, they never hurt you. they at adolescence they get a little cranky and they leave because they are geared to go find their own life and the dogs never do that they are wolves in arrested development that's my conclusion from watching all this stuff and thinking about it a lot for a lot of years well once you decided that they were wolves in arrested development is that when you decided to get your own oh no

i had had a couple of dogs that i loved and then right around that time a dog that we had had for a while passed away. And we wound up getting, make a long story short, we wound up getting three dogs. I was like, okay, we can get another dog. And Patricia, my wife said, okay, well, you can just say you can get another dog. I want two dogs. Okay, so we got two dogs.

And then my very beloved former editor had a little puppy, a miniature Australian shepherd that had the energy of a nuclear reactor. I was going to say, Australian Shepherd. And they lived in a penthouse in, in Manhattan and the dog was going literally out of her mind so one of the visits there my editor's wife said to me carl do you want our dog this dog is not doing well here with us and i and i and i at first i said well i don't know i have to ask patricia so i called her on the on the train so i was going home she said why don't you just bring the dog so now we have that dog that's katie

she's fantastic well i want to bring in dr gregory burns he's a neuroscientist who spent a decade studying the brains of dogs using groundbreaking MRI research welcome dr burns hello hey hi great to be here you wrote a new york times bestseller call how dogs love us tell us how you were able to prove that our dogs love us well i'm a neuroscientist and so i view behavior and everything through the lens of the brain and so about 11 years ago i started a project where we trained dogs to go in MRI scanners awake unrestrained and just you know just a thing that they did and i read that so can i stop you because everybody's thinking the same thing i was thinking when i first read it how do you get a dog to to to be in an MRI machine it was originally a project i didn't know if it could be done in fact

everyone i told thought this was a ridiculous idea yeah but i teamed up with a very good dog trainer and we basically broke down the whole process of going into an MRI for for a dog's perspective and I built a simulator that I kept in my basement a big tube and just over the course of many months I slowly acclimated my dog Callie to going in this tube and then I taught her how to put her head in like in a little chin rest and we made little ear plugs because of course they're very loud, and I started playing recordings of the sound an MRI makes, just in the background when we're playing and having fun, and just put all these steps together just very slowly and very gradually, and in essence just made a game out of it for her, because she doesn't know

what an MRI is. Right. So what did you find out through this process? So, of course, everyone wants to know if their dog loves them. That was what I wanted to know as well. Well, is it just the treats? Is it some kind of bond that they have beyond that? Oh, yeah, or is it dependency? Is it like, you know you can't get along without me, so you have to be nice to me? It could be. Yeah, it could be any of those things because they can't speak to us and tell us what they're thinking.

So my idea was just, well, let's go look in their brains because we know essentially what their brain looks like. They have many of the same basic structures that we do. And so we focused on the reward parts of their brain and asked a very simple question, when we show a dog a treat or the prospect of a treat, we're going to see activity there. That's what Pavlov discovered 100 years ago.

But then the question is, well, what about when there's no treat? What about when just person is there? When their owner is there and they just say, good girl or good boy, what does that do? And what we found was for the majority of dogs, It's about three quarters of the dogs. It was equal response to both of those things.

The dogs valued that praise and just being around their person as much as food. And for about a quarter of them, they actually valued it more, the praise. Wow. And so what is doing all this work taught you about the significance of our dogs and our lives? Well, I agree with Dr. Safina

that they evolved to be with us. They are our first friends. They are the first animals who, in essence, chose to be with us. And so they are very well suited to our lifestyles. They are probably the most successful animal on this planet besides humans because there's roughly one dog for every 10 people on this planet. That's a lot of dogs. And that speaks to their success in kind of hitching their wagons to us.

Yeah, what do you want to say, another huge interesting thing about that is that, Everywhere people have ever gone, dogs have been there with them. So we seem to have valued their presence in our lives as much as they value our presence in theirs. They seem to be these companions that we don't want to go across the ocean in outrigger canoes without dogs. We don't want to travel to Australia 60,000 years ago without dogs.

I mean, it's really unbelievable. The Arctic dogs. are everywhere people have gone. That's fascinating. And are dogs capable of other complex human emotions have you discovered, like jealousy or empathy or guilt? So we have done many experiments in those realms, and probably I think the one that kind of stands out the most

is we have actually studied jealousy. So we did an experiment with the dogs that were trained for MRI and we had their humans standing there right in front of them. And so we did a test where the human sometimes gave their dog a treat, and then other times they turned around and put the food in a bucket behind them. And then the third condition was they gave the treat to a very realistic-looking statue of a dog. So we assumed that our subjects were not terribly happy when they didn't get their treat, but what was interesting is what's the difference between when that treat goes to a bucket

versus another dog or something that looks like a dog so we thought that that might evoke some jealousy and what was interesting is that for some of the dogs it actually evoked a response in an area of the brain called the amygdala which is associated with arousal it's like getting the hackles up and they were clearly bothered by it even though to outward appearances they were doing what they were taught, they stayed in the scanner, they were just watching, but we could see something in the brain that that did bother them. But I think the important thing here is not all the dogs were like that, only some of them. And when we looked at it more closely, these were the dogs who had histories of aggressive behavior. They would fight with other dogs, especially over

resources. My dog being one of them, Callie, even though she was the first one to do this, I'd say she was the first but not the best and now your latest book is called cow puppy i love that title cow puppy about your herd of 10 miniature cows so what do you wanted us to know about cows are they in any way like dogs they're a lot like dogs so four years ago i left the city and my wife and i moved to a farm to live the green acres life and found myself trying to manage pastures and acquired a bull and two cows who very quickly gave birth, and that three, turned into five, which then turned into ten. And I fell in love with them. I found that they are as demonstrative as the dogs that I have. If you know how to interpret their language, they're extremely social. And following on what the cows are or the calves are?

Because I have a bunch of cows, and I don't think of cows as being very similar to dogs. I ask that question, but I don't think of them as being very similar at all. I have seen very, very similar behaviors that my cows have like the dogs so they have playbows too especially the calves they they will kind of go down and and put their front legs down and put their butt up in the air when they want to play and they even wag their tails and they're extremely affectionate with each other and once they accept you into the herd they treat you the same way they lick me they you know they'll lie down and just cuddle up to me and there's There's no treats involved because all I do is manage the pastures.

Wow. Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think if you give almost anything a chance to show you how relational they are capable of being, you will be astonished, as I have been astonished, at the world that we are surrounded by, with all these things that we think are just scenery. Oh, bird flitting by. a rabbit in the bushes that these creatures actually have lives they have their own relationships they're capable of showing you that but we are almost never in a situation where we can see it or

we're even open to seeing it and the the big exception is our dogs or maybe our cats in our homes and most people don't get contact with any of these other lives and any of their minds, their emotional systems, which have a lot more in common than they differ. Thank you, Dr. Burns. So fascinating. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.

Thanks to all of my fellow dog lovers. Thank you all for listening to this special episode of the Oprah podcast. When we come back, we're going to meet families whose dogs literally saved their owner's lives. This episode of the Oprah podcast, is brought to you in part by Hello Fresh. You may have heard of Hello Fresh. They send chef-crafted recipes and fresh ingredients to your home, but they have made their biggest menu upgrade yet. It's bigger. Hello Fresh has doubled its menu. Now you can choose from 100 options each week, including new seasonal recipes from around the world. It's healthier. Feel

great and eat greener with a menu filled with high protein and new veggie-packed recipes. You know, 91% of customers say they feel healthier eating Hello Fresh. That's a stat I can get behind. This week I tried the sweet chili pork and cabbage stir fry and wow. The flavors were bold and well balanced, just the right mix of sweet and savory goodness. And I couldn't believe how easy it all came together. The best way to cook just got better. Go to Hellofresh.com slash Oprah Podcast 10fm now to get 10 free meals plus one free item for life. One per box with active subscription, free meals applied his discount on first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. That's Hellofresh.com slash Oprah Podcast 10FM to get 10 free meals plus one free item for life.

Welcome back to the Oprah podcast. I am grateful to you for taking time out of your busy day to be here. You may think your dog is only interested in treats and an app. You're about to hear two stories of dogs coming to the rescue just in the nick of time. Really incredible. Do you ever look into your dog's eyes and wonder, what's going on in there? That's exactly what my guest, Carl Safina, is inviting us to do, to open our mind, to the phenomenal capabilities and capacities of the animal mind. We heard from one of our listeners, Gabby, a mother of two in Pennsylvania.

She was a part of a group that rescued 35 dogs left homeless after Hurricane Helene struck the East Coast in 2024. Gabby adopted one of those dogs, a shy boy named Rusty, who, less than two weeks after joining the family, showed Gabby what Carl sees as a dog's true nature, watchful, fiercely protective, intuitive. Hi, yes, first of all, I am so nervous and all struck. Thank you for having me. Oh, nice. I grew up watching you with my mom in the afternoons.

So, you know, fast forward 11-ish days later, Rusty's come home. He's starting to acclimate. We definitely were mindful of giving him that space. And Rusty was in the room with us. And I just, I don't know how long I had been asleep, but I just remember waking up because he was barking. And this dog had not made a noise the whole time we had had him so far. And Wesley at the time was six months old,

and Michael was 21 months old. And so I got up and I was like, you know what, Rusty? Like, stop. But then he started gnawing at my sleeve on my sweatshirt that I was wearing. So I opened my jaw. I still get chills kind of thinking about it. but my house was filled with black smoke. And, you know, at the time, I just, I didn't know what was going to happen.

I just remember kind of like going into the things that I did know, because my husband is a firefighter and has been a volunteer firefighter for 20-plus years. So I knew I needed to stay low. I knew I needed to grab my boys and also get the dogs out. So Rusty and my other dog, Aria, that was in the bedroom, came down the steps with me. I couldn't see anything. because it was just such a thick layer of smoke in the house.

But I got them outside. I got with the boys. I put them safely in their car seats in my car that happened to be parked up front. But then I realized that my other dogs were still inside. And so I know what they say. And my husband's golden me for it, I promise. But to not go back in. But I went back in because I was not going to leave my dogs behind because they're my family.

And so I went back in, you know, the thick of the smoke, my Dalmatian, who you would think would be the most equipped to handle a situation like this, proceeded to roll over and fall back to sleep as I'm trying to drag her out of the house. In that process, I located the fire. There was a fire extinguisher in our kitchen, and I was able to put it out very quickly. And evidently, what had happened was an electrical outlet burst, and that spark caught a cereal box, which then caught on fire, which then fell into a pot, or at least that's what we've surmised from, you know, the investigations afterwards.

My husband also... And where were your smoke detectors? What happened with the smoke detectors? That's a good question, right? So we, you know, test our smoke detectors, day late savings, twice a year. We do all of those things, you know, for very fire prevention-minded, just naturally, and they failed. They didn't go off.

Wow. Yikes. But Rusty, it sends the smoke in the house and that there was something going on and was trying to get you out, yes. Yes, and I mean, we were new to him. He was new to us, but the fact that he was willing to do whatever it took to make sure that we got out of that house,

I mean, and it means absolutely everything to us. And, you know, quite frankly, if Rusty hadn't have been there, because evidently my other dogs could have cared less, I'm not sure where we would be right now, which is hard to think about because a six-month-old baby and a 21-month-old, I mean, my own life put aside.

Like, I just, I can't imagine what that would have looked like, so we're very grateful to him. It's interesting that you say cared less. I don't know if it's cared less or that that dog had a sensitivity that the other dogs did not. What do you say? Well, apparently that's the case. But I think, you know, Rusty was probably wondering, I'm alerting you to something really serious and dangerous. You won't believe me. A lot of times when dogs are trying to alert people, we don't give them the credit of saying,

oh, what's wrong? Let me get up and check it out, right? we try to dismiss it because we don't give them the credit that they deserve, even though we love them. They're part of our family, but our expectations of them don't really match their capabilities. That's right, because you're so readily willing to dismiss them when they're obviously trying to show you something or speak to you in a way that communicates danger or communicates alarm. Yes. Gabby, thank you so much for sharing that story. Thank you so much. And Rusty, we couldn't see you, but thank you, Rusty.

Amanda and her son Gabriel are joining us on Zoom. Amanda, tell us what happened with your dog, Axel. Yes, so thank you for having us. It's an honor to be here. And so my son, Gabriel, he had a stroke at 17 and going into his senior year of high school. And on Saturday morning, Axel, our dog, woke me up at around five in a morning, and he wasn't very gentle about it. You know, he went on top of the bed in our room, both claws on my chest, really intense

on waking me up. I figured, you know, the dog wanted to be let out. So my husband went downstairs. My son's room was downstairs, and my husband walked to the back to open the sliding door and legged axle out, and he didn't follow. He stopped in front of my son's door. A little did we know my son was already actively having a stroke had fallen before that. We were upstairs sleeping. I don't know if Axel saw it, if he was present or not, but he knew to somehow, he knew to go upstairs, wake us up, bring us downstairs to encounter Gabriel and stopped in front of Gabriel's room. And Gabriel came out. He was swearing. He was already, you know, actively in this stroke. And being a teenage boy, you know, we would never have gone into his room until

possibly noon, 1 p.m. I mean, he... Because teenage sleep. Yes, yes. Exactly. And so, you know, it was... Later, we found out from doctors how significant and important it was

that Axel chewed us to go see Gabriel because had it been five hours before we got him to the hospital, he could have been paralyzed forever or worse. Gabriel, what do you want to say? I don't know where I would have been. if it wasn't, like, as fast as it was, but, like, hearing that if it wasn't as fast as it was, that I would have not even recovered as well as I have is just, it was terrifying.

Yeah. And I was wondering, how do you not give Axel every treat that? How do you not succumb to everything? Because, like, Axel, you saved my life so you can have anything you want now for now on yeah yeah well he's actually right here nice to me um he's kind of laying down yeah i don't know yeah yeah there's wow oh wow that's a beautiful dog beautiful dog what kind of dog um he's a border collie mix so border collies are so smart anyway they are so smart but look at the love in just right there you can just see i mean what do you make what do you make of this girl well look

I mean, here are, here is just these two, we think of them as different species, right, people and dogs. And yet the pleasure of that touch is so mutual. And dogs understand when things are normal and when things are out of the ordinary, and they understand distress. They show that all the time. So that makes sense to you that Axel would have sensed something was off with Gabriel and would have, Yeah, but the strange thing is, I mean, was your door closed? Was your door closed in the room? The door was closed, okay.

Yeah, I went to my room and I closed the door, just go to sleep because that's just normal. And that's whenever my dad came down with Axel, and that's whenever Axel just, like, he stopped at my door, and he just wouldn't leave. Yeah. So, Oprah, so there's another thing in there that is a thing called object permanence And psychologists forever said, only humans have object permanence, the idea that when you don't see something, it still exists. Well, obviously, these dogs know who they are. They know who we are.

They know where they are. They understand their lives. They understand who is in their lives. We are in their lives. So this dog saw their person in trouble, have a fall. He goes, he closes the door. The dog still knows he's in there in trouble and goes to get help. Wow. We've heard this a lot, though. Are dogs able to send strokes more so than, I don't know?

Well, there are some illness, you know, there are dogs that are trained to alert about seizures and things like that. And apparently there are even chemical cues that the body gives off that dogs can smell about oncoming seizures. It's different than this, right? Yes. But other kinds of cues, because they're like superheroes. Their smell is way better than ours. Their hearing is way better than ours. So in a way, their world is a lot more vivid to them

than our world is to us. Thanks, Gabriel. Thanks, Amanda. Thank you. And good dog, Axel. Yeah, good dog. Good dog. Thanks for sharing that.

Thank you. We have one more person joining us on Zoom. Joining us from Maryland, Christina, who started an online community call Black women love dogs with over 35,000 followers on Instagram. Tell us the story behind that. Yes. Hello, Oprah. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about my community. Like you said, I'm originally from Maryland. I grew up here with a single mother and I would ask my mom for a dog consistently. I didn't realize, of course, the reason that she kept saying no was because she just couldn't afford it. She had to take care of me. So after I graduated for my HBCU, I said, you know what? I'm going to go ahead and do my lifelong. dream of having a dog and being a dog mom. And so I actually adopted my dog, my first baby,

Kana. And after I adopted her, I started looking for a community. I wanted to be able to speak to people about everything dealing with dog ownership. I noticed that a lot of the communities, there weren't a lot of people that looked like me. I was like, you know what? I just want to see if I can build my own community. My mom always taught me, if there isn't something there for you, you create it. Why don't you do it? And it just so happened to grow into such a beautiful community. Now we do so many different in-person events where we're able to meet up with so many different black dog moms. We're able to do giveaways. Last year, we just awarded our first scholarship to a future black veterinarian. What do you want to say about your special bond

with your dog? How has it changed you? For sure. So recently, I actually just moved to Houston, in Texas and me and my dog are the only ones there. I don't have any family or friends. And it can be really isolating to be alone. And so one of the things that happened when I was in a position where I was just in a somber mood one day, she just came to me and she literally just rested her paw on my shoulder. And we just looked at each other and I just started bawling with tears because I just felt like she just knew in that moment. What I needed was her comfort and her support. She's always there to make sure that I feel at peace.

I always tell people that no matter what, if Kana's there, I'm good. I'm going to be at peace. I can do anything. I love that handle too. Black women love dogs. Thank you so much, Christina. Good luck with it. Thank you so much.

Good luck. Good luck with it. Thank you all for listening. We'll be right. back with more of my conversation with Carl Safina. I found it so fascinating. Hope you do too. Lowe's knows how to get you ready for holiday hosting

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See a Loz Red Vest associate or visit loz.com slash holiday install to get started. Loz, we help, you save. Basic install only, date restrictions apply, subject to availability. Install by independent contractors. See Associate for details, contiguous US only. Welcome back to the Oprah podcast. If you're enjoying this conversation, as much as I am, I would encourage you to pick up any one of Carl Safina's beautifully written books

on our relationship to animals and the natural world. Now back to our conversation. So this is what I wanted to know. How did you get interested in? we started the conversation about as a young boy you were interested in nature you were paying attention you saw that there was a deep awareness for you yeah and actually that started really with animals that were not wild animals my father bred canaries as a hobby yeah and as a seven-year-old i demanded that i had to have my own flock of homing pigeons and so my father very generously complied with

my request and i had my own flock of homing pigeons from the time i was seven eight nine 10 when you're a little boy like that you have plenty of time to be with these kinds of creatures i would i'd go in the coop i'd watch their lives i'd watch them in the stack of fruit boxes that we had where they would build their nests and i'd watch them decide who they were going to marry and sometimes they had squabbles and jealousy. We'd let them out every day. They'd fly around. They'd come back, feed their babies, and go to sleep. Across the yard, we lived in our own stack of boxes, in our apartment building, where people figured out who they were going to marry. They sometimes had their squabbles. The adults left during the day. They came home, fed their babies,

and went to sleep. And I realized, right from the start, before I was taught, oh, no, I realized that their lives are really in broad strokes. We're all the same. We're all one life. You were able to connect that at a young age. That's the natural thing to see. And that's really why all indigenous people, despite the tremendous cultural differences,

their sense of our relationship among other living things is that we are all family. That idea only got into Western culture with Charles Darwin. And, you know, and a lot of people still don't accept that, right? Yeah, yeah. That we are all family. That is powerful.

That is powerful. Don't you say that I can't remember the number of how the percentage of birds left on the planet are all chickens now? Yeah. Something like 80% of all the birds in the world are chickens and a few ducks and a few turkeys that we raise. Right. And we raised them to pen them and kill them. Right. Right.

And that's our main relationship. And the percentage of cows and pigs are the mammals. Of mammals, humans, cows, and pigs are 96% of all the mammals on Earth now. And that, of course, is a radical difference from what it was, you know, 500 years ago, let's say. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Because we feel like we are more powerful than they are. And there's no sense for the fact that we're all a part of one family community. Right. And just the respect that, you know, like it shows, this eubris that we have shows in the fact that the world is being unbalanced by us.

We have this extreme weather. We have the climate disruption. We have the deforestation. We have the decline. Since I was 15 years old in high school, the average population of wild. animals has declined 70%, 7% since I was in high school. If we're so powerful and we're so smart, why aren't we taking care of the miracle of the world that made us and maintains us? Because we don't get it. I'm afraid we don't. I'm afraid we don't. Could you speak to, because you were talking about, I think, the Australian Shepherd that

you took into your home, the Australian Shepherd that was losing its mind in the apartment. And often I see people, I know I'm going to get complaints about it, but in New York City with these huge dogs in little apartments, and I feel for that dog. That's why I was saying that I didn't really like dogs because being around them was often so uncomfortable because the dog in the situation were so badly matched. And that was the case with little Katie.

Shouldn't people consider that, though, when they're getting a dog? You should consider what's good for you, but also what's going to be good for the day. dog right what is this what is this breed's energy level an australian shepherd wants to heard they don't yeah i have no business being up in an apartment right exactly exactly but she she came with us it took a few months for her to adjust i remember the first time we brought her to the beach with our other two dogs we immediately just they're all always loose at the beach always off leash and she's looking around she was with us like two days at that point so we start walking down the beach and

She said, oh, that's my family down there. Okay, I better keep up with them. And there were other people, other dogs. She knew right away that we, it was mainly us she was supposed to key into, right? And then this was really, really interesting. She ran way, way down the beach, ran after something. And I said, okay, let's just turn around and see what happens. And let's show her that, you know, when we go this way, you need.

to know right so we go and and always our other two dogs they immediately turn around with us because that's the routine well jude he would have none of this and none of leaving that new puppy out there he laid down with his butt to us and he just waited and watched for her and when she caught up to where he was lying down he got up and he he turned around yeah and that happened almost immediately after yeah almost almost immediately yeah wow wow wow well so what can you finally tell us what is beyond words what is the energy that is beyond words when it comes to animals and the way they think and feel people have explicitly said that humans can only think because we have language yeah and this is simply not the case there is so much that is beyond words

there is so much understanding there is so much bonding there is so much emotion there is so much understanding of who we are and where we are and who we are because of who we're with that does not have words to it we have kind of lost track of that when you go to your house you don't say oh this is my house oh that is my refrigerator oh that is my spouse the the recognition is instant and that's that's our animal recognition of who we are and that's what the world is filled with it's filled with this kind of recognition and understanding and we just don't know wow thank you Oprah thank you so much this has been a thrill oh so delighted that you could come all this way very well worth it Carl's don't prophet is called the sophina center and their mission is

to advance the case for all life on earth by bringing together scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action. You can learn more at saffina center.org. I thank you, Dr. Gregory Burns. Dr. Burns' book is Our Dogs, Love Us and Cow Puppy, and Carl's books, including Beyond Words,

which I love so much, and Alfie and me are all available now wherever you get your books. Thank you, Amanda, and thank you, Gabriel, Gabby, and Christina for zooming with us. and a special thank you to all the dogs, all the dogs. Thank you all for listening and watching. See you next week.

You can subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.