Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Dog Episode - Man's Best Friend

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Wes shares a handful of stories about how dogs can be more than just our friends, they can also be our heroes. This episode goes out to anyone who has ever loved and lost their sweet, loving, and loyal dog. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw podcast. Maybe we have some new listeners that found us through Chimp Crazy. This is just a standard, boring old episode. No chimpanzees in this one. No chimps. We have our wildlife biologist, Wes Larson. You may know them from Dior commercials or National Geographic. I was West's Field Tech

And then we got Mike Smith with us I would say Mike Smith's one of the only people Who's like really on board for cyber trucks But doesn't want one Oh yeah Don't want, never will drive one Things they're like pretty sweet I'm happy they're out there

A little different you know A little spice on the road It does spice things up a bit I do give them that I'm in a good mood because football is almost I'm in college football back but NFL starts uh in two days i have 10 fantasy leagues over like a hundred patrons playing fantasy football with me again are you gonna pay them this year i it's always been if anyone

request money for me during payouts i hit yes yes so just request money for yes yeah um i'm not even sure i got all the payments this year it's been so busy but yeah yeah for people who don't remember i didn't know like there's a story on two things and claw where I was playing fantasy football with computer versions of my college friends just by myself. And then the tooth and claw listeners stepped up the next year. So it's going to come a long way in our podcast. Yeah.

Yeah. We also just got back from Africa. We, the three of us went to Kenya together with a lot of listeners, like 20 plus people. And we had a great time. It was a great group. We had saw some wonderful wildlife. We had like some really exciting things that we did. Do you remember their names?

I do. I got them right here. I'm going to say everyone's name that went on that trip. What? We had Sabrina, Mickey, Kara, Anastasia, Leah Kelly, Kirk. These are ranked from your favorite to least favorite. That's not true. That's not true.

This is just, I just kind of wrote them down. All right. Where was I? Kelly Kurt, Austin, Nils, Hannah, John, Vanessa, Kristen, Anthony. Chris, Liz, Kylie, Anna, Gina, Peter, Nicole, Elizabeth. So. You didn't like Elizabeth? I put Elizabeth last actually on purpose because Elizabeth was the last one to show up.

Oh, that makes me. Okay. Chronological. I did worry like, man, I don't want whoever I put last to have their feelings hurt. But then I thought Elizabeth can go last because she showed up last. Yeah, I think, you know, I think I'll do some version of another trip recap episode because, I don't know. It may be wide, it may be Patreon. A few days.

Yep. We'll get something out there. And Mike's got a recap that he's going to do too. But yeah, we had a great time. We saw a lot of really cool wildlife. I'm still a little jet lagged. We had like our flights canceled a few hours before we were about to catch them. So we had a real wild ride trying to get home.

Luckily, none of us had to be back for anything. All three of us had pretty serious things to get back for. Where would you rank how badly the three of us need to get home? Like most important least important I would say Mine was most Mike was second Yours was third

What? I don't know about all that Jeff's is first in my book I was hanging out with someone Pretty cool right when I got home Jeff was I had something tragic happen And Mike had a wedding

An important wedding to get to Yeah my mom was replaced One that you didn't Maybe you would have been fine Had you missed The funniest part is like The Delta like gave us flights where we weren't going to make it in time for Mike's dad's wedding.

And he's just like, oh, that sucks. And then I, like, found us a path home that got us there in time. But Mike would just, like, accepted. Like, I guess I don't get to go. He was sitting on the bed and he's just like, sometimes you just got to shake your head and laugh. Made me so angry because I was, like, distraught trying to get home. Yeah, my reason.

reason we're going to get to in a bit, but it was a sad one. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that's probably good. Should we get into this episode? Yeah, let's do it. Let's get in there. All right. So, we have talked about dogs a lot here on this podcast.

Specifically, we've talked a lot about how they affect bear encounters. We've told a lot of stories where dogs were a factor in bear encounters. And I still stand by my position that an off-leash dog can really make bear encounters much more dangerous than they would be otherwise, but dogs can also save your life. There are people that have had dogs with them where they save their lives. I'd like to hear an example of that.

That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about stories where dogs help save their owners when they're confronted with dangerous wildlife. Okay, I should mention that a lot of people have requested an episode on dogs as the antagonist of an attack, too, like when domestic dogs attack people.

Mike, you did a docksend, episode where we talked about that a little bit on our Patreon or our Apple Grizz Club. But we will get to that at some point. That's an episode I'm kind of dreading. I don't really want to do it because I love dogs so much. And I just know we're going to get a lot of flack when we finally do that episode too. So who knows if we'll actually do it or not. That's why you love doing grizzly bear episodes is you hate grizzly.

Just hate them. Yeah, I just, I think it's different. And I'm going to explain why it's different in this episode. All right. So we're going to start on October 12, 2015. When 53-year-old Kate Cholawa was walking near Point of Rock's fishing access site on the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley, Montana. The fishing access is busy. It sits right next to Highway 89, which is the road you take down Paradise Valley to get to Gardner and into Yellowstone.

And Kate had moved to Montana in 1987 for grad school, and she'd never left. She liked taking walks in beautiful places around her home, and these walks have been commonplace for her to do together with her 12-year-old Black Lab mix, Carmen. Carmen was actually recovering from a torn ACL. It was an injury that had sidelined the dog. Instead of being so energetic and constantly leading Kate on all these walks, Carmen would actually walk next to her now,

and Kate was really careful not to let Carmen get ahead of her because she didn't want her to over-exert herself and re-injure her ACL. She had actually adopted Carmen as a puppy from the Missoula Humane Society, which I lived right outside of Missoula. Me and Jeff grew up in Missoula. And these two did everything together. They were very close. So in the many years that they had walked together at Point of Rocks, they had seen lots of signs warning about grizzly bears, but they'd never seen a bear or even tracks of a bear. Kate knew that both grizzly bears and black bears could be found in the mountains surrounding the valley or down in the park, but the fishing access area seemed relatively strong.

safe. There was a lot of traffic in and out and it just seemed like a safe place because they'd never even had kind of a whiff of a bear there. That was all about to change. On that afternoon in October 2015 Kate was singing to herself. Guess what song she was singing

to herself? You're not going to get it. All by myself? My milkshake brings all the boys to you. It's a better guess. She was singing Stan by Eminem. Wow. I think that might be my favorite m&M song. Me too. And she was singing the Dido or Dido or is it Dido? It's di-do, right? I don't know. D-I-D-O part of that song. Well, that's like a whole different song. That could have been not Stan. That could have just been the original. She was singing Stan. She was like rapping the verses. I don't know. That's what the article said, that she was singing Stan and she was singing that part. So maybe she was rapping too. Anyway, she was getting through the Dido part. She looks down and she sees the

on Carmen's back standing up in a way she'd never seen before, and the dog's emitting a low growl. Kate slowly looks up and standing in the trail just a few feet from her was a large grizzly bear. And before she could even register what was happening, she was on the ground with the bear on top of her, biting her and mauling her. And her only thought she had in her head at that point was that she was about to die. Suddenly, she felt the presence of her dog nearby and she hears Carmen barking, and the bear actually lifted off of her and she could move again. again. She got up and although

she knew better and although Carmen was still locked in this fight with the dog, she actually ran off as quickly as possible. And when she did that she had this pain hit her because she knew she was leaving her companion of 12 years behind and she could imagine the dog

being ripped apart by this bear and her heart kind of torn to as she was thinking about that. She's losing a lot of blood from a gash in her head and as she was holding that gash and trying to keep the blood in, she grabbed her phone and called 911. The operator asked her if the bear was still following her,

and as those words came through the phone, she heard the bushes to her side start rustling, and she braced herself for another attack. But it wasn't the bear that ran out of the bushes. It was Carmen. Yeah. Carmen killed the bear? Carmen did not kill the bear.

But Carmen managed to get away. So Kate took her hands off these bleeding wounds. She helped Carmen into the car. They both waited for police and paramedics to arrive. She was rushed to a nearby hospital and Carmen was taken to a vet and then a shelter in Livingston. Not long after the duo was reunited and they got to recover from their cut, scrapes, and bruises at home.

Neither of them were seriously injured. Do you think Carmen had to wait for the K-9 unit? They were like, wait, we need to send a K-9 for your dog. I don't think so. I have, I want to push back on one thing you said or just like question it, I guess. Yeah. So you said even though she knew better she ran away. And, like, I do think I've heard you say that before, don't run from bears.

Yeah, but. You definitely have. I can't recall a few instances. I feel like this circumstance feels pretty different. It is. You know, where, like, something else is engaging the bear and has its attention, and the bear has already engaged with her and, like, mauled her a bit. Because, like, the whole theory of, like, don't run from bear.

Or not theory, but, like, the advice don't run from a bear is, like, you might try. trigger a response. You might trigger an attack. But the attack was already triggered. Yeah. You still want to stay still. You don't want to like do anything in this situation because you're right. The attack was triggered. But this was most likely a surprise attack. And what are bears trying to do when you surprise a bear? Neutralize the threat. Neutralize the threat. Exactly. These are good. So if if the bear sees suddenly that that threat's no longer neutralized, if that threat gets up and moves fast again, if it's away from it, there's a chance that bear is going to re-engage and try and neutralize again.

It's kind of like what happens in the Revenant almost, where he gets mauled and then he goes to try and get his gun. And that's obviously more of a threat than just running away. But the thing to do is just to lie still until the bear leaves you alone. Because like in this case, head she just lied there, maybe the bear would have like came back to her. It's possible.

And she got away. So we're not going to say she did the wrong thing. but it's never what I would tell someone to do. Like you should have it in your mind, don't run if there's a bear. And even if the bear is caught up with something else, if it suddenly sees something moving again, especially if it has cubs or something, it might hit that threat again.

So I would just advise people to stay still, play dead if the bear's actually mauling you and you don't have a deterrent. All right, so they both made it fine. Neither were seriously injured. Their bond was made even stronger. And Kate actually kind of had like, this changed her entire life.

She sees the incident of something that was almost sacred, and it brought her out of depression and made her far less cynical about the world. So it was actually like a really good thing for her in a lot of ways. She like starts like a help group. We just get blooded by pressure. Yeah. I have a really unorthodox program. It involves you.

The great thing is it's a one-step program. Yeah. Do you hate talking to therapists? I got something for you. All right. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second

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Terms apply. All right. So we are talking dogs today, obviously, and we're going to talk about our history with dogs. We're going to talk about dogs that save people. Before we get into the history part, I do want to do one more story about Canis Lupus Familiaris, which is the domestic dog. And this one comes out of Russia. This is a good story.

And I like this one because it actually, there's a video of this interaction, which I thought was really interesting. Oh, cool. All right. So in December 2020, in the Northern Russian Republic of KOMI, KOMI, or Komi, one of the two. Kami's? Kami. Kami. Russian commies? That's me. Yeah, you got here a little commie map.

I got my Russian map behind me. All right. 10-year-old boy, Yemalayan was playing a game of Winter Hide and Seek with his siblings. This is December in northern Russia, so you have to imagine it's pretty endless night. There's really probably not too much to do in his small village of Sindor, and the kids around the village are probably doing whatever they can to enjoy the snow,

the freezing temperatures, and just not go crazy during the long winters up there. But these frigid temperatures had also brought some unwelcome residents into the small village, and neighbors had been complaining about missing dogs. Capitalists. Americans. They'd been missing dogs and livestock. And what do you think was killing these animals? Pillar bear.

Wasn't a polar bear. Not far enough north for that. Grisly bear. Wolf? Tiger. Wolves. It was wolves. Mike got it.

Wolves have been showing up in town. They were killing dogs and livestock and they were getting closer to homes and people. So one night as the children were playing hide and seek in front of their home. Couldn't the dogs just be like, dude, we're one of you. Yeah. We're your cousin. Yeah. No.

One night as they're playing hide and seek in front of their homes, a CCTV camera on the family home caught Yemalayan running and jumping behind a snowdrift. Then as you watch this video, just seconds later, a large gray wolf emerges from the woods and starts walking slowly toward the area where he's hiding. And my guess is that it thought he was injured or something because he was running and then suddenly he's laying still. So it must have really piqued this wolf's interest. And as the wolf crept closer to investigate, suddenly you see a streaking white blur on the video. And this blur was Jesse, the family's dog, a tiny Jack Russell Terrier. I'm trying to think of movies that have Jack Russell Terriers in him.

They're pretty small dogs. They're really cute. They're small. Aren't all the dogs kind of streaking if you think about it? Streaking? Yeah. This one wasn't streaking so much as it was a streak on the video. Oh.

But that's a great question, Mike. Anyway, Jesse was no match for this large wolf. It's a tiny Jack Russell terrier, but it didn't stop the dog from running at the big predator and its ancient cousin like a bullet. The wolf immediately grabbed Jesse and now the yelping dog warned Yemalayan of the danger and the boy ran inside to warn his parents.

Yemalayan's father, Ruslan, and some other friends, which is a very Russian name, Ruslin. And some friends rushed out. They scared the wolf away from the tiny body of the Jack Russell Terrier. Jesse had been torn up but was still alive and they piled into their vehicle to drive to the nearest city.

Unfortunately, Jesse passed away in the arms of the family on their drive to the weight of the veterinarian but she had given her life to protect this little family. So this was a dog that died for its owner. And like when you see this video, you see it is a tiny dog and a big wolf and the dog does not flinch.

It just charges at this wolf. It's pretty amazing. Nice job, Jesse. All right. So how did we end up with an animal that's such a faithful, loving, protective member of our family? So faithful that they'll charge and attack a wolf when it's almost certain death. Well, to answer that question, we're going to have to hop in our little time machine. Let's go. We're going to travel back about 100,000 years to when people really started showing up in Eurasia.

Are you sure there is even people? 100,000 years ago? We've been, homo sapiens have been around for about 300,000. 100,000 years. Okay. About 100,000 years ago is when we showed up in Eurasia. So Europe, Asia, Russia, all of those places. And that's when we really started interacting at a high level with wolves.

I should mention I got a lot of this information from a PBS piece on dog domestication, as well as a TEDED video by David Ian Howe, which was titled A Brief History of Dogs. Plus, I read a bunch of articles and a lot of Wikipedia entries as well. So there's actually a bit of dispute as to when the domestication process with dogs actually began. But some of the earliest fossil records of canids being in the same places of humans, so like where they would find bones from dogs and people in like the same cave or whatever, those go back about 33,000 years. So that's even before we became like before we were agrarian, before we had agriculture, anything like that.

We were still hunter-gatherers 33,000 years ago. So we may have had dogs living in our societies even before Neanderthals went extinct, which is pretty crazy. Wow. That's something too that I didn't realize for a long time that it's, we Neanderthals weren't like a step on human evolution. That was like a separate hominid species that evolved and then we like killed them. Oh, really? Yeah, which is pretty wild. They think that they were probably killed by Homo sapien.

So the general thought is that what the first kind of step in the, process were that we had these ancient humans who hunted large prey like mammoths, all these different kind of megafauna that lived with us back then. And after they'd kill animals, there'd be large amounts of scraps and bones outside their camps. And that would draw a lot of animals in. And some of the animals that would come in closest were wolves. And it's actually the descendant of dogs and gray wolves is an extinct species of wolf that

no longer exists. And that's something I just learned. I always thought that dogs just descended from our current gray wolves, and that's not true. They split off from each other when dogs were domesticated. If that makes sense. Dyer wolves, do you think? Uh, maybe. It's not, no, actually, it's not, but it's like a different, it's kind of like a primitive gray wolf. Anyway, these wolves, these ancient wolves that would approach human camps and steal or beg for scraps were probably individuals that were no longer in a pack for whatever reason. They were slightly less aggressive, but they were still highly sociable. So they wanted some sort of socialization. They would approach humans and they would beg for these different scraps. And because they essentially got free food,

they were really successful. That's like a really easy way to live your life where you're not risking nearly as much. You're getting food. So they did really well. And they would breed and they'd have more puppies and they're breeding then those characteristics into their pups. They're breeding pups that are less aggressive, pups that are willing to socialize with humans because they're getting free food. So that's kind of that first step in making this tamer animal. And as these tamer wolves become more common around human camps, they start to serve some purposes for humans.

So this started as something that was really only benefiting these wolves. It wasn't really benefiting humans that these animals were around. But then once they become tamer and tamer, they start benefiting the humans. Can you guys guess what that might be that they were. doing for us. Protecting? Protecting. Yeah.

Like barking if something came up to camp. Exactly that. Yep. Just serving as an early warning system. Probably howling because of the predators. Yeah, they probably howled a bit too. But you think about it back then, there was lions, there's saber tooth cats, there's tigers, there's all these different predators that were major predators for humans.

And so when you have a lot of wolves that live in your camp that will start barking or howling or whatever when these animals approach. It's an early warning system. On top of that, they were starting to help people actually hunt for prey too. So it started to become this mutually beneficial relationship. Plus, because wolves had familial social structures, so they have these really dynamic social structures in the wild,

it made it so they integrated easily into our social structures, and they could even learn commands and roles from humans. I mean, sometimes both. In one. Yeah. The command to roll over. That's true. That's not what I meant by rolls, but that's, that is a good point.

They will roll over. Yeah. So a crazy thing about dogs is dogs will actually look where we point, which shows they kind of understand our intentions. You can't even really train chimpanzees to do that, and that's our closest living relative, but dogs will do that. And another thing that they do is they will look directly into our eyes. And in the wild, that's something the animals don't usually do because it's a sign of aggression or whatever.

But dogs do that and it's a sign of socialization. And we're actually going to talk a little bit more about that specific one in a bit because it's deeper than just that. It is a good thing that we taught them how to roll over, though, to your point, Jeff? Because like, what did they do when they caught on fire before that? They just didn't put it out. They knew how to stop and drop, but they maybe didn't know how to roll yet. How else are you supposed to scratch their tummies, which is like the best thing in the world? That's a good point.

So about 33,000 years ago is when it was likely that wolves actually started living with people in their homes or their camps. And that's when we can officially say that we started domesticating wolves and they started turning into dogs, Canis Lupus, familiaris. And as I mentioned earlier, there's definitely some disagreement on that date of 33,000 years ago. but the earliest fossils where we were found together was 33,000 years ago. So that's what I'm going with. How many years they take to go from wolves to pugs? A lot. About 33,800 or something.

32,800. Yeah, it's in the future. Yeah, it's not in the future. It honestly doesn't seem like long enough looking at the difference between the two. Yeah, we're going to talk about that a little bit too. I would have said like billions. Pugs do not in any way resemble wolves. So as Homo sapiens continued to keep and breed dogs, the tamest most obedient dogs would be the ones that got kept in bread.

This is what's called selection pressure. This is selective evolution, where we're actually selecting for certain traits. And a byproduct of selecting for the tamest dogs is that we were essentially favoring really juvenile and submissive traits and dogs. So pretty much we're selecting ones that acted like puppies for the longest. And this phenomenon of selecting traits associated with youth is known as knee-autony. And many of our dogs today are in kind of a suspended state of perpetual youth. That's why our dogs are very playful and happy and kind of joyful as they kind of act like puppies their whole lives. And that's what we did to them through domestication.

All right, as we continued to keep these domesticated wolves, their physical attributes also changed. They got shorter snouts, smaller teeth, smaller overall body size, but they still essentially looked like wolves for the most part. But that started changing when we started giving them different jobs and purposes, and that was the result of artificial selection. So basically, we would breed dogs that have certain attributes together in order to end up with a type of dog that was really suited to a specific task. And I'm still talking about people a long time ago.

So everything for dogs that are used for herding and guarding livestock, they would become shorter and stockier so they could nip at the heels of the livestock. Dogs that were used for like competitions and racing became really thin and sleek and fast. Dogs used for personal protection got really bulky and strong. And then dogs that were used for chasing badgers out of burrows were long and they looked like weaners or bravers. So these earliest changes in dogs came about because, of these jobs that we were giving them in different purposes we were using them for. And then they also really changed when groups of humans would travel to different parts of the

world with their dogs. They would meet new groups of humans with different dogs. Those dogs would breed together and it would create new types of dogs. So as humans expanded around the globe, dogs started changing pretty drastically. But the thing that really led to an explosion of different types of dogs was the English-Victorian, society where a lot of new dogs were bred purely for their appearance. So people started breeding dogs just to look a certain way because they wanted, you know, like a poodle or an Afghan hound or something that just looked really fancy or different

from everything else that everyone had. And during that Victorian era, they also started coming up with this idea of breeds where they had like these certified breeds of dogs. And that's where we got all the breed names and stuff for. And that's still continuing today. It actually, though, has led to some pretty gnarly health implications for dogs. You guys just brought up pugs. Pugs are an example of that where they have, like, huge respiratory problems.

They're just like, we bred all these weird things into what was a wolf, and it has just really messed it up. So I'm not a big fan of, like, breeding and trying to create new breeds of dogs. I think, like, that needs to end personally. Okay. Pugs, not drugs. Yeah, exactly, sure. Yeah, I would say if you need a pug instead of drugs, get a pug.

Drugs can be cool, though, too. All right. Pugs and drugs. Yeah, doing both. Sure. All right, so in my mind, the most important part of our shared history is that dogs and humans actually bonded chemically. So therefore, we bonded emotionally.

And dogs are often so in tune with their owner, that they can interpret our emotions and our body language. I definitely saw this with my dog where if Jesse was ever at all anxious or off or anything, Bryce knew that something was going on. Jesse was Wes's girlfriend for anyone who doesn't know that context. Yeah. And Bryce was our dog. So even tens of thousands of years ago, humans would bury their dogs in like a really kind of sacred way or they would do combined burials with their dogs, which shows.

that they even had a treasured place or a valued place in those families thousands of years ago. That's nice. I mentioned earlier that dogs gaze directly into our eyes. In the wild, that's usually a sign of dominance or aggression, but with dogs, something really interesting is happening. When they look into our eyes, they trigger an oxytocin feedback loop that's also seen with mothers and newborn babies. So oxytocin is like the love chemical.

It's pretty much like what you feel when you give someone like a big hug or, you're not. when there's some sort of emotional bonding happening, our bodies release oxytocin. So when a dog starts staring into your eyes, you produce more oxytocin. And then as you're staring into its eyes, it produces more oxytocin. And there's this positive feedback loop that keeps growing. And there's some thought that the earliest wolves figured out how to do this to bond with humans through eye contact. And that might been like actually kicked off part of this domestication process.

Or to bake for food while you. you like sit down to eat. Yeah. Yeah. When Bryce would stare at me, I could stay down a lot. I could not say no. So a positive, one other positive interaction between dogs and humans that deals with hormones is that when we interact with dogs, our cortisol levels go down as well. And cortisol is the stress hormone. That's the hormone we release when we're stressed. And when we interact with dogs and when dogs interact with us, cortisol levels go down in both species. So that's really important because we don't really see that in many other animals. Cats, it does happen, the oxytocin stuff too. But it's really rare that that sort of thing happens.

And it shows a dog's a better emotional support animal than like that lady with her peacock she brought on the plane. Yes, I would definitely say that. Yeah. I would definitely say that they're really our best friends. I think they are man's best friend. Man and women. So I have two more stories. Man and woman. Yeah. When I say man, I'm just homo sapien.

Come on. Okay. On May 16th, 2022, Aaron Wilson was walking with her two-year-old Belgian Malinua. A Belgian Malinwa looks a lot like a German shepherd. They're a little sleeker. They're the dogs that they often use as like police dogs, like attack dogs and stuff. They can be pretty impressive and intimidating dogs.

This two-year-old Belgian Malinwa was named Eva, and they were walking near the Trinity River in northern. California. Aaron was 24 years old and she'd stopped at a roadside picnic area and they decided to run down to the river, her and Eva. Eva was running ahead of Aaron off leash when Aaron heard something in the bushes and she looked up to find herself face to face with the snarling mountain line. The mountain line charged out at her and swiped out, ripping through her jacket and cutting her arm and in a panic, Aaron screamed for Eva and the dog came running. Eva slammed into the mountain lion and knocked it off of Aaron. And the two began fighting so ferociously that it was like a blur.

It was hard to even see what was happening. And it seemed to be a somewhat even fight until the cat latched on to Eva's skull and the dog started crying out. So Aaron picked up some rocks. She started throwing them at the mountain lion and hitting the mountain line with rocks in an effort to get it to release her dog. But nothing is happening. The lions just clamped down on the back of the dog's head. So Aaron runs up to the road, she gets a crowbar from her car, and then she finds a woman that had a big PVC pipe, and the two ran down to where the lion had dragged Eva into some bushes. They start hitting it with the crowbar, with the pipe, with everything. It finally retreats into the bush, and it releases Eva, or Eva, it's one of the two, and they scoop her up,

load her back into the car. They speed to a veterinarian, and Ava, I'm going to say Ava, had a lot of pretty horrific injuries, including fractures in her skull and punctures in her sinus cavity. But vets were optimistic and they managed to get her stabilized and then back home with Aaron. Unfortunately, about a month later, she passed as a direct result of the skull fractures. And it was pretty tragic because they thought that she was going to make it back. I got one more. This was a very recent one. This happened June 30th of this year.

So Vanessa Chaput, whose 24, was jogging with her German Shepherd on a paved trail at Pine Lake Campground, which is in Yukon, Canada, on June 30th this year, when suddenly she saw a group of four bears 10 feet ahead of her grizzly bears. Four grizzly bears? Yeah, so a mom and three cubs. Her dog Luna chased after two of the smaller bears, which left her alone with the largest bear, the mom. She tried backing away, but the bear charged at her, wrapping its paws around her. body ripping into her skin near her spine and repeatedly biting her on her arm and her thigh. And she talked about this on NBC News. She said it felt like she was.

What did you guys think she compared it to as the bear was ripping her around? Getting eaten by a truck. No, not getting eaten by it. What did she think she felt like a shark? A rag doll. She felt like a rag doll. Yeah. She said there's an insane amount of pressure and that she has a really high pain tolerance,

but it was worse than any pain she'd felt. And this attack went on for about five minutes, and she was thinking, I'm not ready to leave my daughter and my husband. And this bear finally kind of backs off a little bit when her hair clip breaks and it snapped in the bear's face. And it surprised it enough that it stopped mauling her for a second. And it gave her time to sneak out and hide behind a tree. But the bear chased her down and found her again was about to attack her until her dog, her German shepherd, Luna returned, barked at it and scared it away. and she says Luna you know her barking saved my life she managed to hairpin the hairpin also were they able to save the hairpin uh I don't know uh she limped to the nearest highway she used her

watch to call emergency services she spent 10 days in a hospital um she had broken arm cuts requiring a lot of stitches she had a lot of pretty serious injuries and she's extremely thankful that she survived and her dog helped her survive that, that attack. She didn't say anything about the hairclip. She didn't say anything about the hairclip. No, unfortunately, the haircliff got left out of all this. Huh, that's a good dog. Yeah, so I wanted to end on a happy one and a recent one.

That one just happened. Yeah, that's great. Good job, Luna. Yeah, I think it was Luna. It's a great name for a dog. Yeah, it is a good name for a dog. All right, well, you might be wondering why I wanted to talk about dogs this week. and I'm going to do this the best way I can, hopefully without crying too much.

But unfortunately, me and Jesse did lose our dog this week. I didn't think I would cry after all this, but here I am. She had been battling hemolytic anemia for about a month, and it was pretty hard. And when I went to Africa, she seemed really good. And then the last couple days we were there, she just really, did bad. She just kind of it came back really strong

and the last couple nights I was talking with Jesse and unfortunately about five hours before I got home we had to put her down because she was on a lot of pain. It's really hard and still is hard. And I think we're probably going to miss her forever. And Mike, I know you know this because you had a dog that was like your companion.

All right, I'm going to get it together. I'm good. But until I had Bryce, I just didn't realize how pure of a love you can get from an animal. You know, they just really, it's a different kind of love. It's something, it's so unconditional and pure that it's really hard to get that anywhere else. And Bryce taught me that. And it was a really important lesson for me. And I'm never going to forget how it felt to be loved by her.

I'm really just going to miss that forever. And I don't know if you guys have anything you want to say about your life. relationships with dogs to interrupt me while I'm being all weepy. But I did just want to say that that I love Bryce, that I'm going to miss her, and that dogs are really great. Yeah, I hesitate to make this about myself because it's been so long. But when we lost Brock about 10 years ago, my German shepherd, I still just can't even think of getting another one. It was just so, so devastating. and my heart's just broken for you and Jesse the past few nights, a few days. And like you said, it's different.

And it sounds crazy, but it took an emotional toll that even losing my mother didn't take on me because you're kind of this animal's caretaker. You kind of feel like it's your charge. And then when they pass away, you feel almost inadequate. Like you didn't do your job as illogical as that reasoning might be. but it's devastating. It's the truest, purest form of love that I have ever experienced, at least. And, yeah, conjures up. Painful memories even all these years later. I love that dog still, and I will never forget him, and I'll never get over it all the way. And I wouldn't want to.

I want to have that pain in my heart somewhere deep inside, because it's just a reminder, better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, we had a family dog growing up, but I don't think we quite gave Sundance the opportunity to be a part of our lives in that way, which like, you know, I'd like to maybe try that out sometime. But I'll just say I really love Bryce and I was glad I got to like meet Bryce and Bryce was just a great dog. Yeah, I miss her. Sweetheart. Yeah, I think so sweet. I think the silver lining to all of this for us is like Jesse, I mean, Jesse and Bryce were like best friends. I feel lucky that I got to be like the third party and Bryce's like second favorite person in the world.

But Jesse and Bryce are so close. And the beautiful part of it to me now is that another dog gets to feel that, you know? Yeah. Like another dog gets to be loved by Jesse. You guys will have a great home for future dog. Yeah. And it's going to be a rescue dog. It's going to be a dog that needs that.

And so I do think that's like... I'm not going to get a pug. We're definitely not going to get a pug. But anyway, we're going to talk a... During like the conservation portion, we're going to talk a little bit more about some advocacy around that. But I would just feel remiss if I didn't bring it up. And yeah, it's been hard.

It's been really, really, really hard. And we really miss her. Yeah. All right. We'll get into our categories. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event.

Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry and the best have you wait in the world, Francis Ngano versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific Time. Our first category is your favorite dog in a movie specifically. I'm going with Gus from Iron Will, the sled dog, all white, beautiful. I don't know exactly what kind of dog he is. Beautiful, I guess, is what the kind of dog he was.

And I like that movie a lot. For you Kevin Spacey fans out there, he's got a little bit part in it. Yeah, a lot of Kevin Spacey fans these days. You just don't see a lot of them these days. So if you're kind of starving for a little more Spacey in your life, check it out. Is that the one where he turns into a dog and lives with his family? No, that's Fluk, right? Is that what that's called?

The Shaggy Dog. Jesse's favorite dog movies called Fluk, and it's kind of a similar thing. But, yeah, anyway. I'll go with John Wick. Which one? Like, the first one. The Beagle? Both dogs.

Okay. The Beagle's my favorite, but, like, I just, it's one of my favorite movies, and without the dog, like, he's just a serial killer. But since they killed the dog, it's like, now these guys deserve it. Right. Yeah, it's true. Hallie Berry's got some great dogs in that movie, too, in the third one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually, I thought about this a lot.

And something that I read made me decide on the dog that plays Air Bud, whose name was actually Buddy in real life. And Buddy was found by his owner, Kevin, as a stray dog in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1989. and he took him home and started just training him how to play basketball, baseball, football, soccer, and hockey. And he got so good at, like, bouncing a basketball on his nose and stuff that he was on David Letterman. And then that's why he got picked. And then the Hollywood movie execs were like, I think we got something in here. Real rags to riches story.

He was in the first Airbud. And then he was also, like, on one episode of, what's the one with the old? Wilson Twins. Full house? Full house. Yeah. So, anyway. Nice.

You know it be a good movie? That? What? Like an Airbud type movie? I'd watch an Airbud biopic. Good sequel. What? You know like the Like Mike movie or Thunderstruck where like a kid finds Michael

Jordan's old shoes and then can play like Michael Jordan? Yeah. If like someone, a human found Airbud's old jersey or shoes and then could play basketball like Airbud. just bounce it off their head and then they also like start doing a bunch of other dog stuff like they like hump people and they get up close to them and stuff yeah yeah yeah like that that was the unrated version I guess I never saw that one all right so we're gonna do the most heroic dog in pop culture so a very heroic dog from any kind of pop culture I'll go first on

this one I'm gonna pick the two dogs Turk and I forget the other one's name from Swiss family Robinson because those dogs like this is the 1950s or 60s whatever Swiss Family Robinson that me and Jeff grew up on they fight a lot of animals like they fight a tiger

they are just constantly surrounded by wild animals that this family is bringing around and they manage to kind of keep it together so those are pretty brave heroic dogs to be able to do all that I think they like fight some sharks at one point like they're yeah yeah they're those are some

heroic dogs. So those are the ones I'm picking. Right. I go with Balto, the cartoon and the Real Life dog. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, you can have it. I got another bag. Do you have one? That's all I could think of. Yeah, go with it. Tell us what Balto did, Mike.

That's your pick. He delivered some medicine to some people, I guess. The gnome. You saw the Northern Lights in the cartoon. Yeah. And he found that bear. That's right. Face went through all the vases. He was like a half, though. I guess you

can still count, but he was like half wolf. half dog somehow or something? Maybe. That's not true. I'm going full wolf for mine now. I'm going with a ghost from Game of Thrones. Dyrwolf.

Yeah, very heroic. Like, yeah. Always there with John helping out really good in battles. Yeah, and John just kept leaving him places and not giving a shit about him too.

Yeah. All right. I like that. I guess. I don't know if I agree with that. John, John's a good dog owner in my... I don't know. He kept, he left him so many times and just, like, gave him away at one point, too, at the end.

He's not. Yeah. All right. My next question, next category. He had a dragon at that point. Yeah, but he's got to, I would rather have a dog. No, I wouldn't. Well, yeah, I, now, right now I would.

But ask me in a few months. For dragon stares at you in the eyes? Yeah. I don't think you feel oxytocin. I think you feel a lot of cortisol. The one in Trek does. Yeah. That's a sexy dragon.

All right. My next question is, what animal would you want to domesticate next? I think we've been asked this by listeners before, but right now, your current answer, if you could domesticate any animal, so it's not trained, it's domesticated. Like lots of people around the world have these animals, and we've had them for a long time. What animal would it be? I'm going to go with pandas. it's a good pick

why I mean we'd get them smaller we'd maybe get like they are one of the smallest bears too I don't know I just think they like you can just give them bamboo that's not too hard

for them to eat it's just fun I could watch a panda all day long yeah I like that I like sure I kind of was thinking along similar lines with pangolins I just think they're like similar lines just in

how the name of them sounds kind of, well, a little bit that, but just like that they need our help. Like, they're kind of, like, in critical conservation status. They're super cute. I wouldn't want to remove, like, a wild predator from, I don't know, I just, I think that's cool to keep, like, those. Let's just say there's no, there's no, like, moral implications to this. No downside, no ethical quandries. Great. Yeah. I think, a penguin, they'd be easy to take care of. You wouldn't have to do much to provide for them. Penguin? Like you said penguin there. Peng, oh, did I? Oh, man. That's true. I know, what a freaking, we should restart the whole episode. I just know coming back from that.

I need to cry again. Yeah. I'm going to change mine at the end because I thought I've a better one. But was it Red Panda? Is that what your better one is? But I do think that's a great choice. Because that's my pick. I think, like my knee-

You vote raccoons, and those are similar, but kind of cool. Raccoon is like right up there for me too. But like I think red pandas, you know, same family. I think they're cuter. My knee jerk was to go with something big like a grizzly bear or something, but I just feel like the space it would take and the effort to feed them and everything, it would just be too expensive. So for me, I think a red panda is the right size and they're really cute and fun.

So that's what I'm picking. I'm changing mind to whale sharks. Okay. Just ride on them to go. Like, instead of paddleboarding, you just, like, jump on your whale shark. Sure. It just takes you wherever you want to go. You have a little date on top of it.

I like that one if you're, like, Aquaman or something. Or live in Venice. I'll just live on the beach, you know. Your whale shark's can get pretty lonely, though. Well, I mean, he doesn't need just, I'll have, like, a whistle. Okay. That doesn't help him be less lonely. He can be out in the ocean until I whistle.

Yeah, but if it's domesticated, where is no new social group? Like, that's how he gets interaction is from you. I got to live in the water. Yeah. Right. Yeah. All right. Jeff, you got an animal fact for us?

Yeah. So in places that get cold, turtles and, like, ponds and stuff, they bury themselves as deep as they can in the mud and just kind of go inactive for those coldest months. Yeah. You don't say. Brumation. Brumation is reptile hibernation essentially And that's what turtles do

You don't say, Jeff It's my animal fact That's it Let's move on All right Our next category Is going to be dog cage match So I personally

This is a weird one It is a weird one Michael Vic went to jail for this Yeah We're not going to be having them fight other dogs They're fighting other animals And I think we're just going to pick Like the toughest dog

So in my mind, that's like a pit bull. I don't think there's any dog that's really much scarier than them. These Belgian Melanua are pretty like up there too. But it lost to a mountain line. So I think a pit bull would probably lose to a mountain lion too. So I think the animals... Beats are like coyote. Nile monitor.

Some of our snakes. What do you think it... What do you think is like the of the big cats, the most impressive big cat it takes? I think a pit bull could probably kill a cheetah. You think? I might. I think it's a good fight.

I think it's a good fight. But I think anything bigger, a mountain lion and bigger is killing it. So mountain lion, leopard, all of those. Snow leopard? Yeah, I don't know. We haven't talked about them yet. They're not in our group yet. I do think I'm going to go through our animals we've talked about and make weight categories.

And that'll make this a little bit easier to do. We've been putting that off for a while. while. But yeah, I think coyote is the one that's the most obvious one that it defeats right below it. And the most obvious one that beats it right above it is Mountain Lion. Okay. All right. What do you think about like a wart hog? Leopards kill warthogs pretty easily. I mean, there's a fight, but like they kill them. I think a pit bull kills a warthog. Warthog might be a pretty good fight for it. That actually I think is a really good one. I don't know who I would pick in this.

that. Maybe the warhawk. Maybe. Warhogs get quite a bit bigger, too. Right. Okay. I want to know in Africa, in our most recent trip, what were your guys' top three favorite animals that we saw? I think we all have a top one that's the same.

Top one? I don't know if it's your top one, West, but Cheetah's me and Mike's. Yeah, easily. I think mine was a secretary bird. My secretary bird was number two for me. Had that been my... I loved that thing. Had that been my first Cheats...

I think I for sure would have picked cheetah. But that was my first secretary bird and I think is the one I got the most stoked about. So I think I'm picking the secretary bird. When we, we saw like a cheetah with three cubs first and it was just like all you could see it's was its head and every once in a while one of the cubs or something would get up. They weren't like the tiny cubs. Yeah, like adult cubs. Peak cuteness.

Yeah, adult cubs. So then, I don't know, we saw cheetahs and it wasn't like the best view of them. But, like, me and Mike were already, like, this is the coolest animal we saw. And then after that, we saw a cheetah, like, chase a herd of, what do you call? What were they called? Topies. And zebra together. Yeah.

Which is, like, a pretty big animal, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it gave it, it gave me the old college try. It really went for it. Yeah. Yeah. That was my favorite, like, interaction we saw.

Like, my favorite thing we saw happen was the cheetah chased those. But my favorite animal, I think, was the secretary bird. Yeah. Number two. for me would maybe be the elephants we saw at the river just seeing like close African elephants and like we saw one really small elephant that was flapping its ears really hard to cool itself off and I just loved it and then number three I'm going with our little hippo boat ride okay the hippos I just like seeing all those little heads poking out of water yeah flicking their ears

around Mike what are you so cheetah's number one what are two and three for you cheat a number one by a country mile. Number two is secretary bird. I just thought it was such a cool, just the way it kind of stalked around and surveyed the ground was like so interesting. The feathers and stuff too are just amazing. They have like the cool like almost a headdress kind of plumage

coming out of their head. Just a really beautiful bird. And then number three I never got tired of seeing giraffes. They were, they kind of command a certain reverence and respect almost. Every time we kind of came near one, we slowed down, got a little quiet. Yeah. And there's just something so unique. There's slow like movements, like how graceful

they move their legs and stuff. They're just amazing. Yeah. They are. Yeah. We saw quite a number of them. And every time there was one even just like miles off near the horizon line, if I could see a neck, I was locked in on it for as long as I could be. I think they're the coolest like singular animal at a big distance to watch. Yeah. We had a cool moment too where we like hiked in on some and where they were all surrounding us and we were like really close to him. My number one was the secretary bird. Cheetah was a close second. And for me like a repeat animal, that's a big deal for it to be number two because that

was really cool. Like don't get me wrong. I loved the cheetah and it was really cool. I took the by far the most photos I took of any animal on this trip were of that cheetah. Number three were the lions because I had seen lions like at a distance in South Africa, but it was like not a great sighting. and having a small pride of lions walk right next to our vehicles and there's just something about them.

They're just such a cool cat. So that was number three for me. Yeah. Turns out Africa has some cool animals. Yeah, they sure do. I don't know if you guys knew that, but there's some cool animals over there. Wes, you want to get jealous?

Yeah. A lady on like the plane that, or like when me and Mike had to reroute and we went to Tanzania. Yeah. This lady I was talking to said she went into the Masai Mara and saw Black Mamba. Oh, man. Like that would have been an easy number one for me for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. That's so cool. All right. Quickly, I want to know your guys' favorite breed or type of dog. German Shepherd for me. We had one ever since I have memories of being a human, which my whole life I've thought I've had memories of being human. I just love them.

I love their floppy ears until they grow up and then their ears are not floppy anymore, but still cool. I know there's some weird hip issues going on with the breed, but can't help it. I love them. Love them to death. Jeff?

I don't know if I really have a favorite dog. That's fine. Yeah. Maybe I'd say beagle. I don't know. Bryce was like a black and tan. We think she was probably part kelpie, but I really like black and tan.

tan dogs that have the little, you call them pumpkin seeds. They almost look like little eyebrows. I just think they made her so expressive and cute. So I just like mixed breeds. I like a mutt. Those are always my favorite. But if they can have those little pumpkin seeds, then I sure melt for them.

And we'll probably end up with another dog that has that. All right, let's do some listener questions. I've got some from Patreon. How do you feel about cloning a dog that you just love? Sometimes I wish. it make it again. We would have tried and done it with Bryce, but... Really?

I don't know. It's really expensive, and we're going to get into how I feel about it in a second, but it is really hard not to feel like I would love to bring her back. Yeah. There's another dog out there that you'll be able to love a lot, though. Okay, this one's from Bella. Bella says, I was wondering if you could travel back in time to any time period to see any extinct animal in the wild, where would you travel to and why?

I think we probably all have the same answer for that, right? If it's not a T-Rex, then... Or any kind of dinosaur, really. That's the thing for me. I'm seeing a T-Rex. Let's just say no dynos then. Okay, no dinosaurs. Dinos.

I want to see a saber-tooth tiger. Yeah, that's my next one too. That's up there for me. I might say the giant sloth that is like as big as an elephant. Oh, yeah. Okay. This one's from Alex. Alex says, how many owls would you have to see in a single day

to think something was wrong? 12. That's a good question. I think for me it would have to, it would have to be like 15 owls. Well, since the owl has... At 14 owls, though, you're going to be like, this is fine still.

I mean, it's, yeah, there's some wiggle room on either side of that. But, yeah, there's not, like, there's no line of demarcation. But for me, since I try to avoid going outside and that's where most of the owls are, if I see one, I knew something went wrong with my day. Okay.

Yeah. So one owl's all you need. All right, this one's from Taylor. Taylor says, favorite character in the Sopranos. It's Tony. It's the boring answer. Yeah, it is for me. Without a doubt, it's Tony.

I think mine's Sylvia. Okay. Tony's definitely the hottest, too. Huh? Tony's definitely the hottest character in the Sopranos. Sylvia, huh? Yeah. He's the one from Bruce Springsteen's band, right?

I don't know. Him or Polly? love Polly. Polly's really funny. On my rewatch, I felt much more conflicted about how I felt about Polly, though. Sylvia's like the, yeah, the main, like the second in command, I feel like. Yeah, he was in the East Street band with Bruce Springsteen. All right, this one's from Lauren. Lauren says, I was listening to Mike's Humper episode, and I was just wondering what each of your favorite Beastie Boys song is. Mine is Girls. No, I'm going to go what you want. That's the song that kind of turned me onto hip hop as a whole and it's just infectious, groovy, catchy.

Mine's generic, but sabotage. I just love that song. Mine is a sure shot. Yeah, from ill communication. Good lyrical content. I love it. Rest in peace, MC8. Yeah. Okay. Jeff, do you have any listener questions from us from Instagram? I sure enough do. Oh, yeah, dude. Tatuni iso. I'm going to change their question at a time, bit for my answer, but you guys can answer how they asked if you want. Tatooine or tattooing? Tattoine? Tattoine is, oh, sure. If you guys could have eyes like in the animal kingdom, which color form would you choose?

So like in animal's eyes, I'm just going to answer what eyes in the animal kingdom I think are the coolest. I don't think I would want an animal size. I mean, to me it's big cats. and of the big cats, like, to me, I think lions have the coolest eyes. Just like the really, really light hazel eyes.

They are pretty, yeah. Okay. Mike, what's your answer? I'm going to go with chameleon. I think that'd be really practical. Yeah, that'd be good point guard with peripheral vision. It'd be like Steve Nash.

You'd be great at basketball if you had a comedian eyes. I'm going to go with like a crocodile's eyes. I think crocodiles have really cool like the green eyes with the slit. I just think they're really neat. So I'm going to pick that

even though I'd look kind of evil. I'd look really evil. Do you know who'd be really well served by chameleon eyes as Gandalf? Because remember the promise he makes, he'll keep one eye on Frodo. Yeah. Both eyes, whenever possible or whatever.

But if he could only afford to keep one eye, he could use the other eye and look at like other things. You wouldn't have to just be looking at Frodo the whole time. Yeah, I mean, he might have the capability to give himself chameleon eyes. Yeah, that's true. Can he do that? I like crocodile eyes too because then I'd have a nictitating membrane and I could have like built-in goggles.

Yeah, I like that. I like my answer. Gandalfi, I'll find me some crocodiles. Sure. Linley Parsons, what's your most hated chore? Ooh, that's a good question. Folding laundry. It's a good pay.

Yeah, it's the worst. It's kind of like... You have to do it so much. So much. And you already kind of feel like you did the laundry, but all you did was the easy part. There's the worst part still to come. And like the dryer cycle never quite lines up with your schedule. So like you always leave them in there maybe while you're out running errands and they're a little wrinkly.

I think where I'm at just because of location. it's vacuuming because I have my vacuum in this like area where it's really like saves me space to have it in this one little closet thing but then it's like really hard for me to get in the closet and then just even getting the vacuum out turns into a chore and then yeah I think for me it's probably dishes I always like splash myself and get wet and I feel like my hands feel clammy for a while afterwards I just just don't, I just really don't like doing dishes. Yeah, I feel like dishes too. Like, dishwashers really don't help that much. Like, does anyone just stick dirty dishes without

cleaning them in dishwashers? Yeah. Yeah. You have to get on like a rinse first. We rinse them, but we don't have to like scrub them and we just put them in. It's a lot faster with our dishwasher than washing them by hand. So what do you hate about it then if you just need to stick them in there? I still hate it. I still get wet and I still just don't like doing it. And then there's always some that I have to do, by hand. You just hate getting wet. Yeah. Like, because it's like, you like water slides?

It's the only chore. It's the only like normal chore where I have to like then go like change my shirt afterwards too because I've splashed dish water all over it. Like. Oh, okay. Just rinsing them off? Yeah. And then also I'm not just rinsing.

Like most of our dishes can go in. You just like haven't learned how to do spoons yet. But like pans. It bounces off the bowl of the spoon. Pans and stuff like you need. You need. to like scrub by hand. And let me just, I'm going to do a big disclaimer here

because I'll get in trouble if I don't. Jesse does a lot of our dishes. Like 95% of the time Jesse's doing our dishes. And I do plenty of the other chores around. But like we're very different in that I don't mind kind of letting dishes build up a little bit before I do them. And she needs them to be done. And so she's realized that that's kind of her,

her like thing. So she'll do one. That's me. Because she'd rather. the move just to like instead of putting it in the sink put it in the dishwasher yeah and i usually do i almost always just put my dishes in the dishwasher but when they do pile up after like a big dinner or something i don't like doing them but i will if jesse asked me too oh yeah i that's true if you like cook dinner and you try to like do more than just like one item somehow it's like impossible

not to have like 30 dishes that you got to wash i'm not talking about like a cereal bowl here or like a glass I just drank some water out of. I mean like a sink full of dishes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, I get you. I just want to pry a little bit. Yeah. Investigate. I think we're good. That one, you know, we talked about that a while. All right. So for our conservation on this one, I mean, I want to get into something that I've become very passionate about recently and that I feel even more passionate about now. And that is a dog. And that is a dog adopting dogs rather than buying dogs. And like learning about this history of domestication and everything makes it even that

much more important to me because we essentially created this animal by bringing them into our societies. And we have made, we have created an animal that depends on us for its mere existence. Like dogs need us and in some ways we need dogs. And I think it's uniquely cruel that we have. all of these dogs that don't have homes that don't get to have that socialization anymore and they have to sit in these shelters when people are going out and like buying new breeds and paying exorbitant amounts of money for dogs that have been bred.

So I really, if you are considering a dog, I really just want you to like, before you get one, especially if you're thinking about buying one that's from a breeder, look at like shelters and look at those eyes of the, those dogs and really strongly consider getting one from a shelter. I know that we all have like our own battles that we fight and I'm not going to say this needs to be everyone's battle, but it has become one of mine and I do, I'm not going to judge people that don't do this, but I do really think you should strongly consider it because those dogs need homes, they need homes and they're sad and like they need owners. That's what makes them happy. So I'm a big proponent of adoption. Yeah,

us too and when we get another dog it'll for sure be a rescue dog without a doubt Bob Barker did a lot of bad things but at least he's looking out for dogs yeah yeah

yeah and you know I do think there's some exemptions to that like if you need a specific dog for a specific job then it kind of makes sense to get a certain breed but like even if you're into German shepherds or huskies

or whatever there are rescues out there that only have German shepherds or only have huskies You can find the dog you want at a rescue. You can find puppies at rescues. You can find them out there. And if everyone wants to get those dogs, then it's going to kill this industry of breeding puppies for profit.

So I'm a big proponent of that I know Bryce was a rescue, and she changed my life. So I just want to end on two quotes that I found that I thought were really beautiful. This one's from Josh Billings, who was like a comic or something in the 1800s. I don't know. He said, a dog is the only thing. Yeah, I should have looked into who this guy was. A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself, which is very true. This one's from Milan, Kundera. They said, dogs are linked to paradise. They don't know evil or

jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden. Where doing nothing was not boring, it was peace. I definitely echoed that. And I definitely miss my dog. We miss her too. All right. Well, thanks guys for listening. Everyone with the dog, give your dog a little pack and scratch for West right now. All right.

If you are interested, yeah, sure, from Jeff too and Mike. If you're interested in more content, we have our Patreon and our Apple Gris Club. Jeff just did a fun episode about animals that the alien movies were inspired. by that we recorded while we were in Africa and I feel like it's a very loose episode but it came together well yeah yeah I enjoyed it yeah Mike what was your most recent one I really liked it too oh the dangers of the wildlife in Europe in Europe yeah very low danger is in quotation marks so for 10 bucks a month you'll get access to those plus our entire catalog of bonus episodes we produce two of those a month that really fun

We really enjoy doing them. So check us out on Patreon. Just go to Patreon and Google Tooth and Claw or just Google Tooth and Claw Patreon and sign out. Yeah. It's fun. It's fun, the community. If you are a subscriber already,

message us for Discord access if you're not on there. And, you know, $10 a month, we think it's worth it to people. Like, people seem to think it's worth it. But, like, some people just can't afford that. And don't make us tell you the loopholes, but just figure it out, you know? Yeah. Okay.

Well, thanks, guys. Thanks for listening to this episode. Thanks for letting me get a little emotional about my dog. And we will talk to y'all later. We love you. All right. Love you, guys. Love you, Bryce up there.

Yeah. Love you, Bryce. See ya. Bye.