Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - Josh Was a Dolphin Trainer

Episode Date: March 18, 2023

From gaming hosts Paul, Michael and Josh, we're bringing you even more gaming content each week. Gaming Quick Takes are a short series of game recommendations, funny moments, off-topic chat and more. A small dose of gaming to brighten your Saturdays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online, and sign-up only takes a few minutes.

Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon.

But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and we'll be releasing these Quick takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public. And these quick takes are a little more laid back and they're hosted by just one of us. So sit back, relax and enjoy this quick take episode. Shazam! Boom! Hey, everybody, it's Josh, and I'm back with another bonus episode. I am actually not going to call this one a Gaming Quick Takes because I'm not going to

chat gaming at all on this one. Sometimes it's nice to get away from the gaming stuff for just a little bit and just talk about life or us or some of our background and stuff like that. It's always good to get to know everybody a little bit better. It's one reason we tout our discord server so much. It's not that, you know, we get any kind of benefit from the server with the exception of getting to know our listeners in our community. And man, that is an amazing benefit in that regard. So there's a reason we hype that up. But every now and then, it's nice to take one of these bonus episodes and just talk about something a little bit different as well. So in this one, forgive me how this is going to sound,

but I'm actually going to talk about myself a little bit because I have some pretty cool background that I find to be kind of neat. And I want you guys to know a little bit more about me since you listen to myself and Paul all the time. And so what I'm going to do on this episode is I'm going to tell you a little bit about some of the really cool jobs that I have had over the years. I've led a fairly interesting life. I've moved around a good bit. Hey, Josh, how did you wind up as a podcaster? I wish I could do this full time, but I can't. At least not yet. But you know what? If this growth and support continues, hey, maybe one day. Okay. So I bet some of you knew this. Some of you may have not known, but my first job when I graduated college

was actually as a dolphin trainer. Now, I know what you're saying. Wait, did you say that right? Yes, I was a dolphin trainer. I got paid to train dolphins and swim with dolphins every day. Now, how did I get this job? How does one go about becoming a dolphin trainer? Well, I went to school or college for biology. I got myself a biology degree. I initially wanted to use that to become a veterinarian. I worked many, many years at a veterinarian. I worked back assisting the vets and back in the kennel area, just taking care of animals

and helping out the vets and stuff like that. I have an absolute love of animals, which is a passion of mine. So I kind of thought, hey, maybe I'll use that as a career path. As I went to college and all that, I realized, hey, you know what? I don't like being stuck inside all day. And a lot of veterinarians are just stuck in the little room with people bringing animals in. And so I went, eh, maybe that's not quite what I want to do, but I still want to work with animals. And then I thought, how can I do that? Well, I absolutely love the ocean. I love water.

Dolphins have always been one of my favorite creatures in the whole world, along with whales and stuff like that. I remember talking to my wife about it. At the time, I was very close to graduation. I was waiting tables and bartending to pay the rent and the bills and stuff like that. I remember coming home one day and my wife was very excited. She said, I found this really cool job for you. I said, okay, cool.

What is it? She says, it's a dolphin trainer down in Florida. And I remember going like, yeah, right. Like I'll ever get that job. And she just kind of laughed and she said, well, I put in an application for you just to see if anything happens. Well, lo and behold, the very next day, I get a phone call. And it is this place that my wife applied to for me saying,

Hey, we just wanted to chat with you a little bit. I had this two-hour phone call with the owner down there. And it went very, very well. And he said, Look, we'd love to interview you in person. We'd love to interview you in person. We'd love to have you come meet the dolphins. If they don't like you, then even if we like you, it doesn't matter. Because if the dolphins don't like you, then there's really not much point in you having this job. So we drove for 24 hours straight from Louisiana down to Key Largo.

I remember it was the worst drive of my entire life because we did not get a hotel room. I was absolutely and utterly exhausted beyond belief. A 24-hour straight drive. We pulled over for about 30 minutes to try to sleep in some parking lot somewhere, but I can't sleep in a car either. It was terrible. But we made it to Key Largo. I show up for my interview. They're just the coolest people in the world. Some of the coolest people that I've ever met. I remember talking to them and then they said, Hey, it's time. You need to meet the dolphins. I remember being absolutely terrified, not of the dolphins themselves because I thought that was really cool. But what if the dolphins didn't like me? That was my big fear at that point. So I remember getting into the water with these dolphins. It was

absolutely incredible. I just had a snorkel and some fins on. I was all by myself with these dolphins. It was absolutely incredible. I just had a snorkel and some fins on. I was all by myself with these guys. They're swimming next to me. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. I remember them swimming alongside me. I absolutely exhausted myself because I thought I needed to swim around as fast as I possibly could for 30 minutes straight. I could barely climb out of the lagoon that they were in. But it went really well. And they offered me the job. We moved down there. I have one of the craziest stories you'll ever hear somebody tell. That's a story for another time.

But this lady that rented an apartment to us tricked us. She almost kidnapped my wife. We had to call the cops. It was really, really crazy. Again, I'll tell that story another time. But it wasn't the easiest move. Let's just put it that way. But I got this job as a dolphin trainer. And my job was to basically get to know the dolphins that I was assigned to. My main dolphin was Jeannie. She

was the matriarch of the bunch. I still love her to this day, even though it's been probably 20 plus years since I've been around them. But yeah, my job was to literally keep them entertained, to train them, new behaviors and stuff like that. In between people from the public getting to see them and meet them, our job was to just to entertain the dolphins. So we would get in there as the trainers. There was about five or six of us and we would just swim. We would dive down to the bottom. I have literally pretended to be Superman underwater and had a dolphin pushing me by my feet through the water super duper fast. I have held on to their dorsal fins while they pull us around. It's absolutely mind blowing. It's incredible. It's an experience that I am

insanely grateful for. Why did I leave, right? Hey, Josh, if you were a dolphin trainer, is that amazing? Why did you ever quit such a cool job? I'll say this, you don't have to pay people very much when their job is to swim with dolphins every day. This is a long time ago, but I was making about $16,000 a year, which is not much. Living in Key Largo, Florida, which is extremely expensive to live in, we were beyond poverty level. I'm still grateful to my wife to this day for that opportunity. But man, it was very difficult for us to live, to afford groceries and stuff like that. So ultimately, I had to say, hey, look, this has been a lot of fun, but I have a family to

think about and we just can't survive this way. So we did wind up leaving. After that, I found a job, another job in marine biology where I was what's called a fisheries observer. So I would go out on commercial fishing boats and I would basically record data on what the fishermen caught. Sounds really neat, right? It was kind of cool. It was biology. I was determined to use my degree. The downside to that job was, is that because this was mandated by the government, fishermen could not say no to me going out with them. It would be akin to somebody coming to your house, knocking on your door and saying, hey, I'm so-and-so with the government. I'm going to live with you for the next three days. And you can't tell them no. So you have to just open up your door, let them in. and now you're feeding them.

They're sitting around watching everything you do for the next three days. It's pretty terrible. I mean, I admit it from a fisherman standpoint. It was about the worst thing that you could have happen. I get it from a fishery standpoint. We need to make sure that we're protecting the oceans and how much fishing is going on and all that. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it was easy for the fishermen to deal with either. That job was very interesting, but the days were very, very long. I mean, fishermen work like 18 hour days. There's really no rest. It's just you're either fishing or you're

sleeping and that is it. And because I was recording the date on what they caught, if they were working, I was working. It was absolutely brutal. I also found out that I get seasick very easily and that I stay seasick for a couple of days. So there was lots of nausea and vomiting and stuff like that occurring. I know it sounds like a terrible job. There were moments where it was, but then there were also some very cool just moments where maybe we'd be steaming to another location and I could just get a few hours to lay on the bow of the boat and read a book or watch as whales were coming up. I mean, we were absolutely days away from land. And being out on the ocean like that, away from just civilization, you're the only people for hundreds and hundreds of miles. It's hard to explain that to people, but it's really,

really cool at the same time. And there is absolutely no experience like being out in the deep ocean for a week and then coming home and seeing land and the lights of the harbor. It's an experience that I really can't explain. It's a feeling that I can't really explain, but it was just absolutely incredible to do that as well. I would never go back to that job. It was absolutely backbreaking work. But I'm glad for that experience as well. So all right, I could talk about this forever. But those are two kind of really cool things I wanted to share with all of you about myself. I'm happy to chat more about it. Maybe I'll tell you the crazy story someday. But if you want to know more,

like I said, hit up our Discord server. I am more than happy to chat about that stuff as well. But that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If I bored you, sorry. But again, I just wanted to share a little bit more about myself and some of my background there as well, because I think it's a good opportunity for you all to get to know us a little bit better and share some of those experiences. So hope you enjoyed. Thank you for the support. I am out. I'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye, everybody.