Latest / Every Pawprint! Every Story! / From Obedience Trials To Film Sets With A Golden Retriever Pack

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From Obedience Trials To Film Sets With A Golden Retriever Pack · Every Pawprint! Every Story!

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Every Paw Print, Every Story.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I am your host, Dan Popovic.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: And for those of you new listeners to this show, just to share a little tidbit about what this show is about.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a weekly conversation space where people honor pets they've lost, celebrate the joy pet spring, and support one another through pet grief.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Each episode centers on a guest memories, the ritual that keeps those pets present in daily life, and the lessons of love and loss that pets teach us.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: The goal with this podcast is truly to inspire, guide, and support each other.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm super excited today to have a very special guest to the show, Tina Frosto.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Tina, welcome to the show.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hi Dan.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, thanks.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for being involved in this.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, thanks for being a part of the show.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: And gosh, yeah, let's jump into it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just for the listeners of the show, we Tina and I were catching up a little bit, and she gave me a sneak peek.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's a lot to talk about here.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm trying to figure out what first question to ask you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we'll start with because I know one of the things that I mentioned earlier is that I thought there was a mention of like 15 pets throughout the life, but you you mentioned you had a total of eight pets all at one time.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe let's start there.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about these eight pets and yeah, how did how did how did they all become a part of the family?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: How did that how did that start?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: How in the world does anybody grow to eight pets, right?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um they talk about the crazy cat lady.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I'm the crazy dog lady.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I've always had uh dogs in my life, even growing up.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: We had dogs, and then my husband is also a dog lover.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when we first met, we had one, we had a black lab.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then a friend of ours had a um Chesapeake Bay retriever that they were no longer able to keep in their house, and they were taking her to work and she was staying in a hot car and all the things.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so we offered to see if she got along with our lab and that we would keep her.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so then we ended up with our second dog.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then friends of ours who are both vets are breeders of golden retrievers, and they were like, Oh, we just had this litter of puppies, they're wonderful, you need to come see them.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, absolutely not, because I will come home with one.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And my husband's like, Well, you know, I want a dog that's mine.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: You have Thunder, which was our black lab.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I want my own dog.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So he went and looked at the puppies and he ended up with one who was his name was Cisco.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we decided that we wanted to get into training dogs, just you know, with three and labs and golden retrievers, they can be pretty energetic and they can be, you know, pretty um sometimes rowdy around the house.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we started going to obedience classes, and I found that I really loved it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love the process of teaching a dog something, learning how to break it down into pieces where they could understand it, and then building it up into something that they can do.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then that got me into competing in obedience.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you find when you start competing that your dogs hit their peak between the ages of four, five, six.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, really good trainers can start much earlier and showing it too.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then you find that if you want to keep competing, when your dog is starting at four, five, then you get your puppy so that you can start to train and bring them up.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is kind of a long way of saying, well, then three dogs turned into four, four turned into five.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then we had our son and daughter, and they both enjoyed it and they wanted to start showing, so then they got their own golden retrievers.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So then they only wake up one day and you've got eight dogs at your house.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: But luckily, we lived on five acres.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: We had a full run um over an acre that was fenced in just for them.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: I had a full set of agility equipment, we had an indoor grooming facility, I had my indoor kennels.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: My dogs never stayed outside by themselves.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the only reason why we had kennels inside is because I had intact males.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, that's how you wake up one day and realize that you have eight dogs.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, obviously, they all got along.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: No issues there.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Nope, no issues.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I know everyone said you can't keep multiple intact dogs because they'll fight.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we didn't have a problem with it.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the things that um some people don't realize, right, is that when you bring a puppy home, when you have eight dogs, by the way, you can watch true pack behavior within your own pack and you start to see some of those patterns.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you bring a new dog home, when it's a puppy, it's easy because you can put the puppy in the pack.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let them make the mistake and let the pack correct them because they will put them in their own order.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you try to prevent that from happening, then you end up with multiple dogs that think that they might be higher in the pack than they are.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's when you start to experience challenges and some dog fights and that type of thing.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Other thing that's super important, and you know this because you have more than one dog, too.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be the alpha.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And every pack has an alpha dog and an alpha bitch, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Female and the males.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you I had to be the alpha bitch, quote unquote.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and all the dogs, and I had all dogs, by the way, not any females.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: All the dogs had to know that I was alpha.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're trying to, I'm just trying to think about like I was sharing with you earlier with Car uh with Carly and Hazel, the issues there, and there I'm sure there's an element of that there.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's amazing.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, eight.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'll definitely come back to some of the training stuff because I'm kind of curious, but I always love I always love the question that I always ask about the naming convention.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned Thunder and Cisco.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: What was the how did these names come to be?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, I'm not a very creative person, so let's put that out on the table right away.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it depends.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our dogs, the ones uh that are not rescues that we competed with in AKC, they have to be AKC registered dogs.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So they're coming from a breeder.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of breeders actually have a theme to their litters.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So Thunder did not.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: He was just Majestic Mountain Thunder, and we called him Thunder.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, soda we adopted, she was our rescue.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: She came already named.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Cisco, again, not very creative.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my husband and I were both in technology at the time.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Cisco, back at the time, Cisco Systems, was very popular.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like Cisco.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So he um most breeders do require that you put their kennel name first.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it was his kennel name, which was charisma.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So he's charisma's golden icon, and we call him Cisco.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: His register name didn't relate to his call name at all.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've had a whiskey, and he was starfired bottoms up because the theme of the litter was up.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, what do you do with up?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think you know Jennifer right.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Jennifer and I were working together at Verizon Wireless at the time.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I don't know what the like, what name can I use with up?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I all I could think of was all dressed up and call them like Tuxedo or Tux.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Jennifer's like, no, bottoms up.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well, what am I gonna call them?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And she said whiskey.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And there you go.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was whiskey's name.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then I had a whiskey son, and uh, so he was um, I think it was a drive litter.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we called him Starfire's Driving Me to Drink.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, that was Buzz.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we got Driving Me to Drink, and his name was Buzz, and then his son was Maker's Mark, Designer's Maker's Mark, or something like that.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we called him Makers.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a little bit of a theme going on there uh for a little bit, but it was all based on the theme of the litter and us trying to come up with something that fit the theme of the litter.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's amazing.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't heard that before because yeah, Marley, Marley we got from a breeder in I guess I'll have to ask Sherry.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they had a theme.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, we just named her Marley after um really the movie Marley and me.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that movie, by the way.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: She reminded me a lot of that that fur kid always getting into trouble.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, no, that's really good.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's funny.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: The Cisco, that's where my mind went was uh the Cisco networking gear.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I I'm curious with A.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of fascinating.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Was there gosh, was there like any any favorites, or did you see a couple of them always want to be with you, a couple of them want to be with your husband, or was it just kind of a mutual okay?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, um they truly pick their human.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some of it has to do with um when you're training right for competitive showing, um, you spend a lot of time training, which we did as a family.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like I mentioned, my kids got into it too, especially the field work.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: They loved it.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Who doesn't love water, ducks, guns, dogs, the whole nine yards, right?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit of mud.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, guns in a very safe way, by the way.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: These are hunting guns.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I lost where I was going with that, Dan.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: It will come back around to me.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, humans.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when you spend so much time training with them, and we do all play training, we do all positive reinforcement.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of fun, it's a lot of games, it's a lot of being with the dogs, it's a lot of one-on-one time, you find that they will start to really kind of migrate to you.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even with the puppies, like they'll both of them will go to my husband, of course, and my little girl, um, she'll spend a lot of time with him.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if he's sitting on the house, she wants to sit with him just as much.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: But if we get ready to go do something, she's right to me.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that just comes from that extra time that we spend with them.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but in general, they tend to um they tend to pick their humans, I think.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, interesting.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's fascinating with eight.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then um, any kind of like fun quirks that just made you laugh that they collectively did or independently did differently?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um oh my gosh, we had a couple.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of my husband's labs, his name was Ringo.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had when we were on the that five acres and we had the acre fenced in for the dogs, we had put a rope swing up for our kids when they were younger, and it was inside the fenced-in area.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Ringo decided that the rope swing was really a lab swing.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he would go out and he would grab that rope swing and literally just swing around.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Especially in the fall, my husband would blow all the leaves up into a huge pile and he'd get on that rope swing and swing, and then, you know, he'd play in the leaves just like one of the kids would.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um Let's see, Maker, um, he was a funny dog.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: He was probably my the biggest class clown that I had out of all of my dogs.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: When I'd get home from work in the afternoon, he used to talk to me.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: He used to tell me about his whole day, and he, I swear he was telling on all the dogs and what they did wrong and all of the things.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of our golden retrievers, his name was Carson.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: My husband likes to eat like just little tortilla chips at night or whatever.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the dogs think that that's the biggest thing since sliced bread.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: They get literally a crumb, Dan, because we don't give them a lot of people food, right?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: But they get a little crumb, they get so excited.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: But this one golden would just spin in circles, so excited.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that he didn't even have to get the bag out yet.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: If he stood up to go to the pantry to get it, he'd be like, just spinning in circles.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we find that each one of them would have something that made their personality so unique and so fun.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but those were some of the ones that come to mind or top of mind, I should say.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: See, yeah, no, thanks, Rashia.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: I love that because that's almost one of those things where it's like, man, if you're having a bad day or just nasty drive home and traffic, you think about that, and how could that not make a make you laugh or smile?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you one more fun story about that.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: So um, my husband had his own consulting business for a while.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so he worked out of the house, and I was going into the office and coming home, and I would always call him on my way home.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he was, you know, getting dinner ready and he put me on speakerphone and the dogs heard my voice.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he sent me a picture.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is back when we had, I think we had seven at the time.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: All of them are lined up in front of the door to the garage because they heard my voice on his phone.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: See, and that when you have a bad day and you walk into that, it's like, you're right.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Who who wouldn't smile?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Who wouldn't just be reminded that what was at work was work.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: This the wagging tails, they smile, you know, dogs do smile.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it makes all that go away, doesn't it?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's yeah, oh, that's awesome.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: What's on the other side of that that door when you come home?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um so how long did you do the training?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: I started I started training in general, probably around 92 or three.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So don't, don't, I'm no, I'm getting up there.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um I started I started competitively training right after we moved to the Atlanta area.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: So probably around 96.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'd gotten my first golden, I trained my lab, we did some obedience competitions.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: We we got a passing score, but we didn't, we weren't real competitive.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then when I moved down here, I had this breed golden, so we showed him in confirmation, but he was really smart.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was asking my vet, because we were new to the area, um, if he knew of any good training facilities.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, you know, I got lucky.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Again, Dan, everything happens for a reason.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank goodness.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I got lucky.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I've heard of this training facility.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's called Atlanta's Dogwood Obedience Group, a dog.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he said, I heard they're pretty competitive.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, I'll try it, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I went down and found the most incredible group of people.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and of course, dog owners, I'm biased toward anyway, but they were just an amazing group of people.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were all competitive in their training and showing.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them have amazing accomplishments, but I found I found my community, and it was such a great way to acclimate to the Atlanta area.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have friends to this day that we are just super good friends.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it truly was my mental release, you know, after work.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my again, husband and I were both in technology.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: We ran lots of things over the weekends and at nights, but I could go to dog training and that was my mental release.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I just let it go and focused on nothing but the dogs.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it was such a fun community and a fun atmosphere.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: There was no stress, et cetera.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got hooked.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so from 96 until probably just before COVID, it was very, very competitive.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved it so much that I became an instructor down there for them.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So for oh gosh, a good 12, 15 years, I was an instructor as well.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, still doing any of it or not really?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no, I now I just do it for fun, right?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because I do, I do think that if you're gonna have, you know, an 80, 85-pound male lab that's all muscle, and you know it because you have the Doberman's, um, that they probably need to have their manners, right?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we do some fun obedience like that, and we still do some fun field work um just with some duck decoys and all in the backyard.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But no, you know, we had a great run competitively.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had the RV, we traveled to a lot of shows with our our kids.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we did the obedience, we did um, you know, a little bit of field work and we did agility, got into agility, that was a lot of fun.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then um I was the president of the Atlanta Golden Retriever Club for a few years, and I got this phone call from an animal wrangler.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Dan, I can honestly tell you I didn't even know what an animal wrangler was when he called me.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't either, so I can't wait to know.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, animal wranglers are the people that the film industry uses to get the the um animal talent that they use on film work, like commercials, movies, um videos, you know, et cetera.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he called me and he said, We're casting a golden retriever.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And people told me that you have a golden retriever that knows hand signals.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is when I had whiskey.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm like, actually, I do.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so he said, Well, can you come over and let me meet them and all that?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I did.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Oh, you know, they don't want a breed dog.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: They the breed dogs tend to be pretty but not real smart.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then we started our hand signals because whiskey was nationally ranked in obedience.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: We fleck California, we're in Dog Fancy magazine, all those things.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when he saw what he could actually do, then he took us down to audition.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: That got us into film work.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: So then I started, I started having so much fun with the film work, not because it was film work, but film work crossed over my two paths because at work I did a lot of process re-engineering, I did a lot of execution excellence and all that.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you sit down there and you're on set and you're watching them um like just go from scene to scene and do all the filming and it's in different orders and all that kind of good stuff, it was like process improvement on steroids.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it was fascinating for me.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I started to get away from the competitive world and more into the film work world.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then after several years of that, Dan, I just got to the point where it was like, you know what?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm just gonna take a break and enjoy them as just pure pets.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where we are today.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's fine.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because you're wow, because you're doing all of this and holding down a full-time job at the same time, right?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying not to lose sight of that.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, man, that's inspirational.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a lot of energy.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then oh wow.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: But that's really cool.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: The the film and but so the hand, uh now you got me curious, though, with the the hand signal.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, what like what are some of the hand signals and and what are they doing?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm that's I'm really fascinated by that.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So in obedience, when you get to the highest level of competition, you're doing hand signals.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to do like a drop.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So this is usually down, and then there's a sit, and there's stand, um, and there's come.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and on set, that comes in handy because um normally if you're using voice commands, you have to do it in between the actors or the actress's sentences so they can dub it out.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: If your dog does hand signals and you can be doing all of that, they would just tuck me away in a corner and I could be doing the hand signals and I could be doing it while they were saying their lines.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't step on them at all, um, which is why they were so excited to have a dog that knew hand signals.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I'll have to pick your brain on that one uh a different another conversation because we got Marley to do um, I guess, a handshake.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: She would just kind of raise her paw up to do a handshake and Oh, we can't do that.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: We can't for the life of us, we're trying with Carly and just we can't get it to stick because that handshake was just to die for.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so these eight are obviously no longer with us.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: We've got some new fur kids part of the family now, right?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And you said three of them.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I just lost one.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: We had four up until uh just about two.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's been about two and a half weeks now.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Man, um natural causes.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Dan, you know, again, when you have so many, um you experience a lot of different things from a an illness perspective, and you lose some sudden and you lose some.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: We lost three in one year to cancer.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole other story.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but this guy, it was my daughter's golden, it was her show dog.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but she had gone on to college and now has a little service dog.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: So Carson went ahead and stayed with us.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And because he was part of our pack, we actually um were a little bit concerned to split him off to go with her by himself because she didn't have multiples.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I gotta tell you, when you have a pack, they're used to being in a pack, and so we worried about him get a little bit lonely.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, he stayed with us.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: But we noticed a couple years ago that his barker, you know, his bark wasn't a bark anymore.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was a little bit more of a whisper.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, we started to feel a growth coming in his throat, but he was already, shoot, 10 years old.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so we made the decision.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, you know what, we just lost three to cancer.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: We had two that were six, and we did put them full through the full treatments.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: At six, it was worth it, but at 10 or 11 for a golden retriever, it's just not, it's a lot.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is a lot.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I I respect anybody that does it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is worth it if you can get a good year out of them.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: We we didn't out of our two young guns.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we just opted not to do that to Carson, and we knew that the lump in his throat was getting worse.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, in fact, we had talked to my daughter before she left for spring break and said, Hey, you know, Carson is now 13.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we've been very fortunate the lump in his throat has gotten large.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it we're probably on our downhill side of this now.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, okay, mom, she said, hey, you know, he gets so worked up at the vet.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: When it is time, can I help and pay the extra money to have the vet come to the house instead of taking him to the vet?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yes, of course, we'll do that.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because he did get, he, out of all my dogs, for some reason, he really stressed at the vet.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, right after she left for spring break, he Had an episode and he was having a really hard time breathing.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we knew that it was whatever was in the throat was starting to, you know, compromise his ability to breathe.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: We had no choice but to take him to the vet to see if they could give him steroids or something.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, he got so worked up at the vet then that we just couldn't bring him back from it.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: She sedated him, she put him on pure oxygen.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the vet did everything she absolutely could.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had to FaceTime my daughter and say, honey, I'm so sorry, but he's not gonna make it until you get back.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I let her talk to him and he listened.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start crying.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he listened because he stopped the heavy panting and he's just listened to her for a minute.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, He's listening to you because he stopped panting.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so she said her goodbyes, and um, we just let him go.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get me crying too here in a minute.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was I didn't bring him up because of that, but you know, unfortunately, when you have so many, um that's what happens, right?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and that's yeah, and that's part of what this show is because it helps.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's uh yeah, that's that's tough.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like maybe that that listening or that silence was maybe it was like him giving her permission that, hey, yes, I'm hearing you one last time.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's comforting as hell.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I should I wish I had that with with Marley.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious, was this her first loss of a fur kid?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no, actually, we um we had a rescue.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: We always try to keep one in our pack, but anyway, um this little little mixed breed looked like a little bit like an Australian cattle dog that was not bred very well.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she was running around on our property.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw her and I kept watching.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think what happened, we had some work done on the prop on our uh five acres that we had.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if the workers saw that we had so many dogs and they didn't want her anymore, so they brought her and dumped her.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I was able to um get her, she's very skittish.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we tried to find the owner.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: We went to all the vets, we scanned her for a chip, we did all the things.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we posted, we went to tractor supply and posted because we thought maybe she was a farm dog, right?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: She seemed like she's probably a farm dog.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody claimed her, and my daughter got so attached to her, called her Princess.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, unfortunately, Princess did have some illness, and we were only, we only had her for about a year.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: So she experienced that loss before losing Carson.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And one loss was at about 13, and Carson was at the age of 21, and it wasn't any easier or any different.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: It never, when you when you have so many dogs coming through, like when you have eight at a time, you lose eight eventually.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I will say we've lost, clearly, we've lost over 10 dogs, and it never gets any easier, Dan.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Although I will say, um, there truly is a heart dog, and it's hard to explain.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know it because you had it, it sounds like you had it in Marley.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love all of my dogs.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: We love every one of them.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're spoiled rotten, as you can probably imagine.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Whiskey was my heart dog.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: There was just something extra special about him.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: We had a bond that was unbelievable.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um, kind of similar to what you experienced with Marley, he was absolutely fine.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we had all gone to Taekwondo.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: We were all in Taekwondo as a family, and we had come home, and some kids had come home with us, and we ordered pizzas.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I walked in the door, and Whiskey took my keys.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I have a little keychain, right?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that they can grab onto.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he always took my keys.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was that dog, right?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Always took my keys.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we put them outside so the kids could eat the pizza without the dogs in the house.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then I had to goom them because we were getting ready to film a Southwest airline commercial.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was when they did their merger.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: We were filming in the morning, and whiskey and all the dogs went outside.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I was gonna groom whiskey and um uh Buzz because Buzz was getting ready to take over for, I'm sorry, whiskey and maker, because Maker was getting ready to start doing more filming in place of whiskey because he was getting older.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, um, so I went down to the grooming room and I told my husband, I said, bring whiskey in first, I'll get him ready, and then we'll do Maker.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: He was dead.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: He collapsed outside and was gone.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I I lost it.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just couldn't even imagine.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't process it.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: I literally could not process it.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, I mean, again, it's that one special heart dog that you have.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that loss was so sudden.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I just couldn't, I kept asking, like, why, why, why?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then after a little bit, right, when the pain starts to ease just a bit, I realized it was because, you know, with like Carson, I could make the decision very more like there's always emotion in it, but I could just look at it logically and say, this, I, this dog, it's not fair.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: We need to let him go.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's suffering at this point.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: But with my heart dog, I think, and I I do believe in a higher being.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, God took it out of my hands.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: He took it out of my hands because he knew that I would never in a million years be able to make that decision with that particular dog.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so he took that out of my hands.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm gonna take that pain from you.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you will experience the pain of the loss, but you won't have to go through the emotion of trying to make that decision.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that and that was that that's profound.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for sharing that.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that that loss, was it really didn't see it coming?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: It just not at all.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: A little shocked.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Had no signs of it.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: We did, I did have an autopsy done.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when you are in the dog world as much as I was, you have your friend, good friends that are vets.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in the middle of the night, I called Carol and I'm like, I I just lost whiskey.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, they all knew whiskey because they were all at dog shows with us and they've they watched his journey, right?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, Oh my god, meet me at the clinic.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so we went over to the clinic and she did an autopsy for me, and they found that there's a condition that's in cats, it's a feline condition where the lining of the heart thickens to the point where the heart can't pump anymore, it gives out.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's honestly what he had.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they can't, the vet was like, I can't, I've never seen this in a canine before.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: So no symptoms, no warnings leading up to it, just collapsed outside and was gone.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess that beats the alternative of being in an ER room with with needles and everything plugging in and out of you.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um not that that's any um it is that similar to DCM.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Have you heard of DCM?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think I have.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's a heart condition with with dogs, but I there's I think this is a little bit more noticeable where over time you see them skipping a breath.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of a sign that you know they might have uh, so it sounds different.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the good news was he was wagging his tail and smiling when he took my keys.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: He went outside with his pack.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: We were still doing all of our film work.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was still having he was a star, man.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: We go on set, and you get to the point, like in the Atlanta area, there's there's can't like they're all unionized, right?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's cameramen, there's electricians, there's this, there's that.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: They got to the point where they recognized whiskey.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not so much me, but they all, oh, we're working with whiskey today.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: We love whiskey at all.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so anyway, um, yeah.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that he was he was doing what he loved doing, he was happy doing it, and he was happy up until he collapsed.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't have asked for it any other way because, you know, again, fast forward a few years, and I've got his grandson Maker, and Maker was one of the ones diagnosed with cancer, and I lost him at six years old.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's amazing.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: It could have been that where I watched him deteriorate for nine months.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: No, I love how you came to to reconcile and what what you took away from that experience, and that's that's amazing.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I hate to do this, I think we're actually about close to the end of the segment.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: No worries.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you got some of the questions that you wanted answered, Dan.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the one question I want to leave you with is I definitely want you back because I know there's there's three that we didn't talk about.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's more to talk about, so definitely would love to do a part two.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: See how okay, if if you're up for that.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to, Dan.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is a lot of fun.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I get the one question I want to leave with or thought with the losses, and and like and you kind of touched on some of this as well, with part of this podcast being for supporting folks that maybe that haven't experienced loss.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: What what would you what advice would you share with somebody?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, they truly are part of our family.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you will grieve the same way that you would if you lost a close family member.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And one, you can't prepare for it.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: You can't, but you can prepare to give yourself some grace to allow that process to happen.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, thank you.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's beautiful, that's powerful.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so thanks again for sharing with us today.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and for you listeners on the show, um, you know, like, subscribe, send me a note.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, definitely love having more of these.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, any guest, any family member is welcome.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: But again, don't go anywhere just yet, Tina.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: But um, again, thank you for sharing with us today, and we will definitely get you back.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Dan.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a pleasure.