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Transcript

The World's Okayest Dog Trainer · Wildly Curious

0:42
SPEAKER_00: We're actually starting.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: Season fifteen.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: Here we are.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Listen, again, I don't wanna I almost said I don't want to beat a dead horse, but this is supposed to be an animal loving show.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: But every new season, Laura and I are just as shocked as everyone else that our ADHD and Neurodivergency has allowed us to get this far.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Keep going.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: We kinda we kinda The dopamine is still flowing.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: That's somehow.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: Somehow.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: They're like just life chaos.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: So the season, though, is gonna be a lot of fun.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: We have some great interviews, including the one today, and then some other fun surprises.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: And just like every other season, we're gonna have a long episode, short episode, long short.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: And so because we have a guest today, that's the goal.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: That's the goal.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: That's really we can't go on anything.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Listen, we'll get there one day.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: That's how we keep going for season 15 because we have so many great listeners that hang in there and just bear with us.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, because I cannot imagine Melissa, Laura and I only talking for 15 minutes, this is gonna be the long episode.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: And then we'll start with the short episodes after this.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna skip nature news day because we really want to focus on the interview.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: And so we have Melissa McHumath Grath, and Laura's gonna go over her bio more, but we've known Melissa for quite a while now, from like the very, very early days in the podcast when we connected over what was then Twitter while she was hosting the Bewilder Beast podcast.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: And we are fortunate enough to get to know her daughter and have her on the podcast a long time ago, and her daughter with some amazing artwork that we still bring up all the time because it is phenomenal.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: She's just such a cool kid, and we bring your daughter up all the time whenever we're talking about like the impact of like, hey, this is why we do this podcast.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Or like why we're doing it, yeah.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, so yeah, we've known Melissa for quite some time now.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah, Laura, you want to go over her bio with that real quick?
2:44
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: So Melissa is P-A-C-T-A-T-I-S-A-B-T-C-A-T-I.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: Um I know P is the first is the first American resident to earn certification through the prestigious PACT and the ABTC organizations in the United Kingdom.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: She is the author of the much-awaited Misadventures of the World's Ocayest Dog Trainer, released a decade after her first book, Considerations for the City Dog.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: Misadventures is an educational memoir that peeks behind the curtain of what canine training and behavior can look like, from explaining humping to second grader uh humping a second grader, right?
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Is that what it happened sometimes?
3:26
SPEAKER_01: And adult pleasure toys prominently featured during your home visits to the staff of anxiety and hoarding cases and behavioral euthanasia.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: Melissa's unique perspective, razor sharp wit, and endless compassion for the animals she works with is evident through every page.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Melissa lives in Maine, USA, with her family, two dogs, Captain and Rookie, an ancient cat, and 15 of the luckiest chickens on the planet.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: She does behavior consulting and training where she gets peed on for pay, more than she anticipated in her adult career, and still loves dogs and their people.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: So, Melissa, welcome to the podcast.
4:01
SPEAKER_02: Hello, it's good to see you guys again.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, likewise, likewise.
4:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that kid that you guys were talking about at the beginning is now one of only two students who was not in the gifted and talented program who was invited to be in honors biology her first year of high school.
4:21
unknown: Yes.
4:22
SPEAKER_02: So she really is sticking with science and animal sciences and life sciences.
4:26
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, so what every magic sauce you put in her ears when she was little has worked.
4:34
SPEAKER_02: And I can't thank you guys in enough.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: Good.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: No, we can't thank her enough.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: She's a cool kid, really, really a cool kid.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: All right, so let's go ahead because I love your new book title.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: And let's start with that title.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Why the okayest?
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Because that's a lot of letters to just say the okayest.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: Surely you're a little more than okay.
4:56
SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of a riff on you know those mugs that say like world's best dad or world's best boss.
5:05
SPEAKER_02: And they're usually tongue-in-cheek.
5:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, I always had this idea because like my students are like, you're so great, you're this, you're that.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: And meanwhile, I'm getting peed on by a greyhound and I don't feel so great.
5:18
SPEAKER_02: Like, or you know, like I and there are so many people in this industry that is unregulated, which is even harder to to kind of forge your own path in an unregulated industry because we don't know what's I mean, at least broadly speaking, I know what's ethical and the appropriate way of doing things, but people can abuse dogs and say that they're dog trainers.
5:44
SPEAKER_02: And there's no recourse for it unless it's a criminal case.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: So in my industry of training and behavior, it's really hard to really have a benchmark to go towards.
6:00
SPEAKER_02: Um we're all just kind of doing our okayest and trying to help these dogs and trying to help these people and trying to help these animals at the center of every case.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Makes sense.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Plus, it's a funny title.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: It is.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: No, it's a good title.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: Great title.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, and right, and I just imagine that you're there getting peed on and you're like, this is okay.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: This is okay.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: It's it's okay.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: At least when you have to keep reassuring yourself.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: This is okay.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, what with because you've written a book before, and then there's been a lot of time, you said, since you're in between a decade.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: So when did you realize that you had enough crazy stories and the mental capacity, because that's a big part of it, to compile a memoir?
6:41
SPEAKER_01: Right.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
6:43
SPEAKER_02: So the I think I realized it weirdly, about three months after my other book went out, when I ended up taking on an, for better word, a student.
6:54
SPEAKER_02: I was her mentor, she was my mentee through the Victoria Stowell Dog Training Academy.
7:00
SPEAKER_02: And I had just put considerations for the city dog out.
7:04
SPEAKER_02: She was just getting ready to graduate through that program.
7:08
SPEAKER_02: She was my first mentee.
7:09
SPEAKER_02: And then she asked me, like, what do I need to know for my test?
7:13
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, well, you'll need to know learning theory, you'll need to know like the rectal temperature of a Doberman, like when they're healthy, you'll need to know, like you need to know certain things.
7:25
SPEAKER_02: And she's like, Yeah, yeah, I get all that, but what didn't they tell me?
7:29
SPEAKER_02: And that's what this book ended up being.
7:31
SPEAKER_02: And it's a good question.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: So it's like all the stories that like me and all my dog training friends would tell at like margarita night.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah we're all 100%.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: We got those zoo stories.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
7:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: So like the behind the good, the bad, and the ugly.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: The good, the bad, and the ugly, and the hilarious.
7:51
SPEAKER_02: So like it it's the mishmash.
7:53
SPEAKER_02: And if you can get through the the embarrassing, the funny, the heartache, the hoarding, the humpers, the hoarders, and the pee, then you probably really want to be in this industry.
8:09
SPEAKER_02: And and if any of those things are turnoffs, then that's totally fine.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: Completely understood.
8:14
SPEAKER_02: I think I'm crazy to still be doing this work, knowing what I know now.
8:19
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's just nice to know up front for her, right?
8:21
SPEAKER_01: This is like, okay, let's be real.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the reality of it.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:25
SPEAKER_02: And I've gone on to have 40, 42 now, I think.
8:29
SPEAKER_02: I've just picked up my 42nd mentee from this academy, which is awesome.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: Um, and they are all still coming in doe-eyed, like, I love dogs.
8:40
SPEAKER_02: Often they say, but I hate people, but you have to love people.
8:45
SPEAKER_02: We have to love people if you're doing this work.
8:48
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm just trying to put it all out there.
8:50
SPEAKER_02: The things that you might see when you're in this work.
8:52
SPEAKER_02: All of these stories are my personal ones, but we all have a demon golden retriever.
8:57
SPEAKER_02: We all have a case where we walk in and we are told it's just a jumping case.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: It's like, great, I got this.
9:05
SPEAKER_02: And you walk in, and the dog has their mouth around your arm when you walk in, and you're like, oh, this is not just jumping.
9:11
SPEAKER_02: We have serious guarding and physical harm now for this case and now a bite history.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: So we have we have to meet these people where they are with a language that they don't understand, with their pets that they love, and they're calling me because something isn't right.
9:30
SPEAKER_02: I'm not in their house because something is going correct.
9:33
SPEAKER_02: Right.
9:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
9:35
SPEAKER_02: They're not calling me saying, like, oh yeah, look at my pretty puppy.
9:39
SPEAKER_02: He's just bouncing through the through the fields of daisies.
9:41
SPEAKER_02: And I'll be like, Great, that'll be$250, and I'll see you next week.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: Um, but they might not have the language yet to articulate what's going on.
9:52
SPEAKER_02: They might have been told it's fine by other people in their their lives.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: And so my hope is that people who aren't in this industry, people who just love dogs or want to know what this work is like, are gonna read it and be like, oh, wait, I now understand my dog a lot better because of this book.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: That's my hope.
10:10
SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: So we threw out all kinds of letters at the beginning of acronyms in your bio.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: The scrabble bag.
10:20
SPEAKER_02: I just grabbed a bunch and threw them in the bio for you.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: This will be fun.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: Let's see how much Katie and Laura will say.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: But so can you talk about those certifications that you received and just explain what each of those are?
10:34
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
10:35
SPEAKER_02: So I'm actually really proud to be the first American to get British certification.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: Crazy.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
10:42
SPEAKER_02: And it's been over a year, and I'm still the only one.
10:45
SPEAKER_02: And there's one other North American, but they're all the way over, I believe, in British Columbia.
10:50
SPEAKER_02: So we're on opposite sides of the coast.
10:52
SPEAKER_02: But the idea here is that the UK is way ahead of America as far as regulating the industry.
10:58
SPEAKER_02: It is still highly unregulated, but they are making big waves and are trying really hard to at least have standards that we can train to.
11:08
SPEAKER_02: And so the ABTC, the Animal Behavior and Training Council, there's a lot more use in there that we as Americans would have in behavior.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: Right?
11:18
SPEAKER_02: Like, um.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: But they they have like this umbrella organization.
11:24
SPEAKER_02: They are a charity in the UK that have decided that they're going to create these standards in training and behavior, which is great.
11:31
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
11:31
SPEAKER_02: So they have like if you are an animal training instructor, you take this test.
11:37
SPEAKER_02: So that's what ATI stands for.
11:39
SPEAKER_02: So I took a test and was able to earn animal training instructor.
11:42
SPEAKER_02: My work is actually in behavior.
11:45
SPEAKER_02: In order to get that behavior certification, I have to take a course through them and then earn my certification in behavior.
11:52
SPEAKER_02: And if I want to be considered a behaviorist, I have to take an additional step.
11:57
SPEAKER_02: And that is the equivalent of like a master's degree, which is great because here in Maine, there's no animal behavior master's programs available locally.
12:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:07
SPEAKER_02: I can go online, but I have ADHD.
12:10
SPEAKER_02: I know my homie.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: Still as a preach.
12:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:14
SPEAKER_02: Preach.
12:14
SPEAKER_02: So unless I'm going to be physically in the room, I'm going to be like, I'll do it tomorrow.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: I'll do it tomorrow.
12:20
SPEAKER_02: Procrastinate later.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
12:23
SPEAKER_02: And and not actually meet the requirements within the allotted amount of time.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: So I'm I'm going to set myself up and try to do this course, which is going to have benchmarks that I have to hit, but that's through the UK.
12:37
SPEAKER_02: It's cool.
12:38
SPEAKER_02: We do have other certifications here, but it's kind of a mishmash of well, this is what they call a trainer.
12:45
SPEAKER_02: This is what they call a trainer.
12:46
SPEAKER_02: This is what they call a behaviorist.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: And the validity behind, you know what I mean?
12:50
SPEAKER_00: Like the validity behind it.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, right.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Because if it's not regulated at all, you know what I mean?
12:55
SPEAKER_00: Then it's unregulation regulating unregulation.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
12:59
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
13:00
SPEAKER_02: And and there are there are organizations here who are really trying to do something similar as what the UK is doing.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: The Pet Professional Guild is one.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: But there's there's just this alphabet soup of things.
13:13
SPEAKER_02: And if you find a certification that matches your morals and your ideals and your ethics, back when I started in 2004, there was like one or two.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: There wasn't many.
13:24
SPEAKER_02: And now if you want to specialize in separation anxiety, you can.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: If you want to specialize in aggression, you can.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: If you want to specialize in training puppies, you can.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: So though the world has opened up.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: We no longer have to be the jack of all trades and have to be amazing at all of them.
13:41
SPEAKER_02: I can be very picky about the cases that I want to take on.
13:44
SPEAKER_02: So I love taking on puppies in class.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: And and who wouldn't want to take on puppies?
13:50
SPEAKER_00: Bring me all the puppy.
13:51
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
13:52
SPEAKER_02: Like you know, thank.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: And up until about May, I'm like, I don't want one in my house.
13:58
SPEAKER_02: And now I have one in my house.
14:00
SPEAKER_02: But I I'm not a good puppy trainer.
14:03
SPEAKER_02: I love punk adolescent dogs.
14:06
SPEAKER_02: That is my fodder.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: Their frontal lobe is short circuiting.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: They're making choices.
14:12
SPEAKER_02: Not all of them are great.
14:15
SPEAKER_02: And you kind of have to meet that dog where they are that minute.
14:18
SPEAKER_02: They could be completely short circuiting or they could be a Mensa student, like all within a 20-minute window.
14:25
SPEAKER_02: And I'm thinking that with my 14-year-old kid at home.
14:28
SPEAKER_02: I know y'all have younger kids.
14:30
SPEAKER_02: And so, like that three to four-year-old, two to four-year-old period, that same frontal lobe growth is happening in those kids.
14:37
SPEAKER_02: And it happens again when they're 11 to 27, when that frontal lobe is finally done.
14:43
SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
14:44
SPEAKER_02: But with dogs, it's like six months to 24 months and then they're done.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: So it is a long time.
14:51
SPEAKER_02: And and adolescent dogs are the biggest population in shelters and rescue because people get really stressed out, understandably so.
14:59
SPEAKER_02: But that is my that's my group.
15:02
SPEAKER_02: I I just love them so much.
15:04
SPEAKER_02: I love those punk jerks.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: So do you feel between your peers of trainers, do you feel the overall, like, I guess are are they wanting more regulation?
15:16
SPEAKER_00: Like, what's just the the split?
15:19
SPEAKER_02: It's really split.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: And I understand why.
15:22
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of us who are pushing for regulation for licensing.
15:26
SPEAKER_02: So like I wouldn't hire an electrician to come into my house if they didn't have a license, right?
15:30
SPEAKER_02: Like, especially if they're also working with water and installing a dishwasher, right?
15:34
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
15:35
SPEAKER_02: Right.
15:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, so there are certain things I want to be able to hold my electrician accountable to.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: If something is wrong, I want to make sure that they know exactly what they're doing.
15:45
SPEAKER_02: They didn't just watch six YouTube videos.
15:47
SPEAKER_02: In our industry, that part doesn't exist.
15:50
SPEAKER_02: There is no hierarching uh body that I can say, well, this other trainer is doing XYZ that is harmful and problematic.
15:59
SPEAKER_02: Like there's very little recourse we have unless it meets the criterion of criminal behavior.
16:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:08
SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of us who are pushing for regulation.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: The flip side of that is when I started, I took a$375 exam, earned my certification, I logged hours, I did everything I could, and it was cost effective.
16:24
SPEAKER_02: It was something I could do.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: The bar of entry was lower.
16:28
SPEAKER_02: So it wasn't as gatekeepery.
16:31
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if I would go into this industry today, knowing how hard it is and how many thousands of dollars people are doing are throwing at doing this.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: It's like any kind of certification thing, right?
16:44
SPEAKER_01: Where like the money, the barrier of getting trained is a lot.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:49
SPEAKER_02: And it's, you know, if you're throwing down 10G, that's a lot of money for somebody coming out of college who really just wants to work with animals.
16:59
SPEAKER_02: And some of the best trainers I've met are the people who have never gone to do a certification.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: They might not test well, they might not have the resources available, but they're damn good behavior people and trainers.
17:14
SPEAKER_02: And on the flip, I've seen people who have gotten these certifications who are very questionable in their training techniques and methodology and people's skills and all of the things that they use.
17:26
SPEAKER_02: And I would not recommend them.
17:28
SPEAKER_02: So it is really confusing.
17:29
SPEAKER_02: If it's confusing for us, I'm sure it's confusing as hell for my students.
17:33
SPEAKER_02: Yes, right.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:36
SPEAKER_02: So my hope is that that regulation will come through and that there are still barriers, that we are not putting boulders in the way of people who really are curious and really want to do this work and be able to do so ethically instead of doing, instead of going the capitalism route and just trying to make as much money as we can on people who we're dog trainers for Pete's sake, we don't make a ton of money.
17:57
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, we do it because we love what we do.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, I was gonna say, switching back to what you were saying about how like your bread and butter is the punks, right?
18:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's right now, not that now that your daughter is a punk, but that she's going through the same thing, right?
18:17
SPEAKER_01: Sure, because what what you're saying, right, about the the frontal lobe and our kids and things like that.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: Has learning to train dogs, how has it helped you in parenting?
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: And how has it helped you in interacting with other people?
18:30
SPEAKER_02: Yes, I love this question because once I I got my degree in psychology, my my degree was originally going to be in teaching training horses because I came up in the time of the Afghan war and I was hoping to help military personnel coming back and dealing with PTSD through therapeutic, right?
18:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that was my whole big plan going into college.
18:52
SPEAKER_02: Cool, cool, cool.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: And then two months into the pony program, I get bucked off a horse and I broke my spine.
18:59
SPEAKER_02: Oh geez, speeze out done.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my gosh.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: Like maybe, maybe there's a different way.
19:09
SPEAKER_02: So I went to this college for the ponies and I stayed for the couch and I got my degree in psychology.
19:18
SPEAKER_02: That psychology learning theory, once you understand how any mammalian species can learn, including humans, it is identical across the board.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: So once I realized that, I kind of fell into dog training.
20:05
SPEAKER_02: I didn't go into this thinking I'm gonna be a dog trainer.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: But being a parent after teaching for God, at that point, I think almost 10 years at that point, eight, eight, 10 years at that point, after being a parent and going through all this work and learning how the brain works and learning how reinforcement schedules work and how training works and how how learning works on an organism.
20:29
SPEAKER_02: And then having my own screaming, pooping, crying bundle of mess.
20:34
SPEAKER_02: I was like, okay, I'm overwhelmed, but I know what to do.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm sure our listeners have heard about like bomb-sniffing dogs, drug dogs, seizure dogs, and but you have trained dogs to sniff out spotted lantern flies.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: So first talk about spotted lanternflies and what made you decide on that specific task.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: And how do you even begin to train dogs to detect that kind of specific smell?
21:05
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
21:05
SPEAKER_02: Do you guys have spotted lanternfly where you guys are?
21:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we do, honestly.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna look it up.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and talk.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it got to us two summers ago.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, it took a while to get down to Maryland, but dude, Pittsburgh is overrun.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I heard that.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, it says no, it's known reported cases in Texas, which is good because we have amoeba, brain-eating amoebas and all kinds of stuff.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: So let's just hold off on anything else for it.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're we're good right now.
21:37
SPEAKER_02: So spotted lanternfly, just to catch everybody up, it's an invasive that comes on in another evasive.
21:44
SPEAKER_02: So it's basically a two-for-one deal.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: Comes in on the tree of heaven.
21:48
SPEAKER_02: I know, woo, BOGO.
21:50
SPEAKER_02: So uh comes in on the tree of heaven, which is an invasive from Asia.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: What had happened was in 2014, the spotted lanternfly came in on the tree of heaven and was basically released into the United States at a shipping port in Pennsylvania.
22:07
SPEAKER_02: So Pennsylvania has been basically doing quarantining long before we did in 2020, with making sure that cars are completely clear, that all boxes are checked.
22:17
SPEAKER_02: And the reason it's so hard to tell if you have spotted lantern fly infestation until they actually hatch is they they lay their eggs anywhere.
22:27
SPEAKER_02: They are opportunistic breeders and they're opportunistic layers.
22:32
SPEAKER_02: So they'll put their eggs anywhere.
22:34
SPEAKER_02: Kids' playground equipment, cars, trees, fences, whatever.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: And there's no specific special requirements for it's not like a frog where it's like it needs clear, clean water.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:47
SPEAKER_02: They just slap them on there.
22:48
SPEAKER_02: Right.
22:50
SPEAKER_02: And what they do is they vomit up this substance called honeydew to protect or cover the egg masses.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: And that that kind of vomitous stuff looks like mud spatter.
23:01
SPEAKER_02: So it looks like a schmear of concrete or a smear of mud.
23:05
SPEAKER_02: And so if that is on your car and you are leaving from Pennsylvania to New York and you park your car, you wouldn't really know.
23:12
SPEAKER_02: Right.
23:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:13
SPEAKER_02: They could hatch and then you've spread the information.
23:15
SPEAKER_02: Invasion.
23:15
SPEAKER_02: So for now 22 years, sorry, 12 years, we've been dealing with this invasion starting in Pennsylvania, and it's been going mostly west and south.
23:25
SPEAKER_02: It was predicted to be here in Maine in 2026.
23:28
SPEAKER_02: And I heard yesterday at a parent teacher conference from a mom who knew I was doing this work, was like, Did you hear it's in Maine?
23:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, no.
23:38
SPEAKER_02: So they I was like, that's what you're known for.
23:42
SPEAKER_02: That's what the lantern fly.
23:43
SPEAKER_02: That's the breaking news.
23:45
SPEAKER_02: With the dogs who did the lanternfly thing.
23:48
SPEAKER_02: And so basically what had happened was when I was still doing the show Bewilderbeasts, I had done this story on these bees.
23:55
SPEAKER_02: And the bees had produced this honey that looked like motor oil, but tasted smoky.
24:00
SPEAKER_02: And they couldn't figure out what was going on.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: The apiarist or bee people were like, there's something wrong with our honey, but nobody's died.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna keep selling it.
24:08
SPEAKER_02: Cool.
24:09
SPEAKER_02: Cool, cool, cool.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: They send it off to scientists.
24:12
SPEAKER_02: Questionable.
24:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's roulette.
24:14
SPEAKER_02: It's fine.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: Bee vomit roulette.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: It's cool.
24:17
SPEAKER_02: So they they basically end up sending this honey off to scientists who discover that honey is darker because the bees are picking up that vomitous honeydew substance from the lantern flies and are putting it in the honey.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: It was okay.
24:35
SPEAKER_02: So Philadelphia Bee Company, you can go to their website today, you can purchase it.
24:40
SPEAKER_02: I have, it's delicious.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: As long as you are not thinking too much about what it actually is.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what it actually is, yeah.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: It's I mean, honey's already bee vomit, so what's double vomit?
24:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, double vomit, what does it mean?
24:53
SPEAKER_02: So it just vomit squared.
24:56
SPEAKER_02: That's how that's how I'm talking, right?
24:58
SPEAKER_02: Two wrongs make a right?
24:59
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
25:00
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, right.
25:01
SPEAKER_02: So it tastes great.
25:02
SPEAKER_02: Smoky, it tastes like a thicker, smoker, smokier honey.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
25:07
SPEAKER_02: Super cool.
25:08
SPEAKER_02: So I did this story on these bees, and then a student of mine is, hey, I just found that this.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: I just found that this this study in what was it, Virginia Tech and Texas Tech.
25:21
SPEAKER_02: So Texas was actually Downtour's My, yeah.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: Downtour's My Next.
25:25
SPEAKER_02: Um they wanted to figure out how to stop this invasion because it was really starting to escalate.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: So when I did the story in 2022, there were only 14 states that were under invasion.
25:37
SPEAKER_02: Today there are 21.
25:39
SPEAKER_02: By the time we were done with our part of this study I'm about to talk about, we were at 18.
25:44
SPEAKER_02: So it's moving very fast.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it's yeah, it is and it's so detrimental.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: It's like I think, you know, because we talk a lot about spotted lantern flies around here, about how, you know, it's not as bad as people first thought with trees, but it is as bad as people first thought with grapevines.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: And like it's like impacting the wine industry and everything.
26:04
SPEAKER_02: Juice for kids or great grape jelly, things like that.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: It takes out 70 crops here in the state of Maine once it gets here.
26:12
SPEAKER_02: And Maine, most of our population is along the coast.
26:16
SPEAKER_02: Very few people are inland, and then there's we have towns that are just called T147.
26:23
SPEAKER_02: They're they're unnamed territories in Maine that are just basically lumberjacks that are harvesting trees, right?
26:31
SPEAKER_02: So we have a very small population in a very dense area, and then very little things going on in Maine.
26:38
SPEAKER_02: If it gets here, so much of our environmental industry is dead.
26:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:43
SPEAKER_02: And we're already one of the poorest countries in the union and the oldest.
26:49
SPEAKER_02: We are, I believe, the oldest population in the union.
26:52
SPEAKER_02: So we have a bunch of old white farmers who will completely be devastated when this gets here.
27:01
SPEAKER_02: So Texas Tech and Virginia Tech teamed up, they decided, okay, let's make this marriage.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: We'll make this work.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: So the animal behavior people, I believe at Virginia Tech teamed up with the horticultural specialists at Texas Tech, and they were like, yeah, kind of what they're known for.
27:18
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
27:19
SPEAKER_02: And I believe a Vikram Belega of anthropology is there.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: And so and I talked to him about this too.
27:26
SPEAKER_02: So they got together and they were like, okay, well, we're gonna use like plant smart people and animal smart people because what if like all of these people walking their dogs?
27:36
SPEAKER_02: We know that dogs can smell out cancer and bombs and missing people and all this stuff.
27:41
SPEAKER_02: What if all of these people who are walking their dogs at night could sniff out these egg masses?
27:46
SPEAKER_02: And that's the key.
27:48
SPEAKER_02: It's not the big flying bug or walking bug.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: They're known for walking as well.
27:53
SPEAKER_02: It's a gorgeous insect.
27:55
SPEAKER_02: I actually have a tattoo of it.
27:56
SPEAKER_02: That's really cool.
27:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's super pretty.
27:58
SPEAKER_02: I have a tattoo of it if we're doing this on YouTube.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: Oh, cool.
28:02
SPEAKER_02: And and Captain, my dog, who's finding the invasive, is part of it.
28:06
SPEAKER_02: He is still with us.
28:07
SPEAKER_02: This is not a memorial tattoo, he is still present.
28:10
SPEAKER_02: But I don't think I would have gone with the tattoo had it been a lamb free, let's be honest.
28:15
SPEAKER_02: So I'm glad it was a pretty bug.
28:17
SPEAKER_02: But they wanted to see if they could get dog trainers who do pet dog training to see if we could train pet dogs to find this invasion.
28:23
SPEAKER_02: And the reason they wanted us to find the egg masses is because the insects die at the end of fall, the eggs overwinter and hatch in the spring.
28:31
SPEAKER_02: So if we can find them in the bingo.
28:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: If we can find them late fall, winter, we can scrape the egg masses into sanitizer, kill the eggs, and reduce the population of potential damage for the next year.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: So we could do it.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've already seen a huge improvement here just from smashing, like the amount of people that are on board to smash these insects, it is way less this summer than it was last time.
28:59
SPEAKER_01: Truly, like so many less lantern flies around than there was last time.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: So good.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: And I'm wondering if mycoinsecticides, like the zombie funguses, are a contributing factor because these guys are also super susceptible to that, and scientists know it.
29:14
SPEAKER_02: So these like kind of fungus that like will basically envelop, and you can use these zombie funguses or mycoinsecticides.
29:23
SPEAKER_02: There are two, and I cannot, for the life of me, pull their names right now.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: And I never will.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: No, you're good.
29:29
SPEAKER_02: You're good.
29:29
SPEAKER_02: I always have them on a note card in front of me in case I need it.
29:32
SPEAKER_02: But those two mycoinsecticides are super useful for the spotted lantern fly, as well as the brown-tailed moth up here in Maine, which is another problematic bug.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: So what we had done was that one called what was that moth called?
29:45
SPEAKER_02: Brown tailed moth.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: It is only in Maine and Cape Cod.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: So, like, you have to go all the way through New Hampshire and Maine Massachusetts to get like to the little hook.
29:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:54
SPEAKER_02: But mycoinsecticides, poisonous fungus, is actually what has reduced the brown tailed moth population, which is great because you can get infected and get a horrible rash.
30:05
SPEAKER_02: My my nephew went to the hospital for it from insects that have died miles away because those toxic hairs, as a dead caterpillar decomposes, is awful.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: They can go out on the wind.
30:18
SPEAKER_02: And so when I do these talks at libraries, I say, our dogs are really smart.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: Our dogs can do a lot, but we can't use them for everything.
30:25
SPEAKER_02: And I use this as the example because I don't want my dogs to know where these hairs are.
30:30
SPEAKER_02: So we cannot use them for everything, but we can use them for spotted lantern fly, which is awesome.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's cool.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: Dang.
30:39
SPEAKER_02: So how did you even begin to train a dog to do something like that?
30:43
SPEAKER_02: That's a great question.
30:43
SPEAKER_02: So, what we had done was so I teach, because of my work in animal behavior, I use scent work to help dogs with behavior problems.
30:53
SPEAKER_02: That is kind of the thing I'm known for in New England.
30:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:57
SPEAKER_02: Using their nose to see the world in the way that they're supposed to see it instead of not breathing and using their eyes and winding themselves up.
31:05
SPEAKER_02: So if I can teach a dog to find clove oil or birch oil, I can pretty much teach a dog to find anything I need them to find.
31:16
SPEAKER_02: Most of these dogs, it was the only way that they could find relief in a very stressful environment or a stressful existence, living in a city where you can't let them off leash, they can't do agility, they can't do this, they can't do that, they're restricted in these small homes.
31:30
SPEAKER_02: So we could take things and hide them around an apartment and open up that dog's world and give them something to do.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: The way we do it, it's called associative learning.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: We have taught bees to find bombs in Croatia using associative learning.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: Okay, Morris Face.
31:48
SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
31:49
SPEAKER_02: And the way we do it is very much like your cell phone.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: Your cell phone goes off, right?
31:54
SPEAKER_02: Your special tune goes, and you're, that's my phone.
31:59
SPEAKER_02: And you reach before you even process what's going on.
32:02
SPEAKER_02: So you start to hear your phone, and your hand is going to your pocket, to your bag, to your counter, wherever it is, right?
32:08
SPEAKER_02: We hear that sound, your brain is basically hijacked for a quick second.
32:12
SPEAKER_02: Your processing doesn't even take over.
32:14
SPEAKER_02: That is your hypothalamus.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: It is sending that message, short circuiting everything, and says, just act in the same way a phobia does.
32:23
SPEAKER_02: A phobia.
32:24
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
32:25
SPEAKER_02: I'm, you might have remembered from Bewilder Beast, definitely afraid of spiders.
32:29
SPEAKER_02: So if I see something in the corner of my eye and I think it's a spider, you're done.
32:33
SPEAKER_02: I gasp and back up before I can even process, oh, that's just something hanging.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: Fuzzy.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: Right.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: It's just maybe a pipe cleaner my kid threw at me, right?
32:45
SPEAKER_02: So you you behave and you act instinctively because that's going to save your life.
32:51
SPEAKER_02: And associative learning on the positive side can do the same thing.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's my cell phone.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: So what we do is we take these dogs and we take their favorite thing and we take the thing that they want.
33:02
SPEAKER_02: In this case, I want them to find lantern fly.
33:05
SPEAKER_02: So Captain is not looking for lantern fly.
33:08
SPEAKER_02: Captain is looking for a way to get a cheese stick.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: That's the real goal here.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:15
SPEAKER_02: 100%.
33:16
SPEAKER_02: I also work for cheese sticks.
33:18
SPEAKER_02: So he will, I can put out six boxes.
33:20
SPEAKER_02: I can put whatever I want in those boxes.
33:23
SPEAKER_02: And he will go sniff, sniff, sniff.
33:25
SPEAKER_02: This is the one that gets me cheese.
33:27
SPEAKER_02: Because over time he's learned find it.
33:30
SPEAKER_02: His magic four-letter F-word means if I hit this, I get cheese.
33:35
SPEAKER_02: If I hit these other boxes, I get diddly squat.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: So for him, he's on 13 different odors: birch oil, clove oil, cypress, vanilla, like whatever I could find.
33:47
SPEAKER_02: And then lantern fly.
33:48
SPEAKER_02: So he was kind of the old man of the group.
33:50
SPEAKER_02: My other students, their dogs were on like three or four odors for a class that was really designed to help help support them behaviorally.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: So we were kind of this weird odd man out because the scientists were actually looking for retired police handlers.
34:10
SPEAKER_02: Makes sense.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:12
SPEAKER_02: Bond-sniffing dogs.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, yeah.
34:14
SPEAKER_02: People who do competitive nose work, which is a sport where you hide like birch oil on a Q-tip, and the dog goes out and they're timed and they have to hit accuracy.
34:24
SPEAKER_02: So these dogs are trained to go find birch oil on a Q-tip, then clove oil, then anise oil, then cypress oil.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: And these people are so used to taking their dogs everywhere, and the dogs are great.
34:35
SPEAKER_02: And then we're like, my dogs can't leave the building or they panic.
34:40
SPEAKER_02: So like we had like these like behavioral cases that were really sensitive, that we had to have everything in a very particular way.
34:49
SPEAKER_02: We were handling this like a behavior case.
34:52
SPEAKER_02: And I so I was given six dogs.
34:55
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
34:55
SPEAKER_02: Five of them were behavior cases.
34:58
SPEAKER_02: The sixth one, Tempi, was like, Yeah, I'll do whatever.
35:01
SPEAKER_02: It's fine.
35:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:04
SPEAKER_02: So they were all able to go through all a series of three tests.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: They nailed it.
35:09
SPEAKER_02: Uh two dogs had to be pulled.
35:11
SPEAKER_02: One dog, June, who during an ice storm was when we had to test for our first test to see if they could tell which box the odor was in.
35:21
SPEAKER_02: And in this case, we were given satchels, like little window screens of egg masses from the lantern fly.
35:28
SPEAKER_02: So the male gave me these weird dead eggs.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, this is normal.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: Keep it in the freezer.
35:36
SPEAKER_02: So I had this satchel, they had to find it.
35:39
SPEAKER_02: Four of the six did.
35:41
SPEAKER_02: June fell apart when a fire truck went by the studio that we were training in.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because you just have like the this would be such a funny animated movie.
35:51
SPEAKER_02: So I funny story.
35:53
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you guys know who Victoria Stilwell is, but she's kind of like the television goddess of dog training and behavior.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: And she interviewed me and she's like, I want to make this movie.
36:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I just think because it's like the like just the neurotic dogs.
36:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's like we are here to save the day.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: But we are might panic.
36:14
SPEAKER_02: Right.
36:15
SPEAKER_02: We got this.
36:16
SPEAKER_02: Oh no.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: So like June bailed, understandably so, and and rightfully I completely supported her.
36:24
SPEAKER_02: June bug.
36:25
SPEAKER_02: And then Captain, my dog Captain was pulled, and my daughter Ace was the one who put him on odor.
36:30
SPEAKER_02: She was 11 at the time because I was training these other five.
36:34
SPEAKER_02: She was on Zoom at home handling Captain and putting him on this odor.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: So while she would never say she did anything, she really did the foundational training so he could go ahead and do this work.
36:46
SPEAKER_02: And she was the youngest person in this body.
36:48
SPEAKER_02: I'm so proud of her.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: See, listeners, we told you this kid is cool.
36:51
SPEAKER_02: She's like, and she will blow you off anytime you give her a compliment.
36:57
SPEAKER_02: So whatever.
36:59
SPEAKER_02: But so Captain was pulled because he had a uh sinus infection that wasn't going away.
37:05
SPEAKER_02: We were told it was cancer.
37:06
SPEAKER_02: We were like, oh no.
37:08
SPEAKER_02: Jeez.
37:09
SPEAKER_02: Then they were like, well, maybe it's not cancer, so maybe it's a fungal mass.
37:12
SPEAKER_02: No, wait, it's not a fungal mass, maybe it's something else.
37:15
SPEAKER_02: This poor dog has been on antibiotics.
37:18
SPEAKER_02: He's been on at least 30 different ones over the last three years, and we cannot clear his infection.
37:24
SPEAKER_02: We don't know what's going on.
37:25
SPEAKER_02: It's idiopathic, which is vet talk for we don't know.
37:30
SPEAKER_02: So if you ever run into that, it is very common.
37:33
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that your vet is an idiot.
37:35
SPEAKER_02: It does mean that this is quirky and different.
37:40
SPEAKER_02: And you just do what you can to treat the symptoms.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: So Captain is still with us at 13.
37:46
SPEAKER_02: He is still finding spotted lantern fly eggs, but he's not doing it out in the woods.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: He is doing it like in libraries and museums and things like that, just to kind of educate the population.
37:58
SPEAKER_02: I technically have him retired.
38:01
SPEAKER_02: So we now have this little dog rookie.
38:03
SPEAKER_02: He's five months old and he is now doing it.
38:06
SPEAKER_02: And if I can train a five-month-old teacup chihuahua puppy to do this, oh my gosh, yeah, chihuahua.
38:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:15
SPEAKER_02: Jeez.
38:15
SPEAKER_02: I have little El Diablo upstairs, probably yelling right now as he's but his name is Rookie because we have Captain and Rookie.
38:25
SPEAKER_02: And he is already going into schools.
38:28
SPEAKER_02: And he is already doing the work because dogs know what to do with their noses.
38:31
SPEAKER_02: You just have to show them if you find this and you get this, point in the way, it is not hard to teach a dog how to find something.
38:39
SPEAKER_02: It is hard to proof them through the environment.
38:43
SPEAKER_02: So before people get the idea to go out and just teach their dog, okay, you find this thing, you get cheese, work with your environmental specialists in the area, work with your extension schools, work with environmental, like agricultural outposts.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: Because if you're training a dog to find the bug, you could be you could be undoing all the work that the scientists are actually trying to do.
39:06
SPEAKER_02: We now know we can find the eggs, and that is more helpful.
39:10
SPEAKER_02: As well as those murder walks while you're squatting the living eggs.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: Right?
39:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:17
SPEAKER_02: Murder walks.
39:17
SPEAKER_02: Murder walks in New Jersey.
39:19
SPEAKER_02: My favorite thing that I came across when I started studying the Spotted Lantern fly for this was um, because of course, New Jersey, they have murder pub crawls.
39:30
SPEAKER_02: You go to a pub, that's awesome.
39:32
SPEAKER_02: They give you a putt-putt golf pencil and a kill sheet, and you go out and come back with X number of kills, and they give you free beer.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: That's that I mean, listen, yeah, that it's the same thing as cheese for dogs.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just give it takes.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, honestly.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: Give millennials a beer, a craft beer, and they'll just go out there and do whatever.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:56
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so like we can train people, we can train these dogs.
40:01
SPEAKER_02: And after the study was done, as much as the study people don't love that I'm saying this, I was able to put 25 dogs at the shelter that I previously worked at on this odor.
40:14
SPEAKER_02: The problem was as that egg mass was decaying, the dogs that came on after the study were picking up decaying odor.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: So we don't know if they can actually find egg masses.
40:24
SPEAKER_02: But we do know is that the dogs who were trained on dead flies, dead fly eggs, were able to transition to live eggs.
40:34
SPEAKER_02: And several dogs in areas of invasion during their test were like, I'm gonna go find the dead fly eggs, maneuvered and alerted on live eggs.
40:44
SPEAKER_02: So that transition from dead frozen eggs to live was super high.
40:51
SPEAKER_02: And that is awesome.
40:52
SPEAKER_02: And the person who ran the study, her name is oh, Sally Dickinson and Erica Fullerbacher.
40:58
SPEAKER_02: Those are the two leads on this on this study, which was super cool.
41:03
SPEAKER_02: So cool.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll we'll definitely with all your books and everything, we'll put out we need links from you.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'll get it.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: Side steps.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: We need all the links, but yeah.
41:13
SPEAKER_00: So we'll get we'll put all that in the bio that you guys can check all this out.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: But if readers are gonna go purchase your book, right, right?
41:20
SPEAKER_00: If readers can take away only one thing from your book, what do you hope that it is?
41:25
SPEAKER_02: I hope is that it's it's a really hard question.
41:34
SPEAKER_02: I hope it's your dogs are always right.
41:39
SPEAKER_02: Behavior doesn't exist in a vacuum.
41:41
SPEAKER_02: All behavior has a function.
41:43
SPEAKER_02: And so if your dog is doing something that you find super cute, it's probably working for your dog because you're reinforcing it.
41:51
SPEAKER_02: If your dog is doing something you don't like, digging, barking, whatever the case might be, there's a reason they're doing it.
42:00
SPEAKER_02: Like they're not doing it to be spiteful, they're not doing it to be harmful.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the same thing you hear as a parent.
42:05
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
42:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
42:07
SPEAKER_02: Like all behavior has a function.
42:09
SPEAKER_02: And if you are getting super frustrated, take a beat, walk away.
42:14
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna be okay.
42:15
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: The second thing I want people to take away is growling is communication and never punish it out of a dog because now you're taking the safety off a gun.
42:25
SPEAKER_02: When I'm called into a case, it's sometimes what we call the ladder of regression.
42:32
SPEAKER_02: It's 11 steps of stress that you can see in dogs, like lip licking, averting their eyes, whale eye, curling back, maybe even barking, but jumping back.
42:43
SPEAKER_02: Like, so we can see all of these different signs of stress where dogs are saying, please leave me alone.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: Please, yeah.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: They're asking for help.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's all over social media where I've seen, and again, social media where people will be letting their babies crawling all over dogs, and you can see like the dogs are trying, yeah.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: They're trying so hard to be patient, and it and people are like, Oh, look, the dog's being so good.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: We're like, that dog is about to lose its shit on that baby, and it's trying so hard not to.
43:12
SPEAKER_02: Always like a dog puts up with way more than any other animal we have as a domesticated animal.
43:20
SPEAKER_02: They do.
43:21
SPEAKER_02: What I mean by that is a cat, we don't alpha roll cats because we know we like our arms firmly attached to our like our wrists.
43:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Diggles is the only exception.
43:32
SPEAKER_02: The only exception.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: Diggles is a dog.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: That's not a cat.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: I swear it's not a cat.
43:38
SPEAKER_02: And so horses, like they put up with a lot, but like they also could like, I'm not coming towards you.
43:44
SPEAKER_02: Dogs, yeah, even knowing they're in trouble, will still walk up to us.
43:48
SPEAKER_02: We will still, some people will still pin them on their back for coming, and they will wag their tail and still kiss you at the end of the day.
43:55
SPEAKER_02: Like, our dogs put up with way more human stupidity than any other animal on this planet.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: And they are our best friends for it.
44:05
SPEAKER_02: We have created this beast that is so connected to us that they are so forgiving for our blindness to what they're trying to say.
44:15
SPEAKER_02: More times than not, I'm called into a dog bite case, and they always say, but his tail was wagging just before the bite.
44:22
SPEAKER_02: And I asked them, How is that tail wagging?
44:26
SPEAKER_02: Is it like a full body wag?
44:29
SPEAKER_02: Because that's a happy dog, and that would be weird if it bit you.
44:32
SPEAKER_02: Or is it a twitch and they're stiff and staring at you with their eyes out this way, and they're like, Oh, it's that one.
44:39
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, that dog was telling you every step of the way, do not come closer.
44:43
SPEAKER_02: And we're like, I love you.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's trying to communicate as best as it can.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: It's it's really trying.
44:50
SPEAKER_02: So, my my hope is that people can learn a little bit more about dog communication from ethical sources.
44:56
SPEAKER_02: My friend Lily Chin, she actually has this awesome poster that's behind me, Dogs of the World.
45:02
SPEAKER_02: But she has a I know she did all these cool dogs, but she has a book called Doggy Language.
45:07
SPEAKER_02: And when you're going through, you could teach a kid because they don't need to read.
45:11
SPEAKER_02: They could say that's that's a yeah, which is what I love.
45:15
SPEAKER_02: She used to be an illustrator for the WB and then jump ship and became one of the first behavior-qualified people to do animation and drawing.
45:24
SPEAKER_02: So if you have pets, you go to an animal hospital and you see the art on the walls, it's probably Lily's work that you're seeing.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
45:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's really awesome.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
45:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I need to have a little read over that.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: All right, last thing, because we are we know we've gone over time a little bit.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: So for fun, just rapid fire back to back.
45:45
SPEAKER_01: I got three quick questions.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: Number one, what is your favorite breed to train?
45:50
SPEAKER_02: Oh man.
45:52
SPEAKER_02: I would say mutts.
45:54
SPEAKER_02: I love a good breed.
45:56
SPEAKER_02: That's fair.
45:56
SPEAKER_02: I think everybody else is looking at them and going, what are you?
46:01
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, who are you?
46:03
SPEAKER_02: And I like to try to get them out.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: What's the weirdest thing you've ever trained a dog to do?
46:10
SPEAKER_01: Fuck off.
46:14
SPEAKER_02: And and here's the funniest part.
46:16
SPEAKER_02: It was a person who was, I don't think I'm outing this person.
46:20
SPEAKER_02: He was a producer for NPR's Car Talk at the time.
46:26
SPEAKER_02: And he's the creator of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on NPR.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
46:30
SPEAKER_02: And he invited me to the office.
46:32
SPEAKER_02: He had this dog, Daisy, and he was like, I want my dog to go lay down over there.
46:37
SPEAKER_02: But I don't want to just say go over there because when the big mucky mucks come over, I just want to say, Daisy, fuck off.
46:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:45
SPEAKER_02: And that's what it is.
46:46
SPEAKER_02: And that's your warning on the uh.
46:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's funny though.
46:52
SPEAKER_02: But like he said rapid fire.
46:54
SPEAKER_00: That's hilarious when it came out.
46:55
SPEAKER_01: And it works.
46:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome, though.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: All right, and last thing is if aliens asked you to explain why humans keep dogs, what would you tell them?
47:06
SPEAKER_01: Have you seen a dog?
47:07
SPEAKER_01: They're so cute.
47:08
SPEAKER_02: Look at their face.
47:10
SPEAKER_02: Look at him.
47:11
SPEAKER_02: Look at him.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: Right?
47:16
SPEAKER_00: All right, guys.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, like we said, we will include all Melissa's links in the bio.
47:21
SPEAKER_00: Everything that we can figure out about Melissa will include down there.
47:25
SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys for listening.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you go check us out on Patreon as well and support us if you can, so we can continue to keep bringing awesome people like Melissa onto the podcast.
47:32
SPEAKER_00: So, Melissa, we really, really appreciate your time and talking to you as always.
47:37
SPEAKER_00: We enjoy it.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you tell your kiddo we both said hi.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: I will.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: So shout out to Asa.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: She's yeah, she's still an awesome kid.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: So thank you, Melissa.
47:45
SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, we'll talk to you guys next week.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: Bye.