Starve the Ego Feed the Soul
Starve the Ego Feed the Soul
Dogs and Their Emotional Depths with Dr. Alexandra Horowitz
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Renowned author and dog behavior expert Dr. Alexandra Horowitz joins us to unravel the mysteries behind how dogs perceive their world and the misconceptions we often hold about their emotions. Dive into the fascinating insights from her research at the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab and discover why dogs might not be smiling when we think they are. Through personal anecdotes and scientific observations, we explore the rich emotional lives of dogs and how our relationships with them reflect our own personalities and behaviors.
We promise a fresh perspective on human-animal relationships, particularly the unique bond we share with our furry friends. From the joy and playfulness that dogs bring to our lives to the complex emotions involved in the loss of a pet, this episode covers it all. We chat about the intriguing notion that people often choose dogs that mirror their own traits, and the ongoing debate on whether dogs are a subspecies of wolves or a distinct species entirely. Our discussion also touches on Dr. Horowitz's exploration of the olfactory world of dogs, as detailed in her book "Being a Dog."
Listeners will be captivated by the philosophical considerations of cloning pets and the unmatched uniqueness each new animal brings into our lives. We share touching stories that highlight dogs' resilience and the deep gratitude they exhibit, especially those mixed-breed "res dogs" from the Navajo reservation. This episode will leave you with a profound appreciation for dogs and the valuable insights they provide into our own lives, encouraging a more thoughtful approach to understanding these remarkable companions.
To work with me one on one or inquire more head over to www.nicobarraza.com
To learn more about Dr. Horotwiz's work head to her website and purchase her books here https://alexandrahorowitz.net/
Warmly,
Nico Barraza
@FeedTheSoulNB
www.nicobarraza.com
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Speaker 1:I have a very special guest today Dr Alexandra Horowitz. Now, I first came across Dr Horowitz's work in 2009 from her book Inside of a Dog and got to tell you it's still one of the most incredible books I've read till this day. As you all know if you follow me on social media, I'm a huge dog lover, have two of my own family members, segi and Sol, and actually about to add a third to the family. Not my own dog, but I'm getting another res dog for my grandmother, my mom, since they lost their dog a couple of years ago, and this conversation transcends outside of the dog, uh, a realm too. We talk about every different four legged, two legged family member. That's, that's not a human being. And, um, her book just really was touching. When I read it, um, it was an incredible reflection on dog behavior, on things that dogs do, that we think, uh, we sort of try to humanize them. You know, we try to say, oh, they're wagging their tail or they're smiling or they're they're scared, and and she really brings a um, a, a life's work of research on studying dog and dog behavior specifically. Um, and of course there's like this grief component too, since she lost that dog that was her family member. Um, it's just, yeah, it's a really good conversation and you can tell that she is just such a deep, you know great human being that honestly gets to call her day job. It's a really cool day job she does. We talk about that on the show too. How you know blessed she is to work in this sort of research around dogs and dog behavior and dog love too.
Speaker 1:She is a senior research fellow and adjunct associate professor within the English and psychology departments at Barnard College and she's also the director of the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard, if you want to learn more about Dr Horowitz, head over to alexandrahorowitznet. And she also has Instagram. She's on X, she's on Google Scholar, so you can check out all the links. I'll throw in the link to the show notes If you want to buy any one of her books. She's written a number of books since then. She also mentions that she's going to be revisiting that first book and maybe making some edits and some revisions to it too. But I would pick yourself up a copy of Inside of a Dog Again. It is such an incredible piece of work and any of her current books I recommend to you. So I'll throw a link to her website where all her books are. But you can also get them on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. A lot of your big block retailers sell them too.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, if you're a dog person, if you're an animal person, you're going to love this show. It's just so fascinating to me and there's just a lot of cool information too. So again, if you, if you love, star of the Ego, feed the Soul. If you've been here for a bit, please. Honestly, this is one thing you guys can do. For me Makes a huge difference If you can leave the show a five star written review on Apple and Spotify podcasts. It really just helps get the show in front of more eyes, into more ears all over the world. I mean we, we more ears all over the world. I mean we average listeners from all over the world every show and it's really, really humbling. But maybe like 5% of our total listenership has left a review If you look at the average of each episode people that tune in. So pause this. Do me a solid, leave a review on both Apple and Spotify podcasts. Five-star written review, whatever source that you're listening in on. That would make a huge difference and be very much appreciated. Also, if you want to work with me one-on-one, I work with individuals and couples as a counselor, a coach on relationships, life, grief, grieving, trauma, a whole host of things. You can head over to my website to learn more wwwnicobarrazacom, and I'll throw the link to that in the description. Thank you so much for being here Without further ado.
Speaker 1:Dr Alexandra Horowitz, their late dog's name, and you've never met the person before your dog, pumpernickel, right, is the name? You them Pump? Um, you know, I, uh, it's. It's interesting because, like I, have a a hard time remembering some human's names unless I like repeat it multiple times, but if someone tells me a story about their dog and the dog like makes an impact on me, I'll like never forget the dog's name, you know, and obviously that's the main character in your book, because you're talking about the behaviors and describing it. And one of the things I found fascinating was just like the differences in our perception of what a dog is thinking, feeling, versus what's actually going on, based on you know, what you're observing and like your your time's just sitting in the park and watching other people interact with their dogs. So, yeah, I just it's. It's quite unique what you do yeah, I just it's.
Speaker 2:It's quite unique what you do. Thank you, yeah, it is. I'm a little bit sui generis, I suppose, but um, I love that it stayed with people and you know, it's kind of amazing that people, you know people, wound up knowing pumpernickel yeah that's a kind of the loveliest thing that could happen. Actually. I mean I, we can get into it later, but like, actually there was, it was um. Somebody recently even, uh, contacted me about one of the drawings I did in the book, cause I had these little sketch. I'm not an illustrator obviously.
Speaker 2:but I have these little sketches in the book and he, um, he wanted to use it. One of the sketches on like a sail, he's doing this round the world thing, and I said, sure he could do it, you know. And he sent me some of the swag from the boat. I actually have it right here Like. Here's one of like everyone in the boat gets this photo of a little picture of Pumpernickel. She's now going to go like around the world on a boat on the sail.
Speaker 2:It's neat, like around the world on a boat on the sail. It's neat. I couldn't have imagined leaving that impression with people, so thanks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and before I want because I guess started the recording already I want you to be able to introduce yourself. But since you know it's interesting, most guests I have on here I do a little bit of research on. I get on a brief phone call maybe before we talk and we talk about some of the stuff we're going to talk about with you. I feel like I've known you since I was 20 years old, you know, through your writing, and I haven't read any of your most recent books which I'm interested in. I've just been super busy I haven't been able to read recently. But that first book in 2009, I was an interesting college student. Like I was an interesting college student. Like I was a college athlete but very much into like spirituality and I was kind of on this renaissance away from Catholicism that I was raised on.
Speaker 1:And I remember walking through a bookstore.
Speaker 1:I can't remember if it was like the campus bookstore at San Diego State or it could have been like a Barnes and Noble or something, but I remember seeing the cover of your book and I've always been a dog lover, like I grew up in a family that really loved animals, particularly dogs, really big cat people, which I'm actually going to ask you about too, but I remember seeing that book I'm like inside of a dog, huh, and I was like that sounds like a book I would love to read.
Speaker 1:And I had just gotten done reading the Universe is a Single Atom by the Dalai Lama, which is him talking about the convergence of neuroscience and spirituality and having these sort of summits where he meets a lot of these top scientists, that research stuff, and uh, I was like this is sort of right up the alley, like sort of the spirituality of the dog, you know what, what, what, what, what exists inside of it and and I think the thing that I've always felt, even at a young age, is like the love of a dog. I don't know if like we can quite match in the human realm. You know, there's this sense of like, I don't know, just like dedication and there's like almost zero judgment that goes on. Whereas with humans there has to be some sort of transaction, unless you're a parent I feel like there's some sort of transaction level with dogs. It's like they love you, regardless of who you are. Yeah, I feel like there's some sort of transactional level with dogs. It's like they, they love you regardless of who you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's a level of awe in it, isn't there to have that relationship with a non-human animal? And that dogs enable that right by kind of putting up with us. And then they're not just putting up with us, they're interested in us right there and they come to know us very quickly and they're, as you say, right, devoted, loyal to us, maybe to a fault, and you know sometimes to their detriment.
Speaker 2:But I feel that that relationship is reverential and um and really special that I get to. I feel really lucky that I get to think about that and study this species.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So all right, we kind of jumped into it, but I want to give you the table to introduce yourself, dr Horowitz, because you know, as I said, kind of to start off the show, you know, I feel like I've known you, at least through your work and your words, for a long time now. How did you get into the work you do? How did you get into studying psychology, the emotions, the behaviors of dogs, which sounds like a dream job, by the way?
Speaker 2:It does, and if I had known as a child that that was a job, maybe I would have aimed for it, but there wasn't any such job right, I kind of made it up and it was an accident that I wound up studying dogs. I get into it a little bit in Inside of a Dog, which I'm revising right now, by the way. So I've actually been revisiting that book and that's a great pleasure. I was a graduate student in cognitive science so I was already interested in this convergence between philosophy and neuroscience and thinking about minds, but also thinking especially about non-human animal minds. I wanted to know how do we know what's on the mind of someone who can't tell us?
Speaker 2:People were studying lots of interesting non-human animals, mostly big-brained animals like primates or dolphins etc. Or animals that could be kept in a lab, like a rat or a mouse, which really stand in for cognition in a lot of studies. But I wanted to study play behavior because I was looking at a naturally occurring behavior that might show us something about what the player understands. It's super big. I mean you know all about play. I mean athletics is play in a way, the way that we reify play as adults is we keep, is we sort of constrain it to this athletic forum as though, like as adults, we should be not doing that. But in this one forum we can play and work at the same time. But other animals you know all animals play and that was really exciting to see. But they don't always play right in front of you so that you can stop, like a bonobo will play a lot, but they'll also just disappear.
Speaker 2:And I realized at some point that I was. I was watching my own dog, pumpernickel, play with other dogs several times a day. I was witnessing play all the time, which is maybe what had seeded play in my head as something to study, so I just turned my video camera to them. I convinced my dissertation committee that I should study dogs. I went and studied with a dog biologist, mark Beckoff in Colorado, so that I could learn how to be a good ethologist or just, you know, observer of dog behavior, different than being a person who lives with a dog, different than being a dog owner to observe their behavior from this like quasi objective point of view.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I wound up doing my work at UC San Diego so not far from where you were in, studying dogs at play. And then I just got interested in dogs. I realized, oh my goodness, nobody's studying dogs. You could do anything. There's so many questions to be asked. Every question you have as an owner there's. You could do anything. There's so many questions to be asked. Every question you have as an owner. Can you make that into a question I could ask cognitively of the dog or like this whole interesting dynamic between humans and dogs? That's something that you could study. So then dog just became the center of my interest and that led in several years to you know my writing inside of a dog, which where the field of canine cognition was really at its infancy at the time.
Speaker 2:It's developed a lot since then.
Speaker 1:It has. I just I just picked up a God it was, I think it was time or national geographic maybe, but it was like the front page was like, literally dogs, like what they're seeing, feeling and thinking, kind of thing. Right, and I just picked it was this this month's issue, and I remember the reason why your book stuck out when I was, when I love dogs. I've always grown up like a cowboy family that loves dogs. The dogs sleep inside with in the bed with us. You know, like I never understood how people like the dogs sleep outside. I'm like that's, that's my family member, you know, and everyone sort of has a different relationship with the dog. Like I've also never considered my dog's pets. They're my friends. Like you know, I have had more conversations with my dogs than most human beings um, you know, in various ways, right, I love how people talk to their dogs.
Speaker 1:I love that it totally, it's, it's uh, and it's interesting that we, you know, we'll, we'll say, like the, the craziest things are dogs and whether they understand them or not, I'm sure we can get into that. It's a regardless, it's an outlet for, you know, a lot of times like our, our deepest or maybe our childish feelings, you know, because the way the voices we use to talk to them, and when you brought up play, it was really interesting because the thing popped up in my mind it's like in sports, especially as a professional athlete, even a college athlete at some point, like you lose that because it becomes a job, right and, and you lose it, and I think that there's a little bit of love that gets like stripped from it, right and, and regardless of how successful you are, how much money you make or if you make to top whatever it is, the interesting thing is I'm I'm becoming a pilot. So I'm 35 and I've been wanting to fly for a long time and I had a couple of things that came up in my life that prevented me, and now I'm doing it and I sort of feel like I'm playing again. You know, like there's a ton of things you have to do to fly safely and to be a good pilot. But then once you're up there, you know, but you're like a kid again.
Speaker 1:If you really enjoy it, right, if it speaks to you and with the dogs like whenever I watch dogs play, whether they're an old dog or a puppy there is that transcendent moment or set of moments where you see that and that's what they teach you. And I think a lot of times we don't, because we're so busy as humans we don't pay attention to those little moments. We're like oh, I'm just waiting for you to poop, please pee. I got to go to work, got to put you back inside, you know taking a walk.
Speaker 1:But I try as much as I can to be mindful when I'm spending time with them. You know, even if I'm stressed, even if I have plenty of stuff going on health wise and all these other things, but it really sort of is beautiful to be just mindful, put your phone away and be present, and it's what you do is just to be an observer, right, and I do like how you paralleled like I'm a dog parent and then sort of a dog scientist or a dog observer too, because a lot of people, for instance, think, because you're a therapist or a counselor, you're going to be a better parent or a better partner. Not always the case. That's your professional hat versus like who you are as a person, you know. Yeah, and obviously raising a dog is a lot different than just observing. You know a dog completely you're.
Speaker 2:So I mean one of the things about dog reason you're talking to them, the way you describe you or your family doing is is because you have this like personal relationship with them and that is importantly not a scientific, like distant relationship, right, Like it's deeply involved and science is very involved, but it tries to step outside of that relationship, which may be in some cases is a mistake, right, Like just the way I think it's a little bit of a mistake to let go of the play in athletics and have made it, you know, as a society, something that is all just work.
Speaker 1:Right, absolutely For professionals.
Speaker 2:But I'm always bouncing between being, you know, wearing the science hat and wearing the dog person hat. Right who? Lives with dogs.
Speaker 1:So let's get into what you've learned. I mean, you've done so much of this research, right? Oh, there's a cat there.
Speaker 2:There's a cat.
Speaker 1:Okay, it answers the question I was going to ask you Are you a cat person? I'm not against cats. Not against cats? Okay, but we was going to ask you Are you a cat person? I'm not against cats, not against cats, okay, so that. But we're going to sell some of our books right now.
Speaker 2:The cat people will buy them.
Speaker 1:So you know when, when we, when we communicate with dogs, like, let's say, we get angry at our dog or you know, we experienced happiness with our dogs. Like you talk about the differences in what we are perceiving from the human perspective, based on our own growth trauma, you know like our lives, right, and then what the dog is actually showing us and I remember like it's funny because I remember this book so well it's like jogging my memory, like the idea of their like tail wagging or like the hair on their back standing up or how they're like positioning or like how they're facing you. That is all sort of communicating things and sometimes we might associate them with being happy because their mouth's open, they're panting, but that really might be their like sort of flustered or angry or nervous. Can you explain to me on just about on some of the emotions that we get wrong as human beings often and what we're sort of assuming is going on versus maybe what's actually going on?
Speaker 2:I'm really getting a hug from my cat. She wants to be part of this conversation.
Speaker 1:She wants to say, like dogs are not the only lives that matter, guys, cats are here too.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't think we're wrong to look at dogs behavior to try to understand what's on their mind, right? Where we go wrong is that we assume that whatever sort of maps to us is what they're experiencing. So the smile is a great example. If a dog is panting, they look like they're smiling to us and we assume that means that they're happy and that's, that's just an impoverished inference, right, it doesn't. It doesn't map.
Speaker 2:They do have ways of showing that they're happy. Right, they definitely experience happiness and it's, as you mentioned, like these multiple body things. Right, they'll have a relaxed mouth, their ears might be relaxed and maybe back, their tail will probably be wagging loosely right Versus, like real stern wag. So they have expressions of happiness, they have expressions of disgust and anger and fear, but they don't always look exactly like they do on us and for some reason, we definitely have a block at just thinking about. Well, let's look at what combination of behaviors are meaningful in expressing emotion for the dog versus what would it be for us. I mean, I wish we had a tail to wag, you know, but for some reason we either ignore the dog's tail wag as meaningful or we just think it's always happy.
Speaker 2:For instance, you know, and it has a range of emotions that it expresses in combination with the body. There's another emotion that I actually studied a little bit of, which is the guilty look. You know this idea that dogs they put on this look of guilt and every you smile because everybody will recognize it oh yeah, you walk in the room, you're like who, who did that, who did that?
Speaker 1:and then you see it right and then you see it right.
Speaker 2:But, um, you know, to impute guilt to a dog is interesting.
Speaker 2:It means that the dog not only understands right and wrong, as you have defined it, right, right, which is very obscure, like I don't know, how a dog comes into a human household and, like, suddenly understands all the rules of the house um, takes years for kids to learn that right and then not only understands right and wrong but appreciates that they've done something wrong and then feels bad about it internally.
Speaker 2:Right, that's what we're saying is happening with the dog. Okay, I think there's reason to sort of step back from that and say, well, let's unpack a little bit of that. And the first thing I unpacked is like when that guilty look happens and I found that it happens, not when they've done something I did a research study on this Not when they've done something wrong, like eaten food that you asked them to eat, but when the person thinks they've done something wrong Because they're reading our behavior and even before we're scolding them or whatever we're doing, they put on this like very cute appeasement look, submissive look, which is aimed to get us to not punish them and, by the way, it's really effective. That's when that look comes up, so you don't even have to say anything about guilt to explain that look.
Speaker 2:That's the type of thing I think, this dissonance between what we put on them and what they have, and I'm not saying they don't have guilt, and I'm certainly not saying they don't have happiness, but it doesn't look on them what we assume it looks like in many cases and that's, I think, the the thing I hope people you know take away from thinking, you know reading my book or thinking about the research that we're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you think over time, though, like that is perceived guilt, because, although they might not feel bad for like the result of the pillow exploding or eating the donut on the table, right, they, they learn over time. For instance, like my youngest dog, segi, who I consider a dog dog, whereas my oldest dog, soul, is like a human dog, if I can say, and they're both equally as I love them both. And Segi, as he gets older he's becoming, I'd say, more of like I don't know, there's just more depth now, like into at least what I've noticed Right and again, my, my sort of small human perception of this. Um, but when he was younger he was opposite of soul, so I really didn't have to train, I mean, she just did everything like perfectly, and anyone who's met her has been like soul's, like the best doctor travel over the world with me. Segi was like getting into like boxes of tax, you know, like eating plastic, you know things like that, right, and uh, zero conscientious, for like this might be able to kill me if I ingest it, you know.
Speaker 1:And uh, I remember when he was younger I had just gone through a separation or breakup and I would come home and I'd come home from work and I'd like see him. Uh, he destroyed something and he was like six months, eight months, and I would like scold him, you know. And again, like I I'm infallible. Like I'm infallible, excuse me, but like I try not to get like angry at my dogs even though I do get angry at my dogs sometimes if they do something. That's like oh my God, you just fucking ruined this, right. But like came home with, scold him and then over the years I realized like one he like would stop doing those things. But also I did see like him become more guilty.
Speaker 1:Maybe the first, whatever 10 times something happened. And again he's responding to my emotion. He would be like what happened? I don't know what I did wrong, I was just hanging out and then this thing blew up and I didn't even know what I was doing. And then, a year after now, he's like I come in and as soon as I come in, if I don't even know something's missing, he'll be like cause he, I feel like he's preemptively, even if I don't have like a direct like, if I don't have direct sight on what happened, and I look at him and I'm like all right, something happened. I was like what happened, right, like I know, because what you're looking like telling me is telling me something. Something happened. I don't even know what happened yet, but someone's telling me I should probably be kind of mad because you did something you're not supposed to.
Speaker 2:Is that real or am I making that up in my head? Well, I think it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 2:I mean, I will say they do get better at responding to us, and you said that yourself, like there was studies responding to you yeah, and learns more like oh yeah, maybe not when I'm pulling apart the couch, but when I find myself surrounded by bits of fluff and then you come in, like that scene, yeah, that I should.
Speaker 2:I should put on a look so that I don't, that I don't get punished for that right. So they're learning that right and they learn associations super well and so over time it feels like they're more understanding. But the you know, other people have done research, looking at, basically asking people before they know if their dog has done something wrong. So that situation you're describing, like you come in and you say, oh, I see, you, I see, based on your look, I think there's something going on. They've asked them to just like guess, did they do something wrong or not? And people guess at like 50%, so like half the time yes and half the time no. But there's a human psychology thing here too, which is that we don't always remember the times where they look guilty but they haven't done anything wrong, like we're, like you look guilty.
Speaker 1:That's something's funny and you look positive, nothing yeah yeah, and we just forget that instance.
Speaker 2:but we remember the time that that happened and we did so like, yeah, it doesn't, it's not unrelated to their doing something and having learned over time that you'll be upset about it. But it feels like it's a different method than with us right Interesting Guilt is very much a human. We learn that as kids. How do we learn guilt? We learn guilt because, like somebody's told us, there's things that are right and wrong.
Speaker 2:Eventually we do things wrong. People get angry, and then they and they tell us how we should feel. They say that feeling, you have, that like worried feeling. That's the guilt feeling. You don't even have to see me to feel that Right, it's not obvious to me that all of that gets communicated to dogs.
Speaker 1:I think it's just different for them, yeah, and the look is prompted by different things as well do you think, as we have evolved though, we've picked up each other's emotions slightly, even though obviously our brains develop differently, the capacity is differently, is different. Excuse me, but I feel like, like, for instance, there's been times I come home and like 99 of the time my dogs are waiting at the door, but anytime they haven't been there it's been because one of them did something they're not supposed to, and that's before I even make eye contact with them, right, or before I even they can, even like they hear my car and they're just, I know, like if I want to set cameras up in my home one day and just watch them, you know, because, uh, it's amazing, right, it's like it's so, it's so amazing, like to watch them. So my, uh, my friend Meredith, who I lived with for two years when I was in San Diego, um, over the past couple of years getting revision shoulder surgery, she has a dog, who's also a res dog, who I fell deeply in love with. She's like my third dog and Sonora is probably the most crafty part raccoon, part fox dog I've ever met. I mean an incredibly smart dog, and I want to ask you this question.
Speaker 1:So, for instance, my dogs, I've at least tried to train them to never touch any food outright, even if it's at your height, unless someone said and so they don't do that. But, sonora, not the case. So like there could be anything on the table. If people are sitting in the vicinity of eye contact, right, she will never touch anything. But as soon as that person leaves and has to be distracted, so if I leave but she knows I'm sitting around the corner and I'm not talking or I'm not doing something like she'll come look, like I've seen this, like she'll come check, and if I'm distracted then she'll go and try to get on the table. If you leave, you better not leave any food out, because she will find it on the table, like what is happening in that moment. Because in my mind that seems to be preemptive cognition with also a little bit of manipulation. But those are human things, you know. Like what is going on.
Speaker 2:I think you're a little bit right. I mean, it's not that they don't have any human skills, and there, what this dog is showing in spades is a real sensitivity to the importance of attention, of our attention, right, and dogs can do that. They can discriminate between like you're looking at something and telling them not to have it, or it's in the room but you're talking to somebody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which can be pretty inattentive to the situation, to you're leaving the room, they discriminate those. And if the dog is also around a lot of other intermediate situations, like you're reading a book or you're watching YouTube or something they'll learn how much attention you have on them in that context too. To me those stories are about yeah, I mean, dogs are very sensitive to others and that means other dogs, but people and they're just reading our behavior all the time. It's like they're studying us, Right, and so they do learn these things which are meaningful for us because they are meaningful for them.
Speaker 2:I wish we were watching them with the kind of intensity and acuity that that they're watching us to. That's really what the scientist tries to do in these little glimpses is figure out like oh yeah, like what is the cue that they've learned that you're coming home, or that you're going to get angry, or that the food is now like unsupervised and they can go get it? Or like, how do they learn that? When does that happen? And it's all learned because they're really great like anthropologists reading us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I feel like some dogs will take advantage of that. Some won't, for instance my oldest dog, soul. Like she will never, ever do that. She knows she could, she's just as smart, but like she would just won't, she won't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think there's a level of impulse control that really differs between dogs, so like the puppy is more likely than the older dog to have like impulse control problems, right, but also really big personality differences between dogs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which which I, which obviously we can relate to our human friends, right, I mean I have human friends that have low impulse control and some that don't you know Completely.
Speaker 1:And I bring her up because you brought up the food thing, like she'll eat another dog's food. But you have to be. Your attention has to be distracted, you know, and it's crazy that they're so acutely paying attention to that, because you know, I wish I could pay as much attention to them as they do to me. Unfortunately, I have to pay for the food and find ways to do other things, you know, to keep a home overhead, or you can make it your career.
Speaker 1:That's the key, I think. Now you're onto something it's like just be able to hang out with your dog every day and get paid to do it, and that's awesome. I'm surprised you don't have a YouTube channel just bustling yet. And it's interesting because, like you know, when we talk about like human's best friend, right, they, they got that title for a reason and, uh, again, not to offend cat people, but cats aren't called that. But cats are amazing. I've had a couple of cats in my time. Why do you think that they? They've earned that term? And you know, if we look at the generation and the evolution of the dog in the household, right, I read this book.
Speaker 1:Um, god, what is it called? It's a, it's a chinese book that's been trans translated into english. Um, about, like the, the mongols, how they, like one of them, like started to feed a wolf and then the wolf became part of, like this mongol clan, and then they started to sort of breed certain wolves to like, be able to be like, protect the, the, the herd, basically, as they move through himalayan mountains. Like, at what? At what point? Like, do you think that we started to really give dogs that term? And then you know a lot of people like when they'll observe a dog behavior a little bit well, they're related to the wolf, so that's where they're doing that. I mean we have to be so far gone at some point where, like, they're completely its own species, you know, where, like there's still some obvious, like you know, relation and correlation to the behaviors.
Speaker 2:But they're they're dogs, they're not not wolves anymore there's still an argument, even in my field, about if dogs are a subspecies of wolves. Um, you know, gray wolves and dogs being evolved from a common ancestor we know, that's the case, or if they really are their own species.
Speaker 2:I mean they can interbreed. So there's an argument for the former. But yes, they're so changed in behavior and anatomy from wolves that I think it is useful to look at wolf behavior to begin to understand. You know, they evolved as wolves or as wolf ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years. The last 15,000 years they've been dogs and maybe not exactly all that time the dog that we would recognize as a dog, right, I mean if you have a like a French bulldog or something, that dog, there was no dog looking exactly like that until like 200 years ago, so that's actually really really recent, even though that represents several generations.
Speaker 2:Intentionally or not, make dogs into this model which eventually we called our best friend for 10 or maybe 20,000 years.
Speaker 2:I think initially it was probably pretty unintentional and probably was partly the wolves or these proto dogs doing it themselves, sort of self-selecting. They weren't scared of us, they saw us as a food source, and so they become like aligned with maybe nomadic communities, maybe communities which are in place and generate trash, that's a food for them to eat, right, and then they become guards, inadvertently and then intentionally, right, like over time. That's maybe what happened we don't exactly have the story right and it happened in different places several times and then eventually they've sort of wandered into our homes. But it's it's only the last couple of hundred years that I think that you would find dogs in a home per se, right like they were. They were more function, they had functional roles, so they were the guard or um the hunting companion, and I don't think at that time they were called our best friends right but then, there this became arose, this sort of companion dog version of it, and I think that's when.
Speaker 2:That's when it changed, and it was because they were companionate. You know, they social dogs. They want to be with us. We've changed them enough so that they're directed at looking at us and like gazing in our eyes something cats don't really do so much which makes us feel like we have a connection with them. That's when, I think, the flip switched and they became not just like all the other domestic animals we have out there some, many of which, most of which we eat but instead became the one who's going to be like part of the family right.
Speaker 1:Do you think that you know? Because you mentioned the transaction of, like place for food, right, they, they get a job. They have a job technically, like, they have something to work towards. Like there's training, there's a relationship there.
Speaker 1:Do you think it's also the love connection too, like is there, is there, because I feel like we love in similar ways and so, like when, like the dogs are pack animals, right, they usually, for the most part, they naturally want to be around things. They feel safe with right things. They feel, you know, like a team, for instance, and human beings are social animals. We are tribe animals, right, and do you think that that's part of the cohesion? Because when we look at, like the cat, for instance, some cat families, like larger cats, like tigers, like with prides, but most smaller cats, even in nature, after like a certain short age, like one to two years, they usually split off and they have their own sort of you know hectare of land or their own sort of you know area that they're living in. They don't, they don't really survive. Like when you look at coyotes, you make a dog, they're usually in packs and groups.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is where I think it is interesting to look at wolf behavior. Right, because they live in packs and their packs are, importantly, family packs. Right, there'll be like a mating pair and then they're young and maybe they're young's young, right, and that's so. The pack is actually we talk about packs a lot, but it is. It's a family that stays together. It's like a multi-generational family and they hunt together. So dogs are predisposed to want to be in a family. I would say, right, like that's the way that you can use the looking at wolves to understand dogs behavior. And I absolutely agree, right, that is part of what makes them good companions for us, I mean there are other pack-like animals that we didn't bring in our home right.
Speaker 2:All of the ungulates right in the savannah live in enormous groups with wanting to be close to each other, but we're not bringing in the zebra or the wildebeest. You know, there's also something about like having this family unit that is important to them and that they're very sensitive to. If you look at wolves greeting other wolves when they return to the pack, it's exactly like the greeting that we get at the door. Yeah, it's exactly like it. Right, so that's, and we love it. We really thrive on that greeting. So, yeah, I think that's super important in us choosing them.
Speaker 1:One of the things that gets tossed around a lot is certain dogs look like their owners. They're humans, right? Or they behave like they're humans. Do you think that it's true, right? So do you think that certain people are attracted to certain types of dogs, and if so, what can we tell about a human being based on their dog?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I mean, there has been actual research in different cultures but not just Western cultures too Like with people trying to match. Here are pictures of people and here are pictures of dogs, like who owns who, who lives with who, and people can do it at rates, you know, higher than chance.
Speaker 2:We do look like our dogs and I think a good explanation is that we're probably choosing dogs who we think kind of match us in some way, cause it's not just like I have, I'm a, I've, I'm a brunette, so I choose a brown dog, right Like it's. It's that there's something like like I think of myself as a little bit sporty, so I choose a dog who can be sporty with me. Or I consider myself like I'm kind of a prima donna, I choose a prima donna dog, right Like there's that kind of matching. So I don't think like I wouldn't do it to guarantee a personality test of a person, but I think there's something really to be said that we see the dogs as reflections of ourselves. Yeah, so you can look at how a dog behaves, how the person reacts, and see something about who that person is.
Speaker 1:I completely agree. I mean, I talk about dating and relationships a lot on this show and I think that one thing I've always been keen to is like what kind of dog does this person have, you know?
Speaker 1:And and I gotta be honest, like there'll there'll be a little bit of judgment in the back of my head, you know, and I'm obviously not going to outwardly say that, but they picked an aussie, or I wonder why they picked a res dog, you know. And then if I see a poodle or a pug or something like that, I'm like I wonder why they picked that dog. Different choice, different choice, completely different choice. And and uh, and again, like, we all have our own bias, and I have my own bias with this, you know, and I'm aware of that, but I'm attracted to certain dogs for for reasons that I'm particularly aware of, you know, and also based on their behaviors too, and like how they bond right Like an Australian Shepherd, which is mostly what my dogs are, but they're from the res, so they're mutts from the Navajo reservation. Like when you go up to Northern Arizona people they like iconify res dogs, you know, like, which is funny, because on the res, most people are like they're just freaking dogs everywhere, right, they live this like very, very tough life out there, um, but they're survivors and most of them are mixed, a bunch of different breeds, and so you can get a res dog that looks like a chihuahua and then a res dog looks like australian shepherd. They're both from the res, you know, um, but there's something like particularly I don't know unique about dogs from that grow up in those or even like rescues that grow up in, like those environments, that there's this. What I sense is like gratitude because like they I don't know like they they've been, you know, I guess depending on how old they were when they got sort of plucked or sort of saved.
Speaker 1:But you know, both of my dogs, like you know, people always ask me I used to travel with Soul over in airports. She would fly with me and people were like what kind of dog is that? I'm like, oh, she's a Navajo res dog. And they're like what is that? And I'm like she's literally just from the Navajo res. She's picked up in a box by Monument Valley, you know. And people always wonder like, well, what kind of pure red dog is that? Like you know what AKC breeder? And I've just again, nothing against that sort of industry, whole bunch of shit, and I would, I love the same kind of dogs, you know.
Speaker 2:I totally get it and I think you're right to call the type of dog that she is a res dog, right? I think we get too hung up on breeds, like the idea that a breed, that a one, has to have a breed. I absolutely don't think that's the case. It's a super recent phenomenon in human history and it's it's only to the, you know, it's. It's almost never to the dog's advantage, let's say, because it's a human thing.
Speaker 1:We try to put it in boxes, right, so we can modify it right, right and exactly so.
Speaker 2:It's commodified, and I do have something against the idea that we should just be making more dogs that look a certain way because we like that and selling them I do. So the idea, our impulses, though, that we want to like I mean it's such a weird like purchasing capitalist impulse that like we want one that's just like that. Right, I wrote a piece last year on cloning dogs, because there's also this world of people who clone their dogs, um, which is like really happening, and yeah, interestingly, they're often not purebred dogs, but they're like the dog that you know.
Speaker 2:Somebody had a, had a really meaningful relationship with the dog and and then loses the dog or anticipates that they're losing the dog and they want that dog again and it's like you're not going to get that dog again right, even if you once it got the exact same genome right it's going to be a different dog, and that's because you're different and their experiences are going to be different absolutely the soul, this weird idea that we can just like name a breed and then guarantee behavior or personality is is a mistake this is, this is such a good okay.
Speaker 1:So there's so much of the human psyche that's stuck in this idea, particularly within. Like the capitalist, I want it now, avoiding pain and grief mindset, whereas as a counselor, like what is this do you like? I love my dog. Soul is literally like I've never had a connection with an animal or human being honestly. And uh, she was on the cover of most REIs for 10 years as a ruffle athlete, like she's just and she doesn't know anything about this. She could give two craps about it. Right, it's me bragging about what my dog did and photos she's been in as an athlete with me.
Speaker 1:But she, she's just my dog, you know, and she's loved many people that I've met and people that aren't in our lives anymore. And when I think about this, I will miss her till the day I die if she leaves before me, you know, but I would never imagine cloning her. There is a part of me that wishes, like, as a res dog, you have to get them spayed right when you take them off. And I was like, oh man, I wish she could have had puppies, I one of her puppies. But it's a different soul, it's just part of her. I would never want to clone her because that magic's gone. The quantification of the spirit or soul is something that science will never be able to replicate. You can have AI make stuff up all day, but it's never going to be what that is, and that's the beauty of life.
Speaker 1:Completely Right, and the beauty of life is also wrapped up into mortality. The reason we value it is because it can end. There's an expiration date that should keep you honest to what you're doing and the choices you make and the connections you have. Right, and with the dog leaving. It's interesting that some people's reaction especially if they can afford it is like throw money at the problem. I don't want to feel pain or grief, I just want to have something that looks just like my dog. It's not. It's like losing a child and then having ai make a kid that looks just like your kid.
Speaker 2:It's not your kid, right, it's just like and nobody would do that and we all get that that would be right bananas right, well, someone might try it.
Speaker 1:I would. I would say, like I've, there might be someone that might try it because, like, because they, they've, they've sort of there's so much pain that it's sort of taking them out of, like, their human experience. They're just like all I want to do is just see my kid, you know, and you see this glaze over their eyes, right. And I understand that because, as someone who's lost deeply in my life at a very young age and also with my own, like injuries that took me out of professional athletics, like I've grieved a lot of things as a young human being and like a lot of people have. But that grief is at least I've tried not to let it swallow me to the point where, like it takes my humanness away. You know where it jades me and I feel like that's kind of what you're talking about in that scenario.
Speaker 1:Or like the cloning of a dog. It's like you know, rather than sort of like, oh my God, I need this for the rest of my life. How am I going to live without it? It's like be appreciative that you even got to experience it for the amount of time you did, and I know that's easier to say than do. But it's like I'm just going to go get another res dog and I'm going to have a completely different story and that dog will have bits of soul because it's in me right as an experience, as a memory, as in my behaviors. But it'll be its new thing. You know it's new, it's new animal and there's beauty in that because it's living.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I would argue that one of the things that we kind of forget about our dogs or anyone we deal with is that part of what you love about soul is your interaction with her, yeah, or our relationships with anybody right, and so that is still with you. When that person or that dog passes, you still have that as your memory. It's part of who you. You will give that partially to another person or another dog, right, it's not in just the dog, it's not just the dog being magic, it's that amazing chemistry that you have with a person or a dog, and that thing is just happening now, right, and will be a memory later, but it can't be reproduced.
Speaker 2:I think when cloning first came up, which happened with sheep initially in the 90s, people were super worried about human cloning and a lot of laws were passed against human cloning. And a lot of laws were passed against human cloning and one of the concerns that I remember um, one of the philosophers registering about human cloning, which I think is also appropriate for thinking about cloning non-humans was you're not letting that new human be whoever they're going to be like. They're always going to be a kind of disappointment because they're not going to be that whoever they were, that they were cloned from. Right and here too I think this is important with people getting dogs is that if you lose a dog, the next one is does not know anything about that relationship, right, and you have to figure out who they are and learn who they are and create a relationship with them and not expect that they're going to be that last dog.
Speaker 2:And that's hard for people. It's going to be different. They're not going to understand you in the way that other dog did, and I understand that's hard and I personally understand that's hard. I and I personally understand that, not just intellectually, but that's also the excitement about meeting someone new, about meeting a new dog is getting to know who they are, with their foibles and frustrations, and creating a relationship with them yeah, I think, if you ask any person that has actual human kids and I don't, yeah, but like, they'll tell you that there's differences between all their human kids.
Speaker 1:Obviously, no matter what they've tried to do to like, assimilate them or make them somewhat similar, right, that they're human being with, you know, their own brain. So you can, you know, and there's been tons of research on this particularly is like two kids growing up in the same household, but they have completely different experiences, right, right, completely different experiences, right, right, even if the parenting was trying to be somewhat similar, right. And it's the same thing with dogs. I will say that, like one of the things that you know, I have two dogs now and I've got them in separate relationships, pretty much. What was it like nine years apart, eight years apart, and I think that when they, um, they do rub off on each other on somewhat, right, like, they learn behaviors from each other. And it's funny when, when soul was just a solo dog, like she never barked, like she never you know, really, it was just like this angelic.
Speaker 1:And then, as soon as I got seggy, I was like I was like, okay, what is going on here? Now you bark, now you have an opinion on shit. Now you like don't listen all the time. And I look at seggy and like he's just like, I'm just me. You know, I didn't do anything and but now it's like they're aging.
Speaker 1:I can see seggy's picking up more things from her where he, you know, he he's like softening his old age, almost kind of thing. You know, um, and obviously boys and girls are a lot different in the dog world and how they behave and how they relate to the human too. But uh, you know, soul, for instance, like almost got more of her voice when she had when he came into the life, because he's she just like yeah, she, I don't know she. It was weird Like when, when you're, when you're just with one person, you're solo the whole time, like she spent all the time with me, so like we didn't really, you know, whereas now she's gets left home more because he's, he's there with her, you know. So I don't know.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of obviously loops to like my thinking of this and gaps here, but I guess what I've meant to say is like you know, even if your dog passes away before you get another one, like those memories you keep in, the behaviors you have with them, like some of that will be passed on. Just you know through happenstance of like who you are because of the dog you know that's right and if you're able to sort of have that dog help raise another dog. There is some piece in them. They don't have to be related, it doesn't have to be a clone, but there is still some of that like magic that will be passed on soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it, you know, and people are so obsessed with it being like exactly the same and that's like really like our trauma response to like loss. It's like, well, it'll never be the same and I'm like, yeah, that's unfortunately the reality of life in a lot of ways, but also the meaning of it.
Speaker 2:That's such a good point, right? Isn't that the meaning of it, right? Rather than trying to fight it, right, impossible to fight it. I think it's really important what you say about those two dogs too, and how they're different separately and together.
Speaker 2:People think that maybe getting a second dog will sort of solve the problem of dog needing company. Some dogs don't want company of another dog, by the way, but also they're just two individuals. We kind of forget that sometimes, right? So yeah, dogs are social creatures, but you have this specific dog and they're an individual personality and sometimes that won't we'll, we'll chafe with another individual or they'll behave really differently independently than they are together, right, and those I mean, that's kind of exciting.
Speaker 2:I think people find that frustrating because they're more unpredictable, right, like there's less kind of control, less unexpected, and then this like explodes that relationship a little bit, and I I think it's just very interesting to be able to being a scientist sometimes helps me a tiny bit step back out of my own dog relationships and say like, okay, yeah, I'm having this reaction like this frustrating that now my second dog has taught my first dog to bark, which also happened in our household, and but I see that that happened right, like that's just what happened. That's just who they are and you know, one day I'm going to love this, one day I'm going to look back on this and really miss, really miss these dogs at this time in their life. So can I get there now?
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, absolutely. So I asked you the question of like can you tell you know a lot about a person based on what kind of dog they pick, or like you know what they look like. So I'm going to flip the question now and ask you you know, based on a dog's behavior right, like around a human being, are you able to tell how that human being treats that dog and their relationship with that dog? And if that dog is fearful or if it's like, completely loving and living a happy life? Like do you? Do you notice that out in the world?
Speaker 1:Because, for instance, as a counselor and is a very intuitive, empathic human being who's been through a lot, I can go out and I can walk into your room and I can literally feel things and I'm promising like that some people can can realize that. And with dogs I feel like I have a little bit of that too, because I've been around them my whole life. You know, but of course I could be assuming things because I'm not a dog. You know with you because this is what you do. Can you do that? Can you walk into a room with the owner dog and you kind of have a sense of like, what's going on almost like the the dog whisperer I mean absolutely.
Speaker 2:I I feel that, right, it's a lot to see dogs. All the time you were talking about how the your athleticism was no longer a playful mode, right, becomes a professional work mode and I too, looking at a lot of dogs, this thing, which was viscerally so delightful for me, can become overwhelming, right, just getting into it and seeing too much. I don't know if I'm always right, but I absolutely see what a dog-person relationship is as soon as I meet them, because so much is happening right away. The dog is reacting to the person or not, the dog is close to them or not. The dog just has an overall state of pessimism or optimism that you see right away. They're nervous. How do they hold their body? How do they run? How does the person respond to them? Do they respond to them? Are they controlling or are they ambivalent? Like all of it's very visible right away in any interaction. Like morning dog walks are not just lovely times for me because, yeah, you're, you see too much yeah but that's it.
Speaker 2:Who knows if I'm always right, but I do see a lot of dynamic and a lot of personality on display in right. In a very brief interaction, yeah, I, I and I.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you saying that because as a scientist, you always check yourself like I don't know if I'm right, but you, you, you study this more than the majority of human beings, right, and so like for like. For me, my own experience is like whenever before I got said, you go back to my own dogs like soul, I could walk her that at least wherever, like in the middle of traffic, whatever. She's just always on my side, but with him he has to be on a leash because he will see another dog or human and he will just sprint. It doesn't matter how much training I've done, it's just like he has this incredibly, and it's probably because he's got some German shepherd and I'm just incredibly like strong chase mechanism.
Speaker 1:It's not on animals, he's totally fine with bears, horses, whatever. He just wants to go say what's up to another dog. And he's big and you know sometimes he scares people so like I can't. You know he's not aggressive at all, but I can't let him do that because he'll just like rock it, you know, with a hundred pounds of himself and like start barking. And if I'm in like the countryside where I usually live in Flagstaff, in the mountains, people understand that they're like oh, you know, they can, if you know dogs well enough, if one's running out, you really you really can tell if it's like really a threat or if he's just like trying to say like hey, hey, I'm walking towards you, you know. Kind of thing versus like this dog.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, there's a difference, but a lot of people don't. They don't have that awareness, Just like a lot of people don't have self-awareness, Right. So like those things, you can almost see it when the dog owners, when they're like holding the leash, I'm like my dog's friendly. He just like wants to say hi. But as out of respect I don't think a lot with that being said, like it's interesting how that sort of has changed my morning walks or morning runs, because, like with Saul, I was like you could look at my person and be like, oh, that's a super calm human being. With Siggy, I kind of have to be on alert more, right, Because of like a worker's walking towards us, specifically with men, he like has to let. With women he's totally fine. With men he has to let them know that he is a living being right here, he has to let them know that he's present.
Speaker 2:But you are telling me about yourself. By that You're responding to him. That's the thing. Some people will do that very differently with that excitable dog 100%. Excitable dog 100, and and. And. When I see I mean sold, my sounds like an amazing dog, but she doesn't sound like a dog who you trained through force to be always by your side zero responsibility naturally wants to be like that absolutely so she reflects you a little bit in that way, but no more than segi reflects you in her enthusiasms.
Speaker 2:What I'm seeing is different personalities on their part and different ways that you react to it on your part. Right and that's I mean you might even come across somebody with your very easygoing dog who's scared of dogs and you are conscious about. That is my guess right. Like you'll like lead your dog somewhere else or gently introduce them to this dog, even though they don't need a general introduction as far as the dog's concerned. So that's what I see.
Speaker 2:You know, you're not represented by your dog being like like super cooperative, civilized dog or not. It's more like how do you guys respond to each other in these like little little exchanges? You look, what do they do? They dart, what do you do, like all that stuff is what I is, what I see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. And so the reason I brought this up is because, as someone who's tried to train Segi because he is different than Sol, right, I really didn't have to do much with Sol, although still, I, I went to puppy classes, I did all this stuff right, and with segs I like I literally have changed like how I respond if I make eye contact with my own energy or like how I'm all these different things, and it hasn't made that much of a difference with him, you know and so. So this is the question that I have for you is is terms like raising dogs and like learning how to live with them and teaching them, like there's a certain amount of training we can all do, but then there's this like innate personality we have and that probably changes over time. For instance, like with him I don't know if they're, unless he's older, you know, cause you lose some of that that sort of testosterone or macho, whatever you know is in him. That, uh, and he's a sweetheart like he.
Speaker 1:I don't know, yeah, he is five, he just turned five, he was my same birthday, so, um, yeah, he's. It's interesting though, because, uh, when he's by himself, with just me, it's different, right, and so it is also in particular about who he's around and if soul's there too, because I think he feels like this obviously protective nature, you know, to her, because it's his big sister, because they've they're in a pack now, like when, when I first brought the guy home, she was just like no way, dude, this is a horrible idea she like, she would like bark at him, she's like stay away from him.
Speaker 1:She was totally a solo dog, like literally like soul, and I were like we did everything together, you know, and as soon as I brought him home, she was was just like I could just tell like she was like this is a stupid idea.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit of a betrayal, yeah Right.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, she's like he's getting this tension now. Now we got to take this like fat chubby thing running with us and it's just not as athletic as us, you know. And um, and you know it's it her alone time, you know. But but she like I can tell like they're very bond, bonded, um, and she was very close to my friend Meredith's dog Snora.
Speaker 1:We're in San Diego too, but it's interesting, cause if I like walk out with with him, like he, he's more chill now than he used to be. I still know he always has to be on a leash, whether we're in the forest or not, and if, if he's, if he isn't, I mean he can be off of it. But if he isn't and he sees someone, he'll probably, even if I say don't do it, or if I like yell at him or even my screamer, it doesn't matter. Like he just like he's gone. You know, like I tried, like callers that are like not shocking, but like buzz or like make a sound, you know, to try to revert his attention, tried positive, treat it into him like feeding it into the mailbox, like he is just gonna go say, what's up, it's who he is.
Speaker 2:That's what it sounds like, right 100? I don't know that it I mean you're right that age will change it at some level right and probably already has yeah in some ways, training I mean, you could spend your full-time training and it might not make much of a dent, yeah, or it might make a little more of a dent than you've made already, but I wouldn't recommend that. I mean, what's going to change is the relationship. Relationship is going to change over time.
Speaker 1:This is what I was getting to is acceptance, right, and this. This is another lesson that they teach us, and particularly when we get into relationships with humans, we try to change them a lot. Right, and we're like but if you could just do this, you'd be perfect for me, you know, and then I could love you and that's not how love works, right, love doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1:I think that a lot of people like they get into relationships with someone or they get into marriage and they're like, yeah, all these things, and there's this one thing that I just I'm going to keep trying to change, right, and whenever someone tells you like they've been a successful, happy relationship, whether it's monogamous or not, one of the things is like they even love, like the shadow parts of that human being. Right, they're able to live with them, they're able to coexist and those relationships are beautiful to look at. Unfortunately, a lot of them are not like that, and so when I look at my dog, what I realized is I was trying to force him to assimilate into what I think a good dog should be. Right, and he is a good dog. He's a great freaking dog. He's an unabashedly loving dog. Soul's not a snuggler. She stopped snuggling years ago. She does her own thing.
Speaker 1:He literally will lay all 100 pounds on you like a carpet, wherever you are, if he can find you, whether you're in the bathroom I hear him like when I go to the bathroom he'll sniff and then he'll just sit right by the door.
Speaker 1:He's like dude, I'm here, you need me, just call the phone. I'm here, you know, and I realized that he's going to do that until he gets to a certain age where he just doesn't have. But I'm going to miss that at some point too, cause I'm going to miss being like, oh wait, he's about to do what he's going to do, and then he's just old, you know. And so once in a while, if I know people cause I, if I was in a small, you know, I'm just like, I'll just indulge them once in a while, like, particularly if it's a friend I know my friend's going to meet me, like I just he'll see him and he'll just like, and I'm like, or I'll just say like, like. If I know the person's by language, I'm like he's friendly, he's just kind of an idiot, but a little bit, because, like he just wants. This is how he says hi, you know, um, and I know, but usually he just wants to do that to like people.
Speaker 2:He wants to say hi to you right, right, I mean I think it's really insightful that you just have to let him be who he is and then the only other thing is the world of other people that you have to. That might mean that, like, yeah, it's not as easy to go running with the two of them, or you have to take them out separately sometimes, or you take one some places where you can do that, you know, even if it's not where the other dog is really that hot on going. Like that's the. I've changed my daily habits are all because I want to make it work for these personalities who give me so much, who have no control of their days otherwise, right, like we're completely in control of their days and who, like, we have this deeply affectionate relationship with. So I think that's a great. I think that's a great way to think about who the dog is that you have and how you should live with them, instead of this kind of you have to train them.
Speaker 1:Just very banal, like automatic thing that you put on every dog Yep, and there's obviously a component of like teaching and training, no matter what right, because of like there's boundaries.
Speaker 2:That's what the relationship is about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, For sure. Learning about each other.
Speaker 1:But I think we there's a certain point where we try to be so militaristic, which is like that's just not their world, you know, and I like how you say you, you like taking them out separately. So what I learned and this was only recently is that, you know, before my injuries, I used to run with Sol like hundreds of miles a week when I was a pro mountain athlete, and that was something like she really looked forward to, like she is a runner, we love running together. We've traveled over the world running together in mountain ranges, and when I got Seggy, he can run, but like maybe six to 10 miles. He can't really run very, very far. That's just not his body type.
Speaker 1:And so I'd always run with them together and she, I realized like she just wasn't, it just wasn't the same, you know. And so, as of recently, I'll take him out and then I'll, I'll go, I'll take her, so I have like one-on-one time with her, you know, whereas oftentimes we forget that, like even as parents of kids, like it's like, oh, the whole family, just let's go, they go to your brother's practice, like it's really all of your kids, if you can, you know, not just your human kids, not just human kids, and so once in a while I'll leave his ass home and take soul in the car, and vice versa, you know so they can, like they can have some separate time.
Speaker 2:you know, yeah, and it's super important and they, they probably value it a ton right, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean for soul, particularly like like Segi, in any situation he's probably just going to be a jazz. He doesn't want to be left home alone, but I think he gets it. But like soul, particularly, she is a she's a very solo dog, you know, like she just really wants to have one-on-one time, like she would rather be in a mountain with a peak, just me hanging out snacking on some stuff. She hates dog parks, right, like whenever we go to dog park she'll just like sit in the corner. She's just like I, these folks. She's like it smells like shit here. I don't want to be here, a hundred percent. I am that exact same human being. It's like I would be in a coffee shop, in a nook in New York city having a deep conversation talking about some Alan Watts book. You stick me in an EDM concert out there. I'm like I'm good man, I can listen to this online in my headphones and I'm a musician. I love that.
Speaker 2:I just don't want to but Seggy would love it.
Speaker 1:Seggy would literally be on the stage. You know he would be on the stage. And so again, like just appreciating their personalities but also honoring the fact that, like the one who's aging faster, like I had forgotten that like she has these needs where, like I assumed in my busy life, where and again can afford it, and I have now. This is as silly as, like planes have a useful load, which is the amount of weight you can take in planes. And now I'm just like every time I calculate the useful load and the distance and the speed, I'm like, okay, if I take both of them and I can only get a hundred pounds in the baggage, that means Siggy is in the back, sol's in the front, so she has to be. I'm like literally always things. One of the first things about the plane is like looking at that dynamic based on the way I can transport my dogs, because in my mind, if I can't fly with my dogs to a place, I'm not going to stay there very long.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, Absolutely. What's the point right? That's the cool thing is that they're just woven into our life. And once you realize that, just woven into our life, and once you realize that, you make space for them and it works better for both of you, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:Before I let you go, I want to ask you a particular question, dog, because I know you're like let's not talk about dog breeds. What kind of dogs do you or have you loved and what like? Based on all the dogs you've studied and observed, what are the ones that you like are consciously attracted to you, and why?
Speaker 2:oh, it's a great question. I mean I love the mutts like. All my dogs have been mutts and they always will be mutts. I just think it's important and it's it's. Maybe it makes it also easier for me to not have expectations about who they're going to be before they can show me, before they know themselves, before they become who they are, because they're going to be before they can show me before they know themselves, before they become who they are, because they're just a mix of lots of different breeds, or we really should say breeds are.
Speaker 2:You know, mixes are older than breeds. So they're like the real, they're original dogs. So you know, like I live with two dogs now who one's just a giant brindle dog, has some of the energies you're talking about with Segi and the other one's like a little version of a herding dog, mixed with other things and completely different orthogonal personalities. I would you know the dog like. If I think about the sort of classic dog, it's like a dog-sized dog. First of all, I like dogs who are a little, not teeny, teeny, tiny dogs.
Speaker 2:It's harder for me to see them, frankly, just see them as see their dog behaviors, and also they've been like so inbred that that's a problem. Um, you know, like I like, uh, I love a dog who's real interested in playing with other dogs, who will romp around and run around a lot. Right, I get a lot of visceral. I can just stand there and laugh watching dogs do zoomies with each other or chase, like that. To me that's like pinnacle dog somehow. So being able to like at least be in contact with that urge, that's. I'm excited for dogs, I see, who are like that. You know everything else.
Speaker 2:I don't have a prescription, I want to know who it is, but like those, that's definitely my inclinations, it's like sort of, you know, medium to large size dog who's who's, who's sociable, who sees me, but you know who wants to really run around, who's physically very engaged with the world right and then whatever little quirks they have, they'll be their own quirks. Every dog brings their own little personality and I just can't wait to that. I don't want to know what it is ahead of time.
Speaker 1:I love what you just said. I want to throw a quick shout out to my home in Flagstaff is that we have this term for locals there, where a lot of people don't have TVs because it's an outdoorsy town. You ski, you climb, you bike, you spend all your time outside with your dogs usually no-transcript, that's just like you know what everyone's.
Speaker 2:A tv to me right there exactly 100.
Speaker 1:Um, if people want to start with your books, where would you recommend they start?
Speaker 2:because the first one and the one I've read was obviously your first one, I would say the first one Inside of a Dog, which I'm revising. So there'll be a new edition out next year, I think that you know, with that beautiful dog, gracie, on the cover. I think that's the one. That would sort of gives the overview, you know. And then I think, if people one of the things I really love thinking about with dogs is smell and what it's like to be an olfactory creature who lives in a world of smell, which is just so different than how we imagine the world.
Speaker 2:I wrote another book called being a Dog, which is about like both how dogs smell and sort of also me trying to become a better smeller. And that's a lot of fun too, I think. Oh yeah, I have a puppy book, but like that's where I would start if.
Speaker 1:I were in the first one. Yeah, yeah, I love, I love the the smell part and I know I have to let you go, but like, for instance, the dog paws, I know there's a bacteria that can grow on them that they smell like corn chips. Basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know I love that smell is is literally, if I could say what love smells like I would say it's that smell.
Speaker 2:But if it came in a perfume and another person were wearing it, would that work? I don't think so I don't think, I think you have to have the dog on the pads of a dog you have to have the it's?
Speaker 1:yeah, because it's like there's something about that. You know, like when I pick up a pause and smell, I'm just like this is my dog.
Speaker 2:You know it's something about being the way they are in the world. It sort of represents that to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah exactly it's it's. I'm glad you brought that up, Cause I'm I mean, I thought, well, why don't you like? Why don't we commodify it and put it in a juice so we can like spritz on ourselves? You know, I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't do it. Well, Dr Horowitz, thank you so much for coming on the show and hanging out with me. It's been great to meet you, Obviously an honor, since I read your book at such a young age and it's obviously stuck with me. And thank you again for the work that you do and congrats on building a life that you literally get to hang out with my favorite animal, or, as I say, my favorite Pokemon, all day long.
Speaker 2:It has been my pleasure, nico, and it's great to hear about your dogs as well. I love thinking about that relationship, so thanks for having me on Absolutely.
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