May 22, 2023 • 57 mins
Margaret talks with producer Sophie Lichterman about the stray dogs who fight cops and guard protesters around the world.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Do Cool Stuff, your
weekly dose of sometimes people fight against the bad things.
I'm your host, Margaret kilj With me today as a
guest is okay? There was no one else that I
could have had as a guest for this episode. With
Me Today as a guest is Sophie Lichterman, who you
all might be aware of as the Webby Award winning
(00:20):
podcast producer most known for her work with Jamie Loftus. Sophie,
how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's my favorite intro I've ever received. Also, shout out
Jimmie Loftus. Pre order her book or by the time
it comes out, order her book row Dog. Thank you
so much.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, I literally pre ordered it today after telling other
people to pre order it for a long time.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hey, a pre order is a pre order, Okay today?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, and our producer today is Sophie.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Oh my god, Sophie. Hi Sophie.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yeah. Ian is our audio engineer Hien. Once people hear
the topic, they'll understand why Sophie is the guest today. Anyway.
Ian is our audio engineer, Hi Ian. The theme music
was written for us by unwoman. Since people ask me
this about once a week, I'm saying unwoman like, not
woman like U N w O m e N. That
(01:14):
is the name I'm saying every week.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
No, you're not. You said unwomen. You just spelled unwomen.
You're saying, Oh god, yes, I can't do anything. Bucked
it up and audio wise, you.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Know, as funny as as I was type it is,
I was like, why am I bothering to type this
out with dashes? I'll just look at the word and
spell it, but clearly I'll mess it up either way.
So today's cool people, Sophie, have you ever heard of
you ever heard of dogs?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah? My reason for living?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, dogs are the best. If you were to rate
dogs into tears, all dogs would be s tier, which
is the highest tier.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
That is a scientifically categorizable facts, with the exception of
the Boston Dynamics wrote about dog, which is not a dog.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
No, doesn't count.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, those have to be taken individually and judged on
their individual actions.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Today this week we're talking about dogs in general. We're
gonna be talking about riot dogs. But I'm obsessed with context,
so we're gonna talk about dogs.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Baby, let's go, who let the dogs out? Okay? Well,
I pro wished, Margaret, I wouldn't do the who let
the dogs that reference more than once, so I'm getting
it out of the way early. So yeah, Margaret, tell
me who let the dogs out? Whooo?
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Probably no, probably Siberia, but possibly Southeast Asia. Actually, so
dogs are the first domesticated animal. Yeah, I'm gonna take
this way back. Dogs are the first domesticated animal. Dogs
are not descended from modern wolves. They are descended from
the pleustoicne wolf, the plasticine wolf, from which the modern
(03:01):
gray wolf also descends, so they're like cousins or siblings
to the modern gray wolf. Basically, dogs are descended from
the wolves that evolve to hunt now extinct megafauna like
mammoths and shit. Just part of why dogs are so cool.
They roamed over basically the entire northern hemisphere. These are
the wolves. They roamed over the entire northern hemisphere in
(03:22):
the last ice Age. They crossed the bearing Land Bridge
and shit the same as the mammoths did. And when
the megafauna went away, so did these wolves. Let's talk
about these wolves. Wolves are cooperative game hunters. They also
don't really travel in packs.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Interesting, it's more of like a it's not like a pack.
It's more of like a duo. Right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Well, I mean actually there's often a lot of them,
but it's a family unit. It's usually a nuclear family.
It is a mated pair and their kids. And I
can't talk about wolves that bringing up the alpha wolf thing.
I really want to talk about the alpha wolf thing.
So I'm gonna do you know, the alpha wolf thing.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I do because Anderson, my dog, who is perfect shout
out Anderson, recovering from surgery and still the baddest of
the baddest bitches. I call her an alpha fox because fox,
cousin of the wolf, looks like more foxy than wolfy Okay,
and uh has the personality of an alpha fox, which
(04:25):
I mean of an alpha wolf.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
See that's how well, but but alpha wolves aren't real.
This is what I'm trying to tell you.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
No, no, it's it all goes back to, you know, the
male male authority. Yeah right, well, am I there.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna tell the story because I'm
really excited about because one of my thing favorite things
in the world is that when people call themselves alpha males,
they're basically calling themselves domesticated. Now that domesticated captive. They
are saying, I am in captivity. Yeah, you are, because
the alpha male thing is entire based on a combination
(05:01):
of lies and misunderstandings about wolf behavior. In nineteen seventy,
this guy named David Mech put out a book called
The Wolf, The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species.
Since then, this guy is still alive. He rules he's
spent decades trying to be like, hey, a lot of
the stuff in that first book was wrong. We've learned
an awful lot since that book came out, or, to
(05:24):
quote him more directly, we've learned more about wolf since
that book's publication than we had an all of previous history.
But the book is still in print, and he's tried
time and time and again to get it taken out
of print, but it sells well, so the publisher's like,
whatever are we Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Was going to say alpha capitalism.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, totally the thing that this book got wrong. And
he was not the first person to get this wrong.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
He was.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I believe it goes back to the nineteen thirties, but
I didn't put that part in the script, so I'm
not sure what it got wrong. Was the idea of
an alpha wolf in a pecking order. He called it
a lead wolf in the in the book, but it's
the same idea. It's what the alpha wolf people get
the thing from. It was about how a dominant male
controls the entire pack and picks on the weakest members.
(06:11):
And this is only true of wolves in captivity. So
next time you meet someone who says they're in alpha,
well I have never actually have you ever met a
human in real life who says that they're in alpha?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Just unfortunately on many many dating apps. Oh god, yeah,
a lot of times they lead with that in their
bio and that's an intelle. Yeah. Yeah, it's horrible.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
You've ever seen go ahead.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
I was just gonna say, it's it's a tragedy to
deal with this men, It's really horrible.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
There's this video that lives rent free in my head
and I can't remember the name of the like comedian
group that did it, where they're like a bunch of
bros going down the street and they're like jumping up
and down and they're like yeah, bros. And then they
go up and they're like all right, all right, true
or false? For a dollar masculinity is a prison and
people are like true and they're like true, masculinity could
(07:04):
be a prison.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Baby.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
It lives rent free in my head. You all should
look it up somehow. I'm not sure how.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Anyway, I want to know how that video reached you.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Who in the algorithm was like Margaret needs that. I
don't know. But next time you meet one of these
people on your dating app, it's like they're saying, I
am in prison and other people are in charge of me,
because that's the only way you get alpha wolf behavior.
Of course, the prison in this case is patriarchy, and
it's real, and it's probably why human men exhibit this behavior,
(07:37):
and I mean, frankly, it's why in actual prison you
see the same dynamics, but much much worse.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
It is a thing that people and the wolves do
in captivity, as they create pecking orders and are terrible.
In the wild, wolves form family units, a mated pair
in their offspring. Sometimes the kids fuck off at a
year of age and start their own thing, but sometimes
they don't. Sometimes they stick around a while longer and
help the next round of puppies, and some packs do
(08:06):
form with multiple breeding pairs. Occasionally, I believe in this
case it's always the oldest wolf that is the lead wolf.
But to quote a research science Curicassidy quote, the wolves
generally in the dominant positions within a pack are not
there because they fought for it. It's not some battle
to get to the top position. They're just the oldest
(08:27):
or the parents, or in the case of same sex siblings,
it's a matter of personality.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
You hear that Anderson, I'm older, I'm the pack leader.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
She's like, OK, you haven't proven it. She's like another
treat human. I wrote most this script with my dog
laid on my lap or running around barking at things
that he's not supposed to bark at, aka being perfect. Yes,
wolves do fight other wolves. This is actually the leading
(08:57):
cause of death for wolves, whoops. But they don't fight
inside their own pack. They fight for territory, and this
part I thought was kind of cool. The packs that
win the most are the packs of the oldest wolf,
not the packs with the most wolves, because the elders
are calmer and wiser, and they're like, oh, we don't
actually we shouldn't fight. That's a bad idea when they
(09:18):
would otherwise lose. So yeah, now, I want you to guess, Sophie,
how many people are killed by wolves every year in
the United States?
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Really? None?
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yeah, yeah, that's the correct guess.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Oh is that actually none?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah? That's how many people are killed by wolves in
the average year in the United States. In the past
twenty years, wolves have killed exactly one person.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I bet that. I'm like, I bet that person did
it dumb?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
I think she was just like hanging out in like
backwoods Alaska and someone was.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
A real high you had me at Alaska.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, in twenty ten in Alaska, wolves killed somebody. Domestic
dogs kill thirty to fifty people a year.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
That is so low, actually, I was expecting higher number.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, a lot of people are attacked by dogs, right,
and we're going to talk a lot about stray dogs
and stuff like that on this episode. But what if
we break to a listical of what animals kill the
most people? Because that's what I wrote.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Let's do it then.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
All right, okay, so what animals kill the most people
in the United States. The answer is, honestly, no, wild
animals kill enough people to merit any actual worry. But
deer top the list. Oh shit, bam be you know,
and this one's it's messy because deer do occasionally like
(10:52):
gore people and trample people. But I think most of
these lists include people who die in car accidents caused
by deer right right, right, so I don't know exactly.
And then stingy fuckers that's the technical term, like bees
and wasps and shit. They're next. They kill on average
fifty six people a year.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, I mean allergies and things like.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
It's yeah, it's almost entirely allergic people.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Dogs are number three, cows number four. They take out
about twenty people a year.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Dude, I would think cows would be so much higher.
I don't know why, but I think, but I think
cows are just like out here, trampling, I know whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
I like to see a cow. I'm always like, I'm
so glad you haven't figured out what you could do
if you wanted to know.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
All they would have to do is sit, Yeah, totally,
Oh my god, and let people are under their uh
you know, easel sit death. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, if any cows are listening fully endorsed murder, well,
it's not really, it's self defense, honestly for a cow to.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Kill personally cows alone.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, spiders are next.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, I'm allergic to them. They try to kill me
at least three times a year.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Okay, fair enough, don't become one of the seven that
they succeed with. Yeah, snakes only five people a year,
which is interesting because something like six again, I didn't
write this number down is off the top of my head.
From my memory from writing this, something like six to
seven thousand people are bit by venomous snakes every year.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Are we just good at science?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah? More or less. It's like, do you just get
to the emergency room and you'll probably be okay. So
if you get bit by a venomous snake, don't freak out.
Just get the fuck to the emergency room. Don't try
and suck the poison out.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
So I'm just gonna assume if our healthcare system was
better that it would be none.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yeah, it seems completely possible, especially now that like there's
better backwoods rescue technology like satellite communicators and stuff. Bears,
especially grizzly bears, kill about four people a year, I believe,
mostly in Alaska, and specifically they tend to kill people
who they who thought they were being friends with the.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Bear, Like I said, a stupid.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yeah, alligators kill one person a year, sharks kill someone
every two years. Mountain lions kill someone about every four
years or so. So now you know, watch out for deer.
Don't worry about wolves. It's literally just not worth worrying about.
You ever watch Alone? M I watched like the first
(13:25):
season of Alone, and there's like the person who's like,
here's a wolf and is like, they didn't let me
bring a gun. I gotta go home. It's just not safe,
and just like you fucking anyway, So don't worry about wolves.
But we're not here to talk about wolves. We're here
to talk about dogs. Dogs aren't wolves. They're closely related cousins.
(13:46):
You said, yeah, yeah, they have the same I guess
they make them siblings, right if they have the same parent,
the plasticine.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Wolves, Yeah, I guess. So. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So the answer about how they were domesticated and when
and where is we don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
It's my favorite kind of history.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of guesses,
and a lot of the guesses are backed up by evidence,
and so I'm gonna I'm gonna go through best current knowledge,
as best discovered by Margaret. What we do know is
that dogs are the first domesticated animal. What probably didn't happen,
And it's like always always the way I sort of
was told to envision it. It's not that like humans
(14:29):
like captured some wolves and were like hunt for us, buddy,
and then like consciously bred them for docility or some shit.
You know. What is much more likely, infinitely more likely,
is something called commensalism, which I had never heard of before.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Because I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So, you know how like in like you know how,
like high school science has betrayed us all because it
tells us and we think we know everything, we actually
know nothing. In high school science, I learned about parasitis, parasitism,
and symbiosis, right, Commensalism is something different, is sort of
in between the two. It is where one species gets
benefits from another species while neither helping nor hindering the
(15:09):
other species. So it's just like an animal like a
raccoon digging through your trash can, especially if it like
doesn't leave a mess somehow, is not a parasite, right
because it doesn't damage the host. It is a commensal,
commensial commensal. I'm going to go with that, relationship, and
(15:29):
so probably a long ass time ago, most likely currently
suspected in Siberia or Southeast Asia, until more recently people
are thinking mostly East Asian Southeast Asia, and now people
are leaning a little bit more towards Siberia, and I'm
sure it'll change. A bunch of wolves were like, hell yeah,
we can eat the food that humans throw out, and
they started hanging out near the humans, or it might
have even been hell yeah, we can prey on the
(15:50):
animals that eat the food that humans throw out. Right,
and the calmer wolves were able to do better in
proximity to the humans since they didn't run away as much.
And so these les fearful less human aggressive wolves, they
evolved physically. Their snouts shortened and they ended up with
fewer teeth. They were doing less of the killing themselves basically,
(16:13):
and soon, Honestly, my suspicion is like right away, but
I don't know, No one really knows. As soon this
commensalism moved to mutualism, which is another word for symbiosis
that is technically different. And I spent a while trying
to read about the difference. I'm just gonna use the
word mutualism, where both species gain advantages, and there's so
many advantages having wolves around probably was part of the
(16:37):
direct hunting, right the wolves now dogs would corner prey
for humans to finish off, just like how people hunt
with dogs today. And or and this is like even
more certain or guessed upon, is that they protected the
kill from other predators, right because as soon as you
like bring down a mammoth, all the other animals were like, yo,
what's up? Can I have some of that? And you
(16:58):
got all these wolves around being like, no, the fuck
you can. You can't have any of it. That's for
the humans and me, you know. And also you can
sleep soundly at night because you're campus surrounded by fucking wolves.
And I would argue, and this is my own hypothesis
that emotional support wolf was probably just as important as
anything else right from the start.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Exactly. Yeah, who doesn't want the comforting feeling of a
wolf in their.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Life, because like this is only like somewhere between thirty
to forty thousand years ago when they became dogs, So
probably you're going back tens or hundreds of thousand years
before that, but you're still talking about Homo sapiens. You're
still talking about us. You're talking about someone that could
fucking be raised in our society and be a normal
(17:45):
person in our society right now. So if you take
one of us and they're and a wolf nearby dies,
and there's all these wolf puppies and they're like, oh no,
what will we do without our mother? Like as cute
as shit?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, I mean I guarantee they also needed unconditional love
back then.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, yeah, totally. We all need unconditional love, which leads
me to my statement. Humans and dogs belong together, always
have both are better for it. Yes, that, and this
is the thing that like, it wasn't a violent controlling act.
It's not the destruction of the wildness of the animal.
Dogs were domesticated long before the widespread practice of agriculture also,
(18:24):
which I thought was kind of interesting. And again we
don't know exactly when, but we know that modern DNA
science stuff suggests that the evolutionary deviation from regular wolves
started forty to three thirty thousand years ago, around the
time that the ice age was at its iciest, when
we probably needed each other the most. Frankly and the first, Yes,
(18:46):
we are one hundred percent certain this is a modern
dog entirely. This is a dog, right, is the remains
of a little guy who died and was buried with
his people fourteen two hundred years ago in what's now Germany.
There's more that dogs offer us to quote from The
New Yorker, the Ajibwe people, a North American indigenous group,
(19:07):
say that the wolf was given to the first human
as a companion. They see wolves as mentors to humans,
modeling how to behave in a social group and how
to behave while hunting. And this is like particularly interesting
when you think about the fact that the alpha wolf
thing is absolute garbage and actually, yeah, it actually probably
was decent modeling for people. You know. It's also hypothesized
(19:27):
that are packed with dogs is how we out competed
the Neanderthals. Basically, we are really good at hunting with dogs.
It's like fucked up. It's like just a cheat code, right,
you know. You're like, you go chase the thing and
corner it. I've got the pointy stick. I'll kill it
once you've got its back against a wall, you know, Yeah, okay,
(19:48):
and then the weirdest one I ran across. And this
might not be true, but it is hypothesized by a scientist,
the reason we have whites in our eyes might be
because we hunt with dogs. The selera the like the
white of the eye is not white in most animals,
and it is white in dogs, and it is white
in humans, and it is white in very few other primates.
(20:12):
Like there's individual primate to have it, but it's not
like a species wide trait in any other primate as
far as I can tell. To quote the Guardian, the
wolf possesses white celera, as does Homo sapiens, though crucially
it is the only primate that has them. And then,
according to author Pat Shipman, who's quoted in the same
Guardian article, the main advantage of having white celera is
that it is very easy to work out what another
(20:33):
person is gazing at. It provides a useful form of
nonverbal communication and would have been an immense help to
early hunters. They would have been able to communicate silently
but very effectively. And it is possible and is this
author Pat's hypothesis that we have alled white celera because
we hunted with our dogs.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, I do. I do always say that Anderson has
my eyes, so yeah, and says I am correct.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, wherever dogs were first domesticated. Wherever their people went,
they went, and soon you have four distinct haplogroups, which
is not a term I really understand, but basically subtypes
of dogs and dogs just went everywhere. They went across
the land bridge into North America. And there's all kinds
of arguments about whether some specific types of canines are
(21:22):
really dogs or come from the same place, etc. But
this is the gist of it. This is the gist
of dog existence spread and this is not meant as
a slight Two cats, they started being domesticated, probably in
Western Asia around ten thousand years ago. It seems likely
that the thing that the cats sort of offers they
prey on the rodents that eat grain stores and such. Right,
(21:43):
but today is a dog day. We're talking about stray dogs,
especially we're talking about riot dogs. But first there's more context.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
But before you get to that context, do you know
what time it is?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Time to learn what's good for us to exchange money for?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Well? I thought it would be fun because I feel
like a lot of the listeners listening to this episode
will like dogs. You give some for the adreaks to
recommend some of my favorite dog products. Oh okay, as
the official sponsor and if anything else comes up, it
is wrong. Okay, I want to recommend these these Anderson's
(22:33):
really smart and she really liked and we used to
live in a really tiny apartment a yard to run
in or anything like that, and I got recommended these
Nina autoson puzzles and you can hide dog treats or
whatever snacky in there and they have to like figure
out and Anderson would spend you know, twenty minutes or
(22:55):
ten minutes or its pretty smart, so like two minutes
sniffing through and opening and figuring out how to do
the puzzle. And it's really good for dog brains and
is fun. So yeah, I would like to plug the
Nina Ottison puzzles.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Hell yeah, and then whatever this other stuff is and
we're back. So there are stray dogs, and there are
feral dogs, or as they're sometimes called to try and
make them more technical sounding, free range unowned dogs. I
(23:34):
don't think anyone actually calls them that, except like articles.
Most dogs in the world are free range, unowned dogs.
I didn't realize this. Less than a quarter of all
dogs are pets with specific caretakers. Across a lot of
the world. Dogs are more likely to be sort of
owned by the community, if they're owned at all, like
the village or just yeah, sometimes there's nobody. These dogs
(23:57):
tend to be commensal, like not just the ones who
are owned by community, but the dogs that are unowned
or whatever. They live off trash and such, right, going
back to their roots, and stray dogs or dogs that
start off living with some people. Feral dogs have generally
never had a person who they're paying attention to. I
hate them. It's funny. I feel like, I'm like, I
(24:18):
hate the word like owned with my dog, Rentraw is
my dog, right, I think the possessive pronoun makes sense,
and so I don't mind saying that, but I hate
being like, I'm Rentraw's owner, and I'm like, eh, whatever.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
See, I'm Anderson's human and she, yeah, she more. She
definitely is in charge here.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
So yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So both stray and
feral dogs both live lives where they tend to avoid
or occasionally attack people. They're usually presented as a problem
for the human community and that they live in proximity to,
but not always, And that's actually gonna come up a
couple times in this week's story. Sometimes the community cares
(25:04):
for these dogs. Sometimes they kill these dogs. Sometimes they
do a combo move where they care for some of
them and kill other ones. And we're going to talk
about that in a bit. Unfortunately, that'll be the sad
part of the days episode.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
But first warn me about this.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, we're going to talk about them, not right now,
I'll be a little bit later. We are going to
talk about the way in which society deals with stray dogs.
Most of the individual dogs in this episode do very well. Okay,
let's talk about a famous and this is a thing.
This gets presented as famous. I'd never heard about this
(25:37):
in my life. You ever heard of Bummer and Lazarus.
You're a California person?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, I mean, like yes, but no, if that makes sense,
like darling, but but yeah, I don't know. Yeah, what
you got for me?
Speaker 1 (25:57):
There is a famous duo famous in the stray dog world,
Bummer and Lazarus. All the straight dogs and now these dogs.
They lived in San Francisco in the eighteen sixties from
Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I don't know about San Francis is the same thing.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
It's a California. It's one state. How big could it be?
Two New Jerseys?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
It's large and in charge.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Three Rhode Islands.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah. If the state is as big as like four
Road Islands, I guess I could imagine. Not knowing the
other side of it, it's.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Like the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah. Actually turns out, well, it's going to come up.
California is outsized economy even in the eighteen sixties, is
going to come up in today's story.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
So this is decades before San Francisco burned to the ground.
There are a lot of street dogs in nearby Los Angeles.
Ever heard of it? Yeah, it's the whole country. Straight.
Dogs there outnumbered people two to one in the eighteen forties.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Man, I wish that was true when I live there.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Well, except that everyone was poisoning them with Stryck nine
all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Oh well, Margaret, you should have led with that.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Okay. Some dogs figured out a way to avoid the
strick nine, which was by pleasing people by killing rats
and so like kind of like coming out ahead on
like I'm a stray dog, and I might like fight
your sheep, but you know what, I kill rats, and
people are like all right, So these dogs, the ratters,
sometimes they get spared and loved, which brings us to Bummer.
(27:30):
Bummer was a Mutts mutt medium sized, half Scottish terrier
half I'm quoting a nineteen oh one article that is
going to mention a breed that I Google does not
know anything about half Japanese snubnosed poodle. Yeah, that's what
one newspaper article.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And let's be honest, it probably was none of those things.
It was probably just a dog.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah, it was just a dog. Absolutely. Another book says
that it was a Newfoundland mutt. It's just a dog.
It's also not nearly the size of anything Newfoundland's shaped. Yeah, anyway,
months are the best. Yes, Bummer was born in Petaluma
and then came with this guy, a journalist named Ned Knight,
into the city and then somehow ended up astray. So
(28:15):
I hope that Ned died because that is the only
reasonable reason that his dog became astray. And otherwise fuck him.
One of Bummer's ears.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
It was like it was like I was like, you're
waiting for you to say it, because it's in the
script to he said, Yeah, like, Ned, I hope you died.
Otherwise fuck you.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
One of Bummer's ears was shorter than the other. Maybe
it was cut, maybe it had been bitten. He is
an ugly little guy. He started hanging out. I mean
this in only positive ways. He started hanging out in
front of the saloon and killing rats and begging for scraps.
And he lived a lonely life until until eighteen sixty one,
a year after he'd found his station, he saw another
(28:55):
medium dog in trouble, under attack by a larger dog.
Incomes bum drives off the larger dog, David versus Goliath.
But it was too late. This other dog, he was
fucked up, caught in the leg, not expected to live.
Bummer nursed him back to health, brought him food, cuddled
with him for warmth in the cold streets. Thus was
born Lazarus, his companion for years, and the two dogs
(29:21):
begged together and ratted together and just hung out in
front of the saloon. And everyone loved them. Yeah, they
were famous. There's a really funny reason why they were famous.
Every newspaper was writing about them, every journalist. Every journalist
was like exaggerating their personalities or inventing new ones whole cloth.
Like there'd be like gossip rag stuff about them, you know,
(29:41):
because the bar that they hung outside of was the
journalist's cafe that all the journalists hung out at.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
So they were like the first dog influencers.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, totally, Bummer and Lazarus the first dog influencers, and
political cartoons would feature them. One day, Bummer survives this
to be clear. One day someone shot Bummer in the leg.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Who the fuck shot Bummer in the leg?
Speaker 1 (30:08):
I don't know, I don't know. I hope they died
and Lazarus went off to beg with another dog in
the meantime, and the newspapers were furious. What in gratitude? Right?
But then the wound healed and Lazarus returned Bummer forgave
him and back they went to it. One time they
stopped a runaway horse and so they were heroes. One
time they killed, like I forgot to write this in
(30:29):
a script. They killed like eighty rats in twenty minutes
or some crazy shit, just like just fucked ton of rats.
And anyway, but so their heroes. The newspapers are writing
about them because there's nothing else happening in the first
half of the eighteen sixties in the United States. That's newsworthy.
(30:51):
I got like most of the way through this, and
I was like, ah la, la la eighteen sixty three.
I was like, I think there was bigger things happening.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
I was like, that's so cute. They're giving NewSpace to
these little dogs, the dog influencers.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Completely forgetting the date, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
To be clear, eighteen sixty one to eighteen sixty five
was the American Civil War. California wasn't connected to the
rest of the country by railroad yet, so in many
ways it was isolated. That came in eighteen sixty nine.
The Transcontinental Telegraph was brand new as of eighteen sixty one.
But Californians did do a bunch of anti slavery fighting.
Thousands of Californians joined regiments out east, and then California's
(31:32):
gold was crucial to the war effort, and they also
went and helped prevent the slave Empire of the Confederacy
from taking Arizona, New Mexico. So California did did hold
its own that that collection of four New Jersey sized
area or four Rhode Islands right anyway in eighteen sixty two. Sorry, no,
(31:55):
I did get it right, but I wrote it wrong
in the script I wrote nineteen sixty two in the script,
but I'm going to say eighteen sixty because that's when
this happened. A new dog catcher was doing the rounds
and picked up Lazarus because Lazarus was astray. An angry
mob forced the guy to let Lazarus go, and the
city declared that the pair were exempt from the laws
against strays because they were the people's heroes. They were
(32:18):
still dogs, I was gonna say, because they're dog os. Yeah, exactly,
there are still doggos. Bummer used to kill sheep and
get into fights with the other dogs. That might have
been when I got shot on the leg. I don't know.
Both was innocent, Yeah, I support him even if he's innocent.
And both of them used to trash shops that they
(32:39):
would like, go wander into a shop and then it
would get locked up behind them, right because the day
would end and the person wouldn't notice that the strays
had gotten in, so they would just trash the shop.
But I would too if I was locked inside it anyway,
and then that all dogs eventually come to an end.
(33:00):
One day in eighteen sixty three, someone poisoned Lazarus and
his second death stuck Bummer was inconsolable. In eighteen sixty five,
he died as well. A drunk kicked him so hard
that he lasted only a few more days. The drunk
was arrested, and once he was in jail, his cellmate
found out what he did and then quote popped him
(33:21):
on the smeller. So at least there was some kind
of both.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
The problem was, you know, like like it's the same
thing as like you go to see a dog movie.
You know how it ends.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I know, I'm sorry, I know how it ends.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
But also like did did? Did? Who poisons a dog?
Who kicks a dog? The fuck is wrong with these people?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
I agree?
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Despicable. I just read the next sentence. Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
What so bummer was eulogized by Mark Twain, but in
a weird, mean spirited way.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah, well that's Mark Twain for you. I know.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
At first I was like in a quote as eulogy,
and then I was like, whatever, fuck Mark Twain. Both
the dogs were taxidermied and put on display in the saloon.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
I don't know whether it's I don't know how I
feel about that one.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
I don't enjoy that.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Eventually they would donated to a museum that eventually it
gets written as destroyed what was left of them, But honestly,
I'm gonna go with put them to rest. And there's
a plaque up about them now which ends with quote
two dogs with but a single bark, two tales that
wagged as won. They were good dogs, beautiful I know,
I know, and they were the first news. I mean,
(34:40):
I'm sure there's other news.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Straight a dog influencers.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah, and I think a context. I wanted to lead
with the dogs, but there's some interesting humans in San
Francisco during this time.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
And I think it just stopped with San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, this is the era of San Francisco eccentrics. Most
FA was this guy Joshua Abraham Norton aka Emperor Norton,
who I didn't think I was gonna whatever quite make
his way into cool people, but actually, after reading about him,
I think he qualifies on his own. In eighteen fifty nine,
this man, who was essentially penniless, declared himself Norton, the
(35:18):
first Emperor of the United States. He's a very San
Francisco figure. He was an immigrant. He's a white guy
born in England, raised in South Africa. This is why
he soa San Francisco. In my mind, he was a
real estate speculator and commodities trader who lost everything in
some rice market speculation shit. So he declared himself himself Emperor,
(35:40):
and people were like, yeah, all right, whatever, And he
wore a uniform with a fancy hat and fancy feathers
the Emperor. Basically, I wish we still treated eccentrics this way.
He was granted free ferry rides and train rides because
after all, he's the Emperor of the United States. Police
(36:00):
officers saluted him as he walked by doing his rounds,
quote inspecting the streets and sidewalk, which is what he
spent most of his days doing Businesses he went to
would accept currency with his name on it, People gave
him food. Some people actually assumed he was rich, but
he was poor as fuck. He lived in a boarding house.
(36:20):
People sold souvenirs with his face on it. So it's
like kind of a weird trade where basically, like the
city made a ton of tourism dollars off of their
like guy who called himself emperor. You know, at one
point he called up the army to declare war on Congress,
but oddly enough, no one came, he did make some
good laws, or these might be apocryphal. People argue about
(36:43):
what he said. According to a potentially apocryphal story, he
announced that anyone who called San Francisco Frisco would be
fine twenty five dollars, which is almost six hundred dollars today.
I'm okay with that law coming back. I think it's
just needlessly petty, and you known have laws. He also
demanded that religions weren't allowed to fight each other. And
(37:06):
the thing that I found that is not apocryphal that
I dug in a bunch about and why he's a
cool person doing cool stuff, is that he tried his
hardest to leverage his weird fame to fight against anti
Chinese racism in San Francisco. He used the two tools
at his disposal. One the newspapers like to publish his
eccentric proclamations, and two that people let him speak at
(37:29):
pretty much any meeting. So for a decade he wrote
proclamation saying that Chinese folk should be treated with respect.
This is like, during a big, huge let's be even
more racist to Chinese immigrants than people are today. You know.
Then in eighteen seventy eight, a crowd of racist union guys,
because another thing that keeps coming up on this episode
(37:50):
is that there's a lot of bastards who are union guys.
A bunch of them were forming planning on some let's
call them murder riots, which was a common enough thing
in the racist Bay Area at the time. So he
showed up and he stood on a box and he
was like, hey, let me speak on the Emperor, and
then the racist Irish guy in charge of the mob
was like, okay, yeah, you're the Emperor, you could speak
(38:10):
and basically he was like, as Emperor, I command you
all to go home. And it didn't work. But the
fact that this guy just walked right into this angry
group of thousands of dudes to be like, shut the
fuck up and stop being racist.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
It's cool people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah, And the tie to Bummer and Lazarus is that
in cartoons he was always presented as the owner of
Bummer and Lazarus because they became they're all like characters.
And this, actually, I mean, it gets into some stuff
that like, it's bad when we make animals mascots, it's
even worse when we make humans mascots, especially people who
are nerd divergent, right, But he gets presented as the
(38:46):
owners of the Bummer and Lazarus, and this is not true,
but it fits the vibe at the time. He died
in eighteen eighty and some rich businessmen paid for his funeral.
Equally popular at the time, but not remembered so clearly today.
One final ex centric was Frederick Coombs, sometimes called George Washington.
The second he told people he was George Washington. He
(39:07):
was also a phrenologist. He walked around measuring people's skulls.
I kind of like, don't like this guy. He wore
a Revolutionary War uniform because he was George Washington, and
he had a public beef with Emperor Norton, and eventually
he fled to New York City. His argument was that
Edbur Norton doesn't like me because I'm successful with all
the ladies. And he spent the rest of his days
trying to sell people photographs of himself visiting Benjamin Franklin's
(39:29):
grave and says, I like Norton so much because he
spent his all of his fame trying to stop racism.
I've just like decided that Frederick Coombs is the heel
in this story, but I have no information about that.
I don't know in pristia, I don't know. These are
just exceptions or society used to treat like sort of
public neurodiversion figures who don't have any money differently and
(39:52):
more kindly than they do. But yeah, that's Bummer and Lazarus.
Let's talk about dogs, and let's get to the saddest
part of all week.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
All right, let's do ads first.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Okay, with that, people totally listen to these ads. They'll
be so excited, on the edge of their seat, can't
wait to come back. Okay, what's the thing I like
for my dog? I really like having a hands free leash.
I go hiking with rentron all the time. I don't
it's funny. I don't know what brand leash I have,
but when I go hiking see.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
A really good ones. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah, it's great being able to hike with him hands free,
and I recommend it.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Don't forget to bring water for your dogs on hikes.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah. I use a little collapsible bowl and Rentraut mostly
ignores it unless he's really thirsty. Here's some other ads.
We're back and we're going to talk about how society
treats animals, which.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
I don't like the subtitle for the section the script,
but go off.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
This subtitle is euthanasia.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
This.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Doing this research changed my opinion about some stuff in
really interesting ways. So in that I've learned more about
mora alternatives that other countries have developed to euthanasia. I
was like going to just like leave that there, and
then I was like, people are going to think that
I've like anyway, So most of our heroes are straight
dogs this week. Generally speaking, straight dogs are seen as
(41:28):
a problem for people. Some ungodly high percentage of humans
who get rabies get rabies from dog bites. It's like
more than ninety percent. Bats are, like, I think, the
only other thing that comes anywhere near it, and rabies
fucking sucks. Rabies just kills you unless you run quick
as hell to get a rabies vaccine as soon as
your bit. It as one hundred percent mortality without treatment.
(41:49):
The first person to survive rabies without a vaccine was
a kid in two thousand and four who is bit
by a bat, and so doctors.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
I remember this, Yeah, because there's a big, very Yeah,
this is a huge story that I haven't thought about
since two thousand and four.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah, wow, this kid gets bit by a bat, does
not get the like, doesn't realize that it's a problem,
so it doesn't immediately go get that. I think it's
called prophylactic when you get the vaccine afterwards, and yeah,
it starts getting sick and they the doctors put her
into a medically induced coma and her body fights off
the disease on its own. More people have survived using
(42:28):
this method now, but it's like not a lot more people.
The most recent article I found about ten years ago
and they were like the third person to survive rabies.
You know, So rabies is really fucking bad and stray
dogs are really good at spreading rabies. Yea, even when
they're not rabid. Packs of wild dogs are not always
safe to be around, especially for children, especially for elderly people,
(42:52):
and it is a it is a social issue, right.
There are a bunch of different ways of different countries
try to deal with the problem of stray dogs. There's
two main ones, and I think that they provide I
think it provides important context because we're talking about straight
dogs and what they face and what they deal with
the US and a lot of other countries just kill them.
(43:12):
You can dress it up in a lot of different ways. Overall,
strays are taken to shelters. They're given as sort of
limbo period to see if anyone claims them or adopts them,
and then they're euthanized. This is generally supported as the
best and most humane practice. Literally, the Humane Society does it,
as does PETA. I like the only group I want
(43:33):
to like say like, this pisses me off. It pisses
me off that PETA does it because PETA's whole thing
is like humans should need animals, which I've been vegan
for allen on twenty one years, twenty two year or
something like that. I don't think that it's wrong for
humans to eat animals. It really annoys me that someone
who takes that stance is gonna say, like, well, we
(43:57):
just euthanize animals and that's fine, because it's like, in
my mind is like pick one.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
And there's a lot of hypocrisy.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily hypocritical for other people
who care about animals to try and deal with this problem.
But I whatever, I'm going to try not to moralize
too much about this. It is the accepted method that
I grew up in a society that I have used
this as the accepted method. There's no good statistics available,
but the main statistic that is cited is that as
(44:27):
of two thousand and eight, three point seven million cats
and dogs or euthanized a year in the United States.
The US doesn't have a stray dog problem to the
same degree as some other countries. So in some ways
you could say that this works sort of. I want
to compare it to a different strategy that doesn't sort
of work, that actually just works or has worked for
(44:50):
both the Netherlands in Germany, they have two different attitudes.
In twenty twenty two, the Netherlands declared itself the first
country in those stray dogs. They did it without euthanasia.
They did it by setting up a program called collect newter,
vaccinate in return, which does what it says on the tin, like,
that's what they do. They collect, they newter, they vaccinate,
(45:12):
and then they return the animal to the streets. They
also put a massive tax on store and breeder bought dogs.
I think this isn't nationwide. I think this is like
municipalities do this. So rescue at dogs are the thing right,
you want a rescue animal. Everything else is kind of
frowned upon socially and crazy expensive. Yeah, and finally they
(45:35):
set up a sort of animal cop force, not not
like dogs who are cops, but people who police basically
people who go around and find people who abuse dogs
and then like get them in trouble, right, putting like
massive fines go ahead.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
I would say, that's the first time I've heard somebody
use the word cop in a good way.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
No, it's very like, it's very it's super interesting. Yeah,
And so you create this environment where animal abuse is
taken seriously, throwing out animals is taken very seriously, and
every stray animal is sterilized and vaccinated so they're not
(46:15):
going to be rabid and they're not going to reproduce,
so you you just don't have to kill them, and
it just makes sense that it works. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
I mean, sure, the Netherlands is a much smaller country,
and it's a much smaller population than the United States, right,
But even in that, in that smaller scale, it's quite impressive.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Yeah, it is. Germany is the other country. It's funny
because in twenty two Netherlands declared itself the first nation
with those stray dogs. Germany is like ahead of them
and does it slightly differently, but had worse branding. Yeah. Probably,
Germany is just like, we don't want to declare ourselves
(47:00):
number one on anything. Is this bad? Yeah, we're only
number one in self depreciation these days. It's the only
thing we're the best at. So Germany has a slightly
different attitude, but not incredibly different attitude. There's no euthanasia
for healthy dogs allowed, it is.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
I'm glad that Germany is taking no EUTHANASI stance.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
Yeah, it is illegal for stores to sell pets. Breeding
dogs requires extensive certification. There's like buying a dog from
a breeder costs thousands of dollars, So getting a pet
from a shelter is the way to do it unless
you have very specific needs like oh I need the
following kind of hunt and dog or whatever. Right, Their
(47:43):
shelters have adoption rates upwards of ninety percent as a result,
whereas like, I looked it up, but I've done rat
in the script, it's like less than a quarter of
in the US, unadopted dogs live in the shelters for
the rest of their life. This is the main difference
between them and the Netherlands and other countries. Is that
the dogs are never put back on the streets. They
live in the shelters, and that is financed by the government, right,
(48:07):
It's subsidized by the government. And if you're caught abandoning
your pet, you get a twenty five thousand euro fine.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
That's dope.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Yeah, And I'm not saying this would magically work in
the US, right. We have a lot of very different
things going on culturally, but slowly building a culture where
it's like like there's this thing in the US where
people are like, oh, I'm going to make money. I mean, one,
everyone's poor, right, because the US is fucked, and since
everyone's poor, they're like, well, I'm gonna I have this
(48:36):
thing that can possibly make me money. If I don't
get my dog fixed, it can make more dogs, and
I can sell those dogs. And that is like what
a lot of people choose to do because of their
financial situation, and then they abandon those dogs because they
can't sell them, right, or they can only sell like
one out of ten, or you know whatever.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Just to say though, like, I feel like there has
been a shift where there used to be pet stores
that had dogs available in their stores and puppy mills
and things like that. Specifically, when I was growing up,
there were stores at malls that they had these puppy mills.
That doesn't exist. I mean we probate it like childhood,
(49:15):
me protested and things like that. Yeah, but these things existed,
and now for the most part, there's still breeders. There's
still things like that. But I would say puppy mills
and dogs for sale at stores is very it's the outside,
it's very it's outlier in the situation. Would you agree.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
I think you're probably right. Like, I haven't thought about it.
I used to think about puppy mills and stuff like
that when I was first getting involved in politics and stuff,
and I haven't thought about it in a while, so
I haven't like looked. But you know, you're right. I'm
not used to like walking into a store and seeing
the cage full of dogs anymore.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
And yeah, yeah, I mean there used to be like
actual like brick and mortar stores that that is all
they sold were puppies and they were in these like
little hamster containers that were just horrible, and it was
uh yeah, but you know, I mean, most people, most
people are able to adopt not shop at this point.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Yeah, yeah, and I and I will say one of
the things that my parents did right, They had a
lot of things right. My parents are great. Uh, they
raised me right. All of our pets were rescues. That
was it was never a consideration. That's how you get
You take care of things that need help, you know.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
But yeah, uh okay, I'm gonna close out today with
another highlighting of the sadness of the US system.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Cool, cool, cool, Let's tell a funsie at the end.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah, a little little little I swear Wednesday's episode fucking
all hits. It's gonna be so it's all up hill
from here.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Fuck yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
So I want to talk about some hero straight dogs.
So a bunch of straight dogs are hanging out US
Army base and Sghanistan. Three of them were named Sasha,
Target and Rufus. In twenty ten, in February, a man
tried to suicide bomb the base. The three dogs attacked
the man. He couldn't get past them, so he detonated
himself early. The dogs saved fifty soldiers' lives. The US
(51:16):
should not have invaded Afghanistan, but fuck the Taliban also,
so whatever, I understand people's whatever. Yeah, this is not
a morality tale, that part of it. Sasha died from
her wounds from the blast, but Rufus and Target survived
and were nursed back to health by the soldiers, and
they were heroes. Soldiers pulled strings to adopt them and
(51:36):
get them sent back to the US where they could
live with them. They went through all the red tape
in order to do it. They appeared on Oprah, you know,
with their dog.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
Oh yeahrah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely have seen this
a friend of behind the Bastard's Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, yeah, uh did you hear how that ended?
Speaker 2 (51:56):
Is it bad? No? I only got I only remember
the good dog stuff.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
So Target escaped from his yard in Arizona. Briefly animal
control picked him up and euthanized him.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Fucking Arizona. What the fuck is wrong with you? This
is super fucked up. Yeah, you don't do that.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Yeah, And that's what I like.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Fucking America, what a horrible place. I know.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
It was like, I love that these dogs risked their
life to defend the people who took care of them,
who they cared about, you know, And and the individual
soldiers didn't betray them the country.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
That the yeah them with death.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
Yeah, and Oprah yeah too, equally bad. I don't actually
watch Oprah, but I have heard enough behind the bastards
to have a sense. But when we come back on Wednesday,
we're gonna talk about really good dogs, all of whom
lived good lives, loved by the people they loved, none
(53:01):
of whom die violently or by like unhealthy used in Asia,
you know, mutualistic protection between protesters and dogs. Because when
we come back, we're gonna talk about riot dogs.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
I'm so excited. Do you have a a good Rentros
story to lighten the mood before we exit this episode?
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Yeah, let's see. So today I'm staying with someone who
is trying to milk a goat, and Rentroll, with absolutely
no training, loves herding sheep and goats more than he
loves his own life. Yeah, and so he struggles a
little bit, watching calmly while the goat is being milked.
(53:46):
But then when the goat got away, the goat is
new to being milked, and it is for the goats,
like the goat recently had a smaller goat and whatever. Anyway,
and Rintrew runs around and so as soon as the
goat got away, let Rintroll go, and Renshaw went and
got the goat back or helped get the goat back.
(54:07):
I don't know. I like watching him do his thing.
It makes me really happy.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
He's so smart and he's so sweet. Yeah. We were
together recently and rentro Introt does not like cars. Yeah, no,
understandably so a lot of dogs on like cars, and
it's because of the vibrations. But as we were sitting there,
I realized there was a pattern with Rentrot that I
thought was really fucking cool. Rin Trot only barked at
(54:33):
like the traditional gas cars. Ryntroll never barked at the
electric or the hybrids. Yeah, it was so fascinating. Obviously
it's because there's like some difference in sound or whatever. Yeah,
but I think that's pretty fucking cool. Rentrot is cool
dog who does cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Yeah, he's always yelling. Industrial society has had some consequences.
We need to talk about them.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
I love him.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
Yeah, me too, And we'll come back and we'll talk
about more dogs.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
Yeah, I guess this is the time.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
Oh plugs right, Yeah, Sophie the guest, what do you got,
what do you feel like plugging?
Speaker 2 (55:09):
I would like to plug my very good friend Jimmy
Loftus's new book Raw Dog, which if you're listening to
this on Monday, comes out tomorrow, so pre order, and
if you're listening to this beyond Monday, it is officially
out as of me twenty third, so check out Jimmie
social media to figure out where to purchase or request
it at your local library. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
I am kickstarting a tabletop role playing game called p
Number City, and I will be It will be kickstarting
all June in twenty whatever year. It is currently twenty
twenty three, and if you go now I think this
comes out before June, and you search PA Number City Kickstarter,
you'll be able to sign up for announcements on the
very first day of it, on June first. It's going
(55:52):
to be twenty percent off the print book. We're going
to make the PDFs and stuff as cheap as we
can so that people can play without running a bunch
of money or whatever. But the print books should be beautiful.
And I've been working on this tabletop role playing game
for like fucking ten years, and two or three years
ago finally got together with a really good team of
people who can do the things that I can't do,
(56:12):
including tell me that I'm not in charge. And it's
actually a collective effort and it's really fun and I'll
be pit plugging it all the next couple weeks. And
also go regular order Jamie Loftus's book Raw Dog. Yeah,
it's about hot dogs. If you like history and common.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
There's a dog theme, but it's not the dog that
we discussed today.
Speaker 1 (56:38):
It's more sadness, at least with comedy. Yeah, and we'll
see you all Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (56:45):
Bye. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. H
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Do Cool Stuff, your
weekly dose of sometimes people fight against the bad things.
I'm your host, Margaret kilj With me today as a
guest is okay? There was no one else that I
could have had as a guest for this episode. With
Me Today as a guest is Sophie Lichterman, who you
all might be aware of as the Webby Award winning
(00:20):
podcast producer most known for her work with Jamie Loftus. Sophie,
how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's my favorite intro I've ever received. Also, shout out
Jimmie Loftus. Pre order her book or by the time
it comes out, order her book row Dog. Thank you
so much.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, I literally pre ordered it today after telling other
people to pre order it for a long time.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hey, a pre order is a pre order, Okay today?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, and our producer today is Sophie.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Oh my god, Sophie. Hi Sophie.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yeah. Ian is our audio engineer Hien. Once people hear
the topic, they'll understand why Sophie is the guest today. Anyway.
Ian is our audio engineer, Hi Ian. The theme music
was written for us by unwoman. Since people ask me
this about once a week, I'm saying unwoman like, not
woman like U N w O m e N. That
(01:14):
is the name I'm saying every week.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
No, you're not. You said unwomen. You just spelled unwomen.
You're saying, Oh god, yes, I can't do anything. Bucked
it up and audio wise, you.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Know, as funny as as I was type it is,
I was like, why am I bothering to type this
out with dashes? I'll just look at the word and
spell it, but clearly I'll mess it up either way.
So today's cool people, Sophie, have you ever heard of
you ever heard of dogs?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah? My reason for living?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, dogs are the best. If you were to rate
dogs into tears, all dogs would be s tier, which
is the highest tier.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
That is a scientifically categorizable facts, with the exception of
the Boston Dynamics wrote about dog, which is not a dog.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
No, doesn't count.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, those have to be taken individually and judged on
their individual actions.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Today this week we're talking about dogs in general. We're
gonna be talking about riot dogs. But I'm obsessed with context,
so we're gonna talk about dogs.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Baby, let's go, who let the dogs out? Okay? Well,
I pro wished, Margaret, I wouldn't do the who let
the dogs that reference more than once, so I'm getting
it out of the way early. So yeah, Margaret, tell
me who let the dogs out? Whooo?
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Probably no, probably Siberia, but possibly Southeast Asia. Actually, so
dogs are the first domesticated animal. Yeah, I'm gonna take
this way back. Dogs are the first domesticated animal. Dogs
are not descended from modern wolves. They are descended from
the pleustoicne wolf, the plasticine wolf, from which the modern
(03:01):
gray wolf also descends, so they're like cousins or siblings
to the modern gray wolf. Basically, dogs are descended from
the wolves that evolve to hunt now extinct megafauna like
mammoths and shit. Just part of why dogs are so cool.
They roamed over basically the entire northern hemisphere. These are
the wolves. They roamed over the entire northern hemisphere in
(03:22):
the last ice Age. They crossed the bearing Land Bridge
and shit the same as the mammoths did. And when
the megafauna went away, so did these wolves. Let's talk
about these wolves. Wolves are cooperative game hunters. They also
don't really travel in packs.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Interesting, it's more of like a it's not like a pack.
It's more of like a duo. Right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Well, I mean actually there's often a lot of them,
but it's a family unit. It's usually a nuclear family.
It is a mated pair and their kids. And I
can't talk about wolves that bringing up the alpha wolf thing.
I really want to talk about the alpha wolf thing.
So I'm gonna do you know, the alpha wolf thing.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I do because Anderson, my dog, who is perfect shout
out Anderson, recovering from surgery and still the baddest of
the baddest bitches. I call her an alpha fox because fox,
cousin of the wolf, looks like more foxy than wolfy Okay,
and uh has the personality of an alpha fox, which
(04:25):
I mean of an alpha wolf.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
See that's how well, but but alpha wolves aren't real.
This is what I'm trying to tell you.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
No, no, it's it all goes back to, you know, the
male male authority. Yeah right, well, am I there.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna tell the story because I'm
really excited about because one of my thing favorite things
in the world is that when people call themselves alpha males,
they're basically calling themselves domesticated. Now that domesticated captive. They
are saying, I am in captivity. Yeah, you are, because
the alpha male thing is entire based on a combination
(05:01):
of lies and misunderstandings about wolf behavior. In nineteen seventy,
this guy named David Mech put out a book called
The Wolf, The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species.
Since then, this guy is still alive. He rules he's
spent decades trying to be like, hey, a lot of
the stuff in that first book was wrong. We've learned
an awful lot since that book came out, or, to
(05:24):
quote him more directly, we've learned more about wolf since
that book's publication than we had an all of previous history.
But the book is still in print, and he's tried
time and time and again to get it taken out
of print, but it sells well, so the publisher's like,
whatever are we Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Was going to say alpha capitalism.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, totally the thing that this book got wrong. And
he was not the first person to get this wrong.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
He was.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I believe it goes back to the nineteen thirties, but
I didn't put that part in the script, so I'm
not sure what it got wrong. Was the idea of
an alpha wolf in a pecking order. He called it
a lead wolf in the in the book, but it's
the same idea. It's what the alpha wolf people get
the thing from. It was about how a dominant male
controls the entire pack and picks on the weakest members.
(06:11):
And this is only true of wolves in captivity. So
next time you meet someone who says they're in alpha,
well I have never actually have you ever met a
human in real life who says that they're in alpha?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Just unfortunately on many many dating apps. Oh god, yeah,
a lot of times they lead with that in their
bio and that's an intelle. Yeah. Yeah, it's horrible.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
You've ever seen go ahead.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
I was just gonna say, it's it's a tragedy to
deal with this men, It's really horrible.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
There's this video that lives rent free in my head
and I can't remember the name of the like comedian
group that did it, where they're like a bunch of
bros going down the street and they're like jumping up
and down and they're like yeah, bros. And then they
go up and they're like all right, all right, true
or false? For a dollar masculinity is a prison and
people are like true and they're like true, masculinity could
(07:04):
be a prison.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Baby.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
It lives rent free in my head. You all should
look it up somehow. I'm not sure how.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Anyway, I want to know how that video reached you.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Who in the algorithm was like Margaret needs that. I
don't know. But next time you meet one of these
people on your dating app, it's like they're saying, I
am in prison and other people are in charge of me,
because that's the only way you get alpha wolf behavior.
Of course, the prison in this case is patriarchy, and
it's real, and it's probably why human men exhibit this behavior,
(07:37):
and I mean, frankly, it's why in actual prison you
see the same dynamics, but much much worse.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
It is a thing that people and the wolves do
in captivity, as they create pecking orders and are terrible.
In the wild, wolves form family units, a mated pair
in their offspring. Sometimes the kids fuck off at a
year of age and start their own thing, but sometimes
they don't. Sometimes they stick around a while longer and
help the next round of puppies, and some packs do
(08:06):
form with multiple breeding pairs. Occasionally, I believe in this
case it's always the oldest wolf that is the lead wolf.
But to quote a research science Curicassidy quote, the wolves
generally in the dominant positions within a pack are not
there because they fought for it. It's not some battle
to get to the top position. They're just the oldest
(08:27):
or the parents, or in the case of same sex siblings,
it's a matter of personality.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
You hear that Anderson, I'm older, I'm the pack leader.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
She's like, OK, you haven't proven it. She's like another
treat human. I wrote most this script with my dog
laid on my lap or running around barking at things
that he's not supposed to bark at, aka being perfect. Yes,
wolves do fight other wolves. This is actually the leading
(08:57):
cause of death for wolves, whoops. But they don't fight
inside their own pack. They fight for territory, and this
part I thought was kind of cool. The packs that
win the most are the packs of the oldest wolf,
not the packs with the most wolves, because the elders
are calmer and wiser, and they're like, oh, we don't
actually we shouldn't fight. That's a bad idea when they
(09:18):
would otherwise lose. So yeah, now, I want you to guess, Sophie,
how many people are killed by wolves every year in
the United States?
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Really? None?
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yeah, yeah, that's the correct guess.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Oh is that actually none?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah? That's how many people are killed by wolves in
the average year in the United States. In the past
twenty years, wolves have killed exactly one person.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I bet that. I'm like, I bet that person did
it dumb?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
I think she was just like hanging out in like
backwoods Alaska and someone was.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
A real high you had me at Alaska.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, in twenty ten in Alaska, wolves killed somebody. Domestic
dogs kill thirty to fifty people a year.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
That is so low, actually, I was expecting higher number.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, a lot of people are attacked by dogs, right,
and we're going to talk a lot about stray dogs
and stuff like that on this episode. But what if
we break to a listical of what animals kill the
most people? Because that's what I wrote.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Let's do it then.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
All right, okay, so what animals kill the most people
in the United States. The answer is, honestly, no, wild
animals kill enough people to merit any actual worry. But
deer top the list. Oh shit, bam be you know,
and this one's it's messy because deer do occasionally like
(10:52):
gore people and trample people. But I think most of
these lists include people who die in car accidents caused
by deer right right, right, so I don't know exactly.
And then stingy fuckers that's the technical term, like bees
and wasps and shit. They're next. They kill on average
fifty six people a year.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, I mean allergies and things like.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
It's yeah, it's almost entirely allergic people.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Dogs are number three, cows number four. They take out
about twenty people a year.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Dude, I would think cows would be so much higher.
I don't know why, but I think, but I think
cows are just like out here, trampling, I know whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
I like to see a cow. I'm always like, I'm
so glad you haven't figured out what you could do
if you wanted to know.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
All they would have to do is sit, Yeah, totally,
Oh my god, and let people are under their uh
you know, easel sit death. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, if any cows are listening fully endorsed murder, well,
it's not really, it's self defense, honestly for a cow to.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Kill personally cows alone.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, spiders are next.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, I'm allergic to them. They try to kill me
at least three times a year.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Okay, fair enough, don't become one of the seven that
they succeed with. Yeah, snakes only five people a year,
which is interesting because something like six again, I didn't
write this number down is off the top of my head.
From my memory from writing this, something like six to
seven thousand people are bit by venomous snakes every year.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Are we just good at science?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah? More or less. It's like, do you just get
to the emergency room and you'll probably be okay. So
if you get bit by a venomous snake, don't freak out.
Just get the fuck to the emergency room. Don't try
and suck the poison out.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
So I'm just gonna assume if our healthcare system was
better that it would be none.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yeah, it seems completely possible, especially now that like there's
better backwoods rescue technology like satellite communicators and stuff. Bears,
especially grizzly bears, kill about four people a year, I believe,
mostly in Alaska, and specifically they tend to kill people
who they who thought they were being friends with the.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Bear, Like I said, a stupid.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yeah, alligators kill one person a year, sharks kill someone
every two years. Mountain lions kill someone about every four
years or so. So now you know, watch out for deer.
Don't worry about wolves. It's literally just not worth worrying about.
You ever watch Alone? M I watched like the first
(13:25):
season of Alone, and there's like the person who's like,
here's a wolf and is like, they didn't let me
bring a gun. I gotta go home. It's just not safe,
and just like you fucking anyway, So don't worry about wolves.
But we're not here to talk about wolves. We're here
to talk about dogs. Dogs aren't wolves. They're closely related cousins.
(13:46):
You said, yeah, yeah, they have the same I guess
they make them siblings, right if they have the same parent,
the plasticine.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Wolves, Yeah, I guess. So. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So the answer about how they were domesticated and when
and where is we don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
It's my favorite kind of history.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of guesses,
and a lot of the guesses are backed up by evidence,
and so I'm gonna I'm gonna go through best current knowledge,
as best discovered by Margaret. What we do know is
that dogs are the first domesticated animal. What probably didn't happen,
And it's like always always the way I sort of
was told to envision it. It's not that like humans
(14:29):
like captured some wolves and were like hunt for us, buddy,
and then like consciously bred them for docility or some shit.
You know. What is much more likely, infinitely more likely,
is something called commensalism, which I had never heard of before.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Because I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So, you know how like in like you know how,
like high school science has betrayed us all because it
tells us and we think we know everything, we actually
know nothing. In high school science, I learned about parasitis, parasitism,
and symbiosis, right, Commensalism is something different, is sort of
in between the two. It is where one species gets
benefits from another species while neither helping nor hindering the
(15:09):
other species. So it's just like an animal like a
raccoon digging through your trash can, especially if it like
doesn't leave a mess somehow, is not a parasite, right
because it doesn't damage the host. It is a commensal,
commensial commensal. I'm going to go with that, relationship, and
(15:29):
so probably a long ass time ago, most likely currently
suspected in Siberia or Southeast Asia, until more recently people
are thinking mostly East Asian Southeast Asia, and now people
are leaning a little bit more towards Siberia, and I'm
sure it'll change. A bunch of wolves were like, hell yeah,
we can eat the food that humans throw out, and
they started hanging out near the humans, or it might
have even been hell yeah, we can prey on the
(15:50):
animals that eat the food that humans throw out. Right,
and the calmer wolves were able to do better in
proximity to the humans since they didn't run away as much.
And so these les fearful less human aggressive wolves, they
evolved physically. Their snouts shortened and they ended up with
fewer teeth. They were doing less of the killing themselves basically,
(16:13):
and soon, Honestly, my suspicion is like right away, but
I don't know, No one really knows. As soon this
commensalism moved to mutualism, which is another word for symbiosis
that is technically different. And I spent a while trying
to read about the difference. I'm just gonna use the
word mutualism, where both species gain advantages, and there's so
many advantages having wolves around probably was part of the
(16:37):
direct hunting, right the wolves now dogs would corner prey
for humans to finish off, just like how people hunt
with dogs today. And or and this is like even
more certain or guessed upon, is that they protected the
kill from other predators, right because as soon as you
like bring down a mammoth, all the other animals were like, yo,
what's up? Can I have some of that? And you
(16:58):
got all these wolves around being like, no, the fuck
you can. You can't have any of it. That's for
the humans and me, you know. And also you can
sleep soundly at night because you're campus surrounded by fucking wolves.
And I would argue, and this is my own hypothesis
that emotional support wolf was probably just as important as
anything else right from the start.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Exactly. Yeah, who doesn't want the comforting feeling of a
wolf in their.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Life, because like this is only like somewhere between thirty
to forty thousand years ago when they became dogs, So
probably you're going back tens or hundreds of thousand years
before that, but you're still talking about Homo sapiens. You're
still talking about us. You're talking about someone that could
fucking be raised in our society and be a normal
(17:45):
person in our society right now. So if you take
one of us and they're and a wolf nearby dies,
and there's all these wolf puppies and they're like, oh no,
what will we do without our mother? Like as cute
as shit?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, I mean I guarantee they also needed unconditional love
back then.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, yeah, totally. We all need unconditional love, which leads
me to my statement. Humans and dogs belong together, always
have both are better for it. Yes, that, and this
is the thing that like, it wasn't a violent controlling act.
It's not the destruction of the wildness of the animal.
Dogs were domesticated long before the widespread practice of agriculture also,
(18:24):
which I thought was kind of interesting. And again we
don't know exactly when, but we know that modern DNA
science stuff suggests that the evolutionary deviation from regular wolves
started forty to three thirty thousand years ago, around the
time that the ice age was at its iciest, when
we probably needed each other the most. Frankly and the first, Yes,
(18:46):
we are one hundred percent certain this is a modern
dog entirely. This is a dog, right, is the remains
of a little guy who died and was buried with
his people fourteen two hundred years ago in what's now Germany.
There's more that dogs offer us to quote from The
New Yorker, the Ajibwe people, a North American indigenous group,
(19:07):
say that the wolf was given to the first human
as a companion. They see wolves as mentors to humans,
modeling how to behave in a social group and how
to behave while hunting. And this is like particularly interesting
when you think about the fact that the alpha wolf
thing is absolute garbage and actually, yeah, it actually probably
was decent modeling for people. You know. It's also hypothesized
(19:27):
that are packed with dogs is how we out competed
the Neanderthals. Basically, we are really good at hunting with dogs.
It's like fucked up. It's like just a cheat code, right,
you know. You're like, you go chase the thing and
corner it. I've got the pointy stick. I'll kill it
once you've got its back against a wall, you know, Yeah, okay,
(19:48):
and then the weirdest one I ran across. And this
might not be true, but it is hypothesized by a scientist,
the reason we have whites in our eyes might be
because we hunt with dogs. The selera the like the
white of the eye is not white in most animals,
and it is white in dogs, and it is white
in humans, and it is white in very few other primates.
(20:12):
Like there's individual primate to have it, but it's not
like a species wide trait in any other primate as
far as I can tell. To quote the Guardian, the
wolf possesses white celera, as does Homo sapiens, though crucially
it is the only primate that has them. And then,
according to author Pat Shipman, who's quoted in the same
Guardian article, the main advantage of having white celera is
that it is very easy to work out what another
(20:33):
person is gazing at. It provides a useful form of
nonverbal communication and would have been an immense help to
early hunters. They would have been able to communicate silently
but very effectively. And it is possible and is this
author Pat's hypothesis that we have alled white celera because
we hunted with our dogs.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, I do. I do always say that Anderson has
my eyes, so yeah, and says I am correct.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah, wherever dogs were first domesticated. Wherever their people went,
they went, and soon you have four distinct haplogroups, which
is not a term I really understand, but basically subtypes
of dogs and dogs just went everywhere. They went across
the land bridge into North America. And there's all kinds
of arguments about whether some specific types of canines are
(21:22):
really dogs or come from the same place, etc. But
this is the gist of it. This is the gist
of dog existence spread and this is not meant as
a slight Two cats, they started being domesticated, probably in
Western Asia around ten thousand years ago. It seems likely
that the thing that the cats sort of offers they
prey on the rodents that eat grain stores and such. Right,
(21:43):
but today is a dog day. We're talking about stray dogs,
especially we're talking about riot dogs. But first there's more context.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
But before you get to that context, do you know
what time it is?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Time to learn what's good for us to exchange money for?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Well? I thought it would be fun because I feel
like a lot of the listeners listening to this episode
will like dogs. You give some for the adreaks to
recommend some of my favorite dog products. Oh okay, as
the official sponsor and if anything else comes up, it
is wrong. Okay, I want to recommend these these Anderson's
(22:33):
really smart and she really liked and we used to
live in a really tiny apartment a yard to run
in or anything like that, and I got recommended these
Nina autoson puzzles and you can hide dog treats or
whatever snacky in there and they have to like figure
out and Anderson would spend you know, twenty minutes or
(22:55):
ten minutes or its pretty smart, so like two minutes
sniffing through and opening and figuring out how to do
the puzzle. And it's really good for dog brains and
is fun. So yeah, I would like to plug the
Nina Ottison puzzles.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Hell yeah, and then whatever this other stuff is and
we're back. So there are stray dogs, and there are
feral dogs, or as they're sometimes called to try and
make them more technical sounding, free range unowned dogs. I
(23:34):
don't think anyone actually calls them that, except like articles.
Most dogs in the world are free range, unowned dogs.
I didn't realize this. Less than a quarter of all
dogs are pets with specific caretakers. Across a lot of
the world. Dogs are more likely to be sort of
owned by the community, if they're owned at all, like
the village or just yeah, sometimes there's nobody. These dogs
(23:57):
tend to be commensal, like not just the ones who
are owned by community, but the dogs that are unowned
or whatever. They live off trash and such, right, going
back to their roots, and stray dogs or dogs that
start off living with some people. Feral dogs have generally
never had a person who they're paying attention to. I
hate them. It's funny. I feel like, I'm like, I
(24:18):
hate the word like owned with my dog, Rentraw is
my dog, right, I think the possessive pronoun makes sense,
and so I don't mind saying that, but I hate
being like, I'm Rentraw's owner, and I'm like, eh, whatever.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
See, I'm Anderson's human and she, yeah, she more. She
definitely is in charge here.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
So yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So both stray and
feral dogs both live lives where they tend to avoid
or occasionally attack people. They're usually presented as a problem
for the human community and that they live in proximity to,
but not always, And that's actually gonna come up a
couple times in this week's story. Sometimes the community cares
(25:04):
for these dogs. Sometimes they kill these dogs. Sometimes they
do a combo move where they care for some of
them and kill other ones. And we're going to talk
about that in a bit. Unfortunately, that'll be the sad
part of the days episode.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
But first warn me about this.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, we're going to talk about them, not right now,
I'll be a little bit later. We are going to
talk about the way in which society deals with stray dogs.
Most of the individual dogs in this episode do very well. Okay,
let's talk about a famous and this is a thing.
This gets presented as famous. I'd never heard about this
(25:37):
in my life. You ever heard of Bummer and Lazarus.
You're a California person?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, I mean, like yes, but no, if that makes sense,
like darling, but but yeah, I don't know. Yeah, what
you got for me?
Speaker 1 (25:57):
There is a famous duo famous in the stray dog world,
Bummer and Lazarus. All the straight dogs and now these dogs.
They lived in San Francisco in the eighteen sixties from
Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I don't know about San Francis is the same thing.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
It's a California. It's one state. How big could it be?
Two New Jerseys?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
It's large and in charge.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Three Rhode Islands.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah. If the state is as big as like four
Road Islands, I guess I could imagine. Not knowing the
other side of it, it's.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Like the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah. Actually turns out, well, it's going to come up.
California is outsized economy even in the eighteen sixties, is
going to come up in today's story.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
So this is decades before San Francisco burned to the ground.
There are a lot of street dogs in nearby Los Angeles.
Ever heard of it? Yeah, it's the whole country. Straight.
Dogs there outnumbered people two to one in the eighteen forties.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Man, I wish that was true when I live there.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Well, except that everyone was poisoning them with Stryck nine
all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Oh well, Margaret, you should have led with that.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Okay. Some dogs figured out a way to avoid the
strick nine, which was by pleasing people by killing rats
and so like kind of like coming out ahead on
like I'm a stray dog, and I might like fight
your sheep, but you know what, I kill rats, and
people are like all right, So these dogs, the ratters,
sometimes they get spared and loved, which brings us to Bummer.
(27:30):
Bummer was a Mutts mutt medium sized, half Scottish terrier
half I'm quoting a nineteen oh one article that is
going to mention a breed that I Google does not
know anything about half Japanese snubnosed poodle. Yeah, that's what
one newspaper article.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And let's be honest, it probably was none of those things.
It was probably just a dog.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah, it was just a dog. Absolutely. Another book says
that it was a Newfoundland mutt. It's just a dog.
It's also not nearly the size of anything Newfoundland's shaped. Yeah, anyway,
months are the best. Yes, Bummer was born in Petaluma
and then came with this guy, a journalist named Ned Knight,
into the city and then somehow ended up astray. So
(28:15):
I hope that Ned died because that is the only
reasonable reason that his dog became astray. And otherwise fuck him.
One of Bummer's ears.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
It was like it was like I was like, you're
waiting for you to say it, because it's in the
script to he said, Yeah, like, Ned, I hope you died.
Otherwise fuck you.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
One of Bummer's ears was shorter than the other. Maybe
it was cut, maybe it had been bitten. He is
an ugly little guy. He started hanging out. I mean
this in only positive ways. He started hanging out in
front of the saloon and killing rats and begging for scraps.
And he lived a lonely life until until eighteen sixty one,
a year after he'd found his station, he saw another
(28:55):
medium dog in trouble, under attack by a larger dog.
Incomes bum drives off the larger dog, David versus Goliath.
But it was too late. This other dog, he was
fucked up, caught in the leg, not expected to live.
Bummer nursed him back to health, brought him food, cuddled
with him for warmth in the cold streets. Thus was
born Lazarus, his companion for years, and the two dogs
(29:21):
begged together and ratted together and just hung out in
front of the saloon. And everyone loved them. Yeah, they
were famous. There's a really funny reason why they were famous.
Every newspaper was writing about them, every journalist. Every journalist
was like exaggerating their personalities or inventing new ones whole cloth.
Like there'd be like gossip rag stuff about them, you know,
(29:41):
because the bar that they hung outside of was the
journalist's cafe that all the journalists hung out at.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
So they were like the first dog influencers.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, totally, Bummer and Lazarus the first dog influencers, and
political cartoons would feature them. One day, Bummer survives this
to be clear. One day someone shot Bummer in the leg.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Who the fuck shot Bummer in the leg?
Speaker 1 (30:08):
I don't know, I don't know. I hope they died
and Lazarus went off to beg with another dog in
the meantime, and the newspapers were furious. What in gratitude? Right?
But then the wound healed and Lazarus returned Bummer forgave
him and back they went to it. One time they
stopped a runaway horse and so they were heroes. One
time they killed, like I forgot to write this in
(30:29):
a script. They killed like eighty rats in twenty minutes
or some crazy shit, just like just fucked ton of rats.
And anyway, but so their heroes. The newspapers are writing
about them because there's nothing else happening in the first
half of the eighteen sixties in the United States. That's newsworthy.
(30:51):
I got like most of the way through this, and
I was like, ah la, la la eighteen sixty three.
I was like, I think there was bigger things happening.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
I was like, that's so cute. They're giving NewSpace to
these little dogs, the dog influencers.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Completely forgetting the date, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
To be clear, eighteen sixty one to eighteen sixty five
was the American Civil War. California wasn't connected to the
rest of the country by railroad yet, so in many
ways it was isolated. That came in eighteen sixty nine.
The Transcontinental Telegraph was brand new as of eighteen sixty one.
But Californians did do a bunch of anti slavery fighting.
Thousands of Californians joined regiments out east, and then California's
(31:32):
gold was crucial to the war effort, and they also
went and helped prevent the slave Empire of the Confederacy
from taking Arizona, New Mexico. So California did did hold
its own that that collection of four New Jersey sized
area or four Rhode Islands right anyway in eighteen sixty two. Sorry, no,
(31:55):
I did get it right, but I wrote it wrong
in the script I wrote nineteen sixty two in the script,
but I'm going to say eighteen sixty because that's when
this happened. A new dog catcher was doing the rounds
and picked up Lazarus because Lazarus was astray. An angry
mob forced the guy to let Lazarus go, and the
city declared that the pair were exempt from the laws
against strays because they were the people's heroes. They were
(32:18):
still dogs, I was gonna say, because they're dog os. Yeah, exactly,
there are still doggos. Bummer used to kill sheep and
get into fights with the other dogs. That might have
been when I got shot on the leg. I don't know.
Both was innocent, Yeah, I support him even if he's innocent.
And both of them used to trash shops that they
(32:39):
would like, go wander into a shop and then it
would get locked up behind them, right because the day
would end and the person wouldn't notice that the strays
had gotten in, so they would just trash the shop.
But I would too if I was locked inside it anyway,
and then that all dogs eventually come to an end.
(33:00):
One day in eighteen sixty three, someone poisoned Lazarus and
his second death stuck Bummer was inconsolable. In eighteen sixty five,
he died as well. A drunk kicked him so hard
that he lasted only a few more days. The drunk
was arrested, and once he was in jail, his cellmate
found out what he did and then quote popped him
(33:21):
on the smeller. So at least there was some kind
of both.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
The problem was, you know, like like it's the same
thing as like you go to see a dog movie.
You know how it ends.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I know, I'm sorry, I know how it ends.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
But also like did did? Did? Who poisons a dog?
Who kicks a dog? The fuck is wrong with these people?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
I agree?
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Despicable. I just read the next sentence. Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
What so bummer was eulogized by Mark Twain, but in
a weird, mean spirited way.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah, well that's Mark Twain for you. I know.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
At first I was like in a quote as eulogy,
and then I was like, whatever, fuck Mark Twain. Both
the dogs were taxidermied and put on display in the saloon.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
I don't know whether it's I don't know how I
feel about that one.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
I don't enjoy that.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Eventually they would donated to a museum that eventually it
gets written as destroyed what was left of them, But honestly,
I'm gonna go with put them to rest. And there's
a plaque up about them now which ends with quote
two dogs with but a single bark, two tales that
wagged as won. They were good dogs, beautiful I know,
I know, and they were the first news. I mean,
(34:40):
I'm sure there's other news.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Straight a dog influencers.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah, and I think a context. I wanted to lead
with the dogs, but there's some interesting humans in San
Francisco during this time.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
And I think it just stopped with San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, this is the era of San Francisco eccentrics. Most
FA was this guy Joshua Abraham Norton aka Emperor Norton,
who I didn't think I was gonna whatever quite make
his way into cool people, but actually, after reading about him,
I think he qualifies on his own. In eighteen fifty nine,
this man, who was essentially penniless, declared himself Norton, the
(35:18):
first Emperor of the United States. He's a very San
Francisco figure. He was an immigrant. He's a white guy
born in England, raised in South Africa. This is why
he soa San Francisco. In my mind, he was a
real estate speculator and commodities trader who lost everything in
some rice market speculation shit. So he declared himself himself Emperor,
(35:40):
and people were like, yeah, all right, whatever, And he
wore a uniform with a fancy hat and fancy feathers
the Emperor. Basically, I wish we still treated eccentrics this way.
He was granted free ferry rides and train rides because
after all, he's the Emperor of the United States. Police
(36:00):
officers saluted him as he walked by doing his rounds,
quote inspecting the streets and sidewalk, which is what he
spent most of his days doing Businesses he went to
would accept currency with his name on it, People gave
him food. Some people actually assumed he was rich, but
he was poor as fuck. He lived in a boarding house.
(36:20):
People sold souvenirs with his face on it. So it's
like kind of a weird trade where basically, like the
city made a ton of tourism dollars off of their
like guy who called himself emperor. You know, at one
point he called up the army to declare war on Congress,
but oddly enough, no one came, he did make some
good laws, or these might be apocryphal. People argue about
(36:43):
what he said. According to a potentially apocryphal story, he
announced that anyone who called San Francisco Frisco would be
fine twenty five dollars, which is almost six hundred dollars today.
I'm okay with that law coming back. I think it's
just needlessly petty, and you known have laws. He also
demanded that religions weren't allowed to fight each other. And
(37:06):
the thing that I found that is not apocryphal that
I dug in a bunch about and why he's a
cool person doing cool stuff, is that he tried his
hardest to leverage his weird fame to fight against anti
Chinese racism in San Francisco. He used the two tools
at his disposal. One the newspapers like to publish his
eccentric proclamations, and two that people let him speak at
(37:29):
pretty much any meeting. So for a decade he wrote
proclamation saying that Chinese folk should be treated with respect.
This is like, during a big, huge let's be even
more racist to Chinese immigrants than people are today. You know.
Then in eighteen seventy eight, a crowd of racist union guys,
because another thing that keeps coming up on this episode
(37:50):
is that there's a lot of bastards who are union guys.
A bunch of them were forming planning on some let's
call them murder riots, which was a common enough thing
in the racist Bay Area at the time. So he
showed up and he stood on a box and he
was like, hey, let me speak on the Emperor, and
then the racist Irish guy in charge of the mob
was like, okay, yeah, you're the Emperor, you could speak
(38:10):
and basically he was like, as Emperor, I command you
all to go home. And it didn't work. But the
fact that this guy just walked right into this angry
group of thousands of dudes to be like, shut the
fuck up and stop being racist.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
It's cool people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah, And the tie to Bummer and Lazarus is that
in cartoons he was always presented as the owner of
Bummer and Lazarus because they became they're all like characters.
And this, actually, I mean, it gets into some stuff
that like, it's bad when we make animals mascots, it's
even worse when we make humans mascots, especially people who
are nerd divergent, right, But he gets presented as the
(38:46):
owners of the Bummer and Lazarus, and this is not true,
but it fits the vibe at the time. He died
in eighteen eighty and some rich businessmen paid for his funeral.
Equally popular at the time, but not remembered so clearly today.
One final ex centric was Frederick Coombs, sometimes called George Washington.
The second he told people he was George Washington. He
(39:07):
was also a phrenologist. He walked around measuring people's skulls.
I kind of like, don't like this guy. He wore
a Revolutionary War uniform because he was George Washington, and
he had a public beef with Emperor Norton, and eventually
he fled to New York City. His argument was that
Edbur Norton doesn't like me because I'm successful with all
the ladies. And he spent the rest of his days
trying to sell people photographs of himself visiting Benjamin Franklin's
(39:29):
grave and says, I like Norton so much because he
spent his all of his fame trying to stop racism.
I've just like decided that Frederick Coombs is the heel
in this story, but I have no information about that.
I don't know in pristia, I don't know. These are
just exceptions or society used to treat like sort of
public neurodiversion figures who don't have any money differently and
(39:52):
more kindly than they do. But yeah, that's Bummer and Lazarus.
Let's talk about dogs, and let's get to the saddest
part of all week.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
All right, let's do ads first.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Okay, with that, people totally listen to these ads. They'll
be so excited, on the edge of their seat, can't
wait to come back. Okay, what's the thing I like
for my dog? I really like having a hands free leash.
I go hiking with rentron all the time. I don't
it's funny. I don't know what brand leash I have,
but when I go hiking see.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
A really good ones. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah, it's great being able to hike with him hands free,
and I recommend it.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Don't forget to bring water for your dogs on hikes.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah. I use a little collapsible bowl and Rentraut mostly
ignores it unless he's really thirsty. Here's some other ads.
We're back and we're going to talk about how society
treats animals, which.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
I don't like the subtitle for the section the script,
but go off.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
This subtitle is euthanasia.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
This.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Doing this research changed my opinion about some stuff in
really interesting ways. So in that I've learned more about
mora alternatives that other countries have developed to euthanasia. I
was like going to just like leave that there, and
then I was like, people are going to think that
I've like anyway, So most of our heroes are straight
dogs this week. Generally speaking, straight dogs are seen as
(41:28):
a problem for people. Some ungodly high percentage of humans
who get rabies get rabies from dog bites. It's like
more than ninety percent. Bats are, like, I think, the
only other thing that comes anywhere near it, and rabies
fucking sucks. Rabies just kills you unless you run quick
as hell to get a rabies vaccine as soon as
your bit. It as one hundred percent mortality without treatment.
(41:49):
The first person to survive rabies without a vaccine was
a kid in two thousand and four who is bit
by a bat, and so doctors.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
I remember this, Yeah, because there's a big, very Yeah,
this is a huge story that I haven't thought about
since two thousand and four.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah, wow, this kid gets bit by a bat, does
not get the like, doesn't realize that it's a problem,
so it doesn't immediately go get that. I think it's
called prophylactic when you get the vaccine afterwards, and yeah,
it starts getting sick and they the doctors put her
into a medically induced coma and her body fights off
the disease on its own. More people have survived using
(42:28):
this method now, but it's like not a lot more people.
The most recent article I found about ten years ago
and they were like the third person to survive rabies.
You know, So rabies is really fucking bad and stray
dogs are really good at spreading rabies. Yea, even when
they're not rabid. Packs of wild dogs are not always
safe to be around, especially for children, especially for elderly people,
(42:52):
and it is a it is a social issue, right.
There are a bunch of different ways of different countries
try to deal with the problem of stray dogs. There's
two main ones, and I think that they provide I
think it provides important context because we're talking about straight
dogs and what they face and what they deal with
the US and a lot of other countries just kill them.
(43:12):
You can dress it up in a lot of different ways. Overall,
strays are taken to shelters. They're given as sort of
limbo period to see if anyone claims them or adopts them,
and then they're euthanized. This is generally supported as the
best and most humane practice. Literally, the Humane Society does it,
as does PETA. I like the only group I want
(43:33):
to like say like, this pisses me off. It pisses
me off that PETA does it because PETA's whole thing
is like humans should need animals, which I've been vegan
for allen on twenty one years, twenty two year or
something like that. I don't think that it's wrong for
humans to eat animals. It really annoys me that someone
who takes that stance is gonna say, like, well, we
(43:57):
just euthanize animals and that's fine, because it's like, in
my mind is like pick one.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
And there's a lot of hypocrisy.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily hypocritical for other people
who care about animals to try and deal with this problem.
But I whatever, I'm going to try not to moralize
too much about this. It is the accepted method that
I grew up in a society that I have used
this as the accepted method. There's no good statistics available,
but the main statistic that is cited is that as
(44:27):
of two thousand and eight, three point seven million cats
and dogs or euthanized a year in the United States.
The US doesn't have a stray dog problem to the
same degree as some other countries. So in some ways
you could say that this works sort of. I want
to compare it to a different strategy that doesn't sort
of work, that actually just works or has worked for
(44:50):
both the Netherlands in Germany, they have two different attitudes.
In twenty twenty two, the Netherlands declared itself the first
country in those stray dogs. They did it without euthanasia.
They did it by setting up a program called collect newter,
vaccinate in return, which does what it says on the tin, like,
that's what they do. They collect, they newter, they vaccinate,
(45:12):
and then they return the animal to the streets. They
also put a massive tax on store and breeder bought dogs.
I think this isn't nationwide. I think this is like
municipalities do this. So rescue at dogs are the thing right,
you want a rescue animal. Everything else is kind of
frowned upon socially and crazy expensive. Yeah, and finally they
(45:35):
set up a sort of animal cop force, not not
like dogs who are cops, but people who police basically
people who go around and find people who abuse dogs
and then like get them in trouble, right, putting like
massive fines go ahead.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
I would say, that's the first time I've heard somebody
use the word cop in a good way.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
No, it's very like, it's very it's super interesting. Yeah,
And so you create this environment where animal abuse is
taken seriously, throwing out animals is taken very seriously, and
every stray animal is sterilized and vaccinated so they're not
(46:15):
going to be rabid and they're not going to reproduce,
so you you just don't have to kill them, and
it just makes sense that it works. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
I mean, sure, the Netherlands is a much smaller country,
and it's a much smaller population than the United States, right,
But even in that, in that smaller scale, it's quite impressive.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Yeah, it is. Germany is the other country. It's funny
because in twenty two Netherlands declared itself the first nation
with those stray dogs. Germany is like ahead of them
and does it slightly differently, but had worse branding. Yeah. Probably,
Germany is just like, we don't want to declare ourselves
(47:00):
number one on anything. Is this bad? Yeah, we're only
number one in self depreciation these days. It's the only
thing we're the best at. So Germany has a slightly
different attitude, but not incredibly different attitude. There's no euthanasia
for healthy dogs allowed, it is.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
I'm glad that Germany is taking no EUTHANASI stance.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
Yeah, it is illegal for stores to sell pets. Breeding
dogs requires extensive certification. There's like buying a dog from
a breeder costs thousands of dollars, So getting a pet
from a shelter is the way to do it unless
you have very specific needs like oh I need the
following kind of hunt and dog or whatever. Right, Their
(47:43):
shelters have adoption rates upwards of ninety percent as a result,
whereas like, I looked it up, but I've done rat
in the script, it's like less than a quarter of
in the US, unadopted dogs live in the shelters for
the rest of their life. This is the main difference
between them and the Netherlands and other countries. Is that
the dogs are never put back on the streets. They
live in the shelters, and that is financed by the government, right,
(48:07):
It's subsidized by the government. And if you're caught abandoning
your pet, you get a twenty five thousand euro fine.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
That's dope.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Yeah, And I'm not saying this would magically work in
the US, right. We have a lot of very different
things going on culturally, but slowly building a culture where
it's like like there's this thing in the US where
people are like, oh, I'm going to make money. I mean, one,
everyone's poor, right, because the US is fucked, and since
everyone's poor, they're like, well, I'm gonna I have this
(48:36):
thing that can possibly make me money. If I don't
get my dog fixed, it can make more dogs, and
I can sell those dogs. And that is like what
a lot of people choose to do because of their
financial situation, and then they abandon those dogs because they
can't sell them, right, or they can only sell like
one out of ten, or you know whatever.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Just to say though, like, I feel like there has
been a shift where there used to be pet stores
that had dogs available in their stores and puppy mills
and things like that. Specifically, when I was growing up,
there were stores at malls that they had these puppy mills.
That doesn't exist. I mean we probate it like childhood,
(49:15):
me protested and things like that. Yeah, but these things existed,
and now for the most part, there's still breeders. There's
still things like that. But I would say puppy mills
and dogs for sale at stores is very it's the outside,
it's very it's outlier in the situation. Would you agree.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
I think you're probably right. Like, I haven't thought about it.
I used to think about puppy mills and stuff like
that when I was first getting involved in politics and stuff,
and I haven't thought about it in a while, so
I haven't like looked. But you know, you're right. I'm
not used to like walking into a store and seeing
the cage full of dogs anymore.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
And yeah, yeah, I mean there used to be like
actual like brick and mortar stores that that is all
they sold were puppies and they were in these like
little hamster containers that were just horrible, and it was
uh yeah, but you know, I mean, most people, most
people are able to adopt not shop at this point.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Yeah, yeah, and I and I will say one of
the things that my parents did right, They had a
lot of things right. My parents are great. Uh, they
raised me right. All of our pets were rescues. That
was it was never a consideration. That's how you get
You take care of things that need help, you know.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
But yeah, uh okay, I'm gonna close out today with
another highlighting of the sadness of the US system.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Cool, cool, cool, Let's tell a funsie at the end.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah, a little little little I swear Wednesday's episode fucking
all hits. It's gonna be so it's all up hill
from here.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Fuck yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
So I want to talk about some hero straight dogs.
So a bunch of straight dogs are hanging out US
Army base and Sghanistan. Three of them were named Sasha,
Target and Rufus. In twenty ten, in February, a man
tried to suicide bomb the base. The three dogs attacked
the man. He couldn't get past them, so he detonated
himself early. The dogs saved fifty soldiers' lives. The US
(51:16):
should not have invaded Afghanistan, but fuck the Taliban also,
so whatever, I understand people's whatever. Yeah, this is not
a morality tale, that part of it. Sasha died from
her wounds from the blast, but Rufus and Target survived
and were nursed back to health by the soldiers, and
they were heroes. Soldiers pulled strings to adopt them and
(51:36):
get them sent back to the US where they could
live with them. They went through all the red tape
in order to do it. They appeared on Oprah, you know,
with their dog.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
Oh yeahrah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely have seen this
a friend of behind the Bastard's Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, yeah, uh did you hear how that ended?
Speaker 2 (51:56):
Is it bad? No? I only got I only remember
the good dog stuff.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
So Target escaped from his yard in Arizona. Briefly animal
control picked him up and euthanized him.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
Fucking Arizona. What the fuck is wrong with you? This
is super fucked up. Yeah, you don't do that.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Yeah, And that's what I like.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Fucking America, what a horrible place. I know.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
It was like, I love that these dogs risked their
life to defend the people who took care of them,
who they cared about, you know, And and the individual
soldiers didn't betray them the country.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
That the yeah them with death.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
Yeah, and Oprah yeah too, equally bad. I don't actually
watch Oprah, but I have heard enough behind the bastards
to have a sense. But when we come back on Wednesday,
we're gonna talk about really good dogs, all of whom
lived good lives, loved by the people they loved, none
(53:01):
of whom die violently or by like unhealthy used in Asia,
you know, mutualistic protection between protesters and dogs. Because when
we come back, we're gonna talk about riot dogs.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
I'm so excited. Do you have a a good Rentros
story to lighten the mood before we exit this episode?
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Yeah, let's see. So today I'm staying with someone who
is trying to milk a goat, and Rentroll, with absolutely
no training, loves herding sheep and goats more than he
loves his own life. Yeah, and so he struggles a
little bit, watching calmly while the goat is being milked.
(53:46):
But then when the goat got away, the goat is
new to being milked, and it is for the goats,
like the goat recently had a smaller goat and whatever. Anyway,
and Rintrew runs around and so as soon as the
goat got away, let Rintroll go, and Renshaw went and
got the goat back or helped get the goat back.
(54:07):
I don't know. I like watching him do his thing.
It makes me really happy.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
He's so smart and he's so sweet. Yeah. We were
together recently and rentro Introt does not like cars. Yeah, no,
understandably so a lot of dogs on like cars, and
it's because of the vibrations. But as we were sitting there,
I realized there was a pattern with Rentrot that I
thought was really fucking cool. Rin Trot only barked at
(54:33):
like the traditional gas cars. Ryntroll never barked at the
electric or the hybrids. Yeah, it was so fascinating. Obviously
it's because there's like some difference in sound or whatever. Yeah,
but I think that's pretty fucking cool. Rentrot is cool
dog who does cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Yeah, he's always yelling. Industrial society has had some consequences.
We need to talk about them.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
I love him.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
Yeah, me too, And we'll come back and we'll talk
about more dogs.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
Yeah, I guess this is the time.
Speaker 1 (55:02):
Oh plugs right, Yeah, Sophie the guest, what do you got,
what do you feel like plugging?
Speaker 2 (55:09):
I would like to plug my very good friend Jimmy
Loftus's new book Raw Dog, which if you're listening to
this on Monday, comes out tomorrow, so pre order, and
if you're listening to this beyond Monday, it is officially
out as of me twenty third, so check out Jimmie
social media to figure out where to purchase or request
it at your local library. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
I am kickstarting a tabletop role playing game called p
Number City, and I will be It will be kickstarting
all June in twenty whatever year. It is currently twenty
twenty three, and if you go now I think this
comes out before June, and you search PA Number City Kickstarter,
you'll be able to sign up for announcements on the
very first day of it, on June first. It's going
(55:52):
to be twenty percent off the print book. We're going
to make the PDFs and stuff as cheap as we
can so that people can play without running a bunch
of money or whatever. But the print books should be beautiful.
And I've been working on this tabletop role playing game
for like fucking ten years, and two or three years
ago finally got together with a really good team of
people who can do the things that I can't do,
(56:12):
including tell me that I'm not in charge. And it's
actually a collective effort and it's really fun and I'll
be pit plugging it all the next couple weeks. And
also go regular order Jamie Loftus's book Raw Dog. Yeah,
it's about hot dogs. If you like history and common.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
There's a dog theme, but it's not the dog that
we discussed today.
Speaker 1 (56:38):
It's more sadness, at least with comedy. Yeah, and we'll
see you all Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (56:45):
Bye. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. H
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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