WEBVTT - What are the Most Important Moments in Dog History? 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:03.160 Guess what will what's that? Mang So, I wanted to 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:06.200 talk about this politician I think we can both get behind. 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:09.880 And his name is Duke Rick, and he's from this 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:14.440 town in Cormorant, Minnesota. And Duke was elected mayor in 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:17.400 a landslide because the town doesn't want to be represented 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:20.560 by anyone who's super political. And this is about the 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:22.880 point I should tell you that Duke Rick is actually 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:27.840 a dog. In fact, he's the first dog mayor of Cormorant. 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:32.159 And he's this big, beautiful great Pyrenees. You know, I'm 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:34.839 really curious about Duke's agenda, but I have to ask, like, 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:37.640 what does he do as mayor? I mean, as you guess, 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:40.360 it's mostly ceremonial. There's this deputy who seems to do 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:42.879 most of the real work. But Duke can often be 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:44.920 found sitting in a bar where people feed him steak 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:47.640 and occasionally buy him swigs of beer. This is what 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:50.440 it says online. He also enjoys hanging out on the 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:53.000 streets where he's constantly approached by his adoring fans. And 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:55.760 of course he attends all the city council meetings. But 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:59.240 he's just this great ambassador for the town. Wow, And 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:03.120 so does he have any competition or what? He's actually 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:05.280 won three elections in a row now, and they were 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:09.760 all of these massive landslides. But you know, there actually 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:13.280 was one other candidate on the ballot. It's his girlfriend, Lassie. 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:16.800 So she only got a few votes in the last election, 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:18.960 but maybe she'll take over when he's tired running for 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:22.000 office and be sort of the town's first female dog mayor. 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:25.800 What you're hearing about Duke made me wonder what are 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.160 some other important famous first in doggy history. And that's 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:31.440 what today's episode is all about. So let's dive in. 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:55.320 Y Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:57.480 I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my 0:01:57.520 --> 0:01:59.840 good friend Man gues Ticketer. And on the other side 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:02.240 of the soundproof glass sitting with is that a It's 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:05.480 a Jacktarius? That what it is? Yeah? On his lap 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:08.360 right there, that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:11.200 do wish that all of our listeners could see this 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:14.400 because it is really pretty adorable scene. Yeah. I mean, 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:16.480 this little guy keeps putting his paws up on the 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.119 soundboard and he's got this I know it sounds weird 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:21.560 to say this, but like this really focused look. It 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:25.080 seems like he actually knows what he's doing. So I 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:26.960 laughed when Tristan told me he wanted to train the 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:30.160 first dog to record a podcast. But I think they 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:32.800 might pull it off, which is, I guess all the 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:35.560 more impressive when you find out that they just met yesterday. 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:38.840 Oh this is not even Tristan's dog. No, it's kind 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:43.040 of a business partnership apparently. Okay, all right, well, well, 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:46.680 we do have a ton of heartwarming stories to share 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:50.720 on today's show, which is all about famous first for dogs. Now, 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:53.120 you know, we humans tend to hog the spotlight when 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:56.160 it comes to making history, which I guess there's no surprise, 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:59.120 as we're the ones writing it all down. But for today, 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:01.200 we thought we'd switched up a little bit and give 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:03.560 man's best friend a chance to finally step out of 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:06.800 the shadows and really take their bow. So, you know, 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:08.959 from the first dog to catch a frisbee to the 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:11.359 first dog to drive a car, we're going to dig 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:14.440 into the stories of some of history's most remarkable canines. 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:17.480 That's right, And since our recent President's episode is still 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:19.360 fresh on my mind, I thought we could start with 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:22.560 the very first dogs to hold the title of first Dog. Now, 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.080 just about every US president has had a pet of 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:27.760 some sort, but dogs have always been the most popular 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:30.680 by far. In fact, sixty eight percent of our presidents 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:33.359 have owned a dog while in office, and our very 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:36.960 first president was no exception. George Washington was a huge 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:39.920 dog lover. He owned fifty different dogs during his lifetime, 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.000 including seventeen who kept him company during his two terms. 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:46.440 And since Washington was an avid hunter, most of those 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:49.640 dogs were American fox Hounds, a breed he's actually credited 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:52.640 with founding seventeen dogs, And it makes you wonder like 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:55.760 whether he even bothered naming these dogs, and he did, 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:58.320 so we all know Washington was a great president, but 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.680 he was an even better dog dog namers. So I'm 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:07.720 gonna list out some of these names. He called them taster, Drunkard, tipsy, tippler. 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:10.960 I'm I'm sensing a bit of a pattern here, So 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:13.440 so I feel like either Washington was a lush or 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:16.840 maybe the dogs were. Yeah, but there were seventeen of them, 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.560 so you know, he couldn't keep up this drinking language forever. 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:25.400 So some other names included Mopsie, Forrester Captain Rover Vulcan 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:28.640 makes them an early treky I, guess, and even sweet 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:32.400 lips sweet lips. Okay, well, all right, so those were 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:34.960 the first first dogs, but they actually weren't the first 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:37.159 ones to live in the White House, right, Like, I know, 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:39.640 Washington picked the spot where the White House would be built, 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.679 but he never actually got to live there. Absolutely true 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.799 that that particular honor went to these two mixed breed 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:49.039 pups that moved in with John Adams and his wife Abigail. 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:51.400 And while the dogs might have lacked the pedigree of 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:54.680 Washington's hounds, they also had some pretty colorful names. They 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:59.839 were known as Juno and Satan. Kind of weird to 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:01.839 think that Satan was like napping at the White House 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:04.839 in the earliest years. But all right, so we've covered 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:08.120 the first first dogs, but what about the first dogs period, 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:11.520 like first dogs overall? So how do you even figure 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:15.000 that out? Well, there's definitely a lot of disagreement on 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:17.640 the specifics of this, but it is worth looking at 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.960 what the history books mainly say. So some say prehistoric 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.760 humans began domesticating wolves around ten or maybe fifteen thousand 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:27.440 years ago, and you've got others who maintain it was 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:31.120 even longer ago, like maybe thirty or forty thousand years ago. 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:33.880 And of course the region where this took place is 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:36.640 just as much in question. You've got Europe, you've got 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:39.160 the Middle East, you've got East Asia being you know, 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:42.120 part of some of the most popular theories. And actually 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:44.440 they aren't even sure if it was humans who tamed 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:46.880 these wolves and bred them into the you know, kind 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:49.520 of the good pups that we know today. Instead, some 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:53.880 researchers think that wolves domesticated themselves, which might sound weird, 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:55.840 but if you think about it, you know this could 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:59.320 have happened by them just scavenging the kills left by 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.440 human hunts, or by hanging around the campfire until someone 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.479 literally threw out a bone. I mean, that's crazy to 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:08.440 think about. But I'm guessing there's no one dog we 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:11.560 can hand the title to right for first dog. Ever, Well, 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:13.279 I mean, I think you're right, not in not in 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.279 terms of like first dog in general, but there is 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:18.200 a pup that I want to nominate for the title 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.960 of first pet dog. So in nineteen fourteen, there were 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:24.400 some workers that uncovered a grave in Germany, and that 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.719 grave contained the ancient remains of a man, a woman, 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.440 and a little dog. And these remains actually date back 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:34.880 to the Paleolithic era, so we're talking maybe like fourteen 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:38.000 thousand years ago, and so that makes them the oldest 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:42.000 known grave where humans and dogs were buried together. Okay, 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:44.440 so this is kind of splitting hairs on the definition 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.680 of pet but I'm pretty sure our ancestors only kept 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.320 dogs for utility, right, Like, like they weren't carrying them 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:54.360 around in purses as some sort of accessory. And I'm 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:59.360 guessing it was more of like a mutually beneficial work relationship. Well, 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:01.960 I mean, that's deaf only been the thinking in the past, 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:05.040 but looking at this grave in Germany had actually suggests 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:07.120 that there might have been more to it than than 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:11.320 just practicality. Actually, just this year, there were researchers that 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:13.400 we're looking at this and they brought in this veterin 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:16.000 area to come in and examine the remains, and what 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:19.200 they found was that this dog had had problems with 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:21.360 its teeth and and from that they were able to 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:25.520 conclude that the puppy actually died from canine distemper virus, 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:28.120 which you know this this only allowed him to live 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:32.440 until about ten weeks after he had contracted the disease. So, 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.440 I mean, I guess that's sad, But what does that prove? 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:39.640 According to that research team, there's actually no way the 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:42.280 dog could have survived even that long with such a 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:46.200 life threatening illness unless it was really really cared for 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:48.400 by these humans. And so this is actually how nat 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:51.480 GEO sums up the team's findings. They said, this puppy 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.560 represents the earliest known evidence of dogs being regarded and 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:58.000 treated as pets. The carrot received while it was ill 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:00.040 and of no use to people, appears to have and 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:04.480 driven by compassion or empathy. In other words, an emotional 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:08.360 bond that is pretty sweet actually like and it isn't 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:10.760 something I'd expect to say after hearing about like a 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:14.960 fourteen thousand year old dead puppy, but it does make 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:18.200 you feel for it. And there's actually another archaeological find 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:20.280 I want to talk about, and that's the first dogs 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:23.040 to have ever had their image preserved, or the first 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:24.920 dog to be the subject of our however you want 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:27.920 to put it, what do you mean, like in cave 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:31.480 paintings or something, So it's actually cave carvings. And I 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:34.280 didn't realize these were things. But they were found last 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.280 year at two different sites in Saudi Arabia, and they're 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.640 thought to be the oldest depictions of dogs on record. 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:42.600 They date back eight or maybe even nine thousand years. 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:45.320 And what's wild about this is that it would mean 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:47.920 that humans were training and controlling dogs even before we 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:51.080 started farming. Alright, so I guess it's my turn to 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:54.160 to play devil's advocate here, because I mean, what makes 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:57.600 you so sure that these carvings actually showed domesticated dogs? 0:08:57.600 --> 0:08:59.319 I mean like they could have just been wild dogs 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:02.000 that were in the air area, or honestly, maybe even 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.720 not dogs. Yeah. Well that's the thing. Like the dogs 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.120 and the carvings, they're actually on leashes. And the images 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:11.960 show human hunters with packs of dogs tethered to their waist, 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.040 leaving their hands free to shoot arrows at prey. And 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.439 and we know these are dogs because they have the 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.200 characteristics of dog breeds found in the region today. That 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:24.240 means like short snouts, pricked ears, curly tails. And if 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:26.880 that wasn't enough proof, the same series of carvings also 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:30.679 depict wolves, hyenas, lions, and horses, and they look completely 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.760 different from these leash dogs. Wow. All right, Well, I 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:37.560 guess that's a pretty good evidence. But I'm gonna give 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:39.840 that one too, you know, and unless there are older 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:42.360 carvings that come to light at some point, I feel 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:44.640 like you're probably right that these are the first dogs 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:47.360 to have their their likeness is preserved. I guess. Well, 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:49.440 I mean there's another first here. These hunting scenes are 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.960 also the earliest known evidence of dog leashes, so technically 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:54.960 they might be the first dogs to ever wear leashes 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:57.560 as well. I mean that seems like a little bit 0:09:57.559 --> 0:09:59.199 of a stretch to use that one is like a 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:02.800 big first, and I guess that is is pretty interesting, 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:04.559 but you may be just showing off a little bit. 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:07.520 All right. Well, well, speaking of ruins, there's another pouch 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:09.880 in line with that theme, and that's the world's first 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:12.559 archaeology dog. If you're gonna stretch one, I'm going to 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:15.680 stretch one. So I know what archaeology digs are, But 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.520 what are archaeology dogs are? Are they for like hunting pottery? Well, 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:22.120 actually that could be an application down the line, but 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:24.960 for now, an archaeology dog is one that can locate 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:28.760 human bones that are hundreds of years old, and the 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:30.640 first dog to be trained to do this. Is this 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:33.959 Australian black lab mix and her name is Mighelou. And 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:36.400 the way that came about this is that her trainer 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:38.800 a guy named Gary Jackson. He was trying to think 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:42.760 of a new application for dogs amazing sense of smell, 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:44.880 and so you know, keep in mind dogs have somewhere 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:49.000 around two hundred million more old factory receptors than we do, 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:51.840 so scientists have been using them as field assistance for 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:54.840 years now. So I had actually read a little bit 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:58.160 about conservation dogs, which are these dogs trained to track 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:01.440 all sorts of tough to spot while species and they 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:06.640 track everything from like tiny toads, lizards, invasive plants, even 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:10.000 gorillas which can be people shy apparently, but uh, some 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:12.559 marine biologists and this is the craziest one of them all. 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:15.120 Have you even started using dogs to track whales by 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:17.840 the scent of their droppings? Isn't that amazing? Yeah, it's 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:20.880 amazing they could even pick up on that. But or 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:22.959 go back to to miglu just for a second, because 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:26.760 the closest thing to what she does would probably be 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:30.679 like like those cadaver dogs that law enforcement used to 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:34.560 find those decomposing bodies. But of course that doesn't work 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:37.320 for archaeology because the remains you're dealing with their long 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:40.680 past that decomposition stage. So it's it's not that that's 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:43.160 what they're smelling out like they're they're not trained to 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:46.400 sniff out rot. They're actually trained to smell human bones. 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:49.120 So they just gave her a bunch of old bones 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:51.680 to smell, and we're like, I don't know, like, now 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.640 go find more like this. That That is exactly what 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:58.440 they say. That is the training manual. World. Actually, what 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.800 they did was they got permission from these Aboriginal tribal 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.640 elders to train you know, this dog to smell these 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:09.120 ancestral bones. And they did this with this museum collection 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:11.920 and actually found this interview where he goes into detail 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.400 about how this works. So here's what he says. We 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:19.440 recreated an Aboriginal graveyard and also scattered some animal bones there. 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:21.760 What we saw was that the dog was able to 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:25.080 find a buried bone from about ten feet away, even 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:27.880 if it's as small as a fingernail. We would just 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:30.120 take a cotton ball and touch the bone and then 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:32.640 touch that to the rock and she could still find 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:36.000 the smell. The big test was at an Aboriginal burial 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:38.959 ground in South Australia where a six hundred year old 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:41.839 grave have been found. A few years ago. We were 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:45.559 given about an acre to search. Museum officials and tribal 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:47.880 elders were there and they knew where the graves were, 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:51.720 but not us. Within two minutes, Migaloo was circling this 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:55.200 one spot and it was exactly where the dog was 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:59.000 and it was a six hundred year old grave. I mean, 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:02.320 that's stunning. It really is fascinating that that dogs can 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:05.439 do that. And you can almost think, like how much 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:07.720 easier would be to get a grave site protected from 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:09.720 development if you had a dog that could show you 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:11.520 where the bones word and just I don't know, like 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.880 a few minutes. It's pretty remarkable of the applications. And 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:17.959 also like if you can find bones that easily, then 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:20.680 pottery doesn't feel that far away, or or even things 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:23.880 like dinosaur bones or other kinds of fossils, right, definitely, 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:26.240 I mean I think all of those are our possibilities. 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:28.240 And you know, there's also the chance this technique could 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:30.640 be used to crack cold cases that you know, police 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:33.880 are still dealing of where maybe there was this you know, 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:36.400 thought to be a body buried in a certain area, 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:38.920 but they were never able to find it. But you know, 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:41.960 whatever benefits we reap from this, we will all owe 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:45.040 it to Migalo for for helping us get started with 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:50.280 this type of work. The world's first archaeology dog. Well, 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:51.840 we still have a bunch of dogs to talk about, 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:54.360 including seeing eye dogs. But before we get to those, 0:13:54.440 --> 0:14:12.439 let's take a quick break. You're listening to part time genius. 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:14.640 So we're talking about the famous first of a few 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.240 good dogs, all right, Mango. So we talked about Miguelo, 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:21.000 who was the Australian black lab that's been helping archaeologists 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:23.520 dig in all the right places. But I want to 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:25.720 get back to the basics and and maybe talk about 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:28.880 the kind of service or assistance dog that most of 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:32.200 us know best, and that's of course sky dogs. So 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:34.600 for a long time now, these dogs have been helping 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:38.560 blind and visually impaired people navigate the world much more 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:41.720 independently than they would be otherwise. And so I want 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:45.120 to talk a little bit about the history of their service. Well, 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:47.440 one of the things that's interesting to me is that 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:49.840 it really is hard to pinpoint when the first ever 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:52.640 guide dog came. Like you said, it's been going on 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:55.320 for such a long time. And in fact, the earliest 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:57.920 evidence of dogs guiding the blind dates all the way 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.080 back to the first century a d. And there's this 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:04.160 fresco in the ruins of this Roman town and it 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:06.640 actually depicts a blind man being led by his dog. 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:09.480 So you could say that's the first guide dog. But 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:11.480 the truth is that assumes that the artist based it 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:13.840 on real life subject and and that's kind of hard 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:16.400 to verify. Well, I mean, there is one thing that 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:18.680 we can say, and that it wasn't until the eighteen 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.920 hundreds that trained guide dogs became, you know, such an 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:24.840 important part of the medical establishment. I was looking at 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:27.440 this article on history dot com and here's how they 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:30.880 put it. The earliest systemic instruction of guide dogs took 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:33.840 place at a Paris hospital for the blind. Within a 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:36.600 few decades, the practice had spread to Austria, where a 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:39.920 blind man named Josef Risinger he trained his spits and 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:42.440 later a poodle so well that people actually began to 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:46.600 suspect he was faking his disability. Then in the eighteen hundreds, 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:50.280 another Austrian by the name of Johan Wilhelm Klein founded 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:53.440 the Institute for Training of the Blind and Vienna as 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.480 a teacher there. His dogs of choice were poodles and shepherds, 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.320 and well, you don't see too many guide poodles today. 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:03.200 German shepherds are still a common choice for training. So 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:05.640 I'm curious that, like, do you know when guide dogs 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:07.600 first became a thing in the US, because I I 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:10.880 feel like they aren't really mentioned in the early American history, 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.920 you know, in the colonies or whatever. Yeah, there was 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:16.160 a little bit of this that I saw and doing 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:18.520 some reading for this episode where you see it counts 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.520 from the mid eighteen hundreds and these were dogs that 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:24.240 were helping guide the blind. But it really wasn't until 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:26.320 the late nineteen twenties that you started to see this 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:29.200 practice gaining ground on you know, kind of on this 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:32.400 side of the Atlantic. But that change was largely thanks 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:36.200 to a wealthy American woman named Dorothy Harrison Eustace, as 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:38.840 well as a blind nineteen year old from Tennessee and 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:42.400 his name was Maurice Frank. So we're talking about ninety 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:45.080 seven here, when Eustace wrote an article for the Saturday 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:47.400 Evening Post and it was about her recent trip to 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:50.320 a dog training clinic in Germany, and this is where 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:52.960 doctors had been training guide dogs for use both by 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:56.680 veterans and civilians. And she herself had been living in 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:59.960 Switzerland at the time and she was breeding and training 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:03.240 these police dogs for the Swiss Army. But she'd never 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:06.399 seen anything like this new German method for training dogs 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:08.879 to act as guides for the blind, and so in 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:12.399 her article she was praising this technique as as a 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:15.120 way for the visually impaired too, as she says, once 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:18.080 more take up their normal lives. So where does this 0:17:18.080 --> 0:17:20.679 guy from Tennessee com in? So that's Mars Frank, and 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:23.800 he hears about the article immediately writes a letter to 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:27.160 Eustace asking her to quote train me and I will 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:29.399 bring back my dog and show people here how a 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:33.000 blind man can be absolutely on his own. So you 0:17:33.000 --> 0:17:35.480 fast forward to the next year and Frank spent some 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:37.840 time with her in Switzerland and returns home with his 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:40.840 very own guide dog, and this was, of course a 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:43.800 German shepherd that he had named Buddy. And the press 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:46.320 in the States goes crazy about this story. And so 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.440 it's the first case of a properly trained guide dog 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:52.439 in the US and reporters are asking Frank, you know 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:55.760 how having a guide has improved his life, and he 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:59.560 decides to give them some pretty compelling proof and and 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:02.040 shows and that with the help of Buddy, he can 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.560 navigate across one of New York's most hazardous thoroughfares. This 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:08.639 was a street known by locals as Death Avenue. It 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:10.639 seems a pretty but it seems like there could be 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:14.119 other ways you might test this. But fortunately when he 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:17.720 did it, they made it across without a scratch. And 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:20.159 just a year after that, Frank and Eustace founded the 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:22.680 first American guide dog school and they called it This 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:26.280 Seeing Eye, and it's actually still going strong today. I mean, 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:29.000 it's amazing to think about how relatively recent that was. 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:31.479 I mean, you look at all the roles assistance dogs 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:34.440 filled today, and it's not just helping people with vision loss, 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:40.720 but also hearing impairments, epilepsy, autism, PTSD. It's pretty remarkable. Yeah, 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:42.000 I mean, when you lay it all out there, it 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:45.679 is actually pretty amazing the number of different ways dogs 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:47.720 have been able to help people just over the past 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:50.399 century or so. Yeah, I mean, they're getting the title 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:53.880 of man's Best friend for a reason. Then, Actually, I've 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.840 got a great example of this. It's this Yorkshire terrier 0:18:56.920 --> 0:19:00.040 named Smokey, and during World War Two she became the 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.199 world's first therapy dog. So this goes back to this 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.200 American soldier named Bill Wynn, who adopted her after finding 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:10.320 her in this abandoned foxhole in New Guinea. This so 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:13.200 Smokey's first act of service was to save the lives 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.440 of Wind and his entire squadron. Apparently, the soldiers needed 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:19.040 to string this telephone wire through a seventy ft pipe 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:22.560 underground so that these three different campsites could communicate with 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:25.119 one another. And the problem was that the pipe was 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:28.200 only eight inches wide, so of course it was impossible 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.159 for human to crawl through it, and instead dozens of 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:33.800 men had to spend days digging a trench to get 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:36.280 the wires underground, and all the while they were leaving 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:39.479 themselves exposed to enemy attack. Or at least that was 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:41.720 the plan, and that's how it would have gone had 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:44.720 it not been for Smokey. So she was the scrawny dog, 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:47.760 weighing about four pounds, standing just seven inches tall, and 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:50.280 she could actually fit into the pipe with ease. So 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:52.200 with a little bit of luck and a little bit 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.240 of patients when was able to tie the wire to 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:56.919 Smokey and coax her through the pipe from above ground, 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:00.080 and of course, the little pop got the job on. 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:02.760 She was credited with saving the lives of some I 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:07.120 think it's two fifty men and also forty planes that day. 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:10.080 Oh wow, I mean, that is pretty incredible story. But 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:12.520 I'm curious, like, if if Smokey was such a cool 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.280 hand on the battlefield, how did that transition happen to 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:19.560 becoming a dog doing therapy type work. So pretty soon 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:22.000 after when adopted her, he came down with dangae fever, 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:24.119 which is horrible obviously, and he was sent to this 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.040 army hospital and a couple of days later his friends 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:29.639 came by his fellow soldiers and they brought Smokey to 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:33.199 visit him, and the nurses were just in love with 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:36.840