Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. So this week
Speaker 1: I'm talking about something a little different and a little
Speaker 1: heavier than what we typically cover on the show. We're
Speaker 1: going to discuss the use of dogs in cases of
Speaker 1: police brutality, the history of how dogs have been used
Speaker 1: as weapons, and the harm this does to people as
Speaker 1: well as to the dogs themselves. I'll give you a
Speaker 1: heads up when we're about to describe violence and abuse.
Speaker 1: As a lover of dogs and someone who thinks people
Speaker 1: should never be brutalized by law enforcement, this subject is
Speaker 1: really gutting for me. So I thought at the end
Speaker 1: we could talk about some incredibly wonderful and heartwarming stories
Speaker 1: of how dogs can have jobs that are both positive
Speaker 1: for the world and are things that dogs love to do. Spoilers,
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about big fluffy dogs and cute,
Speaker 1: tiny pink ones and how they form an adorable team.
Speaker 1: And I have a couple of wonderful gifts, including our
Speaker 1: producer Joel Monique. Joining me today is comedian biomedical engineer
Speaker 1: developing ventilators right now, actor activists, and honestly, if I
Speaker 1: list all your accomplishments. I'm going to run out of air.
Speaker 1: Polovic gonalins, how's it good? Good? How are you? Thank
Speaker 1: you so much? So so nice. Of course, of course
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about something that's maybe like
Speaker 1: a little heavier than we normally talk about on the show.
Speaker 1: But I think it is so important. You actually suggested
Speaker 1: this topic to me, and it is something that I've
Speaker 1: also been interested in a while as a dog lover
Speaker 1: and as someone who cares about human rights. I guess
Speaker 1: just the use of police dogs, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: police dogs are often seen as cute and noble and heroic,
Speaker 1: like you see them in the news all the time
Speaker 1: of like, oh look it's this this officer dog and
Speaker 1: he's so cute and it's from rentintin to pop patrol.
Speaker 1: Dogs that are involved in like law enforcement have had
Speaker 1: very positive portrayals in media, and it's really easy to understand,
Speaker 1: like why this is the case, Like dogs are innocent,
Speaker 1: they're loving, their loyal It feels really safe to love
Speaker 1: a dog. And when you hear stuff like a dog
Speaker 1: helped apprehend a suspect, it sounds innocuous on the surface.
Speaker 1: It's presented in a way that's meant to be like
Speaker 1: endearing or inspiring, but the reality is unfortunately very grim.
Speaker 1: When dogs are used as weapons by law enforcement. Police
Speaker 1: can commit acts of horrific violence against civilians using the
Speaker 1: dog as a proxy. And we're gonna talk about some
Speaker 1: pretty like pretty gruesome reality behind dogs being used in
Speaker 1: law enforcement. And I I kind of also want to
Speaker 1: like say, like, I come from this place of really
Speaker 1: deeply loving dogs. I have a dog. They're one of
Speaker 1: my favorite animals in terms of their history with humans.
Speaker 1: How we co evolved with this is like a really
Speaker 1: devastating topic because it breaks my heart to see dogs
Speaker 1: being intentionally trained to harm people, and you know, in
Speaker 1: a way like dogs are also victims of this practice,
Speaker 1: although I think the human victims are more important to recognize.
Speaker 1: But it's just, yeah, it's it's gut wrenching in every
Speaker 1: sense of what's going on. It's upsetting. I also love dogs,
Speaker 1: I like viscerally feel connected to them. I had a
Speaker 1: dog until recently. I grew up with a dog, but
Speaker 1: I've always felt that the behavior of the dog is
Speaker 1: reflected of any dog is reflected through the behavior of
Speaker 1: the owner or a result of the behavior of the
Speaker 1: owner and you know cops, so I kind of have
Speaker 1: I've never like blamed the dogs, but I also definitely
Speaker 1: see how they've been taken advantage of and used as
Speaker 1: a tool in such horrific ways. I mean, there's there's
Speaker 1: two extreme ways to view dogs. Is like completely autonomous
Speaker 1: they do everything because they want to do it, or
Speaker 1: totally blank slate tools little robots that we can program exactly,
Speaker 1: and of course neither are true. Like their animals with
Speaker 1: a brain, they have their own personalities, they have their
Speaker 1: own stuff, internal stuff going on. But when we train them,
Speaker 1: we either tap into their best nature or the part
Speaker 1: of their nature that is very stressful for the dog
Speaker 1: and can result in aggression. So yeah, So first, I
Speaker 1: think it's important to talk about the history of police
Speaker 1: dogs because it is actually really interesting, it's really upsetting,
Speaker 1: and I think like our concept of police dogs is
Speaker 1: kind of like they popped out of nowhere in the
Speaker 1: eighties with like McGruff the crime dog and but it's
Speaker 1: Turner and so K nine units. Police dogs are used
Speaker 1: by police is There a few functions that they're used for.
Speaker 1: They're used for searching crime scene evidence, missing people, sniffing
Speaker 1: for explosive sniffing for drugs and attacking targets at the
Speaker 1: command of police. For this episode, we're gonna mostly focused
Speaker 1: on that last one because it is the most harmful
Speaker 1: use of the dog. I know. There's also like a
Speaker 1: lot of controversy about drug sniffing dogs in terms of
Speaker 1: like how they will signal because they want basically, when
Speaker 1: dogs are trained that when you signal and you get
Speaker 1: rewarded for it, they want to signal, so they kind
Speaker 1: of look for their owner's body language. They want to
Speaker 1: please their owners, so they're not you know, like what
Speaker 1: is it broken door, broken window policing, but by dogs
Speaker 1: like they're looking they're looking for rewards, their quotas exactly.
Speaker 1: They're looking for their treats, quotas. But you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're innocent. They don't understand the harm that they're causing
Speaker 1: by falsely indicating that someone has drugs and you know,
Speaker 1: justifying police force against that person was your jewel here.
Speaker 1: You don't think dogs know about the legal ramification. I
Speaker 1: just feel like, I just feel like, I feel like
Speaker 1: if dogs are going to be cops, we have to
Speaker 1: have dog judges as well, and it would be it
Speaker 1: would be a faster turnover. You know, their lives aren't
Speaker 1: as long they would It would be you young pups
Speaker 1: in there. It would be more progressive. You'd have a
Speaker 1: lawyer dogs working pro bono. I wish it was this cute.
Speaker 1: I wish it was this cute exactly. I mean that's
Speaker 1: the thing, right, Like, so you see a police dog,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, but not all it turns out, so
Speaker 1: the breeds of dogs used by police are typically German shepherds,
Speaker 1: Malonois and Dutch shepherd's bloodhounds and retrievers. So like when
Speaker 1: we think of police dogs, we think of basically only
Speaker 1: German shepherds, but that's not necessarily true. They're definitely like
Speaker 1: very overrepresented as police dogs, but like there's also these
Speaker 1: other breeds that are used. It just occurred to me,
Speaker 1: it's like so funny that German shepherds have this bad
Speaker 1: rap because their cops. And then like Dalmatians are the
Speaker 1: firefighter dogs and everybody loves them and like they were
Speaker 1: the stars of Hunter one. Dalmatians. Like it's like so
Speaker 1: reflective in terms of police dogs. They have pretty unsettling history.
Speaker 1: To put it mildly, they have been used to quote
Speaker 1: hunt down outlaws or basically whoever crossed the wealth holding
Speaker 1: class since at least the Middle Ages. So in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages when there like you're an outlaw, maybe you're
Speaker 1: just someone who's not a noble, who you know, is
Speaker 1: growing crops that they don't want you to grow, or
Speaker 1: looked at them funny, you know. So it's just like
Speaker 1: they they've yeah, been used by the ruling class since
Speaker 1: at least the Middle Ages. I'm sure before then as well. Um.
Speaker 1: The first organized police dog training program was developed in
Speaker 1: Belgium in eighteen nine, which was adopted by Austria, Hungary
Speaker 1: and Germany. In n German shepherd's bread in Germany had
Speaker 1: become extremely popular working dogs and became favored by police
Speaker 1: and oops. Hitler was also a fan of the breed.
Speaker 1: He used German shepherds in Nazi Germany as violent weapons
Speaker 1: to enforce Nazism and to terrorize and maime victims of
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. It's yeah, you know, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go into detail. It's pretty painful to go into but
Speaker 1: you can. Yeah, it's it's very horrifying to look at
Speaker 1: the accounts of people who were terrorized by these dogs. Again,
Speaker 1: you know, this doesn't mean that German shepherds are Nazis.
Speaker 1: They don't, they don't. Dogs don't have that kind of concept.
Speaker 1: But they were trained and taught to hurt people and
Speaker 1: used by Nazis to enforce their horrific ideology. And it
Speaker 1: shows how you know, this, this animal that can be
Speaker 1: such a wonderful, loving companion, can be shaped by someone
Speaker 1: who is evil to do what they want because the
Speaker 1: dog doesn't you know, the dog is responding to the training,
Speaker 1: and the dog itself can often be abused in this
Speaker 1: training and it makes them extremely anxious and fearful and aggressive.
Speaker 1: So German shepherds came to America in nineteen oh seven,
Speaker 1: so this was they did come here before World War Two.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eleven, the NYPD started using the same training
Speaker 1: program developed in Belgium. They were trained to see anyone
Speaker 1: not in uniform as hostile. Is that what it was? Oh,
Speaker 1: people in plain clothes were instructed to walk by their
Speaker 1: cages and tease them, encouraging them to be aggressive towards
Speaker 1: anyone not wearing a uniform, which I mean, that's monstrous.
Speaker 1: That that's how they train cops to just teasing them
Speaker 1: until they're angry. Yeah, but it's like ramping up the
Speaker 1: dog's anxieties so they'll be more aggressive towards people. It's
Speaker 1: that's got to be like a constant. Their body has
Speaker 1: to be like in shock all the time. It's unhealthy
Speaker 1: not to mention um. Like if you have like just
Speaker 1: a domesticated animal, like they're terrified of like fireworks and
Speaker 1: like stimulation like that. You know, it's got to be
Speaker 1: incredibly disorienting for dogs. Yeah, my dog Cookie can Like
Speaker 1: you get a text from someone and the phone goes off,
Speaker 1: and she's shaking. She hates like she she does not.
Speaker 1: That's just because she wants your attention for herself. She
Speaker 1: knows that you're talking to somebody else and she's like,
Speaker 1: show me your phone. Who is it? Who's on your phone?
Speaker 1: I should have named her Fomo, because that is her
Speaker 1: define trade. She cannot, like if she's in another room
Speaker 1: and everyone else moves to another room, she has to
Speaker 1: be there immediately. She can't, like you go to the bathroom,
Speaker 1: she sits outside the bathroom. It's like, na I cannot
Speaker 1: a huge fear of missing out. So she's been trained
Speaker 1: to follow you around your own home. That's kind of crazy,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right, she's been trained to follow me
Speaker 1: into the bathroom. What kind of weirdo am? I? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: these are extremely stressful situations, and as we'll talk about again,
Speaker 1: ramping up the dog stress has been historically used and
Speaker 1: is currently used in training the dogs to be aggressive.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen fifties, US police again attempted to
Speaker 1: establish canine units. An ex marine trained police dogs in
Speaker 1: Michigan purportedly able to be quote vicious or gentle on command.
Speaker 1: You said, this was the sixties. This is the fifties,
Speaker 1: got it? Oh but yeah, the sixties. Yeah, we're getting there.
Speaker 1: But when these dogs were handed off to other departments,
Speaker 1: they and obey their new handlers because guess what, Dogs
Speaker 1: aren't robots. If they develop a relationship with a handler,
Speaker 1: they think you're their friend, they don't. You can't. You
Speaker 1: can't just program a dog and then pass it off
Speaker 1: as a robot. There sentient beings. This is also true
Speaker 1: for men. Please keep this in mind. You can't just
Speaker 1: pass me off. Okay. In nineteen fifty nine, the Baltimore
Speaker 1: City Police established the canine Unit that became the precursor
Speaker 1: two dogs being used by police all over the country.
Speaker 1: These dogs were trained to violently tackle in takedown targets. Um.
Speaker 1: And so this is the point that I'm going to
Speaker 1: start talking about in more detail, the gruesome history of
Speaker 1: dogs being used for violence in the US. It gets
Speaker 1: pretty upsetting. So if you're listening with children, or if
Speaker 1: you're sensitive hearing about violence, especially violence against minorities. By least,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know a lot of people have fatigue
Speaker 1: about that right now, and so I mean, I encourage
Speaker 1: if this is a new topic to you, I really
Speaker 1: encourage you get through this because it's so important. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you need to skip ahead,
Speaker 1: I'm going to insert in a timestamp to skip ahead
Speaker 1: where we're going to talk about something that's at the
Speaker 1: very end. We're going to talk about positive jobs that
Speaker 1: dogs can do. So suck it up and listen to
Speaker 1: the truth. You you weak people, You're just you're telling children,
Speaker 1: suck it up. Well, I gotta learn someday that the
Speaker 1: systems work. Okay, I will say, give it a chance,
Speaker 1: give it a chance, and if it becomes overwhelming, you
Speaker 1: know it, feel free to pause. I know, at the
Speaker 1: very least on Spotify, it will pick you right back
Speaker 1: up when you come back a week later. A couple
Speaker 1: of days later, but it is it is vital information.
Speaker 1: It's very important. Like if you if you already know
Speaker 1: this stuff, and this is just like gratuitous and stuff,
Speaker 1: I totally understand if you don't, just just try to
Speaker 1: it through it. And again at the end we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about some really uplifting stuff, So if you
Speaker 1: need to skip ahead, go to about the fifty eight
Speaker 1: minute mark. Soon after the proliferation of the police dog
Speaker 1: program in nineteen fifty nine, they were used by police
Speaker 1: to violently attack minorities, especially those participating in civil rights movements,
Speaker 1: especially black young people. But that certainly wasn't when dogs
Speaker 1: were first used to terrorize black people in America, so
Speaker 1: they were used throughout our horrific history of slavery. There
Speaker 1: was the Cuban bloodhound that was used to catch people
Speaker 1: trying to escape slavery. The dogs would mall people violently
Speaker 1: because the dogs were abused by the slave owners. So
Speaker 1: Cuban bloodhound trainers forced black men to abuse the dogs
Speaker 1: so the dogs would learn to fear and be aggressive
Speaker 1: towards black people, which is one of the most purely
Speaker 1: evil systems I've ever heard. Just forcing someone to abuse
Speaker 1: the dog, so that dog can be used to abuse people.
Speaker 1: It's yeah. After the Civil War, dogs were still used
Speaker 1: to and abused as weapons to terrorize black people. In
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four, an editorial lauted a Tennessee police forces
Speaker 1: training of a bloodhound where they had the dog tracked
Speaker 1: down a black man who was told to hide his trail.
Speaker 1: And even though he was ostensibly like a quote willing
Speaker 1: participant in this training exercise, obviously no, he probably wasn't.
Speaker 1: When he was told to come down the tree, he
Speaker 1: they assured him like it was fine to come down,
Speaker 1: But as soon as he came down, the dog bolted
Speaker 1: for him and tried to attack him. And this was
Speaker 1: much to the racist amusement of the editorial writer and
Speaker 1: the police. So throughout Jim Crow, dogs were used to
Speaker 1: hunt people who escaped wrongful incarceration. There were even public
Speaker 1: competitions where dogs were forced to compete to chase down,
Speaker 1: you know, quote, escaped convicts, and the winning dog was
Speaker 1: declared ready for sale for the police. So that's the
Speaker 1: history of police dogs in the US. So I think
Speaker 1: for us to pretend that is not part of our
Speaker 1: culture now is I mean, this was recent, this was like,
Speaker 1: there are people still alive that you know, we're lived
Speaker 1: through this era. So during the civil rights era, police
Speaker 1: dogs were routinely used to attack peaceful protesters, including children.
Speaker 1: Police dogs were not only used against civil rights protesters,
Speaker 1: but against people regularly. And the reason that we see
Speaker 1: these images of the protests is that journal didn't go
Speaker 1: to these neighborhoods and document police violence regularly. They documented
Speaker 1: it when there was a protest, so we got to
Speaker 1: see it when there was a protest. But this was
Speaker 1: happening all the time, despite the fact that police dogs
Speaker 1: often maimed people. Martin Luther King encouraged protesters not to
Speaker 1: fight back, citing the fact that white people were often
Speaker 1: more sympathetic to animals than they were too black people,
Speaker 1: and that the images of people defending themselves against police
Speaker 1: dogs would create less sympathy for the protests, which I
Speaker 1: think is really important because I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: relevant now, Like remember when that guy who was just
Speaker 1: like birding, he was going out birding in Central Park
Speaker 1: and then there was that woman, Yeah, that a white
Speaker 1: woman who called the police on a black man just
Speaker 1: because he was in the park bird watching and asked
Speaker 1: her to leash her dog. Yes, because dogs chase sing
Speaker 1: off birds isn't good both for birding but also just
Speaker 1: for the bird populations. It's very disruptive, so it's not
Speaker 1: good for the environment. So like, he very reasonably asked
Speaker 1: her to leash her dog, which she's supposed to do,
Speaker 1: and she threw a fit in like through throughout it,
Speaker 1: she was like holding her dog up by its collar,
Speaker 1: and like the dog was clearly very uncomfortable. But like
Speaker 1: so many people just commented on like the fact she
Speaker 1: was being mean to the dog, which, yeah, that's terrible,
Speaker 1: but kind of not the main the main issue there.
Speaker 1: The main issue to me was just how I think
Speaker 1: it was very a very clear portrayal of a white
Speaker 1: woman showing that she knew how the system works and
Speaker 1: that she knew that when she called, she kept reiterating
Speaker 1: that she was going to tell the cops that it
Speaker 1: was an African American man, and the way she said
Speaker 1: it was so disgusting because she knew that it meant
Speaker 1: violence against him, um, and she knew that it meant
Speaker 1: he could die. Like you could hear it her tone,
Speaker 1: you could hear it in the way that she was
Speaker 1: using the system to threaten the life of this man,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile she was like wrangling this dog and so
Speaker 1: it clearly wasn't out of care for her animal. It
Speaker 1: was out of vindictiveness towards this black, innocent man who
Speaker 1: was asking her something reasonable. The crazy thing was like
Speaker 1: they took the dog, like I think she her job
Speaker 1: was threatened or something. I'm not sure of everything that happened,
Speaker 1: but they definitely took her dog and then gave it back,
Speaker 1: which is crazy. Like when we talk about canceling people
Speaker 1: or going after people. This was the week of George
Speaker 1: Floyd's murder and like it could have I think the
Speaker 1: stark contrast between how those situations ended was something that
Speaker 1: really affected people. Because Christian Cooper, who isn't related to
Speaker 1: Amy Cooper, who was a birdwatcher, he didn't die, and
Speaker 1: it was it was so close to happening, um, and
Speaker 1: she like she was rewarded with her dog back. You know.
Speaker 1: It was just it's just crazy to me that she's
Speaker 1: she's on camera abusing the dog and also just the
Speaker 1: goal of her to be you know, abusive towards her
Speaker 1: dog and then on the call with the police doing
Speaker 1: her fake tears her you know, like saying that he's
Speaker 1: attacking her and her dog using this idea of like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm you know, come and hurt this person
Speaker 1: or kill this person because he's making me and my
Speaker 1: dog feel unsafe. She's practicing unsafe dog loss. It was
Speaker 1: really upsetting to me because like the only thing he
Speaker 1: was at the reason they had any kind of interaction
Speaker 1: all is he was like, Yo, your dog is not
Speaker 1: on a leach in this giant park, which is unsafe
Speaker 1: for your dog and the people here. And so for
Speaker 1: her to be like like, you can't even lie and
Speaker 1: be like I felt threatener this man, it's just a
Speaker 1: guy passing me the party, be like, yo, could you
Speaker 1: put a leachh on your dog? And for that you
Speaker 1: escalated all the way up to calling the cops, like
Speaker 1: there's some sort of I don't know, like private investigator
Speaker 1: or personal protector and they're just not The switch in
Speaker 1: her voice was so sociopathic, like from like screaming at
Speaker 1: him and advancing towards him and like getting too close
Speaker 1: to him during the pandemic by the way um and
Speaker 1: then to switching and pleading for the police to help
Speaker 1: her and her dog. It was like it was incredible
Speaker 1: that it was captured that way, and that we were
Speaker 1: able to see it because I think like white people
Speaker 1: just did not believe that switch or that that's a
Speaker 1: regular occurrence, right, that the weaponization of a white woman
Speaker 1: acting like she's scared and upset and and that that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's extremely disturbing and it that's why when we learn
Speaker 1: about this history and think about these things that happened
Speaker 1: in the past, it's not just like history. It matters
Speaker 1: right now as well, and it's not something just known
Speaker 1: to black people. She knew, That's why she used the system.
Speaker 1: So it's that I think it's like at that point,
Speaker 1: everybody was like, you can't this is just a random
Speaker 1: white woman. You can't say that white people don't know
Speaker 1: this and have been fine with it. Yeah, she was
Speaker 1: perfectly aware of what that meant. Uh. The use of
Speaker 1: police dogs against minorities continued to pass the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: obviously into today. In the nine eighties and nineties, l
Speaker 1: A p D officers regularly attacked young minorities with their
Speaker 1: police dogs and were known to refer to young black
Speaker 1: people as quote dog biscuits. Whoa that is, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little black babies In the South used to be
Speaker 1: called gator baits where they really left on logs as
Speaker 1: we were alligators to the shore. Uh not all those
Speaker 1: babies made back home. Pretty awful. Did not know. We've
Speaker 1: had modern versions of that, which is just I did
Speaker 1: not know the thing. Oh yeah, And there's like a
Speaker 1: lot of in the same way that they have the
Speaker 1: black lawn jockey, these racist depictions that go on the
Speaker 1: lawn of the thing. I can. I don't know the
Speaker 1: origin story of that, but it deeply disturbs me if
Speaker 1: I drive by someone's house and sea like, what are
Speaker 1: we doing? Like, I don't get it, but they would
Speaker 1: do that. They have the same thing with like gator
Speaker 1: bait T shirts, modern times posters like not that long ago.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's crazy. This is why people have
Speaker 1: to say black lives matter in case you're used as
Speaker 1: gator bait, and the eighties and nineties calling people young
Speaker 1: people like kids dog biscuits because they use their dogs
Speaker 1: to attack them. It's yeah. So of course dogs are
Speaker 1: still used as weapons by police today. Research has shown
Speaker 1: that the prevalence, intensity, and bias of police dog bites.
Speaker 1: So there was a study published in two thousand six
Speaker 1: in Injury Extra which is a really weird name for
Speaker 1: a scientific journal about some new injury, extra extra injury,
Speaker 1: extra extra injury. Yeah, but yeah, it is not not
Speaker 1: a necessarily a fun journal to read, but it is
Speaker 1: very informative. So they found that police dog bites were
Speaker 1: far more severe than non police dog bites, so a
Speaker 1: police dog versus a dog owned by a civilian, so
Speaker 1: people who were injured by police dogs were often bitten
Speaker 1: multiple times, where civilian dogs typically only bit once. Researchers
Speaker 1: found that police dog bite victims were bitten more often
Speaker 1: in the head, neck, chest, and flank, They were hospitalized
Speaker 1: more often, underwent more operations, and had more invasive diagnos
Speaker 1: dick tests, and concluded that this was due to the
Speaker 1: dogs quote special training. Another study published in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine found that
Speaker 1: from two thousand and five to two thousand, thirteen percent
Speaker 1: of people admitted to the hospital for police dog bite
Speaker 1: injuries were black. For civilian dog bites, only thirteen percent
Speaker 1: of inpatients were black. So that means that black people
Speaker 1: were extremely overrepresented as victims of police dog violence. This
Speaker 1: is not what we mean when we asked for representation.
Speaker 1: This is not what we're hoping for. No, Okay, I
Speaker 1: didn't even realize the distinct. I didn't even it didn't
Speaker 1: even occur to me, the distinction of the extent of
Speaker 1: the injuries of God. And again, this is I think
Speaker 1: what we were talking about earlier, which is this isn't
Speaker 1: just like, it's not just like dogs being dogs. These
Speaker 1: are dogs trained to be more aggressive, trained to be
Speaker 1: more injurious than a dog, like even a dog that
Speaker 1: kind of lacks training, right, a dog who bites a person.
Speaker 1: So full disclosure, my dog has some form of PTSD
Speaker 1: from a dog attack, and she's she's a little little dog,
Speaker 1: she's a little Chihuahba, so she's kind of nippy, and
Speaker 1: we've done a ton of training to de escalate. It
Speaker 1: always involves reducing her stress, lowering her anxiety. It's not
Speaker 1: yelling at her, it's not you know, it's like you
Speaker 1: to get a dog to be more calm and listen
Speaker 1: to you more. You reduce the stress, you reduce the anxiety,
Speaker 1: You make them attentive to you by positive reinforcement. I've
Speaker 1: always felt like my experience, my personal experiences with dogs,
Speaker 1: has been like I've used like negative reinforcement like twice
Speaker 1: where I just kind of like, hell, I was like
Speaker 1: be good, you know what I mean, Like I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I'm just like mad at you know, I couldn't actually
Speaker 1: do anything to a dog. But like I've noticed that
Speaker 1: they always they always just want to do what you
Speaker 1: want to do. Like positive reinforcement is the only thing
Speaker 1: that ever works for dogs. And like because they so
Speaker 1: badly want to be our friends, they so badly want
Speaker 1: to please us. So if they're doing terrible things, it
Speaker 1: has to be because they're trying to please somebody. And
Speaker 1: who are they trying to please? In this case, it
Speaker 1: can it can also be though a reaction to anxiety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it's it is so like I would say,
Speaker 1: my dog probably has an anxiety disorder as a response
Speaker 1: to um, the dog attacked she. She's actually been through
Speaker 1: two dog attacks, both times from an unleashed dog, so
Speaker 1: please leash. Yes, So she is not a fan of
Speaker 1: other dogs to say the least. All of her behavioral
Speaker 1: problems are a result of anxiety, which I think is
Speaker 1: a really important thing to remember as we get into
Speaker 1: this next section about the training of dogs, how the
Speaker 1: training of police dogs work in questioning some of these
Speaker 1: claims made about police dogs, like that you can make
Speaker 1: them be vicious or or gentle on command, which you
Speaker 1: know is a very questionable claim. So we will talk
Speaker 1: about the science of that and and debunk some myths
Speaker 1: about these ideas about police dog training when we return.
Speaker 1: There's a pervasive myth that a well trained dog will
Speaker 1: react only to commands and nothing else in their environment,
Speaker 1: as if the dog is a furry robot. Dog cognition
Speaker 1: is incredibly complex and they're incredibly smart, but they're not robots.
Speaker 1: Research has shown that dogs and their owners are so
Speaker 1: emotionally linked that our stress levels will mirror each other.
Speaker 1: Experimenters interviewed dog owners and gave them a survey to
Speaker 1: describe themselves and their personality, as well as their dogs personality.
Speaker 1: The researchers then studied hair samples taken from dogs and
Speaker 1: their owners and look for the levels of cortisol, a
Speaker 1: hormone related to stress. They found that the dogs cortisol
Speaker 1: levels were corral alated with the owner's personality, such as
Speaker 1: how the owners self describe their comfort with different situations.
Speaker 1: While the researchers reassured dog owners that being anxious isn't
Speaker 1: going to make your dog neurotic. It's true that dog
Speaker 1: sends and respond to our stress into our personalities, and
Speaker 1: the research showed that this connection is particularly strong and
Speaker 1: well trained competition dogs. If anything, the more training a
Speaker 1: dog goes through, the more carefully that dog is going
Speaker 1: to pay attention to their owner, and the more sensitive
Speaker 1: they'll be to their owner's stress and emotions. This is
Speaker 1: important to keep in mind, especially when it's asserted that
Speaker 1: dogs can be used as passive neutral weapons, when in
Speaker 1: fact they're highly emotionally sensitive and intelligent animals who will
Speaker 1: do their best to please their owner and will often
Speaker 1: mirror their owner's emotions. In many cases, this could be positive.
Speaker 1: Dogs and humans react to each other's emotions and support
Speaker 1: each other, forming friendships. But as will soon discuss, this
Speaker 1: relationship becomes dangerous in situations of police violence. When you
Speaker 1: guys were in elementary school, did you ever have a
Speaker 1: cop come to your school and do a demonstration of
Speaker 1: their canine officers. I feel like, yeah, yeah, absolutely that happened. Yes,
Speaker 1: it happened to me too. In sixth grade, I remember
Speaker 1: police came to our school. They showed off their canine
Speaker 1: officer attack a quote bad guy who was another officer
Speaker 1: wearing protective leather gear and like on command, the dog
Speaker 1: just like shot off like a bullet, tackled this guy
Speaker 1: grabbed onto his arm, and we were supposed to think
Speaker 1: this was cool. It was terrifying, Joel, you that happened
Speaker 1: also to you where they like, look at our terrifying dogs.
Speaker 1: Isn't that neat? Kids? Yeah? I still wonder what the
Speaker 1: point of almost any cop coming into the school to
Speaker 1: be like yo, because it wasn't after are like here's
Speaker 1: how you stay safe from danger, or even like here's
Speaker 1: like some of your civil like rights or anything like
Speaker 1: here's some of your civic ability to protect yourself or
Speaker 1: responsibilities or ways you can be like a good citizen
Speaker 1: and enforced safety on your own block. It was always like,
Speaker 1: here's drugs, don't do them, or I'll have to come
Speaker 1: after you. Here's what drugs are, don't do them. Right?
Speaker 1: You ever heard of acid? Kids, Let me tell you
Speaker 1: all the details about it. That's crazy that it didn't
Speaker 1: even occur to me that they should do that, like
Speaker 1: teach us about our rights, like I like, I was
Speaker 1: just like I don't want to hear that from a cop,
Speaker 1: are you? But like that's what they should be doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: teach us are Miranda rights and stuff. But you think
Speaker 1: about like the ideal like police officer, right, and it's
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to even say that because I mean,
Speaker 1: I just imagined this space an empty space, just nothing officer.
Speaker 1: But I think I think if we were too quote
Speaker 1: unquote rebrand the police, so if they didn't have like
Speaker 1: a low lineage of being slave catchers returning freed people
Speaker 1: back to slavery, and they didn't have a long lineage
Speaker 1: of being first about protecting the wealthy and their own pockets,
Speaker 1: but they were actual like civil servants out to you know,
Speaker 1: just help guide people uh to safety and kind of
Speaker 1: apprehend people who were breaking the law in a way
Speaker 1: that allowed them to be brought to justice instead of
Speaker 1: ending up killed. I feel like a great officer would
Speaker 1: be the kind of person who is from the community,
Speaker 1: familiar with the individuals in that community, and has a
Speaker 1: fested interest in um making sure that that place stays safe,
Speaker 1: not at the expense of lives, but in a way
Speaker 1: that again is just engaging the citizens. So for example,
Speaker 1: like a theft is not oh my god, that guy's
Speaker 1: a thief, get him it's do you need pants? Like
Speaker 1: there was a story in Chicago about a guy he's homeless.
Speaker 1: He's told a pair of jeans he needs some pants.
Speaker 1: Can't be pantsless. They will arrestue for that too. Um.
Speaker 1: He wounded up spending three years in prison just so
Speaker 1: long to give him any kind of quirky because he
Speaker 1: needed a pair of pants. Like the response to that
Speaker 1: is your thirty dollars for these jeans? Go live? You
Speaker 1: like how you bet? How much you bet? Some of
Speaker 1: those arresting officers loved limbs. Oh my god. You know,
Speaker 1: we have a whole musical slash movie thing where it's like,
Speaker 1: it's so wrong that he was thrown in prison for
Speaker 1: stealing bread, and now man steals pants to clothe himself
Speaker 1: in jail. And if there's one way to get through
Speaker 1: to white people, it's through musicals. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: anyway to contact you and make sure you understand. But
Speaker 1: we need it in song. We're happy to do it
Speaker 1: through acrobatic cats. I've heard that's a thing. There's a
Speaker 1: big question about brutal police dog bites, which is something
Speaker 1: uh that POLIVI we talked about a little bit. An
Speaker 1: email is like, are these dogs who aren't trained well
Speaker 1: enough and the multiple severe bites they deliver a mistake
Speaker 1: or are they doing what they are trained to do?
Speaker 1: And So if it's if these like maulings by police
Speaker 1: dogs are mistakes, then why are they safe to use
Speaker 1: by police? And if they're not mistakes, why are police
Speaker 1: training them to mall people? So canine handler in South Florida,
Speaker 1: Charles Meslow, who is a criminal justice professor, claims, quote
Speaker 1: properly trained dogs are like a switch. You turn them
Speaker 1: on and you turn them off, which anyone who knows
Speaker 1: anything about dogs should probably question a little bit. So
Speaker 1: if this is true that dogs are like a switch
Speaker 1: that you can turn on and off, then all injuries
Speaker 1: inflicted by dogs on people are at the behest of police.
Speaker 1: If it's not true, then dogs aren't like a switch
Speaker 1: you can turn off on and off and are not
Speaker 1: safe to use as weapons, especially in the way that
Speaker 1: police train them. So let's dig into how these dogs
Speaker 1: are trained. So how do you train a dog to
Speaker 1: bite someone in a way that is quote like you know,
Speaker 1: police enforcement or apprehending someone without mauling them. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: first of all going to say I don't think there's
Speaker 1: any way that a dog bite, even if it's just
Speaker 1: like you know, not mauling you, that is the right
Speaker 1: thing to do. Like, I just don't think that it's
Speaker 1: right to use dog bites as any type of weapon
Speaker 1: or enforcement. Well, it's just so variable, right, Like if
Speaker 1: everything about like law enforcement and the the application ideally
Speaker 1: of of laws in this country are supposed to be
Speaker 1: specific and consistent in an ideal situation, then dogs using
Speaker 1: animals in any form is so is such a risk factor.
Speaker 1: It's so variable exactly exactly. So, police dogs are trained
Speaker 1: to bite and hold, so the breeds they use have
Speaker 1: incredible jaw strength, and their training teaches them to apply
Speaker 1: more force than civilian dogs typically used. So remember earlier
Speaker 1: we talked about how police dog bites are more severe
Speaker 1: than civilian dog bites and this is due to their training.
Speaker 1: And so in terms of dogs biting this this is
Speaker 1: mystifying to me the idea that you can train a
Speaker 1: dog to bite in a way, in a in a
Speaker 1: hard way, not like a fake bite like a movie,
Speaker 1: like a dog in a movie or something, but a
Speaker 1: real bite that you're saying I have complete control over.
Speaker 1: Because the way that dog communication and bites work is
Speaker 1: a scale of escalation. So there is actually a bite
Speaker 1: level system that was developed by animal behaviorist Dr Ian Dunbar,
Speaker 1: and it ranks dog bites. So level one is like
Speaker 1: nipping in the air, the dog just warning you like
Speaker 1: it's not happy. Level two is nipping skin but not
Speaker 1: puncturing it. Again, the dog is trying to communicate to you,
Speaker 1: I'm uncomfortable, you're scaring me. I'm upset, Please get away
Speaker 1: from me. Um. But it's not trying to hurt you.
Speaker 1: It's just trying to warn you. This is communicating. It's
Speaker 1: still not like for all of these it's like anytime
Speaker 1: you see this behavior and your dog, it's a sign
Speaker 1: that your dog is anxious, scared, or there's a behavioral
Speaker 1: issue and you you should address it um in a
Speaker 1: way that focuses on de escalation, reducing stress and if
Speaker 1: it's something that is like challenging, like talk to a
Speaker 1: dog trainer about it. But so then level three is
Speaker 1: biting and puncturing the skin, but the puncture is pretty shallow,
Speaker 1: like more shallow than the length of the of the tooth.
Speaker 1: So these are all like these are escalations of of
Speaker 1: dog anxiety, dog stress UM and so these are things
Speaker 1: that I had to deal with since Cookie had the
Speaker 1: traumatizing X variance with this dog and these variable levels
Speaker 1: of nipping and like, it's never never got beyond that,
Speaker 1: but it's still like this is a sign the dog
Speaker 1: is stressed or is not coping with anxiety in a
Speaker 1: healthy way, So you have to train the dog how
Speaker 1: to do that in a more healthy way. So level
Speaker 1: four is a serious bite. It's a deep puncture or
Speaker 1: multiple puncture wounds, and it is an indicator that the
Speaker 1: dog's aggression and stress is out of control. The dog
Speaker 1: is biting and clamping down at this point. This is
Speaker 1: when dog bites can actually start to become fatal, and
Speaker 1: it is it's the thing with dogs and their behavior
Speaker 1: is like when dog trainers are talking to you about
Speaker 1: like dogs nipping and biting. It's an escalation. So like
Speaker 1: like you start a like you know these earlier levels.
Speaker 1: Once you get to level four, it means that this
Speaker 1: behavior has been escalating for a while. Their stress has
Speaker 1: been unchecked. They have not been trained to deal with
Speaker 1: their anxiety and stress in a more healthy way. So
Speaker 1: this is a big warning sign for people with dogs.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean the dog, like you know, is it's
Speaker 1: irreversible or anything, but it just means that there needs
Speaker 1: to be serious intervention. Um it gets more serious, much
Speaker 1: more serious. With level five is multiple bites with deep punctures.
Speaker 1: It's the highest level before level six, which is the
Speaker 1: dog actually killing someone. This is the level that we
Speaker 1: see in hospitalization of people with police dog bites, like
Speaker 1: a lot of these hospitalizations. So like earlier the statistics
Speaker 1: we talked about where with police dog bites they're more
Speaker 1: likely than civilian dog bites to have multiple deep wounds,
Speaker 1: which means that the dog is at this highest level
Speaker 1: of aggression on this scale, meaning that they have been
Speaker 1: trained to tap into like in terms of dog communication standards,
Speaker 1: this is an extreme reaction for a dog to do
Speaker 1: against like a human or a fellow dog. Biting, clamping down,
Speaker 1: and tearing our signs that the dog is at a
Speaker 1: high state of arousal and aggression. The claim that the
Speaker 1: dog is this cool, level headed switch that they can
Speaker 1: turn off and on once they're at this level of
Speaker 1: aggression is ludicrous. Honestly, there are multiple anecdotal stories of
Speaker 1: dogs biting bystanders and police officers indicating that dogs do
Speaker 1: make quote mistakes and you know, this is terrible, But
Speaker 1: I think it's not to say, like it's only terrible
Speaker 1: when the nonintended target is hurt. To target people with
Speaker 1: this is it self wrong. So I have a question, Um, So,
Speaker 1: when these dogs are biting, I assume that not only
Speaker 1: the intensity of the bite, but also the location of
Speaker 1: the bite is it's significant, right, But even attacking the
Speaker 1: leg like your femoral artery, could cause you to die.
Speaker 1: So like, what are they how, how do they how
Speaker 1: do they regulate that When a dog gets into the
Speaker 1: state of arousal where they are extremely agitated, very extreme
Speaker 1: levels of these stress hormone is going on, they start
Speaker 1: attacking things like the head, the neck, like you said,
Speaker 1: even if it's quote just attacking the legs, Your legs
Speaker 1: have important stuff in them, it has for moral arteries.
Speaker 1: It can't. Dog bites can, like severe dog attacks do
Speaker 1: kill people. It's still incredibly damaging. And why did why
Speaker 1: did these violent attacks need to happen at all? And
Speaker 1: when a dog is taught to bite down and clamp
Speaker 1: down and shake, that will that will tear flesh off
Speaker 1: of someone and that is extremely dangerous, obviously extremely painful.
Speaker 1: If you are skeptical, which I kind of doubt anyone
Speaker 1: is at this point. There are photos of injuries that
Speaker 1: can be results of police dog bites and they are horrific.
Speaker 1: They leave horrific scars. You can see like how incredibly
Speaker 1: it's damaging. And again, yes, exactly, and and you know,
Speaker 1: so a dog who is just maybe a dog who
Speaker 1: hasn't had that great training often doesn't engage in this
Speaker 1: type of biting like it's not it's sometimes they do,
Speaker 1: like severe bites can come from civilian owned dogs, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, the bites are like the kind
Speaker 1: of like level three bite of they bite you once
Speaker 1: and it hurts, and it can actually it can be injurious.
Speaker 1: You may need to go to the hospital. But the
Speaker 1: dog is like it is trying to communicate with you
Speaker 1: in a sense of like I'm mad at you. Get
Speaker 1: away from me. You know, it's not you know, it's
Speaker 1: like not vindictive. It's just trying to protect itself, right exactly.
Speaker 1: It's stressed out. It's trying to but like these bites
Speaker 1: were clamps down and applies pressure and holds down is
Speaker 1: an escalation of aggression where it's like the dog is
Speaker 1: at that point attempting to uh inflict an injury, not
Speaker 1: because the dog is bad or evil, but because the
Speaker 1: dog has been taught this is what you do. This
Speaker 1: is you know, you get rewarded for doing this. So
Speaker 1: the idea that you can like basically work a dog
Speaker 1: up to this high level of aggression and then I
Speaker 1: can just say stop and stop the dog, That's just
Speaker 1: not how brains work. That's not how dogs work. The analogies,
Speaker 1: the analogies here of of cops with guns like just
Speaker 1: is so so similar because of all I think that there.
Speaker 1: I can't remember where I got this data from, but
Speaker 1: a while back, I was just researching it for my
Speaker 1: own purposes, which means I was trying to prove someone wrong.
Speaker 1: And I looked it up and there was like in
Speaker 1: certain police departments or something, there was like sevent of
Speaker 1: officers were like Caucasian, not including like Latin X or
Speaker 1: Asian um and they they There was also simultaneously studies
Speaker 1: where like white people believe that black people have like
Speaker 1: superhuman strength and our quote unquote animalistic right, and so
Speaker 1: you combine that with giving them a gun. You combine
Speaker 1: those incredible biases and those numbers of the number of
Speaker 1: like Caucasian police officers with giving them a gun, and
Speaker 1: it's a very similar thing to an unrestrained dog that
Speaker 1: has been trained to attack minorities. Dogs aren't born racist,
Speaker 1: much like humans aren't born racist, but like a dog
Speaker 1: can be taught to fear people who are look different
Speaker 1: from their owners if their owners like teach them this
Speaker 1: is who you fear. It makes me curious. I bet
Speaker 1: that there's not a lot of statistics on this, but
Speaker 1: it makes me curious to see how, you know, how
Speaker 1: all these dogs live with their their police owners. I
Speaker 1: think it's my perception, um like the you know in
Speaker 1: interracial relationships or marriages, like how they how those dogs
Speaker 1: treat minorities versus um dogs with all white families. I'm
Speaker 1: curious about that. It's interesting. Yeah, So the justification for
Speaker 1: using dog bites uh as a police weapon is that
Speaker 1: it's quote pain compliance, which is the idea that the
Speaker 1: dog bite will cause quote pain, but injury, which will
Speaker 1: cause the target to comply. None of this sentence makes sense. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, as we've just talked about, you can't
Speaker 1: train a dog to bite just hard enough to hurt,
Speaker 1: but not so hard that they injure someone. That's not
Speaker 1: how dog aggression works. You can't train people the officers
Speaker 1: right right exactly and for you know, like like the
Speaker 1: dog's communication system and aggression system literally is documented escalation
Speaker 1: of force, and you can't be like, okay, bite them
Speaker 1: hard enough to hold them down, but then don't bite
Speaker 1: so deep it it punctures an art, you know, like
Speaker 1: what is the dog a doctor who's like, I know
Speaker 1: just where to bite the person where it will hurt,
Speaker 1: but won't you know, hurt them. It's it doesn't make sense. Um,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence that you can train a dog just
Speaker 1: to be aggressive enough to the point where it's like
Speaker 1: useful for arresting someone. Um. Also, uh, you know there's
Speaker 1: um the you're rewarding dogs for increased aggression, so escalate
Speaker 1: like dogs like to kind of escalate things that they're
Speaker 1: rewarded for. It's actually one of the tricky parts of
Speaker 1: training dogs with jobs is like you they get rewarded
Speaker 1: for certain behaviors. If you want to selectively reward them
Speaker 1: for doing only those behaviors when they're supposed to, It's
Speaker 1: it's tricky because they want to do them all the time.
Speaker 1: They're like, wait, you give me a treat for that?
Speaker 1: I want to do that now, and I want to
Speaker 1: want to do that again. Now. I want to see
Speaker 1: you happy, I want to see you reward me. That's
Speaker 1: how dog cognition works. It's very very hard to get
Speaker 1: them to selectively only, you know, like only be aggressive
Speaker 1: when you want them too. Is kind of yeah. So
Speaker 1: here's this is not just my opinion. This is also
Speaker 1: the opinion of certified dog behavioral consultant Dr Richard S. Pulsky,
Speaker 1: who says, quote, animal behavior analysis indicates that attacked attack
Speaker 1: trained knines are not automated, programmed machines oblivious to the
Speaker 1: variables that control aggressive response ding. If one looks at
Speaker 1: the principles of animal behavior science, particularly with regard to
Speaker 1: principles of learning and conditioning, one easily understands why police
Speaker 1: canines are prone to behavioral error. For example, mistakes happen
Speaker 1: because the act of attack for the dog is self reinforcing.
Speaker 1: The reinforcing nature of the response increases the dog's motivation
Speaker 1: and arousal to extremely high levels, therefore increasing the chance
Speaker 1: of the dog making a mistake. So you combine the
Speaker 1: dog who's being rewarded for being aggressive and the police
Speaker 1: officer who's rewarded for being aggressive. You know, it's like,
Speaker 1: of course, like what are like, how is this okay
Speaker 1: that dogs are used as weapons? Like it? That doesn't
Speaker 1: and none of these dog cops are going to tell
Speaker 1: on each other. They're not going to run it up
Speaker 1: the flagpole. You know, they're all in this gang together.
Speaker 1: The other thing is, um that statement, that original statement
Speaker 1: that you're addressing the parts of said that the pain
Speaker 1: compliance said that it's in tended to cause pain but
Speaker 1: not injury, and the whole thing is moot because it
Speaker 1: causes people to die, Like you know, there's it's been
Speaker 1: all the way up to death, all these sorts of injuries,
Speaker 1: so that that whole statement in itself is false. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like it's supposed to do this except for this
Speaker 1: one time and this other time, and this other time
Speaker 1: and this. You know, if you're saying like, well, this
Speaker 1: is the intended effect, we just have a few mistakes,
Speaker 1: It's like, no, if you have a bunch of mistakes,
Speaker 1: then it doesn't matter what you're quote. Right, this is
Speaker 1: the documented effect that we see in hospitals. So the
Speaker 1: other part of that thing, where the idea of pain
Speaker 1: compliance making a target quote comply, is completely absurd, So
Speaker 1: like the whole premise of it is stupid. The idea
Speaker 1: that a person, when being bitten by a dog is
Speaker 1: going to calm down and become compliant is like the
Speaker 1: most ludicrous thing I've ever heard, both of someone who
Speaker 1: studied psychology and also I've dealt with um sort of
Speaker 1: a near miss dog attack. This was one of the
Speaker 1: times that Cookie got it like attacked by a dog,
Speaker 1: and I had all these logical ideas worked out of
Speaker 1: what I would do in that case. My mind went
Speaker 1: completely blank. I picked up Cookie and I started like screaming,
Speaker 1: and the dog was like started to nip at me.
Speaker 1: And again, this was not like a very serious attack
Speaker 1: for me, but I was still freaking out and panicking,
Speaker 1: and I like thrashing around and and clutching the dog
Speaker 1: and freaking out. The dog biting me didn't make me
Speaker 1: more calm, And I can't imagine a situation in which
Speaker 1: a dog biting you would ever make you like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I just gotta relax now. And like, I
Speaker 1: feel like they don't know what pain is, and that's
Speaker 1: very confusing to me, because like any kind of pain,
Speaker 1: it's going to spike your adrenaline. Yeah, like just naturally.
Speaker 1: I don't know science, but I know that you do.
Speaker 1: Apparently you know science better than police, because that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: So pain triggers stress hormones and the fight or flight response.
Speaker 1: So someone being attacked by a dog is not going
Speaker 1: to go limp and compliant. They're gonna struggle thrash, which
Speaker 1: is an automatic response to pain. Um, And that thrashing
Speaker 1: and that panicking is also going to trigger the dog
Speaker 1: to bite. More so, it is putting dogs and people
Speaker 1: into a situation that is absolutely clearly going to lead
Speaker 1: to escalation. So this is UM. A victim of a
Speaker 1: police dog bite, a very severe one, described his experience
Speaker 1: when the dog started to tear into his legs, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: I didn't hear what they were saying. He's talking about
Speaker 1: the police officers. I didn't hear what they were saying.
Speaker 1: My mind just went blank. That's what happens when you
Speaker 1: are panicked and in pain. So the idea that this
Speaker 1: is going to make someone comply when they are it's
Speaker 1: like they're shouting orders at him. He can't hear them
Speaker 1: because he's being attacked by a dog and he's scared,
Speaker 1: and the dog is seeing this guy thrash and struggle,
Speaker 1: and the dog is getting more scared and anxious and
Speaker 1: biting harder. It's just like this is it's I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like it really is reminiscent of the history of
Speaker 1: you know, using victims to abuse dogs, and then those
Speaker 1: dogs to abuse the victims. It's just twisted. It's The
Speaker 1: kicker is that people who struggle when being bitten by
Speaker 1: a police dog are often charged with resisting arrest. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: That's they're resisting bites from a police dog, right as
Speaker 1: if the dog has like a couple of hands, like
Speaker 1: it's tiny handcuffs, like like give them a badge though, Like,
Speaker 1: well you don't have badges in uniforms, so they don't
Speaker 1: see the difference. Like that is wild. Yeah, yeah it doesn't.
Speaker 1: That's how do they get charged if there I've seen
Speaker 1: videos of them like on the ground, and they get
Speaker 1: charged with resisting arrest by a dog. Yeah, they're really
Speaker 1: trying to make some dogs go to hell. That's what
Speaker 1: they're trying to do. They're trying a bit try to
Speaker 1: pit dogs against people just to make that statement all
Speaker 1: dogs go to heaven. Not true. But I mean I think,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm not saying all this, you know
Speaker 1: to make people afraid of dogs. This is a problem
Speaker 1: of how police use dogs and abuse the trainable nature
Speaker 1: of dogs, so domesticated dogs are not inherently violent. You
Speaker 1: can reward them for aggressive behavior that is a result
Speaker 1: of them being stressed, and like either through like training
Speaker 1: or or animal abuse, like they can learn to be
Speaker 1: aggressive and used as tools of violence. This also, like
Speaker 1: I know that this is very like critical in terms
Speaker 1: of just like survival for for minorities, um, but even
Speaker 1: just on the other end of it, this is such
Speaker 1: a like a violation of the human experience because I
Speaker 1: so I know so many minorities must be afraid of
Speaker 1: dogs because of their experiences with them. And it is
Speaker 1: such a white supremacist thing to take like part of
Speaker 1: the joy of human life and and guard it for
Speaker 1: yourself against other other people who want to partake in it.
Speaker 1: It's like the swimming pool thing. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: like black people got made fun of for not being
Speaker 1: able to swim. Well it's only because they weren't allowed to,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like like it's joy Like how like
Speaker 1: how dare you take companionship with animals, like knowing how
Speaker 1: much joy and love I get from it. To know
Speaker 1: that that same creature would trigger PTSD in a person
Speaker 1: is just so it's so disgusting. I can't absolutely it's
Speaker 1: end it. Docs are a unique animal. It's been this incredible,
Speaker 1: unlikely friendship between these early wolf like animals and humans,
Speaker 1: and just like, huh, you know, it's actually makes more
Speaker 1: sense to get along and to take that in just
Speaker 1: that incredible like we're friends with an animal that's amazing,
Speaker 1: and use it for violence and evil and like you said,
Speaker 1: deprive people of this part of it truly is like
Speaker 1: this fundamental part of the human experience to bond with animals.
Speaker 1: And it's also I mean, obviously the main concern are
Speaker 1: the human victims of police dog violence, but I think
Speaker 1: this is also abusive towards the dogs themselves. Um VA suppression,
Speaker 1: which is the hormone that indicates higher levels of aggression
Speaker 1: in dogs, is also associated with higher levels of anxiety.
Speaker 1: So and aggressive dog is an anxious dog. And if
Speaker 1: you're training, if you're reinforcing a dog's aggressive behavior, I
Speaker 1: don't see how that dog isn't stressed all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I mean, I've seen anecdotal things about dogs,
Speaker 1: police dogs like getting PTSD, and it's like, of course
Speaker 1: they would have these problems. I mean, it's your training
Speaker 1: dogs to be perpetually stressed and putting them into too
Speaker 1: stressful positions and making them respond to things with aggression,
Speaker 1: which is stressful for dogs. It's not constant state of
Speaker 1: shock and fight or fight, right. Yeah, So I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's I just I I don't think dogs should be
Speaker 1: used as weapons. It's just not. It's not right. It's
Speaker 1: not right to the people that they hurt. It's not
Speaker 1: right to the you know, the animals themselves. It's just
Speaker 1: and I don't think the people who use them as
Speaker 1: weapons should get to have the joy of having a dog.
Speaker 1: It's you know what I mean, It's like, screw you, guys.
Speaker 1: You don't get this fair. I mean, Tommy Robs should
Speaker 1: be for good people who don't hurt other people. Yes,
Speaker 1: but I I mean, thanks guys for sticking through this.
Speaker 1: I know this was um, it's not you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a heavy subject. I think it's really important
Speaker 1: to talk about. We are going to talk about how
Speaker 1: we can have dogs have jobs that are positive. There
Speaker 1: are jobs that are both great for humans and also
Speaker 1: good for the dogs mental health and stimulation, and some
Speaker 1: of these are pretty incredible and inspiring, so we will
Speaker 1: talk about that when we return. One of the negative
Speaker 1: effects associated with the history of police dog use has
Speaker 1: been an increase in dog related phobias. Some research has
Speaker 1: shown that the use of police dogs during the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights era may have led to an increase in dog
Speaker 1: phobias amongst Black Americans. What's especially heartbreaking about this is
Speaker 1: how dogs can have such a gentle, positive impact for people,
Speaker 1: and by using them as weapons, many people, especially Black
Speaker 1: Americans and other minorities targeted by police, may be forced
Speaker 1: to associate dogs with violence. The thing is, dogs are
Speaker 1: not intrinsically violent. When their most admirable qualities, such as
Speaker 1: their ability to sense human emotion, their gentleness, their intelligence,
Speaker 1: and playfulness are all nurtured, they are remarkably loving and
Speaker 1: uniquely social with humans. Training dogs to hurt people is
Speaker 1: such a misuse and abuse of this special connection that
Speaker 1: we have with dogs. When we return, we're going to
Speaker 1: end with something to lift your spirits. There are many
Speaker 1: jobs that dogs can have that are so incredibly wonderful
Speaker 1: and frankly impressive things that help people and that the
Speaker 1: dogs themselves seem to enjoy. We're gonna talk about therapy dogs,
Speaker 1: special doctor medicine, scientists, dogs, big fluffy dogs, and teeny
Speaker 1: tiny penguins, so stay tuned for that. So dog jobs
Speaker 1: don't have to be negative. They can be a huge
Speaker 1: boon to humanity and to the environment. Dogs are perfectly
Speaker 1: poised to be one of the most uniquely well suited
Speaker 1: animals to work with humans. They're distant, wolflike ancestors, were
Speaker 1: already highly social pack animals and dogs have co evolved
Speaker 1: with humans for tens of thousands of years, developing skills
Speaker 1: such as reading our emotions and learning how to communicate
Speaker 1: with us. And now we have developed an incredible partnership
Speaker 1: with these animals. I think it's our responsibility to treat
Speaker 1: this bond with utmost respect, both where people and dogs
Speaker 1: are concerned. So we've talked about what not to do,
Speaker 1: which is to use dogs as weapons against people. So
Speaker 1: now I want to talk about positive jobs that are
Speaker 1: good for people and good for dogs. So these are
Speaker 1: jobs that instead of taking advantage of dogs stress response
Speaker 1: and aggressive responses to anxiety, these take advanta of dogs
Speaker 1: best nature they're loving, sweet nature and the things that
Speaker 1: bring dogs themselves joy. So first let's talk about therapy
Speaker 1: dogs and service dogs. And this I don't know. Whenever
Speaker 1: I see a therapy dog in a hospital with the
Speaker 1: goofy little face just about to go into the room
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, I'm gonna kiss a little kid, like,
Speaker 1: it's just it's the cutest thing. It's the sweetest thing.
Speaker 1: So there is a difference between therapy and service dogs.
Speaker 1: Therapy dogs are dogs trained to have a very stable, chill,
Speaker 1: calm personality, to be gentle and provide psychological comfort and
Speaker 1: health to those who interact with them, whereas service dogs
Speaker 1: are trained to provide aid to people with disabilities, such
Speaker 1: as seeing eye dogs, medical alert dogs, dogs trained to
Speaker 1: fetch in hailers or other medical supplies for those in need,
Speaker 1: and dogs trained to provide mobility support. There's also dogs
Speaker 1: that like alert when someone's having a at a coal emergency,
Speaker 1: Like they can detect signs that someone say about to
Speaker 1: have a seizure, and the dog alerts that they're about
Speaker 1: to have a seizure. And it's it's incredible that we
Speaker 1: like dogs are so smart and so perceptive and we
Speaker 1: can train them to help us in this way. And
Speaker 1: these are obviously tasks that are incredibly important and wonderful.
Speaker 1: Can I add um a couple of jobs that I've seen.
Speaker 1: I volunteered in hospitals and so like beyond even um
Speaker 1: just the therapy or the specific tasks, there are certain dogs.
Speaker 1: There are certain children with like very fatal peanut allergies
Speaker 1: and things like that, and so dogs that are able
Speaker 1: to sniff that out. In like the household allows kids
Speaker 1: to be able to interact with other children without fearing
Speaker 1: for their lives. Like they're allowed to have people come
Speaker 1: over because the dog can like sniff the other kid
Speaker 1: and like make sure that everything's okay, or they're like
Speaker 1: they have their dog with them in the playroom and
Speaker 1: the other kids parents bring in peanuts and stuff and
Speaker 1: late like these children will literally die, you know, if
Speaker 1: they're exposed to it. So it's it's it's things beyond
Speaker 1: um that, things that we don't even think of. I
Speaker 1: know that there was like when I was in college,
Speaker 1: we had a bed bug outbreak and they brought like
Speaker 1: they brought a little beagle for like our loft space,
Speaker 1: and then they brought a big beagle for like the
Speaker 1: floor or whatever, and so the beagles were sniffing out
Speaker 1: the bed bugs and it was like very cute and
Speaker 1: very adorable there likeighting day on campus. Yeah, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's so and like you've got the I just imagining
Speaker 1: them have this team dynamic of the little one being
Speaker 1: like kind of spirited and yeah, that's exactly bugs and
Speaker 1: like the old one, you know, like we're gonna get
Speaker 1: this job. Yeah, I don't know. It's just like it's
Speaker 1: there's so many Like when you don't use them for
Speaker 1: for weapons, which they can't control because they're in an
Speaker 1: anxious state. When they're in a happy state, they can
Speaker 1: do so many amazing things, like they're social precision train
Speaker 1: I've seen videos of Golden retrievers picking up eggs. Instead
Speaker 1: of teaching a dog to be violent with their mouths,
Speaker 1: you can teach them to be so gentle with their
Speaker 1: mouth that they can pick up That's that's a TikTok trend.
Speaker 1: And apparently it's like a natural thing that dogs recognize
Speaker 1: not to hurt the egg like, and so everybody's like, hey,
Speaker 1: i've heard dogs don't like crunch on eggs. Let me
Speaker 1: try with my dog, and like it's the first time
Speaker 1: that they've ever given their dog an egg, and and
Speaker 1: the dogs very gentle because they're perceptive about a lot
Speaker 1: of these things when they're not stressed out, you know,
Speaker 1: right exactly, and they're actually happy to like when they
Speaker 1: do these jobs as long as they're being trained in
Speaker 1: a positive reinforcement way. Of course that's a caveat, like
Speaker 1: the training itself has to be positive and and kind.
Speaker 1: But when they are trained in that positive reinforcement way
Speaker 1: and they do these jobs like therapy and service jobs,
Speaker 1: like they are in a relaxed state. And they have
Speaker 1: actually been studies to confirm this. So a study and
Speaker 1: applied animal behavior science found that dogs who worked as
Speaker 1: therapy dogs were uh, not stressed in any measurable way.
Speaker 1: So they looked at their cortisol levels and their body
Speaker 1: expressions and found that there was no difference in stress
Speaker 1: levels at home or in the hospital. So they were
Speaker 1: as relaxed at the hospital as they were at home.
Speaker 1: And you know, you can also like this is maybe
Speaker 1: less scientific, but you can look at the body language
Speaker 1: of a therapy dog and as they sit outside of
Speaker 1: someone's room waiting to go in, and they're so they
Speaker 1: their tails are wagging. They look like really content and
Speaker 1: happy and they're they're getting pets from kids. Like what more?
Speaker 1: Right there? They are getting you know, these interactions with
Speaker 1: kids where they're getting loved and they're expressing love. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that is that's like thin, Yeah, it is beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's dogs and humans at their best. It's also the
Speaker 1: tasks that these dogs often do are very similar to
Speaker 1: enrichment activities that are given to dogs to improve our
Speaker 1: mental health. So I also love with that story you're
Speaker 1: telling about like alerting to the peanuts using a dog's
Speaker 1: love of peanuts and peanut butter, like for good humanity,
Speaker 1: where it's like I could smell a peanut them, I
Speaker 1: don't even think. I don't even think that dog probably
Speaker 1: never gets peanut butter, but a get chicken or something,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah of course, yeah, but like Cookie, Cookie
Speaker 1: could smell a peanut, but if she found it, she
Speaker 1: just like crunched it down. I also, I also think
Speaker 1: it's like with these positive tasks where they're like protecting people.
Speaker 1: I just this is not scientific, but I just feel
Speaker 1: like it's what they want to do because they love people,
Speaker 1: like they want to take care of us, like we
Speaker 1: take care of them and like there's a partnership there
Speaker 1: and they're more motivated to like help us and they
Speaker 1: are to hurt us. Well, when you look at the
Speaker 1: evolutionary history of dogs and how we like, I keep
Speaker 1: saying this, how we like co evolved with dogs are
Speaker 1: our society and dogs like they basically we selected for
Speaker 1: their wolf like ancestors who were not afraid of us
Speaker 1: and weren't aggressive, and basically like humans who enjoyed the
Speaker 1: dog's presence, dogs that enjoyed the humans presence, We formed
Speaker 1: this mutualistic relationship and we like there's early evidence and
Speaker 1: we actually talk about this on an earlier episode about dogs,
Speaker 1: or there's early evidence of dogs being buried with these
Speaker 1: high value items like way way long time ago, meaning
Speaker 1: that we had this emotional connection to the dogs, and
Speaker 1: the dogs I think have an emotional connection to us
Speaker 1: because they are highly social, but their socialness has changed
Speaker 1: to be focused on humans like they they are studies
Speaker 1: that show like they look at our facial expressions, they
Speaker 1: focus more on the side of our face that is
Speaker 1: more expressive. They unlike wolves, they're distant cousins. Like when
Speaker 1: they encounter a problem, they look at a human, They're like,
Speaker 1: help me with this puzzle, and there they really have
Speaker 1: evolved to look to us and to derive pleasure from
Speaker 1: our company. Um, and I think that's you know, I
Speaker 1: think that's that's great. And we we have a responsibility
Speaker 1: to our fellow people and two dogs to use that
Speaker 1: in a way that's positive. And you know, kind one
Speaker 1: of the things that kind of frustrates me is like
Speaker 1: drug sniffing dogs. It's like, yeah, they have an amazing
Speaker 1: sense of smell. Instead of like the war drugs are
Speaker 1: so stupid, we could use their noses for these incredible feats,
Speaker 1: like dogs who can literally smell cancer in blood. So
Speaker 1: dogs have noses that are about ten thousand times more
Speaker 1: accurate than humans, and a study in experimental biology found
Speaker 1: that dogs can detect cancerous blood samples with almost nine
Speaker 1: percent accuracy, which is like a superpower. It should be
Speaker 1: in every household, you know what I mean, Like rather
Speaker 1: than having these dogs like you know what, like, we
Speaker 1: should be able to have more access to these good dogs. Yes.
Speaker 1: So the reason that these dogs aren't like in doctor
Speaker 1: lab coats going around hospital sniffing cancer is because of
Speaker 1: the way that dog training works, which is it can
Speaker 1: but it's like we talked about earlier, why that is
Speaker 1: bad in terms of law enforcement, it can also have
Speaker 1: limitations for good things too. So when you train the
Speaker 1: dog to first of all, you have to train the
Speaker 1: dog to detect a specific type of cancer. There are
Speaker 1: many types of cancer, so you'd have to invest in
Speaker 1: training dogs for each type of cancer. But also dogs
Speaker 1: need positive reinforcements. So when they like sniff or something
Speaker 1: and they properly signal and they get a positive reinforcement,
Speaker 1: like that is what keeps them wanting to do that behavior.
Speaker 1: So most blood samples aren't going to have cancer. And
Speaker 1: so if you have a dog like sniffing around and
Speaker 1: never finding anything, the dog's gonna be discouraged. So you
Speaker 1: could potentially plant like um one you know has it in.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that if they signal and you
Speaker 1: have no way of knowing whether that like you these
Speaker 1: that you're basically diagnosing, so you don't know if they're
Speaker 1: signaling correctly. The problem is if you reward them for
Speaker 1: signaling and they're incorrect, you're reinforcing a mistake. So they
Speaker 1: will keep signaling. Just they'll start signaling everyone. Suddenly all
Speaker 1: the blood samples have cancer because they want rewards. Um.
Speaker 1: But if you don't reward them for signaling correctly, then
Speaker 1: they get discouraged, like well, heck, you know I did
Speaker 1: the right thing. So you know, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: um an artificial intelligence and stuff. You have to have
Speaker 1: a set of like labeled data that you know is
Speaker 1: like positive or negative, and then you just train the
Speaker 1: system this in this case the dog on that data.
Speaker 1: But you would have to do it at regular intervals
Speaker 1: and with new labeled data um and and so that
Speaker 1: would take like a long time and also like a
Speaker 1: lot of samples that could be otherwise used for research,
Speaker 1: right exactly, But the fact that dogs can smell cancer
Speaker 1: may help us develop other tools for cancer detection, basically
Speaker 1: zeroing in like what they're actually smelling, what's binding to
Speaker 1: their smell receptors, and could we create an artificial dog
Speaker 1: nose for detecting cancer which would be and have the
Speaker 1: benefits of the dogs being able to detect it. But
Speaker 1: unlike the dogs, it wouldn't get discouraged by like you're
Speaker 1: not finding it. Dogs like sad that they can't fight cancer?
Speaker 1: What is wrong with you? Dogs? Come on? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is it's like again, like using dogs incredible
Speaker 1: gifts to further medicine and science. I think in a
Speaker 1: way that is again like these researchers are really thinking
Speaker 1: about the dogs in terms of like it doesn't work
Speaker 1: in this case to do something that isn't fun for
Speaker 1: the dog. It has to be fulfilling for the dog
Speaker 1: or they they won't do it, and like that's like fair,
Speaker 1: you know. So another case, this is okay, this is
Speaker 1: my favorite, is dogs out there protecting the environment by
Speaker 1: being dogs. So dogs. Uh So. In the mid two
Speaker 1: thousand and there was a penguin crisis on Middle Island, Australia.
Speaker 1: Remember this, yes, yes, so um foxes were rapidly driving
Speaker 1: down the population of the world's smallest penguin, the fairy penguin.
Speaker 1: And if you've never seen one of these penguins, there
Speaker 1: tiny little penguins that you could right now hold it.
Speaker 1: You could hold it in your It's just like the
Speaker 1: size of a burrito. It's so cute. So foxes from
Speaker 1: Mainland Australia were able to get to the island when
Speaker 1: changes in the sea currents allowed a natural bridge of
Speaker 1: sand to form. So probably our fault, I mean this
Speaker 1: might have been who knows, but I think this one
Speaker 1: might have just been on mother Nature being a being
Speaker 1: a jerk. But the penguin population went from the hundreds
Speaker 1: to just a handful, which is alarming because the tiny
Speaker 1: penguins must be saved. So incomes Marima sheep dogs, which
Speaker 1: are big, fluffy white dogs that look like super friendly
Speaker 1: polar bears and are used by farmers to keep foxes
Speaker 1: away from their chickens. And one of these farmers like
Speaker 1: heard about the penguin problems, like, penguin's not too different
Speaker 1: from a chicken, Like, why can't we use these dogs
Speaker 1: to protect the penguins. It's the first of all, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry. It's criminal how much you're underselling the cuteness
Speaker 1: of these penguins. I looked them up, you guys. Okay,
Speaker 1: imagine like a chick, but in the shape of a penguin,
Speaker 1: and that's what it looks like, like a tiny little
Speaker 1: chicken when it's all yellow and fluzzing cute, but it's penguin.
Speaker 1: And apparently some people started putting sweaters on them. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. And then also there's like pictures of the
Speaker 1: penguins cuddling up with the doggies and they're like little friends,
Speaker 1: I love nature friends. And then they made like little
Speaker 1: penguin doggy stuffed animals, so that so the original penguin
Speaker 1: protector dog is named Oddball, and she started the trend
Speaker 1: of these Marima sheep dogs being used to watch over
Speaker 1: the penguin population which has healed and has come back
Speaker 1: into the hundreds. And the best part about this is
Speaker 1: these sheep dogs are not really violent, so they aren't.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're going around violently attacking predators. They
Speaker 1: are just so big and so imposing they scare them off. There.
Speaker 1: They initially like they're these like huge, gentle dogs that
Speaker 1: are very intimidating, very protective, so they'll they'll bark at
Speaker 1: a fox, but that's that's enough to scare off these
Speaker 1: little foxes. And but they're gentle enough to be around
Speaker 1: the penguins without hurting them. So it's just I don't know,
Speaker 1: I want a Disney movie now. I was just about
Speaker 1: let you know that one already exists, Old odd Ball.
Speaker 1: It came out. It's available to watch on Prime video
Speaker 1: right now, and one of the stars is Alan Chuttick. So,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, it's so cute. I can't Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm watching tonight. That's my that's my
Speaker 1: Quarantine movie for two nights. Puppy and the penguins on
Speaker 1: its head all happy. It's just so it's like again,
Speaker 1: like dogs used to be these like wolves that would
Speaker 1: just basically down a bunch of these penguins in one bite.
Speaker 1: But now they're just big, old, big old cuties, that
Speaker 1: giant old flukes who's like, don't worry a little, Prague's
Speaker 1: your chafe with me? Ah. And then the last story
Speaker 1: I want to talk about is similar, is is how
Speaker 1: do ugs are used as companions to cheetahs, which again
Speaker 1: I just love how like, like, man, how do we
Speaker 1: protect these wild animals or make them safer or happier? Well,
Speaker 1: dogs do that for us, so why not these animals.
Speaker 1: So when cheetahs are orphaned or without siblings, like in
Speaker 1: a zoo or rescue, they are not having a good
Speaker 1: time because cheetahs are highly, highly anxious. I know, they
Speaker 1: look like sleek, you know, predator, and they are predators,
Speaker 1: but they're they're like little they have kind of the sweetest,
Speaker 1: like shyest personality of any wildcat. They're very skittish, very
Speaker 1: like they live very stressful lives, and in the wild
Speaker 1: they actually either live like with their mom and they
Speaker 1: form these kind of family units, or like when they're adults,
Speaker 1: the males will form these like coalitions of of males
Speaker 1: and then the females typically once they start a family,
Speaker 1: they just like have the cycle of always having their
Speaker 1: young around and having these things. So even though they're
Speaker 1: not um pack animals and they're not pride animals, they
Speaker 1: still form these close bonds with each other. And so
Speaker 1: a baby cheetah with no siblings and no parents all
Speaker 1: alone is going to be very anxious. And these um
Speaker 1: wildlife rescuers would notice this that they were very you know,
Speaker 1: not having a good time, and they thought, well, it
Speaker 1: needs like we don't have another baby cheetah. We can't
Speaker 1: do that, but we do have this little puppy, and
Speaker 1: so they put the little I think it's a Golden
Speaker 1: retriever public and they became just fast friends. The cheetah
Speaker 1: like calmed down and the dog, you know, the these
Speaker 1: the dog was very happy to like get licks and
Speaker 1: cuddles from this cheetah, and they just grew up to
Speaker 1: be these great friends. In like this has been used
Speaker 1: by zoos and rescues to keep cheetahs who have been
Speaker 1: orphaned or are alone happy and less stressed and give
Speaker 1: them just this like companion and you know, like it's
Speaker 1: basically like this dog is a therapy dog for the cheetah,
Speaker 1: and the dog is more than happy to get love
Speaker 1: and attention from the What's cool is seeing it when
Speaker 1: they're like little babies and they're like both little fuzzballs,
Speaker 1: and it seems like, you know, like dogs with cats,
Speaker 1: dogs um dogs seem more um like protect like more
Speaker 1: kind of protective than cats. Like cats don't come out
Speaker 1: like as as able, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 1: it just seems like dogs have their their stuff together
Speaker 1: when they're puppies. But then the puppies are a little
Speaker 1: more like on the ball, yeah, than kittens. But then
Speaker 1: when they grow up, this cheetah is like so much
Speaker 1: bigger and more intimidating looking than the dog, but they
Speaker 1: have each other's back because they love each other, and
Speaker 1: the dog has no ego about it. Well, the cheetah
Speaker 1: probably still looks up to the dog, like knowing cheetah personalities,
Speaker 1: like even though the cheetah is like bigger than the
Speaker 1: doge was like or where do we go big brother
Speaker 1: or big sisters that uh yeah, And apparently like these
Speaker 1: cheetahs form these really strong bonds with these dogs such
Speaker 1: that like you can't you can't just like put any
Speaker 1: dog in with the cheetah. You can introduce, like an
Speaker 1: old dog to a young cheetah, like the dog is
Speaker 1: often willing to make friends with, like a young cheetah,
Speaker 1: but an old cheetah, like, you can't tossing a dog
Speaker 1: that's the cheetah doesn't like would be no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they'll be scared of they'll be scared of the dog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll be they'll be fearful. So afraid of a dog.
Speaker 1: I don't understand. Cheetahs are so Cheetahs live these very
Speaker 1: harsh lives, and they're very skittish and they have to
Speaker 1: compete with lions and hyenas and a lot, like their
Speaker 1: cubs are often killed by hyenas. He's a um which
Speaker 1: are not actually dogs, but like these um you know,
Speaker 1: dog like yeah, dog like, and so they you know,
Speaker 1: when they see another animal that is potentially a predator
Speaker 1: that which you know, yeah, a Golden retriever or whatever,
Speaker 1: right like like, well, if I'm a predator, then just
Speaker 1: called Paris walls, not pride. But yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: not that I'm not saying like a cheetah couldn't harm
Speaker 1: a dog may be able to, but cheetahs are easily intimidated.
Speaker 1: They are they're very fearful animals, even though they are predators.
Speaker 1: They will go after after prey animals. They don't cotitions
Speaker 1: exactly there. But so that's lovely. They need emotional support dogs.
Speaker 1: That's sweet that they you know, they have their bonds
Speaker 1: means something basically like all these dog jobs show like
Speaker 1: tapping into the best part of a dog's nature, like
Speaker 1: their sweetness, their intelligence, and companionship. They're like gentleness are
Speaker 1: not only incredibly useful for people and like their animals,
Speaker 1: but it's also something that the dogs enjoy doing, like
Speaker 1: they you know, being friends with a child at a hospital,
Speaker 1: or being friends with a colony of little penguins and
Speaker 1: getting love and and getting positive attention for being loving,
Speaker 1: like these are all wonderful things. So like there are
Speaker 1: ways that dogs can you know, have this role to
Speaker 1: play in society that's so positive and so incredible, and
Speaker 1: it's just I don't know, I think that is that
Speaker 1: should be cherished and any time like a dog is
Speaker 1: used for violence and a dog is you know, it's
Speaker 1: like you know you are you are a weapon. That's
Speaker 1: just it's so wrong. Yeah, well I agree. Um No,
Speaker 1: I definitely do into heaven. Get those dogs into heaven. Um.
Speaker 1: I really love dogs, I think. Um, I am an atheist,
Speaker 1: so I don't believe in souls, but I feel like
Speaker 1: my dog was part of mine. Um So, I just
Speaker 1: feel like they have so much to offer. They're just
Speaker 1: these pure little creatures. Um, and I do. I just
Speaker 1: want to refocus on the victims of the violence, you know,
Speaker 1: like I beyond the animals, Like just we we are
Speaker 1: more aware than ever of how awful the system is
Speaker 1: and how we want to remove these pieces of architecture
Speaker 1: that have um systematically oppressed people first and tortured and
Speaker 1: killed people for so long. Um. This is uh, this
Speaker 1: is another like a huge risk factor. Um. That's that's
Speaker 1: hurting minorities, black people especially. Um. So yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: so much, thank you joining me today. Um and thank
Speaker 1: you to Joel as well. UM. So yeah, do you
Speaker 1: have anything to plug? Yes, So, a couple of things.
Speaker 1: I am working on volunteer engineering a low cost ventilator
Speaker 1: for developing countries. Um. It's open source, which is incredible.
Speaker 1: And we are respiro works, so r E s p
Speaker 1: I r A works everywhere. Um, we're like Respira dot
Speaker 1: works is our our website and you can do slash
Speaker 1: donate if you'd like to donate because we are a
Speaker 1: nonprofit and it's just a bunch of volunteers. Were like
Speaker 1: applying for grants and stuff. But that's going towards the
Speaker 1: ventilator itself and getting it out there. UM. I also
Speaker 1: have started a mailing list and it's got uh. I
Speaker 1: sent it out twice a week. It's got action items
Speaker 1: events like today's the or this is Monday. I don't
Speaker 1: know when this is going out, but there's like a
Speaker 1: budget city council meeting stuff like that. UM. Things to
Speaker 1: people to call to demand justice, petitions to sign, go
Speaker 1: fund me, these places to donate, black businesses to support
Speaker 1: black abolitionists, Instagrams to follow. Um. You know, like we
Speaker 1: have a book club, we have a movie club. Um,
Speaker 1: just to educate ourselves to unlearn the terrible, terrible teaching
Speaker 1: of history that we learned. UM. And so yeah, so
Speaker 1: d m me or email me. I'm Paula V. Ganlin.
Speaker 1: P A l l A v I g u n
Speaker 1: A l a n. That's Paula Vignal in everywhere. That's
Speaker 1: my Instagram, my Twitter, my Facebook, my TikTok. I'm on there.
Speaker 1: That's I don't know how to make that activist. I'm
Speaker 1: figuring that out, but but yeah, you can d M
Speaker 1: me or email me Polo viganol in Comedy at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com to get on this mailing list or the
Speaker 1: the The link to the drive is in my bios.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and I think we'll also probably put that
Speaker 1: in the footnotes too. Yeah. Yeah, And you can find
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at Creature feat Pod. That's f e
Speaker 1: a T, not f e e T. That's something very different.
Speaker 1: On Instagram creature feature pod. Um. I am Katie Golden
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and you know, I just my Katie thoughts
Speaker 1: on there. Um And as always, I am also pro
Speaker 1: bird writes where I you know, I make the case
Speaker 1: that birds should be in charge of stuff. And I'm
Speaker 1: certainly a human being and not a bunch of birds
Speaker 1: in a lady suit. That would be that'd be weird.
Speaker 1: I think you, I think you lost a feather. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's not that's that's from a pillow, that's from
Speaker 1: a pillows nothing. Thank you to the Space Classics for
Speaker 1: their super awesome song ex Alumina. Creature features a production
Speaker 1: of I heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one
Speaker 1: you just heard, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: diheart Radio website, or hey, guess what wherever you're listening
Speaker 1: to it on right now? You know, like clearly you've
Speaker 1: got something that you're listening to some platform you can
Speaker 1: use that too, or anything, just anywhere, you know. Thank
Speaker 1: you guys so much for listening, and I will see
Speaker 1: you next Wednesday