Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 118: What Did Your Dog Name You? | Ear Biscuits Ep. 118
Episode Date: October 30, 2017Rhett & Link are going back down the rabbit hole to discuss what dogs call their owners, pet ownership, and why Link is so okay with dog poop in the house on this week's Ear Biscuits. Follow This Is ...Mythical: Facebook:Â http://facebook.com/ThisIsMythical Instagram:Â http://instagram.com/ThisIsMythical Twitter:Â http://twitter.com/ThisIsMythical Other Mythical Channels: Good Mythical Morning:Â https://www.youtube.com/user/rhettandlink2 Good Mythical MORE:Â https://youtube.com/user/rhettandlink3 Rhett & Link:Â https://youtube.com/rhettandlink Hosted By: Rhett & Link Executive Producer: Stevie Wynne Levine Managing Producer: Cody D'Ambrosio Production Manager: Jacob Moncrief Technical Director: Meggie Malloy Editor: Meggie Malloy & Ty Schmieder Graphics: Matthew Dwyer Set Design/Construction: Cassie Cobb Content Manager: Becca Canote Logo Design: Carra Sykes To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This, this, this, this is Mythical.
Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Link.
And I'm Rhett.
This week at the round table of dim lighting,
we are going down the rabbit hole.
Again. Once again.
Yes, right here on this white envelope
that I can't read what's in the note card underneath.
There is a sealed topic that will start us
on a conversation that will lead who knows where
because we don't even know where it starts.
Well, it's in here but we don't know what it is.
Somebody pointed out that on social media,
you know, I'm not much of a social media guy.
That's an inside joke, so I'm not even gonna explain it.
Keep it inside.
Yeah, just between you and me.
And just between you and me,
it's not that great of a joke.
It's not even that great of a joke.
It just happened.
You don't wanna know it.
I know you're frustrated.
I heard somebody say, "' isn't it a rabbit trail?
Well, that's a good question,
and the good answer is no.
But what's the difference between a rabbit trail
and a rabbit hole?
A rabbit trail.
You gotta go down the rabbit trail to get to rabbit hole.
I don't waste our time with that.
A rabbit trail is when you're talking about one thing
and then you get sidetracked by talking about another thing,
which is clearly not what we're gonna be doing today.
Right, so the distinction is. That was a joke, that's exactly what we're gonna be doing today. Right, so the distinction is-
That was a joke, that's exactly what we're doing today.
No, no, no, no, no,
I thought you were actually setting up a good point.
I know you're not a big social media guy,
but just stay, I'm gonna keep using it, just stay with me.
It's becoming an inside joke for all of us,
even though you don't know how it originated.
Now you're in on it.
Can I just say that I sent a message
just to an old friend asking for his email
and I sent it through a social media service.
Tell the whole story.
I can't, I don't wanna tell the whole story
because I don't know how it's gonna end yet.
Well, no, but you can tell the context that.
No, because if you give any context at all,
then they'll know that it's one of those,
because then we're gonna say their name.
You know what I'm saying?
Like there's another place that's happening
where their names are being said, so I don't.
Even I'm confused now, just keep going.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
His response to, can I have your email address,
was I'm not a big social media guy.
Meaning.
But I just, I reached out on social media.
I don't understand.
He thinks I'm gonna go one layer deeper
into the social media?
Email is one layer back, further away.
Isn't it?
Yes.
So a rabbit trail is when you're talking about one thing
and you get distracted.
And you get diverted and you follow it.
A rabbit hole.
Hole is deeper into the same thing.
An Alice in Wonderland, people.
It's a direct allusion to Alice in Wonderland.
I don't wanna say. Right?
Yeah, follow the white rabbit.
I don't want to say that the rabbit hole
doesn't have a rabbit trail because I do think
the rabbit hole can go anywhere.
In other words, there might be a fork in the rabbit hole
that we take aside.
And that would be a rabbit hole trail.
Yeah, that's less catchy. Could call it a rabbit troll. But that would be a rabbit hole trail. Yeah, that's less catchy.
Could call it a rabbit troll.
But that would be confusing
because people think it was some creature.
Right, especially because of the Alice in Wonderland thing.
And that's all alluding to cocaine, by the way.
You're one of those guys that thinks
that all great children's entertainment
is just comes from people who were high at the time.
If you play the latest John Mayer album
in sync with Alice in Wonderland,
your mind will be blown.
You'll fall asleep.
I like that new John Mayer album.
No, I love it, man.
But it's so soothing.
John Mayer, he's-
We are big fans of John Mayer.
I'm fans of the new John Mayer,
but he's like,
back when my body was his wonderland, I liked him.
And then all of a sudden, I was like,
no, that's when he sucked, guys.
You gotta understand, John Mayer came into his own
when he went a little bit country
and a little bit rock and roll.
Now I'm sure.
And if you disagree with it, you're objectively wrong.
Have we established that?
I don't know him personally.
I don't know anything about him personally.
I have a feeling.
I like him.
That if you know stuff about him personally,
you might be like, well, you shouldn't like John Mayer
because of X, Y, and Z reasons.
Because he's an a-hole, right?
But, and I don't even know that.
All I know is that I love his latest music
and I also see his tweets
and I really like his philosophical tweets.
Yeah, he came up with an idea about everyone on hold
speaking to one another was like his most recent viral tweet
at the time of this recording.
Right.
But then he followed it up with,
he got a little anxious because he followed it up
with a tweet about how there should be some sort of
light irritant in face wash so you would know that you had washed
your face in case you forgot.
And people are like, you should have left this one
as a draft.
Well he had a series of Twitter drafts
and they're referring to that because he would say,
you know what, I'm gonna tweet all of my drafts
that I never sent and those were funny because
Oh that was smart.
They were contextualized as I've decided
not to tweet these.
Unless you just found one on its own,
which is what happened to me.
So again, I mentioned John Mayer being in Zombievers.
Yeah.
And now I'm mentioning him again and open invitation
for John Mayer to come on Ear Biscuits.
Oh, anytime, any day of the week.
Bring your guitar, man, or just.
Don't intimidate us.
Here's what, I want John Mayer to come on our show,
but I want him to just play the mouth guitar.
Okay, I can accept that,
because we could probably hang with him.
Both of us together.
I play the mouth trumpet, he plays the mouth guitar,
and you just take it in like watching a tennis match.
Take it in my mouth?
No, what?
What is your problem?
You're a jerk, man.
You said mouth twice and you said you just sit there
and take it in and my mouth was ready for my instrument.
So if you're not a social media person,
that means you've got code for I don't have an email.
I'm not much of a social media guy.
So I don't.
Is that where we were going or do I need to,
I need to go back out of this rabbit trail
so we can talk about the rabbit hole again.
The rabbit hole can be whatever we want it to be, man.
But we're gonna stick with rabbit hole
because that's what we started with.
Might I just say that I'm very full right now,
I'm on a sugar high.
At the time of recording this, I am still 39.
Just say right now.
No, I wanna say at the time of this recording
because I like to put historical markers on things.
That's what I appreciate when people do that.
Is that coin you've been placing on things?
Around the studio? Yeah. It's like, what's that coin? It been placing on things? Around the studio?
Yeah.
It's like, what's that coin?
It's a historical marker.
That's a stupid joke.
Thank you for going along with it.
Thank you for laughing at that joke.
I'm still 39, I'll be 40 tomorrow.
And Link and I also went out.
I will cease talking to you until I too turn 40 in June.
You got a while.
Link and I went out to our steak dinner
that we promised that we would do in the last chapter
of the Book of Mythicality, Stop and Celebrate.
We said we would stop and celebrate when we finished
the book, we would go have a steak dinner.
There would be hollandaise.
And the interesting thing is, is when we sat down,
that we told the waiter, oh, we're gonna need
some hollandaise, and he said, there will be hollandaise.
Which is exactly what we wrote in the book.
Did we write it?
I think I may have edited that out.
I think at one point,
I think it said there will be hollandaise,
but then when you read it earlier today,
he didn't say there will be hollandaise.
We edited it out.
But we did talk about how there would be
no hollandaise spilled on the book,
but then you purposely spilled hollandaise on the book.
Right on your own face.
It looked like I was eating it.
But then, so, oh, and the guy said,
because it was my birthday, first of all,
thanks for telling them that it was my birthday,
they printed my name on the menu.
No, they do that for all the menus.
If you go to Morton's Steakhouse in Burbank,
But it said happy birthday.
Anytime you hear it, it says happy birthday Rhett,
because odds are a Rhett's gonna stroll in
and it's gonna be his birthday.
And the guy said, given that it's your birthday,
would you like a dessert?
And of course, I never say no to that.
I mean, I'm not a big social media guy, but I'm a big,
I'm a big dessert guy.
So I had the key lime pie, Link had a bite of it
and said that it was too tart for him.
It's not surprising at all.
It was better than lemon pie, which is horrible.
Yeah, I actually like that as well.
So it's not, I didn't say anything with that statement.
And then.
I left no historical marker on that statement.
And then I got here to the office
and they had a cake for me because it's my birthday,
which I should've thought about
because we're traveling tomorrow.
Well there was a general slack this morning
that also said, hey guys, 3.30,
we're all gonna celebrate Darren's birthday
and Rhett's birthday a day early.
Get ready for that.
Don't eat any key lime pie at the steakhouse.
I'm so selfless that those kind of statements just,
I forgot it's my birthday tomorrow.
I don't think about myself at all.
Nope.
I totally agree with that.
So when I saw everybody gathered,
and you know, it took a few moments for me to realize
that I was even a part of it.
That the assembly was at least half for me.
But I saw the wood cake.
You didn't. I knew that was mine though.
Oh, the wood cake?
I didn't even get close to it.
I took a picture of it, put it on my,
I'm not a big social media guy,
but I did put it on my Instagram. After a bite of that key lime pie, I couldn't go get close to it. I took a picture of it, put it on my, I'm not a big social media guy, but I did put it on my Instagram.
After a bite of that key lime pie,
I couldn't go near your wood cake.
I didn't even get to see it.
But I ate it, but it was pure indulgence.
I was in the back of the crowd.
I was that guy moping back there
thinking about when it was gonna be my birthday.
But the key lime pie alone was pure indulgence,
but then the second dessert on top of it.
Ridiculous indulgence.
By the way, my wife is the one that advised them on this.
Was it made out of wood?
No, it had a wood top, but it was just,
it was a decoration.
It just looked like a tree.
Was it edible or is it that fondant stuff
that losers put on cakes when they wanna cover up
the fact that it doesn't taste good.
I don't think that you understand.
It looked like this.
It looked like a tree had been cut.
It's like a cross section of a tree.
Would you, what?
And it had a wood joke.
Would you guess Rhett's 40?
That is hilarious.
And then it was a red velvet cake
and cream cheese icing
and then ice cream cake.
Oh no they didn't.
It was so good.
It's your favorite.
It is.
I wonder how they knew that, I wonder who they asked.
Well that's what I started with when I said
my wife is the one who told them.
I was trying to take credit for it.
I had no part in it.
What should be in it.
No part in it.
So anyway, well.
Didn't even see it.
All that to say that I could fall asleep at any moment
when I come down off this sugar high.
If I get quiet or introspective, don't worry about me.
I'm about to turn 40.
You typically get introspective when you're dozing off.
I'm saying when I get quiet,
you can just assume that I'm being introspective.
Put it back on the timer so we'll know
how long we have to torture these people.
Oh, don't sell out the inside information.
We time these things, guys,
so we know that we're not talking for too short or too long.
Man, I'm tired too.
I'm sorry I made it contagious.
I didn't even eat any of the cake, Dan.
I just called you Dan.
But it's okay, Charlie.
What a weird podcast already. the cake, Dan. I just called you Dan. But it's okay, Charlie. You've got.
What a weird podcast already.
You've got, which is technically your name, by the way,
so it wasn't even weird.
Well, calling you Dan is kind of odd.
Yeah, should've called you Ron.
From now on, I'm gonna call you Dan.
That's fine, let's get ready to go down this rabbit hole,
but first, let's take a moment to shout out our sponsors.
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It's just like a little sweet thing of goodness, man.
If you're into pretzels, they got honey Dijon pretzels.
Sourdough cheddar pretzels sound really good. I'd like to try those Kung Pao pretzels. Kung Pao pretzels. They got honey Dijon pretzels. Sourdough cheddar pretzels sound really good.
I'd like to try those Kung Pao pretzels.
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I just like saying that.
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Now on with the biscuit.
We ready to open this up?
Brace yourself, kids. We're going down the rabbit hole.
Bend over rabbit, we're coming in.
Is this, oh gosh.
Is this still a question?
That's not how it works.
It's a place where a rabbit lives.
Yeah, I don't even know what.
The prompt was what are you thinking about right now?
Okay.
So it could be anything.
you thinking about right now? Okay.
So it could be anything.
Talon Hanson asks,
what did my dog name me?
Oh snap.
I got a dog.
What did my dog name me?
It's in my lap right now.
You know, it's like, I forgot about your dog.
Look at her, she just sits there.
My dog does not just sit there.
Just listen, this is for the audio people.
She's sniffing the mic.
Oh, she just, she licked the inside of my mouth.
I didn't think I'd ever become that guy.
But it's, yeah, but I thought that you, Neil, you didn't like the dog ever become that guy. But I thought that you, Niels,
you didn't like the dog licking on the face.
I don't like it, but I secretly feel loved by it.
Us McLaughlins, man, we make out with Barbara all the time.
It's so gross.
It's so gross.
She's bored of this thing.
But you can look at her face.
Sometimes she'll be looking at me,
and I'm like, what are you thinking?
I'm called. No, I've been like, what are you thinking I'm called?
No, I've been like, what are you thinking?
But I've never thought, I wonder what she calls me.
But didn't the movie Up answer this question?
Because of the device?
Yeah man, the device.
That was a Pixar movie, that was make believe.
You know, I've made out with your dog.
That's like in secret?
No, I mean like today.
You wanna do it right now?
I'll let her lick my face, I don't care.
Well, do you wanna make out with my dog?
I mean, I don't give tongue back,
if that's what you're asking.
But I accept tongue from dogs.
Listen, Dan. Not into the mouth.
Dan, do not ever make out with my dog
unless I'm watching again.
It's like, how weird do you wanna make this?
I'm just saying, first of all, people are like,
it's gross and it's dirty, but dogs used to lick wounds
back when they did things like put leeches on people.
Oh, you mean humans' wounds.
Yeah.
You're talking about historically.
When someone would get hurt,
they'd put a dog on the wound to lick it?
I seem to think that that could be the case.
Again, we're not allowed to lick anything up
until the end of the podcast,
so no internet references because.
Well, I didn't know that was a rule.
I know. But last time,
it worked so well.
Okay.
Because if a dog has a wound, they lick it.
Hence, you know, the saying, a dog licks its wounds.
I don't.
I think that's a- Also a dog returns
to its own vomit, which is also true
and should make me not want to make out with them.
But what I'm saying is that the dog wants,
the dog wants to lick my face.
It is a natural thing that the dog wants to do.
That's because the smells coming out of it are food-like.
Well, that may be part of it but it's also,
as I've been told, a form of the dog
is kind of submitting to you, is licking your face.
So the dog is like, that's what they would do to,
you're like the pack leader, you know?
All the humans can be in the family.
The dog is subordinate to all the humans.
Right, when I go up to Jade's food, she backs away.
Like she literally backs away, like tail first,
in submission.
And sometimes I'm like
filling her bowl with food and then when I leave,
she'll come back up and start to eat it
but she submits to my authority to eat the food first
which in desperate situations, I do partake.
And then she'll come back in so yeah,
she definitely knows that I'm in charge
but that doesn't keep her from sometimes snapping.
Cause she's- At you?
Even at me, yeah.
Does Jade ever do like- Like in the bed.
Like if she gets comfortable anywhere,
not just in the bed, but she does sleep in the bed
with me and Christy most of the time,
I would say eight out of 10 nights.
And then the other two nights she might sleep
with one of the other kids.
If she gets in that nestled in a perfect spot
that she wants to be in, and then if it's like,
well I wanna be in that spot, well she gets mad.
It's like.
It's like that's exactly the noise she makes.
Does she have a mad play mode?
Because like, what Barbara will do is,
I can get Barbara so worked up where she's just growling
and going nuts and she looks like a rabid, vicious dog.
By the way, there's an L in growling.
But she is playing with me.
Yeah.
Like she bites me but it's super soft
and like it's all part of a game.
Like, she looks crazy, she's making crazy noises,
but we're just playing, and I'm like,
kinda like poking her in the stomach and stuff, and she,
Are you making growling noises too?
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah?
But she would never actually bite me.
And then as soon as I like stop, she knows,
okay, that kind of playtime is over now.
But she's not actually mad.
I feel like if Jade got to that point,
Jade would be actually biting.
Well, with Barbara, when we bring them both to the office,
they do it together.
They're intensely growling
and at each other's throats, literally.
And Barbara's, I mean, a third the size of, well.
A third bigger.
One third bigger than Jade, but she's more submissive.
Like she'll roll over.
Yeah.
Put her, cause she's, I don't know.
It's interesting why that's the dynamic.
Jade is much more persnickety.
I think it's just the breed.
Breed type thing.
But they both will like nod each other's necks,
which is the kill zone.
But they're just playing because no one has been killed.
She does that occasionally with me,
but we don't play that way that often.
I don't do it that often either.
I mean, Jade is much more like a cat.
Like she just wants to lay in a spot.
And then occasionally, I'll open the front door
and she'll dart out onto the front lawn
and then she'll just run around in circles
and it's just like getting out all this like tension.
And then she'll like sniff something and then she'll pee
and then she'll dart back in the house
and she'll find a spot and she'll growl
if you try to move her.
Barbara just wants to be
on you, whoever you are.
It doesn't have to be a family member,
it could be somebody who just came over.
Yeah. Like if you lay down,
she comes up, she gets on top of you
and puts her feet, one foot on each side of your face
and then just starts licking your face.
And then when she stops licking your face,
she just puts her head on your face
and just waits until you get her off of it.
She's very sweet.
Jade is not.
And that's what she wants in the morning.
Like she sleeps at the foot of the bed,
in the bed, yes, in the bed.
Under the covers?
No.
And-
Jade will sleep under the covers.
As soon as you like, you'll wake up
and kind of like roll over and she knows,
oh, human's awake, and next thing you know,
she's just, she's in that position.
I know, you've talked about this before
and you talked about how you would do your stretches
and she would perch on you and it made me cry, remember?
I'm trying to make you cry again.
Don't make me cry again.
We've already talked about this.
But the problem with Jade that we're having
is we're coming to grips with the fact that,
we didn't know this, but as a breed,
I was about to say Weimaraners,
but she's not a Weimaraner.
Yeah, she's not anything close to that.
What is she, a Wienerschnitzel?
She's a Datsun. A Datsun.
A miniature Datsun.
She's a long-haired miniature Datsun mixed with a Papillon.
Of course, the person we adopted her from
lied about what she was and said she was purebred.
Same thing for us.
And I think we talked about that too,
but what we discovered is that the Dotson part of her DNA
dictates that she is very difficult to house break
or house train or whatever you call it, potty break?
Use the bathroom outside.
They're notorious for this and of course,
you know, we write about this in the book
about how we picked Jade and the mistakes we made.
I don't regret picking Jade.
I mean, all of this is in the chapter of the book
so I'd rather not rehash that.
I wanna reward those of you who are gonna read that.
But as a side product of how we went about picking the dog
erroneously, I never knew that, oh, this is a big deal.
They like to sneak away and pee and poop other places.
It is a daily battle and it will be with us
the rest of her life to keep her from peeing
and pooping in other places and it drives me nuts.
But. Why don't you just embrace it?
I love her so much.
Why don't you just embrace it?
What do you mean?
Just let pee and poop be everywhere?
Lots of people do that.
I can't be that person.
So I will just, I'll go into a frenzy
of trying to get it up.
Now I like it when she poops in the house.
That's how bad it's gotten.
What?
I would prefer, like, if we could have a talk,
I'm looking at her right now, I'm like,
Jade, I don't care if you poop in the house,
just lay a log anywhere you want.
They're pretty self-contained, they're pretty dry.
After a few seconds, I can just reach down, pick it up,
throw it in the toilet and flush it
like a human turd.
But it's the pee that's the problem.
I mean, you leave a little circle here,
you leave a little circle there,
and once you've left a circle, I understand that
you're compelled to then leave a circle on top
of the circle, you're making Venn diagrams
on all of our rugs and it's unacceptable.
She doesn't look like she cares.
It's freaking unacceptable and we can't get it up.
She doesn't look ashamed at all.
She looks mildly annoyed with you.
Look at me, look at me.
Look at me now, Jade.
Jade, Jade, listen.
That rug that we have in our bedroom,
it's like a sheet, don't kiss me.
She's submissing to you.
Don't make out with my face when I'm reprimanding you.
You can make out with me, you wanna make out with me?
She looks sad.
Okay, play by play, Rhett's coming over to get,
ah, don't kiss the mustache.
I don't care, I like it.
She just licked the inside of my mouth
and then she licked your mustache, dude.
It's self-cleaning. She took care of it in a few seconds before it came to me.
Jade, I love you no matter what,
but it annoys me when you pee in the house.
But you just said you're gonna have to deal with it.
I just say get a yellow carpet and just embrace it.
A yellow carpet with varying colors of yellow
in like a Venn diagram type pattern.
A calico yellow carpet.
Be like, I don't know where she pees.
Somewhere.
You know what? Everywhere.
Just get a white carpet and she'll make that.
But let's dig into this question.
What did my dog name mean?
Now interestingly, the question behind the question
is what's going on inside of a dog's brain.
Right, and like, when I was holding up Jade for that,
you know, the thing I was doing, the bit, right?
Look, she looks, you said she looked,
you personified her reaction in that moment.
Yeah, but she's not annoyed
because I don't believe that they,
I mean, they can be annoyed,
but it isn't the same type of annoyance that,
if she's annoyed, it wouldn't manifest itself on her face
because dogs have not evolved to a place
where they're reading the facial expressions of each other.
That's not how they communicate.
Humans, on the other hand, our faces communicate
very specific things to each other, right?
And monkeys.
Well yeah, but we're taking those facial expressions
and we're projecting them onto the dog,
whereas the dog does not have any point of reference
for understanding other dogs' facial expressions.
So actually, so interesting,
couple of things that I do think apply here.
Yeah.
Domesticated dogs, again,
we can't look anything up on the internet,
so this is like a serious paraphrase,
but domesticated dogs have actually.
Meaning this is BS.
No, it's not BS. Okay.
I'm saying that it's a paraphrase,
so I'm not gonna get it exactly right,
but domesticated dogs, as in Jade, Barbara,
dogs that have been bred by humans,
one of the things that separates them from wolves
is their ability to make and maintain eye contact
with humans.
And I think I'm not wrong in saying this,
that they may be, I mean, obviously,
I think they're the only non-primate mammals
that are capable of that type of connection
with a person.
And then when they don't make eye contact,
that is a sign of submission.
I think I've heard Caesar say that.
I'm paraphrasing, of course.
Right, but what I'm saying is they don't make eye contact
with each other.
They don't make eye contact with each other,
they make eye contact with humans.
They make nose to butt contact.
They have no reason, they're relying on a lot
of different things, mostly smell.
Yeah. And then maybe like
overall body language or something,
but they're not, and obviously, you know, they hear things and growling and that kind of thing
and biting and that.
You cannot say the word growl, can you?
Growling, but that doesn't,
they don't look at each other and think,
oh, he has a mean look on his face and his eyes.
They don't talk to each other in that way.
It's funny because last night we were in bed
and Christy goes,
Jay just seems depressed lately.
Now I think a dog can be depressed.
I certainly, I know that to be true.
But you're not gonna find that on the dog's face.
You're just not gonna look at the dog's face
and know that because she looks sad
but sometimes if her nose is down and she's looking up,
it's just the sheer shape of her face makes her look sad.
And that's what I love about her.
And sometimes you'll see a dog that's smiling.
Yeah, that's.
But Barbara does this thing where.
That's like saying a jack-o'-lantern's happy.
She's got all this hair right around her.
She's basically got like a beard.
And she will lie down on the bed,
and then like the covers will kind of push this up,
and then she'll turn to me and she's got this,
her hair is going like this,
and it looks like a giant smile.
But she's not smiling, even when the dog smiles,
and you see the corners of the, it doesn't,
again, they haven't, there's nothing genetically happening
that is contributing to a smile,
that you're just totally perceiving that.
But that doesn't mean there can't be some,
like, you know, it's body language
or general disposition to know that the dog is depressed.
Like when I, last night when I got home,
instead of going in the front door,
I heard her barking around the side
where the trash cans are,
where she is supposed to poop and pee.
And so I snuck around there and I went through the gate
and I just busted through the gate and I was like
and I just went nuts and she freaked out.
Hold on, but for what reason?
To freak her out.
She freaked out because it was kind of dark over there
and she's like running around.
Hold on, you realize that this is counterproductive
to trying to get her to go outside and relax
and use the bathroom.
I didn't think about that.
She's finally in the one space.
She may have been getting ready to release it
and you're like no, no, no, no, no.
All she hears is that no, this is not supposed to happen.
So you just set yourself back months.
That's a good point.
Don't do that again.
That is a good point. So anyway, that again. That is a good point.
So anyway, she's freaking out.
And then I'm like, hey, it's me.
And then she realized it was me.
And like the tail went up and started wagging
and she comes up to me and she does this dance
on her hind legs like one of those dogs
that you like have to like put in the circus for years.
You don't have to put them in the circus.
Well, they have to be in the circus for years. You don't have to put them in the circus. Well, they have to be in the circus for years
to learn how to do that.
I mean, it is a skill to enslave a dog to that level.
My dog does it naturally.
I'm pretty proud of that.
And, but I was interpreting her body language
as acceptance, unacceptable, unconditional love,
and thorough acceptance and relief
that I wasn't a bear or a trash monster.
And so she went inside and pooped.
She did.
To reward you.
Yeah, I don't punish her for,
if I don't catch her in the act, we don't punish her,
we've read everything we need to read
about how to deal with it and I don't wanna get in the act. We don't punish her, we've read everything we need to read about how to deal with it and I don't wanna get into
the potty training.
But.
You only use positive reinforcement.
Yeah, yeah so.
We do the same thing.
We do not.
Not convinced that it works but that's what I try.
We do not shame or in any way abuse
the most valuable member of our family.
You just scare the dog.
Well she knew it was just a prank.
She knew it was a prank.
I mean, she was like so relieved,
just in the way that you are when you watch a horror movie.
Another fact that we can set on the table
to see if this is gonna help us get to this answer
is there was another recent study
is there was another recent study
where they put dogs into cat scan machines.
MRI? No, that's an MRI.
This is like a brain scan.
Oh, true.
So they basically did a scan of the dog's brain.
First of all, they had to train dogs
to be able to lie still inside of a cat scan machine
and not be freaked out by the noise
and that was a feat in and of itself.
There's gotta be a cat dog scan joke somewhere in there.
Yep, you take some time to figure that out.
I'll be thinking about that.
And what they discovered, well I'm gonna,
so I don't know if you heard me talk about this
or you read it, but they compared rewarding an animal,
a dog, with food, or rewarding a dog with praise
from a person, its owner, and how do you think the dog,
what do you think the difference is?
What's a stronger motivator for dogs?
Food, rewarding with food or rewarding with praise?
I think the heart of a dog has a much greater capacity
than the stomach of a dog.
So I think the biggest factor is is the dog hungry or not?
So you did a little flipper-oony on that?
You started to say one thing and then you came
to the opposite conclusion.
No. Is that on purpose?
No, definitely not.
The heart of a dog is much bigger than the stomach of a dog.
And then you said so it was the food,
which is the opposite of what you were implying.
The food is the limiting factor.
That was not my answer. Okay. That was my rationale to give my answer, which I've yet implying. No, so I'm saying the food is the limiting factor. That was not my answer.
Okay.
That was my rationale to give my answer,
which I've yet to give.
Okay, give your answer.
Which is praise.
Okay, well, it turns out,
now I was thinking, when I started to read this,
I was thinking about Barbara.
Mm-hmm.
Always thinking about Barbara.
Does she love food or praise?
So she loves food.
Like, she loves praise, but if I have,
if it's been established that I have treats,
I can get, you think you got Jay dancing like a circus dog?
I can get Barbara to drive a frickin' golf cart
if I have.
She'd have to go out, you'd get her to go out,
purchase a golf cart, and then drive it back.
No, I had her caddy an entire round of golf
at Hilton Head last summer.
Hilton Head, they don't allow you to have
flashy billboards.
It's a really classy place.
But you can have dog caddies.
It was amazing.
There's a cat doggy caddy joke somewhere in there.
The first nine holes, I had to tell her which club I needed.
Right, right.
And then she would bring it.
But you'd give her a treat when you told her the club.
I had to keep giving her treats.
The second nine holes, she measured the distance
and had the club waiting.
And did you have to still give treats?
Yes.
Right.
The moment that I run out of treats. She's swimming in the pond. On the back nine. On the back waiting. And did you have to still give treats? Yes. Right. The moment that I run out of treats.
She's swimming in the pond.
On the back nine. On the back nine.
Hole 15, par five, dog leg left.
Oh, dog leg.
Dog leg left, she dog leg right?
We got a nice seven mile per hour,
left to right wind.
So I'm like, I'm gonna play a little draw,
but it's gonna sort of, the draw will be taken off
because of the left to right wind.
Right.
And it'll just land nicely on the other side
of that sand trap.
Barbara was in complete agreement with this.
Yeah.
But she says, with that wind,
you may wanna use a three-wood instead of a driver.
So I went with the three-wood,
but then I ran out of treats.
And then I didn't know whether or not I should go
for the green on the second shot,
or if I should lay up.
And where was she?
By that point, because I didn't have any food,
she was completely acting like a dog.
She was licking herself.
She was just finding different weird stuff.
Was she humping anything?
Humping things left and right.
Doesn't even have a penis and she's still humping.
Just she's seen other dogs hump.
Right.
Really going deep with this one.
So what club did you choose and what happened?
I went for it and I landed in the water.
You blew it.
Yeah, I should have laid up.
No, you should have brought more treats.
Yeah, I double bogeyed basically out
the rest of the back nine.
Now, is she interested in giving it a swing?
No, she's just interested in giving me advice.
She knows her role.
Yeah, so as I was saying, very motivated by food.
Did you ever praise her?
When you ran out of treats were you like,
good advice, girl.
Yeah, it doesn't work.
That's my point.
She does not respond.
So she poops outside
and we actually had a trainer come. You remember this.
I paid to have this woman show up once a week
for a couple of months.
To like, and it was one of those things
where it's just like everything she told me,
I was like, that seems so obvious,
but the fact that you're here telling me this
makes it more likely that we'll actually enact something.
Did you pay her in treats, by the way?
No, she insisted on cash.
Dang.
And a lot of it, man.
Southern California dog trainers,
that's like a doctor in North Carolina.
You should've got a prenup.
So, Barbara is so attuned to the food
that she comes in after pooping and if I'm like,
good girl, she's got this look on her face
like she's looking at my hands and she's like
trying to get an angle on my hands
because she's just like, if you don't have a treat,
I don't care.
And we're talking about a dog that loves people so much.
So anyway.
But she loves that treat.
That was the anecdotal evidence that I was bringing
to this particular study.
So when I actually heard that.
And was this a web survey?
I can't remember.
No, it was a scientific study.
This wasn't like one of those like click here
to decide which Harry Potter character you are.
Typically, they don't have to use the,
they wouldn't actually use a cat scanning machine
in a web survey.
I remember now.
This was doctors and scientists.
This is a study you read.
So anyway, you stole my thunder a little bit
because you guessed praise,
but it's actually they're even,
which is, I think for the average person,
that was a surprise that dogs would respond to praise
just as much as they respond to food.
Because a lot of times, because I think most people
are just like, well, my dog only loves me
because I am the one that feeds it.
And I think a lot of people would say that about cats.
And that may be true about cats.
I don't know nothing about cats.
But I'm not gonna make any statements about cats
other than I do not like them.
Hate them, actually.
But I do know that a lot of people are like,
cats would eat you if they could, right?
Might be true, I don't know.
If their jaw would unhinge like a boa.
But there are definitely cases of.
Imagine coming home and seeing an unhinged jaw
of your house cat wrapped around, I don't know, a toddler.
Oh gosh, Link.
That'd be scary, dream about that tonight.
I'm not gonna dream about that.
I'm gonna do everything I can to wipe that image
from my brain for the rest of the day.
Fine, a snake, a cat eating a snake.
But there are cases of dogs.
Whole.
Taking care of their owners
after they die.
Well, there's not much to take care of.
No, like staying by, like first of all,
there's cases of dogs taking care of a person who's sick
and can't get up, like bringing them things,
but there's also cases of dogs staying next to their owner
that has died until someone comes to help.
And these dogs are deprived of water and food,
but they don't start eating the person.
I'm no scientist, but I do believe a cat would eat a person.
You know, I have to think that about cats.
But it turns out that it is evenly praised.
Nick is over there nodding, but you're a dog person.
Yeah, so I totally think a cat would eat you.
Yeah, exactly.
You own a dog, so you're like, uh-huh, that cat.
But also. We're all biased.
No, no, but I think that, again, scientifically,
wouldn't you say that cats
have been less domesticated than dogs?
I mean, a cat, if you have a cat,
with the exception of maybe just a few breeds, you don't have to keep it inside. I mean, like, if you have a cat with the exception of maybe just a few breeds,
you don't have to keep it inside. I mean, like if you just let it go off,
it'll bring birds and fish and squirrels.
But if I let Barbara outside, Barbara would be eaten
within the first 12 hours by some other animal.
She's not all the-
And there are breeds of dogs
that would bring back all types of animals too.
But I'm saying there's certain breeds.
You're saying more cats are more likely as a whole
to be like savage hunters.
You have to get a certain breed of dog to make that happen.
And also, cats don't respond nearly as much to humans.
Anything.
You don't have cats like,
I'm sure there are people who do cat tricks,
like sitting and doing,
but they can't do nearly what dogs do
because the connection is not nearly as great.
And cats don't come up to you and look,
do you have any food, do you have any food?
I love you.
It just doesn't happen.
Some people prefer that, it's fine.
I'm sure there are cats that are very dog-like.
My cat loves me.
I'm getting really nervous
about taking a hard line on cats.
How did you even get into cats, man?
Man, screw cats. I just wanna talk about,
you just took a really hard line on cats again.
Screw us talking about cats,
because we're stupid. Let's talk about dogs.
So dogs. We ain't got no business
talking about cats.
So basically I've said all this to get to two points
that I wanna consider so we can answer this question
definitively, scientifically.
Holistically and permanently.
You've got the fact that they can make eye contact
with people so there's a connection with people
but also that they respond to praise
from their human owners.
Now I do acknowledge that there are some people
who are uncomfortable with that word.
But you gotta- Human?
No, human owners.
You gotta suggest, you gotta come up with something.
If you're gonna have a problem with using the term owner
for someone who takes care of a dog,
you gotta, it's not friend, is it?
It's not mom.
You gotta come up with something.
Before you start tearing something down,
it's a long-held tradition, you gotta have something,
you gotta replace it with something, okay?
That's my note for the people who don't wanna be called
owners of dogs.
What about furpanion?
There's actually a whole movement of people
who don't believe furpanion, that's good.
Furpanion.
I like that a lot.
There you go, so get off it.
Furpanion, okay.
Yeah, take it back.
Well but you're- You were pretty irate
for no reason. You don't even believe that though.
You just like worked up a lot of ire.
There are people who don't believe
that we should have pets at all.
They think the whole industry of having pets is wrong.
They think that.
Oh gosh, I'm getting scared.
They think having pets.
Man, I live in California.
You know, two couple years now, we gonna be that liberal?
Is, pets.
We gonna be relinquishing Jade to the wild.
We're gonna spend the next three years
training Jade and Barbara to live on their own
as fully realized humans.
But what will happen, now first of all.
So I cannot go on record.
They're gonna be pulling this up.
Now I do believe. 10 years.
If I let Barbara out at Hilton Head,
she'll just get a job as a caddy
and she'll take care of herself.
But anywhere other than Hilton Head,
because they don't allow dogs to caddy anywhere else
as far as I know.
What about Boca Raton?
I haven't been there.
She could do it there. I don't know, it's too humid. Everything's What about Boca Raton? I haven't been there. She could do it there.
I don't know, it's too humid.
Everything's pink in Boca Raton.
But assuming that she doesn't get a job as a caddy,
I think she's gonna get eaten by a coyote.
Oh.
You know?
Certainly.
And so I feel like I'm giving Barbara her best life now.
Sometimes I call Joel Osteen and I'm like, Joel,
how do I give my- So are we getting real liberal
or are we quoting Joel Osteen?
I don't know what's happening.
First of all, Joel, I know you're a listener.
Joel, what you need to do, your next book needs to be
give your dog its best life now.
It could be a collaboration with Caesar.
Forpanion?
And then we introduced the term for pannion.
Yeah, well that's copyrighted, we took care of that
before this came out.
So anyway, where were we going with this?
Oh man, did we just hit the end of a rabbit trail?
No, no, no, we haven't.
No, no, no, no, no, we haven't.
All we gotta do is back up
and go to the main crevice of the hole.
I took a rabbit trail off of the rabbit hole
when I started getting on the people who don't believe
that we should own animals as pets.
Okay, maybe that's a different rabbit hole
for a different time.
I'll say this, to get back to what does Jade call me,
what does Barbara call you in their own mind,
on the ownership tip.
I mean, I do think that Jade, you know,
they're pack animals, you're either the alpha
or you're submissive.
And maybe there's some for panning relationships
where the dog is the alpha in the relationship with the human
and they, you know, your baby,
you do everything that the dog wants
and your life revolves around the dog.
And hey, who am I to judge vocally on this podcast?
But.
I have a loophole on the furpanion thing though.
I'm just saying.
Skinless cat.
Skinless cat. What are you talking about, a skinless cat? Hairum thing, though. I'm just saying. Skinless cat. Skinless cat.
What are you talking about?
Skinless cat.
Hairless cats, man.
Man.
Sorry.
Let me finish my point before you start bringing.
Man, that's just the organs exposed in a cat.
That's gross, man.
That's all the rage.
Have you seen on the west side?
Have you seen the skinless cats that the ladies are carrying around in the purses?
Dan, you've got to quit.
It's basically just a face and organs.
Oh gosh.
That fits in your purse.
You have to have a purse.
It's like a biology demonstration.
There's a doctor in West Hollywood that you go to.
It's an anatomical.
And he breeds it, but it has to be,
the cat has to be taken out of this bag.
Oh gosh.
And put into your purse.
What?
That's how it's made.
Wait, is it like, do you have to reinforce it
with like chicken wire?
I'm sorry I said skinless, it's hairless.
Hairless cats can't be furpanions,
they don't have any fur.
And there are some hairless dogs too, right?
Isn't that a breed?
Hairless cats are cats too, man.
I know that, but are they furpanions?
We'll come back to that.
The name does discriminate against hairless cats.
Yeah, we can't have that.
And skinless cats for that matter.
I mean, I just pictured like a bunch of chicken wire
wrapped around a cat's organs.
Yeah, that's a bad mental picture.
But continue your point. Oh, you wanna replace that mental picture with a cat's organs. Yeah, that's a bad mental picture. But continue your point.
Oh, you wanna replace that mental picture
with a cat eating a toddler?
Go back to that one.
Man, that cat's jaw just really gets unhinged.
I never thought it could get around the head
of that big headed toddler.
We're not talking about this anymore, are we?
You are, but I'm just, I'm kinda letting it die.
Well, the point that I was making was,
in every wolf pack, there's an alpha
and then there's the others.
So the dog wants you to be the alpha.
I mean, they'll fall in line.
I mean, it's just, it's how they work.
It's how they would work in the wild.
You know, so. But sometimes they,
but sometimes they want to be the alpha.
If you don't, that's what Caesar says
that that's one of the big problems.
Sure.
When you don't, when you're not the alpha,
they see themselves as the alpha,
then things get out of hand real fast.
And you gotta fix that.
And it's tough to come back from that.
Caesar can do it with the help of Joel Osteen.
I think that my dog names me Alpha.
I think my name to Jade is Alpha.
Okay, is that your answer?
Right now it is.
I think I have the real answer.
Well, I don't like what your retort implied
about my answer.
Well, I have another answer.
I have an alternative answer.
Okay, yes.
Now, it has been documented as well that dogs,
obviously dogs understand their own names.
And this can be demonstrated,
one of the most entertaining ways
I've ever seen it demonstrated is there's a YouTube video of a pack of dogs at the bottom of a
stairs.
Oh no, I thought you... I'll remind you of the other one, but go ahead.
And it's like a bunch of the same breed of dogs, Border Collies or something,
and there's literally like eight to ten dogs. And they're all standing at the
bottom of the stairs and they all want to come dogs. And they're all standing at the bottom of the stairs
and they all wanna come upstairs.
And then the owner calls them each by name
and they one by one, and it's like Donner, Blitzen,
like as she calls the names.
Santa?
We talking about Santa?
They, one by one, they know their names so well.
And they would, and I venture to say
that they can look
at the other one, that didn't happen in the video as far,
I haven't watched it for that reason.
But in other words, they recognize names.
But you could rewatch it for that reason.
And I'm sure there are cases of dogs knowing that,
oh, she just said Donner, that's my buddy here.
There's actually another video going around
of two dogs and they're trying to get one dog to sit
and the older dog puts his paw on the back of the other dog
and makes him sit so he'll get a treat.
Because he knows what's going on.
He's like, she's telling you to sit, just sit, dummy.
So we can both get a treat?
So they can definitely recognize human language,
but the problem is they don't.
And what about the video, first of all,
what about the video where you were showing me this one,
where the person would say something
and then the dog would run over and put its face in a hole?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It wasn't a hole, was it?
Well, a lot of- What was the word?
A lot of this is, is it, I follow him on Instagram.
Is it Tony Baker?
Is that his name?
That sounds right. Comedian.
And he's kind of known, he's a standup comedian,
but he's known for doing these voiceovers
of these animal videos.
That's why I started following him.
He does a bunch of them.
It's funny.
And so a lot of these kind of come through his feed.
And one of them is this little like Pomeranian
that when you bring out the toe clippers,
like the toenail clippers,
the dog will go into like a house.
First of all, did he make the video or did he rip the video
and then he voiced it over, right?
He doesn't make any of the videos.
Yeah.
But this little Pomeranian goes into a house,
but it will go into whatever it can go,
and it keeps getting smaller and smaller for the video.
Once you hold up the toenail clippers,
it goes to the closest thing that it can hide in.
It'll get in a bag, it'll get like into,
but then by the end it's like a cup
and it's just like sticking its nose into the cup.
Yeah, like a- And that's the way
that it's hiding.
Like a toddler sticking its face into a,
like a cat's mouth.
It's hilarious.
That's a great video to watch,
but that doesn't really support any of the points
that I'm making right now.
But it's funny though.
And my question is,
when do you have time to watch these videos?
Like you showed me the one and it was hilarious.
And like never since then have I been like,
I gotta find that feed, I gotta look at the dogs.
Well I'm not a big social media guy or anything,
but I do have an Instagram account that I go on
and I follow people and so it comes up in the feed
and I watch it.
I do have a problem though, because I'll get into,
I'll just, you know, I do the thing where Twitter,
Instagram, newsfeed, whatever, and I like go through them
a couple of times before I go to bed,
then I go through them again when I wake up go to bed, then I go through them again
when I wake up, it's bad, I'm addicted to my phone
and it's not good.
For a while there, I didn't have my phone next to me,
I was putting it in the bathroom.
That lasted a couple weeks.
That's another conversation.
But let me, I wanna get to this.
But you never told me what you thought Barbara calls you.
Well that's what I'm getting to.
So we know that dogs can recognize names.
And we also know that dogs have the ability
to vocalize things.
They have some sort of language, right?
Awoo!
Now, but that's just mockery at that point.
Awoo!
Or that's just mimicry at that point.
Awoo!
No, but they don't know what they're doing at that point.
They're doing something,
I don't know how you get a dog to do that.
Sure, they could do that in Hilton Head, but.
I peed in your bedroom.
But what happens with, so we talked about this before.
You know how when a wolf or a dog,
but this has been documented more with wolves.
Okay.
When they howl, if you'll notice sometimes you'll
play like a musical instrument or you'll
play music or you'll make your own howling
noise and
a dog will begin to howl
and the dog never hits the same
note as you. And it's not because dogs can't
sing but it's been documented that
they actually purposely hit
different frequencies. So a bunch
of
wolves howling together,
they don't all hit the same note, they hit,
and it's not harmonics, they don't hit harmonies,
but they almost hit like purposely dissonant different notes.
As their own sound signature, I guess.
Yeah, so they have the ability
to do pretty complex vocalizations,
but I don't believe that it's been documented
that they have names for each other.
Now I realize I'm taking the scientific approach here.
But they have the ability-
Because whales do.
Oh yeah, oh whales do, dolphins do.
They name themselves as babies.
Yeah.
Right, which is an interesting,
which sounds like a very Southern California thing
that'll start happening with kids, you know?
Let's let the children name themselves.
So then all kids will be named, ah!
Yeah, exactly, it'll be chaos.
Which is why dolphin society is such a mess right now.
Right, they really gotta, someone needs to step in.
Right.
Yeah.
Too free spirited, those dolphins are too free spirited.
Need more structure, you know?
They gotta have a leader, they gotta have a strong leader,
but they want the kids to be in charge
and that's why they're having so many troubles.
Right, if you want to play golf,
you gotta deal with a runoff.
Got it.
So, I think the definitive answer to this, unfortunately,
is that your dog cannot name you,
but your dog can recognize your name.
And if it's a smart dog, it will recognize your name.
So in other words,
I'm sure we could find a YouTube video of this.
Let's say there's a family, they're standing there,
and you say, Barbara, go to Link.
Barbara, go to Rhett.
And Barbara, if Barbara was smart and trained
would be able to do that.
I've seen this video and it is a dog
who is told to get a specific toy.
Exactly.
And it's a basket full of toys and then they're like,
Gray Wolf, go get the Hambone.
Bring back the Hambone.
Gray Wolf, go get the creepy clown face that squeaks
but no longer squeaks because you damaged it.
He goes and gets the creepy clown face that squeaks
but no longer squeaks because he damaged it.
I've seen this video.
So I think you're onto something.
But the real question is,
Tony Baker didn't voice it over.
Will a dog at some point be able to,
like, because the real question is,
is the dog in its own mind,
like processing something that could be
the equivalent of a name when it thinks of you.
And I would think that the number one identifier
that a dog uses with a person is smell.
Wouldn't you think?
Wouldn't you think that it's a smell signature?
No, because I walked through my front door
and then there's a vestibule, a lobby if you will,
to my home, and then there's another vestibule, a lobby if you will, to my home.
And then there's another door, double door,
that's mostly glass.
So basically when I walk in my front door- This is why you never respond when I come to your house
and knock on the door and ring the doorbell.
Because A, the doorbell does not work
even though you insist that it does.
And B, I knock but I'm knocking on the outside
of the vestibule.
Right. You need to have access.
But you've locked.
To the inner sanctum.
You've locked access to the inner sanctum.
Which I have not given you.
And then I text you, I'm here, I'm here,
and then seven minutes have passed and I'm just a.
Don't have reception.
I'm just a doofus on the, yeah.
Even though you say, well I've got, no, no,
I got reception, I have a special antenna that we built.
We built. That we built, that we bought, that gives I got reception. I have a special antenna that we built. We built.
That we built, that we bought
that gives us perfect reception.
Well that's not working either, man.
So many times I've looked like a strange robber
on your doorstep.
Seven to 10 minutes just sitting there
trying to pick my way in and thinking,
should I just go around the back?
One time I did go around the back.
You scared Jay when she was trying to poop.
Yeah.
You set me back a couple of months.
So anyway, when I come home and I'm standing
in my vestibule, it's basically like I'm in my own,
I'm an exhibit in the zoo.
I can see the whole rest of the house
because the double doors are almost all glass.
Jade can also see me and she goes,
ape crap for me, What can I say?
But I'm that fabulous, but she does not smell me yet.
Oh, she probably does smell you.
She probably does smell you.
Well, I will say this.
But she probably also sees you.
She can recognize you.
She woke us up barking the other morning
and she's going nuts.
And I went out second floor,
I went out on the balcony and looked down.
Well actually, I don't know why I said me
because it wasn't me, it was Christy.
Oh I think we just learned something about it.
I was making Christy's story my own.
I don't know why.
You have a tendency to do this.
No I was in the vestibule so I was trying to tell that story
but I got sidetracked.
This is Christy's story, I'm not gonna commandeer it.
But she did tell me in such a vivid fashion
that I felt like I experienced it.
And she did take video.
So she goes out there and there's a bear down there
in our backyard.
Yeah.
Because we back up to some woods and like,
there's one bear that turns over a trash can
and like goes all around.
Well, there was just one window open
and Jade smelled the bear.
Cause I don't think we heard the bear.
The bear was very quiet.
Yeah, bears are quiet.
I think she could smell me through the vestibule.
But you don't smell as strong as a bear.
But I, so what's your point?
If you're right about that,
which I didn't mean to support you, but I guess I did,
then your point is, what?
Your dog names you with a smell.
Not, even though I do agree that we've made
a lot of progress in believing that they do know
the names of their owner, if they're as smart
as that dog that can pull out the hand bone.
So dogs are certainly capable of knowing
their owner's names.
So if I'm sitting next to Jade and then Christy's like,
"'Link, sit,' she'll reach over and like,
"'put her paw on my butt.'"
Well, that is the question.
As many times as, it's like,
Barbara obviously, and Jade obviously knows,
like, they are members of a family and like Barbara knows,
okay, there's the big one, that's me.
And then there's the one with long hair, that's Jessie.
And then you've got the kids, she's like,
okay, Shepherd's the one that messes with me
and kind of annoys me and gets me to bark a lot
because he's the youngest.
Right.
And you know, and so she obviously.
And Jay's like Lando, doesn't know Lando,
it's like that little one, that's the one I would eat first
if they all died.
Right.
I think that we should grab a laptop
and we should Google and see if we're right.
Because our final answer, Talyn Hanson,
what did my dog name me?
You know what?
My answer at first was Alpha, but now,
dang it, do I have to agree with you?
I wanna make a united front here.
You have swung me to say that our official answer
is that dogs know your name,
but they don't call you by that name in their own brain.
They what?
We were only just saying that they smell.
They know you by smell.
So it's just like they have a language of smell
so it's a smell name that doesn't use human vocabulary.
Cody, you had Googled Google. that doesn't use human vocabulary.
Cody, you had Googled Google.
I hope you're not offended if I replace that. If you do that too many times,
your computer will blow up.
I'm gonna Google.
Every time you Google Google,
it really creates a lot of problems.
What did my dog name me?
So that first one that comes up is just a funny meme.
I wastesomuchtime.com.
I have a Scientific American article.
Now first of all, before you give your answer,
the answer that I now have is that Talon Hanson
didn't come up with this question.
This is a memic question that floats around the internet
that we cannot give to just Talon Hanson
because I mean it's got 19 comments
and 1,057 awesome upvotes on the amazing website
known as I waste so much time,
which I'm sure you've been to.
Oh yeah, I founded that website.
But I do appreciate you asking us Talon, Talon.
Heck, we're probably not even saying your name right.
And I said it three different ways just now.
Bet you a dog could say it.
This is basically answering the question, can dogs speak?
Are they actually talking?
And it just says they're no, they're just mimicking,
which is what we already said.
Well that's a smoke screen answer.
Maybe I should keep Googling.
This is when everybody clicks away
because it gets boring.
How about this?
How do dogs recognize their owners?
Do dogs name their owners?
You know, when in doubt, go to the Denver Post.
You get a mile up there,
you're gonna find all the answers.
Gazing at faces is how dogs pick out their owner,
research shows.
Dogs can read a lot from a human's face
according to recent research.
For one thing, they rely on seeing a face
to tell whether a person is their guardian or a stranger.
And they use the word guardian, not owner.
Okay.
I got it.
For opinion maybe.
They also read emotional cues on a face
the same way people do with each other.
Interesting, but we already knew all that.
This is good.
Okay, so according to a study published in a recent issue
of behavioral processes, scientists trained a group of dogs
to sit while in an MRI machine
and then individually recorded
their brain activity as they reacted to the sense
of people and dogs who weren't present.
These included a strange dog, a dog with whom they lived,
a strange person, and a person with whom they lived,
excluding their owners since the owners had to act
as handlers while the dogs were in the MRI.
The dogs exhibited greater brain activity
for familiar people than for any other scent,
even familiar dogs.
Not only do dogs recognize and remember their human scents,
but they also get more excited about a whiff
of their humans than about anything else.
So the number one way in this article is by scent,
and they've identified you.
So basically their name for you is a scent,
but also they recognize your face
by sight, so the user knows is defined and recognize
everything in the world, including people,
but it turns out that they're also very good
at using their eyes.
Dogs evolved to read human behavior and expressions
as a result of their canine ancestors who received
warm places to sleep around human campfires
by making people happy.
To succeed at a survival strategy based on making
another species happy, you need to develop a knack
for reading expressions and body language,
and that's just what dogs have done.
So in other words, again, they didn't evolve
to read each other's body language.
They didn't need that.
They had the sounds and the smells and just the actions,
but they actually learned because of their domestication
to interact with us in that way.
Yeah, according to Dogs Decoded on PBS television's
program Nova, dogs read human emotions the same way
humans do by reading facial cues left to right like humans.
Huh, I don't know what that means, left to right.
They don't do this with other dogs, and that's just
one of the show's interesting findings.
We read emotions left to right just like we do words?
Yeah, that seems odd to me.
Well, that must be true though.
So what have we learned here?
We've learned that furpanions is a potential substitute
for pets and owners and they can be used interchangeably.
Yes.
Except if you have a hairless or a skinless cat,
you're out of luck and you have to come up
with your own name.
And don't send us pictures of either.
Yeah.
Because they both sound really gross to me.
We also determined that,
and everyone will have to agree with the fact
that dogs use smell to identify all types of stuff.
It's like they read a book with their nose, man.
So I think we're onto something with that.
The name that your dog has for you-
Is a smell.
Is a smell that cannot be named by humans.
But it's probably something like.
Yeah, it's like an alien.
It's like an alien trying to,
it's like when those computers started talking to each other
and they bypassed human language
and just went straight to digital.
But ironically for Jade, that does sound,
it's like alpha, it sounds very much like alpha.
So I was right in both ways. If it makes you feel better,
if you wanna create your own truth, that's fine.
As long as it doesn't impinge on me.
We did not validate this last point
with the internet yet, but who cares?
We do also believe here at Ear Biscuits
that I lost my train of thought.
Oh good, you don't need to be making
any statements of belief.
We here at Ear Biscuits believe,
what was the last thing we figured out, man?
That dogs do know their owners' names, that's it.
Yeah, I thought it was gonna be something more. We at Ear Biscuits wholeheartedly believe that dogs do not name their owners' names, that's it. Yeah, I thought it was gonna be something more.
We at Ear Biscuits wholeheartedly believe
that dogs do not name their owners,
but do acknowledge their owners' names.
So to answer your question, Talyn,
what did my dog name me?
Your dog didn't name you, your parents did,
and your dog recognizes that.
And until your dog starts hanging out
with the wrong crowd of dolphins
and starts believing that it should be naming itself,
you're in good hands.
Yep, stick to golf.
That should do it for us.
It should.
I hope the music's playing,
because man, we have reached the end of the rabbit hole.
Yeah.
I like this, it's rewarding.
It's what?
You know what I mean.
Okay.