What's your favourite dog and why is it Golden Retrievers!
In Episode #466 of Meanderings Juan and I discuss: childhood memories and how these interactions have shaped our views on dogs, how owning a dog can teach us about mortality and the finite nature of life, the social dynamics of ownership, comparison to other animals & random thoughts on suffering & mental health.
Huge thanks to Petar for the support!
Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:00:48) The Importance of Dogs
(00:02:03) Childhood Dog Story
(00:05:05) Overcoming Fear of Dogs
(00:10:06) Dog Ownership and Safety
(00:14:53) Dogs As Training for Parenthood
(00:18:59) Teaching Dogs Tricks
(00:24:39) Dog Population in Australia
(00:25:40) Boostagram Lounge
(00:34:53) Dogs and Mortality
(00:52:26) Dogs As Social Connectors
(00:56:21) Final V4V
In Episode #466 of Meanderings Juan and I discuss: childhood memories and how these interactions have shaped our views on dogs, how owning a dog can teach us about mortality and the finite nature of life, the social dynamics of ownership, comparison to other animals & random thoughts on suffering & mental health.
Huge thanks to Petar for the support!
Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:00:48) The Importance of Dogs
(00:02:03) Childhood Dog Story
(00:05:05) Overcoming Fear of Dogs
(00:10:06) Dog Ownership and Safety
(00:14:53) Dogs As Training for Parenthood
(00:18:59) Teaching Dogs Tricks
(00:24:39) Dog Population in Australia
(00:25:40) Boostagram Lounge
(00:34:53) Dogs and Mortality
(00:52:26) Dogs As Social Connectors
(00:56:21) Final V4V
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[00:00:06]
Juan Granados:
Welcome back, Mere Mortalites. This is a Meanderings episode. You've got the 2 Mere Mortals here. Juan here. Kyrin here. It is the 8th December, just a little bit past 9 am, Australian Eastern Standard Time. We've got daylight savings time here in Australia. If you don't know what that is. Actually, I'll just ask you this question directly. Do you think we should have daylight savings time here in Queensland? No. My bad. I don't give a shit. And I say when people talk about this sort of stuff, I'm like, maybe it doesn't come from a location that this has mattered. Yeah. Matters in other different locations. It's it's more it's not that I haven't
[00:00:38] Kyrin Down:
done a well researched No. Arguments
[00:00:41] Juan Granados:
on this side or that side is just like, I I don't I don't want to do that. Yeah. It's a it's of less importance to our life. So, you know, don't take that away. However, what is important and what we're gonna be talking about today is dogs. Very important. Doggies. Now this, roommate do The request? Yeah. Who requests from who? So for this is from Mansfield's girlfriend. Okay. So Mansfield's girlfriend, which we'll we'll leave unnamed until someone determines that they want to put their name forward. Said, hey, you should talk about dogs. I believe then that this would be mentioned when we were over at their place for a bit of a get together, a couple of weeks ago. Dogs was the suggestion to talk about. Now Yep. We have not discussed anything in relation to this topic around what we should be talking about. How many notes did you take?
Few. A few. There's a few a few few. I took 0. You took 0. Okay. There's a couple of interesting concepts that we can talk about from a dog perspective that also meld into a couple of deep conversations. But I probably if people don't know the story of, kind versus dogs. I think it'd probably just be worth telling people because you currently look after a dog, right? Yeah. Not yours. Your brothers, but you're looking after him while your brother is overseas and you currently haven't shit your pants and you're not too scared to go into the home. So obviously something has improved, from dogs. So where did the let's just tell the story of one of the negative connotations with dogs. Where are you today with dogs? Yeah, sure. So
[00:02:06] Kyrin Down:
those who haven't heard the story, basically, I turned it into a date story once. And this is one of those ones where it's like, I sometimes look at my dad and my dad, you're taking too long with this fucking story. Like you're waffling. You're adding like needless drama into it. And it's trying to be a good storyteller and to be a good storyteller. You have to practice telling stories in different ways. And this is one where I look back now. I'm like, I probably made a lot of girls endure like a really weak story.
[00:02:44] Juan Granados:
Like, like stretching a story. It doesn't deserve the limelight that long. We're like, I'm gonna I'm gonna use it.
[00:02:50] Kyrin Down:
So so in essence, I'll know, fuck it. I'll tell you. I'll subjective. No, I won't. Basically, what I would do is like, I got bit by a dog when I was young, my first day of primary school. Before that, you know, I was 6 years old. Can I really remember interacting with animals before then? Not particularly this is got to be one of my first memories. And the what a cherished memory. Yeah, exactly. Right. So you wonder why I was iffy about dogs for quite a while. Where did dog bite you? It was on the heel. And so basically, long story short, we're going to go to primary school, mom, my friend Lachlan and his small dog, Rosie, little poodle.
So probably about the size of a shoe box, I guess. And my mom and his mom and I apparently like ran ahead of everyone. And Rosie got really excited and came in like nippy on the heel. Drew like some blood or something like you know, probably just band aid and Yeah, it was dog was just trying to be like, Hey, can you donate some blood? Yeah, a little bite. Sure. Sure. I infected it with whatever I've got in me. Of course. Super viruses.
[00:04:02] Juan Granados:
Brandball. Unbelievable.
[00:04:08] Kyrin Down:
What I would turn this story into for a day would it be like, I wouldn't tell that story first. I'd tell this exaggerated story of like, first day of primary school describing how it's like sunny outside rainbows. Then I see these dark clouds on the horizon coming towards me. I turn and look around this dog transforms into like Cerberus with a serpent tail spitting venom fire coming out of its back. And I'm running for my life and it like bites off my legs like clean clean fucking takes it off. And then this angel appears from the heavens and like gets a bandage and wraps it up, you know, this being my mom. And then the storm clouds go away and stuff.
And then I'd be like, so that's the truth. And then there's my mom's story, this exaggerated bullshit. And then I tell the real story. Maybe it works. Maybe it didn't.
[00:04:59] Juan Granados:
I've got some I've got some off off air feedback. I need a gift card. I won't do it live right now. But yes. Okay.
[00:05:05] Kyrin Down:
And the Yeah, so that that made me very wary around animals, but especially dogs for a long time. Big and small didn't really matter which. And yeah, so that's one thing I've definitely probably one of the I don't know if it's changed my mind, I guess so. Changed, maybe change something that I thought was fixed in me, which was I don't get along with dogs don't dogs don't get along with me. And I had things to back this up. When I was traveling Latin America, I got chased by a fuck ton of dogs. Stray dogs come across me in the street. They didn't like me. I don't like them.
Plenty of dogs have barked at me over the years. I'm being selective, obviously. But I think even just the you could sense my nervousness around them. And they'd probably get nervous as well. So yeah, having having Butters as a puppy. This being my brother's golden retriever for a year and a bit now. And, you know, I helped look after him when he was really young. Taking him outside when my brother was at work and stuff. And then now that I'm kind of living with him, I guess, looking, seeing him every day, been looking after him for the last week entirely by myself.
I'm comfortable around dogs now and not just him but others. So yeah, good. Okay. There you go. See the transition the transition, which I guess,
[00:06:31] Juan Granados:
would you have said before butters, that transition was happening anyways with dogs in general?
[00:06:36] Kyrin Down:
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, because I was looking at this was one of those ones where it's like, is this actually a trauma? Or is this just a characteristics of behavior that I now do? So I instantly see a dog and as it as it is it something that is within me is actually, other hormones raging smell of the dog, the sight of the dog? Is that actually triggering things in me? Or is it just like, my behavior before this was always stay clear of them. And so I just do that.
[00:07:07] Juan Granados:
Well, and there's the I'm pretty sure most people do say this in that the way that you act or behave or exhibit some sort of action or emotion to say a dog, then they're going to reciprocate in that like, oh, they smell your fear. You know, that's sort of say it with other animals around. Don't, you know, if you show fear, then they're going to latch onto that and do something more to it. That would make sense. So I guess then now with Butters getting to see a growth of a dog so directly. Some of that maybe dissipates from you. And then in turn, you're not as
[00:07:43] Kyrin Down:
what I reacted to another dog. And then other dogs like, okay, cool, whatever. Yeah, the downside of this, though, would then to get overconfidence and think, oh, all dogs. It was all me. So now I can just go and pet any dog and it's going to be fine. Whereas thing even up easy upstairs. You know, even just walking up the driveway, I get a lot of box set. So correct. Obviously, I'm not
[00:08:05] Juan Granados:
welcome everywhere. Correct. Correct. Now. So I was gonna say in an opposite way for myself. Trying to remember we did have dogs. No, no, we definitely had dogs. When I was very young. We had a little brown lab, I'm pretty sure just before we left Colombia, then we always had like family dogs to the day and have had 2 dogs within I guess, like our family home that we've lived in the last few years as well. Now. I have been bitten by dogs. One time I would've been in the face by a dog. Really? But that was like, by recent, I'm talking probably when I was 2023 years old. It didn't turn me from liking dogs, but it did make me cautious about certain types of dogs, especially the more from our, like, but like I would say the, no, I wouldn't say the type. I wouldn't say that the type of dog. It'd be more the positioning and the environment of a dog. So the, Hey, if they're trapped in a corner and injured, probably not the type of dog that you want to approach. However, similarly for my daughter, when she goes close to smaller like, this is probably incorrect.
Would you guys close to small dogs? I feel it's fine. It's cool. And I'm talking dogs are about her size. 80 centimeters to a meter. However, if she goes close to big dogs or pimples or terriers or something to that relation, Kind of go like, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, like pull back. Not that I don't trust you necessarily, but I have this maybe bias where I've seen some videos, I can see that it goes wrong. It's kind of the inverse in some regards because it's a little dog sort of can be a worse ones in like doing little nibbly bites and whatnot. And it's usually the very, very aggressive dogs in a very specific type of breed environment that are really aggressive, not all of them. So, I guess that particular stereotype could be slightly wrong. However, for me, I'm gonna go towards the safety side and I'm not gonna have her around. Similarly, we have a really big dog, I think she's 40 5, 46 kilos, something to that effect. And we've we had both my daughter and her around each other when they were younger.
When our dog gets close to food, you do not want to be near that. She will get really aggressive in relation to food. So we kind of make decision, hey, we're going to separate them as much as possible. Happen, my daughter's older, maybe they can interact a little bit more, but still, separation is probably a good thing. I also lay towards the safety side of things as well. So in general for dogs, I go, do I love them? Yep. I definitely do. I own the side of caution though, always. So I think there's a healthy amount of caution to have, especially dogs that you don't know and more so their environment, the situation, everything like that. But in general, I'd say dogs are probably my favorite pet. For sure. Like cats? Fuck them. Fuck cats. Do you like cats? Hate them. I hate cats. I don't like cats. Probably more of a cat. My sister has a cat, you know. I don't mind people having cats. I'm all that like dastardly.
With me having a cat, I've never thought about it. It's never crossed my mind. Same with other pets like a monkey pet. Nah. Donkeys. No. Nah. I don't want any of that. I'll list some that are actually normal. Snakes.
[00:11:17] Kyrin Down:
Rabbit.
[00:11:18] Juan Granados:
Rabbit? Nah. Nothing. Like, never have a I'm not a parrot. Are you a big animal?
[00:11:24] Kyrin Down:
Like, no. I can't say I'm a big animal No. Personal fan. No. No. What I what I actually probably like about cats is just their independence is that I wouldn't need to do that much work.
[00:11:35] Juan Granados:
Like it's its own thing. So and this gets to like probably the first question about dogs. I was gonna ask you was I think a large percentage of people. Yeah, a lot of percent of people will get dogs for the benefit in that you get home and you have like this joyful happy wants to interact with you animal as opposed to a cat that is independent as opposed to a fish that is just waiting to die and go upside down. You know, it's there's some interaction there with a dog. But from what we're saying, like, I don't necessarily have ever cared about that. Like, have I ever wanted a dog for that reason? Have you ever wanted a dog for the reason or do you find that now having butters? Let's just say. Yeah, it's kind of nice. There's a certain amount of joy that you get coming home and
[00:12:21] Kyrin Down:
Yeah, yeah, there I can see it. I can see why it's fun. And even like waking up in the morning, first thing you've got is just like a really nice pleasant interaction when you wake up. Unless of course he shits on the floor like he did the other day. Because we're changing his food from from puppy to adult, I guess. Less fun, less fun, but it wasn't the worst thing in the world. So, yeah, I can I can understand that one of those ones where it's I'd heard that argument before and intellectually I'm like, but now now I go okay? I'm
[00:13:00] Juan Granados:
trying to determine whether
[00:13:03] Kyrin Down:
I'm trying to determine whether I would be like that if I had ever just owned a dog. What Yeah, why do you like a dog then if you don't enjoy that aspect of it? Well,
[00:13:13] Juan Granados:
maybe this is the reality. I don't know if I like really that that much enjoy owning a dog. There's aspects of a dog that are nice. Let's just say I do like having a dog, but to the example of our friend having a a new dog and they got a 4 month old. I'm a spaniel. But I don't know if that brings me any like necessarily joy to have that around but I don't know if that is an offset in that there is now a comparison in a baby in a kid that blows that out of the water, right? It's in the realm of okay, yeah, it's more work to have a kid. But the amount of joy and fun and learning and all that that you get from a kid is, you know, if that's the feeling people get for dogs, it's like multiplied by 100 For me in terms of having a child.
So maybe it's just a case of I have I've never experienced owning a dog on my own outright. And maybe there would have been that because then with a partner, okay, I probably more fever, the joy that comes from coming home and seeing my partner versus a dog, and then multiply that many times fold on a kid. So I don't know if my view of that is just
[00:14:22] Kyrin Down:
shifted because of that. And I have a feeling it is. Yeah, it sounds like it's good training from what I gather as to what a kid is going to be like. Butters had a rough period at the start where he's pooping doesn't know potty trained or anything. And so sleeping weirdly. So it sounded like my brother had a, you know, a 1 month, 3 month stretch. I don't know where it was just like, he was really stressed out from it as having a baby is. And then it gets into the more fun stage after that. Yeah. Yeah. And that's
[00:14:56] Juan Granados:
actually another aspect of dogs, I would say for sure is if you want to see like, have some training wheels on before going for a kid or something to that effect, I think it's really good. I think it's really good. The other aspect though, like I would say if I had theoretical scenario, I'd move to Germany for work and I was on my own. I think getting a dog would be really nice. I could I could see how that aspect of having a dog to have a companion in a time when maybe you're more solitude. That would be cool. I can see that. It's just in the current time or really, like, realistically, all of that I've lived in my life has never been, necessarily online for any extended period of time.
I go, I just haven't situated myself in that to be honest to say like, oh, yeah, that's a lot of goodness to suggest that. Yeah. Would you teach it to Sig Hale like Count Dactyla did?
[00:15:45] Kyrin Down:
That actually genuinely did that. Yeah. So there's this English dude. Really fascinating story. There's an English guy who had a dog, and I believe he taught it how to Sig Hale. So he can say Sig Hale and it would lift up its paw. Wow. And he got in a lot in trouble. I think he actually went to jail over it. Hold on. Just really interesting because England's hasn't got the strictness that Germany and some of the other Belgium countries and stuff related to like Nazi paraphernalia. And what would you call it like, hit Larry and ideas? You know, if you're posting that online, it's, it's very bad. I'm actually not sure what they are with regards to in terms of mind camp. Are you allowed to read that book there?
How am I? I don't know. But they're certainly, you know, in terms of free speech related to talking about these things, Holocaust denying that sort of stuff. You that very intolerant of that and you will 100% be censored and true, but I'm not sure where England falls on that scale, probably A little. Maybe if you know, Germany's at like 100% England and maybe be at 50. Australia is probably at 25. I know there's some Nazi stuff here that if you do, you can get in trouble for. Well, that's what I was gonna say to you.
[00:17:11] Juan Granados:
Did you know that, you know, he did That we have way off topic. If you see hell, if you do a salute, well, here's interesting, in public or to publicly display, which I guess Karim didn't just then. I'd because it wouldn't be a publicly display, I would say. Well, kind of. But it is, it is a criminal offense and will land you in jail. Yeah. As in the show. But it wasn't a public plea display. Yeah? For those who are just listening on the audio, I've been holding that sick hail this whole time. The whole time. The entire time. So like yeah. I I could see if you teach it to your dog that would be a Yes. Yeah, that'd be crazy. Right?
[00:17:43] Kyrin Down:
What do you think about teaching dogs tricks in terms of like, Pavlovian Lee or in some other ways? Well, I guess,
[00:17:51] Juan Granados:
what do you mean by that? Probably like the like in that demanding repeated way where it's like, okay, I'm gonna train them in a, do this, treat you right, do this, treat you right, or don't do it, punish, don't do it, punished until like they learn specifically. Or do you mean training them in like Is there other ways of teaching them other? I guess it's just general I guess it would be but I, example, our dog that we have we didn't do any type of training like direct training like that to sit or to do like when you go with Butters with doing the love heart and stuff like that. So that's really cool. We never did any training to that effect. She went to puppy training for a little bit.
[00:18:34] Kyrin Down:
So it benefited it. But not really where they would do that. But the training was more, you know,
[00:18:38] Juan Granados:
make sure you go into the toilet and when they're like going off off inside not generally, doing specific training for that. It's just being like, no bad put her outside, wait until she learns she's got to go outside, come back inside, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, that sort of thing, but not with the, I guess, the intended purpose of being like, okay, I'm going to train you specifically for that regard. Or perhaps a better question is useless tricks.
[00:19:02] Kyrin Down:
Is that Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So so Butters knows a whole bunch of useless tricks. We just talked about the love heart thing, you make the love heart with your hands on the ground or up high and he'll like jump up to it and put a snout into it. It's a crowd pleaser as we'll talk about the perhaps interaction with dogs and humans in the after the boost to gram. But yeah, I don't know some people another one the bang like you shoot them and they've gone over. Yep. I've heard I've heard at least one person be like, that's you shouldn't have taught them that that's a bad thing.
Like, yeah, I don't I don't really buy that that argument. I feel I feel I feel just giving them attention of a kind of positive kind. And in this case, teaching them tricks. It's not like a negative kind of thing. Is it is it worsening their life being by being able to do this trick? No, I don't think so. If anything, they get more positive attention for doing it from other people. So in the long term, yeah, maybe you know, because you you're having to teach them with a with a smack on the head or something or usually, I believe it's better to teach them with tricks and with treats anyway. So if anything, it's even more positive. I only see it as kind of like positive things. Whereas, you know, the the opposite side of it would be, oh, it's it's equivalent to training bears to do tricks in the circus sort of deal, which I don't feel those are equivalent analogies. Yeah. Okay. I think how does it
[00:20:40] Juan Granados:
let's wrap into a whole context here. There's a part of domesticating an animal, which here would be a dog over, you know, many many years where now
[00:20:49] Kyrin Down:
which is mandatory, the potty training, wanting to to eat, you know, at certain times or or and and not and not jump on people, for example, not just have other people, not special wolves, don't chew things. I think it's nice that they're not wolves.
[00:21:04] Juan Granados:
Right? If you wanna keep a dog, it's nice that they're not the descendants of wolves because that would be a bad time. But I personally see it as what a useless thing to teach dogs. That sort of doing the love heart, getting them to sit, doing I will go to the point of like, yeah okay, you don't want them shooting inside, you don't want them destroying your items around the home. Okay, that's that part of domestication I do get the benefits of but the tricks and the things couldn't give a hoot, couldn't couldn't care a single thing about mine. However, it is entertaining to see like there is entertainment and great value to see dogs do that. I do agree.
[00:21:44] Kyrin Down:
But I personally would not spend any time in doing that. It's more of a value judgment. If you saw someone else doing this, teaching them. Is that like, a bad thing?
[00:21:55] Juan Granados:
Honestly, if I saw someone else doing that, I'd go. That's cool. Right? Personally do it? Yeah, sure. No. I guess my view with dogs is more functional than I think most people who like dogs would view like I like dogs but I want my dog to bark loudly when a treated child's come in, to behave itself when we're around the dog and to be able to feed it. I do want to take the dog for walks and to behave itself where I'm in certain locations, but I don't want my dog to jump up and do tricks and roll around or do whatever. I want it to just enjoy itself, be around us, be able to not bite our arms off when we're trying to eat or something to that effect. But I want it to be protective.
Right? That's, that's kind of like Garfield. However, I would say I'm in the minority in some of that views, because for sure, but lots of people now buy dogs or get dogs with the view of oh my god, so cute. Oh my god, long hair. I want to pamper it. I want to do all these things. I stray away from that. I'm not wolf level. Not like give me a wolf. Let's go rogue. Somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in the middle. Yeah,
[00:23:03] Kyrin Down:
the I'd labeled this episode incorrectly. So it was something like dogs and puppers. Juan's best friend. Well, it's like Juan's a neutral friend, maybe. Correct. If that best. Yes, I wrote Karen's second worst enemy, I think, with the first being ants. But then I passed a biker today and I was like, oh, god. They're pretty high up there as well.
[00:23:23] Juan Granados:
Yeah. I wouldn't look honestly, with with dogs, I wouldn't say that they see, my personal view, I'm gonna be directing your models. So my best friend and I don't it would be a long shot if not, but definitely not. I'm not opposed to them. I'm very neutral with dogs. I mean, I mean, I like coexistence
[00:23:38] Kyrin Down:
with dogs. Yeah. Totally. Cats, I'll put them on the way. No, Lane fine. The stats of just how many there are surprised me. I would have thought there would have been significantly less than humans. But no, there's more dogs than humans in Australia, at the very least, which is I don't know, I find that mind boggling. I just don't understand what the fuck are they? Because I don't see that many pounds. I'm probably have a lot wild ones. Yeah, you reckon? You reckon? Yeah, I'll have to Yeah, maybe I need to dig into it more and see. Because if they're counting dingoes as dogs. Yeah, I guess. I guess that makes sense. But I mean, where would the stray dogs even live?
Can they live out in the bush? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if that's
[00:24:24] Juan Granados:
questions which we maybe should have done research on. Yeah. And as well, like a quick little like Google also pops up with those around 200,000 dogs and cats every year in animal shelters. Again, what's the percentage of cats versus dogs? Then that's not a website from the 5th April 2023 says there are approximately 6,400,000 dogs in Australia. Oh, really? Yeah, that's from essential dog.com.au.
[00:24:49] Kyrin Down:
Maybe it was a household
[00:24:52] Juan Granados:
that may Yeah, there's another one that said, yeah, from the Sydney Morning Herald from 2020 tubes. Pet dogs rose from 5.1 to 6,300,000. Okay, all right. That makes a lot more sense then. Sorry, the country. Yeah, maybe it's where you're at. How many dogs are in Australia? It's the country is home to around 28,700,000 of pets, with 6,900,000 households confirming to have animal companions. Very sort of statistic for pets in general. I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Oh, good catch. Look at that right on the fingertips you would have seen on the video.
[00:25:25] Kyrin Down:
Yeah. All right. Okay. That makes a lot more sense. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was like, it's a lot of fucking dogs, man. I don't see a dog per person out here. No. Or like yeah. Because I was saying, like, some people have multiple dogs, but that wouldn't, like, come up with No. It's not needed. Wouldn't wouldn't even get close.
[00:25:39] Juan Granados:
In any case, well, I'll just jump into the Blue Streeter Alliance. We'll have a quick look at that, have a conversation, then we're gonna get into, the deeper part of dog conversations. Now that we've been I've just been hating on dogs with teams.
[00:25:51] Kyrin Down:
Alright. Karan, tell the people about, boosted ramming while I bring it up. Yeah. Sure. So for those who don't know, this is a value for value podcast. We provide this value to upfront, no ads, no sponsorships, no nothing's like this. And all that we ask is that you return some value in return. Many different ways of doing this. I'll get towards that at the end of the podcast. But this is the section where we like to thank those who have supported us in a monetary sense in the method that we've been asking for these last couple of years, which is a boost to gram. And so that's a a payment that you can send directly within the podcasting app of your choice.
For the moment, there's a couple, such as fountain is a really good great one. True fans, odd verse podcast guru, curacaster, cast a matic, whole bunch of them. And, yeah. They, a lot of a lot of people actually attach a message with that as well. So one's gonna read out, I believe we had 2. Correct. 2. Although we have 2 from ourselves. What are these from? So I was I went to a couple of crypto events this week. So I was, I was showing some people off the
[00:26:56] Juan Granados:
technology. Cool. Okay. Well, I'll leave them, I'll leave them alone. I won't comment on those ones, but we got, do you have 2 and there's 2 from our absolute favorite friend here at the Meehanortals, Peter. Thank you very much, sweet sir. And he says 2, 2 of them and both of them, I'll call it out, a row of ducks, 2,222 sets using fountain. Quack quack. That's $3 each. Yeah. That's crazy, man. Thank you very much. 3.50. Thank you, Peter. So here we go. First one. I always thought poor mental health was an evolutionary adaptation to help teaching you something is majorly wrong in your life and to motivate you to make difficult but necessary change.
It's really a gift of nature. On the flip side, if you end up killing yourself, I guess you're now no longer wasting resources and procreating humans no longer have to compete with you. By the way, it's a win win for the species.
[00:27:41] Kyrin Down:
Thank you, Peter. There's a that's that's definitely the sort of way my dad would view this sort of thing. Look, I'm gonna I want to like, I think if you you express that view to most people, at least in Australia, you're not you're not going to get a positive response. No, I agree.
[00:28:00] Juan Granados:
But I will, I will hold the line. I won't go too deep because I think I hold similar views to Peter in this, but we talked about with her daughter around the concept of how the difference between, you know, mental health and being active in your choices versus the defaulting to odds, this and that, or you got to medicate with this and that. I guess my default view is, look, there's genetic variabilities, environmental variabilities, and there's decisions and actions that you can take. And I think often some of those can be strong, you can you can do things about that versus the defaulting to y'all woe is me.
Yeah, it must just be because of this. And so now I'm going to be medicated. I'll call it out here because something that I shared with my partner, it was a was in the US I don't know what state it particularly was. But they were talking about it was a mom and dad. I think the dad in this particular video looked a little bit like he was mentioning it like he was saying something but it looked a little bit taken aback with mom was like, no, our daughter told us that she was 1 year old and she's trans and so we want to support her in going through her sex change and doing x y z because she's got this I know I know and again so my view towards us like I don't know if this is a correct assessment of the situation. I would probably say that there is some mental health challenges going here. But the evolution of where we are today, I think has moved the conversation from, Wait a minute, like you kind of need help. Like that sounds like you need some support in other ways, as opposed to almost cherishing and embellishing that particular idea in a supportive way. I kind of go like, I think we're deviating away from probably what would have been a more correct assessment of the truth at that point. But yeah, you say that currently run now and I think most popular scenarios and you're gonna get
[00:29:52] Kyrin Down:
wanted on I think Yeah, well, I'm down you can you can apply that same thing to almost anything though. Right? You know, you could say say that people with cancer, like, it's weeding out the genetic pool. And then you're like, oof, is that
[00:30:09] Juan Granados:
feels less? Yeah, I don't know if that's I don't know if I would say that it's exactly correct. Because either partly most humans do have cancer. It is just how active that particular cell then becomes to become the cancer that proliferates around the body and kills you right? The actual cancer cell versus just having stagnant cancer cells. So there's there's that aspect, I think, I think that more falls in the probability and genetics than it does really anything else. Yes, you can have environmentally caused cancer, aka smoking, or being around uranium being around the elephant foot from Chernobyl, probably not going to be a good thing for you.
But I would say that's a totally different view than straight up like, Oh, no, you seem to have, for whatever reason, have created some challenges from mental health perspective, because environment, genetics, whatever. But I think like, I would have said that one of the 1950s 60s, maybe the view towards it might have been to today's world felt like a stronger or more direct approach. I would hazard a guess that it probably worked in different good ways than right now. And just the pure acceptance of, oh, well, I just have a terrible way to absorb, you know, what you say to me as a teacher in this way. So fuck, I should be medicated or, I should have set us a disability so that I don't have to I kind of go like, well, you know, I think you're masking the true issue. I think masking away the issue versus the direct address. Yeah. Same.
I'm sure we'll get lots of support on that particular topic. And the other one from Vita was, when you tell strangers you're retired, so this is from Karen saying it was semi retired. They will assume you have some sort of inheritance coming your way and don't need to work for money. Little do they know that you just don't need see a need for collecting money. That's that's a pretty
[00:32:02] Kyrin Down:
that's an interesting one. I'm gonna try out a new strategy, which is if someone asked me also, what do you do? I'll ask now, are you asking for money or for fun? Because those are all what I do with my time and really try and separate the 2. And then I can and then I feel that's a good way of then being able to just give the explanation of like, look, I retired 6 years ago, not enough money I invested, I don't really need to do much for it now. But the fun stuff like the hobbies, the time, that's that's what I spend most of my time on. That's what I do. And then I can
[00:32:39] Juan Granados:
talk about those. Yeah, look, put it in there. Like Mark, Mark, my take on this. I'm not going to be harsh here. I'm going to be kind kind. Be kind. I don't think it's a good strategy. Yeah, in that still that particular language. I don't think and mere mortal lights.
[00:32:54] Kyrin Down:
Tell me if I think I'm wrong but I might have tried this before in the past as well.
[00:32:58] Juan Granados:
Being kind of I think that the statement of retirement or that I am retired will have a connotation that not loaded, but that you have money for everything that a general individual would say a retired person has. What does that mean? Houses, cars, some other stability, which is the general consensus. I think you have to change I think you have to change that wording to something else and it was part of what I was going to say actually that I will keep off off air but I think I think a different approach might be best because the reality is it's something like self sufficient Like I am now I'm self sufficient in my current life. Something to that effect where it's like where you're kind of more stating that you're living in a super freeway until that needs to change because the reality is say someone comes up and you do meet someone and then you have a kid.
Something's gonna have to change because right now like from that reality maybe something has to change if they want something. I think the wording of retirement and maybe like what Peter is saying because the the more correct and I think he called it out is I think it's more so that you care less about money and more about freedom. That's a really important distinction that I think would help people understand that
[00:34:13] Kyrin Down:
better. Yeah, I don't know. But I digress. But it also depends who I'm saying this to, you know, if it's if it's to someone. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I don't want to give the wrong impression per se, but it's also if you're chucking extra details of stuff that I haven't elaborated on onto me, there's nothing I can do that. No. That's that's correct. That's correct. I'll,
[00:34:39] Juan Granados:
yeah. The other bit, I'll leave it. I'll leave the other bit. But no, Peter, thank you very much. That's, very much appreciated for those coming through. Yes, Peter. And as Karen mentioned, you can do so because it was
[00:34:50] Kyrin Down:
podcast.com/support if you want to know more. Correct.
[00:34:54] Juan Granados:
Okay, let's get back into dogs and a little bit more into the connection. Well, one thing which you just
[00:35:01] Kyrin Down:
Jasmine today, which I found kind of interesting was dog was one of the end of his first words. Correct. I didn't expect that.
[00:35:07] Juan Granados:
I guess just because you guys say the word dog so much because you've got one. Is that the kind of reasoning you think? I think that probably Yeah, that would be one thing. Often when she was younger, we would say things like, Oh, look, it's easy. The dog, the dog, the dog. Dog gets said a lot in shows, like in kids shows. Dog is really easy word or kids to generally pronounce why the does a little bit easier than or s or something like that. So D is easy. So I think there's a pronunciation of it is fine. Like, you know, generally, it's dog, all dad, those words that are single, single items that are just easy to say, so dog will end up being like one of the first words you've ever said, which is interesting, I guess, not too dissimilar, given the fact that we do have a dog.
[00:35:57] Kyrin Down:
So so it's more. But but is that related to
[00:36:02] Juan Granados:
us spending a lot of time around a dog? No, I don't think so. I think it's just a repetition of the word itself. Case in point, I think Elon Musk's one of his 12 kids, her x, I think it is x, he one of his very first things that he would use to say when he was like a year and a half or something like that, was 3, 2, 1, go in terms of countdown from a rocket. So, you know, generally, kids don't learn backward counting, but like backward counting comes a little bit later, first go forward counting. And so apparently this kid knew backwards counting as like some of his first words. Okay. So I think it's just the repetition of certain things that just builds up that that tolerance. You also see it in kids.
I guess, translating it to dogs. They watch like they watch a lot for what to do, right? So you not a kid who's sub like 10 months, 12 months, but like my daughter now 14 15 16 months onwards, when you talk to them, you will actually notice that they'll look at you, but they'll look at your mouth really intently when you're saying things. And it's watching to be like, okay, I can obviously hear, but what's the movement of mouth that's happening? Similarly, dogs, you know, if you have a dog and you're asking them like, get out, like out, out, out or something to that effect, they they don't translate out as a word, they translate the the meaning and the body language and everything else that you're stating out plus whatever behavior that you've practiced in the past. So, you know, we've always gotten the dog outside, but it's taking you food to get them outside or something. And then you continue to say out without that food, maybe they're not going to translate as easily. Example, without a dog, we've always had it on the front balcony for a long time. And I just recently, we just bought a brand new, like, outdoor table setting and chairs.
And Pardo was like, no, we don't wanna have her anymore in the front yard. It's gonna like destroy it, whatever else. Cool. She's been trained to go to the front balcony for as long as we've lived here to move it to the back balcony. It's no longer just a yeah. Yeah. Go that way. It's like, no, it's confusion. You have to you have to like, change the intent of what you're doing. And it will take a long while for that transition tools to happen. Now, because I was gonna ask you about doggies. So from dogs perspective, maybe a deeper piece of it all, is that what are your thoughts of owning a dog or having a dog?
Does it help in humans understanding mortality?
[00:38:38] Kyrin Down:
Probably it will. I can see the joy and love that brothers brings. And I can also see man is going to be hard when he passes away before us, which is more likely than they're not Yeah. And you know, he's so young. So it's not something that really goes through your mind. Because it's like, that's, he hasn't shown any signs of ageing other than just getting bigger and fatter. Yeah. You know, so it'll be when he hurts his hip or that sort of thing. That that's that's probably when that that starts to come in. So I and I never had pets as a kid. So I don't know the experience of growing up with 1 and losing 1.
[00:39:27] Juan Granados:
We have Yeah, we have. And so like, I guess, and that's what I'm saying. So it comes to say, currently, our 2 family dogs are 12 years old and 10 years old. Our dog is 9 years old. We've also gone through the experience of like losing a dog as well. We had a dog previously that we had to go get put down and then by like a miracle of miracles didn't have to and then ended up going somewhere else. So one of the aspects of dogs, which I guess is not too dissimilar to any other animal or any other NC, but maybe dogs is better because we connect with them slightly better, is that they do teach you about mortality in a much quicker way than what you would see in the timeline of a human. I'm not sure that's a good thing, actually, thinking on it now. And the reason for that, I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. The reason for that is,
[00:40:17] Kyrin Down:
I've seen some people who seem to grieve a dog as much as they would grieve for their, like, closest loved ones. You know, it was as intimate with them as their sister, their mom, their dad. That's a bad trade off. Because you're choosing to love someone something which is got a really short lifespan. So you're like definitely choosing for a lot of pain in a shorter period of time than that is necessary. Yeah, that's a good way. So like, you know, just imagine someone who's perhaps they don't, they have equal ability to love human beings and to love animals. And they they can create that intimacy at a equal level.
If they just for whatever reason, we're like, I'm just gonna, you know, create that intimacy more with dogs and choose, choose that path. They're just gonna have so many fucking heartbreaks over the same period of time as loving a person where you're only gonna get that once maybe if ever. So, yeah, in that case, I could see it being a detriment.
[00:41:37] Juan Granados:
Yeah, yeah. I view it in the other way in that the the the finite nature of life is what brings a lot of its value. If you didn't have finiteness to something, put it to a human. If you could, I was I was having a conversation with some old work people the other day around the table on this relips of 1000 years old. You would if everyone did, I think you would care less about the day to day interactions with them, not more because of the amount of perceived time that you have with somebody. I don't think this is a super easy concept to get. I like the way that, Tim Urban's, weight by y, posted it in terms of if you do the calculations, you'll have spent 80% of your time or something to that effect with your parents up until you're 17 years old and beyond that it's like 15% of your remaining time. And if you do the calculations for someone who lives apart from them, let's just say, you might see them twice a year, you've got a 100 times you're going to see them, maybe less. Right? That to that sort of nature.
If you look at it in those sort of statistical, like numerical ways, you're like, oh shit, I've only got a 100 times I'm going to see them. That's it. Or calculate however you want to do it or if you see them more often, whatever. Goes to that effect. I think with a dog, because of the more finite amount of time, yes I do agree with you it's equally as jarring and as painful to lose an animal someone who you're obviously hanging around with basically like almost every day roughly with a dog that's gonna happen but I think there is learning in seeing the finiteness of something of joy and a lot of the learnings that come from that now.
I will caveat with maybe maybe you do not want that if you're older, because you already understand that concept. But if you are younger, it might be a very powerful teaching moment to know what the future may hold and to be prepared for it. If you are so, this is I guess a few I'll say this, if, I could see getting a dog with my daughter's 8 years old, And so it grows with her, let's say a dog who lives 12 years, so 8 years old all the way till she's 20. Does it 20 grief, the family dog passed away. But a fucking important lesson is learned there around the finiteness of life and going like holy shit, lots of joyful moments. It does end. Everything ends. That is just the reality of life. There's a there's a powerful learning point there that you almost cannot get with any other experience. Like as much as someone tells you how much it's painful to lose a loved one or anything like that, you kind of have to go through it individually and you understand what that is. When that happens, that might be a teachable moment for a young person, let's just say, that can then be absorbed and replicated into the extension of life in the knowledge.
Then I might flip a little bit of my idea if I was 70 years old, the only reason to get a dog around that time maybe it would be for companionship if you are lonely, but if you're not lonely, no, like I don't want to experience that loss at that point because I've already know what it is like to maybe lose or the pain that comes about it and then maybe I'd say the benefits that can be accumulated maybe are gonna feel even worse at the at the loss that comes around to it. Maybe not. Maybe not. But I guess that's just the the variant view of that particular point. Yeah. I'm gonna be contrarian here. I'm I'm not sure I believe that at least from personal experience
[00:45:05] Kyrin Down:
was my mom's death has not added anything. There's no there's been no learning lessons of, appreciating life more now that she's gone. For me, that whole thing was just I wish that never happened. Yeah. And was my life before versus afterwards? You know, do I appreciate life more? I don't think that's had much of an impact on a day to day certainly. So just for me, I would say, you know, was that a good thing? Unequivocally, it was a bad thing. There's nothing that I can really take out from that that suffering and the loss. Which also gets I guess into the was it the life extension arguments and a lot of people would say like, now you need to have the finiteness the finiteness is good.
In of itself. Yeah, I don't I don't I don't believe that. So let's just say like we cure. We cure most things we can live for a long time. We can apply that same technology, I'd say to our to our our pets as well. So dogs aren't living 8 years, 12 years anymore. They live in 8 1200 years. So we're not seeing any death, other than the randomness that there's still probably just going to be pure kinetic, random shit that just happens. Not sure we'd be able to completely solve that. But do we do we would we then want to replicate artificially a death?
And to learn these lessons?
[00:46:57] Juan Granados:
I'm not sure. Well, well, to a couple of points on that one, if we could artificially send length of life to dogs, like any dogs, any human, whatever, whoever. And there's a pretty surefire way that, you know, they wouldn't pass away, let's just say you can move their conceptual self of who they are into another being or another system or another robot or something to that effect. Then no, you wouldn't go and learn the fucking thing because that doesn't exist anymore. That's not even a concept that you need to worry about. Cool, forget about that. You now have other things to suffer through. Fine. The other aspect though of suffering in general is in a similar way to Viktor Frankl's, There is certain suffering that does make the meaning of life meaningful.
Part of the again, if you were to extend the dog to live forevermore, right forever. The meaning of the dog itself, yes, I think you would extract still the joys that a dog would bring. Let's just go in reality. Yes, but an older dog is probably going to be, not going to be walking as much, not going to be interacting as much. And so then you might say to me, well, you know, in this particular scenario, imagine if you could just regenerate and it's the same like young and energetic dog. Okay, well, if that's the case, then we're in a different concept altogether, that you've just completely shifted away from that. But in generalness, with live extension, doesn't necessarily mean extension of health span. And so then, you know, do you want to be have a decrepit dog 40 years? Yeah. I was imagining more of
[00:48:30] Kyrin Down:
the the healthy.
[00:48:31] Juan Granados:
Yeah, like healthy and if that's the case, okay, then this throw I would throw this completely out the bathwater. But where we send it today, I go the concept of, a finite amount of life or a finite amount of time, I think is what gives a lot of joy and context to the things we care about. Case in point, if we if we all all of a sudden, just didn't need money for whatever reason, the concept of money itself would like you just go on the human mind would go and concern itself with other things that then become the next challenge, right? Your, the challenge would just grow into the space that you allow it to be. I just have a view that with a dog, at the very least, the aspect of mortality and finiteness of life is a powerful lesson that can be learned there.
Then maybe it's gonna say that maybe can't even be learned in like with the aspect of a human but that's that's untrue. I think that that can be done as well. Without negating, obviously, the fact that it is a sad event. Like it is a sad event to lose a dog, just as it is a sad event to lose a loved one. Like, you ain't getting past that. And I think it is stupid to say, Oh, yeah, like, you know, you're gonna get some learnings out of it. Shut the fuck up. Like, you don't want that. But I think the learning aspect is, yes, but is 12 years of joy within the loss of that still a net positive?
Yes, it is. And I think that's a powerful lesson to have in like, okay, then that means you should be able to then extrapolate to having a relationship with someone, even if potentially 7 years on time timeline, it doesn't work out. Because the 7 years of the of the relationship is a positive. It's kind of like the people who say, and maybe it would have helped these people who say, fuck, I knew this person. And I was, you know, with them for 3 years, and we traveled all over the world. And we were planning on doing these things. And then we broke up and then fuck, like, what a waste of time. And it's like, no, it was a waste of time. I'm sure you enjoyed it during that time like there's all of that was joyful.
Similarly with a dog, I I tend to think that you wouldn't go like, Fuck! I've walked this dog all the time and I fed him like, what a waste of money. No, you wouldn't be like that. I think in general you're gonna be like, man, there's a lot of great moments and you know what if I had another dog, I probably would recall these moments a little bit better, which I guess with dogs, we tend to do that. We tend to replace dog with another dog. Does everyone take all of the learnings from it? No. But there's a certain finiteness that then spreads into a human where it's like, Yeah, we do it with dogs. We cannot do that with a human, not at this current stage. And so I think that's the learning of like, oh, shit, learnings in that, yes, we can replace them and then sort of settles the pain. But it's the protection into humans of, oh, you don't you can't do that to humans. And then there's a reality of Oh, it's, it's one life, It's these interactions, and that's it. And there will be pain multiplied by however you want in comparison to a dog. That that's maybe the learning that I'm thinking, but you know, when I'm older, like now, kind of don't want to go through that. You're right. I kind of want to go through the depth of a dog.
I kind of know that concept already. I don't need to go and go through it again. That's just
[00:51:40] Kyrin Down:
unnecessary suffering. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's it's like voluntary and involuntary suffering. Not not arguing that there's not benefits to that. But it's more you know, I make myself suffer a lot with the one arm hair stands. I have my body psychologically, it throws you through mind tricks. You're like, this day was really good that day was really bad. I don't need to do any of that stuff. But having brothers die having my mom's die, friends going through bad things that they don't want to go through. But you know, if they're choosing to do kakota trail and like suffer a lot like you did, like, I was on you. We do that. Yeah. Yeah. There's, and I, you know, I hope you do learn things through that. So yeah, it's it's for me, it's more more the voluntary and involuntary suffering. Yes. That is a good that is a good variation when it comes to that. What do you think about so we went to Sosos run club? I did for the first time. Correct. Yesterday.
Got up before 5 am everyone. That's pretty impressive feat. Yeah, that's that's probably the most impressive thing anyone's heard this whole year. And I took Butters along. And it was an interesting experience because I've this was the first time where I've taken him to a place where it's like, I didn't know anyone there apart from from you and man show and Liam. And the I guess like positive feedback was, it's so weird because I'm pretty comfortable just going out to groups of people and saying hi, you know, just small talk, making my way into a conversation.
If it's a group or a single person, it's easier if they're just on their own. That's totally fine. But yeah, the the immediate positive reaction of I think people inferring things once again talking about inferring is like, oh, he's got a dog. People were much more friendly to chat with me. Yeah, I that was probably the main outcome I saw from that, which was just a lot of good traits perhaps got conferred upon me just because I had brothers with me. Yeah, that's that's a fair fair statement. I wasn't I wasn't expecting that as much. I thought I thought probably the the thing with the dog would just be it's an easy introduction for people who aren't used to that. But I'm really used to just going up to people and saying something starting a combo.
But it was the reaction afterwards, which was like, oh, shit. Okay, this is actually a little bit of a hack superpower. Yeah.
[00:54:18] Juan Granados:
Look, you've said this before around
[00:54:21] Kyrin Down:
your brother walking butters around or you walking butters around at South Bend? Well, I haven't gotten it much myself walking him around. Okay. You know, people will come up, but they just want to pat and, and maybe play with them for a little bit, but not necessarily like, stay talk and chat. And this was where it was the environment was different, which was we're all just waiting for the run club to start. That's true. We'll finish. It just finished. And so we're all just hanging around. So there is more of a okay, well, this is now a social setting. Okay to talk with people. And no one's got anything to do. But wait, but wait, and talk with people. Or go get coffee or whatever it is. Yeah, it was.
[00:55:05] Juan Granados:
It was a bit of a superpower, but I was there I was there witnessing it and it was such a it's an easy day as well. Yeah. If you want to get more attention, you're gonna have more conversations, get a dog and if you train your dog well, I think that doesn't fare a few qualities onto yourself. Thank you, Bernice. I have not done anything. Yeah, but you know that, but that's true because you know people saw oh wow like it's doing this and doing that and it's well trained that I think infers certain qualities to a person like, oh, wow, they can do this, oh, they can be trusted, I can, you know, all of those various things that you don't think in a, like a very conscious way, it's very subconscious thought process that goes on that kind of infers between people, right? Like, you know, you see someone wearing lots of sports gear and like the good shoes you kind of go okay they're investing in themselves that probably means that they're good in some relation you set your expectations setting bar in a particular place maybe it's similar with a dog that if you walk with a dog and the dog's not going wild on the leash and doing the things, you kinda go, oh, like this person knows how to behave and, maybe put trust in the dog and take care of something. Yeah. The yeah. The not lazy. The All of those qualities. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Super power super power of dogs. Super power of dogs. Yep.
Look, I don't think I've got anything else to go on with dogs. So, look, thank you very much. Minichal's partner. You know, I won't call out the name for suggesting dogs. If you've got another suggestion on, a topic, please let us know. We've got quite a few comments in the chat. Okay. Let's see. Let's let's tackle the comments. Jump into that before we, jump. Also throw in any comments as well on topics that you'd like us to go through as well if you're listening to this live right now.
[00:56:40] Kyrin Down:
You had some rats apparently. Some what? Rats.
[00:56:44] Juan Granados:
As a as a child. I didn't have rats. My sister had rats. Okay. My sister had rats. I wouldn't say that I generally but we had guinea pigs. We had rats. We had dogs. Got anything else? My
[00:57:01] Kyrin Down:
yeah, I didn't have rats mom. I still have rats. Okay, they were cool though. They were actually really cool. I would say they were cool. Yeah, I've heard they actually are a little bit fun. Yeah, like the one like I wouldn't compare it to the dog. But I feel like it was kind of cool to have a rat. Yep. I think Joey Seth comedy is setting up a joke here. But he's only reading the start of it, which is your current next time you walk by this and a stranger asks us to have a pat. And he just hasn't written anything else. So unless he as he responds and in the next minute, he's leaving the joke to the finish. Such a shit comedian. He just he just does the setup and then forgets to tell the joke. I'm just pause and just begin something else.
Alright, well, we'll end it here. Thank you, everyone for joining in. Much appreciated. Oh, no way I see it on the actual chat over there, but it's not appearing on my phone. Okay, I'm gonna quick look, you should get the stranger. Here we go. You should pat the stranger on the head.
[00:57:59] Juan Granados:
Okay. There you go. So when they pat a dog be like, oh, can I pat your head? Yeah.
[00:58:03] Kyrin Down:
So, a stranger asked to have a pat, you should pat them on the head.
[00:58:07] Juan Granados:
Yeah. Maybe. Sure. Why not? That's a pretty bold bold move. I like it. Yeah. Maybe Lisa. What if? That's a that's a ballsy move. It is. Sounds like a Joey sounds like a Joey ballsy move. Yep. Look, we'll leave it there. I do have some ideas for next week's podcast, but if, if we think of something off off off this Sure. Combo, we'll we'll talk about it. Sure. But for now, immortalize, thank you very much. Take care. Be well wherever you're in the world.
[00:58:32] Kyrin Down:
Bye now.
Welcome back, Mere Mortalites. This is a Meanderings episode. You've got the 2 Mere Mortals here. Juan here. Kyrin here. It is the 8th December, just a little bit past 9 am, Australian Eastern Standard Time. We've got daylight savings time here in Australia. If you don't know what that is. Actually, I'll just ask you this question directly. Do you think we should have daylight savings time here in Queensland? No. My bad. I don't give a shit. And I say when people talk about this sort of stuff, I'm like, maybe it doesn't come from a location that this has mattered. Yeah. Matters in other different locations. It's it's more it's not that I haven't
[00:00:38] Kyrin Down:
done a well researched No. Arguments
[00:00:41] Juan Granados:
on this side or that side is just like, I I don't I don't want to do that. Yeah. It's a it's of less importance to our life. So, you know, don't take that away. However, what is important and what we're gonna be talking about today is dogs. Very important. Doggies. Now this, roommate do The request? Yeah. Who requests from who? So for this is from Mansfield's girlfriend. Okay. So Mansfield's girlfriend, which we'll we'll leave unnamed until someone determines that they want to put their name forward. Said, hey, you should talk about dogs. I believe then that this would be mentioned when we were over at their place for a bit of a get together, a couple of weeks ago. Dogs was the suggestion to talk about. Now Yep. We have not discussed anything in relation to this topic around what we should be talking about. How many notes did you take?
Few. A few. There's a few a few few. I took 0. You took 0. Okay. There's a couple of interesting concepts that we can talk about from a dog perspective that also meld into a couple of deep conversations. But I probably if people don't know the story of, kind versus dogs. I think it'd probably just be worth telling people because you currently look after a dog, right? Yeah. Not yours. Your brothers, but you're looking after him while your brother is overseas and you currently haven't shit your pants and you're not too scared to go into the home. So obviously something has improved, from dogs. So where did the let's just tell the story of one of the negative connotations with dogs. Where are you today with dogs? Yeah, sure. So
[00:02:06] Kyrin Down:
those who haven't heard the story, basically, I turned it into a date story once. And this is one of those ones where it's like, I sometimes look at my dad and my dad, you're taking too long with this fucking story. Like you're waffling. You're adding like needless drama into it. And it's trying to be a good storyteller and to be a good storyteller. You have to practice telling stories in different ways. And this is one where I look back now. I'm like, I probably made a lot of girls endure like a really weak story.
[00:02:44] Juan Granados:
Like, like stretching a story. It doesn't deserve the limelight that long. We're like, I'm gonna I'm gonna use it.
[00:02:50] Kyrin Down:
So so in essence, I'll know, fuck it. I'll tell you. I'll subjective. No, I won't. Basically, what I would do is like, I got bit by a dog when I was young, my first day of primary school. Before that, you know, I was 6 years old. Can I really remember interacting with animals before then? Not particularly this is got to be one of my first memories. And the what a cherished memory. Yeah, exactly. Right. So you wonder why I was iffy about dogs for quite a while. Where did dog bite you? It was on the heel. And so basically, long story short, we're going to go to primary school, mom, my friend Lachlan and his small dog, Rosie, little poodle.
So probably about the size of a shoe box, I guess. And my mom and his mom and I apparently like ran ahead of everyone. And Rosie got really excited and came in like nippy on the heel. Drew like some blood or something like you know, probably just band aid and Yeah, it was dog was just trying to be like, Hey, can you donate some blood? Yeah, a little bite. Sure. Sure. I infected it with whatever I've got in me. Of course. Super viruses.
[00:04:02] Juan Granados:
Brandball. Unbelievable.
[00:04:08] Kyrin Down:
What I would turn this story into for a day would it be like, I wouldn't tell that story first. I'd tell this exaggerated story of like, first day of primary school describing how it's like sunny outside rainbows. Then I see these dark clouds on the horizon coming towards me. I turn and look around this dog transforms into like Cerberus with a serpent tail spitting venom fire coming out of its back. And I'm running for my life and it like bites off my legs like clean clean fucking takes it off. And then this angel appears from the heavens and like gets a bandage and wraps it up, you know, this being my mom. And then the storm clouds go away and stuff.
And then I'd be like, so that's the truth. And then there's my mom's story, this exaggerated bullshit. And then I tell the real story. Maybe it works. Maybe it didn't.
[00:04:59] Juan Granados:
I've got some I've got some off off air feedback. I need a gift card. I won't do it live right now. But yes. Okay.
[00:05:05] Kyrin Down:
And the Yeah, so that that made me very wary around animals, but especially dogs for a long time. Big and small didn't really matter which. And yeah, so that's one thing I've definitely probably one of the I don't know if it's changed my mind, I guess so. Changed, maybe change something that I thought was fixed in me, which was I don't get along with dogs don't dogs don't get along with me. And I had things to back this up. When I was traveling Latin America, I got chased by a fuck ton of dogs. Stray dogs come across me in the street. They didn't like me. I don't like them.
Plenty of dogs have barked at me over the years. I'm being selective, obviously. But I think even just the you could sense my nervousness around them. And they'd probably get nervous as well. So yeah, having having Butters as a puppy. This being my brother's golden retriever for a year and a bit now. And, you know, I helped look after him when he was really young. Taking him outside when my brother was at work and stuff. And then now that I'm kind of living with him, I guess, looking, seeing him every day, been looking after him for the last week entirely by myself.
I'm comfortable around dogs now and not just him but others. So yeah, good. Okay. There you go. See the transition the transition, which I guess,
[00:06:31] Juan Granados:
would you have said before butters, that transition was happening anyways with dogs in general?
[00:06:36] Kyrin Down:
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, because I was looking at this was one of those ones where it's like, is this actually a trauma? Or is this just a characteristics of behavior that I now do? So I instantly see a dog and as it as it is it something that is within me is actually, other hormones raging smell of the dog, the sight of the dog? Is that actually triggering things in me? Or is it just like, my behavior before this was always stay clear of them. And so I just do that.
[00:07:07] Juan Granados:
Well, and there's the I'm pretty sure most people do say this in that the way that you act or behave or exhibit some sort of action or emotion to say a dog, then they're going to reciprocate in that like, oh, they smell your fear. You know, that's sort of say it with other animals around. Don't, you know, if you show fear, then they're going to latch onto that and do something more to it. That would make sense. So I guess then now with Butters getting to see a growth of a dog so directly. Some of that maybe dissipates from you. And then in turn, you're not as
[00:07:43] Kyrin Down:
what I reacted to another dog. And then other dogs like, okay, cool, whatever. Yeah, the downside of this, though, would then to get overconfidence and think, oh, all dogs. It was all me. So now I can just go and pet any dog and it's going to be fine. Whereas thing even up easy upstairs. You know, even just walking up the driveway, I get a lot of box set. So correct. Obviously, I'm not
[00:08:05] Juan Granados:
welcome everywhere. Correct. Correct. Now. So I was gonna say in an opposite way for myself. Trying to remember we did have dogs. No, no, we definitely had dogs. When I was very young. We had a little brown lab, I'm pretty sure just before we left Colombia, then we always had like family dogs to the day and have had 2 dogs within I guess, like our family home that we've lived in the last few years as well. Now. I have been bitten by dogs. One time I would've been in the face by a dog. Really? But that was like, by recent, I'm talking probably when I was 2023 years old. It didn't turn me from liking dogs, but it did make me cautious about certain types of dogs, especially the more from our, like, but like I would say the, no, I wouldn't say the type. I wouldn't say that the type of dog. It'd be more the positioning and the environment of a dog. So the, Hey, if they're trapped in a corner and injured, probably not the type of dog that you want to approach. However, similarly for my daughter, when she goes close to smaller like, this is probably incorrect.
Would you guys close to small dogs? I feel it's fine. It's cool. And I'm talking dogs are about her size. 80 centimeters to a meter. However, if she goes close to big dogs or pimples or terriers or something to that relation, Kind of go like, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, like pull back. Not that I don't trust you necessarily, but I have this maybe bias where I've seen some videos, I can see that it goes wrong. It's kind of the inverse in some regards because it's a little dog sort of can be a worse ones in like doing little nibbly bites and whatnot. And it's usually the very, very aggressive dogs in a very specific type of breed environment that are really aggressive, not all of them. So, I guess that particular stereotype could be slightly wrong. However, for me, I'm gonna go towards the safety side and I'm not gonna have her around. Similarly, we have a really big dog, I think she's 40 5, 46 kilos, something to that effect. And we've we had both my daughter and her around each other when they were younger.
When our dog gets close to food, you do not want to be near that. She will get really aggressive in relation to food. So we kind of make decision, hey, we're going to separate them as much as possible. Happen, my daughter's older, maybe they can interact a little bit more, but still, separation is probably a good thing. I also lay towards the safety side of things as well. So in general for dogs, I go, do I love them? Yep. I definitely do. I own the side of caution though, always. So I think there's a healthy amount of caution to have, especially dogs that you don't know and more so their environment, the situation, everything like that. But in general, I'd say dogs are probably my favorite pet. For sure. Like cats? Fuck them. Fuck cats. Do you like cats? Hate them. I hate cats. I don't like cats. Probably more of a cat. My sister has a cat, you know. I don't mind people having cats. I'm all that like dastardly.
With me having a cat, I've never thought about it. It's never crossed my mind. Same with other pets like a monkey pet. Nah. Donkeys. No. Nah. I don't want any of that. I'll list some that are actually normal. Snakes.
[00:11:17] Kyrin Down:
Rabbit.
[00:11:18] Juan Granados:
Rabbit? Nah. Nothing. Like, never have a I'm not a parrot. Are you a big animal?
[00:11:24] Kyrin Down:
Like, no. I can't say I'm a big animal No. Personal fan. No. No. What I what I actually probably like about cats is just their independence is that I wouldn't need to do that much work.
[00:11:35] Juan Granados:
Like it's its own thing. So and this gets to like probably the first question about dogs. I was gonna ask you was I think a large percentage of people. Yeah, a lot of percent of people will get dogs for the benefit in that you get home and you have like this joyful happy wants to interact with you animal as opposed to a cat that is independent as opposed to a fish that is just waiting to die and go upside down. You know, it's there's some interaction there with a dog. But from what we're saying, like, I don't necessarily have ever cared about that. Like, have I ever wanted a dog for that reason? Have you ever wanted a dog for the reason or do you find that now having butters? Let's just say. Yeah, it's kind of nice. There's a certain amount of joy that you get coming home and
[00:12:21] Kyrin Down:
Yeah, yeah, there I can see it. I can see why it's fun. And even like waking up in the morning, first thing you've got is just like a really nice pleasant interaction when you wake up. Unless of course he shits on the floor like he did the other day. Because we're changing his food from from puppy to adult, I guess. Less fun, less fun, but it wasn't the worst thing in the world. So, yeah, I can I can understand that one of those ones where it's I'd heard that argument before and intellectually I'm like, but now now I go okay? I'm
[00:13:00] Juan Granados:
trying to determine whether
[00:13:03] Kyrin Down:
I'm trying to determine whether I would be like that if I had ever just owned a dog. What Yeah, why do you like a dog then if you don't enjoy that aspect of it? Well,
[00:13:13] Juan Granados:
maybe this is the reality. I don't know if I like really that that much enjoy owning a dog. There's aspects of a dog that are nice. Let's just say I do like having a dog, but to the example of our friend having a a new dog and they got a 4 month old. I'm a spaniel. But I don't know if that brings me any like necessarily joy to have that around but I don't know if that is an offset in that there is now a comparison in a baby in a kid that blows that out of the water, right? It's in the realm of okay, yeah, it's more work to have a kid. But the amount of joy and fun and learning and all that that you get from a kid is, you know, if that's the feeling people get for dogs, it's like multiplied by 100 For me in terms of having a child.
So maybe it's just a case of I have I've never experienced owning a dog on my own outright. And maybe there would have been that because then with a partner, okay, I probably more fever, the joy that comes from coming home and seeing my partner versus a dog, and then multiply that many times fold on a kid. So I don't know if my view of that is just
[00:14:22] Kyrin Down:
shifted because of that. And I have a feeling it is. Yeah, it sounds like it's good training from what I gather as to what a kid is going to be like. Butters had a rough period at the start where he's pooping doesn't know potty trained or anything. And so sleeping weirdly. So it sounded like my brother had a, you know, a 1 month, 3 month stretch. I don't know where it was just like, he was really stressed out from it as having a baby is. And then it gets into the more fun stage after that. Yeah. Yeah. And that's
[00:14:56] Juan Granados:
actually another aspect of dogs, I would say for sure is if you want to see like, have some training wheels on before going for a kid or something to that effect, I think it's really good. I think it's really good. The other aspect though, like I would say if I had theoretical scenario, I'd move to Germany for work and I was on my own. I think getting a dog would be really nice. I could I could see how that aspect of having a dog to have a companion in a time when maybe you're more solitude. That would be cool. I can see that. It's just in the current time or really, like, realistically, all of that I've lived in my life has never been, necessarily online for any extended period of time.
I go, I just haven't situated myself in that to be honest to say like, oh, yeah, that's a lot of goodness to suggest that. Yeah. Would you teach it to Sig Hale like Count Dactyla did?
[00:15:45] Kyrin Down:
That actually genuinely did that. Yeah. So there's this English dude. Really fascinating story. There's an English guy who had a dog, and I believe he taught it how to Sig Hale. So he can say Sig Hale and it would lift up its paw. Wow. And he got in a lot in trouble. I think he actually went to jail over it. Hold on. Just really interesting because England's hasn't got the strictness that Germany and some of the other Belgium countries and stuff related to like Nazi paraphernalia. And what would you call it like, hit Larry and ideas? You know, if you're posting that online, it's, it's very bad. I'm actually not sure what they are with regards to in terms of mind camp. Are you allowed to read that book there?
How am I? I don't know. But they're certainly, you know, in terms of free speech related to talking about these things, Holocaust denying that sort of stuff. You that very intolerant of that and you will 100% be censored and true, but I'm not sure where England falls on that scale, probably A little. Maybe if you know, Germany's at like 100% England and maybe be at 50. Australia is probably at 25. I know there's some Nazi stuff here that if you do, you can get in trouble for. Well, that's what I was gonna say to you.
[00:17:11] Juan Granados:
Did you know that, you know, he did That we have way off topic. If you see hell, if you do a salute, well, here's interesting, in public or to publicly display, which I guess Karim didn't just then. I'd because it wouldn't be a publicly display, I would say. Well, kind of. But it is, it is a criminal offense and will land you in jail. Yeah. As in the show. But it wasn't a public plea display. Yeah? For those who are just listening on the audio, I've been holding that sick hail this whole time. The whole time. The entire time. So like yeah. I I could see if you teach it to your dog that would be a Yes. Yeah, that'd be crazy. Right?
[00:17:43] Kyrin Down:
What do you think about teaching dogs tricks in terms of like, Pavlovian Lee or in some other ways? Well, I guess,
[00:17:51] Juan Granados:
what do you mean by that? Probably like the like in that demanding repeated way where it's like, okay, I'm gonna train them in a, do this, treat you right, do this, treat you right, or don't do it, punish, don't do it, punished until like they learn specifically. Or do you mean training them in like Is there other ways of teaching them other? I guess it's just general I guess it would be but I, example, our dog that we have we didn't do any type of training like direct training like that to sit or to do like when you go with Butters with doing the love heart and stuff like that. So that's really cool. We never did any training to that effect. She went to puppy training for a little bit.
[00:18:34] Kyrin Down:
So it benefited it. But not really where they would do that. But the training was more, you know,
[00:18:38] Juan Granados:
make sure you go into the toilet and when they're like going off off inside not generally, doing specific training for that. It's just being like, no bad put her outside, wait until she learns she's got to go outside, come back inside, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, that sort of thing, but not with the, I guess, the intended purpose of being like, okay, I'm going to train you specifically for that regard. Or perhaps a better question is useless tricks.
[00:19:02] Kyrin Down:
Is that Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So so Butters knows a whole bunch of useless tricks. We just talked about the love heart thing, you make the love heart with your hands on the ground or up high and he'll like jump up to it and put a snout into it. It's a crowd pleaser as we'll talk about the perhaps interaction with dogs and humans in the after the boost to gram. But yeah, I don't know some people another one the bang like you shoot them and they've gone over. Yep. I've heard I've heard at least one person be like, that's you shouldn't have taught them that that's a bad thing.
Like, yeah, I don't I don't really buy that that argument. I feel I feel I feel just giving them attention of a kind of positive kind. And in this case, teaching them tricks. It's not like a negative kind of thing. Is it is it worsening their life being by being able to do this trick? No, I don't think so. If anything, they get more positive attention for doing it from other people. So in the long term, yeah, maybe you know, because you you're having to teach them with a with a smack on the head or something or usually, I believe it's better to teach them with tricks and with treats anyway. So if anything, it's even more positive. I only see it as kind of like positive things. Whereas, you know, the the opposite side of it would be, oh, it's it's equivalent to training bears to do tricks in the circus sort of deal, which I don't feel those are equivalent analogies. Yeah. Okay. I think how does it
[00:20:40] Juan Granados:
let's wrap into a whole context here. There's a part of domesticating an animal, which here would be a dog over, you know, many many years where now
[00:20:49] Kyrin Down:
which is mandatory, the potty training, wanting to to eat, you know, at certain times or or and and not and not jump on people, for example, not just have other people, not special wolves, don't chew things. I think it's nice that they're not wolves.
[00:21:04] Juan Granados:
Right? If you wanna keep a dog, it's nice that they're not the descendants of wolves because that would be a bad time. But I personally see it as what a useless thing to teach dogs. That sort of doing the love heart, getting them to sit, doing I will go to the point of like, yeah okay, you don't want them shooting inside, you don't want them destroying your items around the home. Okay, that's that part of domestication I do get the benefits of but the tricks and the things couldn't give a hoot, couldn't couldn't care a single thing about mine. However, it is entertaining to see like there is entertainment and great value to see dogs do that. I do agree.
[00:21:44] Kyrin Down:
But I personally would not spend any time in doing that. It's more of a value judgment. If you saw someone else doing this, teaching them. Is that like, a bad thing?
[00:21:55] Juan Granados:
Honestly, if I saw someone else doing that, I'd go. That's cool. Right? Personally do it? Yeah, sure. No. I guess my view with dogs is more functional than I think most people who like dogs would view like I like dogs but I want my dog to bark loudly when a treated child's come in, to behave itself when we're around the dog and to be able to feed it. I do want to take the dog for walks and to behave itself where I'm in certain locations, but I don't want my dog to jump up and do tricks and roll around or do whatever. I want it to just enjoy itself, be around us, be able to not bite our arms off when we're trying to eat or something to that effect. But I want it to be protective.
Right? That's, that's kind of like Garfield. However, I would say I'm in the minority in some of that views, because for sure, but lots of people now buy dogs or get dogs with the view of oh my god, so cute. Oh my god, long hair. I want to pamper it. I want to do all these things. I stray away from that. I'm not wolf level. Not like give me a wolf. Let's go rogue. Somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in the middle. Yeah,
[00:23:03] Kyrin Down:
the I'd labeled this episode incorrectly. So it was something like dogs and puppers. Juan's best friend. Well, it's like Juan's a neutral friend, maybe. Correct. If that best. Yes, I wrote Karen's second worst enemy, I think, with the first being ants. But then I passed a biker today and I was like, oh, god. They're pretty high up there as well.
[00:23:23] Juan Granados:
Yeah. I wouldn't look honestly, with with dogs, I wouldn't say that they see, my personal view, I'm gonna be directing your models. So my best friend and I don't it would be a long shot if not, but definitely not. I'm not opposed to them. I'm very neutral with dogs. I mean, I mean, I like coexistence
[00:23:38] Kyrin Down:
with dogs. Yeah. Totally. Cats, I'll put them on the way. No, Lane fine. The stats of just how many there are surprised me. I would have thought there would have been significantly less than humans. But no, there's more dogs than humans in Australia, at the very least, which is I don't know, I find that mind boggling. I just don't understand what the fuck are they? Because I don't see that many pounds. I'm probably have a lot wild ones. Yeah, you reckon? You reckon? Yeah, I'll have to Yeah, maybe I need to dig into it more and see. Because if they're counting dingoes as dogs. Yeah, I guess. I guess that makes sense. But I mean, where would the stray dogs even live?
Can they live out in the bush? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if that's
[00:24:24] Juan Granados:
questions which we maybe should have done research on. Yeah. And as well, like a quick little like Google also pops up with those around 200,000 dogs and cats every year in animal shelters. Again, what's the percentage of cats versus dogs? Then that's not a website from the 5th April 2023 says there are approximately 6,400,000 dogs in Australia. Oh, really? Yeah, that's from essential dog.com.au.
[00:24:49] Kyrin Down:
Maybe it was a household
[00:24:52] Juan Granados:
that may Yeah, there's another one that said, yeah, from the Sydney Morning Herald from 2020 tubes. Pet dogs rose from 5.1 to 6,300,000. Okay, all right. That makes a lot more sense then. Sorry, the country. Yeah, maybe it's where you're at. How many dogs are in Australia? It's the country is home to around 28,700,000 of pets, with 6,900,000 households confirming to have animal companions. Very sort of statistic for pets in general. I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Oh, good catch. Look at that right on the fingertips you would have seen on the video.
[00:25:25] Kyrin Down:
Yeah. All right. Okay. That makes a lot more sense. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was like, it's a lot of fucking dogs, man. I don't see a dog per person out here. No. Or like yeah. Because I was saying, like, some people have multiple dogs, but that wouldn't, like, come up with No. It's not needed. Wouldn't wouldn't even get close.
[00:25:39] Juan Granados:
In any case, well, I'll just jump into the Blue Streeter Alliance. We'll have a quick look at that, have a conversation, then we're gonna get into, the deeper part of dog conversations. Now that we've been I've just been hating on dogs with teams.
[00:25:51] Kyrin Down:
Alright. Karan, tell the people about, boosted ramming while I bring it up. Yeah. Sure. So for those who don't know, this is a value for value podcast. We provide this value to upfront, no ads, no sponsorships, no nothing's like this. And all that we ask is that you return some value in return. Many different ways of doing this. I'll get towards that at the end of the podcast. But this is the section where we like to thank those who have supported us in a monetary sense in the method that we've been asking for these last couple of years, which is a boost to gram. And so that's a a payment that you can send directly within the podcasting app of your choice.
For the moment, there's a couple, such as fountain is a really good great one. True fans, odd verse podcast guru, curacaster, cast a matic, whole bunch of them. And, yeah. They, a lot of a lot of people actually attach a message with that as well. So one's gonna read out, I believe we had 2. Correct. 2. Although we have 2 from ourselves. What are these from? So I was I went to a couple of crypto events this week. So I was, I was showing some people off the
[00:26:56] Juan Granados:
technology. Cool. Okay. Well, I'll leave them, I'll leave them alone. I won't comment on those ones, but we got, do you have 2 and there's 2 from our absolute favorite friend here at the Meehanortals, Peter. Thank you very much, sweet sir. And he says 2, 2 of them and both of them, I'll call it out, a row of ducks, 2,222 sets using fountain. Quack quack. That's $3 each. Yeah. That's crazy, man. Thank you very much. 3.50. Thank you, Peter. So here we go. First one. I always thought poor mental health was an evolutionary adaptation to help teaching you something is majorly wrong in your life and to motivate you to make difficult but necessary change.
It's really a gift of nature. On the flip side, if you end up killing yourself, I guess you're now no longer wasting resources and procreating humans no longer have to compete with you. By the way, it's a win win for the species.
[00:27:41] Kyrin Down:
Thank you, Peter. There's a that's that's definitely the sort of way my dad would view this sort of thing. Look, I'm gonna I want to like, I think if you you express that view to most people, at least in Australia, you're not you're not going to get a positive response. No, I agree.
[00:28:00] Juan Granados:
But I will, I will hold the line. I won't go too deep because I think I hold similar views to Peter in this, but we talked about with her daughter around the concept of how the difference between, you know, mental health and being active in your choices versus the defaulting to odds, this and that, or you got to medicate with this and that. I guess my default view is, look, there's genetic variabilities, environmental variabilities, and there's decisions and actions that you can take. And I think often some of those can be strong, you can you can do things about that versus the defaulting to y'all woe is me.
Yeah, it must just be because of this. And so now I'm going to be medicated. I'll call it out here because something that I shared with my partner, it was a was in the US I don't know what state it particularly was. But they were talking about it was a mom and dad. I think the dad in this particular video looked a little bit like he was mentioning it like he was saying something but it looked a little bit taken aback with mom was like, no, our daughter told us that she was 1 year old and she's trans and so we want to support her in going through her sex change and doing x y z because she's got this I know I know and again so my view towards us like I don't know if this is a correct assessment of the situation. I would probably say that there is some mental health challenges going here. But the evolution of where we are today, I think has moved the conversation from, Wait a minute, like you kind of need help. Like that sounds like you need some support in other ways, as opposed to almost cherishing and embellishing that particular idea in a supportive way. I kind of go like, I think we're deviating away from probably what would have been a more correct assessment of the truth at that point. But yeah, you say that currently run now and I think most popular scenarios and you're gonna get
[00:29:52] Kyrin Down:
wanted on I think Yeah, well, I'm down you can you can apply that same thing to almost anything though. Right? You know, you could say say that people with cancer, like, it's weeding out the genetic pool. And then you're like, oof, is that
[00:30:09] Juan Granados:
feels less? Yeah, I don't know if that's I don't know if I would say that it's exactly correct. Because either partly most humans do have cancer. It is just how active that particular cell then becomes to become the cancer that proliferates around the body and kills you right? The actual cancer cell versus just having stagnant cancer cells. So there's there's that aspect, I think, I think that more falls in the probability and genetics than it does really anything else. Yes, you can have environmentally caused cancer, aka smoking, or being around uranium being around the elephant foot from Chernobyl, probably not going to be a good thing for you.
But I would say that's a totally different view than straight up like, Oh, no, you seem to have, for whatever reason, have created some challenges from mental health perspective, because environment, genetics, whatever. But I think like, I would have said that one of the 1950s 60s, maybe the view towards it might have been to today's world felt like a stronger or more direct approach. I would hazard a guess that it probably worked in different good ways than right now. And just the pure acceptance of, oh, well, I just have a terrible way to absorb, you know, what you say to me as a teacher in this way. So fuck, I should be medicated or, I should have set us a disability so that I don't have to I kind of go like, well, you know, I think you're masking the true issue. I think masking away the issue versus the direct address. Yeah. Same.
I'm sure we'll get lots of support on that particular topic. And the other one from Vita was, when you tell strangers you're retired, so this is from Karen saying it was semi retired. They will assume you have some sort of inheritance coming your way and don't need to work for money. Little do they know that you just don't need see a need for collecting money. That's that's a pretty
[00:32:02] Kyrin Down:
that's an interesting one. I'm gonna try out a new strategy, which is if someone asked me also, what do you do? I'll ask now, are you asking for money or for fun? Because those are all what I do with my time and really try and separate the 2. And then I can and then I feel that's a good way of then being able to just give the explanation of like, look, I retired 6 years ago, not enough money I invested, I don't really need to do much for it now. But the fun stuff like the hobbies, the time, that's that's what I spend most of my time on. That's what I do. And then I can
[00:32:39] Juan Granados:
talk about those. Yeah, look, put it in there. Like Mark, Mark, my take on this. I'm not going to be harsh here. I'm going to be kind kind. Be kind. I don't think it's a good strategy. Yeah, in that still that particular language. I don't think and mere mortal lights.
[00:32:54] Kyrin Down:
Tell me if I think I'm wrong but I might have tried this before in the past as well.
[00:32:58] Juan Granados:
Being kind of I think that the statement of retirement or that I am retired will have a connotation that not loaded, but that you have money for everything that a general individual would say a retired person has. What does that mean? Houses, cars, some other stability, which is the general consensus. I think you have to change I think you have to change that wording to something else and it was part of what I was going to say actually that I will keep off off air but I think I think a different approach might be best because the reality is it's something like self sufficient Like I am now I'm self sufficient in my current life. Something to that effect where it's like where you're kind of more stating that you're living in a super freeway until that needs to change because the reality is say someone comes up and you do meet someone and then you have a kid.
Something's gonna have to change because right now like from that reality maybe something has to change if they want something. I think the wording of retirement and maybe like what Peter is saying because the the more correct and I think he called it out is I think it's more so that you care less about money and more about freedom. That's a really important distinction that I think would help people understand that
[00:34:13] Kyrin Down:
better. Yeah, I don't know. But I digress. But it also depends who I'm saying this to, you know, if it's if it's to someone. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I don't want to give the wrong impression per se, but it's also if you're chucking extra details of stuff that I haven't elaborated on onto me, there's nothing I can do that. No. That's that's correct. That's correct. I'll,
[00:34:39] Juan Granados:
yeah. The other bit, I'll leave it. I'll leave the other bit. But no, Peter, thank you very much. That's, very much appreciated for those coming through. Yes, Peter. And as Karen mentioned, you can do so because it was
[00:34:50] Kyrin Down:
podcast.com/support if you want to know more. Correct.
[00:34:54] Juan Granados:
Okay, let's get back into dogs and a little bit more into the connection. Well, one thing which you just
[00:35:01] Kyrin Down:
Jasmine today, which I found kind of interesting was dog was one of the end of his first words. Correct. I didn't expect that.
[00:35:07] Juan Granados:
I guess just because you guys say the word dog so much because you've got one. Is that the kind of reasoning you think? I think that probably Yeah, that would be one thing. Often when she was younger, we would say things like, Oh, look, it's easy. The dog, the dog, the dog. Dog gets said a lot in shows, like in kids shows. Dog is really easy word or kids to generally pronounce why the does a little bit easier than or s or something like that. So D is easy. So I think there's a pronunciation of it is fine. Like, you know, generally, it's dog, all dad, those words that are single, single items that are just easy to say, so dog will end up being like one of the first words you've ever said, which is interesting, I guess, not too dissimilar, given the fact that we do have a dog.
[00:35:57] Kyrin Down:
So so it's more. But but is that related to
[00:36:02] Juan Granados:
us spending a lot of time around a dog? No, I don't think so. I think it's just a repetition of the word itself. Case in point, I think Elon Musk's one of his 12 kids, her x, I think it is x, he one of his very first things that he would use to say when he was like a year and a half or something like that, was 3, 2, 1, go in terms of countdown from a rocket. So, you know, generally, kids don't learn backward counting, but like backward counting comes a little bit later, first go forward counting. And so apparently this kid knew backwards counting as like some of his first words. Okay. So I think it's just the repetition of certain things that just builds up that that tolerance. You also see it in kids.
I guess, translating it to dogs. They watch like they watch a lot for what to do, right? So you not a kid who's sub like 10 months, 12 months, but like my daughter now 14 15 16 months onwards, when you talk to them, you will actually notice that they'll look at you, but they'll look at your mouth really intently when you're saying things. And it's watching to be like, okay, I can obviously hear, but what's the movement of mouth that's happening? Similarly, dogs, you know, if you have a dog and you're asking them like, get out, like out, out, out or something to that effect, they they don't translate out as a word, they translate the the meaning and the body language and everything else that you're stating out plus whatever behavior that you've practiced in the past. So, you know, we've always gotten the dog outside, but it's taking you food to get them outside or something. And then you continue to say out without that food, maybe they're not going to translate as easily. Example, without a dog, we've always had it on the front balcony for a long time. And I just recently, we just bought a brand new, like, outdoor table setting and chairs.
And Pardo was like, no, we don't wanna have her anymore in the front yard. It's gonna like destroy it, whatever else. Cool. She's been trained to go to the front balcony for as long as we've lived here to move it to the back balcony. It's no longer just a yeah. Yeah. Go that way. It's like, no, it's confusion. You have to you have to like, change the intent of what you're doing. And it will take a long while for that transition tools to happen. Now, because I was gonna ask you about doggies. So from dogs perspective, maybe a deeper piece of it all, is that what are your thoughts of owning a dog or having a dog?
Does it help in humans understanding mortality?
[00:38:38] Kyrin Down:
Probably it will. I can see the joy and love that brothers brings. And I can also see man is going to be hard when he passes away before us, which is more likely than they're not Yeah. And you know, he's so young. So it's not something that really goes through your mind. Because it's like, that's, he hasn't shown any signs of ageing other than just getting bigger and fatter. Yeah. You know, so it'll be when he hurts his hip or that sort of thing. That that's that's probably when that that starts to come in. So I and I never had pets as a kid. So I don't know the experience of growing up with 1 and losing 1.
[00:39:27] Juan Granados:
We have Yeah, we have. And so like, I guess, and that's what I'm saying. So it comes to say, currently, our 2 family dogs are 12 years old and 10 years old. Our dog is 9 years old. We've also gone through the experience of like losing a dog as well. We had a dog previously that we had to go get put down and then by like a miracle of miracles didn't have to and then ended up going somewhere else. So one of the aspects of dogs, which I guess is not too dissimilar to any other animal or any other NC, but maybe dogs is better because we connect with them slightly better, is that they do teach you about mortality in a much quicker way than what you would see in the timeline of a human. I'm not sure that's a good thing, actually, thinking on it now. And the reason for that, I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. The reason for that is,
[00:40:17] Kyrin Down:
I've seen some people who seem to grieve a dog as much as they would grieve for their, like, closest loved ones. You know, it was as intimate with them as their sister, their mom, their dad. That's a bad trade off. Because you're choosing to love someone something which is got a really short lifespan. So you're like definitely choosing for a lot of pain in a shorter period of time than that is necessary. Yeah, that's a good way. So like, you know, just imagine someone who's perhaps they don't, they have equal ability to love human beings and to love animals. And they they can create that intimacy at a equal level.
If they just for whatever reason, we're like, I'm just gonna, you know, create that intimacy more with dogs and choose, choose that path. They're just gonna have so many fucking heartbreaks over the same period of time as loving a person where you're only gonna get that once maybe if ever. So, yeah, in that case, I could see it being a detriment.
[00:41:37] Juan Granados:
Yeah, yeah. I view it in the other way in that the the the finite nature of life is what brings a lot of its value. If you didn't have finiteness to something, put it to a human. If you could, I was I was having a conversation with some old work people the other day around the table on this relips of 1000 years old. You would if everyone did, I think you would care less about the day to day interactions with them, not more because of the amount of perceived time that you have with somebody. I don't think this is a super easy concept to get. I like the way that, Tim Urban's, weight by y, posted it in terms of if you do the calculations, you'll have spent 80% of your time or something to that effect with your parents up until you're 17 years old and beyond that it's like 15% of your remaining time. And if you do the calculations for someone who lives apart from them, let's just say, you might see them twice a year, you've got a 100 times you're going to see them, maybe less. Right? That to that sort of nature.
If you look at it in those sort of statistical, like numerical ways, you're like, oh shit, I've only got a 100 times I'm going to see them. That's it. Or calculate however you want to do it or if you see them more often, whatever. Goes to that effect. I think with a dog, because of the more finite amount of time, yes I do agree with you it's equally as jarring and as painful to lose an animal someone who you're obviously hanging around with basically like almost every day roughly with a dog that's gonna happen but I think there is learning in seeing the finiteness of something of joy and a lot of the learnings that come from that now.
I will caveat with maybe maybe you do not want that if you're older, because you already understand that concept. But if you are younger, it might be a very powerful teaching moment to know what the future may hold and to be prepared for it. If you are so, this is I guess a few I'll say this, if, I could see getting a dog with my daughter's 8 years old, And so it grows with her, let's say a dog who lives 12 years, so 8 years old all the way till she's 20. Does it 20 grief, the family dog passed away. But a fucking important lesson is learned there around the finiteness of life and going like holy shit, lots of joyful moments. It does end. Everything ends. That is just the reality of life. There's a there's a powerful learning point there that you almost cannot get with any other experience. Like as much as someone tells you how much it's painful to lose a loved one or anything like that, you kind of have to go through it individually and you understand what that is. When that happens, that might be a teachable moment for a young person, let's just say, that can then be absorbed and replicated into the extension of life in the knowledge.
Then I might flip a little bit of my idea if I was 70 years old, the only reason to get a dog around that time maybe it would be for companionship if you are lonely, but if you're not lonely, no, like I don't want to experience that loss at that point because I've already know what it is like to maybe lose or the pain that comes about it and then maybe I'd say the benefits that can be accumulated maybe are gonna feel even worse at the at the loss that comes around to it. Maybe not. Maybe not. But I guess that's just the the variant view of that particular point. Yeah. I'm gonna be contrarian here. I'm I'm not sure I believe that at least from personal experience
[00:45:05] Kyrin Down:
was my mom's death has not added anything. There's no there's been no learning lessons of, appreciating life more now that she's gone. For me, that whole thing was just I wish that never happened. Yeah. And was my life before versus afterwards? You know, do I appreciate life more? I don't think that's had much of an impact on a day to day certainly. So just for me, I would say, you know, was that a good thing? Unequivocally, it was a bad thing. There's nothing that I can really take out from that that suffering and the loss. Which also gets I guess into the was it the life extension arguments and a lot of people would say like, now you need to have the finiteness the finiteness is good.
In of itself. Yeah, I don't I don't I don't believe that. So let's just say like we cure. We cure most things we can live for a long time. We can apply that same technology, I'd say to our to our our pets as well. So dogs aren't living 8 years, 12 years anymore. They live in 8 1200 years. So we're not seeing any death, other than the randomness that there's still probably just going to be pure kinetic, random shit that just happens. Not sure we'd be able to completely solve that. But do we do we would we then want to replicate artificially a death?
And to learn these lessons?
[00:46:57] Juan Granados:
I'm not sure. Well, well, to a couple of points on that one, if we could artificially send length of life to dogs, like any dogs, any human, whatever, whoever. And there's a pretty surefire way that, you know, they wouldn't pass away, let's just say you can move their conceptual self of who they are into another being or another system or another robot or something to that effect. Then no, you wouldn't go and learn the fucking thing because that doesn't exist anymore. That's not even a concept that you need to worry about. Cool, forget about that. You now have other things to suffer through. Fine. The other aspect though of suffering in general is in a similar way to Viktor Frankl's, There is certain suffering that does make the meaning of life meaningful.
Part of the again, if you were to extend the dog to live forevermore, right forever. The meaning of the dog itself, yes, I think you would extract still the joys that a dog would bring. Let's just go in reality. Yes, but an older dog is probably going to be, not going to be walking as much, not going to be interacting as much. And so then you might say to me, well, you know, in this particular scenario, imagine if you could just regenerate and it's the same like young and energetic dog. Okay, well, if that's the case, then we're in a different concept altogether, that you've just completely shifted away from that. But in generalness, with live extension, doesn't necessarily mean extension of health span. And so then, you know, do you want to be have a decrepit dog 40 years? Yeah. I was imagining more of
[00:48:30] Kyrin Down:
the the healthy.
[00:48:31] Juan Granados:
Yeah, like healthy and if that's the case, okay, then this throw I would throw this completely out the bathwater. But where we send it today, I go the concept of, a finite amount of life or a finite amount of time, I think is what gives a lot of joy and context to the things we care about. Case in point, if we if we all all of a sudden, just didn't need money for whatever reason, the concept of money itself would like you just go on the human mind would go and concern itself with other things that then become the next challenge, right? Your, the challenge would just grow into the space that you allow it to be. I just have a view that with a dog, at the very least, the aspect of mortality and finiteness of life is a powerful lesson that can be learned there.
Then maybe it's gonna say that maybe can't even be learned in like with the aspect of a human but that's that's untrue. I think that that can be done as well. Without negating, obviously, the fact that it is a sad event. Like it is a sad event to lose a dog, just as it is a sad event to lose a loved one. Like, you ain't getting past that. And I think it is stupid to say, Oh, yeah, like, you know, you're gonna get some learnings out of it. Shut the fuck up. Like, you don't want that. But I think the learning aspect is, yes, but is 12 years of joy within the loss of that still a net positive?
Yes, it is. And I think that's a powerful lesson to have in like, okay, then that means you should be able to then extrapolate to having a relationship with someone, even if potentially 7 years on time timeline, it doesn't work out. Because the 7 years of the of the relationship is a positive. It's kind of like the people who say, and maybe it would have helped these people who say, fuck, I knew this person. And I was, you know, with them for 3 years, and we traveled all over the world. And we were planning on doing these things. And then we broke up and then fuck, like, what a waste of time. And it's like, no, it was a waste of time. I'm sure you enjoyed it during that time like there's all of that was joyful.
Similarly with a dog, I I tend to think that you wouldn't go like, Fuck! I've walked this dog all the time and I fed him like, what a waste of money. No, you wouldn't be like that. I think in general you're gonna be like, man, there's a lot of great moments and you know what if I had another dog, I probably would recall these moments a little bit better, which I guess with dogs, we tend to do that. We tend to replace dog with another dog. Does everyone take all of the learnings from it? No. But there's a certain finiteness that then spreads into a human where it's like, Yeah, we do it with dogs. We cannot do that with a human, not at this current stage. And so I think that's the learning of like, oh, shit, learnings in that, yes, we can replace them and then sort of settles the pain. But it's the protection into humans of, oh, you don't you can't do that to humans. And then there's a reality of Oh, it's, it's one life, It's these interactions, and that's it. And there will be pain multiplied by however you want in comparison to a dog. That that's maybe the learning that I'm thinking, but you know, when I'm older, like now, kind of don't want to go through that. You're right. I kind of want to go through the depth of a dog.
I kind of know that concept already. I don't need to go and go through it again. That's just
[00:51:40] Kyrin Down:
unnecessary suffering. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's it's like voluntary and involuntary suffering. Not not arguing that there's not benefits to that. But it's more you know, I make myself suffer a lot with the one arm hair stands. I have my body psychologically, it throws you through mind tricks. You're like, this day was really good that day was really bad. I don't need to do any of that stuff. But having brothers die having my mom's die, friends going through bad things that they don't want to go through. But you know, if they're choosing to do kakota trail and like suffer a lot like you did, like, I was on you. We do that. Yeah. Yeah. There's, and I, you know, I hope you do learn things through that. So yeah, it's it's for me, it's more more the voluntary and involuntary suffering. Yes. That is a good that is a good variation when it comes to that. What do you think about so we went to Sosos run club? I did for the first time. Correct. Yesterday.
Got up before 5 am everyone. That's pretty impressive feat. Yeah, that's that's probably the most impressive thing anyone's heard this whole year. And I took Butters along. And it was an interesting experience because I've this was the first time where I've taken him to a place where it's like, I didn't know anyone there apart from from you and man show and Liam. And the I guess like positive feedback was, it's so weird because I'm pretty comfortable just going out to groups of people and saying hi, you know, just small talk, making my way into a conversation.
If it's a group or a single person, it's easier if they're just on their own. That's totally fine. But yeah, the the immediate positive reaction of I think people inferring things once again talking about inferring is like, oh, he's got a dog. People were much more friendly to chat with me. Yeah, I that was probably the main outcome I saw from that, which was just a lot of good traits perhaps got conferred upon me just because I had brothers with me. Yeah, that's that's a fair fair statement. I wasn't I wasn't expecting that as much. I thought I thought probably the the thing with the dog would just be it's an easy introduction for people who aren't used to that. But I'm really used to just going up to people and saying something starting a combo.
But it was the reaction afterwards, which was like, oh, shit. Okay, this is actually a little bit of a hack superpower. Yeah.
[00:54:18] Juan Granados:
Look, you've said this before around
[00:54:21] Kyrin Down:
your brother walking butters around or you walking butters around at South Bend? Well, I haven't gotten it much myself walking him around. Okay. You know, people will come up, but they just want to pat and, and maybe play with them for a little bit, but not necessarily like, stay talk and chat. And this was where it was the environment was different, which was we're all just waiting for the run club to start. That's true. We'll finish. It just finished. And so we're all just hanging around. So there is more of a okay, well, this is now a social setting. Okay to talk with people. And no one's got anything to do. But wait, but wait, and talk with people. Or go get coffee or whatever it is. Yeah, it was.
[00:55:05] Juan Granados:
It was a bit of a superpower, but I was there I was there witnessing it and it was such a it's an easy day as well. Yeah. If you want to get more attention, you're gonna have more conversations, get a dog and if you train your dog well, I think that doesn't fare a few qualities onto yourself. Thank you, Bernice. I have not done anything. Yeah, but you know that, but that's true because you know people saw oh wow like it's doing this and doing that and it's well trained that I think infers certain qualities to a person like, oh, wow, they can do this, oh, they can be trusted, I can, you know, all of those various things that you don't think in a, like a very conscious way, it's very subconscious thought process that goes on that kind of infers between people, right? Like, you know, you see someone wearing lots of sports gear and like the good shoes you kind of go okay they're investing in themselves that probably means that they're good in some relation you set your expectations setting bar in a particular place maybe it's similar with a dog that if you walk with a dog and the dog's not going wild on the leash and doing the things, you kinda go, oh, like this person knows how to behave and, maybe put trust in the dog and take care of something. Yeah. The yeah. The not lazy. The All of those qualities. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Super power super power of dogs. Super power of dogs. Yep.
Look, I don't think I've got anything else to go on with dogs. So, look, thank you very much. Minichal's partner. You know, I won't call out the name for suggesting dogs. If you've got another suggestion on, a topic, please let us know. We've got quite a few comments in the chat. Okay. Let's see. Let's let's tackle the comments. Jump into that before we, jump. Also throw in any comments as well on topics that you'd like us to go through as well if you're listening to this live right now.
[00:56:40] Kyrin Down:
You had some rats apparently. Some what? Rats.
[00:56:44] Juan Granados:
As a as a child. I didn't have rats. My sister had rats. Okay. My sister had rats. I wouldn't say that I generally but we had guinea pigs. We had rats. We had dogs. Got anything else? My
[00:57:01] Kyrin Down:
yeah, I didn't have rats mom. I still have rats. Okay, they were cool though. They were actually really cool. I would say they were cool. Yeah, I've heard they actually are a little bit fun. Yeah, like the one like I wouldn't compare it to the dog. But I feel like it was kind of cool to have a rat. Yep. I think Joey Seth comedy is setting up a joke here. But he's only reading the start of it, which is your current next time you walk by this and a stranger asks us to have a pat. And he just hasn't written anything else. So unless he as he responds and in the next minute, he's leaving the joke to the finish. Such a shit comedian. He just he just does the setup and then forgets to tell the joke. I'm just pause and just begin something else.
Alright, well, we'll end it here. Thank you, everyone for joining in. Much appreciated. Oh, no way I see it on the actual chat over there, but it's not appearing on my phone. Okay, I'm gonna quick look, you should get the stranger. Here we go. You should pat the stranger on the head.
[00:57:59] Juan Granados:
Okay. There you go. So when they pat a dog be like, oh, can I pat your head? Yeah.
[00:58:03] Kyrin Down:
So, a stranger asked to have a pat, you should pat them on the head.
[00:58:07] Juan Granados:
Yeah. Maybe. Sure. Why not? That's a pretty bold bold move. I like it. Yeah. Maybe Lisa. What if? That's a that's a ballsy move. It is. Sounds like a Joey sounds like a Joey ballsy move. Yep. Look, we'll leave it there. I do have some ideas for next week's podcast, but if, if we think of something off off off this Sure. Combo, we'll we'll talk about it. Sure. But for now, immortalize, thank you very much. Take care. Be well wherever you're in the world.
[00:58:32] Kyrin Down:
Bye now.