Isaac Mizrahi chats with Alexandra Horowitz about kids vs. dogs, how puppy therapy can translate to couples therapy and more.
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(Recorded on July 26, 2023)
This isn't necessarily just like, oh boy, wow, that's funny. Gg sh oh, no wow gg quiet shah. This is Hello Isaac, my podcast about the idea of success and how failure affects it. I'm Isaac Msrahi and in this episode I talked to my dear friend, author and dog cognition expert Alexandra Horowitz.
Hello, Isaac, It's Alexandra Horowitz, and I'm really looking forward to talking to you about dogs.
Darlings. I don't know if you know this, but I met my husband, Arnold whilst walking my dog Harry. That was the first dog I got on my own, Harry in two thousand and within the first six months of getting him. I met my husband on Fifth Avenue between twelfth Street and thirteenth Street, and the rest is history. So you see that, to me, the subject of dogs and dog ownerships darlings I could do. I could do a podcast season of just talking about dogs. I love it so much. And I'm going to talk today to one of my favorite people, Alexandra Horowitz. She is a dog cognition expert and a dog writer, and she has a way of looking at the subject that I haven't encountered with other dog experts in that she doesn't expect dogs to be human. She doesn't expect them to be anything but what they are, which is dogs. And I really really appreciate that, and I always feel so kind of soone after I speak to Alexandra because I feel a little bit better about the craziness that I go through with my dogs. Anyway, I'm really excited. Let's get into this. Hi, Hi, Hi, Hi. Are those birds chirping I hear in the background. Those aren't pet birds, are they?
They're just birds outside that like to hang around.
Okay, all right, By the way, you have the most soothing voice in the world. I've known you for what like three or four years. I've never noted how incredibly soothing and kind of malifluous your voices. And I wonder if that's what the dogs pick up from you, and they just kind of get that wonderful soothing voice or something, you know.
You know, people talk about the dog whisper, and I like to say that I like to talk to them in a normal speaking voice, so maybe so, yeah, but thank you.
I honestly have never seen you with a dog, but I know that you have what two dogs.
Yes, it seems suspicious. You've never seen me with a dog.
I know.
Right now I want to say we live with because I don't feel like we have them. You know, they're part of our family. Quidity who is three and a half, and Tilda, who is new she's eight months.
And did you get Tilda from a litter or did you save? Did you dog?
Quidity was from a litter, but also of mixed breed dogs that she was being fostered by a breed rescue group. And Tilda is from Muddy Pause, which is a rescue organization. She was brought up from the South, like so many dogs, like.
My dog, like our new puppy.
Yes, yes, your new pupp I can't believe another new pot that's right.
He was also brought up from the South. Yeah, darling, let's talk about you for a minute, because I was reading a lot about you. Was there something that you did before you found yourself doing this job? What were you studying to do?
Well? I was studying to do a cognitive science in graduate school, you know, just to study the brain generally. But I came to that through being a fact checker at the New Yorker and before that, I was a definer on a dictionary Miriam Webster's tenth collegiate.
Yeah, is that right? So wait a minute, because I know your husband works at Miriam Webster too, so both of you. Is that where you met.
No, we didn't meet there, but we did meet through Snaris. Yeah. I mean he started working there maybe ten years ago, and I met him not twenty years ago. I worked at Miriam right out of college. Right, I want to hear how we met. It's kind of ridiculous. It's sort of cinematic.
Well, of course I want to hear. Tell me everything. I was supposed to be talking about dogs, but you know, it talks to me about your cute husband.
It all comes through after talks.
Yeah.
In fact, there's a dog in this story. So the dog in the story is Pumpernickel. And I was moving my parents' apartment in New York and we needed a mover to get them from one apartments to the next. And I hired a mover called All Star Movers. And the movers come to the door. They knock on the door. Pumper Nickel starts barking, and I say, pumper Nickel, you don't need to bark, you know, it's the mover the way I talk to dogs like they're gonna answer me back, and she did not. But the mover at the door said, do you know the etymology of the word pumpernickel?
Nice word for a move, And.
I'm like, yeah, like who are you? And by the way, I do know the etymology of pumper nickel. It means flatchelin goblin, because pumper nichol is nice, notoriously hard to digest. And he said, well, actually, I think it's more like farting devil. And we had a little disagreement over the over which was the correct German etymology? Yeah, and we sort of hit it off. Turned out he'd written a few books on obscure words basically, and he was, you know, doing the moving as like his side hustle, I guess. And so the years later, when I needed to move myself into an apartment, I called him and then that was it.
We Oh, that's a hilaryous Exactly did the dog fart a lot?
She was not a big farterer, She was not flash, she wasn't no, not more than the average dog.
But there are certain dogs who will fart more than others, right, And you always wonder about that.
Yeah, fussy dogs. Fussy dog. But also you know, it's a lot to do with what you feed them. Are you giving them your food or beans or what are they eating? Maybe it's not suiting them. I don't blame the dogs now me either.
I never blamed dogs for anything, Darling. So what drew you to the subject of animals? Because I think it's more than just dogs. It's also insects you're interested in. And I know you all have a cat, isn't that true?
Absolutely, she might make a business. I'm appreciative of all species. But you know, I was at the New Yorker fact checking and I read some of Oliver Sacks's pieces, and I was just super intrigued by his scientific but also philosophical, you know, and writerly approached. I just loved it, and I thought, I'd love to study the things that interest me. And the things that interested me are you know the animals around me? Like, what is their life? Like? What are they thinking? I like people, but you know, the non people around me really intrigued me. So I wound up going into cognitive science to study non human animal minds. And then dogs just showed up later as a possibly fascinating subject to study, and then they just got interesting in and of themselves. And then suddenly I'm studying dogs full time and writing about dogs.
This is amazing, this story. I find that so inspiring. I cannot tell you only because I feel like I knew what I wanted to do at a very very young age or something. So I'm always like so inspired by people who actually gave them a chance to figure it out. You know, where were you when you had this kind of epiphany or slow rollout.
I was in New York City and living with Pumpernickel and spending a huge amount of time in the parks with her. But I brought up a Colorado more surrounded by you know, animals, animals around us. Being in the wilderness was familiar to me and what I felt like the world was about.
Right, So, when you were in the beginnings of this career that you have, it was Pumpernickel who brought you to this, would you say absolutely?
You know, the first book I wrote, Inside of a Dog, which is really just about the science of dog cognition work at the time that I was doing. I really started writing it after her death, where I really really grieved. I mean you know this.
Grief of yes, we do know this grief.
Unfortunately. One of the ways I dealt with it was every morning when I woke up, I would think of her and write down the memory that I had of her, came to mind or a dream, whatever little moments of her, to kind of like hold on to her. I did that for a year, and some of those little episodes wind up being chapter openers and so forth in my book, and I would use them as a kind of launching into right, what is behind this, you know? Which I think, you know, even studying dogs changed my relationship with her a lot, and I thought other people want to know these things that our science is discovering about dogs as well.
Right, So you wrote that book and you became this incredible kind of expert on the subject of dogs through study, through memory of your dog, right.
Absolutely, yeah, and through you know, the researchers who also study dog cognition, dogmind, and through observation. You know what I became expert at, if anything, was really observing animals and trying to understand them from their point of view, not just like putting what I assume is happening onto my dogs, which is how I'd always lived with dogs. It's how everybody lives with dogs.
Yeah, I know that you differ from a lot of animal experts and especially animal trainers, you know, but what would you say is the biggest difference between yourself and a lot of those animal experts that we seem to know and follow, I mean, will remain nameless.
Yeah, there's a lot of differences between the bad animal experts right where, I just philosophically, what we think dogs are doing, what we think they're about, and how they need to behave is different. But even the difference between me and many, you know, really wonderful trainers who do amazing work is that I'm not trying to get dogs to do anything. I'm just interested in who the dogs are, sort of like the dog for the dog's sake, in finding out about that and the kind of letting them live within the parameters of our society their best dog life, versus trying to kind of civilize them. I'm definitely not trying to train them, you know, just trying to teach them enough so they can live with us.
That's why I love you.
Thank you.
You did a TED talk and it was entitled something like why all dogs are good dogs, you know what. That's how I feel. I don't feel like there are bad colors or bad flavors or bad dogs. They're just aren't right, right.
Right, Such a weird thing for us to put on them that they're somehow bad. Maybe they're bad at being dogs in a human society, right, but they're being great at being.
Dogs, right exactly. I bet some people listening to this are going, yeah, but it's like you do want your dogs, like you said, to sort of live in a society. Is there a minimum requirement if you're a dog of Alex Horowitz?
Yeah, I mean, I guess so. I'm hoping that they pick up a lot from each other and how we deal with them, right, We allow them a lot of things, right. They can sleep on the bed, they can be on the sofa. But we also expect that they'll come, you know, pretty reliably when we call them, because we're calling them when we need them to come, right, when something's happening, when they're in trouble, when we just need to leave. It's more important, right. But I'm not going to ask that they sit down or lie down on command. That's not as important to me. Sit is kind of nice because it lets them like stop doing whatever excitement is bothering you, so sort of to be still, but not to sit, like look what I can get my dog to do. I don't want to have that kind of relationship. It's more like, great that you can calm yourself, like I know how to calm myself. We teach our kids how to settle right, and it's sort of like that. So I mean, apart from that, you just have to have fore legs and a gorgeous tail, and you could be my dog.
Me too, Me too, darling. Can you give me a clue about how you make a dog come to you? Because my dogs will come to me if they sense a kind of real panic in my voice, they will come. And sometimes I'll scare them away and they'll run even further. But I would love a foolproof, like a lesson in getting them to come when I call.
I think one of the things is we call our dogs all the time, right when we don't really need them to come. So one of the thing is if you need them to come when called, call them only when you need them to write. Don't just constantly be using their name and calling them and have nothing happen, and when they come, something amazingly good has to happen for them. So training of this is like you call their name. If they come to you, they get like all the treats. It's a big jackpot, right, And if they don't come, no punishment. They just don't get it, so you try to make it work for them. One of the things we used to do with one of our other dogs, Finnegan, is I would call him and then I would run away because he loves to chase, so he catches up to me. He's come when I'm called and celebration.
Oh God, that is the most adorable thing in the world. I can't even said that's hilarious. I think I've used their names to such an extent of promiscuous name calling that I think it's too late. So what if I associate it with the word come or come here or something like that. Can I do that?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, come Georgie.
Right, come Georgie, or come Kitty. You know, Kitty is a COLLEI mix. Georgie is a year and a half old now, so he's more curious, Like when I call his name, he wants to come. Because Georgie sees me as the food wagon. As my husband calls me, I am the food wagon. And so sometimes I think Georgie will just come because he knows that when he hears his name there is a treated.
You ought to give him something when he does, because it reinforces that behavior, right, because if he's opportunistically, let's just see if Isaac has something for me. The answer is.
Yes, exactly. Well that's the thing. Do you wean him off the treats eventually and just make him come back? You know?
Well, in psychology they would say you could use like intermittent reinforcement, which means that you could, okay, you know, bring the treats down so that they're less good, like if you give them drive kibble, like it could be a kibble. Maybe Georgie would come just for a kibble, and then maybe not every single time, Oh oh he will, darling, are you kidding? Maybe every other time?
Then right right right?
Feed them, but with Kitty if she doesn't want to come, you use their breakfast for training them this way, right, don't make them all full and then be like, as they're running away, come back.
Well, no, kitty weirdly doesn't love breakfast. You know, it's like you put kibble down, she takes her time. Of course, if the kibble has chicken in it at night, which it always does every single night, it has some fresh chicken in it, she will dive that, obviously. But if you put a bowl of kibble, you have to put some kind of treat in it or something to get her interested in the morning. You know, she's very, very independent. Also, she came to us quite skittish. She was from Puerto Rico, and she had a life I can only imagine because for months and months and years was heartbreakings. But I often think it was my husband who spent the time with her and made her feel okay. She got nothing from me but love and a lot of treats and a lot of belly rubs and a lot of closeness. I think she's fully integrated, and she probably isn't a flight risk, whereas like Georgie is still very young and curious. You know, so if a gate is open and he gets out and he doesn't come back, I'm scared about like the consequences of that. But a little bit earlier, you spoke of growing up in Colorado, right and being around animals, did you have specifically dogs.
Growing up, we were like cereal dog owners. We'd have one and then another, and we lived with a cat. But like outside our windows there were elk and deer and you know they lived in the mountains, right, and bears. That was just part of the way the world was that we lived around animals. And I love, love living in New York City, but you get the sense sometimes that we forget that we are but an animal among animals, and we should know how to deal with them and imagine what's going on for them.
Right. So I grew up with a poodle, this giant kind of standard apricot poodle named Pom Pom right, and my mother sent him every week to the groomers. And he had like pink fingernails and a diamond thing and these puffs. I mean, he was really something else. But he was extremely neurotic. He didn't love children. He would kind of attack us when we came home from school. And after about six or seven years of this, one night my mother stepped in pooh. She was barefoot and she stepped in the pool. And the next day, like Pompom was history, right, you know, they told us he went to live with an old you know, this is not the farm that they make up to tell kids. We went to the far farm, I'm telling you. And then later in life, like when I was in my thirties, I said, you know, Pompom didn't go to a farm, did he? And she was like, actually he did. He really did go to a farm. So either my mother was like holding on to the lie forever, or he really did go to a farm. But I do wonder like our experience with dogs was so checkered because of Pompom. We didn't have a particular love, but I always loved dogs. You know, do you think there are people who I just love dogs?
Yes, yes, yes, you know there might be something about just the way that person bonds to people or is interested in others. Right that, and that dogs are so responsive, So being able to even have the hope of having such a response from an animal, I mean, to me, that's thrilling and exciting. And I think a sense in other people live with dogs. They really love that about them. They want a conversation with an animal, and dogs are just completely well designed, even the MutS, right, especially the MutS for doing that.
While we're on the subject of that, where did dogs come from, How did they become domesticated.
It's still being a little bit determined, but they certainly share a common ancestor with wolves, with gray wolves, so they're not descended from the wolves we see, right, They're both descended from another wolf some fifteen twenty thousand years ago who probably just wasn't as fearful of people as most wolves rightly are, and kind of allowed themselves to encounter people. And over time, many generations maybe started scavenging on the trash that we left, because we humans have always been trash makers, maybe started being taken in when they were you know, really cute cubs pups by people, and then eventually, over thousands of years, we started to shape this like proto dog into something that was useful for us, like a guard or a hunting companion, right who could sniff out prey. And then selective breeding, like breeding like guard dogs with other guard dogs started. And it wasn't actually until two hundred years ago that we started breeding fancy dogs what we think of as pure bread dogs are all super super new, but they were domesticated sometime you know, those ten or fifteen thousand years ago, when those wolves finally started being shaped in their breeding.
By us, right, you know, honestly, I've heard that story before, but every time I hear it, it just is so compelling, you know, to think of how this one species was so kind of available to us, you know, to be reshaped and shaped into something, you know, like a dog.
I completely agree.
It breaks my heart. It's like pig melian or something, you know.
Right, right, right, right, yeah, I mean it's true. We're like, let's mold you into your proper you know, gentle woman. And in a way we're still doing that, right, We're saying that they need to be civilized and properly behaved.
There's sort of this push pull thing with dogs. I don't know if you experience it. It's like an ecstasy slash like burden, you know, but mostly it's complete ecstasy. I just melt when I look at my dogs. But a lot of times, you know, there's a big, big, big burden that is associated with well, first of all, caring for anything, you know, completely, and then for a different species. How do you deal with the fact that your dogs.
Are a burden? It is, Yeah, I mean I think it's a real thing. I mean, it is a real, big responsibility. You're basically taking on the complete responsibility for another life, just like having a child is also doing this right, But even with a dog still taking on their life, their life is going to be all subsumed by you, for good and bad. They're captive to us. Basically, they can't go outside, you know, if you're in a house or an apartment and they're inside, they have to wait for you to let them to go pee for that matter, right, let alone be with other dogs have new experiences, sniff things, you know. So it is a big responsibility. I haven't just considered them like appendages that I could add to my life and just go on my merry way instead and getting to live with dogs, I say, I also am going to have to shape my life around them. And I don't think that's silly. I think that's completely respecting the fact that they are here for us and we have to kind of be here for them.
When I first got Harry, who was my first dog of my own, right, I was late to the party. I was about thirty nine, and I remember I was talking to my friend Kitty, who, by the way, is who I named my second after Kitty Hawks. Yeah, Kitty Hawks is a big dog kind of rescue person in the world, and she's a dear friend of mine. And I said, Kitty, darling, what do you do when you travel? She's like, we don't. Well, we do a little, but not the way we used to. And you know, that is really true about my life. I travel when I have to and when I can, which is never if I don't have to. It really is this kind of big life thing. And then you know, you wonder about all of those dogs that were adopted in the pandemic, and you go like, oh Jesus, because I remember the shelters were empty at a certain point. Do you know anything about like what happened to those dogs.
Everybody who works with dogs in any capacity was freaked out, because we figured freaked out. If the world is going to go back to normal, whatever that is, you know, all these dogs are going to be badda cases because they've been around their people full time and they're not used to dealing with other dogs. They're not used to being left alone. Right, it hasn't gotten that bad. There are plenty of rs aamples of separation anxiety. But what I kind of like is the world shifted a little bit toward the dogs, right. I think dogs are now allowed in more places, more people are working at home, people have appreciated the role dogs have in their lives. So just like I think we as individual people have had to shift. Yeah, our travel plans, our daily plans a little bit to account for our dogs well being. Also, the world has shifted a little bit, kind of accidentally as a result of the pandemic. It's definitely not worse than it was before. It might be better.
Oh that's great, that's great. I'm glad to hear that. A little bit earlier, you were talking about children versus dogs. Do you have a kid? You do?
Right? Yes?
I do not right, And I am gay, by the way. You should know that if you don't already. But anyway, the point is, it's like this kind of cliche about gay people, like, you know, they replace children with dogs, which is a complete truth. That is the complete truth. And of course I just hate it when my mother and my family and my sisters they kind of go, oh, you and your dog, how sweet, But you know, we have kids. I mean, it is a little bit something that people with kids do to people with dogs, where they go like, yeah, dogs, you know, and I go, yeah, kids, you know who the hell was? But I guess you did, right. Is there a delineation between how you mother your child and how you mother your dog.
I had my son almost fourteen years ago, and I remember when we had this latest puppy, you know, from when we got quidity from nine weeks. I remember thinking, like, raising a kid has almost prepared me for having a puppy, right. You know, people talk about it as the reverse, but I was like, you know, the same things. It's a sleepless it's a sleepless night. It's the being completely responsible for them. I think it's ridiculous to say, you know, you should not have dogs, you should have children, Like you could just as easily say like, why are we overpopulating this earth with more of us? Right when dogs are so lovely and kids, you know, grow up to sometimes be horrible people.
Yes, I think it's.
Super interesting to live with a child. For me, who if I just take the same types of observational skills that I honed and looking at animals, you know, if I watched him develop into a person, I think that's super interesting. The talking is, of course very exciting. On the other hand, I don't want my dogs to talk. I want to know about them and their lives. But I think their silence is a great, great pleasure frankly, that they're not always reflecting back to you the thing whatever they're thinking about moments.
Yeah right right, ah, oh, that's going to be even worse. Star he's fourteen, now, it's only gonna get worse. Get set him up with a really good shrink.
My son is fantastic, but he is like another little dog in the family basically, right, just yes, we try to all treat each other as beings that have meaningful lives, and we try to, you know, help each other excel same thing.
I have a question for you that I ask all of my guests, which is the idea of failure.
Right, there's so many failure I mean.
Really, well, is there one that you learned from?
Well, most recently, I think this puppy who we raised from nine weeks and who I followed from the time that she was born. I wrote about in the Year of the Puppy. She was not the puppy i'd hope she should be. We just recently lost two other dogs, you know, last year Finnegan and uped In and Finnegan like my heart dog. Right. He was just a professional dog. He was in all my books, he could do everything. He was friendly, he was charming. He melted me. And this new puppy, Quidity, was not going to be Finnegan. You know, she is a little cattle dog mix. She's just like a bundle of energy after every squirrel barks, you know, has such a horrible bark like And I really felt in raising her that, like, you know, I should be able to pick out the right dog right the dogs who I'm a dog professional in a way, it's a failure of that I did not pick the right dog. On the other hand, what I came to learn was that like the pleasure of dogs and knowing dogs is not that you can just sign up for one that has all the features you want and then you have it, like your car or your computer or whatever. It's that they are their own personalities, right, They are their own persons. And what the real pleasure of no Inquidity is that I came to know her, not that I that not that I was be able to pick the perfect dog and raise the perfect dog in our family. It was that I would just meet a dog and find out who she is over time and come to love her for who she is. And that's what happened. She's complete doll. I love her.
Did you figure out how to stop her barking a little bit?
We can shape her barking a little bit. We can shape partly when it happens. She's also learned quiet. So some people like to ask their dogs to bark, so that they bark on command, so that like in theory, they wouldn't then bark when you haven't asked them. But that's very tough, that's very tricky to do. So in set, what I've done is like try to shape quiet, which is acknowledging your barking, Like thank you for showing me the squirrel. We all wanted to know about that. And then we're so edified and here's quiet, and you get rewarded for quiet, and oh, that's not a problem. They can learn that. But also it's not just a change in her, it's a change in us and realizing listen, yeah, barking is a communication, and she's telling me something and I can listen to that, or I can just hear it as noise. That's my choice. Right. Dogs probably evolved to bark with us to bark to us as a communication, because wolves do not bark, so we created barking dogs.
Exactly when I was asking you the question, I was thinking about our dog named Dean, who we put down about a year ago, who was really the most adorable creature who ever lived. But he was a monster, and of course we loved him, loved him, loved him. And while you were answering the question, I was thinking to myself, failure in this position, The word itself is not the best because it's not like we failed with Dean. It was not a failure, But it's this idea that, like you said, you kind of learned to love them for who they are, even in the awful times, Like I remember, Dean would do things that were just so enraging, you know, and I would have these rageful reactions to Dean. Of course, you would pick the worst time in the world to do the stupidest thing like pee in the bed, you know, like right before you're supposed to go to bed. And he was a barker, and that we could never figure out, never because we couldn't do the shock thing. But you know, when I used to talk to my shrink about it, because you know, all I talk about in therapy are my dogs, right. I used to tell him that I think Dean was put in my path to kind of reveal something about me and why I feel rage and what I feel rage about, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's the lesson because now Georgie is the most adorable and he barked a little, but he's so good natured. And he did not come from trauma the way Kitty did, the way Harry sort of did, the way Dean did. He came right out of a litter. We adopted him within like the first four months we had him. You know, we actually took him to get his balls cut off, which was insanely insane.
That was a real's traumatizing.
He's starting to get very weirdly like patriarchal with Kitty, Like he's dominating her in this really ugly kind of white male supreme way that I hate. You know, he's not white, and well he is male, but he's brown actually, And she doesn't fight it a lot. She will scratch his eyes out occasionally. I don't know what to do about it, Darling. Can you tell me what to do about that?
Okay, I need two bits of information. One is how old is he?
So he's a year and four months, okay.
And then give me example of a thing that he does well.
He guards the door when she goes in and outside. He comes up stairs with me at night. It takes her a minute to come upstairs, and when she enters herm he pounces on her. Right, he bogart's her bowl. I told you she's not the most you know, energetic, especially in the morning, in the afternoon, and so like I have to watch that. He won't eat her food, which is really really upsetting to me because Dean never did that because it was Harry, you know, like another man's another boy, so he didn't feel like he had the right. But with Dean, I feel like it's because she's a girl that he can eat her food. It's like disgusting. I want to kill him for that, you know. No, I'm like, not with my daughter. You don't. No means no. And he's constantly humping her. He's constantly humping her.
Darling, Well, she smells terrific. So what can we say. I have two you know, female dogs, and they do similar things in some respect. So first thing, I will say, is that your dog is a teenager. You were mocking me and my son. You know what's gonna with you? But you have a teenager too, and teenagers are adolescents across the animal Kingdom basically have this period of rebelliousness and just being sometimes really clingy and sometimes kind of an ass. Right, that's not unexpected. It's a phase that they go through while they learn how you react to it. So it's again like, what are you going to do? Let's see if I take this food, does everybody get excited about it? Or do I get away with it? Like, It's just they're learning the results of pushing the boundaries a little bit. So that's what he's doing. He's pushing the boundaries, getting a nice reaction out of you, getting some reaction out of kitty, And that's a teenager thing.
This morning they did that thing where they bared their teeth and they sort of like were like scratching at each other. Was really scary. I hate that.
They work it out, right, what happens if you weren't there? They kind of work it out. I mean, it's easier for us to imagine it with kids, even if you've never been a child in this relationship. But my brother and I would would like go at each other with scissors. We would literally want at each other with scissors, and then we would like slam the door and lock the door, and the other person would use the scissors to open the lot. My god, we were scrappy.
That is unbelievable.
Well, they're doing the same thing.
It wouldn't bother me as much. What bothers me is the way I know it bothers my husband Arnold, you know, like that really bothers him when they're not in line, you know, And so I go, guys, come on, well, I.
Feel like this is our therapy. You don't have to talk to your therapists about dogs today because this is it. You're just seeing how much we want our dogs to reflect us, right like you said this about your previous dogs, and how much we see their effect on each other and on us, and so we want to kind of corral them as a result, the same as we do with other people with dogs. We feel like we should be able to control it. But no, no more than I can control my friends, you know, like blowing me off at the last minute or showing up late. I can't control any of that at all. That's about being a personality, and it's about how you deal with it. We can decide, Hey, you know what, as a result, I'm not going to put Kitty's food out all day and Georgie's not going to have access to it, or you know what, Georgie, when you attack Kitty like this, you have to go and be separated from us for a little while. Yeah, but I think the things you can do to set up the environment so that the things that are desired are the things he does, and the things that you don't like that he does, do nothing good for him, don't get the result that he wants, the excitement, the arousal, everybody reacting to him. That's the best we can do.
Got it, got it? You know what. We have him create trained, which I think is always a great thing. I think he needs to sort of be and created more. You know. I think unleashing is a good thing. I think in creating is a good thing. I mean that.
I think you just made that word up. I love it. I love the wording I did.
I made both of those words up. I do think that it's a very very big thing between couples, the way their dogs act because Arnold and I are so happy about most other things, we see eye to eye exactly. Really, that's the only thing we fight about. Do you fight with her husband?
Unfortunately, Ammon is not a good person to fight with because it's just like super steady. But I get this, and I have a question for you. Of the dogs, one of them a little bit more your dog, and one of them a little bit more Arnold's dog.
You know, Arnold found Kitty, and I do think that it was him who made her feel okay about the world more than me. Arnold took the time, he was with her all the time. So I think Arnold is Kitty's dad more than me. You know.
Yeah, in a way I could see. Then this new dog comes along and is like harassing the dog who you feel attached to and who took so long to feel comfortable in your home with you, with people in general. So I also see that happening write a lot with people, and that does happen with us. When we got Quidity, Finnegan, as I said, you know, was like my dog, like just the greatest companion, and he was getting quite bold, and he had lost the use of his back legs, gradually over the year. He had this horrible disorder at fourteen. It was traumatic. And then this new dog comes along and she had just all this energy and life, unfair amount of life that she had, And I was very Finnegan biased, and Equidity would do something, it would drive me out of my mind because I'm like, there's an unfairness here, right, And in some ways they are a mirror of ourselves and how we're thinking about ourselves and our relationship and each other. And I think that it gets played out with the dogs.
Right, Yes, it does. Speaking of Finn again and being old and old dogs, talk to me for a minute about euthanasia. Did you finally put finn Agin down?
Yeah? So he had a disease called degenerative milopathy, which is basically like you lose feeling and use of the body from the tail and eventually it kills dogs because it stops their heart. But even before that, people usually euthanize their dogs because it's so difficult to deal with and it's difficult for them. So at some point we assumed that it was on the horizon for him, but we lived with him for probably a year. He was using a little wheelchair. He still had joys in life. He loved life. He was just like, what's happening to my back quarters? But one day he had like a stroke or something. He woke during the night, I think he had a stroke. In the morning, he was not himself and it's clearly he was clearly not coming back. And we have a vet, lovely vet, who comes to our home, and we asked her to come and euthanize him. Our other dog, who was also aging fourteen, upped in. He was a big dog and we didn't expect him to live to fourteen probably, but he died the next month. But he just slowed down. He just slowed down and died. He didn't like the person. Amazing death, if there can be such a thing. Yeah, I was next to him, lying holding onto him, feeling his heart beat until it stopped beating.
Oh, darling, that is so beautiful that.
One could design that you want them to have that life where they die when it's time to die. With Finn again and with most dogs, I feel like we're in that awful position where we have to make some decision about ending their lives. It's just extraordinary that we have to do this. But with Uped in he decided himself.
That's unbelievable. You're quite lucky, I think, because I will say that both dogs that we had that died we put down Harry. It was so obvious to all that this dog needed to be put down. He was sixteen. It was sort of an auburn colleymix, and just like you said, he lost the use of his legs, he stopped eating. And I'll tell you what, like that's one thing about dog ownership that I actually kind of treasure in a way is knowing that I can do that if I feel it's a benefit for the dog. You know. We did it with Dean too. Dean had a really bad few days and finally we just decided it was time that he'd be put down. And he was also like seventeen or eighteen years old. But the point is that I wish I could rely on somebody outside myself to go you know what. That's it for Isaac. We liked you. We're going to put you to sleep in a really fun way, you know. But we did that with Harry too. I remember the day we put him down. We made the plan and I cooked all the spacon and I just kept feeding him bacon all morning, all morning, and then our divine veterinarian Jennifer Chateman came over to the house and on his beloved porch. We put him down on the porch also Dean, it was the same thing in the house.
What's amazing and fabulous is that we have the privilege of seeing them through their death that way. I agree that it would be so meaningful that we should take that information a way of dealing with them and apply it to humans as well. And this is a case which I think we're much more advanced in our thinking about dogs, about animals than as we are about humans, where we're just like, oh no, no, just they have to continue indefinitely, right, it makes no sense to me. So I promise I will do everything I can. Let's make a deal that we can see that will will make sure that whoever is going first if they need to go, like they get their favorite meal and there's.
Exactly and a glass of rose. That's what I want, Okay.
I want a G and T and just like a couple of really fresh peaches, So you might have to plan ahead because just perfect peaches. Yeah.
So now another feature of the podcast is that I ask people about their obituary speaking of euthanasia and dying. Nice buzzkill that we have going on here at the end of our podcast.
But that's great.
But I know you wrote an a bit of one of your dogs.
It was Finnigan's.
Yeah, it was just beautiful, absolutely beautiful. What did it say? What were the main points of Well.
You know, you can't run an actual animal obituary in the obituary section of the Times. That's they don't run animal at bit.
No, I know they will not do it. I've tried.
So it was sort of about that a little bit. It was about how but you left, But they are persons who have lives, and it was about his life and who he was as a you know, personality. And it was also about the fact that we treat animals as our children, our family, like critical to our lives, and then yet for some reason in the end we're like, oh, they're not newsworthy yet. My dad died nine years ago in a huge blow, incredibly tough to deal with. Finnegan's passing was the same, right and not a diva how you might absolutely right, absolutely depending on your relationship with your father. Right. So I think the obituary was a little bit of an argument for that, and was also just telling about Finnegan and like what he liked to do, and he would steal mooses squeaky balls all the time, and that was just who he was and I wanted to be able to celebrate that and share that with people, which is what obituary is about, celebrating the person and sharing just even who they were, right, and Finn was very accomplished.
But absolutely the essence of who they are. What would your obituary say.
I think I would want it to say Alexandra Horowitz changed the world for dogs. She made people think about their worldview, She changed how they interacted with them. She showed people again that dogs should be allowed to sniff the world and sort of opened up to us what it might be like to be another creature.
That's great. I want my obituary to say that Luco says, hi, Say hi, Georgie, Georgie.
If that's not a teenager being forced to say hi.
To your look at that, Look at that face, it's true. Okay, that's enough for you, Darling. Is there something you want to promote on the podcast?
Sure? The Year of the Puppy is my most recent book about the first year of a dog's life, not just quidities, but it's the science of all early dog development. There's that as well as my books, you know, but that's the fun one to read. And you know, I have a podcast with Freaconomics called Off Leash, and I think it's good, so go check it out.
I love it. I love it. Well. You are just divine. Thank you so much.
You are it's all I'm to your pleasure.
Wow, that was such a great conversation, and I must say the subject is filled with emotion. For me, it was really difficult to get through that discussion without like bursting into tears in so many places, so many times. I mean, the whole idea about euthanasia at the end, I thought was a really really incredibly touching story about how her dog sort of died on her chest and she felt her heartbeat those last few heartbeats. That is a really really beautiful story. So much beauty in that conversation. And more than anything, I take a great sense of calm from this, you know, like somehow like I'm much calmer about the antics that I live with with my dogs after having spoken to this wonderful dog expert. And I'm going to make sure that my husband listens to this podcast because I think it would really help our relationship in regard to the way we kind of look at dog ownership. I think he would relax a great deal just hearing a lot of what she has to say. For that matter, I think all y'all might get your significant others to listen to this podcast too, because I think it would really benefit your relationship. So, Darling, this isn't just puppy therapy, it's couples therapy. Oh, Georgie has something to say about it too, Darling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favorite and tell someone, tell a friend, tell your mother, tell your cousin, tell everyone you know. Okay, and be sure to rate the show. I love rating stuff. Go on and rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts so more people can hear about it. It makes such a gigantic difference and like it takes a second, so go on and do it. And if you want more fun content videos and posts of all kinds, follow the show on Instagram and TikTok at Hello Isaac podcast, and by the way, check me out on Instagram. And TikTok at. I Am Isaac Msrahi. This is Isaac, Missrahi, thank you, I love you and I never thought I'd say this, but goodbye Isaac. Hello Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio, Awfully Nice and I AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. Series is hosted by me Isaac Musrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by Robin Gelfenbein. The senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti, and is executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazerkarra Welker, and Nathan Klokey at Imagine Audio, production management from Katie Hodges, sound design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed by Ben Waltzer. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and Sarah katmak at I AM Entertainment