Canine Chronicles: Nick Mills Reflects on His Young Years with Dogs

In this engaging episode of "Dog Friendly," host Brandon Bennett sits down with his friend Nick Mills to reminisce about his cherished childhood dog experiences. The conversation kicks off with a nostalgic look back at Snoop Dawg, the English Springer Spaniel Nick and his brother welcomed into their lives during a bout of chickenpox. Nick shares the heartwarming stories of their family moving around frequently, but Chester, as he was lovingly named, happily accompanied them, showcasing the deep bond they formed as a family.

Nick recounts another memorable moment when he surprised his dad with a beautiful Labrador puppy named Andy on Christmas morning, wrapping him up and placing him under the tree. Listeners will enjoy the endearing descriptions of how Andy thrived on their 50 acres of land in Crandon, Wisconsin, living a full and adventurous life. Nick humorously highlights the uniqueness of Andy's life experiences, including being hit with a stun gun yet remaining a beloved companion without significant issues.

The episode also touches on Nick’s journey into adulthood as he and his wife welcomed a cat into their first home, along with the saga of a COVID rescue dog. Nick describes the challenges they faced with this pup, who exhibited aggression. His determination to train the dog shines through, showcasing the love and effort he and his family invested in making the pup a well-adjusted member of their household, complete with a luxurious two-story doghouse and a toy bin.

While the story takes a bittersweet turn with the decision to send the rescue dog to a "farm" for more open space, the overall episode is filled with laughter, love, and an appreciation for the pet relationships that shape our lives. Nick’s stories capture the essence of the joys and challenges of dog ownership, making this episode a must-listen for dog lovers and those who appreciate heartfelt reflections on companionship. Tune in for an entertaining and nostalgic discussion filled with warmth and genuine emotion!

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Dog Friendly Podcast TM

Transcript

  Good morning, dog lovers. Welcome to Dog Friendly, the podcast where we celebrate the joy of dogs and the adventures we share with them. I'm your host, Brandon Bennett from Alpine Howl.  Each week, I take you to dog friendly locations to chat with passionate dog owners about their furry companions and the unforgettable experiences They've had together. 

We'll also hear from experts, who share valuable insights on training, health, and making the most out of our time with our canine pals. All while enjoying the great outdoors. So whether you're a seasoned pup parent, or just a dog lover, grab your leash, maybe a libation, and join us as we enjoy the world of dogs, and incredible adventures that await.

Let's dive in to today's episode.  And we're back!  With another great episode of Dog Friendly. Good morning! Uh, it is, uh, Tuesday, February 25th.  And we're launching a great episode. I got to sit down with my buddy Nick Mills. This was a few years ago. Uh, sadly, uh, since then, we used to work together. I hired him on at FFL Brands and Out of Boulder, Colorado, a furniture company, and, uh, we haven't seen a lot of each other  since then.

Uh, that's my fault, and, uh, I'm going to rekindle that. Not to get all sappy, but Nick is an  amazing human. Uh, anybody that crosses his path, you'll know that, uh, he's a good  uplifting, one of the more positive people, if not the most positive people. Next to my, maybe my dad, but In any case, uh, friends, uh, that I've ever met, he is one of a kind.

He's got some great stories for us that I listened back and giggled. We talked about, uh, Snoop Dogg for a little bit. Um, you know, I do like Snoop Dogg, although, uh, growing up and just, you know,  in comparison, I was a big Tupac fan, still am. So, that was my, uh, My internal beef with them, but, uh, Snoop, if you do listen to this, man, you're a great entertainer.

And, uh, maybe we will talk to you someday, talk about dogs. But, uh, on to the show. Thank you again, Nick. I hope you get to hear this, uh, maybe listen to it at the, the office. Uh, say hi to everybody there for me, but, uh.  Here we go! Nicholas Mills and his great adventures growing up with some dogs.  But the guy that's walking out right now, though, I  told there's a new play grooming place in Longmont called D O G E.

For his beard?  Maybe. He lost his house in the fires. Oh, well that's sad. I know. His beard game is strong. It is, and he moved to Longmont, which is the best place in the world next to me.  Um,  and his wife, I told him about this new place and his wife got a job. Cause I told him about it. Wait, what new place?

Oh, it's a grooming place. Yeah. Like dog grooming place? Dog grooming, it's called D O G E. That's the name of it.  Be better if it was a D O double G.  N W A. I mean,  we're gonna keep talking cause it sounds good. It does. Turn me up in my headphones.  I got no treble. No treble in my headphones. Hit me with the beat. 

See, it's just fun just to talk. And you know, we talk about the same bullshit anyway. But when you talk about dogs a little bit, then you're just like, yeah, make a podcast out of it. We can talk about Snoop Dogg.  You know, that would be somebody to interview on here.  Hey, what's your relationship with dog, Snoop Dogg?

I'm a dog lover. That would be fun. Have you seen that commercial with him and, uh, Andy Sandberg? I just saw it, yeah, Sandberg. That's so funny. Hey,  Snoop D O double G. It's cool, you can just call me Snoop.  Okay, Snoop. D O double G.  I used to not like him, but I like him now. Are you Snoop or Andy? I still am, I'm not a big Snoop fan. 

But Snoop has a Sonyo Dreamwave, you know that.  In his studio, he's got a red Sonyo Dreamwave in his studio. It's time for an upgrade. Yeah, well, I mean, you can sell him that. I mean, I sold one to freaking, uh, uh, Oh, I can't remember his name now.  It'll come to me. 

Timbaland? Timbaland, yes. I sold one. Well, Morgan technically wrote it out, but I'm like, Morgan, do you know who that is? No idea, no idea. Um,  See, there's a dog. 

Hello, friend! Yeah. Um. I like this hat. Yeah. It's a good color. I 

like hats. I like buying hats. People,  you know. Everyone needs a hat.  You gotta hide what's underneath. 

Right.  But I was gonna say something along the lines of the Snoop Dogg uh, piece of it, but I can't remember. G's up, O's down. Oh, that's the way we like to talk. I did PG 13 or whatever on one of the podcast like platforms just to talk about,  just so I can swear a little bit and things like that or, you know, drop a bomb or something like that once in a while.

Hey, how's it going buddy?  Good, good, good. We're just talking dogs. And mostly about Snoop Dogg.  Yeah. 

Yeah.  I was, that, that's close to what I was trying to remember. It was like, what is the dog pound?  Let's play house! I don't know if we can get Who else, who else was in the dog pound? Yeah, I wanna know, we gotta talk about who was in the dog pound.  Nate Dog?  Yes. 

Yeah, we gotta talk soon. We gotta pull that out. You feeling good now? Yeah, right? You getting in the mood? It's gonna be good.  We're gonna be talking soon you and I  Heck yeah.  Oh, that'd be great.  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah  Yeah, yeah, so Nick you had a shitty dog  We're gonna get into it we're gonna get it if we're gonna talk about dogs I want you to hear your dog experience.

You never had dog. He was a great I had dogs growing up always What about that tell talk about what when was it? What was your first dog? Do you remember?  So  My first dog was a  I'm gonna screw up the breed now. 

Not a Golden Retriever, what's the other one that's darker brown and reddish?  Border Collie? Lab? Not even close. Lab? No, it's another Retriever, just not Golden.  Yellow Retriever? No, it's dark brown reddish.  Mic drop. Doosh. I have no, I, I'm trying to become the expert at dogs, but  I mean the, the magic Google phone.

So, uh, just so everybody knows I'm gonna, I'm gonna, so, uh, Nicholas Mills, a good friend of mine,  co worker, I, I hired him many years ago, and, uh, we became good friends. He's on the show today,  and I'm happy he's sitting down. He doesn't have a dog, but I'm gonna get a little bit into it. I'm gonna pull some strings. 

So he's looking up right now at the  dog he grew up with. Well the first one. First one. Which was there before me. There was the dog and then there was me. Well that makes sense though.  Kids don't naturally, you know, my. And I'm going to lose my mind when I find it.  So there's golden retriever. 

Retrievers are retrievers.  Maybe it was an Irish Setter. Springers, Spaniels. I think it was an Irish Setter. Okay, well that's a way different name. But it's the same kind of dog, different color.  Okay, we'll look at it. I'll tell you a story. So,  first dog  I got after this one was long gone. I'm pretty sure it's an Irish Setter because I'm looking at the pictures.

Um, my brother and I at the right age of like 6 and 7 had the chicken pox. Oh. So, we were laid up in the basement of our house in Seattle,  playing Nintendo, whatever we could do to,  scratching each other with a chicken pox. Just  pumped into a basement. And one day, dad comes home with a puppy.  Ooh.  And it was wonderful.

It was a, I'm gonna screw this up too.  No, I'm not. Give me a moment.  It was a English Springer Spaniel. A Springer Spaniel, sure. Yeah, yeah. My buddy had one growing up. Not a Cocker Spaniel, but an English Springer Spaniel.  And he was a wonderful puppy. His ears were so long. Just floppy as shit. He would trip on them. 

Because they were floppy as shit. He would walk around, he would go to his food bowl, and his ears would be in the food bowl, and he would chew on his ears and not even realize it.  Come on, that's funny. But he was awesome. He was our gift for being chicken pox. That was dad's way of saying, hey, feel better, you know. 

We had that dog forever. Um.  Yeah, God, I was 6 years old. We had that dog until I was probably,  God, 16, 17. Ah, that's awesome. Had him for a long time. Did you move around with him? Oh, yeah. He went everywhere. I mean, he was our dog. He had to go where we went. Right, and you, but you moved around, right? You, Seattle, how long was Yeah, so I got him in Seattle.

Um, from there, we had moved to Illinois. To California, a couple different places, back to the Washington area, back to California, and then finally, his final resting place in Wisconsin. How, how did he do on all that moving though? Yeah, he's great. Yeah. He fell out of, so  Okay, here's the butt. We were, we were moving one time, and it was, it was funny.

Um  We had this car, it was a hot car at the time, the Isuzu Amigo. Oh, I've heard of Amigo. Yeah, for sure. It's like a  half assed Jeep thing that Isuzu made. You could take the back top off so the back seats were exposed. It was almost like a 4Runner kind of thing too, or more like a, uh Yeah, it was a little smaller, it was two doors. 

Only two doors on that beauty. So it was a 4Runner back in the day? Well, yeah, an old 4Runner. Yeah, old 4Runner. I'll give you that. Yeah. So we were, we were moving Amigo. somewhere, the Amigo, yeah. Um,  and the dog fell out of the back of the Amigo because the top was off  and just tumbled down the road. Got up, he was happy as shit, he didn't care.

Wow! He was all beat up. I don't know how fast we were going, maybe 40 at the time?  But I thought the dog was dead. What's the name of the dog? Do you remember? Chester. I named the dog.  Chester. Chester was his name. It's a good name. I like human names. I would use him as a pillow.  If he'd lay down on the kitchen floor, I'd just use him as a pillow.

He was six years old in Chickenpox. Why would not? And then we got him a friend years and years later when we were in Wisconsin. I got my dad a puppy for Christmas. You got your dog? Oh yeah. Okay, you don't hear this too often. I got dad a puppy. So, some neighbors of ours had labs. Yeah. And they'd gotten together, you know, doing what labs do.

And they made more of them.  That's what they do in the Midwest. So we got one, and I, I, we didn't go pick it up until Christmas morning. And we wrapped the puppy. So we put the puppy in a box.  We poked some holes in it, we wrapped it up, poked some holes, poked some holes so the dog could breathe, um, and put it under the tree. 

In a big box.  And the whole time, so we're going through, we're opening gifts, and while the puppy is in the box, it's  like it's whining. Like, occasionally, not steady, every once in a while. So, my brother, my mom and I knew about the puppy, dad had no clue.  So every time we hear the puppy make a little squeak noise, we're just dying laughing, trying to hold it in. 

And it was just, it was constant. It got to the point where it was pretty steady, and he had no idea, and he's like, what's going on? Here's your next gift. And then finally we're like, you have to open this. So he opens it up and out bursts with excitement this little pink bellied chocolate lab. And it was just the greatest thing ever.

Um, his name was Andy. Okay, good. My dad named the dog, he named it Andy. Another human name. Yeah, another human name. Love it. Andy and Chester. Andy and Chester. Um,  and Andy was great. He was, he was the best dog.  We had at the time 50 acres of land. Wait, what, where were you living? We were in Wisconsin. Yeah, but where?

So we were in Crandon. Crandon, okay. 50 acres? Yeah, 50 acres. Horse farm. That's hunting land and shit. Yeah, it was mostly open field. We had some woods, not much. Okay. Um,  But yeah, the dog would chase, when he got older, not as a puppy, he would chase you and you left in a car to the property line. He would run to the end of the fence as fast as he could, turn around and walk back to the house.

He was, he was the best.  He once got run over by a horse trailer. Wait, what?  He was older, not a puppy. Okay. Um, later in life. The dog was totally fine. No way! Oh yeah.  There was no horses in the trailer, it was empty, hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. It was good. I mean, trailers aren't light though. No, it's not light. It's a single, it's a double axle, yeah.

You have one. Ran him over twice.  Jeez. The dog was tough as nails. Yeah. Um, the dog was never bad, never did a bad thing to anybody. Um, someone walking, there was like a trail alongside of our property. It was mostly for ATVs. Some people would walk on it. Yeah. There was people walking. Dog runs out there like he always does along our property line, you know, goes to say hello.

Someone zapped him with a stun gun. Wait, what? Oh, yeah, just freaked out because it's a, he's a big dog. Yeah, but what is this, in the 90s or something like that? Hell yeah, it's the 90s. Come on, no one's He's got a 70 pound lab running at him. Who's carrying a zapper? That's question number one.  Seriously. So he comes back and that screwed him up.

Okay. He's like limping back and can't hold his head up. Yeah.  and we're like, oh my God, he's gonna die. You know? Yeah. He was totally fine. He gave him an hour. He is fine.  Oh. Shook it off. Dog was tough as nails. Yeah, he couldn't That's awesome. Couldn't kill that dog. Run him over, hit him with a stun gun.

Those are, they're, they're tough. He's good. Yeah. And probably the fastest dog I've ever seen in my life. Really? We clocked him at 45 miles an hour. Holy shit.  And the same thing, we're just running the property. Yeah. We'd take off, we'd get going as fast as we could to the end of the property, and he was right with you, 45 miles an hour.

Did you do any training with him or anything like that? Nothing, no. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, you know, outdoors living where we grew up. Like, I, I, same thing with my parents, we never trained our dogs to do anything. No, they just, they do what they do. They figure it out. That's awesome. So, two dogs growing up, and, uh, and, and, so, since then,  What?

Since then, no dogs. Just lol. I mean. Till the COVID. I mean, what? You're 59 years old now, I mean. I'm 63.  You don't look a day over 32.  Got a great beard, no gray hair. I got gray hair in my beard. I've got plenty of, that's why I wear a hat. That's why I wear one of these fine alpine howl hats. Ooh, plug, plug.

But you, so you didn't, you've never had, you've got kids, got a great wife. As a family, no, no pets. Yeah. We've had some fish.  Um, we had a cat. We can go into that briefly.  So when Alpine cat.  Oh, yeah, sidetracked. Meow!  When my wife and I bought our first house, we ended up getting a cat.  This is in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

This is in Green Bay, Wisconsin. We got a small house, about 800 square foot, two bedroom, one bath.  Nice next to the park. Luxury. It was beautiful.  We decided to get a cat.  The cat was fine. The cat hated it when we left to go to work. So we got the cat in the summer. My wife's a teacher.  When it was time for her to go back to work, the cat was very resentful.

She didn't want to be alone in the tiny house. Wow. So she started shitting in the house.  Can you say that? Yes. Can you say shit? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we, we, yeah, we, we have a, it's like a PG 13 thing. Yeah. They have bombs or, you know, I bleep those. No, I don't bleep them out. I just leave them in there. We'll see what happens.

So the cat would leave me gifts by the front door when I would come home. By shitting on the front rug. Yeah.  And I told Tina  Like, as soon as the cat does this on the furniture, there's going to be no more cat. Oh boy. So one day I come home, and sure enough, the cat had taken a dookie  on my couch.  By the time Tina got home from work, the cat was no longer there. 

The cat went to the farm. Yeah, it's a good place. When I say that, most people think, Oh, you killed the cat and it went to the farm. I didn't think that one bit. That's cat heaven. I didn't think that one bit. cat to my mom's farm.  What's up, brother?  Yeah, no, it's good. People interact all the time, so this usually doesn't get cut. 

Good seeing you. I almost stopped you the other day and saw you at work. Why didn't you? 

I didn't know who was there. I'm there. I know. Now I asked him later. I told him. I said he's there. I probably was the only one there. Yeah. I went to, what, CES or whatever? Oh, right across the street. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for stopping in. Yeah, I mean Yeah, he's a dick. Ha ha ha ha ha! I mean, look what he wears on his head.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! So the, so the, but the, but the, but the cat went to the farm. Yes, people do take that the wrong way, right? I took the cat. But where we grow up and everything, it's, yeah, you take it to the farm, you just take the cat to the farm, she lived her best life. And then she was at home, she had her place, and it wasn't long, she was like the queen of the roost.

Nice. She lived a great life. I've heard a few years ago she passed on, but she was an old cat. They all do. That's what circle of life, but you had a cat, you had a cat, but then, uh, with the kids, you had a short stint  lately. Well, not lately, a couple of years ago with a dog, we got a COVID dog, get a COVID dog.

Everyone got COVID dog. So we got a COVID dog. Yeah.  Talk, talked about that dog. Yeah. Friend of ours had a farm in La Junta.  If you don't know where that is, La Junta, Colorado. We'll have to put it on a map when we publish this.  It's basically in Kansas. Oh, so yeah. East. It's far. Southeast. Oh. The deep southeast.

Oh. You got, you got a southern accent there. They do make their own beer in La Junta. Oh, no way. God damn it. What's it called? See, I'm bad with names. That's okay. It's like belt buckle or rodeo buckle. I, I didn't. Gold buckle.  Gold buckle. That's what it's called. You never told me this, that they had. Beer there.

Gold buckle. I would've went with, get it. Nine bucks for like a pallet  . Certainly not the nectar of the gods. The rodeo beer of dirt. Yeah, it's got dirt. Dirt side to Colorado.  So you got a,  you got a Covid dog. So we got a dog. He's a wonderful dog. We named him Rocky. He was a  border Collie kelpie mix  at their farm.

They had beef cattle. They had a border collie and a Kelby  who got together and made puppies.  That's what they do, circle of life.  Yeah.  So we picked one out. He was wonderful. He was fuzzy, cute. 

Found out later he had  Resource guarding issues,  food aggression. Yeah. Whatever you want to call it. Yeah.  So if you got near him while he was eating he would  Yeah, that's no good. It was no good.  Um, dealt with that for a while. Took him to puppy classes. Took him to doggy daycare where they would  train him.

We would do everything we were told to do. Didn't seem to help. Yeah. He would not attack me because  I had a bigger stick than he did.  You're the alpha, for sure. Right. Yeah. But my small Children and my wife. He right attack, right?  Yeah, you know and and interesting that you had such a good upbringing with dogs like your stories I had no idea about these and then you got this Dog, I got a bad one.

Yeah, I mean, you know and and bad one and you know  time and working, you know, it's  Do you think you'll ever get another one  I will. I think so.  I think you will. I know you enough. I don't know if I will with my current family. This is going to be a new family. We'll edit that out.  A new family, a new dog.

There's tons of different kinds of dogs out there though. You know what I mean?  Go back to a lab. It's hard. We travel a lot. You guys do a lot. You're busy.  We have  another cat now.  It's much easier to leave the cat behind. Yeah, we don't need to, like, you know, get into cat talk anymore. No plug for cats. No. I mean, Bixby does have cat food now.

And you're gonna be getting some Bixby. Bixby does take care of, when you come and talk on the show, we try and give some treats and all that, so. But Thank you, Bixby. And, and Nick is gonna get some Bixby food for his, for his cat. For my cat. He's adopted from across the way, but, uh. But this is great. I, I, thanks for talking with me.

So we can redirect. The only reason I have a cat is because if I didn't take the cat, it would have gone to the Humane Society. See, and Nick is a good man. So I basically rescued the cat. Yeah. That's awesome. You're a good person. Trust me. Like, it's good.  Well, this is awesome. Thanks for talking with me. Are we done?

Well, I mean,  we got to the end of talking about dogs. We didn't finish my dog story. What's the dog story end? Do you want the end? Yeah! Do your listeners want the end of my dog story? Nick, I thought you were done talking about it. So let's circle back to my dog, Rocky. Okay, Rocky is back in action. Who attacked? 

Three, two, one, take it. Who attacked my family over his food. I built Rocky a beautiful dog house. Oh, that's right. I totally forgot about this. Okay, we'll put a picture when we post this episode. We'll put a picture of this. This is amazing. Can you do that? You can post pictures? Yeah, so when you go to the website, you see the pictures.

So I'm going to take a picture of you. I have a picture of you, but, but you, you, but you got to send me a picture so we can put that on. And people will say, during that time, I'm telling you people, like Nick is an amazing carpenter. He knows everything there is about Everything. Just ask me. Just ask him, you know, other than, you know, dogs, obviously, but, um, but he made this fantastic.

Okay, I'm into it. Go on. So I,  my project was to build this doghouse and I wanted to go, sometimes I go a little bit overboard with things. Sometimes?  So I built a doghouse with It was, I don't know, size wise, it was probably 6 feet by 4 feet.  That's right. By  40 inches tall ish or more. Yeah, I couldn't fit in there.

With the railing. So, it had a front porch. There was kind of a ladder step system going to the upper sun deck. And of course, for safety,  a railing all the way around. The railing was icy on the cake. So it was this beautiful doghouse. And the dog did enjoy it. I built a dog run next to the house, and the dog would go up onto the sun deck so he could look over the fence to see what we were doing in the street. 

So if we were playing cornhole in the street, the dog is up on his sun deck looking over the fence and just keeping an eye on things, which was wonderful. And it was always funny to see him up there. Uplifting! It was wonderful, yeah. It was awesome. Underneath the ladder's stairway was a toy box, and that is where all of his toys were kept.

In his toy box, attached to his doghouse. Geez, see? It's overboard.  Nicholas Overboard Mills.  But it was lovely. I love building it, and the kids helped me. That's cool. And we stained it, and we painted it to match the house, and it was awesome.  Um But yeah, and the dog was great for a while until we went camping and  Our neighbor kid was eating a bag of chips and dropped some chips in front of the dog who was then eating them and then knelt down and was still eating chips in front of the dog and the dog Lashed out and bit the neighbor kid And then the dog had to go back to the farm.

Yeah  You know it sucks. It was it was awful. It was very traumatizing and I just  As it happens just got rid of the doghouse last weekend. Oh, no way. Yes I mean, what are you gonna do with it with the cat? It was it was sad to look at every day Yeah, it's now it's gone. Yeah, it's on to a happier place I guess that though we will we'll post a picture because this thing I'm talk about like, you know  We could plug a Kardashians or something like that.

But this dog Had the life 'cause of his owner, Nicholas Mill. I mean, seriously, this thing was, the dog was spoiled. I don't know what, he was so pissed about the,  the food thing's weird because he wasn't even fat. He was like, oh my,  not that you have to be fat, but like, you know what I mean? Like, you know, it's like, no, I, yeah, he had nothing to be angry about.

Nothing, but he was just angry. And, and, and that household has got some of the most love that I've ever, nothing but love experienced. Yeah. So. And Bush Light. Lots of Bush Light. Little plug there. Nane Anheuser. Anheuser Busch. The two biggest Bush Light drinkers in all of Colorado. Right in Longmont, Mead.

Keep that Bush Light apple coming. Oh, there we go.  That is magical.  Well, I, I, are you, are, that's it? I mean, I, and I'm not trying to wrap things up, I could talk all day. I, you and I could talk all day about everything. I know, and uh, and part of this, and we will, we'll talk more, I mean, uh, Nick, Nick, Nick Mills is one of my dearest friends here that I've met since I've lived in Colorado to this day, still a wonderful man, um, great talking with you, thank you so much, I mean, I didn't know anything about the dogs growing up, that's really cool, um, It's not very interesting.

Yeah, it is, no, you may not think that way, but like, it's, it's, it's different when it's coming from the, you know, From the outside people looking in like wow, that's really cool. I look at that dog I might want one of those dogs, and you don't know I mean you're you would have That's a pretty cool thing to give your dad a dog He gave me a dog.

I know but like I Don't know I mean it just seems you know given you you know given the kids a dog seems like out of a movie right like Oh, there's a puppy under the tree, woof, woof, woof. But to give your dad or, you know, any, that's cool, like that's thoughtful. And he loved it. Yeah. And he was a great farm dog.

Yeah, it sounds like it. So, that's a, that's a neat part. I haven't heard that, you know, ever. So, it's just good talking with you and I appreciate you being on the show. Well, I appreciate being here. Heck yeah, man. And if anyone wants to follow me on social media. He is zero. You can find me. Nowhere. You can.

Nick, Nick, Nick has pretty blue eyes for nothing out on there other than his wonderful life post and pictures of him. But that's what, what I love about him and, and, and I'm grateful you guys will get to see his beautiful picture of when I was like in the doghouse. So thanks so much, Nick. Thank you, buddy.

All right. Cheers.  Thanks again, Nick, for sitting down with me, apologize profusely to everybody for a little bit of cussing this time around. But, uh, Nick and I had some fun with it. And again, it was, uh, neat, uh, listening back to this and it was so fun. You know, when people have a good time and that are open about stuff.

You hear some stories and, you know, uh, it's, uh, life, life is interesting that way. And so, Nick, cheers to you, man. And, uh, we'll see you soon. But, uh, onto this week's reviews. So, um, this one's going to be a two part review in the sense of, I got this, uh, toy,  a Trixie Mad Scientist. Turnaround dog puzzle. Uh, yeah, mouthful, but basically I got it for my healer and it's this, uh, these treats that are suspended in air, uh, kind of like, uh, on a, uh, you know, if you're on a,  What's it called?

Uh, teeter totter. And, uh, basically you fill them with some food, some treats, food. I, I put the kibble in there for Hazel. And, uh, it's supposed to, uh, be, uh, mental stimulation. So, uh, touching it with her nose and moving them, uh, around, uh, so that she gets more treats out of it.  Now, I, like I said, it's doing two parts right now because I just got this.

So, I'm going to, uh, work with her, uh, it's, uh, February 25th, and so I'm going to work with her for 30 days, and we're going to see if we can get her to do that. She's a blue healer, uh, she's six years old, let's see if, um, I, I can, uh, I can get it to happen. And then we'll review it, um, you know, their, their  claim is, uh, you know, leveling up.

Uh, Mental Stimulation, Enrichment of Fun,  Pet Safety, and Tasty Treats. Those are the bullet points that I got from Amazon. But, um, yeah. Let's, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll circle back and we'll give you all a, um,  an update. And how Hazel's doing on this. Uh,  this, uh, Treat O Matic, if, uh, I'm gonna give it a little nickname, so, uh, stay tuned and we'll give the review.

And a big shout out to Bixby, we talked about him during the show, but I wanted to say thank you again. Uh, we gave out some magazines, uh, Bixby used to have a publication that they sent out.  And, uh, I just wanted to say thank you again, uh,  BigSpeedPet. com, check them out, great food, grain free, uh, you can read all about them, and, uh, we'll plug more of them.

Until next week,  woof, pet them dogs.  Today's episode was brought to you by Alpine Howl. Handcrafted scarfs.  for your furry friend and matching hats for you.  Get yours today at alpinehowl. com.  Dog Friendly comes to you every Tuesday. So hit the subscribe button, send us a review, like us, share us with a friend.

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