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Anything BUT Politics
A groundbreaking new podcast, Anything BUT Politics, is redefining how we view political figures by focusing on everything about them—except their political careers.
Anything BUT Politics
Family, Fame, and Four-Legged Heroes
What happens when Pittsburgh pride meets New Hampshire heart? Larry Myers has the answer.
Stepping away from politics and into the realm of meaningful human connections, this episode introduces us to Larry Myers, a passionate humanitarian whose journey from Pittsburgh to New Hampshire set the stage for remarkable contributions to his adopted community. As the father of comedy stars Seth and Josh Meyers, Larry shares charming insights into raising creative minds destined for the spotlight, including Seth's hilariously fabricated family history paper that earned an A+ despite featuring a fictional "1904 Lithuanian equestrian team" grandmother.
Beyond family anecdotes, Larry reveals how his sons' paths to comedy greatness unfolded through Northwestern University's sketch comedy scene and Amsterdam's Boom Chicago theater. The brotherly bond continues today through their popular podcast "Family Trips," where celebrities share vacation stories while the brothers occasionally poke fun at their parents' traveling habits—wet countertops and all.
The conversation takes a powerful turn as Larry discusses his dedication to Operation Delta Dog, an organization transforming lives by pairing rescue dogs with veterans suffering from PTSD. These extraordinary canine partnerships—each costing $25,000-$30,000 to develop but provided free to veterans—create profound healing for those who have served. From veterans who couldn't enter grocery stores to those suffering debilitating night terrors, these service dogs provide what Larry beautifully describes as "the only real form of unconditional love."
Whether you're drawn to heartwarming family stories, fascinated by paths to comedy success, or moved by the healing power of the human-animal bond, Larry's philosophy resonates with simple clarity: "Rescue one dog, save two lives." Discover how one man's commitment to community is creating ripples of positive change across New Hampshire and beyond.
Ready to make a difference? Visit OperationDeltaDog.org to learn how you can support this life-changing work.
Hey everybody and welcome to the latest episode of Anything but Politics. And I'm Tom Preysol.
Speaker 2:I'm Tiffany.
Speaker 1:Eddy, and we're here today, like we are every episode, to learn more about people and really talk about anything but politics.
Speaker 2:Easy to remember, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So we're really excited about our latest guest and we're kind of taking a departure from the political world and we have someone who is I think you could probably call him a humanitarian, but someone who's very active in the local community and somebody who I've had the pleasure of getting to know gosh, I don't know, like 10, so years back.
Speaker 3:Probably yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you were doing work for CASA New Hampshire and I was working with the Granite State Children's Alliance. But also I think you have a couple of famous family members, but we can get to that later. But I would like to introduce you to Larry Myers, who is not originally from New Hampshire but is certainly making a difference in so many different organizations across New Hampshire. So, larry, welcome and thanks for coming on.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Thanks for inviting me. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so not originally from New Hampshire Tell us a little bit about the route that got you here.
Speaker 3:I'm from Pittsburgh, not the one here, the real one. I'm from Pittsburgh and still a hardcore Steeler fan. I've lived here since 83. We were living in Michigan. I worked for a company there that was sold and came here to work for National Corporation in Merrimack, moved to Bedford, didn't like the job and ended up working for a subsidiary estate Street Bank and we liked living here quite a bit, but I commuted to Boston for the next 20-plus years oh wow and working in the financial services business and eventually for GE Capital, which got me an office in Bedford in a shared tenant office space.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 3:And then for the last 17 years of my career for BNP Paribas, the French bank, still in Bedford. So I was way ahead of the COVID for working remotely. I was working remotely for the last 18 years of my career. So, yeah, so we've been here ever since. And my wife is a school teacher. She taught French in Bedford for 27 years. She retired about 10 years ago and I retired about two years ago.
Speaker 2:And people still talk about Madame.
Speaker 3:Everybody calls her Madame, Everybody we did. Seth, my son Seth, who does have some fame and fortune, did after the COVID pandemic was over. He did a show to benefit the Palace Theater.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:And we were in the theater there and we were sitting about the 12th row, kind of in the middle, and usually when Seth does a show we have better seats. And I'm thinking, I'm just thinking why? Why are we sitting here? And somebody was introducing Seth I think it might have been Bob Baines, who was the mayor, and then he had been the principal of West High School when Seth went to school. And he was introducing Seth and he says I would like to have Larry and Hilary Meyer stand up. We stand up and from the back, all these adults yell Madame, that's great.
Speaker 3:So yeah, she's well-known as Madame, and the reason we were sitting there, by the way, is they put these little plaques on the seats to thank us, to help set the thing up, and I saw that explains the seats.
Speaker 1:So you're not bitter about that, no, we're good.
Speaker 2:So you alluded to one son, but the real famous one, I believe, is your other son, Josh, who does a mean Gavin Newsom impersonation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Josh, he's living in LA and he does a great Gavin Newsom on Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, big fan.
Speaker 3:Yep and Seth is obviously 12 years of Saturday Night Live and then 10 years. Now he's in his 11th year at Late Night and a couple you know a special on Netflix, a special on HBO, another one coming up for next year that he's starting to work on. That's fantastic. He's written a children's book and is writing a memoir and has produced some other TV shows. So a lot going on for him and three kids too.
Speaker 1:So when you moved to New Hampshire they must have been just kids.
Speaker 3:Fourth and second grade.
Speaker 1:Okay, so they grew up here. They went to high school, middle school.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they went to West and yeah, they went to the summer program up at St Paul's and they, you know Red Sox fans, huge Red Sox fans Steelers fans. Absolute Steelers fans.
Speaker 1:All right, you did your job. Absolute.
Speaker 3:Steelers fans yeah.
Speaker 2:How would that have been for you if they were Patriots fans.
Speaker 3:They would have had to live somewhere else. That would have been it.
Speaker 1:Would, have been better than the Jets man.
Speaker 3:We still go to a Steeler game every year and in fact, at the end of Saturday Night Live, when they have everybody on stage, they call it good nights. And it was during the playoffs and Seth is in the back. He never moved to the front front and he's waving a terrible towel. Yeah, and one of the minority owners of the Steelers is in LA watching and he says I wonder if Seth Meyers is from Pittsburgh. And he reaches out through NBC and talks to Seth and he said explains how my dad's from Pittsburgh. And he said well, you have to come to a game. Said, well, you have to come to a game, you and your family, you have to come to a game.
Speaker 3:And he invites us to a game and we've been doing it for 10 years and we go, usually early October, around my wife's birthday, but this year we're going to do it in November. Last year we did it in November and we go to a game and for a Steeler fan like me, if I was religious, this would be like going to the Sistine Chapel, because we're down on the field before the game. We're in the owner's box, we're down under the stands when the team comes in at the end we sit in at Tomlin's press conference. It's just for a Pittsburgher like me, it's just great. It's just absolutely great.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I'm happy to hear you like your seats there too.
Speaker 2:Sounds like it's a hard one not to like.
Speaker 3:And now the last couple years, because Seth has become friendly with Cam Hayward. We go out after the game with Cam Hayward and his whole family and his brother Connor also plays for the Steelers and their mom and stepfather and brother and all their kids. Cam gets this restaurant. We all go out and hang out with them. And the thing is, you know, he's a defensive lineman, all pro and a guy comes out after the game. He doesn't have a bruise, nothing. You know he's got short sleeves. I mean, he's been down there in the trenches. He looks fine, relaxed, cool, nothing hurts. Unbelievable, unbelievable. I realized one of the reasons that I realized many years ago that I shouldn't play in the NFL. Yeah, I couldn't do it.
Speaker 1:No, it's tough, but that's fantastic that you get to do that. I mean, I can only imagine that's just like Christmas once a year. You get Christmas twice a year, that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's incredible. It's amazing and some of these opportunities come because you have a son who's done well, two sons who have done really, really well. Was there a point when they were growing up where you were like boy these guys are? I mean, we all think our kids are special, but, like, these guys have some potential.
Speaker 3:Well, they were creative. I would say that they were very creative as kids. Seth has always been a good writer. Most of everything that he's accomplished in his career is because he was able to write. You know, he was not Freddie Armisen, he was not Bill Hader when he was on SNL as an actor, but he was a good writer and he could write for others as well as himself. And then, you know, obviously he ended up on Update, he ended up as a head writer, so he was always. Writing has been the thing that's been the engine for his career.
Speaker 3:For sure, and you know, josh was also very creative, but neither one of them were real big in performing. When they were, he was to do like a comedy night or something at uh, at west, but they weren't big performers. But, um, just as the creativity goes, when seth was in about seventh grade, he had to write a family history and, uh, my wife was a teacher in a school where he was, and he was a great procrastinator, a tremendous procrastinator. I remember the night before we kept asking him how's it coming? How's the family history? Did you call your grandmother if you looked at albums? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:The night before I hear him in there typing on his little computer and I'm thinking this is going to be a life lesson because you wasted all this time. This is going to be a life lesson because you wasted all this time. This is going to be terrible. So next morning, prints it out. They go to school. It's toward the end of the year. So, hillary, my wife is cleaning out his backpack when school's over. You know she finds all kinds of stuff, like a half a sandwich from December.
Speaker 2:You know Sure.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, and she's this family history A plus, plus. Bottom of the first page. I can't wait to turn the page Bottom of the second. It's only like three pages. It's the bottom of the second page. What an interesting family. It's really well written. Did he make it all up? Every word, oh my God, every word. And he came home. The only thing I remember is he said that my grandmother was a member of the Lithuanian 1904 Lithuanian equestrian team in Stockholm. But he, I said I read your paper. He goes yeah, I got double A plus. I go yeah, but you made it up. And then he had the best line, better than anything that was in the paper. He said what were they going to do? Check?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point. Good point. And I think another great writer, mark Twain, used to always say never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. That's right.
Speaker 2:That's a good one. I'm just wondering, like so Seth was kind of showing his talents in seventh grade, how about?
Speaker 3:Josh. Josh was a better. You know when they would do the like the comedy nights or winter follies. I think the other thing was called he was more of the performer, he was a little bit more outrageous. He would be more into costumes and I remember him once come out in a full I don't know what the skit was a full body suit, cross country skis, a wig. He was. He was much more out there as a performer. So, and he was, he was. He was creative as well. But that story about Seth's family history, it just stands out because it's so, it's so outrageous.
Speaker 2:It's interesting too, because when I was at, when I was working at New Hampshire Chronicle and I had the opportunity to go out to LA and interview Sarah Silverman and Adam Sandler many years ago. But it's so fascinating that we have this cluster of incredible talent like these incredible comedians who grew up in Bedford, manchester and went to neighboring schools. Does that occur to you at all?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean you know, it's not like it's three people you mentioned, and I think there's a woman on Broadway that was one of the Tony nominees who's from New Hampshire as well. I don't remember her name, just that's in a musical too. She's a singer, but yeah, it's well, we're a small state and there's a lot, and so I guess if you have four or five people that have come out of the state roughly the same age not, you know, adam's a little older, but it's yeah, that's pretty good, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2:Must be something in the water.
Speaker 1:I don't know. It's in the Merrimack.
Speaker 3:Could be. Could be, I don't know. We had a well, so I don't know what the others were drinking. We have a well at our house.
Speaker 1:I don't know what Sarah was drinking. That's great. So what does that look like? You said they weren't involved in a lot of performing in high school, so how do you go from just being super creative to all of a sudden being on SNL, being on Jimmy Kimmel, getting gigs and movies?
Speaker 3:Well, what happens in this case is that Hillary and I both went to Northwestern. My wife was a school teacher. They have a very big theater school there. A lot of famous people have come out of that, you know Charlton Heston, julia Louis-Dreyfus, anna Gosteyer Lots of people come out of the Northwestern program. I was in engineering but and we were never usually active alumni.
Speaker 3:But when Seth got ready to go to college, you know, they had a very good screenwriting program that he was interested in and so he got into Northwestern and he was there, you know, for a couple years. And when Josh, it was Josh's turn to go, he had been out to visit his brother and he liked it too, and so he went there also. So at Northwestern, one of the things they have, which just had its 50th anniversary, is they have a sketch and improvisational comedy troupe called Meow, and a lot of those people I mentioned Anna Gasteyer, julia Louis-Dreyfus, brad Hall, her husband and many others came through Meow and they do some sketch comedy and then they do improvisations based upon things that the audience says, and Seth got into that. He tried out for it and he got into that Turned out he was a good improviser and it turned out that he was a good sketch writer. Well, roll ahead, two years, he graduates and meanwhile Josh is coming up and so he gets into Meow.
Speaker 3:Now, when Seth graduates, there's a couple guys that have been there, had been in Meow before, had moved to Amsterdam and started a sketch and improv comedy club in Amsterdam. Now, you know, these guys are from the Chicago area, so Second City ImprovOlympic, improv and sketch comedy, is a big thing there, and I think Seth had been taking courses at ImprovOlympic while he was still in school. Anyway, these guys had this comedy club in Amsterdam. They came back and they auditioned at Meow and so seth.
Speaker 3:Another actor named pete gross, who's done quite a bit, been on broadway and some other things, um, and a woman named allison silverman who ended up as the head writer on conan. They get cast and they go over to amsterdam and, um, it's a very successful theater it's now almost 30 years old and it's much bigger because they keep getting newer spaces and then two years in, when Josh graduates, they've come back. They've seen Josh in Meow as well and they hire him, so they overlapped over a three-year period there. While they're there there's other people like Jason Sudeikis, ted Lasso, brendan Hunt, who plays Coach Beard. Actually, josh was just at his bachelor party in Vegas last weekend. He was with us in Amsterdam as well. Ike Barinholtz, who's been in a million things, and he's in. I think he's in that show about it's about.
Speaker 1:I think he's also a Celebrity Jeopardy winner yeah, he won Celebrity Jeopardy.
Speaker 3:So anyway, they're over there and they're doing this improv stuff and they're doing corporate events and they're doing the stage show and they do the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and one of the female members of the cast is a woman named Jill Benjamin and she and Seth put together a program called Pickups and Hiccups an Improvised Love Affair the best improv I've ever seen. It's really good, she's terrific. So they go to Edinburgh, they kill it. They get great reviews and people compare them to Nichols and May Burns and Allen, all of that. So it's time they've done what they think they can do in Amsterdam. They come back to Chicago and they rent a theater out it's Friday and Saturday nights, about a 150-seat theater. They rent a theater out it's Friday and Saturday nights, about a 150-seat theater and there's a play. It's a small stage with like a drawing room type, a couple couches, a lamp and whatever, and they put up their show Pickups and Hiccups. So the first night they invite all their friends. It's packed, 150 people packed. Second night my mother wasn't well so I couldn't go. My wife goes there's 8 people there but the first night the Chicago Tribune writes a killer review and so they did it, I don't know, 4 weekends in a row and it's packed every time. Then the Chicago Improv Festival because improv is a big thing in Chicago invites them to come and be on one of the stages for the improv, which is a festival, which is a week or whatever it is. And they go and they do their show and Saturday Night Live, you know, they come to the Improv Festival looking for talent and they see them and they invite them to come to New York in this tiny little theater, 75 seats, to do their show.
Speaker 3:And Seth gets hired. I said so, now he had to audition. After that she didn't get an audition. She is hysterical, oh wow. But bad luck. They had Tina Faye, amy Poehler, maya Rudolph, anna Gasteyer. They just didn't need women at that point because they had four big time women, absolutely. And so Seth got hired and that's how he got. That's how he got SNL. And when Josh came back he ended up on MADtv with Ike Barinholtz, yeah. And then he went from MADtv for a couple years and then he was in the last year of that 70s show, yeah. And then, you know, his career didn't have a straight arc like Seth's had, but he, you know, he would do a movie here or there, he would do this or that, he'd write something and eventually, you know, I don't know how he got hooked up with Kimmel doing that, but he did.
Speaker 2:The Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 3:The Gavin Newsom, yeah, and then the biggest thing that's happened, started in the pandemic, has been the podcast. Yeah, because the podcast has done really well. It's taken off, they have good advertisers and they have a lot of people that want to be on it. Uh, you know, they've had people like julie andrews. They had bill gates, yeah, they've. Uh, they've had timothy oliphant, uh, and uh, you me, hillary, they've had lots of people on it.
Speaker 2:It's amazing they could book you too. Yeah well, you're in demand.
Speaker 3:I was Well clearly, here I am.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 3:We're so lucky we got you. I know, I know I'm sorry I have to go now. Yeah, so that was it, so anyway. So Josh, his career didn't have as straight an arc because Seth was 12 and a half years at SNL and he went straight from SNL to late night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he's done a really good job there, so it's amazing that they've always been passionate about this, and I think that's something that you've always preached, right is be passionate about something.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, you've got to make the most of what you've got. They weren't going to be doctors. They weren't going to be engineers. They weren't going to be scientists. This is also what they like. But look, you send your kid to an expensive college like Northwestern. They say I'm going to be a comedian. You say that's funny. But I said, look, that's great because you have the best insurance policy against failure you could possibly have. Right, you're 22. As long as you don't have any baggage, in other words, you don't have a dog. You can't leave a girlfriend you can't leave. You don't have any debt, you don't have a lot of material possessions.
Speaker 3:As it turned out, when he got cast in Boom Chicago, he threw his stuff in a duffel bag and moved to Amsterdam. Same thing with Josh. You know Josh had a car out at school. He said what do I do to a car? I said drive it to a bad neighborhood, leave the keys in it and go, take the plates off. You don't, you don't. There was nothing that constrained them. So you know they could go and they could take a shot at their age. They could fail and they didn't, but they could have and they also weren't stupid. They knew we were here in worst case. But I would say this is your dream, not mine. So when Seth came back, you know he was a waiter for a while and they were he was still writing corporate shows for the people in Amsterdam and you know Josh did whatever he had to do to make a living. Nobody you know were coming back to us and say, hey, can you support us? And so they paid their dues. So I'm very pleased with the way it's worked out.
Speaker 2:And it's great that they've got a podcast together now. And is there a particular inspiration for family trips? Did you guys have a lot of special family trips?
Speaker 3:I think we had. Yeah, I think we had some pretty good family trips. But what's more interesting is it's universal. Everybody has family trips, you know everybody does. Because when you hear all these different celebrities talking about their family trips, I remember one of their guests was John Oliver and a question was did you, when you went on these trips to the beach in England, you know, did you stay at a hotel or as a resort? And John Oliver says think, canvas, canvas. We stayed at a tent on a beach, you know, and? But everybody, yeah. So it's fairly universal, which is what I think makes it tick. But it was the pandemic.
Speaker 3:Seth had time, oh no, it was the writer's strike. I think it might have been the writer's strike or the pandemic, one of the two, I'm not sure. But they had time and they normally didn't do a lot together. They're on opposite coasts, you know they have different situations and you know different obligations. Do a lot together. They're on opposite coasts, different situations and different obligations. This gave them an opportunity to do things together and it's been terrific. Now they're on the phone a couple times a week and doing the show, doing the ads, josh does the songs independently and uh, so it's, yeah, it's been great and they're, they're, they're more in touch than they've been since they lived in Amsterdam. Yeah, so it's great.
Speaker 2:That must make you and Madame very happy to see them working together like this you and madame very happy to see them working together like this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's, it's, it's really really good. We listen to the podcast mostly when we are in a car. We're not often in a car on a long trip, but we just went to martha's vineyard and back, so we drove and so we listened to a couple on the way down and a couple on the way back um, and occasionally we'll listen to one at lunch, but you know, sometimes we get pretty far behind. They talk about us a lot on the podcast, if one of them sees us or whatever. In fact, last year when we did the podcast from Pittsburgh, it was the rebuttal podcast. I went through a whole year's worth of the podcast and I rebutted all the stuff that I thought they said about us. That was not right. One of the things they said was that when we would visit them, their counters were always wet and we would spill like water, which that's not so, but they would talk about that.
Speaker 3:Those were one of the things that I had to rebut Were the counters wet. If they were, it wasn't our fault.
Speaker 2:That's all I'm going to say.
Speaker 3:Were you cleaning them? Again, not our fault If they were wet. They must have been wet or it wouldn't have come up. Yeah, but it implied that we were like I think Josh had a coffee machine that leaked is what I think but we took the blame, but it was successfully rebutted.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm glad you had the gumption to stand up and do that. Are there any particular family trips that stand out in your mind at all that you can remember that? There was that one where maybe everything went right or maybe everything went wrong.
Speaker 3:Well, that's the kind of question they ask on the podcast. But I can remember a couple things. My wife was a teacher and so, like in april, we would often go to, maybe to florida, maybe the bahamas, or something like that for the week. And, uh, it was always during the nfl draft. Oh, because the nfl draft wasn't a three-day event there, it was like usually saturday, yep, and we'd all be on the beach and Seth would be in the hotel room watching the draft and then every time the Steelers had picked somebody, he'd come out to tell us who they picked and then he'd go back in and you know, we were down there on the beach and he's watching the draft. That was every year. That was a standard thing that he would do. That was every year. That was a standard thing that he would do.
Speaker 3:Now everybody videotapes and takes pictures because we all have phones in our pockets. So we have movie cameras in our pockets and I know I get pictures every day, or videos of my grandchildren doing everything and nothing. Yep, right, we didn't do that. I wasn't, I didn't. They had video cameras when we had. But I thought I'm never going to want to do this, I'm never going to be able to watch these things. It's just going to make me sad. You know, 30 years from now on, yeah, but we also didn't record them much, except one time we were driving up north here in New Hampshire. It was my brother-in-law and my wife, me and the two boys and we were. My brother-in-law was recording us singing Stand by your man and it's the only audio that we have of my kids growing up.
Speaker 3:But that was a vacation going somewhere up north to probably, you know, go skiing or or do something like like that. Um, we also went when we lived in the midwest. Before we came here, we used to go skiing out west every year. The kids started skiing when they were really young and we went to telluride, colorado, for nine days and Telluride wasn't what it is today and literally it was like an old west town with wooden sidewalks that looked like a cowboy movie and it was a great ski resort. First day, first run down the mountain, my son, josh, breaks his leg and for the rest of the time I had to carry him on my back wherever we went, and then we'd have to get somebody to watch him, like one of us would stay with him and the other one would go skiing. So that was a pretty eventful vacation, that's for sure. And so you know there's so many I mean it's been a long time, there are 50 and 48, so we had a lot of vacations.
Speaker 3:And we still go to Pittsburgh every year, you know, and that's it's interesting because you know Seth has a wife and three kids. His wife has a family there. They live next door to one another on the vineyard. They have a place in New York. They usually go out to their home in New Mexico for Christmas, so they see her family a lot. So there's other obligations that they have, and Josh has had a girlfriend who's lived on the West Coast for a long time now, and so there's not a lot of opportunities with just four of us. So you have a core four. So the Steelers going to the Steelers game once a year, the four of us for a weekend, is pretty special, because you just don't get that. It's not that we don't like the rest of them, we do love them, but to be just the four of us, the way, it used to be very unusual. And the last time Seth was here performing for CASA and the Child Advocacy Centers, we did a show, I think right after the pandemic 22, maybe at SNHU.
Speaker 2:I was at that show. It was incredible.
Speaker 3:And we came out, thank you. And we came afterwards. We had a little party at Manchester Country Club and then we came home and it was late and the four of us was just hanging around the house. Yeah, and we never hang around the house, because when Seth comes, he does something and then he's got three kids. He's gone.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:The next day, and so that was really unusual. I can't remember another time where there was just the four of us in our family home for one night. We stayed up really late. We listened to John Prine music like they listened to when they were growing up. So yeah, it was pretty good, pretty good.
Speaker 1:You know I never think about that, the core four right Like the core members of the family, because everybody grows up, they get significant others, grandkids, and it is very rare. So that's really special that you still get those moments every year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not, I wouldn't say, well, you get that every year. But now that my grandchildren are older, there's two boys nine and seven and a little girl three and a half.
Speaker 1:The boys are coming this year to Pittsburgh, as long as they're not taking your ticket.
Speaker 3:No, no, we have plenty of access to tickets. Tickets are never a problem. So, yeah, the boys are coming. So that's going to change the dynamic. Sure, we'll miss the core four. This will be something completely new. Now, the other thing about my grandsons is I don't think they know what shape football is. They know what a Steeler is, they know the logo, they all have Steeler shirts and all of that. They have towels, but as far as an appreciation of the game, that I'm pretty sure is going to be lost on them. But there's food, so they'll be okay.
Speaker 3:And just a cute story about that, because my son, seth, and his wife were very when the kids were well, they're a little bit older now, but there were no screens when they were young.
Speaker 3:None, zero, nothing. So one day I would say Ash is about, he's the older grandson, he's maybe three or four, and they have a house in Connecticut and in this house in Connecticut there's a big TV in the attic which is a game room. It's this old farmhouse and you know, the TV is about three and a half four feet tall and it's down on the floor, and so we were about to watch a football game. So his mom's downstairs and I think we just had the one grandson there she calls him because he can't the screen, he can't watch football, he can't watch TV. So as he's walking by the TV, there's Ben Roethlisberger throwing a pass to somebody and they're about the same height on the TV, roethlisberger and my grandson. So he walks past the TV it's a flat screen he walks to the end of the TV. He's watching a football player and he gets to the end and he looks around the back.
Speaker 3:He didn't even understand the concept of television and now that they're older, they get to watch, watch like we watched part of a Marvel movie which are terrible, by the way, I've never watched. They're terrible and we watched like 40 minutes one day, 40 minutes the other day. So they do get to occasionally watch things on screens now, but compared to, I think, the average kid.
Speaker 1:Like you know, you should go in a restaurant and you see a kid with an iPad or something like that they're very, very good about controlling how much access to screens they have, so they don't watch their dad and their uncle on TV, never.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good for them. No, there's plenty of time for that later in life. That's amazing. That's a lot of hard work too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I guess you just come up with a plan and stick to it. Sticking to it's the hard part. Coming up with a plan is not that hard. So that's true. That's the way it works.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned Seth coming back and performing at the SNHU and I know he's been up here at the Capital Center on behalf of CASA and the Granite State Children's Alliance and you've come and taken tours of the Boys and Girls Club of Manchester as a board member. Thank you for doing that, but you've been very supportive of local organizations making a difference in the community and now you're involved in another organization, Operation Delta Dog. Would you mind talking a little bit about that? And they were just in the paper too, right?
Speaker 3:They were just, yeah, front page story. They won a $50,000 grant from Citizens Bank this year. I think it's called their Champions Award or something and they're doing this. I think the words from Citizens, but part of the promotion comes through the union leader, and so they've been on the front page of the union leader twice since that Citizens Bank award. But it's interesting. I got involved with CASA and I actually just had lunch with Joy Barrett of the Child Advocacy Centers today, and it was not because I was looking for something to do. I'm you know there's a lot of bad stuff that happens, but I don't wake up every day thinking about child abuse. In fact, I would like to never think about child abuse. And a friend of mine who was involved in Rotary asked me if I would come to lunch with two people from the child advocacy centers and this is 10 years ago. And so I go, I think, with my wife and my neighbor who do these people, and they were starting a program called Know and Tell.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:There's a law in New Hampshire, I think, that if you know about child abuse you have to report it. Yeah, and they wanted to see if Seth would do some promotion and because my wife was a teacher, she would do something. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I know I think Seth at least did a poster or something and they were going to push this out through the schools because you know, teachers see kids every day Absolutely. And they were going to push this out through the schools because you know, teachers see kids every day Absolutely. Often the abuse comes from the family. So I had never thought about it before and then I was. A lot of times we would. We would try to get tickets to Saturday Night Live to auction off for events, and we still do that for late night all the time. Saturday Night Live to auction off for events and we still do that for late night all the time. And we're at a fundraiser for the child advocacy centers and we're offering tickets, I think, to Saturday Night Live I think it was, it could have been late night, given that it was 10 years ago and usually these tickets go for a couple thousand dollars and people that are at these events are generous. They're there to give money, and so this is a fun way to do it, and so it's somewhere in that area. So this guy bids $2,000. Another guy bids $3,000. Another guy bids $4,000. Another guy bids $5,000. You were probably there actually Ends up going for $13,000. Wow. Now, these are two generous people that are there to support a worthy charity and this is a fun way for them to do it.
Speaker 3:So I called Seth that next day I go. I think we can raise a lot of money for child abuse up here. So we got in touch with CASA and child advocacy centers, both of which deal with the same kids. You know, casa is more on the civil side. The criminal side was child advocacy centers and we put this idea together to do a show here across the street at the Capital Center for the Arts, and we did two shows in 2018, and we were able to give each charity $100,000. Wow, all we had to pay for was the ushers and the Ticketron fees on the ticket. Everybody else gave us everything for free. We didn't spend any money.
Speaker 3:And then, a couple years later, we did the one at SNU and same thing. They were able to get a couple hundred thousand dollars each, and so we, you know, and whenever there's material like again these jokes, he doesn't get them out of Cracker Jack boxes. He's got to write them and put a show together. And so when he did his first special for Netflix I don't remember the name of it, and then he just did the last one was for HBO, dead Dead Walking. It takes him a long time to put those shows together and he may go out on the road and perform them 20 times, but this will always be a spot that will perform.
Speaker 3:And so whenever the next one is and there'll be another one, I don't know, I can't tell you when, but one of the stops will be new hampshire and the beneficiaries will be those two charities. And, like you know, you mentioned boys and girls club, totally worthy charity, the charity that I'm involved with, operation delta dog, which I'll tell you more about, totally worthy charity but we made a commitment to those charities and we'll use tickets to the shows. Any other ways we can help other charities, we'll do it. We've done that, I know, for Boys and Girls Club. We're going to stay with the people that we started with in terms of that coming up and doing performances for charity.
Speaker 3:Oh sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, no that's it, and so, again, I think it's good for the community. I think I know that there was years ago Sarah Silverman did a thing for a charity that her mother had at the palace. And you know, Adam, I'm not as familiar with how much he's done in the community, but yeah, I think it's great. This is where they grew up. I mean, why not?
Speaker 2:Right, why not? No, and as a former board member of the Granite State Children's Alliance, it's so hard to raise money for kids who have been sexually abused, and I remember going back to my channel nine days that we might do a story on an animal who had been abused and people would be writing in and how can we help this animal. And this is outrageous and rightfully so. I mean, that's unfair and they should totally be protected. But when a child's been abused you can't show a photo. There's privacy laws, so there's just not the same kind of outrage and reaction and so it's really really hard to raise money for those organizations. So the fact that your family has stepped up is incredible.
Speaker 3:You'd rather not think about child abuse, as I said before. But I'll give you a great example. Years ago, a few years ago, there was an earthquake in China. I don't know how many people died. It was on the news every day for like three days, because news stories don't last that long. Three days, and okay, china, far away, earthquake happens.
Speaker 3:And then there's a story about the pandas. Yeah, that they can't get bamboo to the pandas because the road has been washed away where they have to bring to this panda sanctuary. And I'm saying well, how do we get money through the pandas? What's going to happen to the pandas if they don't get bamboo? I have bamboo in my backyard. I'll cut it down, I'll bring it over there. But you're right, animals is a different thing, which kind of segues into what I'm doing now, because I went to this event that I got invited to, not thinking much about PTSD, and it's at Nashua Country Club and there's about 10 veterans with dogs. There's about 300 people there and they're walking around with these dogs, which I've since learned is a big thing for vets with PTSD to be in a crowd, a lot of close people. When they don't like that, there's anxiety and so forth and we sit down and they have a guy speak Executive director speaks and then they have a guy speak. Now, most of these guys are, I would say how old are you?
Speaker 1:Me 40.
Speaker 3:Okay, plus or minus your age. Okay, fit like you. Thank you. Okay, they look like they're Afghan or Iraqi war veterans. This is what I expected. Yep, the guy gets up to talk. He's my age, 35? Yeah, times two plus. So he's a Vietnam War veteran. Wow, he's got a dog that can't be more than two years old and I'm sitting. This guy had PTSD for 50 years, so he has a speech which he wrote, which he delivered beautifully. They have a screen behind him. They show this picture of a Marine, his son killed in Afghanistan when that happened obviously terrible trauma. It triggers everything in this fella. And he talks about how he was always anxious, he didn't like crowds, he wouldn't go to restaurants, he was this, he was angry all the time and I.
Speaker 3:It was really eye-opening to me and afterwards I thought to myself, much like when I met the people from the Child Advocacy Center. So a know and tell. I wasn't looking for something to do, I wasn't looking for something, a cause. But those people, they just walked right in front of me because my neighbor set it up. I didn't know what it was, but there they were. I said, oh, they're doing something. That's important. I can either walk around them. But I'm right here, maybe I can do something. Yeah, maybe Same thing here. So after this is over, I, you know, think maybe I can do something to help. I don't know what, but you know we had given tickets to Sessho and so forth.
Speaker 3:And then I get to know these people a little bit. I start by walking dogs. They need volunteers. So I go down to Hollis and I walk dogs you know a couple dogs once a week and I start to see, because they have classes for these veterans, women that suffer military sexual trauma, traumatic brain injuries, ptsd people in their 60s, people in their 30s, people in their 40s. And the thing about them some of them look like warriors, some of them don't. Some of them look like old men, some of them look like warriors, some of them look like middle-aged women, but you can't see PTSD. And when you talk to some of these people and they say and when you talk to some of these people and they say I can't go to a grocery store, I couldn't go to a grocery store, I couldn't go, I'm thinking I couldn't go to a grocery store. I have to know how I'm going to get out. I don't like people to be too close to me. Okay, everybody likes their personal space. I don't like somebody in line behind me at a grocery store. What I realized is I can't empathize with these people. You either have PTSD or you don't, because it doesn't make sense, it just doesn't. Yeah, but you can sympathize with it.
Speaker 3:So what, what Operation Delta Dog does is they rescue dogs from kill shelters in the south, often within 24 hours of euthanasia. They bring the dogs up and they they very carefully match them with veterans I'll talk about that in a minute and very often the veteran who calls and looks for help because a lot of these veterans think you know, somebody else needs it more than me so these guys maybe have tried medication, they've tried counseling. So historically they've tried to answer that call and get an interview the next day, then do a home interview, try to see if there's kids, if there's family, if there's a yard, to try to figure out what's going to be the best situation for this veteran. And they don't want to wait because what if this is the last call? These veterans are five times more likely to commit suicide than anybody in the general population, right? So they don't want to wait and a lot of these people have tried to take their own life. What's happened is it's grown, the demand has grown, it's going to grow further. They're going to be the entity that's going to work with canine support animals up at the new Franklin facility for veterans, and so they. Now, if somebody calls, they're not going to be able to get into a class because the classroom environment is really good. They either have the classes in Hollis or out in the community.
Speaker 3:But you have five or six veterans together, all different kind of people, all suffering different issues. But they all have something in common they support one another. And then you may have somebody in and they may have to try two or three dogs until they get the right match. These people know what they're doing. It changes these veterans' lives. It changes their lives. I was with a woman today. I don't know how old she is, she looks like she's 60. And she said her PTSD just got worse and worse and worse. She's had her dog for a year. It's an 18-month program. It's free. Other programs with service dogs can charge a veteran $25,000.
Speaker 1:This is free.
Speaker 3:You don't have to do a GoFundMe page, you don't have to do anything. And they feel that a veteran that has PTSD is already given enough, and so they match them carefully with the dogs. Once they're out of the program they always can come back. They recertify the dog as a service animal every two years. They're not trying to solve every problem the veteran has. The veteran has to be drug and alcohol free. They can't be an alcoholic or a drug addict. But they tell you stories that you can't believe. These are all the things I couldn't do. This is what I can do now. I couldn't do things with my kids. You know I couldn't. Some of them don't work. They're on disability, you know, but whatever.
Speaker 3:But I was there one day and this guy who looks like a full-blown warrior, inked on the arms, big beard, strong, muscular guy. He had had a service dog for 10 years who was getting older and he was getting a new dog because his older dog wasn't able to be a service dog anymore and he was telling me that his symptoms are night terrors that's what children have right and his dog gets on his chest in bed, lays on his chest, and they lays on his chest and they go away. That's incredible. So imagine this guy his dog that he's had for a long time 10 years maybe is not going to be able to do that anymore, can't get up on the bed. I don't know what the reason is. He has a new, he's gonna get, he's got a new dog and it happened to be that was the day he was taking the dog home. Because they don't take the dogs home right away, they kennel them there and this dog, which was a golden retriever, walks into this office and jumps into the guy's arms. Wow, about a 70-pound dog jumps into the guy's arms and you could see the relief. Imagine that, having night terrors when you're a full-grown adult and you know what fixes it and all of a sudden it's pretty dramatic.
Speaker 3:And so I did get involved. Mainly what I do is there are limitations. They have some space limitations. We've been able to get some more space. Some of the space is for training. There's not enough kennel space. They can only keep about eight dogs there at a time and if they had more kennel space they could get more dogs.
Speaker 3:More dogs shorten the wait for the veterans. What is the wait right now? Guys that are on the wait list right now probably won't get into the program until December. Okay, wow, and we probably got about 40 people in the program right now. There's been 100 that have gone through it. They're all still with us. So I asked you, I think, earlier, if you had dogs, and if you had or have dogs, you know how you feel about your dog and the thing about your situation with your dog, my dog situation is you have other people in your family. You have loved ones, you have partners, you have children, you have parents, you have friends, you have siblings. None of those people love you all the time. You've had an argument with all of them, not your dog, yeah, your dog, whatever you do, you're fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if your dog right it's, it's the only real, real form of unconditional love. Because, as much as you hate to say it, every love has conditions on it. Sure, but not, not, dog, not your dog.
Speaker 3:So that's part of it. This is my theory. That's part of it. And these people that were in the military, they know they saved the dog's life, the dog was going to be killed. They know they saved the dog, so they let the dog save them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I'm not 100% sure why it works. But as a dog owner it makes sense to me and it seems like I mean. The data's there, the facts are there, it works. Unfortunately, the VA. There's a study being done over a couple years called the PAWS, P-A-W-S Act, where the VA may, once the study is completed, agree to pay for service dogs. It's about $30,000 for the full training of an 18-month program. But in the current environment in Washington, with cuts to the VA and other agencies, I'm not sure, if the study's done, what that means for funding. So they don't rely on that or won't rely on that.
Speaker 3:So it's all grants and donations and corporate sponsorships and I spend most of my time because you know, look, I'm retired, I have time. I'm not afraid to ask people to help and if I can find somebody who's interested, and take them down to Hollis and let them see what's going on, let them talk, as I did this morning to a couple veterans. And you know, these veterans don't say here's my story, I did this in the military, I did that, or whatever. They just say this is what my life was like and this is how much better my life is right now and everything is so obvious. So, yeah, so that's what I try to do. I'm trying to help them because I have the time to do it and the interest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'll tell you it doesn't surprise me. I mean, I'm a firm believer in what you've said of the impact of dogs on these people's lives. I know I had two dogs and one was a bull, mastiff Zeus. He was about 130 pounds and you could tell when he wanted to cuddle he'd come over and he'd put his head on your chest and even if I was anxious about something at work or something else going on, it went away. It's almost like a weighted blanket.
Speaker 1:But there's also something to be said about caring for another life, responsibility and responsibility. You know, I grew up with golden retrievers my entire life and you know, and they came and they would pass away when they got older and sick. But when we had our dogs, when they passed away, it hit me completely different and I was like, well, why is it so different? And it's like, well, because they relied on me. Yeah, whereas you know, my other dogs relied on my parents. But I think there's so much Dogs are such special creatures and I think it's really worthy and it's a fantastic program.
Speaker 3:My theory is no kid ever had a dog. The parents have the dog. The kid might like the dog, but the parents have the dog because the parents are responsible for the dog, right?
Speaker 1:They were my sisters.
Speaker 3:You're talking about it and the ultimate thing, like everybody, we live longer than our dogs, but your ultimate obligation as a dog owner, a pet owner, is to know when it's time to put them down. That's your ultimate role. When you buy that dog or what have you, and what's happening with this demand that I'm talking about, because this program's been around here in New Hampshire since 2018, you're going to get some dogs aging out. So, just like that situation I was describing, if a veteran today loses a dog, then they go to the front of the line because they have had that. It's like losing a wheelchair if you needed a wheelchair, you can't get by without the wheelchair so they have to get another dog in their hands as soon as they possibly can.
Speaker 3:And we've had people recently come because they know about the program and they know how, how, how well it's it's, it's, it's put together that have said listen, if you'll give me a dog, this is not typical, so I'll, I'll give you $25,000. I'll donate $25,000 if you give me a dog and put let me in the program ahead of all the other people. And we turned it down. That's just not fair. It's not a good precedent. It's it's. It would be a terrible idea and uh. But so you know the the goal is get more space, get more kennels, get some more trainers and and and raise the money to do it. And you know one of the things that we really you've been on boards a lot. We have about nine people on the board. We could use more people on the board and people on the board that have time and connections.
Speaker 3:You know a lot of the people on the board. They're very good people, very committed to the program and they, you know, but they have jobs, they have kids. I have more time, you know, being retired, but my connections are limited because I never did business in the state. I worked for a bank out of New York, and even though I worked remotely up here, I dealt with multinational companies and nobody in New Hampshire ever, or even in New England, to speak of. So other people that are much more engaged in the community on a day-to-day basis would have a better network than me. I'm doing the best I can with what I got, yeah, but you know more people on the board that would be interested in getting involved, in helping meet the financial goals would be something that would be a home. Getting involved and helping meet the financial goals would be something that would be a home run for us too.
Speaker 1:So what would be the best way for someone listening to this podcast? What's the best thing they can do immediately to help Operation Delta Dogs? Write a check.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and where would they find you?
Speaker 3:OperationDeltaDogorg. It's D-O-G no S, operation Delta dog dot org. And that you know, because money solves a lot of problems, yeah, and, but if people were interested in getting more deeply involved, there's probably volunteer opportunities. There's certainly, if it's a company, sponsorship opportunities because, listen, if you're a company we were with a bank today that bank has employees and customers that are veterans, and to be associated with dogs and veterans in a positive way has to be brand enhancing, not just for your customers but for your employees.
Speaker 3:It's something that is going to be uplifting, it's something that's going to make you feel good that you're involved with it, and it would be the same as if you were helping the child advocacy centers dealing with abused kids. If you could help them, them, it's an uplifting experience. Um, but I, I joke, you know, uh, there's uh phil phil dob, who, who runs swim with a mission, is one of the first guys I talked to. They're a big donor and because I had never been involved in this before and he, he said you know, larry, you got dogs and you got veterans how hard.
Speaker 3:How hard can it be? Yeah, and I thought, well, if I just had kids too. But that's that's again dogs, veterans, children, things like that when you're helping out. Not that there's not other causes that merit that. There's, there's diseases and so forth and other things that people could use help. But again, you can't solve every problem and you can't fix everything. And so, if there's somebody that wanted to be focused on this issue saving lives of veterans, rescue one dog, save two lives. It's just that simple.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's also really an important part, and something that's really unique and pretty amazing is that you're rescuing the dog first. Right, You're rescuing the dog from a kill shelter, bringing it up here and then rescuing a veteran, and so what is the cost? Just from the minute you rescue that dog down south to when it gets into a veteran's home?
Speaker 3:Well, let me.
Speaker 1:I would say If you could monetize it.
Speaker 3:I can monetize it From the time you rescue that dog until the veteran completes the training and has an all-singing, all-dancing service dog. It's $25,000 to $30,000. Okay, that would be the overhead of the transportation, the vet bill, the food, the training, the overhead of the facility $25,000 to $30,000 a dog. And you know somebody that wanted to really sponsor a dog. When we have a graduation ceremony of one of the classes you know we had one recently and you know the veteran is there, he's at a table, his family's there kids, parents and often a sponsor family that sponsored that dog there's like a dozen people at the table and then when they go up they give him a plaque. The veteran goes up with the dog and I think there were four four males and one female at that last graduation and they're up there and they're telling their story and all these people that they that their table, they're crying. Yeah, cause you imagine what, not just what the veteran went through, what did all those people go through?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:When, when a guy gets up there and says, yeah, I had a gun in my hand, they remember that those kids were maybe I don't know what they remember. Some of them were pretty young and then everybody else. I'm not emotional but you do get a little choked up and it's seeing this is a joyful thing, yeah, you know. The thing about other is is that you can see that this works. Almost never does a veteran that starts the program stop. Yeah, sometimes things intervene, right, life intervenes. But just for example, one of the veterans is going to go back to college.
Speaker 3:I don't know where they're going to go to school, but their dog has to be trained to be able to go to class and live in a dorm, and so that's something they didn't train the dog to do before. So they jump in and they go to the college. The trainers go down, they put a program together and when we were down there today there was a class and there's six people sitting around and all the dogs are under their chairs, and this gentleman was down taking a look at it today. The executive director says it doesn't look like training to you, does it? We were just sitting there with. The dogs are under their chairs.
Speaker 2:That's important. Yeah, try to make a dog do that.
Speaker 3:That's important, you know, because you go to a lot of places you know and like a restaurant or a movie theater, and the dog has to be able to sit there until you tell him not to. And, by the way, every dog that they bring up doesn't make it. Forty-five percent of the dogs don't make it. As service dogs they're adopted out. No dog is sent back to a shelter, they're all adopted out. But one of the things is a dog has to be food motivated because everybody they wear a pouch with kibble in it and every time the dog does what they're supposed to do, they're hand fed. Now they eat the same as my dog, two bowls of food a day. But they don't eat it out of bowls, they eat it out of the hand. For years, for maybe three or four years, they'll hand feed the dog and then later on they can maybe ease up because by that point the dog is completely trained.
Speaker 2:So oh, that's fascinating. It's really. It's really something, and you've always had dogs like you personally.
Speaker 3:Right, I have uh, since I've uh.
Speaker 3:When I was a kid, this is a long time ago, there was a movie, black and white, called the shaggy dog yeah and it had a net funicello mickey mouse Mouse Club she was the sexy one when you were a kid and Annette Funicello, tim Considine, the whole Disney crew and it was about a ring that made the kid turn into a dog and it was a big English sheep dog, old English sheep dog, and from that movie I don't know how old I was 6 years old, 7 years. It was a big English sheep dog, old English sheep dog, and from that movie I don't know how old I was 6 years old, 7 years old. I wanted an English sheep dog and I also wanted to name him Albert. I don't know why, but I wanted to name him Albert. So one day when we lived in Michigan before we moved here, we had two little boys and I was driving to the airport and I went past this house and it had a big silhouette of an English sheepdog and it said English sheepdog puppies for sale. So I called.
Speaker 3:When I got to Chicago I called my wife. I said hey, I've always wanted an English sheepdog puppy, maybe because we had a neighbor whose dog used to come over all the time. So I said let's go look at the dog thing. So I came back a couple days later I walk into my house and we had a puppy. My wife bought an english sheep dog. We bought our first, albert, and uh, I now have albert the sixth. I've named all of my sheep dogs albert. I wanted a sheep dog named Albert when I was a kid, so that's what I have. I lose one, I start over, and then I've had three great Pyrenees over the years, big dogs like you had. So yeah, but we've just had the one dog now for about three years. He's my co-pilot. If it wasn't hot he'd be in my car with me right now. He goes everywhere with me.
Speaker 1:So what did you name? The Great Pyrenees, alice.
Speaker 3:No, no, I mean, we named them after flowers. There was a bell, tulip and daisy. Okay, those were our three Great Pyrenees.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of hair and a lot of pet dander.
Speaker 3:The Great Pyrenees shed, the English Sheepdogs don't. Oh, they don't, okay, they don't. There could be pet dander, but going by says allergies, I would say there is. But yeah, the Great Pyrenees, but the Great Pyrenees are English Sheepdogs, just want to be with you.
Speaker 3:I wake up I was talking about these veterans wake up happy every day. I wake up about I don't know, 6.30, 7 o'clock. My sheep dog, who weighs about 85 pounds, gets in bed between Hillary and me, puts his head on my pillow next to my head and goes to sleep until I roll over and then he licks my face a thousand times. I wake up with a smile on my face every day because of that dog and, uh, it's just the best. Yeah, I just wake up happy every day and then he's. But my the, uh, great pyrenees would just as soon be outside, yeah, just as soon be outside watching, because they're livestock guard dogs is what they were bred to do and and so she, she would sit outside and in the biggest snow pile just watching come in. She, moderately affectionate, didn't want a lot from you, didn't need a lot from you. But very nice dog, but completely different personnel.
Speaker 1:I will say it's always fascinated me that dogs are. You know, they're bred for a specific purpose and, um, you know like, and they just, it just grows with them, it's like part of their DNA. You know, I was talking about Zeus the bull mastiff, who, you know, bull mastiffs were bred to guard castles. Every single morning, without a second thought other than breakfast, he'd walk to the perimeter of the yard, check all the windows of the house and then eat his breakfast, and it's just, we never taught him that Dogs are so cool.
Speaker 3:If you watch. If you're in England, there'll be something on, like if you're typically. If you're in Mexico and you turn on a TV, there's always soccer 24 hours a day on at least three channels Some soccer. If you're in England and you turn on a TV and scan a little bit, you're going to find sheepdogs herding sheep. Yeah, and people watch that as entertainment and I was watching one of those shows one day. They had a big sheep in a wire enclosure and they had a border collie puppy who had never seen a sheep outside of this enclosure. They opened the enclosure, the sheep ran out. That puppy, who had never seen a sheep, went around and made her come back into the enclosure. That's the breeding. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's nuts Dogs are amazing.
Speaker 3:It's nuts.
Speaker 2:Well, larry, can't thank you enough for coming on. It was a pleasure, it's been awesome. So thank you for sharing the stories and thank you for everything that you do in the community. Like, you are very, very active and your sons have been very generous to helping out local causes. But it's much needed and much appreciated, and you do a lot.
Speaker 3:Well, we live here. It's much needed and much appreciated and you do a lot. Well, we live here. So we do what we can and do the best at trying to do what we can, as we can.
Speaker 1:That's important and it's appreciated so thank you, yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you, guys. I almost forgot. All guests get one free pair of Majestic Balls underwear.
Speaker 3:This will be my second pair, hopefully you like the first ones, Because when she kicked it off she gave me a pair of these as well. I weighed a lot more then, so maybe these will fit. They're double XL. They're too big now.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll get you another, I'll get the XL then. That was not a comment on your waistline, by the way.
Speaker 1:Well, he's been walking those dogs, so he's lost some weight.
Speaker 3:No, I've been using ZepBound for four months. I've lost 25 pounds. No, I don't walk. I stop walking those dogs. I figure that my time could be better using money to let somebody else walk the dogs.
Speaker 1:That's great. Well, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your stories.
Speaker 3:It's great to meet you and it's always good to see you again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much, and thanks to our audience for watching this episode of.
Speaker 1:Anything but Politics.
Speaker 2:Where we really did talk a lot about anything.
Speaker 1:But politics.
Speaker 2:So I hope you had a lot of fun and again, our thanks to Larry Myers. Operation Delta Dog. If you want to get more information on how you can volunteer, how you can give money, it's OperationDeltaDogorg.
Speaker 3:Perfect, excellent. Thank you, thank you everybody. Thanks so much Thanks.
Speaker 2:Have a good one.