Hero Dogs! 4 EPIC True Stories 🐶 B1 English Conversation

Incredible dogs that save lives & one talks! B1 English conversation

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In this real human voice conversation, we share three inspiring true stories about hero dogs to improve English listening skills.

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Free Transcript (50+ languages)  → https://simpleenglishbooks.com/b2

Transcript

Okay, welcome everyone. With me today is James. Once again, hello James. 

Hello again.

Today, we will share the four most incredible stories about incredible dogs in simpler English.

Two of these dogs have statues. Statues made of the dogs! Do you have a statue made of you, James? 

No, I don't have anything. Not even a 3D printed statue. I have no statues. The dog has definitely done something more important with its life, unfortunately.

But dogs, they have a completely unique relationship with people?

I can tell you something very interesting about dogs. 

Dogs, when they're younger, will fall in love with their human master. So, oxytocin will be released in the dog's brain when the dog is younger. And at the same time, that same love chemical will be released in the human brain, in the master's brain. 

So, in a strange way, the dog falls in love with the owner and the owner, in a chemical, physical way, will fall in love with the dog. It's a very strange thing. It doesn't seem to happen with many animals, if any other animals.

Wow. Okay, so first, incredible dog story. Would you like to tell us a story, James?

So I would love to speak about Don the talking dog, a dog which could speak. He was a German dog. German, this is the key element, because he could speak German. And German is such a crazy sounding language. Absolutely, yes. It is a strange language.

And so when I say he could speak German, he could not communicate in full sentences. But he could say "have" in German, "cake", "hunger", "yes", "no", "quiet". He was able to communicate by vocalizing these German words to get what he wanted, basically.

This skill first emerged during a dinner conversation, and he used the word "haben", or "haben". I don't know the pronunciation. This captivated locals and later the international press.

So this is in 1905. Over a span of about six years, he became more and more famous in Europe.

In America at the time, they had vaudeville, which was kind of like theatres and performances, typically aimed at working class people. Oh, vaudeville. It's a theatre style. It's a kind of performance, like a theatre performance, and a bit of variety, right? There'd be someone doing a song, someone doing some jokes. A type of variety performance, yes, absolutely.

And this dog was so famous, he was requested in the United States. And to make sure that he arrived safely in America, there was an insurance put on the dog. And by today's money, it would be $1.25 million insurance on Don the talking dog.

He was incredibly famous. And when I say incredibly famous, he would perform in New York City with Harry Houdini. So you would go to a show, and you would see Harry Houdini, the famous illusionist and escapologist. And you'd see Don the talking dog, and I wonder how... Locking him in a box. Probably. Locking him in a chest. I wonder how many people... To be thrown off the waterfall. 

Yes. I wonder how many people went to see Don the talking dog as the headliner, and Harry Houdini as the, you know, the support act.

But it becomes even more interesting because Don also was a hero. He saved a drowning man at Brighton Beach, New York. 

Witnesses claim that Don barked help. In German, some people say English, probably German. And then he ran into the water to aid the struggling man. And he was rescued. Had he said it in English, then he would be not just the first talking dog, but the first bilingual.

I did have a cat which used to say, "Oh no," before coughing up a hairball. He would say, "Oh no," before, you know, vomiting.

Animals could probably speak to some very, very basic single word levels. Like there's that, I think the most intelligent dog ever, right? And he knows like 300, 400 different words. Yeah. That's true. That he recognizes. 

We are made with vocal chords. We can speak and we can move our mouths in this kind of way that animals cannot. But if they could, I'm sure some chimpanzees could say, you know, give me that banana. If they could.

But regardless of whether the dog could actually speak, it was incredibly intelligent. 

So there we are. Don, the talking dog, spoke German and saved a boy from drowning. Sounds awesome. Already he's better than me. I can't speak German. Or whatever.

 So, story, are you ready?

This is one of the statues of dogs that I earlier mentioned, is a statue of this dog. And here is a legendary story in Japan. Hachiko.

Of course, I'll try to say it with a Japanese accent, like in a Japanese movie. Hachiko.

The dog who waited nine years. So, in 1924, there was a Japanese university professor named Ueno.

Ueno had a puppy and the puppy's name was Hachiko.

Every day, Hachiko walked with Ueno to the subway station each morning, walking together. And then the dog, Hachiko, waited there at the station for his owner to return. So the dog would wait, just wait at the station until the owner gets back. And then they'd walk home together. Lovely.

Every day, walking to the station together. And every day walking home together. But Ueno suffered a stroke.

A stroke is when a blood vessel in your brain pops and often you die. And unfortunately, Ueno passed away and he did die and he didn't come home.

But Hachiko didn't stop coming. For nearly 10 years, that dog kept on coming to the subway station at the exact same time, every day, waiting for his owner to return.

And the dog was now living with the gardener of the owner, but every day he'd still go to the station, walk to the station alone at that same time. And he would just wait for the professor. And he even walked past the professor's old house and he would look through the window to see if the professor was there. And then he'd continue walking until he got to the station and wait at the station through rain or shine. Even when it was snowing, the dog still came.

There were incidences where strangers and drunk people kicked him, bullied him, even painted graffiti on him at one point with their calligraphy ink that lasts a long time. But still, through the beatings and graffiti on him, Hachiko appeared at the station every single evening at the exact time that his owner's train was due to arrive.

Then a former student of the professor, Professor Ueno, Hachiko's old master, the student started to notice this and started writing articles, writing articles about the dog. And these articles became increasingly famous around Japan. And then Hachiko became a national symbol of loyalty and faithfulness.

And the people would travel from all around Japan to come see Hachiko, like waiting at the station. And he actually became a tourist attraction while he was still alive.

But in 1935, he passed away. They found his body in an alley, kind of on the way to the station. He was just a very old dog at that point.

And today, outside Shibuya station — so Shibuya is the busiest station in Tokyo. And that is where the story takes place. So you might know Shibuya Crossing, James? 

I do know Shibuya Crossing. 

Most people have seen the crazy video images of all those like hundreds and hundreds and maybe over a thousand people crossing. It's so busy. It's the busiest crossing in the biggest city in the world. And there is where the story of Hachiko was. And a bronze statue is there to this day.

Fantastic. Yeah. It's amazing. The dogs and their loyalty.

It always reminds me of Argos from the Odyssey, Homer's Odyssey. About Argos is a dog which waits in Ithaca for his master to return. And when he finally sees his master again, he is happy to die. And it's this amazing element of like faithfulness and how dogs will be so incredibly loyal.

And you see this again and again. There's countless videos out there of a soldier comes back from service or a dog hasn't seen their master for like a year, two years. And the dog just goes insane. 

And even if you have a dog and you go for a walk or you go shopping and you come back, the dog just goes absolutely crazy. Like it just runs up and down your body, leaping up and down. It's such a natural joy!

People have done lots of interesting things to be with their dogs as well, haven't they? I mean, I remember there was a person at our school and she went to live in Australia. And the effort and time and money it took for her dogs to be able to move from Europe to Australia was really significant. It was like a months long procedure. And also the dogs had to have like special dog passports. They also needed to be quarantined. So when they, I believe when they arrived in Australia, it was incredible, absolutely incredible.

But she was so adamant and certain that her dogs would join her on this new adventure, that she did everything she possibly could to have the dogs move with her. And eventually they did, they did. But without that desire, without that kind of real need almost for the dogs to be — no, no, no, no — the dogs are coming.

You know, I live in these expat communities in Asia, I guess in Vietnam right now, but before I was in Cambodia, in Korea. And I know all about what you're talking about, like the people taking their dogs back to the UK, back to America. 

Some people here are backpackers or, you know, traveling on a budget, or I mean, they don't have much money. Yeah, yeah, they're not rich. 

Absolutely not. No, but they'll spend whatever money they need to get that dog. I'm not joking. Like for them, it's like a year of their savings, thousands of euros to get it sorted.

I can imagine that being an incredibly painful and lengthy and costly process. 

Our friend Emma, that's what she did. Her two dogs from Cambodia, you flew both of them back. One of them was in the second half of its life, maybe the final few years of its life. One of them is a street dog from Cambodia. So, you know, they had to do all that, the dog passports. But she did it.

Yeah, a mess. Yeah. And to see, and to see the excitement of those dogs, and to see them running around those big, clean green parks like Merrick Park. And it's just so crazy to me to see them because I saw them in Cambodia. And Cambodia was their world. It was all they ever knew. And then they're just running around on Bournemouth Beach.

I have another pretty cool story. First, I need to give a little bit of information about what Greyhound racing is.

Now, in the past, in England, Britain, and somewhat in America as well, they would race dogs in the same way you would maybe race cars or you'd also race horses. And they would have these dogs and they would run around an oval typically or a circle on a type of track. And at some point in the UK, it was incredibly popular, incredibly popular.

And I would like to speak about a particularly famous dog called the Great Master McGraw.

Now, this dog was born as a small and weak puppy. And despite him being very small, he was a powerful dog.

As we said before, racing dogs was pretty big business. And so you would have rich people who would breed dogs. And so this particular dog was one such. He was bred and brought into this world to race.

Now, he was small and weak. And to be honest, there was real thought that maybe he would not become a racing dog. Maybe he would not become a professional.

Having said that, that all changed when he saved a young boy from drowning. So the young boy's name was McGraw.

And so the dog was named after this boy. Now, Master McGraw first competed at a very young age. And his owner started entering him in races. And slowly but surely he built up this reputation, not only as being a heroic dog, but also being a successful winning dog.

And he totally dominated a competition at the time called the Waterloo Cup, which was the most prestigious tournament in all of Britain. And he won it three times. And this achievement garnered him international recognition.

So much so that Queen Victoria requested to meet the dog. So the dog was taken to London and met Queen Victoria.

In 37 competitive races, he only lost once.

And much like your Japanese dog, they created a statue. There are houses named after him. And he became a symbol of Irish pride.

Now, as all things, he did die eventually due to heart disease. And it was noted he had a heart twice the size of a typical dog's, which again likely contributed to his racing ability. There are also songs written about this particular dog.

And the end of one of these songs is as follows. "I've known many greyhounds that filled me with pride in the days that are gone, but it can't be denied that the greatest and the bravest that the world ever saw was our champion of champions, great Master McGraw." And there we are. That's it.

Wow. Many greyhounds race every race. And to only lose once out of like what, nine, twelve — when you say lose, do you mean not come first? Yeah, so he lost one race in 37. So yeah, that is not come first. Absolutely fantastic.

I'm just imagining the royal family having an afternoon tea. And the dog is just next to them on a chair. It's like lifting his teacup. I mean, that's how you meet the queen, isn't it?

So dogs come from — at some point, we must have started to domesticate dogs. We must have seen a wolf, you know, started working together with wolves, right? For mutual benefit. So we both benefit from it. The wolf helps us hunt. And then we share the catch of that hunt with the wolf.

But it is tragic. I live in Vietnam, as you know, and I've lived in Korea and Japan and in East Asia, they like small dogs. In the UK, in western countries, they like bigger dogs, you see more golden retrievers, German shepherds, Labradors, all these kinds of dogs. But here, it's all about the small dog. And I swear they're getting smaller and smaller. And like obscene, slightly bigger than my hand, adult sized.

And I think to myself, how did that used to be a wolf? That is messed up. It used to be like a wild and free, beautiful, glorious animal. And now you see that's what happens if you mix it with human beings over time, some kind of half rat yapping selective breeding. Yeah, we've bred them from wolves to be these things.

And what about the ones with the very baggy wrinkly faces, like pugs, bulldogs? What the hell is that? Like, why are people — human beings' perversion that this poor thing can't breathe properly? It's like trying to breathe. And the owner is just like, "Oh, look how cute it is. Oh, I don't know. Little, little Fido," and he's like, and he literally can barely breathe.

At the same time, winning dog shows. Because of that, he's like the best one of the species that can't breathe. He can't breathe the most. And therefore he's the best.

My general rule is if a dog can be killed by a cat, it's not really a dog.

In Puglia, where I live, they had a puma on the loose. Really, a puma? The puma is a wild cat, quite a big black wild cat, right? Normally, they're in zoos or the Amazon, right? And so this cat was regularly seen. And so it wasn't a fantasy, it was seen. And the police had to hunt to find this cat.

And no one knows really where this big cat came from. The local theory is it used to be owned by a mafia boss. Mafia bosses in Italy often sometimes buy like exotic animals. And that is the rumour that this animal escaped from this criminal compound. And yeah, just hung about in the area.

One of my students said he saw it. Yeah, yeah. So that's near your area. Yeah, yeah. So James lives in the south of Italy. Yeah, wow. It's true. And this puma, they still haven't caught it. No idea. Oh, wow.

They found it because it was like, I don't know, there's a cat around. They found it. Catting around.

Now that is a new phrasal verb for all of you, to cat around. Brand new phrasal. Don't use it in your Cambridge exams, please. Hey, in your IELTS test. Yeah, I was catting around in my hometown.

So you've touched on it twice in both of your stories. And we see this often, dogs saving lives and attempting to save and often dying in the process or being hurt in the process, protecting and saving people.

And, you know, in terms of biology, what's the biological motive, motivation for that? Or is it love, you know? Well, it's fact, isn't it? It's fact, it's that love, that compassion, I guess. It's the dog protecting its family, the dog's family. Yeah. Yeah. That's the beautiful thing about dogs.

So there's a transcript, everyone, a transcript on the website in the link. And now it's translated into over 50 languages. Quickly look at the transcript in your own language and then listen to the podcast again to further your comprehension.