Transcript
Speaker: Hi and welcome to the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host Jennifer Muldowney aka the Glam Reaper herself.
Speaker: Today's guest is a lady called Gila and we are talking about all things love and life with a dog.
Speaker: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: This is a podcast where we talk about life, love and loss.
Speaker: We have a massive impact from the funeral industry because that is the industry that I live in.
Speaker: However, we do want to share stories of human life, human loss and human love.
Speaker: And today on the podcast, we have a lovely lady called Gila.
Speaker: I hope I'm pronouncing that right.
Speaker: You're going to correct me if I'm not.
Speaker: Tell me a little bit about you and what exactly it is that you do.
Speaker: Okay, thank you, Jennifer.
Speaker: Well, I'm Gila Kurtz.
Speaker: I am an unapologetic dog mom who has turned my passion and love for pets and the connection that we have with them.
Speaker: the dog-human bond connection into a business.
Speaker: So I am also one of the co-founders of a company called Dog Is Good.
Speaker: It's a lifestyle brand for the dog lovers, specifically producing products that do help pet lovers, dog lovers share with the rest of the world how much they truly do love their dogs.
Speaker: Sounds fantastic.
Speaker: So I actually looked up a lot of your videos and exactly what it is that you do.
Speaker: And I love the like the way you talk about dog.
Speaker: It's so I mean, oh, my God, I'm obsessed with my dog back home in Ireland.
Speaker: I just wish she was here.
Speaker: I want to get a dog here in New York.
Speaker: But unfortunately, just the way I travel, it's just probably not feasible for a while anyway, because I do feel like, you know, I would want to be with it 24-7.
Speaker: What is it that you think is so wonderful about having a dog in a home?
Speaker: Because for me, I've always said the saying that a house is not a home without a dog in it.
Speaker: So tell me what your thoughts are on that.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So I have a little bit of a theory as to why there is this phenomenon around dogs in particular.
Speaker: It's not just in terms of us having them as our family members, but if you look at commercials and advertising and corporations who are integrating the concept of dogs into their philosophies and into their advertising and marketing campaigns, there's a reason for that.
Speaker: And my scientific hypothesis around it is the fact that in an age where we are so technologically connected, right, 24-7,
Speaker: We can communicate at any particular time.
Speaker: We're constantly interacting with our phones on a number of levels.
Speaker: In a time when we are more connected technologically, we are more disconnected.
Speaker: as humans than ever before.
Speaker: And there's this real deep desire as humans to feel some sort of connection.
Speaker: And I think technology gets in the way of that.
Speaker: But when you are with dog, as I like to refer to dog, that goes away, right?
Speaker: It is the one relationship that we have where there is no interference, where there really is this connection.
Speaker: And because dogs have this amazing ability to connect with us in a very heart-centered way,
Speaker: They change the way we feel.
Speaker: They change the way we look at the world.
Speaker: They make us immediately compassionate and joyful and serene.
Speaker: They are a gift.
Speaker: And because of the crazy lifestyles that we all live, the racing and the going and the constantly doing, they bring us back.
Speaker: They ground us.
Speaker: And I think that that is why dogs are so important to us.
Speaker: And we saw this last year in 2020 as more and more families are
Speaker: brought new furry members into the household for that reason.
Speaker: Yeah, 100%.
Speaker: And you know, it's interesting what you said there, because I did a TED talk actually on losing my dog.
Speaker: That's the way, if you haven't watched the start of it, that's just giving it all away.
Speaker: But it was about the loss of my dog and the judgment that we sometimes get from society that, oh my God, it's just a dog.
Speaker: I hate that phrase, it's just a dog.
Speaker: Because I have sat on the phone for over an hour with a lady who just cried and cried and cried because she lost her dog.
Speaker: And
Speaker: To her, she'd lost all her family members and this was her last sort of connection to, like human connection to the world, even though it wasn't human.
Speaker: But that's what it kind of becomes.
Speaker: Like a dog does become like a child.
Speaker: And I know there are people out there that will be listening that will be like, oh, for God's sake, it's just a dog and all of that.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: But there is a type, there's a love that they give us that is just on.
Speaker: It's incredible.
Speaker: Like I think I even said it in my TED talk that I could have told my dog I had
Speaker: you know, murdered an entire village.
Speaker: I didn't, but I could have told my dog that and they would have still licked my face and, you know, let's go for a walk and I still love you.
Speaker: I still got your back.
Speaker: And while I'm not saying that that's something, you know, I'm promoting, I'm just saying that their love is just, it's just unbelievable.
Speaker: It's just pure and wholesome and it doesn't get better than it.
Speaker: What's interesting, what you said there about like during COVID is
Speaker: And hopefully we're coming out of it now, although I feel like we're going back into another deep depth of it.
Speaker: But what you said there about how everybody sort of ran out and started fostering dogs and adopting dogs and stuff like that.
Speaker: I absolutely adored that because there's so many families out there that were able to give love to these dogs and vice versa.
Speaker: What I don't like and I've heard already is that there's so many of them being returned.
Speaker: And that really upsets me because it's like these aren't commodities.
Speaker: They're not, you know,
Speaker: They are living, breathing creatures and it shouldn't be that sort of a way.
Speaker: And so that's really, that just really irritates me that people just use them for the time that they were at home, even though there's a lot of dogs out there who were probably at the end of their life and at least got their last few months.
Speaker: So it's a quid pro quo.
Speaker: But tell me more about the business that you have and what it's called and why you refer to dogs as dog.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: And just to
Speaker: kind of touch on just a teeny bit more to the thread that you were going with, this concept of love, right?
Speaker: What is the core basic need of most people after food and water and air and things like that is this desire to feel loved, to feel loved.
Speaker: And on a daily basis, most people do not experience this in the relationships that they have.
Speaker: More importantly, they don't know how to love themselves.
Speaker: Most people will treat their dogs with greater love, care, and respect than they will give to themselves.
Speaker: And so dog becomes a tremendous teacher, right?
Speaker: And dog does have no judgment to anything that you might do.
Speaker: They don't even hold grudges as much as a professional dog trainer.
Speaker: I will hear my clients say like, I know that they just peed because they're mad at me.
Speaker: I'm like, dogs don't have that capacity to engage in things that are hurtful or in vengeance or that kind of thing.
Speaker: But the reason why we say dog is that it's almost, you know, not putting it in a God-like, a sort of God-like way in jest, right?
Speaker: That really the concept of dog is elevated because of what they bring to our lives.
Speaker: There's not one person, except those who are not ready to receive, whose lives are not enhanced as a result of having experienced the power of this incredible bond that can take place.
Speaker: And you are absolutely right.
Speaker: It is incredibly unfortunate that many people are returning dogs to the shelters after having them during COVID, but it begs the question of where can the greater education lie, right?
Speaker: I spoke about this recently, this concept of what is one's expectation, right?
Speaker: We are where we are because of the way that we have been all along.
Speaker: When it comes to dogs and dogs are often surrendered, not because people don't love them anymore,
Speaker: but because the dog is behaving like a dog many times or in cases where people might have to move and can't take them.
Speaker: Or, you know, I know there are hard luck circumstances where people just don't have anywhere else to turn.
Speaker: But many dogs are often surrendered because the time was not spent to teach them the appropriate ways of being in a household that makes it a well-mannered dog, both in and out of the home that you can enjoy.
Speaker: That's what everybody aspires to.
Speaker: When they get a puppy, they don't anticipate that they're going to have an unruly dog.
Speaker: But if they're not putting in the time, if they don't have clarity around what success looks like to them in that relationship, and then they don't do the work, then that's where you end up.
Speaker: And there's a lot of parallel.
Speaker: And that's something that I chose to do about seven years ago was really draw parallels from these anecdotal lessons that are delivered to us daily from these incredible creatures and being more mindful of choosing how to live one's life through the examples that these dogs provide to us on a daily basis.
Speaker: And Gila, do you think dogs are superior to other animals?
Speaker: You've obviously chosen to specialize in dogs and life with dogs and living with dogs.
Speaker: Is there, you know, because I know there'll probably be a lot of cat listeners, cat lover listeners out there who will be like, oh, my cat, you know, I don't like dogs, my cat.
Speaker: What's your thoughts on maybe cats, but, you know, potentially dogs being superior to other animals?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So I do not think at all dogs are superior to other animals.
Speaker: I think animals have this unique capacity of a number of things of just being who they are.
Speaker: So a level of authenticity.
Speaker: They don't compare themselves to other cats or other dogs or other horses or whatever.
Speaker: There's no comparative paralysis that takes place.
Speaker: They live based on instinct and they cultivate relationships based on the capacity for the domestication of those animals.
Speaker: cats and horses and pigs and chickens and the little mini ponies.
Speaker: You know, there's so many animals, ferrets and rabbits and birds that have this connection to the person.
Speaker: And again, this connection is in part due to something that I believe is missing for that person.
Speaker: And they are finding it and getting that fulfillment through the connection and the relationship they have with that animal.
Speaker: I just happen to love dogs.
Speaker: A lot, it's a profession that I went into over 20 years ago as a trainer.
Speaker: And then what I started to notice was that people's lives really were so positively impacted through their dogs.
Speaker: And that's where we wanted to create the Dog is Good brand as a way to express that, as a way to bring to life via messaging and via language, what felt something that one could not articulate.
Speaker: And I always go to this one point,
Speaker: My favorite part of travel is my first two minutes home.
Speaker: And everyone understands that whether you've gone to the store or you've gone to work for the day or you've taken a business trip, the moment you go back through the door is this absolutely incredible experience that just creates this surge of, you know, release of oxytocin and just all of these amazing chemicals in our body that it's this two minute period of truly feeling great.
Speaker: And what if that was a feeling that could be carried through all day long?
Speaker: But that was the essence in which the brand was developed, living a life inspired by dog and reminding people how great we feel when we're with them.
Speaker: Can we expand on those two minutes and have greater impact for ourselves and around us?
Speaker: It's a fascinating subject and it's, I actually, you just reminded me there that at my brother's wedding, him and his wife, my sister-in-law, actually had me read a poem about, you know, experiencing life as a human, but through a dog's eyes, you know, through, like if we lived life like a dog,
Speaker: how much more enriched our life and love would be.
Speaker: So it really is.
Speaker: It's an age old topic.
Speaker: It's not something new you're bringing, but you're just bringing a different twist to it.
Speaker: And I love to talk, like, obviously I'm going to dip into this category and I'm sure people listening will be like, ah, Jen, but, you know, it is what I do.
Speaker: So I'd love to talk to you or have you tell us about
Speaker: two different things.
Speaker: One is dogs as therapy dogs, because I know that's something that's hugely topical at the moment and only getting more and more, especially for mental illness.
Speaker: And, you know, it feels like everybody has a service style dog.
Speaker: You know, I know some people do abuse it to just get on planes and things like that.
Speaker: We won't talk about that, but then therapy dogs.
Speaker: But equally, what I'd love you to touch on as well, if you don't mind, is dogs grieving.
Speaker: whether it's the loss of a fellow dog in the home or their owner.
Speaker: So two big topics, but if you wouldn't mind.
Speaker: Yeah, well, you're absolutely right.
Speaker: There is a growing capacity right now in our country for the emotional support,
Speaker: and or therapy dogs, right?
Speaker: And why is that so?
Speaker: Again, and there are a lot of studies to support this.
Speaker: One of my favorite organizations, a research organization is HABRI, Human-Animal Bond Research Institute.
Speaker: And they have been doing so much research on what happens the moment you are connecting with or the moment you touch a dog.
Speaker: At the physiological level, there's definite changes.
Speaker: And yes, it can bring calm.
Speaker: It can bring a sense of peace.
Speaker: can feel soothing if you are grieving yourself or in pain or anguish.
Speaker: And then of course, there's the service dogs that support people with disabilities in the forms of impaired vision, impaired hearing, epilepsy or diabetic seizures, being able to alert those kinds of things.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Dogs have so much capacity to support people on so many levels.
Speaker: And then to your other question about grief, I really do feel very strongly that dogs do grieve.
Speaker: We see it.
Speaker: I've seen it myself in a multi-dog household when a dog passes away, the dogs themselves go through a grieving process.
Speaker: They absolutely grieve when the owners disappear, whether it's a military service member going
Speaker: overseas or to duty and they're gone for a period of time or even when you're traveling.
Speaker: I know when I travel, my team here at Dog is Good, my dog Bolo, a yellow lab, she gets to come to work.
Speaker: My employees bring her here, but the pictures they send me, they're like, stop, I feel so bad.
Speaker: You can see she is definitely sad that I am not around.
Speaker: You can see that.
Speaker: Also, many of the dogs that are currently for this past year spending all their time with their family members because of COVID and suddenly are faced with them disappearing.
Speaker: They don't have the capacity to understand not only the passage of time, but really to understand what is going on.
Speaker: And so there is, in the same way that we feel loss, very similar for them too, that there is a period that they have to adjust
Speaker: And it can even be as simple as moving to a new house, moving to a new location, sometimes change as it is process for us.
Speaker: It is also a process for them.
Speaker: And we do need to be mindful of that as the pet parent that and helping them navigate through newness of things.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I know I've experienced all of that and above with my dog back home in Ireland.
Speaker: Poppy is her name.
Speaker: We got her when we just lost her grandmother and we had her for 16 years and we were heartbroken as a family.
Speaker: And actually my best friend had just lost somebody really, really close to her and she was just devastated at the time.
Speaker: And Poppy was only the size of a teacup.
Speaker: And I will never forget, because we were heartbroken and my best friend was heartbroken and Poppy was so small, we held her at our heart.
Speaker: We held her to our chest a lot of the time as comfort to ourselves because she was so small and delicate when I think of her.
Speaker: And actually, we noticed as she grew into an adult dog, that was where she sought comfort then.
Speaker: was that she would curl up and get as close to your heartbeat as possible.
Speaker: And all of a sudden she would calm down and things like that.
Speaker: So I definitely think sort of the way dogs are brought into the world and the way they're brought up around loving, I think they absorb all of that.
Speaker: And even I'm living over here now six years in New York and every single time I go home and thank you, thank God, other than COVID last year and the fact that I haven't been home in nearly two years, I would go home three to four times a year.
Speaker: And every single time,
Speaker: Poppy will absolutely know who I am.
Speaker: She knows my voice from FaceTime.
Speaker: My mom laughs because when the FaceTime ringtone rings, she knows it's me.
Speaker: And she comes up and curls into my mom's lap and listens to my voice.
Speaker: And it really is incredible.
Speaker: We thought it was a joke.
Speaker: We thought maybe it was a coincidence at the start, but it is.
Speaker: And she comes running to the door.
Speaker: It takes her a minute, especially the older she's gotten.
Speaker: It takes her a second to figure out exactly who I am.
Speaker: I'm probably getting an American accent, but she, yeah, it's unbelievable.
Speaker: And it's exactly as you said, that few minutes when you arrive home and that overwhelming sense of welcome.
Speaker: It's just, oh God, I get emotional now because I want to go home.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the best.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: So just to wrap it up, Gila, what would you urge people to do?
Speaker: Would you urge them to get a dog or, you know, I mean, as simple as that, like just get a dog in your life, get that wonderful connection.
Speaker: Or what would you tell people?
Speaker: What would you like to leave the listeners with today, I guess?
Speaker: What's the message?
Speaker: Yeah, I think I don't want to actually encourage everyone to run out and get a dog, right?
Speaker: Because we owe these creatures to
Speaker: our full commitment.
Speaker: And so I think that there needs to be a self-assessment.
Speaker: What is my lifestyle and what is my intention and my commitment to this amazing creature that's going to gift my life with the best lessons, with the best experiences, with great adventures, with comfort, with joy?
Speaker: What is my commitment to them?
Speaker: And am I, and will I live up to those commitments?
Speaker: Because we have these expectations for dogs.
Speaker: We want them to
Speaker: And I hear it on a daily basis.
Speaker: I don't want my dog to jump.
Speaker: I don't want them barking.
Speaker: I don't want them digging.
Speaker: I don't want them running away.
Speaker: I want them to come to me when I call them.
Speaker: And I remind people when I work with them that what they're asking me to do to help them is to de-dog their dog, right?
Speaker: Is to take away all these instinctive behaviors that are just the essence of who this dog is and
Speaker: and replace it with behaviors that they don't know yet and try to do that in a way that they don't quite understand because we're so we're not consistent in our language or in our own behavior.
Speaker: And so if someone wants to get a dog because of the tremendous benefits, and I guarantee you there are, it is life changing that they be mindful of the type of dog that would be best for their family and that they commit to serving that dog well throughout its lifetime in the, in the home.
Speaker: The second thing that I'd like to leave people with is the fact that, you know, there's a lot of people right now, given the shifts with COVID, gig economy, the changes in opportunities that are available to people to consider.
Speaker: Some of your listeners might be thinking, wow, you know, I do love dogs.
Speaker: I wish I could do more with them.
Speaker: There's ways to contribute to your animal welfare organizations via volunteer work.
Speaker: And there's also ways to turn your passion into something that you could benefit from as a business.
Speaker: And I would love to share that Dog is Good as a company.
Speaker: We recognized that a few years ago and made it possible to collaborate with our brand to turn your passion into a business that you can enjoy part-time or full-time or any time.
Speaker: We have a whole program for that, and they can access information on that through our website.
Speaker: Just look up Dog is Good pop-up shots.
Speaker: And then I want to lastly invite people into a conversation around something I call fur-covered wisdom.
Speaker: A dog can change the way you see the world.
Speaker: You can receive a note from your dog every single week written in their voice, signed in their name with a message that, as we often hear, comes exactly when you need to hear it.
Speaker: And so you can also sign up for Covered Wisdom is on the Dog is Good website to get that free weekly email from your dog.
Speaker: Oh, isn't that gorgeous?
Speaker: I wish Poppy could take out a pen and paper and write to me.
Speaker: I'm sure dad is probably not letting her out on time, every time, every day.
Speaker: I'm sure of it.
Speaker: She's not getting all the treats.
Speaker: Well, that is wonderful.
Speaker: And thank you, Sheila, so much for joining me on this show.
Speaker: I'm sure a lot of my listeners are probably delighted that I'm, you know, talking about something that's not revolving around the funeral industry.
Speaker: So I'm sure we've given them a lovely light respite there.
Speaker: But thank you so much.
Speaker: And we're going to leave all your information on how to contact you.
Speaker: And yeah, maybe, you know, you'll update us as the years progress on how, you know, dog is good.
Speaker: Maybe it'll become dog, cat, horse is good.
Speaker: But for now, dog is good.
Speaker: Yeah, well, we do have those.
Speaker: Oh, you do already?
Speaker: We do have cat is good and horse is good too.
Speaker: But our focus does tend to be centered around the dog.
Speaker: Thank you, Jennifer.
Speaker: It was wonderful to connect with you.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much for coming on and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
Speaker: Definitely we focused on life and love with a dog, but we also focused on loss.
Speaker: If you've got any thoughts, questions, concerns, or suggestions of new guests, please email us at glamreaperpodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: That's glamreaperpodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: And if you've got any questions
Speaker: things that you heard today that you want to touch base with either myself or Gila, please also feel free to leave it in the comments or to reach out to us at our various different social media handles also listed below.
Speaker: We look forward to sharing another exciting guest and topic with you soon.
