Angelique's Bad Ass City Dog

John Ramer  0:00  
I'm John Raymer from Kindness Ranch Animal Sanctuary in Wyoming,

Chelsey Marino  0:04  
and I'm Lori Cohen from the Beagle Alliance in Manitoba, Canada, and I'm Chelsea Moreno from Keeper and Kin in Charlotte, North Carolina, and this is Dogs Beyond the Lab. Hello, everyone, I am really excited to bring in our guest today. Her name is Angelique, and I worked with her for a while with her dog Oliver, and one of the reasons I'm really excited to have her on, her story is such a difference from our other guest Christy and her dog Kasey, because when Casey came home things were fairly easy, not to say that there wasn't an adjustment that needed, but it wasn't as fragile or as complicated as Angelique's story. So I'm really excited for her to share that with you and get the real picture of what it looks like to have a hard dog you are not expecting, and put in the work every single day with them, for better or for worse. I think you're gonna love her. We will bring her in. Angelique, welcome to the show.

Angelique Vinther  1:12  
Thanks for having me, everyone.

Chelsey Marino  1:14  
Why don't you start by just telling us from the very beginning what made you want to reach out to Kindness Ranch, looking for a research beagle to bring home.

Angelique Vinther  1:24  
I think I first saw a number of beagles that were adoptable on a website, you know. We were looking for ones that were available, and we had started looking through, I think, the Colorado Beagle Alliance, I think it's called, and they basically just had links to a number of beagles that were available around the country, and I started noticing that several of them were all located in the same area, so I started looking into, well, why are they all in the same area, and I had heard of the Beagle Freedom Project, and I had been donating to them for years, but there's other organizations that also work with these former research beagles, and that's how I came across Kindness Ranch. And so I found a number of them that were available that we were interested in, and so we made arrangements to drive up there. We're in Denver, so drive up and spend the night and get to know some of the dogs.

Chelsey Marino  2:19  
How was that for you,

Angelique Vinther  2:20  
it was a little bit of a last-minute plan, and it was a little overwhelming, because there's a lot of dogs that were there, and you know they're all running around together and stuff, and so you're trying to see if you have a connection with a dog, you know, because you're making a big commitment, you're making that decision in a pretty short period of time, and they're all sweet, and they're all running around, and you're trying to figure out, like, what's the best fit for you, and things like that. At the time, I had a very elderly cat at home, so I was looking for, you know, anyone that didn't seem like they would be maybe aggressive towards an animal that was, like, slower or a little bit more reserved. We had ways to separate them in the house, so I wasn't worried about them coming in contact all the time, but I did want to look for dogs that could potentially be around cats and things like that. What's great is because you guys also have cats on the ranch, like the handlers will sometimes bring the dogs on the walk, like near where the cat enclosure is, and so they can kind of start to gather some information about how the dogs respond. So that was really helpful to kind of see that happen too when we first arrived and pulled into the parking lot. Oliver, who was called Butters at the time, was the only one in the outside enclosure, so I kind of approached the fence a little bit and he shrunk away, but I greeted him quietly, and then we went inside to see all the dogs in the common area, he kind of came around through, I guess they have a dog door that allows them into a section of enclosure, right? So they, he came around on his own, and right away the handlers said, "Oh, they call them butters at the time, that's butters. He doesn't really let anyone touch him. He seemed curious, but nervous, right? You know, so he's there, he's trying to like kind of get a sense of us, but keeping his distance, and at one point he just jumped up on the couch next to me and let me pet him, and they were so surprised they actually asked if they could take a picture, they were like, he doesn't let anyone touch him, he was so it was just out of the ordinary for his behavior, so that was kind of the thing that stuck in my mind, so that happened in the first greeting, like I said, spent the night and decided the next day what to do, but like the fact that he just kind of came out of his shell momentarily in that first greeting just kind of stuck with me, and that's when I was like, I think he's the one for me,

John Ramer  4:38  
as Lori says, the dogs adopt you. Yeah, it's true.

Lori Cohen  4:43  
The dogs choose you. I fundamentally believe that, and I think everyone does. When I say it to them, they eventually say, yeah, I think that's true.

Chelsey Marino  4:52  
So, Angelique, you left with Butters, and you also left with someone else.

Angelique Vinther  4:58  
I was with my husband. And and he was concerned that because he was very fearful dog at the time and my husband's taller, he's around six feet, and I think some of the more scared dogs just tend to do better with people of smaller stature, and like women, because we're smaller stature and softer, you know, softer voice and things like that, and so he was really concerned that he might not be able to bond with him, and he got along really well with another dog that was there, Hunter, who was much more outgoing, and just showed a lot more like what we would think of as like classic beagle behavior, right? Like, and we had had a beagle before that we had lost, and that's why we were kind of looking for another dog, and so I think he just got more attached and bonded more with him initially, because he just had that more outgoing kind of beagle attitude at the time. We decided, which was not something I was expecting at all, but decided to try going with both of them. From the beginning, it was clear that they were going to have different kinds of challenges. They each had their own thing going on, but the types of challenges that they were going to face were going to be different, just based on their kind of personality profiles.

Lori Cohen  6:06  
So, Angelique, when you, I mean, you're very brave, both of you, to say you're going to take two, that's amazing. Skip to when you got home, what did that look like with the two of them? Had you already seen them a little bit together, because they were all there. What did it look like? Because they're almost being introduced to each other at your own home. I'm

Angelique Vinther  6:31  
going to keep calling him Oliver, because that's how I renamed him, but it was Butters at the time he was at the at the ranch. He had some challenges around, like, like claustrophobia, I think he couldn't be enclosed in one of the, like, I think of them as almost like small horse stalls, right? Like, they have their own little private space, and then they have the little dog door and do a little paddock outside, and I think even that the handlers had noticed was like too confining for him, so they were kind of just letting him exist in the common space, and he'd sleep on the couch at night, and things like that. They were just trying to accommodate his, his fearfulness, and so I think that actually put him in contact with the other dogs in that house more often, because he was always kind of in the general space. So he had definitely had interactions with Hunter, like they were not like unknown to each other. We had a detached garage at this house, so when we first got back home, coming out of the garage is just like our enclosed little backyard area, and there was a maybe eight steps up the back porch into the back door, and Hunter ran right up them. I mean, he was just like very curious, running around trying to smell everything and explore everything. Oliver was really just kind of following Hunter, like he was very fearful, and a lot of very fearful of people. So a lot of what made him feel comfortable was like seeing another dog take the lead, and you could tell he'd like never gone upstairs before, because even to this day he does it really awkwardly, um, but at the time he only kind of could follow what he saw the other dog do, so he was like, "Oh, okay, I guess I could go up these, and he sort of just, you know, scrambled up them, and so, and Hunter was comfortable being kenneled, so we basically made two spots next to each other, you know, in the house, like in this back room of our house, where we could kind of keep them like enclosed, like you know, to one section of the house, so that we could slowly introduce them, and you know, get them potty trained, and all the different things they had to do, but Hunter was a little easier in the sense that he was really comfortable in his kennel, he had no trouble with it at all, and then Oliver just kind of stayed in the same room as the kennel and had a little bed in there, and things like that, but yeah, it was interesting to watch the two of them at first, because I feel like, you know, Oliver just really wouldn't have known what to do with himself if there wasn't another dog sort of acting dog-like in his, in his presence.

Chelsey Marino  8:56  
So, at what point do you feel like things shifted from what was happening into a relationship that wasn't normal for two dogs

Angelique Vinther  9:10  
in the first week or so, it was just really trying to kind of establish a little bit of routine, right, like this is when we eat, this is when we go outside, this is what a house looks like. This is what the TV sounds like, you know. This is what you know, the kitchen noises sound like, just really basic stuff. And they were doing fine together, and going outside in the yard, and pottying, and things like that. What I started to notice happening, and it was really subtle at first, because Oliver wasn't making a lot of big movements, but as he started to become more comfortable, he wanted to get more, he would get like excited energy, and he wanted to do like zoomies in the backyard or something like that, and I noticed Hunter starting to sort of like police that a little bit, where you could tell he. He became uncomfortable with that, like the hyper energy of the other dog in the household. We noticed a couple times where he kind of like went for Oliver, and we were like, "Oh, you know, we broke it up just verbally, saying no, don't do that, and we were able to like kind of manage it, but then it started to escalate, and it caused a fight with them, so we were in contact with the our contact at the ranch and getting advice, and that's actually how we got introduced to Chelsea, because just discussing, like behaviorally, what can we do, because like clearly it's causing anxiety, and we didn't want it to continue to shut down Oliver's progress, because he was so shy and so you know, fearful that for him to start to get a little zoomies to get a little comfortable to see a couple tail wags and things like that, we were really worried about, like, we would didn't want to see that shut back down because you know they weren't getting along together, ultimately it just I think it was a bad fit for the two of them, because Hunter really felt, I think he had experienced maybe some altercations in the past, and things like that, and you could tell he felt maybe unsafe with hyper excitedness in other dogs, and he felt like he had to shut it down, and Oliver is so submissive and scared that to have a dog like stopping him from excitement was creating more anxiety for him too, and like kind of shutting him down a little bit. Yeah, we had to work with our contact at the ranch, and we talked to Chelsea, and things like that, and decided like they were probably not a good long-term fit, because it was also creating a lot of stress in us to try to manage, like we didn't want to see another conflict break out between them, you know. We're being hyper vigilant, which we didn't think was good for them to acclimate to either.

Lori Cohen  11:50  
Angelique, what decision did you finally come to, and how difficult was that for you?

Angelique Vinther  11:58  
We really struggled with it. It was, it was really hard. The decision became a little more time sensitive because the ranch informed us that Hunter had an opportunity to be transported to another like placement opportunity for him, basically, and so we had to choose quickly and just evaluating what was going on in the home, what we would have to do in terms of like modifying their contact with each other to keep everybody safe and calm, and things like that, and like what we felt equipped to do, it all kind of came together, and we were like, oh, okay, this is creating a lot of stress. We did not feel like trained or equipped to deal with it if they really weren't getting along. We were kind of concerned about really both their development, if we were having to like do so many things to separate them or regulate things and stuff like that, and then that opportunity of like, oh, he has a placement opportunity that could be really good for him, so that was kind of the thing that pushed us to decide like it was okay if Hunter went back and we just capped Oliver, but it was really hard because we didn't want to feel like we were giving up on him, and we definitely knew the behavioral stuff. It was not his fault, it was his way of dealing with what felt safe for him.

Lori Cohen  13:10  
I think that's amazing. I think it's incredible that you guys made such a hard decision, and a thoughtful decision, and one that put both dogs' interests at the forefront, and that's what the foster period is, or whatever the time period is for the Beagle Alliance, at least, because we do foster to adopt, because we don't have a facility. I think that you're a perfect example of putting the dog's needs first. A lot of people look at that as a failure, or that they've done something wrong, but the simple fact is it's not always a match, and that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with what the people did, and it doesn't mean that the dog is bad, it's just not the right fit at that moment in time, and I'm really happy to say that Hunter, who is now called Sampson, is living the dream in Canada with like two boys who adore him and his mama, you know. Maybe he was meant to be there so Oliver could sort of learn the ropes a little bit, and then he moved on to his destiny and where he needed to be. So I just really appreciate that you made the decision, a hard decision, a heartbreaking decision. Sometimes that was best for the dog.

Angelique Vinther  14:25  
Yeah, I appreciate that. It was really hard at the time. The one piece that I feel like we were kind of fortunate in terms of the timing is that there did feel like there was a good path for Hunter. We weren't just giving up on him and sending him back. There was like an opportunity there that we felt good about. Also, the lack of ability for them to get along peacefully was showing up really quickly, so if we had had them for six months and then this happened, we would have possibly made some different decisions, because the attachment would have been greater, the assimilation into the household, and all that other stuff would have been much longer, and so the fact that it just showed up for us early was that. Actually, like, kind of a blessing, because we could figure out what to do, I think, a little more quickly.

John Ramer  15:06  
It's a perfect example of how important and how amazing environment plays a role in all of these dogs. They come out of a research facility where it's constant activity and noise, and then we try as hard as we can to provide them a home-like experience at Kindness Ranch, but as you said yourself, there's dogs running all over the place. When these dogs make it into a home and it's their first chance at like real decompression and and they have a chance to breathe, then their real instinctual personalities start to display themselves, and I'm, I'm proud that you found such support in the team here in finding solutions and not excuses, and it's, it's really easy for people to talk themselves out of allowing a dog to go someplace else and find success, and I'm, I'm thrilled that you had the support you needed and the confidence to make the decision that you did, because it sounds like it's a win-win on both sides.

Angelique Vinther  16:20  
Yeah. Thank you. I agree, like Oliver has blossomed so much since then, and I hearing like Hunter has this like wonderful home, like it just, it worked out beautifully, and it was really facilitated by the people at the ranch. It was really supportive and really helpful. It mattered a lot to us.

Lori Cohen  16:37  
It's an important place to be, because you know, even though you adopt, or people adopt, it's just important to know that you're not adopting a dog, and then never hearing from or able to contact an organization and say, "Look, I need help, look, I need this. It could be a year later, could be a week later, but I think that's really important, and you know, John, to hear that Kindness Ranch always does that is amazing. We like to be there for our adopters as well, and I love that this story turned itself around and ended up coming back to the fact that we all played a part in, you know, this dog's life, it just goes to show you how everyone has their role, and the dog ends up where they need to be.

Chelsey Marino  17:29  
Angelique, so you are with Oliver now. Hunter is back at the ranch on his way up to Canada. We're expecting him to blossom immediately and feel safe, and you know, not feel bullied, if that's the word we're going to use. What actually happened?

Angelique Vinther  17:50  
He started what would ultimately become about five months of a decompression period. He has no bad habits, like he's a very sweet, very like kind of neutral dog. He doesn't do anything destructive, like he's he's really good, but he slept like over 20 hours a day, and he basically like got out of his bed to eat and go on like potty breaks, and that was it. He just wanted to go back to his bed, and we were reaching out to Chelsea, and just like, is he sick? What do we do? And she was really instrumental in, like, educating us about, like, what this decompression period could look like, and how long it could last, and that that is normal for him. So that actually took our anxiety down a bit, because we, you know, we weren't sure if we were doing something wrong. We weren't sure if he was depressed, because the dog that was there is no longer there, so that helped a lot. And Chelsea, you even said one time he will tell you when he's ready for more. And the day we started seeing that happen, we were like, "Oh my gosh, he's doing it. Like, he instead of eating his meal and going straight back to lay in his bed, he started like wandering around the house and kind of looking at us like, what's next, guys, and we were like, oh my gosh, he's like emotionally and energetically, like he's ready for a little bit more to happen, and so, but that took like five months, it was a, it was a long decompression period for him, so you know, like I said, he wasn't doing anything bad or wrong during that time, that he was just really shut down, and we were having to be really patient, and we wanted to do all these like trainings, right, the behaviorists getting them acclimated to domestic environments and things like that, and we just had to go really slow with him, because there was only so much bandwidth for him to be engaging with new things or having new experiences, but he did get pretty fearful for a while, anytime he heard like dogs in the neighborhood barking, he would kind of just like go back inside. He just wasn't super interested in other dogs for a while, but again that all changed, like he really started to open up after that five months, but it was a long time, like I mean, for people to bring a dog home and then go. He or she's not really engaging with us for a long time, like it was super helpful to have that support and advice during that period of time, because we were kind of at a loss, like we didn't know if we were doing something wrong, and it was just really helpful to just know to be patient, because there was a lot going on in his head, we think it looks like nothing is happening, but he's learning what the sound of domestic life is, and the smells, and he's learning like that the TV isn't scary, and he's learning, you know what I mean, like all the things that we take for granted were new to him, so he was just like quietly assimilating all of that new information.

John Ramer  20:36  
Now, through this, did you know anybody else that had a former research dog, or this was your first exposure, and all of your friends with quote unquote normal dogs are

Angelique Vinther  20:49  
exactly giving you

John Ramer  20:50  
their advice.

Angelique Vinther  20:52  
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. They, no one else we knew had adopted a dog with this kind of history. So having Chelsea support, honestly, like having set meetings, and we would like make notes to talk about things that we were observing, or you know, is this a good thing or a bad thing, like that kind of stuff, was really helpful support during that time, because we just didn't know how long it would last. It's hard to have faith that it's going to change, like you've never seen anything else come out of that dog before, so you're just like, I mean, we hope it gets better. We're really, you know, we're really hopeful, but we hadn't seen a change. And then, like I said, it was just about at the five month mark. All of a sudden, he was ready to see more things or do more things. It was pretty remarkable.

Chelsey Marino  21:34  
I would say, what's interesting about our work together is we would meet, I think, I don't know if it was like once every two, once every three weeks, and we talked a lot, and when I work with adopters or fosters, there's consulting, there's behavior training, and then there's management things, and a lot of our work together was just kind of hearing where we are, making tiny little adjustments, giving some insight of what's happening. We didn't do a lot of heavy behavior work because he wasn't ready for it, and that's hard for you, I would imagine, because you're not seeing that progress. Behavior work takes time anyway, but to feel like you are just in the weeds, working hard at this every single day, and not seeing progress, but you still showed up for him every single day, and you, you know, when things kind of felt defeating a little bit, we had a conversation, and I feel like you really, really gave this dog all the time that he needs, even if again, like it's emotionally taxing on you, and the timeline that we give to people was extremely longer for you, so I just want to commend you on putting in work with a very difficult dog and not having that satisfaction of seeing it come to fruition until a long time after you got him. I think that's just incredible.

John Ramer  23:06  
Good dog,

Chelsey Marino  23:07  
good dog, Mom. Absolutely,

Lori Cohen  23:10  
I just want to know, what was your tear jerker moment like? Your tears of joy, was there a moment in time that he either picked up a toy or he jumped up and snuggled with you. Was there a moment that it just hit you in the heart where you, it was just an overwhelming transformation, or you realize that you were there?

Angelique Vinther  23:32  
I think there have been a number of them. Unfortunately, he still doesn't play. Like, I have a basket full of toys he has zero interest in, and I think someday when I'm in a different location and a second dog is possible, I think a second dog might help, like teach him to play, but yeah, he doesn't play with toys. I have started using kind of a slow feeder puzzle where the pieces move around and he has to like actively move them, and he's actually starting to get excited and play with that, so that was encouraging for me, but he couldn't be on a leash or be in the harness, he would, his, his, his fear response is freezing, so he just freezes literally in whatever position he was in when you put the thing on him, so if he was sitting, he won't stand, if he's standing, he won't sit or walk, like he just freezes, and then stressed rules, you know. We had a fenced backyard, he could go outside to go potty, and things like that, but he could not go on a walk because I couldn't put him on a leash or put him in a harness. And so, a lot of the work that we were doing with Chelsea during that time was getting him to accept those things and start to move around, and so I think that when I finally started to see some movement, we had put our house up for sale at the time when we had some scheduled showings. We would take him to a nearby park, we would just put a blanket on the grass, and he would just sit there and usually drool the whole time. But then one day he just walked around, like you know, did a little figure eight off the blanket, and came back and sift around in the grass, and he had the harness on, and he still moved around a little bit. He just started to, you know, like consistently I would give him opportunities and just be really patient. Eventually his interest in the world around him pushed him out of his, his little rut, basically, like he was willing to, like, start to move around, and now he's fine. I mean, like, I furnace him every day, and we do two to three miles a day at the park, and stuff like that, and he loves exploring, it's his favorite thing, but it took a long time, and I mean, honestly, even just like seeing the tail wags, because he started out with the tucked fear tail, you know, like tucked under his body all the time, and just the first time you see like the little low wag, and then the high wag, and even nowadays, like watching him, his tail is always up in the air, like full, you know, beagle mode of sniffing with the tail up, and I love watching that, that gives me so much satisfaction, just watching him be a beagle.

Chelsey Marino  26:02  
There's something that I remember that to me was a really big thing that happened, and you may agree with me. I say sometimes, you know, when I started this work, there wasn't a lot of people out there who were working with these dogs behaviorally, and adopters didn't know what to do, and the phrase I always use is, adopters didn't know what to do when there's a dog who won't eat and won't play and won't come anywhere near them. That was Oliver. A little bit, I remember one of our sessions, you told me that Oliver, you, you felt like you were really micromanaging everything he needed, you were almost caretaking somebody who couldn't take care of themselves, which is, you know, obviously we do that with dogs, but there was one point that you came to me and told me he's starting to ask you for things, he's starting to ask you almost like he's asking you questions, or he's, he's interested in, you know, learning about you, or asking you for help on certain things, and that was a really big thing for me, because he trusted you, and he knew you were there to take care of him, versus just being in this learned, helpless state, and just having someone care for him. He was almost like, 'Hey, Mom, can you, can we go potty? I think that was huge.

Angelique Vinther  27:18  
Yeah, and now when a big scary truck goes by, and we're on the sidewalk, and he gets scared. He looks at me like he's like, "Are we okay? And that always kind of warms my heart, too. I think you know who to look to to make sure that you feel safe, like something scary happens, and instead of just totally cowering, his resilience is amazing. Like, he gets scared sometimes. I do a little like chest touch, rubbing him and stuff, that seems to calm him a lot, but any kind of small reassurance and he bounces right back, and seeing that growth and resiliency is incredibly rewarding.

John Ramer  27:54  
He sounds like such an amazing little dog now.

Angelique Vinther  27:56  
Yeah,

Chelsey Marino  27:57  
yeah, it's a totally different dog than I knew, even when I was working with him,

Lori Cohen  28:01  
Angelique, when you look back on those early days and the fact that you had mentioned it took five months to see any sort of real progress, that that's the time it took for him to decompress and then keep decompressing as time went on. What do you think you learned about yourself through that, I know that some people will say, "Oh my gosh, I didn't have patience in the beginning, or, "Really, this has taught me so much about dogs, etc. When you look back at it, what does that look like for you?

Angelique Vinther  28:34  
So, I grew up with animals my whole life, you know, I trained horses, and we always had pets in the house, and things like that. It sort of unlocked a completely different level of patience, and not just patience in the telling myself to attenuate my expectations, kind of patience, like just very open, loving patients. Like, I understand that he had a lot of difficulty, and that he's still discovering a world that he wasn't given access to, you know, he didn't have a normal, like, puppy to dog trajectory, and so it, yeah, it has given me a level of patience that I didn't even have in the past with other pets that I'd had, if that makes sense, like it's taught me, yeah, a level of just openness, and I think a little bit of faith too, like he'll get there, because other people can still see him actually scared, and are like, oh, he's scared, I'm like, he's fine, he has given me this confidence of like he'll get there, he's fine, he's a ton braver than he was before, but he's a skittish little dog, it doesn't gut wrench me the same way, because I was like to Chelsea's point, trying to curate a perfect environment for him, and I couldn't do that, because you know we live in Denver, and there are city noises, and there's trash trucks, and there's other dogs, and there's kids screaming, and you know, I was really afraid that I couldn't like make a. Perfect enough environment for his little nervous system, and she was really good about saying, like, that's not what he needs, he needs to learn how to live in the world that he's in, and so now that I have seen enough little, like little miraculous moments of him doing that, it's given me this like quiet confident patience, of like I know he can get through it, even if it takes him a little longer, or whatever, he can get through it.

Lori Cohen  30:27  
And I think they feel that confidence, that's just such an incredible way of putting it. It's almost like the dogs in our lives bounce, we bounce off each other, and so I would imagine that he felt your confidence, for lack of a better way of putting it, and then you two would just be moving through his journey together, is how I see it. When you're explaining it, you explain it so well.

Angelique Vinther  30:54  
Oh, thank you. When I became less hyper-controlling about trying to make everything perfect, it was putting a lot of stress on me too. He's had some like GI issues throughout his decompression period, and his stuff, and they're definitely stress related, you know. We've been to the vet, like, on multiple occasions to talk about it. It's all stress related. As my stress has decreased, and I've developed that kind of quiet patience and confidence about him, almost all of his GI issues have gone away. He was obviously feeling his own stress, but I think he was really feeling my stress too, and a lot of my stress was just this like hyper attention to trying to make everything perfect. And when I stopped doing that and started to like just focus on me also staying calm, it has made a huge difference in how he physically feels day to day. You can tell his GI issues have basically gone away,

Lori Cohen  31:48  
and there is no perfect environment. They're always going to have to decompress. They, they have come from not living in any sort of place where there's choice or freedom, whether they're in the country, what you would maybe have thought Angelique was a calmer situation. Then that's what I know, right? Go

Angelique Vinther  32:08  
live on a farm somewhere quiet.

Lori Cohen  32:11  
He needs to go live on the farm, right? But there's gonna a train is gonna go by, or there's no perfect environment. Again, I think you describe it perfectly when you let go of your expectations and met him where he was, and just moved ahead with him. It changed

Angelique Vinther  32:29  
people who know him call him a little miracle dog because they saw what he was like before, and then they see him now, and like if a friend comes with me on a walk or something like that, and they haven't seen him in a while, and now he's this little bad ass city dog that knows how to cross like busy crosswalk streets with cars everywhere, and he doesn't cower, and he doesn't get scared, and it's pretty amazing to see how like blossomed and resilient he's become,

Matt Cundill  33:00  
and now dogs beyond the lab continues.

John Ramer  33:05  
Here's my probing question for you. After everything you've been through, and all of the work put in, and full well knowing that there's always going to be a little way to go, would you recommend adopting a research animal to anybody else,

Angelique Vinther  33:23  
it's been incredibly rewarding, and it's taught me a lot. I do think that people should be prepared for how different it's going to be than even adopting a dog at a shelter. For the most part, it's just a different experience, and education and the support and all that stuff really helps, but I think it's important for people to just be realistic, and I would do it again, actually, like when I get to a place where I can accommodate a second dog and he's ready for a buddy and stuff like that, I would do it again, but also because I know so much more now than I did at the time, I would not never discourage anyone from doing it, I think it's a great thing to do, I just think that people have to really understand that it's different, right? It's a different experience, and just be ready for it to take longer, and for the challenges to maybe be a little different than what you might have expected with previous pets.

John Ramer  34:14  
So, how much of this experience would you say is like your standard academic education compared to experiential education with actually having the dog in the house and going through the motions,

Angelique Vinther  34:32  
the best learning is doing right, but some

John Ramer  34:36  
people,

Angelique Vinther  34:37  
yeah, right, but for me having a little bit more guidance and just a little bit better view of the long distance, because when you're just in it day to day and you don't completely understand their behavior or where they're at cognitively and emotionally, I think that that piece of it, the support and the education around that stuff was really important for. Me, because it gave me that longer view of, like, oh, this is how it is now, this is how it is today, this is not how it's always going to be. Watching him develop once he got out of that decompression period, that built a lot of confidence, because, like, every week I was seeing growth, right, and there's the occasional backslide, and Chelsea helped me be expectant of those happening sometimes, so it didn't feel scary. It's like he could do something one day and he couldn't do it the next day. He has a hard time jumping over, like, the metal kind of drainage grates that can, like, be in the sidewalk, like I don't know if it's the glare or whatever. Just doesn't like them, and so sometimes he jumps over them with ease, and other days he gets kind of stuck on that and I don't feel like a backslide means anything scary or permanent, it ebbs and flows, and it's going to do that, but the education helps prepare me for all of that, so that I didn't panic every time he showed a resistance to something that wasn't scary before, and then I think something really bad has maybe happened, but because I got that support and the education, it helped calm me through those fluctuations with him. For me, I feel like the way I am and the way I'm built, like the education and the support piece of it, helped me profoundly, like to navigate all the ups and downs with it, just to know what to expect, and to have that little sense of reassurance that I wasn't doing anything wrong, it wasn't backsliding because I, I messed up. It's just part of the journey.

Chelsey Marino  36:32  
I think that's so important to, to say, because a lot of people go through this journey similarly to you in the beginning, where they know this is a big deal, and they try to do everything that they can perfectly to help this dog, and the intentions are correct, like we do want to decompress, we do want to keep things quieter, we don't want to take them out, we absolutely want to do all of these things, but there is a point where you know, and obviously we have had this conversation. If he were to go to an environment where there was none of that, he would have plateaued. Like stress and change build resilience, so your lifestyle is not extremely stressful, right? And he can get through it. Yes, it will take him a while. Dogs vary at different ages, but completely eliminating all of the triggers, completely eliminating everything that is scary, and never asking him to do these things would have kept him where he was. So, understanding that, yeah, even if you do do something wrong, even if there is a backslide, like that's okay, that builds resilience. He will bounce back, and he will get better at bouncing back every single time, and that I can see that you know, and you see now, and I think a lot of people start out, like I said, like you in the beginning, where we know this dog is fragile, and we don't want to break him, so it's this fine line of you're not going to break him, but also don't break him, and that's a hard balance to have,

Lori Cohen  38:09  
and we don't want to bubble wrap them, we're not bubble wrapping them, we want them to, the whole goal for everyone is so that they can be dogs and they can enjoy the world around them as dogs, and they just have to, just as you said, Angelique, the best way to learn is to do,

Chelsey Marino  38:28  
but also have to

Lori Cohen  38:30  
go through it. But

Chelsey Marino  38:30  
also, what's so good about you? Again, I'm just talking, how great you are, because I think you are great. We want to take them out, we want them to be dogs, but we have to wait till they're ready, and for you, I can imagine it was impatient, impatient a little bit, because okay, Chelsea, you said wait until he decompresses. It's been a month, you know, like, can I like what can I do? How much can I push him? So there's this balance of wanting to push him to be more brave, but not doing it till he's ready, and you did a really good job, and I mean it took you five months, but now, like you said, you were able to take him out and do all these different things, and if you would have done that at the beginning, he would have been so overloaded with information that his brain wouldn't have, you know, filed it, is how I say it, his little file system would have been overflowed, and he wouldn't have been able to get through it. So, it's, it's hard,

Lori Cohen  39:25  
it's hard, and it ultimately would have taken longer, right? Is what we see when they get pushed a little bit, or you know, people decide that they want to do training a little earlier, and what by training I mean, where it's obedience training. These dogs are not ready for obedience training. They haven't even.. we

Chelsey Marino  39:44  
barely did

Lori Cohen  39:45  
there in the world, right? I

Chelsey Marino  39:47  
think we taught, right? I think we did place because we wanted him to feel.. I think he fell off the couch one time, and so.. or something. He wouldn't go on the couch, and so we're like, 'Well, let's get him a place, so he can go, you know, lay in his little bed. I think that's like.. The only obedience that we did.

Angelique Vinther  40:01  
Yeah, I taught him to sit recently, and I was like, so proud of myself for teaching him, because it's nothing I'd spent real time on before, and I was like, "Oh, look, you learned how to sit, that's great.

Chelsey Marino  40:14  
Do you see videos online, probably where you would see them most of dogs, any dogs, even not specifically research dogs, but they come home and they are happy and they are running around and they are living the easy life. How does that make you feel, knowing that your journey was completely different than that?

Angelique Vinther  40:38  
It's still hard sometimes, because I'll see the dogs, like you know, playing with toys and things like that. I was like, he still doesn't do some like normal, especially like beagle-y type ways of playing and stuff. He just like doesn't do some of those like really typical things. He's also incredibly quiet, like people see that he's a beagle and they're like, "Oh, does he make a lot of noise? Our previous beagle did. He's very vocal, and so I know what they're talking about, but he doesn't. He's very quiet, and so sometimes I think, you know, maybe a second dog will like teach him to find his voice and things like that. It's still hard sometimes to see, like he's never.. I don't know that he'll never do some of those things, but he may never, right? Like, there are certain things that just might miss him, right? I get to see him be so happy in the things that he does do. It gives me a lot of reassurance that I mean he's a completely different dog today than he was a year ago. So, a year from now, I don't know what he might be like, right? He might be much more playful, he might howl, he might do all those things. Who knows? But even if he is kind of where he's at now, he has a life filled with all kinds of pleasures, right? Like, he's very food motivated, he gets super excited to go on his walks, he loves to meet dogs, you know, he loves to explore. We have this big city park, like a big lake and long trails and stuff, and he absolutely loves it. It's his favorite thing, like driving there, he's like bouncing around in the back seat, just so excited, because he knows where we're going. So I just get to see so much happiness in him that even if he never completely acts like exactly the way like our previous beagle did, or the way we see in videos on, you know, like social media or whatever, it's still like kind of okay with me, because he's like a great little companion, he's super sweet, and he's affectionate, you know. He comes to me for affection now, which was, you know, another kind of milestone moment of like looking to be touched, as opposed to tolerating being touched. It was a big deal. So I see him do so many like things where I can tell he's happy, and he has a lot of pleasure in his life, so that that is super encouraging for me.

John Ramer  42:44  
You saying how quiet he is reminded me of my, my wife and I just adopted our third beagle that is in the house, and she's just this little tiny thing, and she didn't make a peep for the longest time, and my wife was out someplace, and I was sitting in my home office, trying to get some work done. All of a sudden, I heard a dog noise in the other room that I had never heard before. It wasn't one of our dogs, and I went racing out of the office because it sounded horrible, and here was this little 12 pound beagle screaming at the dishwasher as it went into a different cycle, and she would not let up, and I, she did it long enough, I was able to pull out my phone and capture a video and send it to my wife and tell her she found her voice today, and she hasn't stopped since. Awesome, she's a screamer now, John. Yes, she is, for sure.

Lori Cohen  43:45  
Angelique, I feel that one day you might see Oliver teaching the new dog the ropes.

Angelique Vinther  43:53  
Yeah, possibly. I mean, he does make noises, like he doesn't howl the way or bay the way you expect, you know, beagle noises. He obviously, like I said, is very food motivated. And one day I was eating something and ignoring him, and it must have been something that smelled like familiar, if he was excited about. And so he started making this little, like, purring growl. It sounds like a Chewbacca noise, like I'd never heard our other dog make this noise, but this is the

John Ramer  44:22  
noise for

Angelique Vinther  44:23  
us. It's like this, like kind of noise, like, yeah, like almost like a little per growl sound. It's so cute, and so, like, I get excited when he starts to find like little ways to use his voice, because he's, you know, they're new sounds that I hadn't heard before, and that just came up a couple weeks ago.

Chelsey Marino  44:43  
I love that. What do you think that a foster or adopter who has a dog right now who is feeling overwhelmed because their dog is very shut down, or it seems like this is going to be a lot of work? What do you wish that you could tell them? Or even tell yourself when this first started.

Angelique Vinther  45:03  
I think that, honestly, like the timeframe expectation was helpful to me, because I am the kind of just personality that just wants things to, like, I just want to fix things, like I just want them to be fixed now, kind of thing. And it's like, if there's something I can be doing to make it better, let me let me know what I can do to fix it, and so that, that, like, this is the timeline you're on. It's long, and it does, you know, that helped settle my just tendency to want to, to fix or metal, or you know, like adjust, and things like that. It's that feeling, like when you fly international, right, versus like you're on a short flight, it's like settle in, because you're going to be doing this for a while, like this is going to be seven hours, not two, and it's like that different mindset feeling of like this isn't going to change overnight, and this is just going to, how it's going to feel for a time, that helped me a lot, just knowing that the like kind of long-term arc of it, and that you'll get to see, you know, Chelsea's really good about making people identify and focus on those little wins, because you'll forget them, and I forget them now too. Like, there are things that he's so good about now that I forgot he used to struggle with it, right? Like, thresholds are really crying the car, a lot. Oh yeah, the car. He loves the car.

Chelsey Marino  46:24  
Just said he used to go. He goes to the park. He hated the car.

Angelique Vinther  46:27  
Yeah, every time we'd have to put him in the car for like a house showing, it was just again, it was the freeze and the stressed roll the whole time and stuff. And now he, he loves it. So yeah, it's it's that kind of settling in for the long haul and knowing that, like, you're going to get those, like, really great progress and wins, and it's good to focus on those, because you want to remember them, but that it's that it's the long game, not the short game.

Chelsey Marino  46:52  
Do you feel like that's translated into other parts of your life that settle into this I can't fix everything right now mentality?

Angelique Vinther  47:01  
Yeah, I think,

Chelsey Marino  47:02  
because I also have that, so I'm asking for advice.

Angelique Vinther  47:06  
So do I. Yeah, no, I think people that have, like, a perfectionist nature, you know, it's like anything you think is wrong or out of place, you want to fix it now. And so that has, I mean, the, the kind of patience and the lack of focus on or obsession around time, like, how long has it been? How long have we been doing this? You know, like, I just don't worry about that the same way as I did before, and it has helped in other parts of my life too, with, like, work, or, you know, long-term planning, and different things like that. It has helped settle me in other ways, just because of the, like, kind of daily practice of not not trying to perfect everything with him all the time,

Lori Cohen  47:45  
so the moral of the story is, if you are a perfectionist or a Type A personality, please get your applications into the Beagle Alliance and Kindness Ranch, and buckle

Chelsey Marino  47:57  
up

Matt Cundill  48:00  
for sure.

Lori Cohen  48:01  
We will be there with you, but that's that is how you will transform by having a former research dog. They, they help us grow while we help them grow.

Angelique Vinther  48:13  
Absolutely, they do. Yeah, and I think the network is really helpful too, like seeing other people and being able to communicate, and like the kindness wrench, there's like that Facebook group, and there's like different things that people who have adopted have done to connect with each other, and I think just seeing like how people are doing the wins and the struggles and people talking about that stuff, it's really nice because you don't feel isolated because obviously it is a different experience than like getting a dog from a puppy, or you know, even a lot of times a shelter dog, like this is a kind of different path, and so it's nice to see the community of people kind of talking about their, their experiences with their dogs too.

John Ramer  48:52  
I am just so appreciative of your, your stamina and your fortitude to stick with it and see this through. You've, you've done wonderful things for your dog and yourself, from the sounds of it, and I just, I want to say, thank you for putting in the time, and, and seeing it through, me

Chelsey Marino  49:11  
too,

Lori Cohen  49:12  
yeah, me too, big time, big time,

Angelique Vinther  49:15  
yeah, he's so sweet, and so darling, like it's just, he's such a gentle soul, and so I've just always kind of felt like trying to do my best for him, because he's just the sweetest little creature, you know.

Lori Cohen  49:28  
Well, I will say that he definitely chose the right person. Me too.

Chelsey Marino  49:33  
He needed someone who's patient and wanted to understand him. I think that's a big part of this too, is yes, patience is great. Yes, love is great, but really understanding the dog and what's going on in their head and what's going on in your head and adjusting as you go. It's just so important because there is, as you know, you could love him all day long and you could be patient all day long, but when you understand him or when you can. Communicate with him more, it makes everything easier.

John Ramer  50:03  
So, Chelsea, I have a question for you. Okay,

John Ramer  50:06  
my social media feed has been really busy lately with a lot of dogs coming out of hoarding situations, horrific abuse cases, even flooding, and all kinds of other traumas that dogs experience based off of everything that Angelique has experienced with her dog. How much of that decompression and and trauma work do you think equates to anybody looking for either a former research beagle or another dog coming out of one of those horrific situations?

Chelsey Marino  50:48  
How a lot is

John Ramer  50:49  
transferable? Yeah, how much of the patience and work is transferable between the two, or are they pretty unique amongst themselves? A good

Chelsey Marino  50:58  
question. You know, I've been working in dog behavior for a decade now, and I'll be honest, when I first started working with research dogs, I had to learn a lot of different things, and, and trauma rewires the brain, and trauma can be one big event, like a big flood or big displacement, but trauma can also be anything that is too much or too much for too long or not enough for too long, and the variance of the type of trauma is obviously going to have the variance of what has been done to the brain and the nervous system, so if you know behavior work, that's great, but it's completely different than trauma work, and what's different about research beagle trauma is their have their lineage is full of that, so their parents and their grandparents were all bred for the same situation, so just like in humans when a pregnant woman is stressed that gets passed down to the baby, and obviously the male equivalent, so there's that. There's also complete isolation. They don't, you know, they don't have any experience with the outside world whatsoever. They don't know what outside is. They don't know grass or sun or anything like that. There's a severe lack of choice in the matter, they're not willing, and I think Angela can back me up on this. Of sometimes there's just, I don't want to, I don't care, I don't want to, nothing I do matters, and so it's very, very hard to get them motivated. You can't convince them to do anything, I guess. To answer your question, trauma itself is transferable, but the specific nuances of dogs in research is very, very specific, and knowing what they have been through, what works, what doesn't work. I think is super helpful for me to work with these dogs again, even having 10 years of training in working with dogs with trauma,

John Ramer  53:06  
so do you think trauma has become kind of like an overly generalized term for when it comes to what research beagles are facing?

Chelsey Marino  53:15  
Yes, and no, I think it's trauma. I think it's more than trauma, I think trauma is a big general word. Yes, and they do have trauma, but there's so much more than that.

Lori Cohen  53:28  
I agree. I mean, we see PTSD. I think I think it maybe can't be simplified to just that. Certainly, it's, it's a, it's a long term, and I do believe that because they are bred into testing that a lot of what is going on with them psychologically is now

Chelsey Marino  53:48  
it's in that part

Lori Cohen  53:48  
of their cellular dna it becomes a part of the cellular dna and getting the opportunity to place them into homes is like stopping the cycle, and then they have an opportunity to change the narrative and really transform in ways that probably we don't even see. We see the outward, you know, experience of what's going on, but there's so much there, and it just goes to show how really truly resilient they are, how brave and courageous they are. You know, they trust the very species who harmed them eventually, and certainly when we think it may take time, when you really think about how long some of these dogs have spent in a laboratory, you know, John, we've gotten dogs that, you know have been 89 years old, and so when we look at the few months or the year sometimes that it takes, and sometimes it takes three years for a dog to even howl, you know, that's still a pretty, pretty, pretty good stats there, considering that they've been. In a facility for so long. Well, let's not

John Ramer  55:03  
forget that they can become bad ass city. Absolutely, yeah,

Lori Cohen  55:08  
that's right. That is exactly it. I think there's also a nuance

Chelsey Marino  55:13  
in where they came from too. I know that I can work with a group of dogs and I can work with another group of dogs, and yes, they all have different personality traits and different behavior, good and bad behavior, but what facility they were at also matters, right? So, yeah, a hoarding case, you could say, is very similar, but there are also very, very specific things that they went through for a long amount of time that you are not going to replicate anywhere else from from any other type of dog from a bad situation.

John Ramer  55:51  
Angelique, do you have anything that you would like to offer in advice or personal insight to anybody that may be listening, that's considering bringing in one of these dogs into their home.

Angelique Vinther  56:06  
One thing that I found really encouraging with Oliver, I would encourage anyone else. When you were talking about the trauma, Chelsea and I talked a lot about the learned helplessness kind of dynamic, where they just don't even know what to ask for, what they want, and they definitely are not going to try, and it's a little hard sometimes to like push them to try for something that behavior, like watching that him kind of grow out of that or develop out of that, is a is a big thing that I look for, and so sometimes I feel like maybe I'm encouraging bad behavior a little bit, but like beagles are willful little animals, and they're sassy, and they're food motivated, and things like that. So, when I, and I now see, because he had a lot of, like, kind of claustrophobia fears, you know, confinement fear, he will get himself wedged into this tiny little corner of the kitchen if he thinks I'm making something that he wants, or he'll like stand up on his kind legs, so that he can try to see what's on the counter, if he's excited about what I'm making, or like I'll leave the back door open, and he just goes out on his own and sits on the couch in the sun's sunshine, because he likes to sunbathe, and I get so excited every time I see him make choices, and like have an opinion or like a motivation for himself about what he wants, like that. I think is one thing I would encourage people to like look for when they have one of these dogs, and to also like kind of celebrate and encourage, is when they start to make their own choices. It's a slower process, I think, because that is grounded in some of their trauma, but when they start to grow out of that. It's really beautiful

John Ramer  57:42  
when you talk about those little victories. It makes me wonder, how many pictures on your camera are of your dog?

Angelique Vinther  57:50  
I wish I had more, honestly, because sometimes they're just these quick little moments, and I'm like, oh, I wish I could have captured that. But yeah, anytime I see him, like, go like sit on the couch on his own, and not just following me from room to room, things like that, like making choices. I love that. Yeah, yeah,

Chelsey Marino  58:06  
I love what you said about him doing bad behaviors, you know, quote unquote bad behaviors, like naughty dog behaviors. I love when I see that, and I love when I hear that, because I'm like, that's a real dog thing. Real dogs do that, like I love when research dogs do that, because that means they're, they're coming out of this shell, and I think it's totally fine to let them do some of those things,

John Ramer  58:32  
except

Chelsey Marino  58:33  
yeah, exactly, like that's a dog, you know, if he, if he's making for food, fine, who cares, and

Lori Cohen  58:40  
beagles are crafty, they are, they're gonna jump up on your tape, they're gonna do those, those witty, crafty little things that they do. My

John Ramer  58:49  
dog's bad behavior behind, yeah. There you go, there you go.

Lori Cohen  58:52  
I want to ask you, do you have any, what, what is your question for us? Do you have a question that might pop in your head for us, I

Angelique Vinther  59:01  
didn't think about that, but yeah, have you guys heard stories? Because you've obviously talked to lots and lots of people that are doing this over long periods of time. Have you heard stories like you said about a dog, like maybe finding its voice three years in, or suddenly playing with toys like years down the road? You know,

Chelsey Marino  59:17  
gosh, we're about to do our next, our next one that we're doing today, this dog didn't use his voice at all, and now he, he has a special thing with his, his adopter, where they just howl and howl and howl and howl all the time, but yeah, I mean, we hear, we hear a lot, especially playing,

Angelique Vinther  59:34  
I try to,

Chelsey Marino  59:35  
yeah,

Angelique Vinther  59:36  
we had some sirens in the background, and I kind of howled at him with the sirens to be like try to encourage him to do it, and he just looked at me like I was crazy.

Lori Cohen  59:44  
Well, it might come, and I would not lose hope, because truly I have had people send me videos three years later, two years later, with them playing with a toy for the very first time, howling at something. Out the window, so absolutely it is entirely possible. Yeah, I agree. I've worked with people

Chelsey Marino  1:00:06  
I've worked with people where a year after I worked with them, and they had had their dog for years before that, have sent me videos, and it's them creeping around the corner taking a video of their dog playing with a toy on their own. Exactly, so it does come, and you know, as you know, if

John Ramer  1:00:22  
that's every night at my

Chelsey Marino  1:00:23  
house, if that's just not his jam, that's not his jam, that's totally okay. I think there is hope for some of these things to continue coming, like you said, a year ago he was a completely different dog. So, where's he going to be a year from now, two years from now, right? He had a big year, it's a really big year. Yeah,

Lori Cohen  1:00:41  
I think you'll see it. One

John Ramer  1:00:42  
of my favorite stories is when I first got to Kindness Ranch. We had this adopter that filled out an application, and they were talking about how they love this active outdoor lifestyle. They love going for hikes in the Rockies, and they linked to their Instagram, and they're this family that just absolutely, I don't think they ever spent any time indoors, and we had a dog that I thought would be an absolutely perfect fit for him, and they got here, and of course, they fell in love with the most shy and withdrawn dog that we had on the property, and I told him, I said, I don't think this dog is a good fit for you, but they were insistent, and they, they followed through. They, they told me that they, they had to have this dog, and I just saw them back in February, and this dog, his name is Doug D U G, and he is a badass city dog, completely off leash, never leaves their side. That he goes for hikes in Estes Park with them, they're all over the place. He has his own Instagram, and it took him a good long time to get there, but they followed through. They did everything they could to make sure that Doug was happy, and I have to say, I felt like I wasn't serving my dogs well enough when I saw this guy. He's just amazing.

Angelique Vinther  1:02:13  
We're going up to the mountains at the end of next month for the first time. He's going to learn some hiking, because we've gotten really good with going on the park trails and things like that, and I ended up taking him one morning to kind of inadvertently to a different park that he'd never been at before, and it was really busy and dogs everywhere, and he handled it beautifully. He was, he was happy the whole time, it was great. So, it was like, he's ready, so we're going. I rented a cabin, and we're going up for a week at the end of the month to like teach him how to hike,

Chelsey Marino  1:02:42  
I love that.

Angelique Vinther  1:02:43  
I'm pretty excited. Keep

John Ramer  1:02:44  
this, keep us updated on. Yes, I think he's gonna

Angelique Vinther  1:02:48  
love it. So it's.. I'm excited.

Chelsey Marino  1:02:51  
Amazing, I love it. I really, really, really appreciate you coming on. I love your story. I think you have done everything right that we ask when people adopt these dogs, and you didn't have the best go at it. You didn't get the luck of the draw, or you did get the luck of the draw. You didn't get the easiest dog in the whole world. So I really appreciate you putting in the work for him every day. I think that's, you know, when I think of somebody rescuing a dog, or saving a dog, or adopting a dog, a lot of people may think of it's this heroic big act, I got the dog and now they're mine. I saved them from the situation, but in your case, saving this dog is showing up every single day for a year and moving forward for him, and that to me is the real heroic act. So I really appreciate you coming on and telling our viewers or listeners this story.

Angelique Vinther  1:03:44  
Thank you so much for having me.

Lori Cohen  1:03:46  
I couldn't have said it better. Yeah, but I also want to say that your heroic act extended also to Hunter, and that it doesn't always look the way we think it's going to look, but that was a heroic act too, and that that allowed him to end up where he needed to be, and I just really appreciate that.

Angelique Vinther  1:04:06  
Thank you. I'm so.. it makes me so happy to know that he's happy. He's such a sweet little dog, and it was heartbreaking at the time to have to make that choice, because he's a good boy, like he's a good little dog. And so I'm so happy he's in like the right environment that makes him happy too, I

Chelsey Marino  1:04:21  
bet. His mama and his little, his little brothers are also very thankful to you.

Lori Cohen  1:04:27  
Absolutely, they are. Yeah,

John Ramer  1:04:30  
and we're all a tight-knit community as well. So, like, like I said earlier, we're as a group, we're all able to put our heads together and find solutions to these things, and it just takes somebody like you being brave enough to make the right decision for the dog, and we're grateful for that as well.

Angelique Vinther  1:04:49  
Thanks so much for having me. It was really nice to be able to talk about all of his stuff. Sometimes I forget, right, it's a long timeline, and you forget about all their little steps in progress, so it's wonderful.

Chelsey Marino  1:04:59  
I went back. Read all of our notes from our sessions, and I'm like, man, I can't believe he used to do that, or he used to do that, and now to hear where he is now is just.. it's great. And now he's going hiking. Yeah, so

Angelique Vinther  1:05:10  
that's cool. Now he's going to the mountain.

Matt Cundill  1:05:14  
Thanks for listening to Dogs Beyond the Lab. For more, including comments, feedback, and ways to get in touch with our hosts. Go to Beyond the Lab dot dog,

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  1:05:24  
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