Ginny & Celie: Trust, Patience, and a Beagle Doing Things Her Way

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. I am really excited for today's episode, I've been looking forward to it, because we have David and Ginny here. A little background about them: Ginny and David adopted Sealy in the summer of 2023 from Kindness Ranch, and Celie is one of those dogs who is not one of the easy ones, unfortunately. She came home with a lot of fear, and I would say she's one of those dogs who didn't really know how to be a dog yet, and what I mean by that is she didn't really play, she didn't really want treats or interaction with people whatsoever, so that left Ginny and David with a little bit of struggles in there, so I am excited to share their story with everyone, because they have done so much work with her, and she is a brand new dog, and she is a real dog now. So we will bring them in. David and Ginny, welcome to Dogs Beyond the Lab.

David Reese  1:15  
Thanks for having us.

Chelsey Marino  1:16  
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for being here. Let's start from the beginning. Why Research Beagle? Beagle, and how did you decide Kindness Ranch and your journey to get Steely?

Ginny Reese  1:31  
I started it. I was the instigator. I had a Beagle before who was.. I don't want to say normal, that he, he was a rescue, but not from a laboratory, and so knowing a bit about the breed kind of helped us out. We got another beagle after he passed away, Bowman, who's still with us. And then when In Vigo had released all those beagles, we were in a position, and I said, you know, we should, we should try and find one of these dogs, because we know the breed. We have a huge yard. We have a very calm older beagle who would be, I think, a great big brother. I started kind of looking into that and seeing where those beagles had ended up, what other rescue facilities had taken in those dogs, and I found Kindness Ranch, either through social media or online, started doing some investigating into what Kindness Ranch accomplishes with the dogs and what their mission is, and I really liked it. Then surreptitiously filled out and adopted in questions like, How big is our yard, honey, and and and I request, you know, it also gives you the option to request, and I, and I thought, well, you know, I've had two boy beagles, let's, let's get a girl, and it would be lovely to get one younger than Bowman, so that he's got himself a little sister, so that's what I put that in there as my request, didn't hear anything for a while, and then I saw the Aqua girls, and her name was was Talia when she was there at the ranch, so her and her sisters and I reached out again, and I said, "Hey, you know, I'm really interested, and I got a message, a phone message back from April, who was working there at the time, and so she said, "Hey, you know, which one are you looking for, looking at? And I, she sent me some photos, and I saw the photo of this scared little, little Talia at the time, this little girl, and I was like that one, and I knew about her background, or her, like the amount of fear and trauma she was still holding within herself. April and I had a really long phone conversation, told her about, you know, our, our home situation, our home life, and about Bowman, and how calm he is, and how I thought, you know, it would work out well for her to have a mentor to guide her, and so that's how we got her.

Chelsey Marino  3:55  
How was it when you first went to go get her? Did you, did you connect with her right away?

Ginny Reese  4:01  
We got there, and April took us to the dog yurt, and so I went in there, and I, and you know, all these beagles are running around like, like a beautiful fantasy. So I sat on the floor, and all these dogs came in to come see me, except for her, except for Seeley, and I looked at April, and I said, "That's her, and she said, "Yeah, that's her, and I went, "Okay, she's the one I chose. And you know, I think looking back on it now, I would not have made a different decision with everything we've been through. I would have still chosen.

John Ramer  4:40  
I love hearing them.

Ginny Reese  4:41  
Yeah, I, for one thing, I think if I, if we had chosen the dog that tried to crawl into my jacket, you know, that was very, seemed very affectionate. I would have been wondering for the rest of my life what happened to her. There was a dog there named Seamus, who was very loud and. And I remember,

John Ramer  5:01  
I remember Sheamus so well,

Lori Cohen  5:03  
so do I. Actually, I actually met your, I met your dog, I met Talia, I believe we were, we were there, so yeah. Now that you said her original name, anyway.

Ginny Reese  5:13  
And David said, "Well, we're not taking that one home, meaning Seamus, because he was so loud, and so, but we were actually kind of worried about him after we got home, and hoping that he found a home, and I know he has found a home since. Anyhow, I look at April and I said, okay, well, let's do this, and so it took her and at least two other people to wrangle Seeley, because there she would not come to anybody at all. I think at one point she got out of the yurt into the into the yard, and they had to go fetch her and bring her back in that way, and you know, but when I, I remember first holding her and going, okay, well, here we go, let's do this adventure.

John Ramer  5:52  
There's a funny story on that, because I remember April telling me the dog that you guys wanted, and I, I threw a fit. I was like, that dog shouldn't be available for adoption, it's not ready. And April really went to bat for you guys, and was like, no, no, these, these people are, are great, they're, they're gonna give ever a great home, and she, she really, really sold me on you guys, and it's funny because April is responsible for introducing Lori and Chelsea, and I, so she's, she's quite the little matchmaker, so I had to trust her for that stuff. Yeah, so yeah,

Chelsey Marino  6:34  
you know, April introduced you and I, Jenny, also I know, yeah, she's the little matchmaker, and all this, just like you said, John. She said, "I want you only to talk to Chelsea. Well, that's nice. Thanks, April. David, did you just get rolled over on this whole process, or what were your thoughts?

David Reese  6:53  
I was excited for Jenny to get her eagle, because when Bowman came into our life, she wasn't really ready for another beagle, because Milo had just passed away a couple months earlier, and so Bowman instantly became my, my Beagle, and at night we're sitting on the couch, and Bowman's in my lap, and she's like, I need a dog in my lap, support of her getting Sealy, and you know what, a beautiful face she has, and now her personality is really coming out, and she's pretty dang awesome, but she didn't become Jenny's dog, she became Bowman's dog.

Ginny Reese  7:29  
As far as David's being okay with everything, I am very fortunate to have him, because he has a huge heart, and the journey to get her, and the journey coming home was not for the faint of heart, you know. She vomited in the little crate we had her in, and pulled over, and I'm holding her in my lap, and he's clean. We're at some truck stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and he's hosing out the crate, so that we can put her back in the truck, and you know, so he's, he's done, he's done an amazing job of being supportive of all of this.

David Reese  8:06  
She was so, so scared, she wouldn't, she wouldn't potty, and it took until we got two days later when we got back home and put her out in the backyard, and you went a story. Oh,

Ginny Reese  8:19  
well, she, we took her out. Well, when we first got home, she went out in the yard, and you know, there's the thought of, oh, there's freedom, and she's gonna love this, it's gonna be great. Well, she just kind of walked around, and then vomited again, because of either nausea from the trip, traveling nausea, or not being able to potty nerves, all these things that could have been part of what she was experiencing, and then the next morning she went out, and, and we have the video of her leaping like a little baby goat all around the yard until she spun around and then squatted and potted and proceeded to intake of that potty, we have a problem.

David Reese  9:01  
Yes, yes.

Ginny Reese  9:02  
And so that's a problem that we've addressed as well.

David Reese  9:06  
Still working

Ginny Reese  9:08  
well. We have a she's on a schedule now for, for when I mean both dogs that when they eat they immediately go for a walk, and that's generally when she does it, when she does her potties. And so it helps to keep her on a schedule, and she gets a treat when she does that. Yeah, he's the one who came up with the schedule first for getting them out there and getting her out there to help her digestive system to create that stability for her.

Chelsey Marino  9:35  
She loves routine for sure. She loves knowing exactly what's going on at all times.

Ginny Reese  9:40  
Yeah,

Chelsey Marino  9:41  
for sure. I mean, it's a lot of anxious dogs. I find that a lot of anxious dogs, and I mean, if you really think about anxiety, we get anxious when we don't know what's coming and kind of assume that it's negative, right? That to me is like what anxiety is. And so, yeah, I mean, a lot of the work that I do is making things. More predictable for them, so they can understand. Maybe they aren't super excited about something that's going to happen, but if they can understand it and prepare themselves for it, I think that helps a lot. But some more than others, for sure. She loves - she's a girl who, in my intro that I almost mentioned, is she's a girl who loves control. She loves things on her terms, you know, she, we had a little difficulty at the beginning with her motivation, where she wasn't really motivated by you guys, and she wasn't really motivated by food or by toys, but what we did find is she likes things, she likes to feel like she's in charge, and she's doing things on her terms, and so a lot of what we did was kind of tweak, like I think manipulate is the wrong word, but we made her think a lot of the times that this is Sealy's idea, and what a great idea you had, Seeley, like you should go do that, you know. So, yeah,

John Ramer  10:53  
I think my wife uses that technique on me, I'm sure she

Lori Cohen  10:56  
does. The question is whether it's working or not, John, that's

John Ramer  11:01  
a question for her. When we have her as a guest,

Chelsey Marino  11:03  
David, do you want to talk about your relationship with Celie? At the beginning, I know when you and I started working together, I'll, you know, a main goal that we had was Sealy to be more comfortable, but coming up to you and hanging out with you a little bit.

David Reese  11:20  
Yeah, she definitely has trust issues, especially with, with, with males. She's really good around the girls when Jenny has piano students come in, the girl piano students, Seeley's all over them, and just loves them. But definitely the boy, she has a struggle with, and so it's just been routine using the, the place

Ginny Reese  11:40  
that word place? Yeah,

David Reese  11:41  
if I have to put her collar on and she's loose around the house, I say place. She goes right up on the cash, the same spot, and just patiently waits for me to put the collar on, is you know, which she would never do before. You'd have to corner her before, that's like on her terms. Okay, and she does that also when we get ready for walks. She has her place in the, in the mud room to put her harness on, and she's very comfortable with that, and I think routine has been a huge part of her success, just doing the same thing every day. She has her zone on the walk, where that's her potty zone, and she won't move until I give her the treat afterwards. That's definitely a motivation for what's also really cool is that is we've started playing in the backyard a lot, started off just kind of, you know, doing the Beagle chase, which, you know, we saw that she had the zoomies, and we would just, okay, so you, you're in control, you have the ball, we're going to kind of chase you around, and and now she's a ball dog, so I get out that she demands it too, like I'll be sitting on the couch and she will

Ginny Reese  12:48  
down dog, she'll down

David Reese  12:49  
dog and look at me, and then do Beagle Zoomies in the in the little area, and then she'll even yip at me a little bit, and like run away and go towards the door, then come back, go, come on, How come you didn't come with me? And so then we go out and we play ball, and she fetches for a good 20 minutes. Wow,

John Ramer  13:06  
wow,

David Reese  13:07  
unusual for a beagle, I think.

Ginny Reese  13:09  
Fast,

David Reese  13:10  
yeah,

Ginny Reese  13:10  
she's so fast,

David Reese  13:12  
and she demands it. It's like it's time for me to exercise. Let's go. So it's been pretty cool.

Ginny Reese  13:18  
She's got a really loud bark, she doesn't have any kind of a howl, you know, or a bay, but she has a very loud bark if she gets startled by somebody driving up the driveway or something, but for him she's got this little tiny yip that she does, little tiny thing for when she wants to go play, so it's pretty, it's pretty special, you know, she'll allow me to throw the ball for her when he's not home, but I'm definitely second in the ball throwing category.

David Reese  13:48  
Yeah, but it's really taken three years to get to this point. Well, we

Ginny Reese  13:52  
were, we were looking, actually went and looked at old photographs to just, you know, figure out, okay, when was she doing certain things, and she was interested in playing with the ball just a few months after she came home, but she was not interested in playing with us at all,

Chelsey Marino  14:08  
right? You know, yeah. The

Ginny Reese  14:10  
hardest part for her, which Chelsea knows this, is the transitions, so when we go from summer back into our school year, or when it starts raining more, or when the snow comes and it's really cold, those are times where it's she's not really taking too many steps back as she used to, but where there were times where she would start pottying in the house again when those changes would happen, even good changes like when we're home more because of summer break or spring break or something, so when the routine gets messed up, that's that has been in the past something that she'll end up going backwards on, not so much anymore,

David Reese  14:52  
but on the contrast, every time we've taken a trip with her, she has done monumental things and gotten better. We went to Seattle for. Christmas rented an Airbnb, and it was around a busy street, lots of noise, and I thought this is not going to go good for her walking, and she became like a rock star, and just like bucked up and said, all right, I'm tougher than all this stuff, and

Ginny Reese  15:14  
yeah, it's almost like you could raise herself up like this and power through, because she could see Bowman up ahead on the sidewalk, and she was like, okay, I'm, I can do this, you know. So she's a pretty brave little thing.

Lori Cohen  15:29  
I wanted to ask you guys, because you said that she's really Bowman's dog. What did that look like when they first met? Was it love at first sight, or did were they weary of each other, what, what, how did that go about, and you're laughing,

David Reese  15:45  
yeah, because we

Ginny Reese  15:46  
could care less, yeah, he was just like, whatever,

David Reese  15:48  
but now it's like yesterday we were working on different sides of the house, Jenny was back in the garden, I was in the front wheat, pulling weeds in the in the roundabout, so Bowman was out front with me, tied up, and she was out in the Sealy, was out in the garden. It was about two hours, and so I was done, and brought Bowman back in the backyard, and he kind of runs towards the garden area, and goes, "Who's that dog on the garden? And so I let him in the garden, and then all sudden he realized it was Sealy, and they just like they

Ginny Reese  16:16  
acted like they hadn't seen each other for two years.

David Reese  16:18  
Same thing happens at the vet, when one of them goes to the back, the other one just sits there and stares at the door and waits for him to come back, so they definitely have a connection.

Chelsey Marino  16:27  
And she got a little protective over him too, like when he.. I remember he was like sick or something like that, and she was like protective of him, and like sleeping on the floor with him, and like I think the vet came over, and she was like, 'don't touch my brother, or something like that, right?

Ginny Reese  16:46  
Yeah, he hurt his back last summer, and so, you know, he's so used to being in the bedroom, you know, upstairs. So, I'd carry him upstairs to put him on the floor; he couldn't be on the bed, and she laid down like long ways in front between him and the rest of the bedroom, so that nobody could get, like, you're not going to get to him, I'm going to be here to protect him. And then when I took him to the vet, she was with us, and the vet, you know, we just stay in the in the lobby area there, and the vet comes out, and and Sealy got down on the floor and sat up real straight, just stared at the vet right in the eye, and she, you know, was that appearance of you're not getting to him unless you go through me.

Chelsey Marino  17:28  
For a scared little dog to now be defending her big brother,

Ginny Reese  17:32  
yeah, it's, it's pretty remarkable, you know. So they are, they love each other a lot, and and it's, it's pretty special. I don't think she would be as far along as she is without Bowman.

John Ramer  17:48  
A good balance dog definitely helps with with that development.

Chelsey Marino  17:53  
Well, let's talk about some of the down points at the beginning of your journey with Seeley, and it's something I know is really, really tough for you guys that happened, so I appreciate you talking about it. But tell us, tell us what happened with Seeley's branch of freedom by herself.

Ginny Reese  18:16  
So, we've had her for eight months, approximately. Yeah, yeah, nine months we had her,

David Reese  18:21  
and once a week I would take Bowman to my mom's house, which is just across the field from us, so about a quarter mile walk, and Sealy would go with me. I dropped Bowman off, and then bring Sealy back with me. It was just our morning walk, and this morning Mom met me on the porch instead of inside the house, and we're doing the exchange, and her cat came out and startled Sealy, and she and I wasn't sure which Lisa had in my hand, and boom, she was out of my control on the driveway, free, staring at me, and I just told everyone to stay back, and I quietly went up to her and just said, it's okay, it's okay, and I got within six inches of that leash, and she bolted, and so then I called Jenny on the phone, said Seeley's loose, she's going back towards the house, going towards the field, trying to figure out, you know, how to cut her off, and Seeley outsmarted us, and went on down the street, and then across the highway, and

Ginny Reese  19:22  
three times,

David Reese  19:23  
and then we, so we

Ginny Reese  19:25  
didn't see that

David Reese  19:25  
we spent the next seven days looking for it, was it was pretty rough. I was the middle of the school year, Jenny had to cancel lessons because she couldn't, she couldn't deal with it, she had to just keep searching for the for Seeley, so every day after school I go out, go through people's backyards, and search up in the hills around our place, and we got to know a lot of neighbors.

Ginny Reese  19:51  
People were amazing. It was, you know, you have your, you have your community, your people, and of course all of those people through social media. Immediately were were helping us and reaching out to other people and sharing the information, but the amount of community that we found beyond that was remarkable, and I put up, I think, 25 posters of her face with April - like, April called me the first night that she was gone - and I'm just sobbing and crying, and, and I'm telling her I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, how could we have lost her, and we, we said we'd take care of her, and I felt like I'd broken this promise, and so it was really hard, and and so April guided us through how to make a poster that says, "Do not chase just my phone number, lost dog, do not chase a giant picture of her face of Sealy, and my phone number. And we had that plastered within a range of five miles around the house, all directions. I think my friend and I went around and did at least 25 different posters. You get people texting you saying they have your dog, but you have to bring them money, or that their neighbor has the dog, and I just scams. The scams were awful,

Chelsey Marino  21:10  
heartbreaking, I'm sure,

Ginny Reese  21:12  
infuriating. Like, I just.. I can't imagine how someone could be so cruel. And then other people who had put their number into, put my phone number into their phone, so that if they saw her somewhere on out on one of their daily walks, they could just call me, and I was driving around with Bowman, because he was like the bait, you know? I figured if she, to me, go come to Bowman, and we went. There was only one sighting of her in all of this entire week, and we live in an area where there's the Whitefish Rivers right over here, and the it's very forested, it's very open, there's coyotes and foxes and bobcats and large raptors, and so I was just terrified that she was going to get caught, either get her harness and her leash caught on something and not be able to move or get hurt by another animal. I think that as she started to head, I think Northwest is from the sightings that we, we got and started to come back, I think pretty quickly because there were no more sightings of her, where there's population, and so I think she was hanging out in the forest pretty close to us those last few days, and then two guys in a canoe that were on the river, she was on the bank of the river, and I don't know if she was trying to get water or if she was just trying to get home, and they found her and picked her up and continued on the river until they found some people who were not far from here, actually outside in their yard, and they said, "Did you lose a dog? and the people said, "No, but is it a beagle? and they said, "Yeah, and they go, "Oh, we know where she belongs, because they had seen my signs all over the place, and so she called us that Sunday night, so Sealy went missing on Monday morning. The following Sunday, we were like, we were seriously discussing, okay? How do we get on with our lives right now? We can keep looking, but I couldn't take any more time off of work because I didn't go to school, I didn't teach lessons, I didn't do anything, and so trying to figure out how to get back to I don't even want to say normal, because I don't think it ever would have felt normal again. And then we got this call from this woman just down the road, and I, you know, at first I was like, yeah, sure, I thought it was another scam, and she said, no, really, we have her, and I think we were in the car in less than a minute, and went down there to pick her up, and and she was filthy dirty, and had the harness and the leash still attached, which is bonkers, but every, it was still attached, and and just I just picked her up and held her, and I remember hugging the one guy, but it's like there was, it was such a blur in that moment that I don't remember much more than just having her back with us. She lost almost four pounds, I lost four pounds that week. It was, it was really traumatizing. It was difficult to drive down the road that I had spent days and hours and hours looking for her, it was hard to go that direction again for a while, so yeah, it was. It was really hard. The kind of, I want to say, funny thing is that you know we come home with her and we know she probably needs to eat and eat the bath. We bring her back in the house and the first thing she does is jump up on the couch, and then turn around, look at us, like, what's for dinner, you know? Like, like, like, nothing happened, like I was just on a visit somewhere, you know. Glad to be home.

David Reese  24:53  
Yeah, besides the weight loss, she was perfect.

Lori Cohen  24:56  
Yeah,

David Reese  24:56  
there was nothing else wrong.

Ginny Reese  24:57  
We had two rounds of blood tests done and. Check for parasites and all those things, nothing, not a scratch.

John Ramer  25:04  
What a little trooper. Now

David Reese  25:06  
we have a collar with a GPS tracker on it, and that logs into our phones when she's out of the zone, and so, and funny, our Jenny's son said, Well, now that you have that, you'll never lose her, and that's like, good,

Ginny Reese  25:21  
that's that's fine. Then

John Ramer  25:23  
it's worth every penny,

David Reese  25:24  
exactly.

Ginny Reese  25:25  
Yeah, but it's nice because you know, then every time the dog sitter, when we have to go out of town or something, the dog sitters here, she's got it on her phone. I kind of feel like we're being weird because we can see exactly when she goes for walks and everything.

Chelsey Marino  25:40  
I don't think that's weird. I do that with my dog too. When I have him, you know, my neighbors, or my mom's watching him, I'm like, "Oh, Stanley got all of his steps in today, and he took a three hour nap, like I can see all that stuff. I feel the same way

Lori Cohen  25:54  
when I travel. My friend stays at my house, and she knows that I better hear from her first thing in the morning, or else I can't start my day, and then I need to hear from her before I go to bed, or else I won't sleep, and so that's the way it's got to go down when I'm away, because I need to know, so I get it. What was she like after that? Did you find that she was braver because she had been out on her own, or was she? Did she take a few steps back in terms of anxiety?

Ginny Reese  26:26  
I don't think she took any steps back. I have this concept myself, and a friend who's a writer of writing a book called Seeley the Bravest Beagle, and you know, basing it on fable about somebody who goes on a life journey to find themselves, so that every time I start to write things down, I think I kind of get a little freaked out or emotional. So we'll see, we'll see if I get that on paper.

David Reese  26:52  
I think she came back appreciating us more, and actually I kind of felt like she was ready to be part of the family instead of trying to escape all the time,

John Ramer  27:04  
probably definitely equated you with a safe space after all of that.

David Reese  27:08  
I mean, I think she would still run if given the choice.

John Ramer  27:11  
That's a beagle.

David Reese  27:11  
Yeah, I think she probably pulled back a lot easier, but I don't want to test it. So,

Lori Cohen  27:16  
no, exactly.

David Reese  27:18  
Keep our routine the way it is right now, it's doing just fine. And now dogs beyond the lab continues.

John Ramer  27:29  
I appreciate you guys sharing that story with us. I know it's not easy to look back on, and I'm sure that it was just a bundle of emotions while you were looking for, and especially with knowing how traumatized she was when you adopted her. I know from my position here at Kindness Ranch, there is a lot of people that that feel like they are going to be the perfect home to take in one of these exceptionally scared traumatized beagles and all they need is love and everything for that beagle is going to be just right and that they'll never be out of their sight and then there's going to be people that will be a keyboard warrior and probably chime in when this goes out for everybody to listen to and view on YouTube that will question my decision to allow you guys to adopt that beagle, and they've, there's, there's going to be people on both sides of that, but what, what I want to harness is that there's a lot of people out there that are going to be well-intentioned, and in my opinion, they, they wouldn't have the patience or the fortitude to deal with everything that you guys threw yourself in the middle of, and I want to commend you for your follow through on giving her a good home, and I thank you for everything that you've done for her. So, haters be damned, I'm grateful that you guys are there, and you're fantastic dog parents. So, thank you for all of that. That being said, what would you tell the people that think that they want to take on one of these extremely traumatized beagles?

David Reese  29:26  
You get to have to have a ton of patience, celebrate the little victories that you get, because they come pretty far in between, and a lot of times you don't realize how far you've come until you look back and go, wow, we're able to do all these things now that we couldn't do before. She's going into the mud room by herself. I'm not having to chase her in the yard to get her inside, and you know all these, all these little victories that you forget about, or you have to kind of celebrate that as much as you possibly can, and it just. Understand that this little dog that we have, like you said at the beginning, she is her own beast, and I call her the little Velociraptor Eagle, because she just does what she wants to do, and, but, but you know, when it, when what she wants to do involves us, it's really cool.

Ginny Reese  30:18  
The things that makes my heart so happy is when she does normal dog things, and I mean, I can remember her first down dog, when she was relaxed enough, and I know, Chelsea, you've talked about this a lot, about their brains are so different, and when she was finally in a place in her brain where she could relax enough to do the down dog stretch, or now in the mornings, when she gets on her back and does the worming scratch, scratch, scratch on her back, and literally it's like she does a complete 360 you know, as she's scratching her back, completely normal dog behavior that we will never take for granted. I don't think ever again. We're starting to realize more what that trauma does to the dog's brain, and she's now so relaxed that she can do these normal things that we consider to be normal for a dog, and whether normal or not normal for a dog or for a trauma dog, Chelsea, I've taught her how to sit, and so now she'll actually, she'll actually do a sit, and which is adorable and kind of cute, and I don't look at it as a trick, I look at it as she pays attention to me, and we've got that connection, and so if there's a situation where I need her to be able to come to me and listen, hopefully this is helping to establish connection there,

Chelsey Marino  31:42  
yeah, that brings up a good point, because we talked about place a little bit at the beginning of this, and places, you know, it's an obedience command or trick, I guess, where your dog goes to a bed or a couch and they, you know, hang out there, it's like a stay kind of, but what's interesting is I don't really teach a lot of obedience when I work with beagles, because they're, they're not really ready for it. We do a lot of behavior stuff, but place for Sealy, we used it as a behavior mechanism, because again, she is her own dog and suspicious of being tricked into training, so it was very hard for you at the beginning to get her to come to you, and then if you needed to access her, and you went towards her, she would scurry away. So you were like, How do we get her to get the leash on? How do we get her if she gets something stuck in her paw, and we need to take care of her, you know? Like, how do we care for her? And so what we did is, we, we said, you know what, Seeley, like, go to your place, you know, and that's her little like spot, and it's her safe spot, and it's where she goes to get her equipment on. It's where she goes when you have piano lessons over there, and it's just kind of like her little throne, but it is a way for you to do the things that you need to do that you couldn't do because behaviorally she wasn't there yet, so like it's just interesting.

John Ramer  33:06  
I like that you called it a throne.

Chelsey Marino  33:09  
Yeah, it is. I mean, she thinks it's a throne. Yeah,

Ginny Reese  33:12  
yeah, she actually has many thrones. She's become much better at coming straight to me in the bedroom, which is. I don't, we still cannot figure out why that is such a safe space for her. She'll be snugly in there, she'll get under the covers and curl up with us, that she will not instigate that anywhere else. But she'll get on the bed as a place, place the couch in the living room as a place, my mother-in-law's recliner chair is a place, and one of the chairs in the piano room is her place, and so, depending on where we're at, she, you say place to her, and she'll, she literally kind of like looks around, goes, where am I? Oh, okay, there's my place,

Chelsey Marino  33:54  
and it makes her feel safe and comfortable, and she takes affection so much better on her place too. It's just like it's just her, like it's her safe place. I think it's just it works so well for her. And again, something that, like, it's not really in my repertoire for Research Beagle training, but for her it was like, you know what, I think this will work. Thanks, this will be good for..

Ginny Reese  34:14  
yeah, it was. It was brilliant, brilliant.

Chelsey Marino  34:20  
So, describe her today. What is she like now compared to in the beginning? And I don't know if you even remember, I went back and looked at some of our notes from the beginning, but you know the describe the differences, you know, a little bit with her relationship with you and your guests and Bowman, and you know just how she lives her life,

David Reese  34:41  
she communicates with us now. She tells us when she needs something, which is something she didn't do, you know, before, because she didn't know how. Like, she comes in and does her crazy beagle stuff in the living room, and I know that means she needs to go outside, and you know she's. And either she wants to play ball or she has to has to go pee, and now that she's figured out she can do that, and I figured out that's what she's telling me, she does it all the time, and so that's really cool that we're, we have that communication back and forth, and she advocates for herself, she, she definitely tells you this is what I want, and I want it now. I think I think you taught the boop game to Jenny, so you know to get her to come to have your hand out, and she's supposed to tap her house there, and

Ginny Reese  35:34  
then you toss the treat away from you, so she has to go through a doorway or she has to go behind me, and and she used to be so terrified, there'd be five treats in the other room on the floor, and she won't, she wouldn't go get them, because it meant it go, it meant going through a doorway, and so now you toss it, you know, you do the boop game, where it's over here, it's over here, wherever she has to hit your hand, and she'll, she'll just charge right in there.

David Reese  36:01  
She's turned that game into that's what I'm going to do when I want something, so when I'm cutting, you know, so hard it's like, geez, there I love it, because it's like, okay, you're brave enough to come up, touch me. That's pretty awesome.

Lori Cohen  36:23  
Yeah, I think you guys are awesome. Yeah, just the amount of patience and work, and how long, and just how you can see how proud you are of her, and, and even to get through through that escape. I have been through that myself as well, I didn't know the Beagle breed 15 years ago, and it's a pretty shameful place to be. And what I mean by that is, you, we shame ourselves, and you beat yourself up, and who makes me emotional, even thinking about how devastated I was to think that I might have harmed my dog, and of course he came back three hours later on his own volition, looking at me like I was absolutely crazy, because I'm on the ground thanking God and crying and mauling him, and just thanking God and thanking him and thanking my friends who were searching for him, and it was only three hours, you guys, and same thing attached to the leash, and I thought, How would I ever live with myself? But yeah, and so, while you were telling the story, it was making me think about that, and I think that everyone with the dog has probably gone through that once, whether they care to admit it or not, and it just, yeah, it just doesn't. Sure, there's a world where we all think we could have done better, and where maybe we didn't. We made a mistake, and that's okay too, when we learn from those mistakes and do our best. But I just think that we. I think, I just so appreciate you sharing that, because, as I say, I think we've all been through it. People don't want to say that they've done it because they feel shame. Just as John said, there's keyboard warriors who will come at you, meanwhile they've probably, they've probably been through it too. And I just, I think it's, I think you guys are as brave as she is, to be honest, and that, and that I think she probably knew that, because these guys know that I'm a big believer that the dog chooses us, we don't choose them, we just like to think we do, and I think I think she knew who she was getting in bed with, and so she did a good job picking you guys, in my opinion, I think so. Yeah,

Ginny Reese  38:43  
well, and I really don't think April would have approved this or anybody else if Bowman had not been involved again. I just, you know, we have, we have patience because we are.. I was almost going to say older parents, but because, you know, we have grown children, so we've been through all of that, and, and we know you know how hard it is to be patient with children, and being patient with a dog can almost be harder, because they are not necessarily understanding you, and there is a beagle stubbornness we all know exists as well, you know, and so I think that that we were pretty well prepared, but honestly not prepared for as difficult as she was. Regardless of the her week being away from us, it was a lot more than I expected. It was a lot. So,

David Reese  39:36  
during that week, I had to go to another town, about four hours away, to adjudicate a music festival, and Jenny was supposed to be part of that too, but she, she had to bail out because

Ginny Reese  39:50  
I did not

David Reese  39:50  
know we needed to keep searching, and so I went and did the festival, and one of the bands performed a piece called Our. Castaways by Julie Jerome, and the first three pages of the score are pictures of adopted animals. Oh, wow, I lost it. I totally lost it, and I, and I was the one that had to go up and talk to the band about the performance afterwards, and so I'm up there balling, just totally out of source. I said, okay, guys, I gotta tell you a story about this dog, and so I told him about Sealy and what's going on, and their music made so much it hit me, and that's when I really realized how much I love this beagle right here.

Speaker 1  40:39  
Yeah,

David Reese  40:40  
and so it was the day that I got back that we got the call and got her, and I was still

Chelsey Marino  40:46  
so band. If you're listening, we did find Sealy. She's all safe and sound

Ginny Reese  40:53  
where I got her name from.

Chelsey Marino  40:57  
No, I don't.

Ginny Reese  40:58  
Well, see, see, Bowman is named after a lake, he's named after a lake up in Glacier National Park. It's where we like to go canoeing and stuff. And there's another lake called Seeley Lake, but it's not that, it's Seeley from The Color Purple, the protagonist who had to rise above her horrible, abusive childhood and all of the trauma she went through as a young woman and trying to get out on her own and being brave enough to stand up for herself, so if you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it, or the original movie is a very good rendition of the book, but that's how I, that's how I see her as that, I love that too, brave little young woman, she is,

Chelsey Marino  41:42  
she cheers, cheers, I love that.

John Ramer  41:44  
Well, now that you've been through all of that, and you kind of have us as your audience, what questions would you have for any of

Ginny Reese  41:53  
us? Y'all used the picture of Seeley when we were up at Glacier. Now,

Chelsey Marino  41:56  
oh yeah, John, I don't know if you know that Sealy was the cover model on the calendar, that's right. You did. Oh,

Lori Cohen  42:05  
yes, yes, yeah. I

Chelsey Marino  42:06  
saw that. I saw that yesterday in my notes. So I'm like, oh yeah, I wonder if John knows that. That's Sealy

John Ramer  42:11  
amazing. I didn't know that. No,

Ginny Reese  42:13  
I was scrolling around and I saw, oh, look at.. oh, they have a fundraiser or whatever was coming up, and I went, oh gosh, that looks like that looks like she could be one of Steely's sisters, and then I zoomed in, like, wait a minute. So I thought that was very cool, and, and I keep asking for a pig, but he won't let me have a pig right now. Just

John Ramer  42:38  
the pig, I've got just the pig,

Ginny Reese  42:42  
not Sapphire, she's too big. I want one of those little ones,

Chelsey Marino  42:46  
they're cute.

Ginny Reese  42:47  
Yeah, I know

John Ramer  42:48  
we've got a little boy named Thor that it's, it's amazing. You walk right up to him and he just flops on his back for belly rubs, and he, he walks on a harness really well. I know a guy that can hook you up.

Lori Cohen  43:03  
Jenny's, Jenny's looking at David. For those of you who are not watching this

David Reese  43:10  
well, how big can kindness ranch get? It seems like you guys are getting so many beagles right now. Do you, are you running out of space?

John Ramer  43:18  
That is a really good question. What I'll say will be a mixed blessing. It's an absolute blessing, because right now the current trend for companion animals being used in laboratory research is on the way out, without any intervention from animal rights groups or legislation. They predict that just because of scientific advances in AI and organoid models, that there will no longer be a use for dogs in any form of research in the next 10 to 12 years. So, for longevity at Kindness Ranch, we have to start looking at alternatives when cats and dogs will no longer be used. The downside on this is, and this is why I'm trying so hard to sell you a pig or adopt a pig to you, is according to somebody very affluent in the research industry, people eat bacon, not beagles. So, the trend now is using specifically bred pigs in replacement of companion animals, which is why we have so many pigs right now. We have 39 pigs today on sanctuary property, and we have 28 cats, and I think 34 beagles right now, and all of the phone calls and everything that I have, I could have another 80 pigs. Pigs by the end of the year, but I'm only slated to bring in another 32 dogs, so it's, it's quite a switch, and we're just, we're preparing for that, we're, we're building new, new pig shelters on the property, and I'm, I'm hiring experts in the field, so as long as there's animals being used in research, we're going to have room for them, and hopefully, as with any nonprofit, the more animals and the more staff that we have, I just hope that we have the financial backing to bring them in, because every time I post a picture of a pig, it only gets a fraction of the engagement as a cute beagle running through the grass, so we just need to continue to raise awareness and educate people that just because it's not a cute little beagle doesn't mean it's not a cute little pig, you know, they just found a different way to skirt around the public outrage of using cats and dogs.

Ginny Reese  46:00  
There was one of the previous podcasts, I think I listened to one or two of them, and you talked about staying in your lane. Each one of you talked about where your lane is, know your lane of advocacy, and, and doing this work. I know that I've, we both kind of started to do, especially after this Ridgeland thing went down, is that there's been education from me to some of my friends about, you know, when they see the Ridgeland, the activists, the militant activists going in. Is there a place for that? Not so sure. And so we talk about the different ways that you can help out without getting arrested, basically, and what we can do. I cannot believe somehow how many people are not aware that you can buy things cruelty free, that you can get almost every single thing that you need that has been tested on animals. You can get that cruelty free from my dermatologist, my friends, to, you know, medical professionals don't even know

John Ramer  47:08  
it takes a strong desire to be in that compassionate role as a consumer, and until more people vote with their pocketbook and go down that lane and start buying more of the cruelty free stuff, we're all forgive the term, but we're all slaves to convenience. It's really easy to choose processed foods, it's really easy to just choose whatever is on sale. Sometimes it takes a little bit more work to purposely seek out cruelty-free products, and you know, try being an animal sanctuary in Wyoming. Wyoming isn't exactly known for all of its cruelty-free products available for consumers, so we do have to really actively search them out, and you know, our UPS and FedEx delivery drivers hate us out here at the sanctuary, because they're bringing in hundreds of pounds of products every day from the staff ordering stuff. We, we live off of direct mail out here, because our local stores, you win when there's 550,000 people in Wyoming, and there's 2.8 million cows, you kind of know where, where the public opinion on on that lies in this state.

Ginny Reese  48:33  
Well, in Northwest Montana, we do not have a wealth of stores to choose from, either, and so we have to do a lot of direct shipping of products, and I do a lot of research to find the ones that that I know are cruelty free, plastic free, you know, so yeah, well, it's a, it would feel really hypocritical if we weren't doing that after rescuing her, after going after doing all of that work and advocating for her and her life, if we weren't also following through on the other part of

John Ramer  49:10  
it. I know that feeling very well.

Lori Cohen  49:12  
Yeah, and you know what, I think that's great, and I love that you're sharing that with the people around you, because you know so many people maybe don't have the means to donate, they don't have the, you know, availability to foster or adopt, but everyone has to go shopping, and that, you know, if we, if everyone in both of our countries decided to make that choice and to only shop cruelty free, that would be a very, very big statement economically to those companies who are still using animals, and there's some great resources out there. Leaping Bunny program has an app that you take right to the store. It's, you know, they, we did a town hall with the people at Leaping Bunny, and they, they update their app every day. It's crazy, so they're really on. Top of it, so there's so much out there that makes it easier for people now to be able to know if the products are cruelty free, but I just appreciate that you guys are out there on the front lines and sharing it, and you know it just goes to show how much our dogs change our lives, because you know just by the nature of you guys taking in and loving a former research dog, it, she's kind of facilitated that that conversation with you and other people, and trying to make a difference, which is pretty special.

Ginny Reese  50:35  
Fostering a dog, because I know, Laurie, you do, you do only fosters through your organization, correct.

Lori Cohen  50:42  
Well, foster adoption, but if you mean foster by foster, we are a foster base, so we don't have a facility, so every, every pretty much every person that fosters a dog and usually ends up adopting in the end, we probably have a pretty darn good foster failure rate, but they, they take a dog sight unseen, so they.. we don't know, we don't even know, really, the dogs that we're getting until we.. we meet with John in Kindness Ranch, and so they trust us, thankfully enough, because the dog doesn't.. I think the dog chooses them, but it's more of an energetic process, because they have no idea who they're getting until the dog's in their cars, so

Chelsey Marino  51:21  
Lori does a really great job. She's underselling herself. She really likes, she's really great at picking.

Ginny Reese  51:29  
Do you get the dogs from Kindness Ranch? Is that you're getting dogs from there? We do

Speaker 2  51:34  
the,

Ginny Reese  51:34  
okay,

Lori Cohen  51:35  
yeah. As I mentioned earlier, the, the, the law, there are no laws in Canada. There's no legislation in Canada protecting dogs in research, so a lot of our advocacy work is to make a difference in the world of legislation and to make people aware in Canada. So the majority of dogs used in research in Canada are euthanized, and we're working to change that, of course, with other amazing organizations in Canada, but in the meantime, we've been really blessed to be able to work with kindness and to have kindness, and John and Katie and the team trust us enough. So, together we have placed probably over 130 dogs from Kindness Ranch into Canada, so I like to say that John's made a difference in Canada without really even trying, just by trusting us, and so many more people know about the world of animal testing because of Kindness Ranch. So it's great.

John Ramer  52:37  
Thank you, Lori. Well, for everybody listening, this is yet another example of how you don't have to have a former research beagle in your home, or considering bringing a former research beagle into your home to equate with the stories and the lessons that we all learn here. Thanks to David and Jenny for sharing their, their journey and the ups and downs, and and the lessons that they've learned and been willing to share with us. Make sure that you, you follow dogs beyond the lab, give us five stars, and make sure you subscribe to get updates when new episodes come out. And thank you very much, David and Jenny, for joining us, and we look forward to sharing more episodes in the future.

David Reese  53:28  
Thanks for listening to Dogs Beyond the Lab. For more, including comments, feedback, and ways to get in touch with our hosts, go to BeyondTheLab dot dog. Produced and distributed by The Sound Off Media Company,