So funny story. Yesterday on the podcast, we recorded a wonderful, award winning podcast and then we went to hit a saver or store or whatever, and there was nothing there, and then the computer froze. We couldn't read emails. So we're gonna catch up on some stuff. Jenny, you ready, Let's do it all right? He would go, We're gonna start off with Stephanie. She says, Dave, thank you for introducing me to the poem just a Dog. I read it on the air a couple of weeks
ago. I'm not going to read it now because it's long and the podcast is going to get a little bit long, but I will say you can definitely google the poem just a Dog. And it's a beautiful poem. It's not even a poem. It's just more of like a thought of what dogs mean to us. And when people say, well, don't get so into it. It's just a dog, but it goes on to talk about well, that's like saying it's just a friend, or it's just a child,
or just a promise, and it really is beautiful. Today we have to say goodbye to my best friend of thirteen years due to congestive heart failure. He's not only my first and only pet. He has been with me through college, marrying my husband, having my first baby, and getting me through
so many hard things in life. I've never said goodbye to a pet, and I'm very fortunate we can have his last moments together at our homes, surrounded by family, because a lot of times when they put a pet down, they come to your house, and I think that's what Falon did with Elliott. I keep reading this poem over and over as it is sinking in. I will only have his memory moving forward. Your show will help me try and give my mind small breaks from drowning in the emotion of this loss.
Stephanie, I know exactly what you mean. I'm going to choke up because that's how I feel about Josie. She has been around since Allison was I don't know, fourteen fifteen, and since Carson was about seven or eight. So many trips, so many runs, so many walks, camping trips, canoeing trips, playing fetch, just all of the things. Well, you had to put Mickey down. Tierrie right now too thinking about it, because it was one of the hardest things we ever did. And so I
know where she's coming from. It is a very very tough situation. And I didn't grow up. We had an animal when I was super young, but it was like four when they put our dog down, and so I don't really remember it very well or what it was like and stuff. So I don't feel like I've ever felt that kind of pain before. But yeah, it was. It was a very hard time, and it was even harder for Andrew because it was Mickey was his dog, like her whole life,
and like I, she was in my life a later part. But yeah, I grew very close with her when we moved in together, and it was super tough. A friend of mine, Curtis, has a partner that Curtis never was a dog person, but his partner had a dog and they moved in together and Curtis fell in love with a dog and then they had to put the dog to sleep, and Curtis was just devastated because he got so close. Yeah, all right, this next one is and am
I the asshole? And it actually happens to do with dogs. I'm going to sum it up a little bit. They say, first of all, love your show and us in religiously Dave Jenny Drake. I'll try to keep it short, but I have an am I the Asshole question for the Minnesota Goodbye. First of all, we love dogs. We had an absolutely wonderful German Shepherd but lost him to cancer when our first child was two years old. Fast forward to now, our first child is four and we have a
one and a half year old. We're not ready to get another dog, so no judgment. Also, our four year old had an incident with a neighbor's dog and now is deathly afraid of dogs. Our one and a half year old doesn't know dogs, so he is also scared. Here's am I the asshole part. I'll sum it up. We go to the park and a woman and are probably ten year old and a dog off leash arrive. Okay, first of all, the dog is off leash, so my kids get anxious, and the woman says, oh, my dog is so friendly,
they're fine, don't worry about it. And I said, well, my kids are a little afraid of dogs. So she took her kids to the other side of the park to a playground area. Yeah. Well, here comes the ten year old with a dog off leash, chasing the ten year old and getting up on the equipment. Now, that seems weird to me. But the dog is running up and down the stairs, through the tunnels, going down the slides, she said. Normally, I think that's
awesome and what a great bond the girl and her dog have. But my kids are panicked and they're afraid, and I'm doing my best to keep my children from, like, you know, being so scared. And I eventually politely asked the woman, I love dogs, and your dogs seem super friendly, but this is there a way you could keep her off the playground equipment? My kids are scared. I don't want them to get hurt trying to run away from your dog, even though she's not going to hurt them.
She was not happy with me and ended up leaving the park with her kid and her dog. Am I the asshole? Well? Absolutely not at all, not at all. The other woman is the asshole. First of all, it pisss me off when I see anybody with a dog off leash. Everybody knows you're not supposed to have your dog off a leash. I don't give a fuck whether it's friendly or not. Obey the rules. I obey the rules you should to. Everybody knows this, especially in a park with
kids. Yeah, we walk past the park often because we don't have Mackey anymore, but we dog said sometimes. So we walk past the park all the time, and I always make sure the dog is very close to me when I walk past that park because I just don't know what someone might like. I don't know these dogs very well. It's not my dog, so I don't want them to ever lunge at a kid or something. And they're always always so friendly, but I just get nervous about that, So I
think it's a big You're not a jerk whatsoever. That woman should have just followed. She shouldn't have done what she did, which was bring the dog off a leash, period, But then she should have been okay with it when you asked her to put the dog back on a leash. If I were to ask if if first, I never would. But if I had my dog off a leash and somebody said, hey, my kids are scared, will you put your dog on a leash, I'd be like, God,
I'm sorry and be kind of embarrassed. So if I'm going to ask you this one, if you take your dog out off a leash, why, how do you justify that if you go hiking. Let's say you go to no Tailor's Falls and you got your dog off leash your hiking, how do you justify that? How is it okay? I will say, because I'm not as big of an advocate for dogs having to be on leashes all the time as you are. But like I've never been in a bad situation
where a dog has attacked me or anything like. That's so why I understand a lot of people are very scared of dogs, and you should do that. But like when we were in like different states we did a West coast road trip, dogs were awfu leash all time at all times in Oregon and California. It was just like such a more dog friendly state there. Yes, and we loved it because we love dogs and I know you love dogs too, but it was just like so fun because like the dog would come
up to us and stuff. And then even the airbnb we were at this weekend, the neighbor's dog kind of was like rolling around in the yards and I would get I would literally go outside when I saw the dog like roaming into our yard so I could go, like pet the dog. Dogs No, And I love that too. And I love seeing a dog and I'll gree like, oh can I give her a scratch? If I'm at a brewery and there's a dog sitting there next to the owner's table, Oh can I give her a scratch? Oh? Yeah, she's blah blah blah.
I don't know. I think that dogs are such a personal item. We love our dogs, but we shouldn't subject other people to our dog. Yeah. Next one Hi Day Daily listener, Listen, you talked about the screen time and you thought you had a high daily average. There's another listener who thought the screen time average around eight hours was even worse than yours, and they said they had a full time job. Well, I just checked mine and my daily average week to date is eleven hours and two minutes. And
I have a full time job. Two. I swear I do use YouTube as one of my primary sources of TV entertainment, which makes up six and a half of my eleven hour daily usage. It is huge. Not sure if that's a lot. I just thought I would share. I don't know if there is some way to see a daily average over a longer period of time. Love the show and the Minnesota Goodbye, thank You. That is
from Bailey. Thank you, and I want to thank both of the people who have emailed in with their higher screen times because it's made I felt like garbage when I saw mine wasn't even higher than yours. So I was like, man, I know, I get stuck scrolling on social media, but I never feel like I'm on my phone that much because I'm not a big
Texter. I don't do phone calls very often. But I guess I just spend too much time on Instagram. I think it's so easy to do to just you know, if you scroll to something, you watch it go nine. I don't think so when you scroll the next one, and of course it learns what you love. So it's kind of like if every time you walked into your kitchen there was a delicious whatever your favorite food was on the table, you would eat a whole lot more if it knows what you want,
all right. Yesterday we were talking about sending kids to school to make them either the oldest or the youngest. So if your kid is born in August, you make him you send him school early and make him the youngest, or you sim school late, making the oldest. My oldest has in August thirty first birthday. We waited to send him, so he turned six right before kindergarten. I am so happy we waited. They expect so much more out of kids at school than they did back in your day, Dave
laugh emoji. He is naturally just a smart kid, so he gets bored, but his teachers have been great about giving him harder things to work on, and he also helps kids that are struggling. Kindergarten used to be all play. Now they're reading and doing math. I got to sit at a table for longer periods of time. I'd also talked to a few teacher friends.
They all said, wait and send him. And even if you said they should change the start age of kindergarten to six and make pre K like the new kindergarten, obviously every kid's different, but I'm happy with our decision and we will do the same. They're my third kid that has an August birthday. It'd be interesting to ask this question on the show and get some feedback from teachers, so Shay, yes, if you're a teacher, let
us know. I'm going to guess you probably prefer an older kid because younger kids are they're more high maintenance, they cry more, they wet their pants more. Good morning, Dave, Jenny, and ou two Drake. My name is Carmen, Dave's pain and the ass friend. I've known Carmen forever. We have kids at the same age. I try calling every damn Friday, but it never gets through, So I figure, why not email and discuss toilets? Do you or your family clogged the toilet all the time?
May I recommend the Toto toilet for all your clogging needs. You can flush a golf ball and it won't clog your toilet. But don't forget to get a bi day because no one likes it. Dirty ass, I think dingleberries. Good god, Carmen serious. Anyways, thanks for always making my morning's less boring and less crabby. On the bad day's day, be nice to Jenny because she can have your ass thrown in a nursing home from Carmen. Well, she is sassy. I like she is sassy. Yeah, she's
I know her and her husband and her kid. I've known her for years and years, all right, David Jenny. The other day, you guys talked about what food and beverages you had at your school's growing up high school Ostio. We had pop machines in the school and open lunch. We could go anywhere if we had a ride or car. We ate a McDonald's or subway every single day. Now I'm forty five, so we didn't have screen time besides TVs, and my friends and I all stayed in shape. I
agree with you, Dave. I think today's kids aren't active enough. I'd rather sit in the phone or video games all day, not to mention the amount of terrible food that's available to them. When people come to the US from other countries, they are usually astounded at the amount and variety of junk food we have here. Sarah, Okay, I don't want to get completely off subject, but you and I were having this conversation recently about how food
and like Europe. It's just you can eat pasta there and it's healthier and it's not as bad as what it is in the United States because it's more process Well. I have like full blown proof from it because my trainer just was in Portugal in Spain and she said she ate pasta like every day and she eats a very clean diet here and she didn't feel bloated once and it was just like insane. How big of a difference eating food in a different
country like Europe was from eating food here in the United States. I guess it's all processed food here and not so processed over there. But I think it came up because of now I can't remember who I heard it, but it was a doctor from India and he said, you Americans eat the worst shit. And he kept using the word shit. It might have been a woman, I'm not sure, but the doctor kept saying, you eat the
worst shit. Everything is processed. Potato chips are not even really food, that is all processed chemicals, oils, etc. And it's I did have We had an intern here from Ukraine many years ago, back in the nineties, and she said one of the things that she noticed was how heavy Americans are. When she got off the plane in New York and started to walk around. She was like, wow, there are a lot of heavy people
here, and you don't really think about that. But again, I guess if you go to France or Ukraine or Germany, there's probably a lot fewer heavy people. I don't know why, whether it's the culture, the diet, or what. I don't really a next email. Let me delete that one so I don't accidentally reread it. Okay, here's one that I think we were going to read it yesterday, but we did not. It got deleted, is Chow Chow writes in