Dogs: Stories about our furry friends

In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers share tales of man’s best friend, more scientifically known as canines.

Part 1: Dog trainer Chris Brown needs to up his skills when he adopts a former bait dog named Terror.

Chris Brown was born and raised in Detroit, MI. He's always had an affinity for animals, but especially for dogs. Chris spent most of his early childhood sneaking into neighbors' yard to play with their dogs, and gravitated toward the dogs that all the adults and other children were afraid of. In turn, those same dogs became Chris' protectors. Chris' grandfather nurtured the growing passion and began teaching him how to groom desired behaviors even in tiny puppies, and Chris' uncle introduced him to his first protection dog, a Rottweiler/Dobermann mix that showed just how well trained a dog could be. It was invigorating. Dog training became a hobby that persisted into adulthood, and eventually grew into a successful business. Chris' dog training business is now based in Dallas, and he has partnered with a local rescue where he educates both fosters and adopters. Chris and his wife Kay share their home with three lively (former) street dogs, Ellie, Rogue, and Terror.

Part 2: David Crabb has to make some tough decisions when his dog, Charlie, starts having seizures.

David Crabb is a writer, actor and storyteller in Los Angeles. He’s a member of The Groundlings Sunday Company and author of the memoir Bad Kid, based on his New York Times Critics’ Pick solo show of the same name. David is a host of The Moth and RISK! LA. He's a professor of autobiographical storytelling at Occidental College and has directed & taught storytelling in the US, Australia, Ireland and Canada.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

My wife is an extraordinary woman and an exceptional partner. Loving her has been one of the great joys of my life. But I only found love because of a dog, a dog named Terror who, like me from Detroit, like all of us, was born in the circumstances she did not choose.

Terror was a bait dog. Some of you are familiar. For those of you that aren't, in fighting dog rings they use bait dogs to train the fighters to kill. By the time I got to Terror, she was the only puppy still alive from her litter. I know because I was able to get one of the guys alone and, using my gift of gab and a 40‑caliber pistol, I convinced him that I was taking that dog.

She's sitting in the car next to me. She's in my passenger seat and I'm looking down at her. She's emaciated, dirty, fur ripped off, open wounds, broken ribs and fleas bouncing off of her like a trampoline. She's staring right into me with these eyes full of fear, full of hope, conflicted. And I knew I had to take care of her. This was my life's charge.

So, I take her to the vet. I get her cleaned up and, now, it's time to start training. Now, at this point, I've been working dogs since I could walk. My granddad would throw a big winter coat on me in the dead of summer and I’d go out there and work those German Shepherds.

Chris Brown shares his story at Wild Detectives in Dallas, TX in December 2022. Photo by Jason Hensel.

At this point with Terror, I've been doing it to make a little money on the side here and there when I saw people who needed help with their dog. I'd charge them a little, very low fee, help them with their dog.

I was good at it but, with Terror, it mattered that I understood why. So, I started reading voraciously because, at this point, I haven't had any formal training. No certification, no three easy payments of $29.99 DVDs. Nothing. Just a keen eye.

And so I start reading. I'm looking at studies. I'm looking at anything I can find on canine cognition and communication. I need to understand how they think, how they learn.

As I'm studying, I'm also watching. I'm watching videos now. I'm watching not just people actually interacting with dogs but just if they're doing an interview on the news and there are dogs there, I want to know is the dog how they're responding to the reporter. I'm taking notes. How are they responding to the camera crew and are they listening to the owner? I want to know everything.

I'm watching my neighbors very creepily, walking behind them with my notepad. Interesting. I just studied and studied and absorbed and absorbed and I applied and applied. I'm doing it with my clients and with my dog Terror.

We keep working and there's two really big things that are an issue with her. She's very scared of people and especially if you have something in your hand. And she can't play with other dogs without trying to rip their throat out. Not a great game. Not fun to have to police, but I'm working with her.

In all that I learned, one very fundamental thing that was very simple that I realized almost everyone missed, including me, we talk too much to our dogs. We're either baby talking or we're talking to them like a petulant teenager when they mess up. They don't know what that means. It's just sounds to them.

But how do you teach a human words? You show them a square and you say, “Square”. So when we go outside, “Outside.” We come in the house, “House.” When we play, “Play.” And as she learns, you see the eyes change. She starts really paying attention. She's locked in on me and anything I'm saying because, now, she's looking for those key words because I've given her a lexicon to work with.

And we use that and we build on that and we build her bravery. And now, she's not scared of people.

Now, I lived at this point in an adult frat house. Six nights a week for the parties. Terror became the show. She's not scared of anything in anyone's hand or the people in there. People are coming more frequently and the first thing they ask, “Where's Terror?” She's a star. And she's a beautiful Brindle Pitbull now, full grown, two years old, but she still can't play with other dogs without trying to rip their throats out.

We keep working at it. For two years, still nothing. Every time, she goes for the throat. But we condition with no means very firmly. So when I say no, she stops and waits for her next direction. So I could always stop her so that allowed me to keep trying for two years.

Finally, a Shetland Sheepdog, they're like tiny Collies, little Lassie. Cute dogs. Full of energy. This one loved herding cars, so he needed to come stay with me for a while so we could work that out. Not a healthy habit. And as I'm working with him and Terror's helping, she helps with all the dogs. As long as they're not playing, she's a great teacher. Play, not so much, obviously.

But we hit a point where I'm trying to let them play and she tackles the Shetland Sheepdog, pinned down real hard with the elbows. But she stops and doesn't go for the throat. “Terror, eyes.” She looks at me, still pinning this dog down.

“Terror, play.” And she looks down at him and she lets him up and they run around my backyard for the next 45 minutes. It was beautiful.

And it was at this moment that I knew that I needed to become a dog trainer to the stars and get my own Nat Geo TV show. I'm going to move to LA. It's going to have a cheesy name like Captain K‑9 or The K‑9 King. They're going to superimpose a cape on me, dogs flying around. You know how the TV show intros are. It's going to be great.

So my business has grown, but I'm feeling it and I'm like, “We need to get out to LA, me and Terror, because she helped me build this. We're gonna do this.”

At the time, I worked for a veterinary company and they had a job opening in Fresno or, as I call it, Fres‑hell‑no. Yeah. See, somebody knows. If you don't know, California also has desert and Fresno is right smack in the middle of that desert, so it's a great place to be. But it would get me out to California. It was a step in the right direction.

They said, “You have 30 days or we got to give it to somebody else.”

I say, “Cool, I'll make it happen.”

So I clean up my life. I'm getting everything ready. And, three days before it's time to go, I've got everything squared away except I don't have a place to live. I've learned more about the job and it's a traveling role. I need to travel three days a week.

No place and gone three days a week, I know I can't take Terror into that. It's not going to work.

I realized that and I fall to the bottom of the shower as I'm having this moment and I cry, like toddler‑dropped‑ice‑cream‑on‑the‑dirt cry.

And as I'm sobbing my eyes out, Terror— one thing I never trained out of her, she's afraid of water. Like it's her Kryptonite. Like if you do this even with dry fingers, she hates it. Hates the stuff. It's her Kryptonite.

Same dog walks right into the bathroom where I'm crying at the bottom of the shower and she sticks her whole head in that shower and she nudges me hard, staring right into me, eyes full of fear, full of hope, conflicted.

Three days later, I was in a car on the way to Fresno without her. Hardest decision I've ever made. My best friend is riding with me, lived with me at the adult frat house. He's assuring me, “I'm gonna take care of her. She's gonna be all right.” He knows I'm coming back for my girl. And the whole time, I'm plotting on how I'm going to make it happen.

So when I get out there, instead of traveling three days a week, I'm on the road six days a week. I'm not just building the existing market like I'm supposed to for the veterinary company, I'm building a new market in LA.

11 months later, that market's built. They said, “We need someone to run it.” I said, “That's mine.”

They said, “You built it, it's yours. “

So now, I'm stable in LA 11 months later and I buy a one‑way flight back to Detroit and I go get my Terror.

She's sitting in the car with me, passenger seat, staring right into me but, this time, there's nothing but hope in her eyes. And she sleeps that long 36‑hour ride back to LA.

Now, here's the thing about that choice. Six days a week, I'm working one day a week. I'm in a town in Fres‑hell‑no and it was during that one day a week that I met my wife. Sometimes in life you have impossible decisions. No right or wrong answer, no idea what to do. But to make the hard choice, sometimes you just need a little nudge.

Part 2

So, one thing that I love about little kids is that they're like kind of the ideal improv partners, in part because, sure, they're curious. They like to explore. But they also have the memory of a gnat, which you really need for improv. You need to forget what you know quickly and move on.

One of the first times I realized this was from my nephew Leo. My nephew Leo moved here with his mom, my husband's sister, about four years ago. He was five when he moved here. And as an adult who was raised an only child, single mom, I don't have a big extended family so he was kind of the first child that I had in my adult life that I thought of as family or someone that I could care about who was a child.

David Crabb shares his story in a backyard in Los Angeles, CA in May 2022. Photo by Mari Provencher.

And I was like, “Oh, kids are cool.”

He's one of the coolest. There were days that I would hang out with Leo and I'd be like, “Oh, thank God, you're here, because you understand me.” And I'm like 45. What's going on?

I remember one of the things I love about him, which is playing games and being improvisational, was, one time, he broke a rubber band. He was just playing with a rubber band in the kitchen. And you know when kids are little, they don't understand the value of things. In his mind, he looked terrified. Like he could have broken a crystal lamp worth like a thousand dollars and had the same like, “[gasp] Is this rubber band important?”

He looked at me and I looked at him and I was like, “Leo, you know, I'm gonna have to reach out to the rubber band repairman now.”

And I saw his face do the thing where a little bit of fear and then ‘I see you’. And then I saw him make the choice to be like, “Oh, well how much do you think it'll be to fix it?”

And was like, “Well, how much was it originally?” I was like, “Wow, you are five doing cost benefit analysis on a rubber band. You're my ideal scene partner. I love this.”

Now, one of the things that was cool is that my husband and I had moved just a few years earlier from New York and we were kind of just the two of us out here. It was so cool to have my sister‑in‑law and Leo. It was like we had a little family. I had that little family in LA. It was the four of us and then the fifth member of our family, our dog Charlie.

Charlie is a little terrier, kind of a Chihuahua mix. Little white dog with a black, one like Martin Scorsese eyebrow. That little dog was my jam.

I didn't really grow up with a lot of animals that we had in my life. My dad liked getting married as much as he liked getting divorced. Pets kind of came and went with the one‑time stepmother.

I remember this dog, like my husband and I met him at a meet‑and‑greet. I didn't even think I liked a little dog and then he came up. His hip had a scar because they had found him in Alabama with a busted leg. He kind of limped over, like tripoded over and I just was like, “Oh, you're my person.”

And I remember the first week I had him, we were walking around in Williamsburg and I was just like, “I'm a man walking my pet. This feels amazing.”

And I walked past this Williamsburg Thai restaurant with like a thumping DJ and a big Buddha fountain. It was very hip. Sitting in front of it was this like very Berlin‑looking guy in those big parachute pants. He had like a chain link necklace and frosted spiky hair. And he had the big cans on, like big, big headphones.

I walked by with the dog and this guy looks up and his face, everything shifted. He lit up and he said, “Oh, my God. Zis looks like the dog of a boy from a story.”

And I was like, “I'm glad I could light up your day.”

He was like, “Oh.”

And this is crazy but he really kind of made me feel like a boy from a story. I just felt like that little dog was my jam. So it was great having us all here together.

Then shortly after Leo and his mom moved here, one day, Charlie had a little seizure. I didn't think much of it and the doctor said, “Oh, well, we're not exactly sure but we'll run some tests.”

Over the next few months, there were all sorts of diagnoses. It was like maybe a compressed vertebra. Maybe he was just having a reaction to something in the environment. But I knew something wasn't right.

Slowly, what started to happen was that we started to realize that there was something wrong in Charlie's brain, because the seizures kept going. My husband and I, we just started throwing money at whatever this was. And if you've ever had a pet that you care for in that way, you know the first bill comes and you're willing to just take one little step towards whatever it is. And the next thing you know, you're just running. Your soul, your heart, your bank account, you are just running at whatever this problem is. You're going to fix it.

After a few months, we realized that what Charlie had was a brain tumor. We went to the cancer veterinarian and he basically told us, “Look, this is progressing so fast that your little dog won't survive the series of radiation treatments that it will take. He literally won't make it through the treatments themselves.”

You know, if you get normal radiation for a small pet, it's up to 20 different radiation and they have to give the dog anesthesia each time.

And he's like, “We can't put your dog under and bring him back over and over again this many times. But there's this thing called stereotactic radiation,” and he explained to me what it was. It was three treatments of radiation that were super, super focused and really, really intense and very, very expensive.

I had that moment where Jack and I looked at each other and we looked at this little dog that we love so much and we're like, “We're all in.”

I had already been, at that point, living in and out of the veterinary cancer center, just on and off. Charlie would go in and come home. There would be nights I would just stay up. My ringer was on all the time. I started to take less freelance work. I just started to arrange my— there were date nights that I would go to the cancer center and be like, “Well, I would just listen to the Sad album by The Sundays,” and I would sit and I would watch him struggle to lift his head to eat wet food and that was my life.

When they started the treatments, the first one went okay. When the second one happened, they were like, “We had to intubate him. He didn't make it through it and we don't know if he's gonna make it through this third one, but we're gonna give it a go.”

And I just had this sinking feeling that it wouldn't go okay. The next day, I remember I woke up and Leo was there with us that day. He was like, “How do you think it's gonna go?”

I remember telling him, “I think it's gonna go okay. I don't know. I don't know.” Because I didn't want to be negative. I didn't want him to kind of experience my own anxiety.

And when they called us and said, “It went great. He's gonna be okay,” we couldn't believe it. We couldn't believe that he made it through all three treatments. And they said, “The radiation worked.”

We brought him home literally like the next day.

And he was a mess. He was a hot mess. He had a cone. He was shaved in lots of spots. He was a little drunk. He kind of hobbled places. And he needed stairs to get places but the veterinarian told us, “Hey, this is gonna improve and improve. Radiation doesn't stop working after the last treatment. It's gonna keep working.”

For six weeks, he started to get better and it was like we had our whole family back. We would be in our little house and Claire would come over with Leo. Charlie would be there and we'd all be enjoying each other's company.

I remember one night, I was sitting on the couch and Leo was sitting on the other side of Charlie. And he played with Charlie very intensely, but Leo is a really sensitive kid. He's smart and, even at five, he got the idea.

He also could see Charlie, Charlie was battle scarred. This dog had so many shave spots from IVs and incisions and injections. And as we're watching TV, I just hear Leo go, “David, David.”

I say, “What?”

He was whispering. He didn't want to annoy Charlie. And he was pointing at a little shaven square on Charlie side where it's just pink skin and he just whispered, “Is Charlie made of ham?”

I looked at him and it was that combination when a kid can say that thing that makes you want to laugh and cry at the exactly same amount, because what I wanted to say to him was like, “Yeah, we kind of all are. I don't even know if you've realized the point you've made.”

And I thought, “This is gonna be great.”

Then about four weeks after that, one day, Charlie had another seizure. They told us it could happen. So we took him to the animal cancer center and we surrendered him. We thought, you know, in the morning we're going to call and it's going to be over.

The next morning, I called and I was like, “How is Charlie? How was the seizure?”

And they're like, “Well, it hasn't stopped,” and that means that he had been, essentially, seizing for so long that even to bring him back, we didn't even know what we'd be bringing back.

So my husband and I made the choice after all this fighting and months and months of living this way that it was just over. Like that we couldn't do it, so we said goodbye to him.

And in the weeks after that, I was just so devastated. It was interesting to have to surrender so much of my life and things I do and love to care for him and then loosen and then not have all the things that I gave up to do that work. I was just so depressed.

One of the things that really struck me that was weird about the depression was that I couldn't be around Leo. Like Leo was this person who was like my little person who I loved and I was like, “He can't see me.” Because I would just cry all the time. I kept finding toys around the place. Like everything triggered me.

I also, for all the ways that I had been immersed in this, very scientific. Like the fact that I could even understand radiation to me was amazing. I just don't think that way. And the fact that I could understand all of these sort of procedures yet also be a person who was wandering through House of Intuition, a New Age store, openly weeping, just buying as many little crystal bracelets to protect me from death or depression or sadness, I was just kind of a mess.

Weeks and weeks went by and I hadn't seen Leo at all. I guess the way to describe that kind of sadness was that I felt like the sadness in me was weather. It was like weather that was always moving.

I remember one day I was like, “Oh, I don't feel the weather.” I felt like it was over, whatever it was. And I was like, “I need to see Leo.”

So, my husband and myself and my sister‑in‑law, we met for tacos. We were sitting, having tacos. It was so great. Leo was being so sweet and I was like, “I can do this. I'm not gonna cry in front of him. I'm not gonna be emotional. I'm not gonna scar him with my grief over my dead Chihuahua. It's gonna be great.”

And at one point, basically, I look and Leo reaches out and he touches my little hand and he says, “What exactly happened with Charlie?”

And I was like, “I can do this.” So I started explaining to him how radiation worked, and I couldn't believe I could do it.

As I'm explaining, “Well, this and it's less treatments and more and it's focus radiation,” I know that I made enough sense to a five‑year‑old. By the time I was done he was like, “So you kind of put him in a microwave?”

I was like, “Well, I kind of did.” Like I made that much sense, which is amazing. And I said, “Yes, they kind of put him in a microwave.” And it was great.

Then, all of a sudden, he reaches out and he puts his little hand on mine and he just says, “Are you sad?” And like the weather started.

I was like, “Oh, shit, there's still weather.” You know what I mean?

And I just blurted, “Do you want ice cream?”

And his mother, it was 10:00 AM. We were having breakfast. And his mother looks at me like, “What’s going on?” But you can’t say that to a five‑year‑old without ice cream happening.

So, 10 minutes later we're down the street and he has this ice cream he loves called Cookie Monster ice cream. He's covered in blue. It's toxic blue. No child, no one should ingest this. Blue. He has it in a cone and then, the other thing, because it's so big, he has a cup that he can kind of rest it upside down in and just navigate. He's really little.

He's having the ice cream. He's so happy. It's not even lunch time. And as we leave the ice cream place, my sister‑in‑law and my husband are walking ahead of me and I'm walking with Leo. They cross the street and me and Leo were there and we can't cross, because it's a crosswalk, so we wait a minute.

And then when the light changes, I go to cross with Leo and he looks at me and he's got blue‑smeared blue hand, the blue cup and he looks at me and his face is saying, “What am I supposed to do, Uncle David?” The reason his face is doing this is because he knows, he's a good boy, you don't cross the street without holding the hand of an adult. And there is no hand to hold. It's just blue mess, cup, cone, dripping, what.

I reached down and I say, “I'm gonna grab your collar. Is that okay?”

And he's like, “Okay.”

So I grab his collar and we're sort of shuffling across the street. I feel like I look like one of those angry ‘50s moms that grabs a kid by the ear, “Get out of my house. You’re bad news.” You know, like Eddie Haskell or something. It feels so aggressive.

And as we walk by people, they're just lighting up, just giggling and laughing at this bright‑eyed boy covered in blue, toxic blue ice cream, being dragged across the street. There's like hahaha laughing.

I'm like, “I'm sorry, really. He just doesn't have a hand.”

So, as we're crossing the street, we're almost to the curb, all of a sudden, he looks at me and he says, “It's kind of like you have me on a leash.”

And I say, “Yeah.”

Then he says, “If you want, I can be Charlie now.”

We get up on the curb. We're in front of this horrific generic version of a Forever 21. I drop to my knees and I just hug him so hard. I remember I'm like weeping and I look over his shoulder and up ahead I see my husband and my sister‑in‑law stop and they turn. I can see Claire looking like, “Oh,” and I see my husband, I always remember, grab her arm, almost like, “Let him have this. Like just let him be.”

I hug Leo and, as I'm hugging him, all of a sudden, I feel my shoulders wet. I'm like this is the thing I didn't want to do. This kid that I care about so much is so broken and sad by seeing me this way and now he's crying and he doesn't even know why.”

I look at our reflection in the Forever 21 window and, over my shoulder, my nephew has his ice cream cone under my armpit of the hug we're in. He's trying so hard to get his chin over the top of my shoulder to make mouth connection with the ice cream.

My shoulder is wet with toxic blue ice cream. There's no tears. He's already forgotten it. No registering at all. Just like, “I love you but this tastes good.”

I give him a hug and I know it's going to be okay. And the next few weeks it was okay. I got to hang out with him again and not feel weird like I was going to scar him. I also learned a little bit about being emotional in front of him. Maybe that's not the worst thing.

It was a few months after that when me and him and our new dog Frankie were sitting in our front yard in Eagle Rock with this little five‑month‑old dog watching the sunset, which she liked to do as a puppy which was the cutest thing ever. He would just sit silently and watch the sunset. And me and Leo were sitting with him watching the sunset.

On the table between us is one of those crystal necklaces I got from the New Age shop. It had broken and there were kind of loose rocks over the table. Leo reaches over and he starts touching. I'm like, “No, Leo. Leo, don't mess with that. I'm gonna see if I can fix it or something.”

He's like, “Why don't you just take it to your rubber band repairman?”

I looked at him and I was like, “You remember that?”

And he just reached out and he patted my hand and he said, “I remember a lot of things.”

Thank you.