Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, I'm joined by filmmaker, storyteller, musician and author, Richard Newman.
Richard is also the author of Woody My Journey Through Grief, Joy and Healing with a Dog.
The book tells the story of his extraordinary relationship with Woody, the grief that followed his death, and the dream work Richard used to reconnect with memories, emotions and parts of himself that had been buried for years.
Richard is also the co creator of the award winning surfing documentary Addicted to Joy which follows some remarkable characters and explores what surfing, adventure and joy can bring to our lives.
My name is John Littlefair and I'm proud to bring you this fantastic episode of Never Just a Dog.
I know you're a big music producer
[00:01:05] Speaker B: and big music man. Big fan.
Yeah, I, I do a podcast for Santa Cruz Guitar company and we were doing it live and then all of a sudden Covid hit. We moved it over to Zoom. And one of one of my big heroes was a guy named Happy Trom, who really invented online music education.
I mean, he was part of the village scene in the early 60s. He and his wife, they had six tape recorders in their kitchen in New York and they would record 5 inch reels and go to the post office on Friday afternoon and mail them out. He marketed it completely through this tiny little ad in Sing out magazine and that's grown into something called Homespun now. And they have over 4,000, close to 4,000 titles. We lost Happy last year, but we had this unbelievable conversation about him doing playing with the Rolling Stones and playing on Peter Tosh's records. And you know, because he played harpsichord and all this folk stuff from the 60s and at the end of came up and it, there was no recording.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Oh, that's an hour, an hour and a half. Yeah. And I just put my head on my desk and picked it up and picked up his phone, called him and I said, we have nothing. And he said, well, no worries, you know, we'll do it again tomorrow. But you know, the stories are never as good, the same.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: The magic sort of definitely in the.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Always the first record you feel like, well, I'm a complete idiot, you know, I didn't do something right here. You know, something went wrong here, you know, so what did I do? You know, I.
Yeah, but boy, I don't want that to happen.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: No, no, no.
What part of California do you and your wife Wendy live in?
[00:03:11] Speaker B: We're in Monterey. Monterey, which, you know, we're south of San Francisco about two hours and we're on the southern end of the bay, Santa Cruz is on the north end of the bay and we're on the southern end of the bay where we're actually in a town called Pacific Grove, which is kind of between Monterey and Pebble Beach.
Yeah, we moved up here 30 years ago. We were both part of the music industry and the video industry in la.
And we moved up.
I had kind of lost completely.
You can only do it for so long, you know, in a technical. From a technical point of view, you could only really do it for so long and then you either became completely disconnected or you went crazy, you know, and drugged and drank yourself to death. And I was a photographer working kind of, kind of just said, I can't do this anymore.
And working kind of as an independent photographer, I got this offer from this company in Chicago to be their artist representative.
And they said you can live anywhere you want, just gotta be close to an airport.
So we have a small little regional airport here that flies to San Francisco or LA to connect. And it's a beautiful place.
Um, at that time it wasn't overly expensive. It was, it was affordable. Um, my wife went to school at a new csumb, a new state college. So they had the newest computers, you know, they open one year when she went and class size was 15 versus 500 at Berkeley.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: That sounds like more like heaven to me.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it. It pretty much is. And we hate to talk about it because it really, you know, we're right on the edge of this mild, deep trench, so our temperatures never really get above 70 and they maybe go to 45, 50 in the winter, you know, but so perfect temperature five miles east,
[00:05:16] Speaker A: it's a hundred, probably similar to Australia. But you go inland and you get away from the coastal breeze like a. There's a breeze that comes in in summer and hits sort of Perth or West Coast. They call it the Fremantle doctor And it's just this nice cooling breeze that comes in not all the time, but every now and then. So they call it. Yeah, the Fremantle doctor But you head inland and desert or even north a few hours and then it starts getting baking hot. So. But it's not so bad. We're just about. We're coming out of winter now, we're into spring, so it won't be a lot, it won't be too long and then we'll have summer to complain about how hot it is.
So I definitely. We're going to get into your book, Woody. My Journey Through Grief, through. Sorry Through Joy, Grief and Healing with a Dog. But also fascinated by your documentary making.
I believe it's an award winning documentary, Addicted to Joy. Do you still catch up with your co contributors in with.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: I'll, I'll.
We just lost Paul Strau about six, six weeks ago. And if you watched it, Paul. Paul and I bonded from the first time we met. I think I interviewed him five or six times.
He gave me a Hawaiian name and just.
He was Duke Kahana Moco's second.
And his job was because Duke slept. He was a deep sea diver before he did the whole Olympic thing. He would wear a bell helmet and, and clean the docks in Hawaii and he could sleep underwater in this bell helmet. So it was Paul, it was Paul's job to sit next to him and they'd be out to dinner with a senator or you know, because Duke was a huge, huge person and he would sleep, he always wore really dark glasses and he would sleep at the table and it was Paul's job to kick him on the leg and then repeat the question to him so he could, you know, answer the question.
Just hysterical stuff.
It really, it really is. He had such a, he had such a soft, gentle spirit.
And they just had his paddle out about 10 days ago in Honolulu. And another one of the guys from the film, Derek Dorner, the big wave guy, Derek asked me to write a piece of music for it. So of course I'm not done with it. You know, of course I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pound it to death and do that. But, but I think it's a pretty big honor. I'm, it's really funny, I'll tell you.
I gave up on that film about a year and three months ago last June.
And we had been trying to stream it, we'd streamed it, we couldn't get them to pay $1.99 to see it.
And last June I just went, I'm going to put it on YouTube and I'll, I, let's just see what happens.
And I forgot about it because I was kind of working on, on the book and, and stuff like that and I had a couple, couple big projects and I just forgot about it. And in December I got this really beautiful comment that was like, that was like, wow, I, I really love this, this, I love what you did and stuff. And I went, well, that was really nice. I should, I should respond.
And I went and I clicked onto the page. 25,000 views, 15 pages of beautiful comments.
Yeah. And right now it's 35, 35K. And you know, it's just, I guess that was the mana that I was supposed to spread there and just put this thing.
About a year before I did it, I got this comment and it said this movie should be free, like surfing.
And I went, yeah, this guy has no idea what it cost to put this thing together.
I just want to kill him for
[00:09:32] Speaker A: that comment, you know, Just such a sellout.
Yeah, you sold out, man.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Come on.
Oh, yeah.
I am in contact with a few of them. The, the guy that, that was the, the kind of the board builder, Larry. It was going to be called the Larry Fuller story. And all of a sudden, he got really closed up about his past.
And then I realized he never finishes anything, and there had to be an end, you know? And right now, I think there are 60 to 70 of those precious surfboards wrapped up in foam against a wall in a warehouse. I know I can see them. I know where they're sitting, and they're not finished. They're either not glassed or they're not chambered or. And all these guys that, that he brought in, like Al Marrick's close to 80.
Al Marrick is not going to sit there and hand sand a board for six hours a day. His shoulders gone anyway, you know, especially
[00:10:41] Speaker A: in the wrists as well, even in the fingers. Simple thing.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Yeah, Just holding. Yeah. And so all those guys are.
Are beginning to age out.
He got, he got aboard to Kelly Slater, your countryman. Wayne lynch was, Was the smartest.
And he just, he just said, I'll take the boards.
I'll finish him, you know, and he, he, he. Then he could sell him, but with every person, it was supposed to be one for the wood supplier, one for him, one for Larry, and then one for the surfer or the shaper. But then he, like, lost his mind. And when Kelly won his 11th world championship, they got that board, they scanned it, and he decided he wanted to make 11. 11 redwood boards and 11 giant sequoia boards. There were 22 of those boards.
And then he did some nine sixes with Al. And that was all done through Al Marrick at Channel Islands. Last time I was down there, there was probably 16 of them that weren't touched.
And the. The film came out, and actually, Paul and I had a lot of pretty heavy conversations about the title because he said addicted has a negative connotation to it. And I said, well, it does, but in this case, it's the addiction of all these guys that did whatever they could so they could serve.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: And Addicted to Joy is such a great title. I mean, as you say, addicted by itself can have as you know, like so many different connotations, especially with drugs and alcohol and other. But Addicted to Joy is. There's a real balance I feel to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Wayne. Wayne lynch and I got, got to be pretty close and he told me some pretty incredible stuff that, you know, I said at the end of the inter. First interview, I said, tell me a story, just tell me a story. And he said, I suppose you want a shark story.
And I said I don't have to have a shark story.
I can just tell me whatever you want.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Quintessential Australian stories are the sharks or redback spiders.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: You want a shark story, right? No, no, no, just tell me something. And he told me about he and his friend surfing and seeing this wave breaking out about a half a mile and thinking, wow, let's go out there.
And they paddle out to it. And as they're paddling out, it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and it's starting to get into the 30 foot, 35 foot range. And he got on it and lost his balance and went completely over and landed on his back on flat on the water. And when you do that from, from 30ft.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like a slab of concrete, right?
[00:13:46] Speaker B: It was. And he broke a couple vertebrae and he broke his shoulder and he broke an arm and it was really pretty messed up. And fortunately he was surfing with somebody and he said when he came to and he was held under for a really long time to the point of blacking out and he was wearing a leash and he said the only thing I could think of when I was underwater thinking I was going to die was they're gonna say the leash drowned him.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: That's what was going through his mind when.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: That's what was going when.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: He's just one of his greatest fears. I don't know if it's getting attacked by a great, great white shark or white pointer shark or. Yeah, I mean the little tumblers we on school holidays. Little, you know, you get, get tumbled around just in the wash and that was bad enough, but like surfing the big waves, that's. Yeah, I think I'll leave it to the pros.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna.
Well, my one and only real surfing experience was in Southern California and, and I was body surfing. I was living right. Didn't know it at the time, but I was living up on the bluffs on Santa Monica above the Duke Kahanamoko Club right below me. I, I believe in everything's connected.
How, how that, how that got connected like that I don't know, but I got down there and There was about 8 or 9ft in Santa Monica Bay. That's pretty big.
And I got out there and I got up on it and I looked around and I could see all the way past the southern end and I could see up to Zuma. And I went, I did it really quick. And I went, wow. Never seen that before. And then I went over, I went over the top and went in face first.
I broke three, I broke three ribs and I kind of, kind of staggering out of the water and there are three lifeguards standing there looking at me. They're going, wow. We thought we were going to come for you.
We're all betting we're going to come for you. And, and I, I went, no, I don't want to. I don't want to. I shouldn't do that. I'll take unnecessary chances. This is a warning, you know, don't, don't. And, and I'm tall, which, which, which is a problem.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Yeah, your center of gravity is so much taller.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Way up. Yeah, way up.
Jerry Lopez, tiny. I mean, Paul was about 5, 10 or so, but that's big. That's big. 5, 6 is 5, 6, 5, 8. Kelly's pretty short.
You want to keep that center of
[00:16:25] Speaker A: gravity down lower, don't you?
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You don't want flying around.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. That's why I'm too uncoordinated. I would never be a good surfer. Motorbike riding. Yeah.
I did read from your book is that you are not a pet person.
But were it the birds or the dogs that convinced you to become a pet person?
[00:16:48] Speaker B: It was, it was my wife and it, to me, it didn't really matter. I, we met, we met like at work. She was chief engineer of record plant in LA on 3rd Street. And we, I worked for a consulting company that we brought in really high tech stuff.
So if a big, if a big artist was in there and they wanted an extra 24 or they wanted two extra 24 tracks, we brought those in for them and then made them all run together.
So, you know, you go in and do your wonderful little magic for a couple hours and then leave them alone and go visit them every once in a while.
And she was the engineer there. And I went, wow, this person is really special.
Really, really special.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Workplace romance. I love it.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Oh yeah, it was, it was.
And I knew it almost immediately. And she had a bird that hated me.
Just hated me.
I still have scars on my fingers from, from the things it would Hang upside down. We had an apartment on Sunset Boulevard. It would hang up, had its own room. It would hang upside down and just screech at night at the. At the stoplights and the car lights and stuff.
And if you put the blinds down, it's. It stopped. But it was the Hang upside. Hanging upside down on the bridge. Just.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: You were competition. You were competition. I was coming in between the burden and. And.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we had. We had another one that died in the earthquake in Northridge in 94. It couldn't take the stress.
It just. They stress out so easy.
And, you know, if my wife's dad would have got her a pony, you know, there never would have been eight Great Danes. But I've con. I connected with the dogs and the bird. The birds were really focused on her, and I connected. I started to connect with the dogs.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: Once you started bringing dogs into your life, was it always Great Danes or. You know how you kind of. Sometimes you can pick a breed and that becomes your breed. They become your essence, in a sense.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: It's definitely. It's definitely my wife's breed. And as. As we get a little bit older and we start thinking about, I'm kind of trying to cross the barrier of another dog because our current Great Dane will do nothing with me.
Nothing. She won't walk out the door on a leash with me.
It's. She's completely bonded to my wife, and I miss walking a dog.
So I don't know if. If we have a great breeder who breeds for. For long life and especially in a day. And, you know, we. We got a couple of them that didn't make it past six. And we lost another puppy at. At. At a year. And, you know, just one that we sent one puppy that we put through four weeks of dialysis at UC Davis in Davis and brought him home, and he was fine. But when he started to grow, his organs didn't grow, you know, so when he started to get big and he got big fat, they get big fast. He just couldn't do it.
So, yeah, there's something about them. I mean, they're all characters.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: There's a puppy photo, it might be on your website of Woody when he was a pup. And my goodness, he was such a cute pups.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Well, and I do believe.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: I know he got his name, but it wasn't from the Toy Story, maybe linked to the documentary we've been speaking about.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it. He just looked like a Woody.
He did. He just. It. It. It just kind of stuck with him. I mean it, it happened really quick too. We, we. The name came out really quick.
We drove up to Spokane to get him.
So one day of driving from Monterey to Spokane is about 14 or 15 hours. That's a long drive straight, you know. And then we took two days to drive him back home.
But he kind of just came in and the coloration was really unusual. They, they went back 14, 14 generations in his pedigree to find the brown.
And I think that was probably, and this is my personal feeling about it, but certainly not science. But I think that when we had him altered, that's when the change really started to happen in him.
And I think there was probably that weird genetic thing that made him the color that he was also probably unleashed some pretty bad brain stuff because I
[00:22:07] Speaker A: did read that he developed, you know, very, very sadly developed some neurological problems and some, you know, anger around that as well.
It must have been amazing though, you know, your journey with Woody and it's always the end is always a sad part and it's always a part that's been.
I've kind of struggled a bit myself to remind me of the beauty because the loss is so overwhelmingly destructive in a sense.
What was he like as a puppy? Was he ever naughty? And I really hope he was. I really hope he was because that's the best part.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Oh. Oh.
At points he would just be bouncing off the walls.
My wife and I would just look at each other and go just, just, just a complete lunatic. But, but really, really well mannered, you know, but boy, when the switch flipped.
The switch it went, it went to full blown. Full blown, I'm a
[00:23:21] Speaker A: child mode.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
At one point my, my office is kind of like lets out onto our back patio and we have a pretty good backyard for, for Pacific Grove.
And I look out the back door and he's.
He's digging a hole.
And I, I went, okay. And I walked out there and he's talking to it, He's digging it and he's going.
And then he digged really fast. And then. And, and it. I. I was this far from him and I would. Didn't exist.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: It didn't exist.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: It was him in this hole. And it was like grudge match, you know, loser leaves town here. I'm.
That's it. I'm done with you.
And you know. Yeah.
The lessons for me still continue to this day that he taught me. And we're coming up on three years in January, it'll be three. And I am still learning.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: I love your book and it's so honestly written.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Like it's so perfectly imperfect. And I say that with the most absolute respect. It was really interesting. And this is part of your journey that I'd never thought about is dreams. Ophelia got recommended by a therapist pretty much.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: You know, I'm still studying with her today and it's, it's gone to a different level with it, but I kind of view her as my Earth science advisor. You know.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: Amazing. Sounds absolutely incredible.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: It, it really is. I mean, a couple of the things that, that came out you would never, ever, ever think would be possible.
You know, I, I, I. In the book, I talk about it a little bit, but we grew up poor and my father was abusive and my mother was abusive and they pretty much left me alone from the time I was like 13. I was the last kid and I was a good kid. I was playing music, but I was a good kid.
And my sister was a complete, she'd been to jail three times by the time she was 16. And, and, and she'd go to California and get pregnant and they'd bring her back to Illinois and, and they'd give her my room. And I moved, I, I moved from, I moved from a room into a closet down to the basement because I just, I, you know, I couldn't, I just couldn't. I had to find this place. And, and when I, I moved out, I went to school with the Belushes.
I went, I went to school. John and I were on a duet acting team.
Not John, Jim and I run. But we knew each other and they played music too. So, you know, it was Wheaton and small town kind of stuff. And I was a good kid. I was honor roll.
And when I moved out, two of us didn't go to college. The other guy went to jail. Out of 500 kids in our graduating high school, they asked me what I wanted to do and I said, I'm going to go be a sheep herder in Wyoming, you know. And the other guy went to jail. The other guy went to jail. And when I moved out, my mother gave me this 12 page letter of don't get girls pregnant. Don't get, don't go to, don't go to jail. You know, don't blah, blah. 12 pages of it. And I was like, I was stunned the first night I ever drank and I moved into an apartment with a couple of guys and we went and got beer and that was the first time I ever drank.
And I was about 19, close to 19 at that point.
And I Carried this image of being the janitor's kid because everybody else in town was really affluent, you know, and we had a 54 Ford army station wagon. And you know, my dad didn't wear his teeth and he was the janitor at the school, so everybody called him Mushmouth. And I was Mushy's kid and, and I carried this self vision of a janitor's kid around for close to 50 years.
And Ophelia, when we were kind of at the end of, or in the middle of the, the dream work, she said, I have no idea what is going to happen, but on the 17th of November you're going to wake up and something really is going to change.
I was like, okay. And I kind of forgot about it.
And the night of the 16th, I had this really awful bunch of dreams and, and everything. And I woke up and I wasn't even, I couldn't even talk. I wasn't conversant with my wife. I didn't, I couldn't say. She, she'd look at me and I just said, I can't, I, I can't talk to you. I gotta get in the shower. I stood in there for about 45 minutes and when I came out it began to kind of gel and I realized that I had lost that.
And to this day I don't see that as a self image anymore.
Which was.
Yeah, not stopping drinking after 50, 53 years was a, was a big, big thing.
But this was such a much bigger thing, you know, because it, it allowed me to really have value and feel value about what I do and, and, and that you, you know, you spoke about. The, the book is kind of perfectly imperfect. It was really, really train of thought.
Really wrote it in six weeks and it just kind of poured out of me. I, I developed a really great routine where I went and waited the garden for an hour in the morning and then I came in and wrote for three hours and it was, it was a really great routine and you know, getting my hands in the earth and, and grounding in that, in that manner.
And then I came in and I focused pretty, pretty well on it, but I didn't know how to end it.
I really didn't know because I didn't know if there was an end because I knew there were so many changes going on in me, you know, that there wouldn't be an end. And I tried about four or five different ways and they failed and they just didn't go together at all.
And again I went to sleep and woke up and My wife went in the shower and I wrote the last chapter in 10 minutes.
Every word in there is true. And I know a lot of it. I know a lot of it sounds pretty freaking crazy, glowing lights outside the window and, and. And all that stuff, but it was. It was all real. And I have a.
A friend who's.
They're actually breaking pretty much.
Pretty much this year. They'll break as. As major artists.
It's called. The band's called Poi Rogers and it's kind of like Western swing and just. She plays stand up and her husband plays guitar. And three, Three different slide tunings. You know, he's got a Fender triple neck and you know, and she's just slaps it. They're on the road with Southern culture on the skids right now, and they're, you know, they're playing some big halls and they're getting some great response. And we've been. We've been friends for a long time. And she called me up after she read it and she said, that's pretty honest.
And I said, yeah. And she said, you really didn't leave anything out, did you? And I said no. I said the only way I could do it was to be honest about it. And yeah, the only really way I could do it was to just really tell the truth.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: And you still work with Ophelia now she's a musician as well. And maybe that's how it works, works together. Maybe. I don't really know, but it's just so interesting.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: I gave myself over, completely over to the work. And it was difficult.
I mean, she said, okay, I don't take everybody. So she said, what I want you to do is write out your intention for our work.
And that was really hard.
I just kept a legal pad around and I would just scratch it and, you know, and just three form ideas. If I had an idea about something and it. It really put it together. It took me three weeks and I went back and she said, okay, let's go.
And you. I really, you really had to give yourself over to it because a lot of. Boy, a lot of it. There's a lot of tears and there's a lot of really raw emotions that came out and all the. Some things that would. Would come out. At one point I was up. The COVID of the book is a kind of a really special place to me. And I was up there in my dream. She would take me down that path and take me out into that beach there that the COVID of the book is. And, And I, in one of the dreams. She had me come around a corner and I remember jumping back and there was this blue towel spread out and it had a whole bunch of bones on it.
And my initial thought was, what about the bones?
And she said, no, what did you feel about the color of the towel?
It stunned me because I thought she was going to say, yeah, well these are Woody's bones.
And that's the connection you're making. And when she, she's really knocked me across the side of the head a few times with. How does that feel? Where does, where do you feel that?
Where in your body do you feel that?
And what, and what does it make you, what does it make you want to do?
You know? Why?
What is your intentions behind that, behind that feeling?
I can travel.
I can dream myself into things now.
And we did a, a lot of ancient ancestors work.
So when I was in, when I was in London for the London Book Fair, I took a couple, three days for myself.
And my ancestors are back from that part of the world.
So I kind of, you know, I found like the first standing stone and it's in the middle of a courtyard that's 400ft by 600ft and it's got 35 story chrome buildings around it.
And it's really. You have to go down alleys and under this and over that, over that to get to it. But it's great, it's perfectly London. And I also, I took Alfil calls them seeing stones, but they're round with holes through them and you know, that would call by creatures or something like that, but she always called them kind of seeing stones. And I took one and left it at the tower.
And when I got home I was actually able to dream through that.
Looking through the stone and into, into that environment.
And absolutely the craziest thing last night I probably had 50 dreams of Woody.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Were they good dreams of Woody?
[00:35:17] Speaker B: They were, but I could feel the pressure on the leash in the dream.
There was one incident where he got away from me and I thought for sure he was going to get hit by a car and he, you know, he came back and that was kind of like after the change had started to happen where it was uncontrollable. I mean, I'm a big guy and this dog just saw something he wanted to do and he was gone, you know, So I, that I repeated that three times last night.
But I track my sleep and my sleep pattern last night. You can see each dream as it hit. I've never had a sleep pattern like I had last Night. And again, Ophelia's statement about, out of the blackest earth grows the best life.
Absolutely, you know, out of the just. Absolutely.
And that's reflected in nature.
You know, we live here in this. We live here in the Salinas Valley. We grow food for the world.
And it's. When you drive past the fields when they've been plowed, it's black.
So if you can find that really, really, really blackest place, and instead of being afraid of it, go make friends with it and welcome it in and say, you know, I realize you're there.
As ugly as grief is, it's comfortable because it's.
You know, it. It's familiar. And so when you start to have that feeling, you don't have to kind of branch out on it, but it doesn't grow you.
You know, it doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't allow you to.
And really, time is the conqueror. You know, we. We got. Who knows what we have, what we have. But, boy, it's a pretty amazing place, this. This planet. And I'm amazed at. At the things that. When I just went through kind of a weird dreaming situation, Ophelia's counsel to me was, let's see what comes forward, and then let's approach that with curiosity.
I want to relate one story about Woody that I think said it all to me, and it was.
We live kind of in an area of a lot of elderly people, and we were walking one day, and across the street was this woman who was just 95, and she was just absolutely ancient. She was on a walker, and she was just staring at him, and she just couldn't take her eyes off of him. And I said, do you want to meet him?
And she kind of, like, nodded her head a little bit. As I'm walking across the street, I went, this is the stupidest thing I've ever done. Because if he sees a squirrel, nothing's going to stop him.
He's going to trash her. He's going to knock her down. There's going to be paperwork. It's going to be all.
And he stood up against her and leaned ever so softly while she rubbed his ears for five minutes and told me about all the dogs in her life. And at the end of it, we're both crying and. And. And. And he's just standing there.
The leash is completely limp, and he's just. Just ever so softly touching her. And then he kind of looked and he went, okay, I'm done.
I've done my work here.
After we lost him.
Both my doctor and my therapist said write a book. I wanted to know the purpose.
And the purpose of it for me was that.
I mean, I think it's absolutely amazing. Woody goes to Australia.
His reach is so expanded than it ever was in this little community that I have to take some comfort in that. That as much as I'd like to have him and.
And last night he always used to walk down the very small bedroom. The bedroom is the bedroom, so there's maybe a slit half on my side and maybe two feet on my wife's side. And he used to come down the side of the bed and put his face in mine every morning and harder have a time to eat, you know.
And last night I felt him come down the. Come down the thread and, you know, thanks, buddy. It. It hurts, but thanks. Thanks for stopping by. You know, whatever. Whatever astral plane you're on, you know, thanks for stopping by.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: If you'd like to learn more about Richard and his work, you'll find links in the Show Notes. Just scroll down in your podcasting app.
And if you'd like to read Woody My Journey Through Joy, Grief, and Healing with a Dog, Richard's book is available now in paperback, hardback, and also an audiobook edition is available.
I'll also place the links to purchase in the Show Notes. My name is John Littlefair, and thank you for listening to Never Just a Dog.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: Sa.
