722 – Sometimes you have to do this: Tom talks Sleeping Rough

Episode 722 – Sleeping Rough
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, this is Tom here with episode 722 and I'm calling it Sleeping Rough. And this is definitely not my normal. High energy training session. In fact, I don't even want to be sitting here recording this right now. I really have better things to do. Which you'll learn about in a moment. Hope you too, miss. Episode 721 That was Matt Shoop. He's a serial entrepreneur. A lot of interesting things on that episode, and especially episode 720, which is about staying safe on public Wi-Fi. Of course, any time you want to get to a back episode, you go screw the commute.com/any episode number. And I guess if you want to, you can follow me on TikTok at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire and pick up a copy of our automation book. I'm a little bit out of it today, folks, but I think I have a message that for a lot of people will resonate. Pick up a copy of our automation book. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree.

[00:01:48] All right, let's get to the main event. I've been sleeping rough. That's what we're calling this episode. Sleeping rough. That's a term that goes around and it's usually people are homeless or not, you know, if they're sleeping in their car. Well, I'm not homeless and I'm not sleeping in my car. It also applies to some just sleep in some place that's not normally designed for people to sleep. So why? Why am I sleeping rough? Well, one of my beloved protection dogs, Tuck, is kind of facing the what they call the Rainbow Bridge. Currently I'm doing like a Hail Mary protocol to try to get him out of pain and walking again. And yeah, I know it's a long shot, but as long as I can keep him out of pain, I'm going to give it a try. And also, yes, I know that I'm violating my own rule about putting out content people didn't sign up for. So if you want to unsubscribe or tell me to go pound salt, I get it. You didn't sign up to hear about this stuff, but it's really part of entrepreneurship. That's kind of the message for today is I can do the best I can with my beloved boy because I don't have to go to work every day. So it's kind of related anyway. You know, normally we talk about entrepreneurship starting and running small businesses.

[00:03:30] So I'll tell you about more about Tuck in a moment. But. Before I do, The big picture here is that this business allows me to better serve humanity. And you might say, well, Tom, a dog is not humanity. Well, I would counter and maybe about 48 other million households in the US alone would disagree with you. And but among them, they have about 77 million pets in these 48 million households in the USA alone. And this doesn't even count the millions of people who want pets, but they can't have them because they're renting. Or maybe they extensively travel for work or whatever. Now worldwide. And this is according to an online survey of like 27,000 people in 22 countries conducted by the global research firm GfK. They said that more than half or 56% of people internationally have at least one pet living with them. So I say pet animals are part of the human experience. In other words, humanity. Now back to Tuck. Well, Monday I took him to the vet, thinking he was not coming home. He couldn't walk and any walking he was able to do, he was falling all over the place. Now Tuck replaced my beloved Rubix who who went to doggie heaven about 5 or 6 years ago. I actually built his casket and we had a funeral for him, which I'm going to leave a link in the show notes. I think you've got to be logged in to watch the the funeral and the casket and everything.

[00:05:23] Burial for that majestic dog. But let me back up a little bit. Tuck was the toughest dog I ever owned. He's a trained protection dog that was bonded with me to the point he would lay his life down to protect me. This kind of bond. Most pet owners, I mean, they either think they have a dog that will do that until testing shows that their dog would probably run behind the couch and hide while they were getting home invaded. Or or they know they don't have a dog like that. Like this rescue husky I got here is all she wants is hugs from everybody. She would never bite anybody, ever. So she's just a sweet family member and loves everybody. All right. But I got to tell you, it's different with protection dogs. I mean, Tuck will not take his eyes off of me unless he's working or chasing his ball. I remember the first couple of days I got him, I was throwing It's called a ball on a string. I said, so I can wind it up and throw it really far, get him his exercise. And it bounced up into a tree and the string got stuck in the tree and this was about 75 yards from me. Well, I could hear and see Tuck tearing limbs off the tree to get to the ball. Right. So that's tough. I know he broke his tooth one time when the ball got away and landed near a curb and he just slammed into it, broke some of his front teeth out.

[00:07:07] So he was a tough boy. But when he's near me, he won't take his eyes off me. He's pretty much using his eyes to beg me to work with him or play with him. And most pet owners just don't know what it's like to have a dog that if there was a threat to me, he would turn that threat into Swiss cheese in a couple of seconds. Anyway, I got to talk as a full grown, highly trained protection dog. And after a few days, I kind of realized why I got such a good deal on them. The people that I bought them from told me that they were raising a puppy for competition and couldn't have two dogs they'd already raised and trained Tuck. And that might have been true. All right. They got a puppy and they have two dogs. But I think the real reason was that Tuck was known as what we say in the business as a vocal dog. He was so loud that I got animal control called on me several times because the neighbors called the police as if I was killing him or poking him in the eye with a stick or something. Now, luckily, the animal control officers were ex-military canine officers themselves. And also, luckily I had everything on video showing them how loud and excited he gets when he's training or playing.

[00:08:37] So. So luckily they left without any trouble. But you could not have this dog in any close, house to house, urban environment. He people would go crazy because he is loud. Everything with this dog is loud and I'm pretty sure that's why they gave him up so cheap with the amount of training he had on him. So after hundreds of hours of training with him and in five years being pretty much inseparable, he started to get arthritis in his spine. So I retired him from heavy training like we use with the protection dogs and and I just let him carry his favorite ball around. He's got a big black Kong that's his favorite and carry it around as we play in the yard. And this led in the past couple of months to his inability to jump up in the Suburban. So I have to help him in. I got a big set of steps to help him into the car. And most recently, he falls over. And now this week, he can't walk at all. Any dog going through this is a sad thing to watch, I can tell you. But especially for Rubix and now Tuck, who were the They were the kings of the hill, majestic beings that were just, I mean, gorgeous and regal and tough but compassionate. You know, they had the reason these dogs are so expensive is because they can be professional fighters on one end, which is easy to find in a dog.

[00:10:19] But on the other end, I've got videos of little three year old leading Rubix around on a leash. You know, so their temperament is they they've got an instinct about the the threats levels and perfectly good to have around that little three year old and kids and kids are hanging on them. And, you know, so so with no danger. That's why they're so expensive to find a dog, find dogs that have that kind of temperament. They can be a professional level fighter or they can be docile and just playful with the when there's no threat, usually you can find one or the other, either something, a dog that'll kill everything in sight or a dog that would go hide behind a couch, you know, for you. So so that's what made them so special. And then being reduced to helplessness is very difficult to to watch after all the time spent with them. Hundreds of hours of training, pretty much inseparable. 724 seven sleeping on the bed next to you. You know, if anything happened, there would be a sad day for the criminal. So it is pretty darn difficult. And being the money guy that I am, I seriously had thoughts. I should buy some stock in Kleenex because it's it's really tough. So sleeping tough. Sleeping rough. I mean, like I said, I'm far from homeless or sleeping in my car. But since Tuck can't get up the steps to the bedroom anymore, I just couldn't stand the thought of him being alone in his hour of need.

[00:12:02] So I slept in the chair that I work in every day so I could hear be near to him and hear him if he cried and give him his medicine and pat him and talk to him like I have every single day since I got him. I mean, every day I've told him he's daddy's boy forever and ever. So with very little sleep, I'm kind of zombified as I'm recording this and I have a very heavy heart. I don't know how people that have to go to a job and at least appear to be alert all day can handle these situations. And plus, they have to leave their babies alone for sometimes 10 or 12 hours all day in a crate. I just can't imagine that. So I'm not really sure what the purpose was of this episode other than to reiterate that our animal friends are part of our humanity. And they've given their love over their entire short lives. That really sucks, the fact that their lives are so short. Asking nothing in return. So I'll sleep rough as long as it takes to make my boys final time on Earth as comfortable as possible and to let him know. His best friend will be there for him as. He's heard his entire life with me. Forever and ever. I'll catch you on the next episode.