Episode 1: Being Wrong Act One - Low Birth Weight Puppies

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Act one

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low birth weight puppies.

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So the first one is Sid,
our tiny baby puppy.

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Remember the tiny puppy?

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Tiny Sid. Who is now.

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Scarlett. Scarlett.

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So Sid was born.

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She was three and a half ounces, I think.

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I think she was three and a half ounces.

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If that If that and our normal is

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8 to 12, I would say eight, eight
and a half to 12 ounces.

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So she was just tiny, tiny, tiny. And,

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you know, she came out and she suckled
right away, which for us is a threshold.

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Right, that they have to nurse.

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They have to want to nurse.

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You know, people kept asking me,
is she going to make it?

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Of course, you know, Facebook, everybody,
Of course

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The little one,
I mean, yeah, it's heartbreaking.

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And why not and why not?

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And I kept saying, I don't know.

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You know, there's

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I kept saying, not only don't I know,
I said there's no way to know.

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There's no way to know.

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But she's nursing
so that she's crossed that

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she's
crossed that threshold she's nursing.

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But I don't know.

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And then, you know,
the days went by and she did okay.

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We had some issues with her getting cold.

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That was a problem.

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She would get cold because of her body
size was so little and probably also blood

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sugar was, you know, more of an issue
because of the small body size.

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So, you know,
I did make sure that she, I defended her,

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made sure she got a good place
on the teat.

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I provided an extra heat source for her,
so I always made sure

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she was snuggled into a warm neck warmer.

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Velvet would be kind of upset by her
sometimes.

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And, you know, a lot of breeders will say,

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you know, mother knows best, it's nature.

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If she's rejecting it.

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But, you know, here's
the thing about that,

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is that many times
the dam will be rejecting a puppy

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just because it's a little cold
or a little, the body temperature

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is a little bit lower,
even if it's not totally chilled

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or the blood
sugar might not be quite right.

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And these are things that are really
there's nothing inherently wrong with

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a puppy.

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It's just that the small body
size, it chilled easier. So,

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you know, I
was working hard to keep her warm and then

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but it was really still from time to time
upsetting to velvet.

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So I tried to sneak her out of the box.

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That didn't work because Velvet knew
she was missing and she went nuts.

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So, you know, it was kind of a catch 22.

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Darned if you do and darned if you don't.

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And I will be honest,
it was getting to the point for Mark and I

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where it was so upsetting and disruptive

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to Velvet

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and the rest of the litter
that we were worried

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that the rest of the puppies
and Velvet were suffering.

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And we, you know,
I was right on the edge of just like

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I just don't even know this puppy's
so tiny.

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Is she going to make it?
And it's upsetting everyone.

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And maybe we're doing the wrong thing
to keep her alive,

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because she also was scrawny
and just terrible looking and,

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you know, but she was nursing.

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And then right after that,
she sort of turned a corner.

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I don't know if you remember that, honey,
but she sort of turned a corner

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and she just started gaining
and doing a lot better.

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And Velvet settled down. Yeah.

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You know,
but I still was sort of in the dark about

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if she was going to make it
and if she did make it.

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You know, more specifically,
was she going to be normal?

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Was she going to be neurologically normal?

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I mean, what what were we looking at here
with this puppy?

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What kind of possible

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defects? You know, I just I didn't know.

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But she moved normally.
She nursed normally.

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She was strong.

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So there we were.

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So now comes my part about the story
and my story and how my story

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almost kept me from learning something.

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So we put up pictures of her all the time.

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Of course, every she had a whole following

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and somebody said,

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isn’t her head, abnormally large?

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And I very reflexively said, No, no.

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Bull terriers
have big heads and big heads.

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That's how they look.

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And you know, it's true.

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Bull terriers do have big heads
in comparison to their bodies.

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And in fact, there's a great article

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by Winky Mackay-Smith
on Type in the Bull Terrier,

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where she specifically talks about it and
says It's one of the things that artists

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tend to get wrong and judges, too,
when they're judging or drawing bull

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terriers is proportionately
the head is large.

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It's what gives them that.

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They almost look like they're
going to tip over onto their heads.

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Yeah, they do.

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They almost look like, you know,
those fish eye things when you're looking

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through it in the heads really big
and the bodies is little.

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I mean, that's, you know,
not that extreme, but that's sort of

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the effect.

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It's the head is big.

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But here's the thing

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that puppy,

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the head was really big
and the body was really scrawny.

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But I just you know,
I had this strong thing in my head,

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almost reflexive,
like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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The head supposed to be big
because that's my tribe, right?

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I'm a bull terrier fancier and I know.

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And you don't know when the head's big
and supposed to be big.

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And I just even though at the time
I remember looking at it and thinking,

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yeah, her head is big, my might just knee
jerk was no know that that's normal.

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But then this woman, Patty,
Brill Harbison, who's very smart,

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wrote in and said, oh, no,
that's IUGR It's normal.

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And in fact, it's asymmetrical.

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IUGR She's going to be fine.

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So overall.

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So of course, I'm like, well,
what the heck is IUGR and what's going on?

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So IUGR is intrauterine
growth restriction.

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And what it means is that

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the animal,

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human or puppy somehow
had growth restriction in utero.

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And there's a lot of reasons
it can happen.

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But basically there's asymmetrical
and symmetrical.

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Symmetrical is where the puppy is born
proportionately small.

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It's like a perfect little puppy,
but it's just small.

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And then you have asymmetrical
where the puppy is born

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and it's a little bit of a Frankenstein
puppy.

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It has a ginormous head and a scrawny
little body with no subcutaneous fat.

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It almost looks like wasted away
like a little old man.

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And, you know, so

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those puppies, those asymmetrical puppies
really are not as attractive.

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The little tiny ones look nicer.

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But here's the crazy thing.

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When it's symmetrical.

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So those good looking little tiny ones,

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that means it happened probably in the
first half of the pregnancy.

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And the prognosis is actually

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worse for those puppies, ironically,
because

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in the first half of the pregnancy is

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when the the neural tube is being formed.

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And that is when you get profound
birth defects.

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And if if if there's any growth
restriction during that time

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for any reason,
it can have profound effects

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developmentally
and neurologically on the puppy,

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because fundamentally
that whole system is being formed then

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in fact, with certain kinds of defects
in humans,

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like thalidomide,
the thalidomide babies, the that that

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it was a drug
that they gave to women that just,

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you know, caused horrible defects

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with thalidomide babies.

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They can actually tell exactly

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when the exposure was by the defect.

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They actually have like a a chart.

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So you can say, what if it's legs,
it happened at this time

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because each of these things, it's

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a critical period
for the formation of each of these things.

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And if anything happens,
any growth restriction, any toxins,

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it will affect profoundly
for the rest of the life.

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The animal,

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as opposed to

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when it happens in the second half,
the fundamental embryo has been formed.

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So now what happens is the

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puppy can go to what we call
brain sparing strategy.

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So the body basically is

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wasted at the expense of the brain.

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So so the puppy will develop
neurologically normal

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or the baby
because it's the same thing in humans.

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So when you have that puppy that's born
that just looks like, again,

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a Frankenstein puppy, scrawny little body,
big head, that actually

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is a good indicator because it means
that probably neurologically

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that puppy has a better chance
of growing up normally.

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So you cute little puppies with all the,
you know, regular

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chubby little tiny puppy, that puppy

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not is not as good a chance of living.

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So, you know, now I could say to people,
hey, you know what?

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Actually,
I think her chances are pretty good.

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And in fact, she's doing great right now.

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She's already got Barn Hunt titles.

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You know, she's been to some dog shows.

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And. Were you wrong?

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Yeah. Was I wrong?

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Was I wrong and was my story ever so

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strong that even as my eyes were seeing it

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and my brain was even registering like,
yeah, no, that puppy doesn't look good.

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My mouth or fingers were typing.

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No, no, that's normal.

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That's not because.
Because this is my story.

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My story is that my bull
terriers have big heads.

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What do you think about that, honey?
Mm hmm.

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I mean, I understand what you're saying.

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Was this public,
everybody saw your response,

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and somebody had the courage to step up
and say, actually, you're wrong.

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Yes, that's what it is.

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Yeah, well, she.

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Yeah, she didn't say, well, you're wrong.

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She said, this is what this is.
And and I and I really. She didn’t say

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verbally you're wrong.

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But she says, no, you're wrong.
Right, right, right.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And again, that's, you know, it's
in a public forum and you're like, whoa,

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you know?

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But for me, I think here's the thing.

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Once you take that step to saying
when someone puts out

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something that shows me
that I actually am wrong for me,

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now that I have
this mindset of being wrong is growth.

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I'm like, Wow, Patty, thank you.

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That's amazing. I did not know that.

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So that now becomes, for me,
a position of strength.

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Because you a little bit of freedom,
I guess, too, how

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you don’t have to worry about being right
all the time.

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You don't have to.

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Well, it you know, because being listen,
anybody who comes and tells you I'm right

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all the time, this is the way it is

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and you just do what I do
and what I do is the right thing.

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Run from that person because they don't
know what they're talking about.

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Can't be

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no, it's just not because if you're never,
you know, listen, the world is growing.

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Knowledge grows every day.

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We know more every day.

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So so that was our little puppy story

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that we learned a lot about.