November 10, 2022 • 49 mins
Episode 74: Countdown With Keith Olbermann
A-Block (1:45) Let me tell you what is to come: Trump and DeSantis will both run for the '24 Republican Nomination. When DeSantis wins, Trump will run anyway as an independent, cinching the White House for Biden (or any Democrat) (2:05) The Republican establishment has, overnight, turned on Trump and burned the bridges to him. The front page of Murdoch's New York Post has an illustration of Trump as an egg, atop a wall, and in big block letters: "TRUMPTY DUMPTY" and a column inside nicknames him "Toxic Trump." (7:00) Let's review your doubts: Do you doubt DeSantis will run? You think he made that two-minute miniature Bible Epic movie just to run up the score in Florida? Do you doubt the GOP has bailed? Peter King has just said Trump "should no longer be the face of the Republican Party." (12:10) Now Kevin McCarthy gets to lead an impotent, fractured Republican party in the House with not enough power to crush the crazies but not enough power to impeach Biden, either (11:50) And Trump got them a runoff in Georgia where the 203,000 Georgians who voted for Brian Kemp but did not vote for Herschel Walker are really expected to vote for Walker in the runoff?
B-Block (17:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Spaghetti in Staten Island (18:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Glenn Youngkin apologizes to the Pelosis but only after the election is over, and competes with Chris Cillizza and Elon Musk screwing twitter into the ground and threatening to turn your non-blue-checked tweets into junk mail, for the honors. ( 23:14) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The story of the anniversary of my late beloved puppy Mishu.
C-Block (37:02) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL, CONTINUED: The passing of Mishu.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
Let me tell you what is to come. Because there
(00:27):
was no red wave on Tuesday. Donald Trump is wounded
and the right wing establishment, which loved him Tuesday morning,
is turning on him Thursday morning. The front page of
today's Murdoch tabloid, The New York Post, has an illustration
of Trump as an egg a top a wall, and
(00:48):
in big block letters, there is the inevitable caption Trumpty, dumpty.
Donald Trump will respond with his only two emotions, rage
and the thirst for revenge. He will declare his candidacy
as planned next week, no matter how it will hurt
the Georgia runoff. He will step up his attacks on
Ron de Santis. He will call all his opponents rhinos.
(01:12):
He will be indicted in January. He will call the
indictment political persecution. He will note De Santis is morph
into a Jesus freak. He will attempt to go further
than that. He will claim God told him only he
can save America. He will keep running even if his
trial has already started, and De Santis he will also run.
(01:36):
He will drop hints, maybe as early as Trump's declaration
next week. He will let the anticipation build. He will
let the pundits switch to him. He will only announce
later in the winter or even spring. He will position
himself as sane and Trump as crazy. Himself as dedicated
to others in the party, and Trump as dedicated only
(01:58):
to himself. He and Trump will spend the rest of
three beating each other up. He and Trump will then
spend the debate season of three beating each other up.
He and Trump will then spend the primary season of
beating each other up. And it is only then that
(02:18):
it will get interesting, because the Republican Party will have
taken all may learn from Trump. They will have stolen
it from him, refined it, taken it some extra steps,
and they will deny Trump the nomination by hook or
by crook, and then, barring the unforeseen, the presidential election
(02:39):
will be Joe Biden versus Rhonda Santis versus Donald Trump
as an independent. You know that is what a thwarted
Trump would do. You know it if there was any
reason to doubt it, that gleeful tweet from Tuesday night
about the Republican he did not support Joe o' day
(03:02):
losing the Colorado Senate seat is your room. Finder that
while Trump once understood although he did not like the
fact that he was in a partnership with the Republican Party,
he has long since left behind that correct assessment of reality.
Trump believes Trump invented the world, and the world owes Trump,
and the world cannot function without Trump, but Trump can
(03:26):
win without the world. November five, Biden, Democratic Party, incumbent
De Santis, Republican Party Trump, Trump is Jesus Party, and
the outcome the scales may have fallen from the eyes
(03:48):
of the Republicans, the Conservatives, and even some of the fascists,
but that does not mean Trump will have been reduced
to Jill Stein two thousand sixteen or Ralph Nader two thousand.
It does not even mean Trump will have been reduced
to the thirteen point five percent of the vote George
Wallace got that wiped out Hubert Humphrey's last chance in
nineteen sixty eight, nor even the percent for Ross Pero
(04:10):
in nine two that threw any doubt about that election
to Bill Clinton. It is realistic to suggest that in
a three way battle for the presidency in four that
Trump and even the most charismatic of other Republicans like
de Santis could split fifty two or fifty three or
(04:31):
fifty four percent of what would have been the Republican vote.
Maybe it's thirty to twenty three to twenty five, or
something like the nineteen twelve election, in which a similarly
magnetic ex president. And I hate to compare these two men,
but in nineteen twelve, Theodore Roosevelt denied the Republican nomination,
went out on the progressive third party ticket, the Bull
(04:54):
Moose Party, and he finished second, ahead of the incumbent
Republican President, William Howard Taft. And all that did was
guaranteed the Democrats the White House Woodrow Wilson Roosevelt president
Taft could do. Santis finished second and Trump third. Sure,
(05:15):
it's a long time until November, but you know that
even Trump's morbid fear of losing would not stop him
from running as an independent somehow, even if he understood
it meant also destroying the party that he in essence built,
and that it would mean keeping the Democrats in the
(05:36):
White House. Let's review your doubts. Do your doubt to
Santis will run. Do you really think he made a
two minute commercial about how God created him on the
eighth Day. How God made him to be the man
who protected the world. Do you really think he made
(05:58):
that miniature Bible epic just to run up the score
in Florida against Charlie Freak and Chris de Santis is
going for the evangelicals. He started it months ago by
ending every speech by imploring the audience to put on
the armor of God. That is a quote, put on
the armor of God. And for all we know, De
(06:19):
Santis may actually believe he has been anointed. Do you
doubt the GOP mainstream didn't just tell Trump it is
leaving him. The rest of that New York Post cover reads,
Don who couldn't build a wall, had a great fall.
Can all the GOP's men put the party back together again?
(06:42):
And it's more than just a humiliating illustration. The Post
promises on its cover nine pages of Trump Republican coverage,
and writes analyst John put oor ITTs has two words,
Why Tuesday was a red trickle. Donald Trump his terrible
candidates dragged Republicans down. Rupert Murdoch approved this and there's
(07:03):
more on the cover, and now, writes columnists Pierce Morgan,
It's time for Trump to move on from politics inside
pot Or It's His column begins, Hey, Lion, Ted and
Sleepy Joe meet Toxic Trump. He calls him toxic Trump
(07:25):
five times in The New York Post. What Tuesday Nights
results suggest, he writes, is that Trump is perhaps the
most profound vote repellent in modern American history. This is
not peak over losing the midterms. This is scapegoating, and
from Rupert Murdoch. That is to expand a phrase I
(07:48):
know from somewhere that is not just burning the bridges,
it's napalming them. In fact, it's not just burning the bridges,
it's burning the river as well. And every major news
outlet with a conservative source through Trump overboard, Yes Your Day.
This was the end of the Trump era and the
dawn of the De Santis era. ABC News quoted a
(08:11):
Republican operative it says is close to the Trump orbit.
Like every other Trump catastrophe, he did this to himself
with stupid and reckless decisions. If I did not know better,
I would have thought that was said by me in
the New York Times quote. I strongly believe he should
no longer be the face of the Republican Party. That
(08:34):
is from the arch Trump loyalist and longtime New York
Congressman Pete King. The rage against Trump is obviously not
without basis or merit. In these mid terms, the Republicans
had on their side the tradition of nearly every White
House losing heavily at the mid terms, but also Biden's
(08:56):
low approval numbers, wild inflation, gas price jumps, supply chain issues,
a war in Europe, the res to do of the
Afghanistan withdrawal, voter caging, pandemic paranoia, jerrymandering, and then the
Democratic nominee from Pennsylvania having a stroke and needing electronic
help processing speech during the debate, and they lost. And
(09:20):
what did all that get them? A margin in the
House so small that the Washington Post Jennifer Reuben observed
last night that the Democrats could get four although they
might need maybe eight, saying Republicans and say, look, if
you will vote for her, we will vote for her.
(09:40):
And they would then nominate Liz Cheney to be the
new Speaker of the House, and they'd probably pull it off. Instead,
Kevin McCarthy says he has enough votes to become speaker.
He met with Marjorie Trailer Park Green last night for
forty five minutes, after which he might have thought about
running instead forehead preschool teacher. It looks like McCarthy will
(10:03):
have two hundred twenty four Republicans. That is not enough
to impeach Joe Biden. That is not enough to cut
off Ukraine. That is not enough to undermine the security net.
That is not enough to shut up the lunatics like
Trailer Park Green, with or without Bobert. If McCarthy wakes
up tomorrow morning and endorses Liz Cheney for Speaker, I
(10:25):
would only be mildly flabbergasted. In the Senate. All Trump
got them was a repeat of control, likely to hinge
on a runoff. In Georgia again, a runoff after a
general election in which herschel Walker got one million, nine
hundred and six thousand, two hundred and twenty nine votes
(10:46):
one million, nine hundred and six thousand to two nine.
In the same general election, George's Republican governor Brian Kemp
got two million, one hundred nine thousand, two hundred eight
votes to one oh nine to eight. That's two hundred
and three thousand Georgians, nearly all of them Republicans who
(11:08):
did not vote for herschel Walker. Why on earth would
anybody expect all two hundred and three thousand of them
to turn up for a runoff, another runoff, another Georgia
election and vote for herschel Walker when they just refused to.
There is at the bottom of all this always the
(11:30):
same issue, the issue of forgive the use of the
term Trump's slaves the cultists. For seven years, he and
Fox and Murdoch and news Max and every evangelical have
been positioning him as the Messiah. And there are tens
of millions of Americans whose belief in that is as
(11:51):
strong at this moment as it was on Tuesday. But
the problem becomes, as it becomes for all the messiahs
in all the pages of history. What happens? What do
you do when a new Messiah opens up a messiah
shop down the block, and he does the messiah thing
(12:13):
just a little bit better than you do. And on
the day God looked down on his planned paradise and said,
I need a protector. So God made a fighter. God
said I need somebody willing to get up before dawn,
kiss his family goodbye. Travel thousands of miles, two minutes
(12:36):
of that Mark my words. Rhn de Santis is running
to be God and the Republican nominee for President Trump
doesn't care if he's elected God or the devil, or
is even on the Republican ticket in he is also
running for president, but only one of them is on
(12:59):
the cover of the Rupert Murdoch newspaper this morning, portrayed
is a cracked egg still ahead. Everything's just fine at Twitter,
(13:23):
just because there's a fake Donald Trump with a blue
check mark, and a fake Lebron James with a blue
check mark, and a fake ESPN with a blue check mark,
the convenience of timing. A Republican who made fun of
the attack on Paul Policy apologizes after the election is over,
and it is an anniversary for me, both heartbreaking and heartwarming.
(13:45):
Indulge me, please, I want to tell you the story
of my dog, Misshoe. That's next. This is countdown. This
is countdown with Keith Alberman still ahead. On countdown, Elon
Musk says everything, I'll be fine when verification ends on Twitter,
(14:07):
and then a fake Lebron James with a blue check
mark demands the Lakers trade him and gets thousands of retweets.
It's gone great Almo. First, In each addition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need whom you can help.
Every dog has its day. As you will hear shortly,
any dog named Spaghetti is family to me. This one
(14:27):
is a big, handsome bulldog pit mix tan and white.
He was found in Staten Island, New York, almost dehydrated,
almost starved by his humans, with a sweet face and
a look of desperation in his eyes. Near and Far
Animal Foundation has gotten him and launched a fundraiser for
Spaghetti on Cuddly. Any donation will help. You can find
(14:49):
Spaghetti on Cuddly or Spaghetti will be my pinned tweet
at tom Jumbo Grumbo with a link to donate. If
you can't donate, a retweet can almost be invaluable. I
thank you and Spaghetti thank you. Coming up on Countdown,
(15:27):
the story of Mishu. First, the daily roundup of the miscreants,
morons and Donning Krueger Effect specimens who constitute today's worst
persons in the world. Le Bronze gonna give you three
hints and see if you can guess who the guy
is before I say his name. The column is from
two weeks ago yesterday. The first hint the title of
(15:48):
the column, why the midterms are going to be great
for Donald Trump. The second hint he wrote, all signs
you're pointing to a strong Republican showing that would result
in a switch of party control in the House and
possibly the Senate. That's very good news for Donald Trump.
And the thing is, there won't be anyone within the
GOP willing to step up in question Trump's claims of
(16:10):
credit because he is both the loudest voice in the
room and the most popular person in the party. Now
when Republicans on November eight would accrue to Trump's political benefit,
So it wasn't a strong showing. It wasn't good news
for Trump. Lots of people in the GOP have stood
up in questioned Trump's claims and it has not accrued
(16:30):
to his benefit. Who could get that much wrong in
one short column? Who else but CNN's Chris always bet
against him Solizza the runner up Virginia Governor Glenn un Kin,
that a rally for a Republican who lost by the way,
a rally on the day that Paul Pelosi was attacked
(16:51):
during the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi. Young Kins said
there's no room for violence anywhere, but we're going to
send her back to be with him in California. The
Republican crowd cheered his joke about a stochastic terrorist attack.
That's what we're gonna do. Yesterday, Pelosi's office revealed it
had received an apology from Governor Junkin and young contold
(17:15):
Huffington Post he intended to say political violence was never
acceptable quote, and I didn't do a great job with that.
The Speaker's office said the apology has been accepted, and
good for her. She is a bigger person than I am.
I would note here that young Can had eleven days
to apologize, but those eleven days were before the election,
(17:38):
and he didn't apologize that exploiting the attack on Pelosi
was to his and the Republicans political advantage before the election.
So that's why he didn't apologize before the election. That's
just a coincidence, no doubt, ass clown, governor ass clown,
but our winner, Elon Musk the bad news. Nobody has
(18:02):
any idea what he's doing with Twitter. The worst news.
Clearly he has no idea what he's doing with Twitter.
In a span of hours. Yesterday, Musk introduced his new
own version of verification, called Official, then he deleted it.
He scrapped it. He later told advertisers that he compares
the tweets of users who will not buy a blue
(18:24):
checkmark from him to spam emails. You pay eight dollars,
or your tweets pretty much vanished in the ether. He
also said he really wants Twitter to become a way
to make payments. Tweeters could link their online bank account
to Twitter. Twitter would offer quote extremely compelling money market
(18:46):
accounts to get extremely high yield on your balance, and
eventually he would make Twitter debit cards. One reporter phrase
the blue check elimination of verification. Thus Lee Musk's whole
idea seems to be that people won't do bad things
impersonation or hate speech if they're risking a dollars. Within hours,
(19:07):
a fake Espan account with a blue check mark tweeted
that the Las Vegas Raiders football team had fired its coach.
A fake Lebron James account with a blue check mark
tweeted that he was requesting a trade by the l
A Lakers, and to fake Rudy Giuliani account with a
blue check Mark tweeted that he had just defecated. None
(19:29):
of these things were true, maybe the Giuliani one. The
site The Intercept notes that since Musk's bid to buy
Twitter went public on April fourteen, Tesla's stock price has
fallen and Elon Musk's company is now worth a little
less than it was that morning. It's worth half a
(19:51):
trillion dollars less than it was that morning. Ellen, but
I'm rich. I must be infallible. Musk two Day's worst
person in the world, old to the number one story
(20:24):
on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. And this is not a
career story this time. It is a dog story about Mishoe.
It has been a year. I think I can get
through this. As I've mentioned before, I never had a
dog until two thousand and twelve. I was allergic as
(20:45):
a kid still am to big fur dogs, and I
was repeatedly warned by my allergists that hypoallergenic dogs weren't
really a thing, and if you had a minor reaction
to the hair of a poodle or a Westier a Maltese,
you were lucky, and if you didn't, you'd heartbreak. In fact,
(21:07):
I had almost no reaction at all. I was blessed,
and I was blessed by the opposite of heartbreak. And
I rapidly realized after getting my first dog, Stevie, that
I had wasted the first fifty three years of my life.
So I've tried to make up for it. My gal
Stevie and I just celebrated the ten year anniversary of
(21:28):
having adopted one another. Rose's birthday is next month. It
will be her ninth I had often looked into getting
a third dog, and I had gotten heavily involved in
rescue work, and then in two thousand eighteen, the paths crossed.
I got a call from a woman I met at
a pet food store and she became my friend, Sue Levitt,
(21:50):
who runs the rescue part of the American Maltese Association
for much of the Northeast. And Sue said, we have
something special and challenging, and if you don't want to
do it, understood. He's a three month old Maltese pup
with a terrible, terrible heart condition and they are not
sure that he will make it past ten months. And
(22:11):
I thought about it for about five seconds, and I
said yes, and soon Spaghetti was in my apartment trying
to boss Stevie and rose around, and I knew he
needed to stay, and I knew one other thing. He
needed a new name. Spaghetti, Spaghetti Getty Teddy Ted my
(22:32):
dad's name perfect. I was so prepared for the worst though,
with Ted that it was July and I did not
buy him any stuff for winter until I took him
to the Animal Medical Center here in New York, and
the cardiologist Dennis Traffney said, he's got a heavy valve
in his heart. If we don't do anything, he's got
five to seven years. My ears perked up. Then he said,
(22:59):
with medication, seven to ten years. But I can operate,
he added, I and probably give him a normal lifespan,
at least close to it. I thread this filament that
I'm holding in through his jugular vein and into his heart,
and then I stopped his heart electrically for three seconds.
See this push button here. I pushed this button on
the filament, and the other end of the filament is
a tiny balloon, and it pushes the valve open in
(23:21):
the heart. And you keep doing this as long as
he can stand it. And it's like knocking the rust
off a hinge on a door by just opening the
door again and again. And I said, I don't see
any filament, and he said sorry, and he moved it
in front of a black background, and there it was
about half the width of a hair. And I said great.
(23:42):
And then I said, but but why did they think
he wouldn't make it past ten months? And he said, well,
if you're a vet, you might see this condition once
in your entire career. I operate on it three times
a month. Ted is now four and a half years old.
He is a four and a half year old boy
(24:03):
in a dog's body. On our walks, Ted flirts with
all the human girls. He barks at all the other
dogs and then goes up and says hi to most
of them. He has a series of enemies, the printer,
the plunger, the thunder, and at least a dozen television commercials.
(24:24):
The operation went so well that they were an hour
late giving him back to me because, as the surgical
resident said, he had to do all the tests a
second time because he was worried he had screwed up
the first set of tests because the results were too good.
If I could have gotten luckier given the prognosis with
(24:45):
which Ted arrived. I don't know how I could have
gotten luck here. So when my friends Sue from Maltese
Rescue called last summer August of two thousand twenty one
and said, I have a really, really tough case now,
and I don't think there's a chance that there's some
sort of unexpectedly positive outcome like there was with Ted.
(25:08):
This was another puppy, barely three months. The family loved him,
but there were two young kids, and frankly the mother
thought the kids were too young to watch this little
dog die. His name was Mishu m i s h
U Polish for little bear, and the condition he had
(25:31):
was well known and feared. Tetrology of fallow. If that
sounds familiar, it happens to human children. And to correct
it in a human child, now take surgery that can
last twelve hours. Jimmy Kimmel's son had tetrology of fallow.
It's four major problems all in one heart. In dogs,
(25:56):
there have been early experiments in surgery, but almost exclusively
for bigger dogs. And to try to explain what's wrong.
If you've ever seen the drawings of mc Escher where
the same staircase can go up and down at the
same time as you look at it. That's more or
less what a heart afflicted with tetrology of fallow looks
(26:18):
like there are arteries going over the heart, and there
are others that take the oxygenated blood and pump it
backwards in the wrong direction. In the middle of last August,
Mishu arrived here. It is so easy to romanticize things
like this, but there was from the first something magical
(26:38):
about this little puppy. He was very, very sick. His
tongue and his gums. We're not that healthy pink that
you are familiar with if you've ever seen a dog
once in your life. His tongue and gums were purple.
He was tiny, he was dwarfed by my other three dogs,
but he was surprisingly healthy. And he would start trouble
(27:00):
with the other dogs. He would silently charge into Ted,
or he'd go up and yap at Stevie, and soon
he get all three of the other dogs of them
playing and fighting, and then all the strength that he
had would drain away a minute tops and he would
have to sit down and watch the chaos he created.
And he clearly loved watching the chaos he created, and
(27:22):
he also clearly loved the dogs. If two of them
were lying near each other but not right next together,
Mishu would lie in the empty space so that his
head would rest on one and his back paws would
rest on the other. Soon they would respond to his
presence by arranging themselves, cuddling together with the space for him.
(27:46):
Once I was stretched out legs up on my couch
and the four of them climbed in, two by my
feet and two by my knees. I called Mishu's name,
and he turned and looked up at me, and then
the four of them almost simultaneously fell asleep. Such a
(28:07):
simple thing that easily one of the most extraordinary and
wonderful moments of my entire life. And I prayed that night,
and not for the last time, that if there was
no miracle meant for Mishu, that at least when he
left us, could he be in my arms. This dog
(28:32):
was an athlete, bad heart or not, he just was
one with no stamina. In the pen that I would
keep him in for his own safety, especially when I
had to go out. Misha would get up on his
hind legs and stand or try to get out. And
once he did get out, he moved the walls of
the pen. He got out of the cage, he broke free,
(28:52):
and he trotted confidently around the place. And he loved
to move and to run and to play, and he
just had to stop early. Mishu also enjoyed food as
much as any dog I had ever seen. He gained
nearly a pound a month while he was with me.
If you approached him with a treat, he would see
(29:15):
it from across the room and he would literally punch
the air with one of his front paws and legs
like an athlete celebrating a success, and often with one paw,
and then punch with the other paw, and the sheer
joy of that never failed to make me smile and laugh.
A one to punch, put him on his back next
(29:38):
to you, and jab a finger at his paws, and
you'd be in a boxing match with a four pound
puppy who exulted in duking it out with you. You
always knew, though, when the fight was over, miche would
simply stop throwing hands, pause, and he would simply take
his front paws and grab your finger and hold onto it.
He once did this for a solid minute. I have
(30:02):
never felt more as if I were truly communicating with
a dog than when he would hold my finger. He
was an extraordinarily happy puppy, even when he felt bad physically.
When he felt bad physically, those were the harrowing times.
(30:22):
Mishu would be sitting on my lap, or walking on
the floor, or just chilling with the other dogs when
he would suddenly tense up and often let out a cry.
And twice that cry was like that of a young
human child, and it was so startling that the other
dogs stopped and stared with what could genuinely be described
(30:43):
as looks of alarm. Most times, the tensing was my
cue to grab him and hold him tight as he writhed,
because that inability to get oxygen to all the parts
of his body would cause his body to contract, and
if he was on any surface other than the ground,
it could literally propel him to the floor. The first
(31:03):
time he did that, my veterinarian was here, and she said,
you may have to take him to the emergency room
right now. She said. It was essentially what a dog
does just before he faints, but then within seconds, as
it did that first time with the vet here, it
would stop and his body would relax, and he would
be close to find it had taken something out of him.
(31:27):
And then, more or less by accident, I discovered that
after one of these seizures, he seemed to be soothed
if I would carry him and walk him around, gently
rocking him in my arms and talking to him. As
I did so, Missu and I solved a lot of
(31:48):
the world's problems in those little walks out in the
fresh air, on the balcony or just around the house.
He would often doze off, but just as often would
within minutes be ready to start playing again. And so
I had in my little flock of lovely dogs, a sweet, wise, serene,
playful puppy who liked to grasp my finger with his paws,
(32:09):
and loved everything about life. And he was dying well,
and I could not not try to find out if
there was something to be done to make his life
longer or happier. What we tried to do when I
resumed the story of Mishu. Next resuming now the story
(32:34):
of my Maltese puppy, Mishu. His heart so bad that
it pumped oxygenated blood the wrong way and limited him
to brief bursts of energy, and how he never really
knew how sick he was, or that he had been
dealt such a bad, tragic hand, and how he just
took the life he was given and loved and was loved.
(32:57):
Of course, I knew what sadness this was, this special
soul trapped in a body that would betray him at
any time, and fatally, so I had to at least
try to see if something could keep him here longer,
or at least make him feel better. We went to
see the city's top cardiologist for dogs, and there wasn't
(33:19):
anything to do. Although he thought keeping the cans of
a minute's worth of oxygen that you sometimes see football
players breathing from on the sidelines, He thought those might
help a little when he would have these little pre feints.
Soon I had dozens of those cans in the hall closet,
and I was discussing building him an oxygen tent. But
(33:41):
ultimately the problem wasn't his breathing. He was breathing fine,
He got all the oxygen he would normally need. It
was finding some way to get the oxygen pumped by
his fatally flawed heart, to carry the oxygen in the
blood around his body, and there was no way to
do that. The median age of survival for dogs suffering
(34:05):
from tetrology of fellow was just about two years. The
cardiologist brought up Mischu's case on a board of international
experts in canine cardiac care, and they agreed that unfortunately,
there was no chance he could survive any operation, let
alone experimental surgery for this devastating malformation. He could not
(34:29):
survive the anesthesia, let alone six eight, ten, twelve hours
of surgery. Thus, the visits to the hospital turned out
to be more about letting people there who I knew,
meet him and hold him. And I can tell you
there was an extraordinary soothing quality to holding him. I
(34:50):
heard it from these people again and again, what a
special little soul, and he loved to be held. I
took him everywhere they would let me take him. He
was a regular at my weekly physical therapy for my
art critic joints. My therapist adored him. She would just
hold him and tell him stories. Took him to the
(35:11):
apple store once that he did not like. He went
for walks with me and the other dogs, but always
in a bag draped over my shoulder. He did not
have the stamina to walk for very long. But he
enjoyed the outdoors. He enjoyed the park. He enjoyed the
other dogs. He enjoyed the people who would come up
and say hello to him. The inevitable finally came this
(35:34):
time last year. Throughout the last week, the little prefaints increased,
but Misho's happiness did not decrease. Two days before the end,
I approached him with a treat and my camera phone rolling,
and sure enough he punched with the left, and he
punched with the right, and he ate the treat, and
(35:56):
he licked his purple lips, And when I surprised him
with a second treat, he did it all again. Some
time a year ago, I was sound asleep. The dogs
sleep with me, and in my dreams somebody or something
was breathing in my ear. Well, of course it was Mishue.
(36:21):
He had figured out how to wake me. He had
to go to the bathroom. He knew enough to tell
me that he knew enough to wake me to get
me to get him down, and he had to get
some water. On the afternoon of the twelfth of November
(36:43):
a year ago, Saturday, I was holding Mishu in my lap.
As I sat and looked at the peak foliage in
the park out the window. With no warning, he suddenly
let out that near human cry. The other dog's frozey
in place. I stood up and walked him around the
balcony again. I had to sit him down in his
(37:03):
pen for a second, and I was just picking him
back up when he tensed up, just like all the
other times. His body got rigid and twisted, and he died.
He died as I picked him back up. The special
little soul was gone. His body was getting cold with
(37:26):
stunning rapidity, and something inside me said, no, not yet.
I'm not ready. And I don't know why, but I
don't think he's ready. And with no training and no
earthly clue what I was doing, I tried CPR on him.
You have to try, you have to try. I had
(37:50):
so little idea what I was doing that after breathing
air in and out of his lifeless body, I moved
my face away as if I was going to spit
out water before I had to remind myself, no, moron,
that would be if he was drowning. I must have
done five or six breaths when I heard him exhale
I waited for it to stop or to be a
(38:11):
false alarm. It wasn't damned if this little dog didn't
somehow teach me how to resuscitate him. He was dead,
and now he was back. I didn't delude myself that
this was going to last very long, and the circumstances
(38:32):
could not have been worse. It was a rush hour
on a Friday afternoon, and there was a bottleneck and
the bridge approach between Mishu and I and the hospital,
and I had visions of being stuck in traffic for
half an hour or longer and almost nothing they could
do for him if we somehow got there in time.
But you have to try. You have to try. I
(38:57):
loaded a bag full of those cans of oxygen. I
grabbed him. I got in the car. The driver realized
my distress and asked me what he could do to help,
and I said, don't run any lights, but do not
stop unless you have to, and when you do stop,
help me unwrap some of these plastic wrapped oxygen cans.
The oxygen cans are what are keeping him alive. Normal
(39:22):
trip twenty minutes. We made it in eleven minutes. The
streets parted for Mishu at the Animal Medical Center. Somehow
I ran up the stairs. I handed him off to
the emergency room doctor, saying with an evenness, I could
not believe I was mustering. My dog is dying. He
(39:42):
has tetrology of fellow. She ran off with him to
an examining room, and a second doctor came out, and
I briefed her on everything, including missus human like cry
and his unexpected resuscitation. And I told her he had
been seen by the chief cardiologists there, and she said
(40:03):
Dr Fox. Dr Fox is here and now Mishu was
being worked on by the expert in the field. And
despite all of this good fortune, I knew, I knew
there was no hope. I had managed to text Sue
from the Maltese rescue who adored him, and she came
(40:24):
to the hospital, and three of the people from other
departments in the hospital who had met Mishu came down
to see him, not for my sake, for his It
was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. And when
(40:44):
his doctor came to me and said, he is alive,
but if you take him out of the hospital, you'd
get about as far as the parking garage. And then
you'd have to bring him back, because what you heard
when he cried out was a stroke. The oxygen deprivation
was finally too much for him. He had a stroke,
and he began to gently prepare me for the question
about him go, and I stopped him, and I said,
(41:09):
I know we've all done everything we can, miss you,
especially I'm ready when you are. So they brought him
back to me, a little drip attached to his arm,
and when the toggle on the drip was thrown, the
(41:30):
medication would end his life. He was as warm and
as soft as ever in my arms, and yet I
knew he was no longer there. Sue held him for
a while too, and then everybody left me alone with him.
(41:56):
I said what you would expect somebody to say in
such a circumstance, about love and happiness, And then I
heard myself saying things about gratitude, gratitude to him for
(42:18):
teaching me that in the face of death, the point
is to know when to try and when to say enough,
and that he had taught me how to confront death
and crisis and urgency with evenness and practicality that I
never knew I had in any quantity whatsoever and to
(42:39):
be able to say, I know you had a happy life, Missue,
and it seems like that, and not the fact that
you had a happy life but not a long one.
The happy life is all that mattered to you. The cardiologist,
(43:00):
Dr Fox and the tech came back to the room
at this point, and I said I was ready, and
they turned the toggle and left very quietly, and I
said to miss you, I know if there is a
place for you to go now, I am certain you
will be the first one they let in. I just
(43:23):
hope they will let me visit you there someday, and
I hope you will remember us. I said, good night,
sweet prints and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,
and he was gone again, as I had prayed when
(43:49):
he died, Miss You died in my arms, and he
managed somehow to do it twice. There are some postscripts, missus.
Cardiologist very solemnly returned and respectfully said that of those
international experts who had reviewed his case and were deeply
(44:11):
saddened that they could not help him, only two out
of a couple of dozen had actually seen and been
able to study any small dog suffering from tetralogy of
fallow and Mishu might have one final blessing for them
and the rest of us, if they could keep and
study his poor little malformed heart without hesitation. I said yes,
(44:35):
because in that instance I saw him positioning his head
on Stevie's head, and his back paws on roses back paws,
So the three of them were cuddling together, and I knew,
as I had always known, this was a dog who
cared about and actually loved other dogs. So the hospital
(44:56):
wound up recalibrating some of the cameras they had that
they used to photograph the smallest teeth in the smallest dogs,
so they could get every imaginable image of Mishu's tiny
heart and maybe someday learn methods with which to fix
this nightmare in another dog. And Mishu is in the
(45:21):
veterinary textbooks now. As a second PostScript, Mishu's parents had
another litter late last year after he died, and they're
human was kind enough to offer me either of the brothers.
Mischau would never know. Each was eerily reminiscent of him,
but healthy, completely healthy, so healthy that they were threats
(45:47):
to my other three dogs. I had each of them
live a week with us, and I would have been
fine with each other. They liked me fine, but each
of them first bit ted in the genitals, and then
Stevie in the genitals, and rose in the genitals, and
in one case me and the genitals. They were crazy,
fun but crazy. And the second one was not only
(46:09):
twice as large as other Maltese his age, he was
able to vault out of his pen like an Olympic gymnast.
So they went back and now have their own homes
where there they are the only dogs in their own homes.
So the third PostScript when Sue from Maltese Rescue reached
(46:34):
out again this past June and said, um, I've got
another special case. Fifteen year old perfect health but but
rotting teeth, and he has dementia. His human got sick
and and didn't really take care of him, and then
she died, and I don't know what to do. Who's
going to adopt a fifteen year old? I was able
(46:56):
to raise my hand. I had an open roster spot.
The fifteen year old's name is Mena. It's French for kids.
I can't imagine what confusion that's caused him all these years.
His human had been a French teacher. He actually didn't
have dementia, or at least not very much dementia. It
was those teeth. His teeth was so bad, so rotten.
(47:20):
Some of them came out by just pulling on them
with your fingers. So we had them all taken out.
And the next day he woke up like he was
seven years old, looked around like how long have these
other dogs been here? Every day since then he's gotten
a little younger. He's Benjamin Button, and he's a living instruction.
(47:40):
Look out for your dog's teeth. Even if you think
you know to do that, do it more. The last PostScript,
I got the tattoo a month after me Sho died.
His pensive, half smiling little face looks up at me
(48:01):
from near the crook of my elbow where he used
to sit when I would carry him around after one
of those pre feints. It is a remarkable likeness to me.
It means exactly what you would think it means. It
comforts me greatly. It means Mishu is always with me
(48:28):
and always will be with me. And now as this
unwanted but not tragic anniversary approaches, Misshu will also, I hope,
always be with you. I'm taking the holiday off. There
(48:57):
will be a new episode Monday. Thank You. Countdown with
Keith Olderman is a production of my heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
Let me tell you what is to come. Because there
(00:27):
was no red wave on Tuesday. Donald Trump is wounded
and the right wing establishment, which loved him Tuesday morning,
is turning on him Thursday morning. The front page of
today's Murdoch tabloid, The New York Post, has an illustration
of Trump as an egg a top a wall, and
(00:48):
in big block letters, there is the inevitable caption Trumpty, dumpty.
Donald Trump will respond with his only two emotions, rage
and the thirst for revenge. He will declare his candidacy
as planned next week, no matter how it will hurt
the Georgia runoff. He will step up his attacks on
Ron de Santis. He will call all his opponents rhinos.
(01:12):
He will be indicted in January. He will call the
indictment political persecution. He will note De Santis is morph
into a Jesus freak. He will attempt to go further
than that. He will claim God told him only he
can save America. He will keep running even if his
trial has already started, and De Santis he will also run.
(01:36):
He will drop hints, maybe as early as Trump's declaration
next week. He will let the anticipation build. He will
let the pundits switch to him. He will only announce
later in the winter or even spring. He will position
himself as sane and Trump as crazy. Himself as dedicated
to others in the party, and Trump as dedicated only
(01:58):
to himself. He and Trump will spend the rest of
three beating each other up. He and Trump will then
spend the debate season of three beating each other up.
He and Trump will then spend the primary season of
beating each other up. And it is only then that
(02:18):
it will get interesting, because the Republican Party will have
taken all may learn from Trump. They will have stolen
it from him, refined it, taken it some extra steps,
and they will deny Trump the nomination by hook or
by crook, and then, barring the unforeseen, the presidential election
(02:39):
will be Joe Biden versus Rhonda Santis versus Donald Trump
as an independent. You know that is what a thwarted
Trump would do. You know it if there was any
reason to doubt it, that gleeful tweet from Tuesday night
about the Republican he did not support Joe o' day
(03:02):
losing the Colorado Senate seat is your room. Finder that
while Trump once understood although he did not like the
fact that he was in a partnership with the Republican Party,
he has long since left behind that correct assessment of reality.
Trump believes Trump invented the world, and the world owes Trump,
and the world cannot function without Trump, but Trump can
(03:26):
win without the world. November five, Biden, Democratic Party, incumbent
De Santis, Republican Party Trump, Trump is Jesus Party, and
the outcome the scales may have fallen from the eyes
(03:48):
of the Republicans, the Conservatives, and even some of the fascists,
but that does not mean Trump will have been reduced
to Jill Stein two thousand sixteen or Ralph Nader two thousand.
It does not even mean Trump will have been reduced
to the thirteen point five percent of the vote George
Wallace got that wiped out Hubert Humphrey's last chance in
nineteen sixty eight, nor even the percent for Ross Pero
(04:10):
in nine two that threw any doubt about that election
to Bill Clinton. It is realistic to suggest that in
a three way battle for the presidency in four that
Trump and even the most charismatic of other Republicans like
de Santis could split fifty two or fifty three or
(04:31):
fifty four percent of what would have been the Republican vote.
Maybe it's thirty to twenty three to twenty five, or
something like the nineteen twelve election, in which a similarly
magnetic ex president. And I hate to compare these two men,
but in nineteen twelve, Theodore Roosevelt denied the Republican nomination,
went out on the progressive third party ticket, the Bull
(04:54):
Moose Party, and he finished second, ahead of the incumbent
Republican President, William Howard Taft. And all that did was
guaranteed the Democrats the White House Woodrow Wilson Roosevelt president
Taft could do. Santis finished second and Trump third. Sure,
(05:15):
it's a long time until November, but you know that
even Trump's morbid fear of losing would not stop him
from running as an independent somehow, even if he understood
it meant also destroying the party that he in essence built,
and that it would mean keeping the Democrats in the
(05:36):
White House. Let's review your doubts. Do your doubt to
Santis will run. Do you really think he made a
two minute commercial about how God created him on the
eighth Day. How God made him to be the man
who protected the world. Do you really think he made
(05:58):
that miniature Bible epic just to run up the score
in Florida against Charlie Freak and Chris de Santis is
going for the evangelicals. He started it months ago by
ending every speech by imploring the audience to put on
the armor of God. That is a quote, put on
the armor of God. And for all we know, De
(06:19):
Santis may actually believe he has been anointed. Do you
doubt the GOP mainstream didn't just tell Trump it is
leaving him. The rest of that New York Post cover reads,
Don who couldn't build a wall, had a great fall.
Can all the GOP's men put the party back together again?
(06:42):
And it's more than just a humiliating illustration. The Post
promises on its cover nine pages of Trump Republican coverage,
and writes analyst John put oor ITTs has two words,
Why Tuesday was a red trickle. Donald Trump his terrible
candidates dragged Republicans down. Rupert Murdoch approved this and there's
(07:03):
more on the cover, and now, writes columnists Pierce Morgan,
It's time for Trump to move on from politics inside
pot Or It's His column begins, Hey, Lion, Ted and
Sleepy Joe meet Toxic Trump. He calls him toxic Trump
(07:25):
five times in The New York Post. What Tuesday Nights
results suggest, he writes, is that Trump is perhaps the
most profound vote repellent in modern American history. This is
not peak over losing the midterms. This is scapegoating, and
from Rupert Murdoch. That is to expand a phrase I
(07:48):
know from somewhere that is not just burning the bridges,
it's napalming them. In fact, it's not just burning the bridges,
it's burning the river as well. And every major news
outlet with a conservative source through Trump overboard, Yes Your Day.
This was the end of the Trump era and the
dawn of the De Santis era. ABC News quoted a
(08:11):
Republican operative it says is close to the Trump orbit.
Like every other Trump catastrophe, he did this to himself
with stupid and reckless decisions. If I did not know better,
I would have thought that was said by me in
the New York Times quote. I strongly believe he should
no longer be the face of the Republican Party. That
(08:34):
is from the arch Trump loyalist and longtime New York
Congressman Pete King. The rage against Trump is obviously not
without basis or merit. In these mid terms, the Republicans
had on their side the tradition of nearly every White
House losing heavily at the mid terms, but also Biden's
(08:56):
low approval numbers, wild inflation, gas price jumps, supply chain issues,
a war in Europe, the res to do of the
Afghanistan withdrawal, voter caging, pandemic paranoia, jerrymandering, and then the
Democratic nominee from Pennsylvania having a stroke and needing electronic
help processing speech during the debate, and they lost. And
(09:20):
what did all that get them? A margin in the
House so small that the Washington Post Jennifer Reuben observed
last night that the Democrats could get four although they
might need maybe eight, saying Republicans and say, look, if
you will vote for her, we will vote for her.
(09:40):
And they would then nominate Liz Cheney to be the
new Speaker of the House, and they'd probably pull it off. Instead,
Kevin McCarthy says he has enough votes to become speaker.
He met with Marjorie Trailer Park Green last night for
forty five minutes, after which he might have thought about
running instead forehead preschool teacher. It looks like McCarthy will
(10:03):
have two hundred twenty four Republicans. That is not enough
to impeach Joe Biden. That is not enough to cut
off Ukraine. That is not enough to undermine the security net.
That is not enough to shut up the lunatics like
Trailer Park Green, with or without Bobert. If McCarthy wakes
up tomorrow morning and endorses Liz Cheney for Speaker, I
(10:25):
would only be mildly flabbergasted. In the Senate. All Trump
got them was a repeat of control, likely to hinge
on a runoff. In Georgia again, a runoff after a
general election in which herschel Walker got one million, nine
hundred and six thousand, two hundred and twenty nine votes
(10:46):
one million, nine hundred and six thousand to two nine.
In the same general election, George's Republican governor Brian Kemp
got two million, one hundred nine thousand, two hundred eight
votes to one oh nine to eight. That's two hundred
and three thousand Georgians, nearly all of them Republicans who
(11:08):
did not vote for herschel Walker. Why on earth would
anybody expect all two hundred and three thousand of them
to turn up for a runoff, another runoff, another Georgia
election and vote for herschel Walker when they just refused to.
There is at the bottom of all this always the
(11:30):
same issue, the issue of forgive the use of the
term Trump's slaves the cultists. For seven years, he and
Fox and Murdoch and news Max and every evangelical have
been positioning him as the Messiah. And there are tens
of millions of Americans whose belief in that is as
(11:51):
strong at this moment as it was on Tuesday. But
the problem becomes, as it becomes for all the messiahs
in all the pages of history. What happens? What do
you do when a new Messiah opens up a messiah
shop down the block, and he does the messiah thing
(12:13):
just a little bit better than you do. And on
the day God looked down on his planned paradise and said,
I need a protector. So God made a fighter. God
said I need somebody willing to get up before dawn,
kiss his family goodbye. Travel thousands of miles, two minutes
(12:36):
of that Mark my words. Rhn de Santis is running
to be God and the Republican nominee for President Trump
doesn't care if he's elected God or the devil, or
is even on the Republican ticket in he is also
running for president, but only one of them is on
(12:59):
the cover of the Rupert Murdoch newspaper this morning, portrayed
is a cracked egg still ahead. Everything's just fine at Twitter,
(13:23):
just because there's a fake Donald Trump with a blue
check mark, and a fake Lebron James with a blue
check mark, and a fake ESPN with a blue check mark,
the convenience of timing. A Republican who made fun of
the attack on Paul Policy apologizes after the election is over,
and it is an anniversary for me, both heartbreaking and heartwarming.
(13:45):
Indulge me, please, I want to tell you the story
of my dog, Misshoe. That's next. This is countdown. This
is countdown with Keith Alberman still ahead. On countdown, Elon
Musk says everything, I'll be fine when verification ends on Twitter,
(14:07):
and then a fake Lebron James with a blue check
mark demands the Lakers trade him and gets thousands of retweets.
It's gone great Almo. First, In each addition of Countdown,
we feature a dog in need whom you can help.
Every dog has its day. As you will hear shortly,
any dog named Spaghetti is family to me. This one
(14:27):
is a big, handsome bulldog pit mix tan and white.
He was found in Staten Island, New York, almost dehydrated,
almost starved by his humans, with a sweet face and
a look of desperation in his eyes. Near and Far
Animal Foundation has gotten him and launched a fundraiser for
Spaghetti on Cuddly. Any donation will help. You can find
(14:49):
Spaghetti on Cuddly or Spaghetti will be my pinned tweet
at tom Jumbo Grumbo with a link to donate. If
you can't donate, a retweet can almost be invaluable. I
thank you and Spaghetti thank you. Coming up on Countdown,
(15:27):
the story of Mishu. First, the daily roundup of the miscreants,
morons and Donning Krueger Effect specimens who constitute today's worst
persons in the world. Le Bronze gonna give you three
hints and see if you can guess who the guy
is before I say his name. The column is from
two weeks ago yesterday. The first hint the title of
(15:48):
the column, why the midterms are going to be great
for Donald Trump. The second hint he wrote, all signs
you're pointing to a strong Republican showing that would result
in a switch of party control in the House and
possibly the Senate. That's very good news for Donald Trump.
And the thing is, there won't be anyone within the
GOP willing to step up in question Trump's claims of
(16:10):
credit because he is both the loudest voice in the
room and the most popular person in the party. Now
when Republicans on November eight would accrue to Trump's political benefit,
So it wasn't a strong showing. It wasn't good news
for Trump. Lots of people in the GOP have stood
up in questioned Trump's claims and it has not accrued
(16:30):
to his benefit. Who could get that much wrong in
one short column? Who else but CNN's Chris always bet
against him Solizza the runner up Virginia Governor Glenn un Kin,
that a rally for a Republican who lost by the way,
a rally on the day that Paul Pelosi was attacked
(16:51):
during the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi. Young Kins said
there's no room for violence anywhere, but we're going to
send her back to be with him in California. The
Republican crowd cheered his joke about a stochastic terrorist attack.
That's what we're gonna do. Yesterday, Pelosi's office revealed it
had received an apology from Governor Junkin and young contold
(17:15):
Huffington Post he intended to say political violence was never
acceptable quote, and I didn't do a great job with that.
The Speaker's office said the apology has been accepted, and
good for her. She is a bigger person than I am.
I would note here that young Can had eleven days
to apologize, but those eleven days were before the election,
(17:38):
and he didn't apologize that exploiting the attack on Pelosi
was to his and the Republicans political advantage before the election.
So that's why he didn't apologize before the election. That's
just a coincidence, no doubt, ass clown, governor ass clown,
but our winner, Elon Musk the bad news. Nobody has
(18:02):
any idea what he's doing with Twitter. The worst news.
Clearly he has no idea what he's doing with Twitter.
In a span of hours. Yesterday, Musk introduced his new
own version of verification, called Official, then he deleted it.
He scrapped it. He later told advertisers that he compares
the tweets of users who will not buy a blue
(18:24):
checkmark from him to spam emails. You pay eight dollars,
or your tweets pretty much vanished in the ether. He
also said he really wants Twitter to become a way
to make payments. Tweeters could link their online bank account
to Twitter. Twitter would offer quote extremely compelling money market
(18:46):
accounts to get extremely high yield on your balance, and
eventually he would make Twitter debit cards. One reporter phrase
the blue check elimination of verification. Thus Lee Musk's whole
idea seems to be that people won't do bad things
impersonation or hate speech if they're risking a dollars. Within hours,
(19:07):
a fake Espan account with a blue check mark tweeted
that the Las Vegas Raiders football team had fired its coach.
A fake Lebron James account with a blue check mark
tweeted that he was requesting a trade by the l
A Lakers, and to fake Rudy Giuliani account with a
blue check Mark tweeted that he had just defecated. None
(19:29):
of these things were true, maybe the Giuliani one. The
site The Intercept notes that since Musk's bid to buy
Twitter went public on April fourteen, Tesla's stock price has
fallen and Elon Musk's company is now worth a little
less than it was that morning. It's worth half a
(19:51):
trillion dollars less than it was that morning. Ellen, but
I'm rich. I must be infallible. Musk two Day's worst
person in the world, old to the number one story
(20:24):
on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. And this is not a
career story this time. It is a dog story about Mishoe.
It has been a year. I think I can get
through this. As I've mentioned before, I never had a
dog until two thousand and twelve. I was allergic as
(20:45):
a kid still am to big fur dogs, and I
was repeatedly warned by my allergists that hypoallergenic dogs weren't
really a thing, and if you had a minor reaction
to the hair of a poodle or a Westier a Maltese,
you were lucky, and if you didn't, you'd heartbreak. In fact,
(21:07):
I had almost no reaction at all. I was blessed,
and I was blessed by the opposite of heartbreak. And
I rapidly realized after getting my first dog, Stevie, that
I had wasted the first fifty three years of my life.
So I've tried to make up for it. My gal
Stevie and I just celebrated the ten year anniversary of
(21:28):
having adopted one another. Rose's birthday is next month. It
will be her ninth I had often looked into getting
a third dog, and I had gotten heavily involved in
rescue work, and then in two thousand eighteen, the paths crossed.
I got a call from a woman I met at
a pet food store and she became my friend, Sue Levitt,
(21:50):
who runs the rescue part of the American Maltese Association
for much of the Northeast. And Sue said, we have
something special and challenging, and if you don't want to
do it, understood. He's a three month old Maltese pup
with a terrible, terrible heart condition and they are not
sure that he will make it past ten months. And
(22:11):
I thought about it for about five seconds, and I
said yes, and soon Spaghetti was in my apartment trying
to boss Stevie and rose around, and I knew he
needed to stay, and I knew one other thing. He
needed a new name. Spaghetti, Spaghetti Getty Teddy Ted my
(22:32):
dad's name perfect. I was so prepared for the worst though,
with Ted that it was July and I did not
buy him any stuff for winter until I took him
to the Animal Medical Center here in New York, and
the cardiologist Dennis Traffney said, he's got a heavy valve
in his heart. If we don't do anything, he's got
five to seven years. My ears perked up. Then he said,
(22:59):
with medication, seven to ten years. But I can operate,
he added, I and probably give him a normal lifespan,
at least close to it. I thread this filament that
I'm holding in through his jugular vein and into his heart,
and then I stopped his heart electrically for three seconds.
See this push button here. I pushed this button on
the filament, and the other end of the filament is
a tiny balloon, and it pushes the valve open in
(23:21):
the heart. And you keep doing this as long as
he can stand it. And it's like knocking the rust
off a hinge on a door by just opening the
door again and again. And I said, I don't see
any filament, and he said sorry, and he moved it
in front of a black background, and there it was
about half the width of a hair. And I said great.
(23:42):
And then I said, but but why did they think
he wouldn't make it past ten months? And he said, well,
if you're a vet, you might see this condition once
in your entire career. I operate on it three times
a month. Ted is now four and a half years old.
He is a four and a half year old boy
(24:03):
in a dog's body. On our walks, Ted flirts with
all the human girls. He barks at all the other
dogs and then goes up and says hi to most
of them. He has a series of enemies, the printer,
the plunger, the thunder, and at least a dozen television commercials.
(24:24):
The operation went so well that they were an hour
late giving him back to me because, as the surgical
resident said, he had to do all the tests a
second time because he was worried he had screwed up
the first set of tests because the results were too good.
If I could have gotten luckier given the prognosis with
(24:45):
which Ted arrived. I don't know how I could have
gotten luck here. So when my friends Sue from Maltese
Rescue called last summer August of two thousand twenty one
and said, I have a really, really tough case now,
and I don't think there's a chance that there's some
sort of unexpectedly positive outcome like there was with Ted.
(25:08):
This was another puppy, barely three months. The family loved him,
but there were two young kids, and frankly the mother
thought the kids were too young to watch this little
dog die. His name was Mishu m i s h
U Polish for little bear, and the condition he had
(25:31):
was well known and feared. Tetrology of fallow. If that
sounds familiar, it happens to human children. And to correct
it in a human child, now take surgery that can
last twelve hours. Jimmy Kimmel's son had tetrology of fallow.
It's four major problems all in one heart. In dogs,
(25:56):
there have been early experiments in surgery, but almost exclusively
for bigger dogs. And to try to explain what's wrong.
If you've ever seen the drawings of mc Escher where
the same staircase can go up and down at the
same time as you look at it. That's more or
less what a heart afflicted with tetrology of fallow looks
(26:18):
like there are arteries going over the heart, and there
are others that take the oxygenated blood and pump it
backwards in the wrong direction. In the middle of last August,
Mishu arrived here. It is so easy to romanticize things
like this, but there was from the first something magical
(26:38):
about this little puppy. He was very, very sick. His
tongue and his gums. We're not that healthy pink that
you are familiar with if you've ever seen a dog
once in your life. His tongue and gums were purple.
He was tiny, he was dwarfed by my other three dogs,
but he was surprisingly healthy. And he would start trouble
(27:00):
with the other dogs. He would silently charge into Ted,
or he'd go up and yap at Stevie, and soon
he get all three of the other dogs of them
playing and fighting, and then all the strength that he
had would drain away a minute tops and he would
have to sit down and watch the chaos he created.
And he clearly loved watching the chaos he created, and
(27:22):
he also clearly loved the dogs. If two of them
were lying near each other but not right next together,
Mishu would lie in the empty space so that his
head would rest on one and his back paws would
rest on the other. Soon they would respond to his
presence by arranging themselves, cuddling together with the space for him.
(27:46):
Once I was stretched out legs up on my couch
and the four of them climbed in, two by my
feet and two by my knees. I called Mishu's name,
and he turned and looked up at me, and then
the four of them almost simultaneously fell asleep. Such a
(28:07):
simple thing that easily one of the most extraordinary and
wonderful moments of my entire life. And I prayed that night,
and not for the last time, that if there was
no miracle meant for Mishu, that at least when he
left us, could he be in my arms. This dog
(28:32):
was an athlete, bad heart or not, he just was
one with no stamina. In the pen that I would
keep him in for his own safety, especially when I
had to go out. Misha would get up on his
hind legs and stand or try to get out. And
once he did get out, he moved the walls of
the pen. He got out of the cage, he broke free,
(28:52):
and he trotted confidently around the place. And he loved
to move and to run and to play, and he
just had to stop early. Mishu also enjoyed food as
much as any dog I had ever seen. He gained
nearly a pound a month while he was with me.
If you approached him with a treat, he would see
(29:15):
it from across the room and he would literally punch
the air with one of his front paws and legs
like an athlete celebrating a success, and often with one paw,
and then punch with the other paw, and the sheer
joy of that never failed to make me smile and laugh.
A one to punch, put him on his back next
(29:38):
to you, and jab a finger at his paws, and
you'd be in a boxing match with a four pound
puppy who exulted in duking it out with you. You
always knew, though, when the fight was over, miche would
simply stop throwing hands, pause, and he would simply take
his front paws and grab your finger and hold onto it.
He once did this for a solid minute. I have
(30:02):
never felt more as if I were truly communicating with
a dog than when he would hold my finger. He
was an extraordinarily happy puppy, even when he felt bad physically.
When he felt bad physically, those were the harrowing times.
(30:22):
Mishu would be sitting on my lap, or walking on
the floor, or just chilling with the other dogs when
he would suddenly tense up and often let out a cry.
And twice that cry was like that of a young
human child, and it was so startling that the other
dogs stopped and stared with what could genuinely be described
(30:43):
as looks of alarm. Most times, the tensing was my
cue to grab him and hold him tight as he writhed,
because that inability to get oxygen to all the parts
of his body would cause his body to contract, and
if he was on any surface other than the ground,
it could literally propel him to the floor. The first
(31:03):
time he did that, my veterinarian was here, and she said,
you may have to take him to the emergency room
right now. She said. It was essentially what a dog
does just before he faints, but then within seconds, as
it did that first time with the vet here, it
would stop and his body would relax, and he would
be close to find it had taken something out of him.
(31:27):
And then, more or less by accident, I discovered that
after one of these seizures, he seemed to be soothed
if I would carry him and walk him around, gently
rocking him in my arms and talking to him. As
I did so, Missu and I solved a lot of
(31:48):
the world's problems in those little walks out in the
fresh air, on the balcony or just around the house.
He would often doze off, but just as often would
within minutes be ready to start playing again. And so
I had in my little flock of lovely dogs, a sweet, wise, serene,
playful puppy who liked to grasp my finger with his paws,
(32:09):
and loved everything about life. And he was dying well,
and I could not not try to find out if
there was something to be done to make his life
longer or happier. What we tried to do when I
resumed the story of Mishu. Next resuming now the story
(32:34):
of my Maltese puppy, Mishu. His heart so bad that
it pumped oxygenated blood the wrong way and limited him
to brief bursts of energy, and how he never really
knew how sick he was, or that he had been
dealt such a bad, tragic hand, and how he just
took the life he was given and loved and was loved.
(32:57):
Of course, I knew what sadness this was, this special
soul trapped in a body that would betray him at
any time, and fatally, so I had to at least
try to see if something could keep him here longer,
or at least make him feel better. We went to
see the city's top cardiologist for dogs, and there wasn't
(33:19):
anything to do. Although he thought keeping the cans of
a minute's worth of oxygen that you sometimes see football
players breathing from on the sidelines, He thought those might
help a little when he would have these little pre feints.
Soon I had dozens of those cans in the hall closet,
and I was discussing building him an oxygen tent. But
(33:41):
ultimately the problem wasn't his breathing. He was breathing fine,
He got all the oxygen he would normally need. It
was finding some way to get the oxygen pumped by
his fatally flawed heart, to carry the oxygen in the
blood around his body, and there was no way to
do that. The median age of survival for dogs suffering
(34:05):
from tetrology of fellow was just about two years. The
cardiologist brought up Mischu's case on a board of international
experts in canine cardiac care, and they agreed that unfortunately,
there was no chance he could survive any operation, let
alone experimental surgery for this devastating malformation. He could not
(34:29):
survive the anesthesia, let alone six eight, ten, twelve hours
of surgery. Thus, the visits to the hospital turned out
to be more about letting people there who I knew,
meet him and hold him. And I can tell you
there was an extraordinary soothing quality to holding him. I
(34:50):
heard it from these people again and again, what a
special little soul, and he loved to be held. I
took him everywhere they would let me take him. He
was a regular at my weekly physical therapy for my
art critic joints. My therapist adored him. She would just
hold him and tell him stories. Took him to the
(35:11):
apple store once that he did not like. He went
for walks with me and the other dogs, but always
in a bag draped over my shoulder. He did not
have the stamina to walk for very long. But he
enjoyed the outdoors. He enjoyed the park. He enjoyed the
other dogs. He enjoyed the people who would come up
and say hello to him. The inevitable finally came this
(35:34):
time last year. Throughout the last week, the little prefaints increased,
but Misho's happiness did not decrease. Two days before the end,
I approached him with a treat and my camera phone rolling,
and sure enough he punched with the left, and he
punched with the right, and he ate the treat, and
(35:56):
he licked his purple lips, And when I surprised him
with a second treat, he did it all again. Some
time a year ago, I was sound asleep. The dogs
sleep with me, and in my dreams somebody or something
was breathing in my ear. Well, of course it was Mishue.
(36:21):
He had figured out how to wake me. He had
to go to the bathroom. He knew enough to tell
me that he knew enough to wake me to get
me to get him down, and he had to get
some water. On the afternoon of the twelfth of November
(36:43):
a year ago, Saturday, I was holding Mishu in my lap.
As I sat and looked at the peak foliage in
the park out the window. With no warning, he suddenly
let out that near human cry. The other dog's frozey
in place. I stood up and walked him around the
balcony again. I had to sit him down in his
(37:03):
pen for a second, and I was just picking him
back up when he tensed up, just like all the
other times. His body got rigid and twisted, and he died.
He died as I picked him back up. The special
little soul was gone. His body was getting cold with
(37:26):
stunning rapidity, and something inside me said, no, not yet.
I'm not ready. And I don't know why, but I
don't think he's ready. And with no training and no
earthly clue what I was doing, I tried CPR on him.
You have to try, you have to try. I had
(37:50):
so little idea what I was doing that after breathing
air in and out of his lifeless body, I moved
my face away as if I was going to spit
out water before I had to remind myself, no, moron,
that would be if he was drowning. I must have
done five or six breaths when I heard him exhale
I waited for it to stop or to be a
(38:11):
false alarm. It wasn't damned if this little dog didn't
somehow teach me how to resuscitate him. He was dead,
and now he was back. I didn't delude myself that
this was going to last very long, and the circumstances
(38:32):
could not have been worse. It was a rush hour
on a Friday afternoon, and there was a bottleneck and
the bridge approach between Mishu and I and the hospital,
and I had visions of being stuck in traffic for
half an hour or longer and almost nothing they could
do for him if we somehow got there in time.
But you have to try. You have to try. I
(38:57):
loaded a bag full of those cans of oxygen. I
grabbed him. I got in the car. The driver realized
my distress and asked me what he could do to help,
and I said, don't run any lights, but do not
stop unless you have to, and when you do stop,
help me unwrap some of these plastic wrapped oxygen cans.
The oxygen cans are what are keeping him alive. Normal
(39:22):
trip twenty minutes. We made it in eleven minutes. The
streets parted for Mishu at the Animal Medical Center. Somehow
I ran up the stairs. I handed him off to
the emergency room doctor, saying with an evenness, I could
not believe I was mustering. My dog is dying. He
(39:42):
has tetrology of fellow. She ran off with him to
an examining room, and a second doctor came out, and
I briefed her on everything, including missus human like cry
and his unexpected resuscitation. And I told her he had
been seen by the chief cardiologists there, and she said
(40:03):
Dr Fox. Dr Fox is here and now Mishu was
being worked on by the expert in the field. And
despite all of this good fortune, I knew, I knew
there was no hope. I had managed to text Sue
from the Maltese rescue who adored him, and she came
(40:24):
to the hospital, and three of the people from other
departments in the hospital who had met Mishu came down
to see him, not for my sake, for his It
was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. And when
(40:44):
his doctor came to me and said, he is alive,
but if you take him out of the hospital, you'd
get about as far as the parking garage. And then
you'd have to bring him back, because what you heard
when he cried out was a stroke. The oxygen deprivation
was finally too much for him. He had a stroke,
and he began to gently prepare me for the question
about him go, and I stopped him, and I said,
(41:09):
I know we've all done everything we can, miss you,
especially I'm ready when you are. So they brought him
back to me, a little drip attached to his arm,
and when the toggle on the drip was thrown, the
(41:30):
medication would end his life. He was as warm and
as soft as ever in my arms, and yet I
knew he was no longer there. Sue held him for
a while too, and then everybody left me alone with him.
(41:56):
I said what you would expect somebody to say in
such a circumstance, about love and happiness, And then I
heard myself saying things about gratitude, gratitude to him for
(42:18):
teaching me that in the face of death, the point
is to know when to try and when to say enough,
and that he had taught me how to confront death
and crisis and urgency with evenness and practicality that I
never knew I had in any quantity whatsoever and to
(42:39):
be able to say, I know you had a happy life, Missue,
and it seems like that, and not the fact that
you had a happy life but not a long one.
The happy life is all that mattered to you. The cardiologist,
(43:00):
Dr Fox and the tech came back to the room
at this point, and I said I was ready, and
they turned the toggle and left very quietly, and I
said to miss you, I know if there is a
place for you to go now, I am certain you
will be the first one they let in. I just
(43:23):
hope they will let me visit you there someday, and
I hope you will remember us. I said, good night,
sweet prints and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,
and he was gone again, as I had prayed when
(43:49):
he died, Miss You died in my arms, and he
managed somehow to do it twice. There are some postscripts, missus.
Cardiologist very solemnly returned and respectfully said that of those
international experts who had reviewed his case and were deeply
(44:11):
saddened that they could not help him, only two out
of a couple of dozen had actually seen and been
able to study any small dog suffering from tetralogy of
fallow and Mishu might have one final blessing for them
and the rest of us, if they could keep and
study his poor little malformed heart without hesitation. I said yes,
(44:35):
because in that instance I saw him positioning his head
on Stevie's head, and his back paws on roses back paws,
So the three of them were cuddling together, and I knew,
as I had always known, this was a dog who
cared about and actually loved other dogs. So the hospital
(44:56):
wound up recalibrating some of the cameras they had that
they used to photograph the smallest teeth in the smallest dogs,
so they could get every imaginable image of Mishu's tiny
heart and maybe someday learn methods with which to fix
this nightmare in another dog. And Mishu is in the
(45:21):
veterinary textbooks now. As a second PostScript, Mishu's parents had
another litter late last year after he died, and they're
human was kind enough to offer me either of the brothers.
Mischau would never know. Each was eerily reminiscent of him,
but healthy, completely healthy, so healthy that they were threats
(45:47):
to my other three dogs. I had each of them
live a week with us, and I would have been
fine with each other. They liked me fine, but each
of them first bit ted in the genitals, and then
Stevie in the genitals, and rose in the genitals, and
in one case me and the genitals. They were crazy,
fun but crazy. And the second one was not only
(46:09):
twice as large as other Maltese his age, he was
able to vault out of his pen like an Olympic gymnast.
So they went back and now have their own homes
where there they are the only dogs in their own homes.
So the third PostScript when Sue from Maltese Rescue reached
(46:34):
out again this past June and said, um, I've got
another special case. Fifteen year old perfect health but but
rotting teeth, and he has dementia. His human got sick
and and didn't really take care of him, and then
she died, and I don't know what to do. Who's
going to adopt a fifteen year old? I was able
(46:56):
to raise my hand. I had an open roster spot.
The fifteen year old's name is Mena. It's French for kids.
I can't imagine what confusion that's caused him all these years.
His human had been a French teacher. He actually didn't
have dementia, or at least not very much dementia. It
was those teeth. His teeth was so bad, so rotten.
(47:20):
Some of them came out by just pulling on them
with your fingers. So we had them all taken out.
And the next day he woke up like he was
seven years old, looked around like how long have these
other dogs been here? Every day since then he's gotten
a little younger. He's Benjamin Button, and he's a living instruction.
(47:40):
Look out for your dog's teeth. Even if you think
you know to do that, do it more. The last PostScript,
I got the tattoo a month after me Sho died.
His pensive, half smiling little face looks up at me
(48:01):
from near the crook of my elbow where he used
to sit when I would carry him around after one
of those pre feints. It is a remarkable likeness to me.
It means exactly what you would think it means. It
comforts me greatly. It means Mishu is always with me
(48:28):
and always will be with me. And now as this
unwanted but not tragic anniversary approaches, Misshu will also, I hope,
always be with you. I'm taking the holiday off. There
(48:57):
will be a new episode Monday. Thank You. Countdown with
Keith Olderman is a production of my heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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