August 30, 2024 • 44 mins
In this episode, we continue our conversation with Ian Donovan, diving into part two of his incredible story. If you missed part one, we highly recommend going back and listening to it for a comprehensive understanding of Ian’s journey.
In this episode, we explore Ian's resilience and mental mindset following a severe accident that left him with multiple injuries. Ian shares his experience of overcoming physical and mental challenges, drawing from his military training and life lessons. We discuss the importance of mental preparation, crisis rehearsal, and how to push through adversity, both in personal life and professional settings.
To contact Jeff Meyer email him at: JeffMeyer1@outlook.com
To see more about Jeff and the classes that are offered go to: www.Policek9Training.net
Thanks to this shows sponsors:
______________________________________________________________________________
KATS K9 Record Keeping www.katsplatinum.com
______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
Ray Allen K9 https://www.rayallen.com/
____________________________________________________________________________
For information about the Colorado K9 Conference https://coloradok9conference.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey everybody, we're going to get to part two with Ian Donovan here in just
a minute, but let's pay some bills real quick and talk about Kevin Sheldahl with K9 Services.
Kevin's down in New Mexico. You hear me talk about him. I've interviewed him on this show a few times.
Kevin does a little of everything in K9, so he's got decades of experience and
he can help you out with either coming and doing an audit of your unit,
(00:22):
which is always a good idea.
You know, it just shows that you're at standard or probably higher and and then
he can maybe give you a few ideas.
So I always encourage different agencies to bring in an outside person to kind
of look and see what you're doing, check out your training, your records,
your policies and everything, and just make sure you're all up to date.
And it's just a good, healthy thing for agencies to do.
(00:44):
Kevin does a lot of those, obviously does a lot of different training and all
different types of police dogs.
So he can come to you and do seminars, or you can go to New Mexico and go to some of his classes.
Check out K9services.com, K-9services.com, or just give Kevin a call at 505-250-4576.
(01:07):
That's Kevin Sheldahl with K9 Services. services.
And then of course, you know, my sponsor that has been around for quite a while
already, Ray Allen Manufacturing, and I talk about them every show,
but the thing I always have to mention about Ray Allen is their quality.
So I just did a class two weeks ago, had a lot of dogs in there,
(01:27):
and I mentioned it a few times already that that Ray Allen muzzle is just my favorite muzzle.
So we had one problem with a different brand muzzle, and luckily somebody had
an extra Ray Allen muzzle, and threw it on.
The guy liked the muzzle so much on his dog that he ended up ordering a new
muzzle that night right online.
So check out Ray Allen. They also have a button on their website for what's new.
(01:50):
They're always putting out new products. So Ray Allen Manufacturing for all your canine needs.
Great products and a very, very good company. They stand behind us and sponsor shows like this.
So with that, let's jump over and listen to part two with Ian Donovan.
Music.
(02:10):
This is the Police Canine Training Podcast with Jeff Meyer.
Join us for each episode to get real-world advice from canine professionals
who have experience on the street.
Each episode will focus on up-to-date information that you can use on the street.
Spend about 30 minutes with us each week as part of your training day.
Our goal at Police Canine Training is to make every canine team be the best they can be.
(02:33):
Music.
Welcome to the Police Canine Training Podcast. I'm your host,
Jeff Meyer. Today I'm back with,
Ian Donovan, and we're going to talk about part two of our show.
So if you didn't listen to part one, stop this recording here and flip back
(02:53):
and listen to part one with Ian.
We talk a lot about his military career, what he did with canines,
and how we got to this point of the show right now, where we're going to talk
about some mental mindset and resiliency and just everyday life stuff that happened to Ian.
So I met Ian the first time in person at the Colorado Canine Conference,
conference talked to him a few times went to his nutrition class
(03:14):
and then he was at a scenario and we started talking
and if you meet ian he's just a good shaped dude
that's walking around i had no clue what
his actual story was and we started talking about some
of the injuries that he had recently sustained and what
it struck me as is this is definitely a
besides just a tough dude there's a
(03:36):
mindset here where you know adversity has hit
him hard and he's still walking around and and
not feeling sorry for himself and and kind of
working through it i'm sure some of the military training and just some of his
life training played a part in that so i thought it was really a great topic
to talk about because it affects all of us at some point as a cop and most people
(03:57):
get injured it either sometimes real bad sometimes not hopefully you know most people don't
But there's a mindset, and I've seen it with a lot of cops over the years,
when they're injured, the ones who are kind of mentally prepared before it seem
to fare a little bit better when they come out of the back end of it.
So Ian started to mention about the accident that he had at the end of the last show.
(04:19):
I thought today we're going to jump right into it. So how are you doing today, Ian?
Good, man. Good. Thanks for having me back. I appreciate it.
Absolutely. So we ended up the last show when we were talking about your combat
time was pretty much cut once you became a Kettlemaster.
And then you were stateside, obviously. What state were you living in?
Yeah, Tennessee. So I live in Tennessee right outside of Fort Cam.
(04:42):
So you're living, you know, I assume you have a family and you're living off base and you're.
Somewhat normal life for for what you
do yeah as normal could be i am married
i got five kids so yeah this
is a part of the country we're going to stick around in yeah and then you know
family was was big in helping me to get through you know i got through it was
(05:06):
always there for me when i was doing what i was doing overseas supporting me
so yeah so before we get to your accent any bad injuries overseas?
No, not overseas. You know, I'd gotten, I'd gotten banged up,
you know, broken some bones here and there just in training,
you know, jumping and then, you know, doing some, some of the MMA type stuff
(05:27):
and then overexposure to overpressure, eating some charges that I feel a little bit close to,
but you know, just TBIs and concussions mainly
yeah so i was i was much
i was much further along i was
much much better shaped than a lot of my my guys
that i worked with as far as tbis were concerned because
(05:49):
i had never i'd never i'd never gotten hurt let's say in combat yeah from a
tbi but a lot of shoulder fired munitions and mortar firing when you're just
not being careful enough you know it all adds up yeah yeah kind of manifested
of itself when I got in this accident.
And I'm sure the whole time you were over there, though, you were doing mental
(06:12):
crisis rehearsal about, you know, if you get blown up in a Humvee or whatever,
you know, whatever situation it was, it had to be a big part of your everyday
thought process while you were over there.
Sure, man. Yeah. I mean, you fail to plan, you can plan to fail, right?
So, you know, we always planned and trained for the worst case scenario from
there. You know, We always had contingency plans.
(06:34):
One thing that we're well known for in the special operations community as Green Berets is planning.
It's too ad nauseum.
The senior guys, the experienced guys understand the importance of it,
but as a young guy coming in, a lot of times they don't understand it because
they've never needed to have multiple contingency plans.
Because when you're over there and everybody wants to kill you,
(06:58):
your first contingency plan probably won't even work. Then you might have to rely on a second one.
But if you don't even have those, you're in, you're in a real bad way.
So now you're back at your home stateside. Can I go over your story? What happened?
Sure, sure. Yeah, so it was actually my wife and kids were down in Mardi Gras in Louisiana.
(07:21):
And so I was here alone. My oldest daughter stayed back because she had to work.
And the night prior was when Russia invaded Ukraine, just to give you a timeline,
I guess. So I was by myself in my living room and I had all of my kit and my
guns and I'm just cleaning stuff and packing stuff. Ready to go.
(07:41):
Because I'm thinking, man, if this happens, even though I'm the kennel master, we're pushing, baby.
Yeah. You know, I'm going to deploy my entire kennel.
Yeah. And I'm going to get a dog, the spare dogs.
I'm going to run the spare dogs. You know, we're back in it,
baby. Yeah. I'm super excited. Didn't sleep at all.
Very excited. Go to work the next day, you know, just follow the news,
(08:02):
blah, blah, blah. Nothing really exciting happens.
I believe it's like February timeframe. So in Tennessee, it's,
you know, that's probably our coldest months, but our coldest month when we
normally get most of our snow, if any.
So I remember I'd come back from work that day and then I was going back out
because I work with a buddy of mine who trained dogs, basically just in obedience.
(08:29):
And I had three dogs in the back of my truck and in crates.
That I was going to go and do some, do some training with after I'd just gotten
off, you know, my family wasn't around, so I was going to go and do that.
And I was driving, you know, just driving back out there to go and meet with him.
And I lived in a pretty rural environment and the roads are pretty windy,
(08:49):
just these back roads, the country roads.
And two kids were, were speeding, come in the opposite direction.
And I was on a blind curve, kind of like an S curve in the road.
And I see them, you know, initially approaching me at a pretty high rate of
speed, you know, faster than they, I immediately realized faster than they were
(09:11):
going to be able to control.
So sure enough, he goes off the road away from me, you know,
towards his passengers and overcorrects and his trucks on his front two tires
when he locked the wheels up and turned.
And, and that's when I knew that the impact was going to be inevitable.
This is a 45 mile an hour zone. Yeah. Yeah.
(09:32):
All I could do, I didn't want to go in his lane, you know, because if I missed
him, great. But if we didn't, if I didn't miss him, now I'm in the wrong.
Yeah, yeah. So I just stopped to slow down as much as I could and tried to go
off to my side of the road.
Yeah. And that truck, you know, struck me head on.
And as things do when it's, you know, your adrenaline is just peaked,
(09:55):
things start to slow down.
So I was able to see the driver, look into his eyes, a young,
you know, male occupant.
And the female occupant, the same age or younger, was on the dashboard.
I would assume she didn't have
seatbelt on. So I thought that her body was going to be what killed me.
You know, it looked like she was going to come through both windshields and
(10:16):
strike me. So that's the last thing I remember.
And I wake, you know, in a ditch and I can smell, you know, there's that ringing in your ears.
I can smell fire. I remember smelling smoke, and it's burning plastic.
And if you've been to the Middle East, you know what I'm talking about. Burn everything.
(10:38):
There's no sanitation services there. So burning plastic is what kind of woke me up.
And, you know, I did a head-to-toe assessment, and I was trying to do it quickly
because I could smell smoke. I didn't know where it was coming from.
So, you know, I started in my head looking for any gashes in my head, you know. Yeah.
(10:59):
Fingertip size are bigger. I was okay. But I did realize that my right arm was
broken because it wasn't working properly.
So I left it down. And then I started doing a, you know, checking my chest as best I could.
Just kind of going over myself with my left arm, checking for any bleeding, sweeping myself.
Just basically reverted back to what I'd known to do. Through your training.
(11:21):
Yeah. Right. Right. So.
So you really weren't panicked at this point, I assume, because of all your prior training.
You know, I wasn't panicked, but I don't know if it was because of the training or what I'd been.
I think it was just the mindset of, okay, this has happened, right? Yeah.
Now what's the next step? Yeah. Okay. I live by the mindset that there's no
(11:46):
one there to save you. Yeah.
If you expect to get out of anything, you need to have a way to do that yourself.
So if you need to be able to count on yourself to get yourself out of any situation,
and I live by that, whether it's, you know, professionally, financially,
physically, mentally, emotionally.
And I think that's probably a very important thing to, I guess,
mention now at that point, because that's the mindset, you know,
(12:10):
you wake up, you say, okay, that sucked.
Yeah. This isn't so good. I used to like this truck, but now we're here.
And how do we get away from here? You know, You got to assess your environment immediately.
And do a threat assessment, basically. So the first thing I needed to do was
make sure that I took care of any major bleeding.
You know, I go through the steps, through the fundamentals. It's just muscle
(12:33):
memory. Yeah. But you're not going to be able to do that if you're in shock.
Yeah, yeah. You know, you're not going to be able to do that if you're not mentally
prepared for that situation.
I think that something that really helped me that day was living with the understanding
for so many years that eventually I'm going to get really mangled probably in this life.
(12:53):
So you weren't actually surprised to be in that situation.
You're probably surprised to be in that situation in the United States,
but I think you probably in the back of your mind, you assumed at some point
doing what you did, you'd find yourself in some kind of situation like this.
You know, yeah, professionally for sure. And it was a shock.
It was not a shock. I would say it was a surprise.
(13:14):
You're right. I was not expecting it to happen that day. My mind was in Syria, you know, in Ukraine.
My mind was on that, even though I was going to go train some companion pets in obedience still.
Still so i you know
that motivated me too but you know initially you wake
up and now you're here so how do you how do you get
out of here right because there's nobody that's going
(13:35):
to come and say yeah you know that's just what you have to revert back to and
if you if that's your mindset then you're going to have a plan of action sure
in most situations you find yourself in and if you don't have a plan of action
you're going to have the mindset to be capable of creating a plan of action
yeah yeah but that's only possible if you're not freaking the hell out yeah exactly,
so anyway i keep going head to toe and i
(13:56):
i was really concerned that my pelvis was broken and that only occurred to me
because we do a lot of practice shooting people in the pelvis yeah if you have
body armor on sure you can shoot the head and the neck but if you crush the
pelvis you know That's going to drop the person.
You can't stand up or walk without that structure from the pelvis. Yeah.
(14:22):
You know, I was pushing there and I couldn't feel any pops or grinding.
And then I went down to my femurs, the tops of my legs. It's all I could see.
I couldn't see from the knees down. I didn't know if I had feet.
And I pushed on my femurs and they were pretty squishy and I could feel the
popping and the grinding.
So I knew that they were broken and then realized that I couldn't see my feet.
And that was the only part of my body I couldn't see.
(14:44):
So I have tourniquets in my truck, in my center console.
And I said, well, I got to put tourniquets on. You know, I had a, I did not have a belt on.
I was wearing some tactical pants that had a belt built in, but I always have a belt.
Yeah. It sounds weird, but it's so that I can have a tourniquet.
Yeah. If I need to make one.
So I'm, and I'm kind of out of it. I was concussed pretty bad. Yeah.
(15:08):
So I'm looking for my center console and I, I just have to talk to myself out loud. Okay.
You're sitting in the driver's seat. The center console should be to your right,
you know, between you and the path of your seat.
And I look right, and all I see is the passenger seat. So I'm sitting on the
center console, and I can't open it now to get to my tourniquet.
(15:30):
So that's when I started realizing I got to get out of here because I got to
see my feet or what's left of them. I need to stop the bleeding. I couldn't feel them.
And that's when I realized that I was trapped in the vehicle.
The engine block had smashed my – from the knees down, basically.
It had me pinned between the frame and the engine. Yeah.
(15:51):
So, now my attention goes back to smoke, right? That's the next threat that
I need to start working on.
And my vehicle is on fire. And so, I start punching out my window with my good hand, my left hand.
I end up breaking through it, and I grab the top of my truck and try to pull
myself out, and it's just not going to happen.
(16:14):
So, at that point, a couple thoughts crossed my mind.
The initial thought was, well, this is where you die.
Yeah. And immediately after that, you know, because those thoughts will creep
in your mind. Oh, absolutely. This is a bad situation.
Yeah. If you are exposed to bad situations enough, it's hard to not have that thought creep in.
(16:36):
But because you're exposed to them on a regular enough basis,
you know, the next thought just comes and pushes out right out the way.
So the next thought was, well, how do I signal for somebody to come and help me?
Yeah. You know, how do I signal? How do I make sure someone who may be looking
here understands that there's a person still in this car? Yeah.
(16:57):
So that's what, that's what I tried to do.
I tried to take my shirt off to hang it out that hole that I knew in my window
with my good left arm and swing it around.
And as I'm doing that, I get my shirt off.
I get it to the door. Or this guy just walks in front of my truck,
(17:18):
and I can see some flames leaping up from the hood of my truck.
I can see him through the windshields destroyed.
He looked at me, and we locked eyes.
I remember thinking, well, if this guy's reaction is any indication as to whether
or not I'm going to live, then I'm pretty screwed.
He was terrified. He was shocked. He was shocked. He was terrified.
(17:39):
He saw me. I saw him. So I started making hand signals, like,
come to my window here, bud. Yeah, help me.
Comes over and I said, hey, you guys, you got to put the fire out,
man. I can't get out. I need you to put that fire out. So it was two guys that had been fishing.
His other buddy started throwing unearthed dirt, you know, from the trash on
the hood, on the fire, and basically smoldered it out enough.
(18:01):
And then another guy came with a fire extinguisher and put it out.
And then, you know, I was trapped in that vehicle that, you know,
they came in and those civilians that were there really are the ones that saved my life. Sure.
Without them, I'd have burned up and died. Yeah. I couldn't get out. So...
You know, they, police were on the scene probably within 15 minutes.
(18:22):
You know, like I said, it's pretty rural, but they got there and then they were
able to get me out probably 30 minutes later from doing quite a bit of cutting. Yeah.
But you know, the whole time I remember the, the EMS guy, when they broke the
back window out and he comes and crawls in, he's kind of on my lap and I'm telling
him, put your, put your weight on my pelvis. Cause my humors are broken.
(18:45):
Yeah. And he's trying to just care about my head and my neck.
He's telling me not to move.
But I'm telling him, put me in the K-hole, ketamine.
Because I know from experience, you can't really overdose on that.
And we push it to guys all the time. They're just going to go out for longer.
So anyway, I'm basically telling him how to do his job. He's a great guy.
(19:05):
I made it my business to go and thank everybody for that. After what I could.
But yeah, that was basically it. They were going to life flight me,
but they couldn't. So they put me in an ambulance and it was about an hour drive to Nashville.
And, you know, even then I remember telling them to put me in the K-hole because
(19:26):
I was. Did they help you? Did they?
They did. Yeah, they did. They were great guys. Yeah.
And they got me there and had some phenomenal surgeons that put me back together best that they could.
And then, you know, after that came the rehabilitation process, basically.
And and talk about the rehabilitation process what did they tell you at the
(19:48):
beginning you know what's your what your outcome you know best best case scenario
and some of the stuff you told me about that uh you just had to choose not to
listen to oh yeah well everybody's going to tell you all kinds of things a lot
and i've been i've been not listening to people that have doubted me for,
decades you know that happened when i told them what i was going to do in the oil field Yeah.
(20:09):
All right, Rambo, why don't you calm down?
And you know, it happened, it happened even in group, you know,
when senior guys that may be a little apprehensive to take you at your word
because they don't know you and that just fuels you to prove them wrong.
But you know, yeah. So my injuries were basically, I crushed both my pelvises,
tibia, fibulas on both legs,
(20:31):
basically had a floating knee because I'd broken through both bones on the bottom
of the knee and on the top of the knee.
So basically they took out the bone marrow in the center of the bones, they put rods in there.
So the rods became my new skeletal structure, basically, until the bones healed around the rods. Yeah.
(20:53):
Both above and below the knees and put plates in the knees to hold them together.
And then I had a plate in my wrist, a little, I had a broken portion of my spine
and broken quite a few ribs.
So, you know, you're on your back in hospital and it's the most demoralizing position.
Oh, yeah. You go from a guy who can, who's very physically capable to a guy
(21:14):
that can't wipe his own, you know, butt.
Yeah, yeah. And that's, to this day, that's probably the worst thing still,
you know, just going from a point of, from the peak of a mountain down to the
very, very bottom. Yeah. Yeah.
But they told me, you know, at best case scenario, you know,
you'll be getting around with a walker, maybe a cane if you're really lucky.
(21:35):
Yeah. And initially, you know, to me that meant, well, I'll be upright.
Yeah. I'm upright, you know, then I'll be running again.
I'll be, you know, it's okay. Because you've got to understand,
every time we go to our medic, especially when it comes close to retirement,
they say, okay, when you go for your physicals, when you go for your screenings
(21:56):
to determine how disabled you're going to be, you've got to have the mindset
of a person who doesn't do this job.
When they ask you how you're feeling and we just say, yeah, I'm good.
No, you're not good. Everything hurts. You need to tell them what hurts and how much.
Yeah so for them to give me that you know that
diagnosis they were they were giving me that diagnosis as
a i don't want this to sound bad but as a regular normal person
(22:17):
yeah not so i knew that i knew that i could yeah i
knew that i could overcome that stuff and
go beyond it their expectations but yeah the
rehabilitation process you know a lot of times it's much more mental than it
is physical sure people the body is going to heal it's going to mend it wants
to you know i I went into that accident being physically pretty strong,
(22:42):
so that really assisted me. Sure.
But I'd never been injured that bad. So for me, it was more of a mental challenge.
Yeah. I weaned myself off of these opioids because I wanted nothing to do with
them. How long were you on those?
They wanted to send me home with them, and I was in the hospital for two and
a half months. Yeah, yeah. But I weaned myself off of them in the first month.
(23:04):
Yeah. just because, you know, they were telling me I was getting up and walking.
I was getting up out of bed. They didn't really want me to.
And every time I did, man, you know, the pain was just phenomenal. Oh, I can imagine.
Yeah. Every time I tried to swing my legs off the bed, I would pass out.
Wow. Because blood would go down there and then it wouldn't get back up. Yeah.
(23:24):
And I remember telling the nurses, you know, giving them a countdown of when I was going to pass out.
Because in MMA training, you know, we practice choke holds on each other.
Yeah. You know, and we'll go out unconscious so we know what it feels like.
Yeah. And we know what it was like to wake up again.
Because that's important. So I knew that. that and was able to tell them.
And from there, basically, that was the biggest first step, just sitting up
(23:48):
until you're going to pass out, pass out, wake, do it again.
And they didn't want me to do that, obviously, and they could only be around
me so often. So, you know, I did what I wanted to do, unfortunately.
But it helped me mentally more than physically. Yeah.
And that's just the biggest game, man, is you've got to understand that no one's
(24:08):
coming to save you but yourself. So if you want to walk again,
you got to do the things necessary to do it.
But I didn't like the opioids because I didn't feel pain on them.
I knew I was in a lot of pain.
And, you know, my muscles had atrophied so badly that I had to get stronger.
And I knew how to get stronger.
And I knew how I needed to get stronger because I was very intimately familiar with my body, my job.
(24:33):
I asked a lot of it and I trained it to a certain degree. So I knew what I needed to do.
And that's why I needed to get off them because I didn't want to hurt myself
further or injure myself further because I couldn't feel the pain I was in.
That makes sense. Your body's going to tell you when to stop.
Yeah. But there's a difference between pain and discomfort.
Yeah. And for anybody who does a physical job, it's very, very important to understand.
(24:57):
You need to be uncomfortable most of the time because that's when you're growing and developing.
Yeah. But you need to stop at pain because that's when you're going to injure yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
So it was two and a half months basically in the hospital, and then they released you to do some rehab?
Yeah, yeah. So I got to come home when I could basically sit in the shower and
(25:19):
do all the things, get on and off the toilet with a slide.
This board that goes from your wheelchair to the toilet, and you can get off
your wheelchair and get in the shower. hour.
And, uh, it was, it was pretty eyeopening, man, because when I came home,
you know, I immediately was just not realistically, you know,
(25:41):
no responsibilities that I really needed to take care of.
But as a guy, you know, you come home and you just see the list of things you have to do.
And man, I almost wish I'd have stayed in the hospital at that point.
But you know, there's no substitute for being around your kids.
Cause they weren't, they weren't going to let my My kids come into the hospital
to see me because of, you know, COVID protocols back then.
(26:03):
So I, you know, it was good to come home so I can be around my kids.
But they were, you know, they don't know and they don't care about how hurt you are, really.
They can't understand that. All they understand is dad can't play with them.
Yep. Or dad's always tired.
Dad's always angry because he's in pain. So that was even more important for
(26:24):
me to get better for them.
It was a good motivator, I'm sure. For sure. Yeah.
And being in a rural area, did they have good physical therapy?
Did they come to your house or was it mostly just stuff you started doing on your own?
Well, you know, I had a swimming pool and I can remember dumping myself off
(26:46):
in that pool and walking for a long time, for hours. Yeah.
I shouldn't have been upright without.
A walker at that point but i knew that you
know how buoyant your body was and how much weight it took
off your joints so i would get in that pool man and
i'd walk and walk and i'd do you know water aerobics i'd
(27:07):
pull myself out and be done but i did that quite a bit and they had therapists
that they would send to me but man i'll be honest those therapists are really
more or less for elderly people yeah their their expectations were probably
pretty low very low and the stuff that they'd put me through,
you know, I dealt with it, but that's not the best I could do for them.
(27:29):
So I didn't, you know, really the therapy came from when I could drive again,
which I'd started doing way sooner than I should have.
But I got back to Fort Campbell and I went to our therapists that deal with combat injuries.
And, and those guys really helped me out quite a bit.
And a lot of it was, you know, getting those
(27:49):
muscles back active and the knots in those those
muscles because when you break your bones like that it shatters it
goes straight through your muscles too so you're severing muscles then you
got to rebuild those so yeah i did have great access to
therapy on base but you know the guys that came out to the house not so
much yeah it was more of us just him to me yeah i think it's just different
mindset for the guys that are on base they've dealt with you know massive injuries
(28:13):
and and and the mindset that you had so i could see why it'd be so different
yeah yeah it was different but it was good man man.
It was, uh, it was good. And you know, man, I'll be honest.
It's, it's nothing that I didn't think would happen to me again at some point.
And it's, it's just an added challenge every day.
(28:33):
And it's, that's something that I'm thankful for. You know, I enjoy challenges.
I enjoy, I enjoy the challenge of being uncomfortable and making myself stronger
with, you know, with this now that I have to work with because it's definitely
different. The body's different. Sure.
So for people who can't see you physically, where are you at now with,
(28:55):
with your, your recovery?
Well you know from the from the waist up i'm pretty good like you know back to where i was.
But i made a living on my feet you know yeah i made
a living rucking and jumping out of planes and
fast open on a helicopter so the shock there's
really very little cartilage left in the knees i've got
cadaver parts in there yeah you know
(29:18):
i'll still i call it a bag shuffle you can
edit that out if it's just a little
light jog because my kids are extremely active
and yeah you know they're still part of me i have a six-year-old son that
says hey man your dad can still yeah beat you
in a race or at least come tackle you and play football yeah
yeah so i could if i need to get from
(29:39):
point a to point b i can it just won't be very quick yeah yeah
and there's you know there's a lot of impact that i don't
want to do anymore on the joints because i just don't want to get my knees
replaced because if i have to get them replaced which they're all telling
me i do all these rods and plates and everything have
to come out so this will be a major major surgery yeah
i'd like to avoid that at all costs but yeah man
(30:01):
i mean you know the job that i do now for kinetic which still gives me access
to law enforcement military guys you know on a flat range i can do that all
day you know in colorado it was painful but i had to follow my kids up and down
these mountains and show them places that I had been prior to this injury.
And that was a big motivator for me to get in good enough shape before I went
(30:22):
to the conference because I'm showing them, you know, we summited some pretty
high peaks that I had done as a, as a mountaineer prior to this accident.
And, uh, it was important for me to show that to my kids and start building
that mental resiliency in them that I learned from nature and how,
just how unforgiving nature can be and how that's such a great teacher of your, I guess,
(30:48):
how far you can go, what your capabilities are, but always working on improving them.
Well, I can tell you from, you know, I sat in your class and I hadn't talked to you a ton.
I had no clue of the injuries you'd been around.
The way you move around is remarkable considering what you've been through the last few years.
So my hat's off to you because I know, you know, we've been talking about it,
(31:09):
but obviously, you know, being in good physical shape before played a huge part.
But the mental part of it is that resiliency and and
i think some people have it in spades clearly you
do you know where it's like i'll get through this and it's something
you know i think is is genetic you know you've seen we see
it in dogs we see it in people you know that some dogs
(31:29):
are just you know a little little bit stronger genetically some
people are you know and thank god you have those genetics
you know otherwise be a very different story right now
i'm sure yeah for sure man yeah yeah the
body can do a lot more than the mind wants to you know
let it believe you just gotta force it to do it i'm sure
there were some dark days in those days do you
(31:53):
mind talking about any of those dark i mean some nights or some days i'm sure
that look that things look pretty grim and and how and what did you do on those
days yeah well yeah you're right man and like i said you know the physical aspect
of the injuries and getting over them was nothing I think,
compared to the mental demons you're dealing with.
(32:14):
You know, my wife would come as much as she could, bless her heart. We have five kids here.
And literally the day that she came back, the bottom floor of our house flooded
from a washing machine overflowing and no one was home.
So she's dealing with home repairs and me in the hospital and still being a
mother to five very active kids. is.
(32:36):
So, you know, at nights and a lot of days I was just alone in the hospital and
guys would come and see me, but man, I never expected life not to go on for them.
They have a mission and they have, you know, a responsibility to.
Do their job like I understand they needed to do it. So there was,
(32:56):
I knew that they couldn't come and just sit with me.
And I really enjoy time alone.
Once a year, I try to do something for a few days to a week by myself where
I just go out on these trips in nature and challenge myself. Yeah.
Well, because I'm the only thing that I can fall back on at those times.
(33:20):
And I've learned how productive that can be mentally for me personally.
So I couldn't do that at this point. So I treated this stay in the hospital
like one of those trips where, you know, you're battling everything.
You're battling not only the physical pain that you're in around the clock,
but all of these thoughts that start creeping when you're at your most vulnerable.
(33:43):
It's uncomfortable for people to continuously place themselves in vulnerable
positions. positions, but I'm telling you, that's where you grow the most as a person and as a man.
And for me as an operator, that was no different.
You're really, there are some times where you're going to be there and you're
going to be able to feed off of other people's strengths and also other people's weaknesses.
(34:04):
You see that and you know that that's not you, so it makes you feel stronger.
But in this certain situation, I was by myself and I'd put myself there before in the a past.
So I went back to that mental space, that mindset of.
Having conversations with yourself you know yeah
those are some of the most productive conversations that you
(34:25):
can have if you're constantly crushing
your self-pity yeah but if you allow that to seep in you know it's not going
to do anything good for you it never has it never will so coming up with a plan
yeah and that mindset can be it's not just physical injury you know cops go
through some crappy stuff their personal lives because of the job then through
(34:47):
the job now especially the way
politics are invading our job in a real negative way.
Some of these cops, the suicide rate's higher now.
So it doesn't have to be physical. It could just be all the pressures from the
job that the same stuff you're talking about could still help.
Start thinking to yourself and clear your mind a little bit by being uncomfortable
(35:08):
for a while and talk to yourself for a while before you make any big decisions about anything.
Anything. Anything, man. I mean, there's a lot of guys that are still going to be dependent on me.
You know, I had kids, I had a wife that were still dependent on me,
but I needed to be dependent on myself, you know, because all that goes away
when no one else is there.
So that's very, very important to be able to look within yourself and understand
(35:31):
because you've challenged yourself before that this is just another one of those
things that you're going to overcome. And now it's, it's fun.
Now let's make this a game. Okay. So now this is where we are.
How do we get, how do we get over?
This is a challenge. You should enjoy these challenges. is if you're the right
personality type and have the right mindset. And that's kind of how I looked at it.
But, man, some dark, dark days. And opioids didn't help, and that's why I got off of them.
(35:56):
I needed mental clarity as much for mental recovery as physical recovery.
I didn't need that fog or that haziness in my brain. I needed to be very sharp
and think about what I needed to do.
And a lot of breathing exercises, man, that I'd learned in shooting,
just to focus on something else other than the pain.
(36:18):
That can be from mental pain. That can be from emotional pain.
That can be from physical pain. Sure.
But there's always a way to get over it. There's always a way out and a way
to conquer it. It's just how...
How good are you at, you know, figuring that out? Yeah.
Well, it's a remarkable story for sure. And I mean, you, obviously you're,
(36:39):
you know, people that are, are, do your profession are already,
you know, a different type of person.
I mean, that was a compliment, but I think there's definitely lessons to be
learned, you know, for, for anybody to be mentally prepared for stuff as it
comes, you know, cause it's going to happen in your life at some point and having that mental,
(36:59):
crisis rehearsal whether it's a critical incident
on the job or something like this that i mean clearly i'm
sure in all your thoughts of ways you could be hurt
driving to train a dog was not in that that planning i'm sure you know no but
but yeah it also comes to you when you're least expecting it yeah yeah that's
(37:20):
always a thing to think and remember yeah so we'll wrap it up real quick but
let's talk real quick about what you're doing with kinetic dog food because
you came out here through Kinetic and did a great class for us and a lot of
good information that was not an infomercial.
It was just good information about nutrition for dogs.
When I first talked to you, I was like, just obviously I can't have an infomercial.
(37:43):
And you're like, no, it won't be in it. It clearly wasn't. I know that they
paid the ticket, and I know that you're working for them, but I appreciated
all the just substantial information that was in the class.
So how are things going with them, and what's that set up like?
Well, really good, man. I found Kinetic when I was a handler at Fifth Group,
and we had a huge problem nutritionally with our dogs.
(38:05):
And when I became the green suit trainer, kind of like the subject matter expert
on dogs at the kennel for my kennel master, he said, dude, fix this dog food problem.
So I went and bought all the most expensive dog foods, and none of it did anything
good for our dogs until we found Kinetic.
So for a lot of reasons, I had to become a subject matter expert on it.
(38:28):
Employed a canine nutritionist and really started understanding the ingredients
that go into the formulation for a performance canine diet, basically.
And when I got out, I'm friends with the owners of the company,
Dave and Debbie Dorsen, exclusively own it now.
They bought their business partner out and they always wanted me to come on board in some aspect.
(38:53):
And now I kind of to run the military law enforcement
side of the house for them but what that gives me access
to is all all the guys like that were at your conference you
know yeah my goal at the end
of my time with them is that i want them to go and make the best informed decision
that they can possibly make yeah they're only going to get that way by understanding
(39:14):
how to read the ingredients that on every bag of dog food they're there legally
for a purpose it's because you are required you They're required by law to tell
you what's in that bag of dog food,
but there's a lot of games that are played with the wording of these ingredients.
That's really the only thing that's going to make your dog successful as a performance
animal. There's three things that make them up, genetics, training, and nutrition.
(39:35):
We all hammer on genetics and training, and we always ignored nutrition,
and we were no different in special operation.
When we rectified the nutrition piece, man, we had phenomenal results with our
dogs being much more successful. So that's really what I do for them is educate
guys on how to properly fuel performance canines.
And I think if you're open to it, I'd like to bring you back on for even another
(39:58):
show and even talk about reading dog food labels because I've been to quite
a few different classes and I understand it to a decent amount.
But I really liked your explanation on a lot of the different ingredients and
why some things sound bad, but they're actually good. And I'd probably like
to bring you back on here pretty soon, and we could just go over that whole
class if you're good with that.
(40:20):
Yeah, that'd be great, man. Yeah. I enjoyed talking to you. You're a great guy,
and I want to thank you for what you do for the law enforcement community. Absolutely.
We need a lot more of it. We're just here to support those guys.
They're our biggest clients by far, which is why I'm so thankful and happy and
fortunate to be working with them. Good, good.
It's a very good company that you're working for, so I'm happy that you're out there with them.
(40:43):
So well this has been I think this is a remarkable show and it's a hell of a story,
if I get some questions or answers or questions you and I can come back on and
do some like a Q&A about any of this and then like I said in the very near future
let's get you back on and we'll do a whole show about reading dog food labels and proper nutrition,
(41:03):
yeah let's do it man I'd enjoy them alright thanks again for all your time and
good luck on continued rehab yeah thanks Jeff I appreciate you man.
All right. I hope you enjoyed that show. Although this one wasn't really as
canine related, I think talking about resiliency for our profession and just
our lives is always a great topic to throw in once in a while.
(41:25):
Ian obviously has a lot of resiliency. If you see him walking around,
you wouldn't have any idea all the different injuries that he's still healing from.
Pretty amazing story and a really good guy.
So I appreciate him coming on and talking about
it we'll get him back on talks about some canine nutrition
real real soon let's wrap up today and
(41:46):
talk about you know it's still heat of summer and heat alarms
are important and the one that I always recommend is ace
canine calm so check out ace canine calm look at all their features I always
talk a lot about the cellular phone option but they also do a door popper they
do several different features on their their alarm so you can set it up to your
(42:07):
car alarm your heat alarm you can set it up just how you want it.
So there's also a feature called no canine left behind.
It's a cool feature that it won't turn off the alarm until you've opened the back door.
So if somehow people sometimes get out of their routine and a dog gets left
in a car, that heat alarm is going to keep functioning until that back door
(42:28):
is open and then closed again so that the heat alarm knows the dog has been removed from the car.
So it's just a safety feature that the owner, owner John Johnson invented,
and it's a pretty cool feature. So check out acecanine.com.
And then finally, record keeping. I talk about it every episode,
but Bob Eden's record keeping with cats is an excellent product.
(42:50):
So check out catsplatinum.com.
Bob is available for any questions you have. You can get his information on
the website at catsplatinum.com.
Give him a call, ask him some questions, and he'll show you that that program
can do anything you want it to do.
It's highly customizable and it cranks out some really
very professional reports both for court and both for your your admin it keeps
(43:13):
us track of all the important stats for you so check out catsplatinum.com very
good product it's been the one that's been around the longest for a reason it's
got the staying power for it so catsplatinum.com thanks for listening everybody.
Music.
Hey everybody, we're going to get to part two with Ian Donovan here in just
a minute, but let's pay some bills real quick and talk about Kevin Sheldahl with K9 Services.
Kevin's down in New Mexico. You hear me talk about him. I've interviewed him on this show a few times.
Kevin does a little of everything in K9, so he's got decades of experience and
he can help you out with either coming and doing an audit of your unit,
(00:22):
which is always a good idea.
You know, it just shows that you're at standard or probably higher and and then
he can maybe give you a few ideas.
So I always encourage different agencies to bring in an outside person to kind
of look and see what you're doing, check out your training, your records,
your policies and everything, and just make sure you're all up to date.
And it's just a good, healthy thing for agencies to do.
(00:44):
Kevin does a lot of those, obviously does a lot of different training and all
different types of police dogs.
So he can come to you and do seminars, or you can go to New Mexico and go to some of his classes.
Check out K9services.com, K-9services.com, or just give Kevin a call at 505-250-4576.
(01:07):
That's Kevin Sheldahl with K9 Services. services.
And then of course, you know, my sponsor that has been around for quite a while
already, Ray Allen Manufacturing, and I talk about them every show,
but the thing I always have to mention about Ray Allen is their quality.
So I just did a class two weeks ago, had a lot of dogs in there,
(01:27):
and I mentioned it a few times already that that Ray Allen muzzle is just my favorite muzzle.
So we had one problem with a different brand muzzle, and luckily somebody had
an extra Ray Allen muzzle, and threw it on.
The guy liked the muzzle so much on his dog that he ended up ordering a new
muzzle that night right online.
So check out Ray Allen. They also have a button on their website for what's new.
(01:50):
They're always putting out new products. So Ray Allen Manufacturing for all your canine needs.
Great products and a very, very good company. They stand behind us and sponsor shows like this.
So with that, let's jump over and listen to part two with Ian Donovan.
Music.
(02:10):
This is the Police Canine Training Podcast with Jeff Meyer.
Join us for each episode to get real-world advice from canine professionals
who have experience on the street.
Each episode will focus on up-to-date information that you can use on the street.
Spend about 30 minutes with us each week as part of your training day.
Our goal at Police Canine Training is to make every canine team be the best they can be.
(02:33):
Music.
Welcome to the Police Canine Training Podcast. I'm your host,
Jeff Meyer. Today I'm back with,
Ian Donovan, and we're going to talk about part two of our show.
So if you didn't listen to part one, stop this recording here and flip back
(02:53):
and listen to part one with Ian.
We talk a lot about his military career, what he did with canines,
and how we got to this point of the show right now, where we're going to talk
about some mental mindset and resiliency and just everyday life stuff that happened to Ian.
So I met Ian the first time in person at the Colorado Canine Conference,
conference talked to him a few times went to his nutrition class
(03:14):
and then he was at a scenario and we started talking
and if you meet ian he's just a good shaped dude
that's walking around i had no clue what
his actual story was and we started talking about some
of the injuries that he had recently sustained and what
it struck me as is this is definitely a
besides just a tough dude there's a
(03:36):
mindset here where you know adversity has hit
him hard and he's still walking around and and
not feeling sorry for himself and and kind of
working through it i'm sure some of the military training and just some of his
life training played a part in that so i thought it was really a great topic
to talk about because it affects all of us at some point as a cop and most people
(03:57):
get injured it either sometimes real bad sometimes not hopefully you know most people don't
But there's a mindset, and I've seen it with a lot of cops over the years,
when they're injured, the ones who are kind of mentally prepared before it seem
to fare a little bit better when they come out of the back end of it.
So Ian started to mention about the accident that he had at the end of the last show.
(04:19):
I thought today we're going to jump right into it. So how are you doing today, Ian?
Good, man. Good. Thanks for having me back. I appreciate it.
Absolutely. So we ended up the last show when we were talking about your combat
time was pretty much cut once you became a Kettlemaster.
And then you were stateside, obviously. What state were you living in?
Yeah, Tennessee. So I live in Tennessee right outside of Fort Cam.
(04:42):
So you're living, you know, I assume you have a family and you're living off base and you're.
Somewhat normal life for for what you
do yeah as normal could be i am married
i got five kids so yeah this
is a part of the country we're going to stick around in yeah and then you know
family was was big in helping me to get through you know i got through it was
(05:06):
always there for me when i was doing what i was doing overseas supporting me
so yeah so before we get to your accent any bad injuries overseas?
No, not overseas. You know, I'd gotten, I'd gotten banged up,
you know, broken some bones here and there just in training,
you know, jumping and then, you know, doing some, some of the MMA type stuff
(05:27):
and then overexposure to overpressure, eating some charges that I feel a little bit close to,
but you know, just TBIs and concussions mainly
yeah so i was i was much
i was much further along i was
much much better shaped than a lot of my my guys
that i worked with as far as tbis were concerned because
(05:49):
i had never i'd never i'd never gotten hurt let's say in combat yeah from a
tbi but a lot of shoulder fired munitions and mortar firing when you're just
not being careful enough you know it all adds up yeah yeah kind of manifested
of itself when I got in this accident.
And I'm sure the whole time you were over there, though, you were doing mental
(06:12):
crisis rehearsal about, you know, if you get blown up in a Humvee or whatever,
you know, whatever situation it was, it had to be a big part of your everyday
thought process while you were over there.
Sure, man. Yeah. I mean, you fail to plan, you can plan to fail, right?
So, you know, we always planned and trained for the worst case scenario from
there. You know, We always had contingency plans.
(06:34):
One thing that we're well known for in the special operations community as Green Berets is planning.
It's too ad nauseum.
The senior guys, the experienced guys understand the importance of it,
but as a young guy coming in, a lot of times they don't understand it because
they've never needed to have multiple contingency plans.
Because when you're over there and everybody wants to kill you,
(06:58):
your first contingency plan probably won't even work. Then you might have to rely on a second one.
But if you don't even have those, you're in, you're in a real bad way.
So now you're back at your home stateside. Can I go over your story? What happened?
Sure, sure. Yeah, so it was actually my wife and kids were down in Mardi Gras in Louisiana.
(07:21):
And so I was here alone. My oldest daughter stayed back because she had to work.
And the night prior was when Russia invaded Ukraine, just to give you a timeline,
I guess. So I was by myself in my living room and I had all of my kit and my
guns and I'm just cleaning stuff and packing stuff. Ready to go.
(07:41):
Because I'm thinking, man, if this happens, even though I'm the kennel master, we're pushing, baby.
Yeah. You know, I'm going to deploy my entire kennel.
Yeah. And I'm going to get a dog, the spare dogs.
I'm going to run the spare dogs. You know, we're back in it,
baby. Yeah. I'm super excited. Didn't sleep at all.
Very excited. Go to work the next day, you know, just follow the news,
(08:02):
blah, blah, blah. Nothing really exciting happens.
I believe it's like February timeframe. So in Tennessee, it's,
you know, that's probably our coldest months, but our coldest month when we
normally get most of our snow, if any.
So I remember I'd come back from work that day and then I was going back out
because I work with a buddy of mine who trained dogs, basically just in obedience.
(08:29):
And I had three dogs in the back of my truck and in crates.
That I was going to go and do some, do some training with after I'd just gotten
off, you know, my family wasn't around, so I was going to go and do that.
And I was driving, you know, just driving back out there to go and meet with him.
And I lived in a pretty rural environment and the roads are pretty windy,
(08:49):
just these back roads, the country roads.
And two kids were, were speeding, come in the opposite direction.
And I was on a blind curve, kind of like an S curve in the road.
And I see them, you know, initially approaching me at a pretty high rate of
speed, you know, faster than they, I immediately realized faster than they were
(09:11):
going to be able to control.
So sure enough, he goes off the road away from me, you know,
towards his passengers and overcorrects and his trucks on his front two tires
when he locked the wheels up and turned.
And, and that's when I knew that the impact was going to be inevitable.
This is a 45 mile an hour zone. Yeah. Yeah.
(09:32):
All I could do, I didn't want to go in his lane, you know, because if I missed
him, great. But if we didn't, if I didn't miss him, now I'm in the wrong.
Yeah, yeah. So I just stopped to slow down as much as I could and tried to go
off to my side of the road.
Yeah. And that truck, you know, struck me head on.
And as things do when it's, you know, your adrenaline is just peaked,
(09:55):
things start to slow down.
So I was able to see the driver, look into his eyes, a young,
you know, male occupant.
And the female occupant, the same age or younger, was on the dashboard.
I would assume she didn't have
seatbelt on. So I thought that her body was going to be what killed me.
You know, it looked like she was going to come through both windshields and
(10:16):
strike me. So that's the last thing I remember.
And I wake, you know, in a ditch and I can smell, you know, there's that ringing in your ears.
I can smell fire. I remember smelling smoke, and it's burning plastic.
And if you've been to the Middle East, you know what I'm talking about. Burn everything.
(10:38):
There's no sanitation services there. So burning plastic is what kind of woke me up.
And, you know, I did a head-to-toe assessment, and I was trying to do it quickly
because I could smell smoke. I didn't know where it was coming from.
So, you know, I started in my head looking for any gashes in my head, you know. Yeah.
(10:59):
Fingertip size are bigger. I was okay. But I did realize that my right arm was
broken because it wasn't working properly.
So I left it down. And then I started doing a, you know, checking my chest as best I could.
Just kind of going over myself with my left arm, checking for any bleeding, sweeping myself.
Just basically reverted back to what I'd known to do. Through your training.
(11:21):
Yeah. Right. Right. So.
So you really weren't panicked at this point, I assume, because of all your prior training.
You know, I wasn't panicked, but I don't know if it was because of the training or what I'd been.
I think it was just the mindset of, okay, this has happened, right? Yeah.
Now what's the next step? Yeah. Okay. I live by the mindset that there's no
(11:46):
one there to save you. Yeah.
If you expect to get out of anything, you need to have a way to do that yourself.
So if you need to be able to count on yourself to get yourself out of any situation,
and I live by that, whether it's, you know, professionally, financially,
physically, mentally, emotionally.
And I think that's probably a very important thing to, I guess,
mention now at that point, because that's the mindset, you know,
(12:10):
you wake up, you say, okay, that sucked.
Yeah. This isn't so good. I used to like this truck, but now we're here.
And how do we get away from here? You know, You got to assess your environment immediately.
And do a threat assessment, basically. So the first thing I needed to do was
make sure that I took care of any major bleeding.
You know, I go through the steps, through the fundamentals. It's just muscle
(12:33):
memory. Yeah. But you're not going to be able to do that if you're in shock.
Yeah, yeah. You know, you're not going to be able to do that if you're not mentally
prepared for that situation.
I think that something that really helped me that day was living with the understanding
for so many years that eventually I'm going to get really mangled probably in this life.
(12:53):
So you weren't actually surprised to be in that situation.
You're probably surprised to be in that situation in the United States,
but I think you probably in the back of your mind, you assumed at some point
doing what you did, you'd find yourself in some kind of situation like this.
You know, yeah, professionally for sure. And it was a shock.
It was not a shock. I would say it was a surprise.
(13:14):
You're right. I was not expecting it to happen that day. My mind was in Syria, you know, in Ukraine.
My mind was on that, even though I was going to go train some companion pets in obedience still.
Still so i you know
that motivated me too but you know initially you wake
up and now you're here so how do you how do you get
out of here right because there's nobody that's going
(13:35):
to come and say yeah you know that's just what you have to revert back to and
if you if that's your mindset then you're going to have a plan of action sure
in most situations you find yourself in and if you don't have a plan of action
you're going to have the mindset to be capable of creating a plan of action
yeah yeah but that's only possible if you're not freaking the hell out yeah exactly,
so anyway i keep going head to toe and i
(13:56):
i was really concerned that my pelvis was broken and that only occurred to me
because we do a lot of practice shooting people in the pelvis yeah if you have
body armor on sure you can shoot the head and the neck but if you crush the
pelvis you know That's going to drop the person.
You can't stand up or walk without that structure from the pelvis. Yeah.
(14:22):
You know, I was pushing there and I couldn't feel any pops or grinding.
And then I went down to my femurs, the tops of my legs. It's all I could see.
I couldn't see from the knees down. I didn't know if I had feet.
And I pushed on my femurs and they were pretty squishy and I could feel the
popping and the grinding.
So I knew that they were broken and then realized that I couldn't see my feet.
And that was the only part of my body I couldn't see.
(14:44):
So I have tourniquets in my truck, in my center console.
And I said, well, I got to put tourniquets on. You know, I had a, I did not have a belt on.
I was wearing some tactical pants that had a belt built in, but I always have a belt.
Yeah. It sounds weird, but it's so that I can have a tourniquet.
Yeah. If I need to make one.
So I'm, and I'm kind of out of it. I was concussed pretty bad. Yeah.
(15:08):
So I'm looking for my center console and I, I just have to talk to myself out loud. Okay.
You're sitting in the driver's seat. The center console should be to your right,
you know, between you and the path of your seat.
And I look right, and all I see is the passenger seat. So I'm sitting on the
center console, and I can't open it now to get to my tourniquet.
(15:30):
So that's when I started realizing I got to get out of here because I got to
see my feet or what's left of them. I need to stop the bleeding. I couldn't feel them.
And that's when I realized that I was trapped in the vehicle.
The engine block had smashed my – from the knees down, basically.
It had me pinned between the frame and the engine. Yeah.
(15:51):
So, now my attention goes back to smoke, right? That's the next threat that
I need to start working on.
And my vehicle is on fire. And so, I start punching out my window with my good hand, my left hand.
I end up breaking through it, and I grab the top of my truck and try to pull
myself out, and it's just not going to happen.
(16:14):
So, at that point, a couple thoughts crossed my mind.
The initial thought was, well, this is where you die.
Yeah. And immediately after that, you know, because those thoughts will creep
in your mind. Oh, absolutely. This is a bad situation.
Yeah. If you are exposed to bad situations enough, it's hard to not have that thought creep in.
(16:36):
But because you're exposed to them on a regular enough basis,
you know, the next thought just comes and pushes out right out the way.
So the next thought was, well, how do I signal for somebody to come and help me?
Yeah. You know, how do I signal? How do I make sure someone who may be looking
here understands that there's a person still in this car? Yeah.
(16:57):
So that's what, that's what I tried to do.
I tried to take my shirt off to hang it out that hole that I knew in my window
with my good left arm and swing it around.
And as I'm doing that, I get my shirt off.
I get it to the door. Or this guy just walks in front of my truck,
(17:18):
and I can see some flames leaping up from the hood of my truck.
I can see him through the windshields destroyed.
He looked at me, and we locked eyes.
I remember thinking, well, if this guy's reaction is any indication as to whether
or not I'm going to live, then I'm pretty screwed.
He was terrified. He was shocked. He was shocked. He was terrified.
(17:39):
He saw me. I saw him. So I started making hand signals, like,
come to my window here, bud. Yeah, help me.
Comes over and I said, hey, you guys, you got to put the fire out,
man. I can't get out. I need you to put that fire out. So it was two guys that had been fishing.
His other buddy started throwing unearthed dirt, you know, from the trash on
the hood, on the fire, and basically smoldered it out enough.
(18:01):
And then another guy came with a fire extinguisher and put it out.
And then, you know, I was trapped in that vehicle that, you know,
they came in and those civilians that were there really are the ones that saved my life. Sure.
Without them, I'd have burned up and died. Yeah. I couldn't get out. So...
You know, they, police were on the scene probably within 15 minutes.
(18:22):
You know, like I said, it's pretty rural, but they got there and then they were
able to get me out probably 30 minutes later from doing quite a bit of cutting. Yeah.
But you know, the whole time I remember the, the EMS guy, when they broke the
back window out and he comes and crawls in, he's kind of on my lap and I'm telling
him, put your, put your weight on my pelvis. Cause my humors are broken.
(18:45):
Yeah. And he's trying to just care about my head and my neck.
He's telling me not to move.
But I'm telling him, put me in the K-hole, ketamine.
Because I know from experience, you can't really overdose on that.
And we push it to guys all the time. They're just going to go out for longer.
So anyway, I'm basically telling him how to do his job. He's a great guy.
(19:05):
I made it my business to go and thank everybody for that. After what I could.
But yeah, that was basically it. They were going to life flight me,
but they couldn't. So they put me in an ambulance and it was about an hour drive to Nashville.
And, you know, even then I remember telling them to put me in the K-hole because
(19:26):
I was. Did they help you? Did they?
They did. Yeah, they did. They were great guys. Yeah.
And they got me there and had some phenomenal surgeons that put me back together best that they could.
And then, you know, after that came the rehabilitation process, basically.
And and talk about the rehabilitation process what did they tell you at the
(19:48):
beginning you know what's your what your outcome you know best best case scenario
and some of the stuff you told me about that uh you just had to choose not to
listen to oh yeah well everybody's going to tell you all kinds of things a lot
and i've been i've been not listening to people that have doubted me for,
decades you know that happened when i told them what i was going to do in the oil field Yeah.
(20:09):
All right, Rambo, why don't you calm down?
And you know, it happened, it happened even in group, you know,
when senior guys that may be a little apprehensive to take you at your word
because they don't know you and that just fuels you to prove them wrong.
But you know, yeah. So my injuries were basically, I crushed both my pelvises,
tibia, fibulas on both legs,
(20:31):
basically had a floating knee because I'd broken through both bones on the bottom
of the knee and on the top of the knee.
So basically they took out the bone marrow in the center of the bones, they put rods in there.
So the rods became my new skeletal structure, basically, until the bones healed around the rods. Yeah.
(20:53):
Both above and below the knees and put plates in the knees to hold them together.
And then I had a plate in my wrist, a little, I had a broken portion of my spine
and broken quite a few ribs.
So, you know, you're on your back in hospital and it's the most demoralizing position.
Oh, yeah. You go from a guy who can, who's very physically capable to a guy
(21:14):
that can't wipe his own, you know, butt.
Yeah, yeah. And that's, to this day, that's probably the worst thing still,
you know, just going from a point of, from the peak of a mountain down to the
very, very bottom. Yeah. Yeah.
But they told me, you know, at best case scenario, you know,
you'll be getting around with a walker, maybe a cane if you're really lucky.
(21:35):
Yeah. And initially, you know, to me that meant, well, I'll be upright.
Yeah. I'm upright, you know, then I'll be running again.
I'll be, you know, it's okay. Because you've got to understand,
every time we go to our medic, especially when it comes close to retirement,
they say, okay, when you go for your physicals, when you go for your screenings
(21:56):
to determine how disabled you're going to be, you've got to have the mindset
of a person who doesn't do this job.
When they ask you how you're feeling and we just say, yeah, I'm good.
No, you're not good. Everything hurts. You need to tell them what hurts and how much.
Yeah so for them to give me that you know that
diagnosis they were they were giving me that diagnosis as
a i don't want this to sound bad but as a regular normal person
(22:17):
yeah not so i knew that i knew that i could yeah i
knew that i could overcome that stuff and
go beyond it their expectations but yeah the
rehabilitation process you know a lot of times it's much more mental than it
is physical sure people the body is going to heal it's going to mend it wants
to you know i I went into that accident being physically pretty strong,
(22:42):
so that really assisted me. Sure.
But I'd never been injured that bad. So for me, it was more of a mental challenge.
Yeah. I weaned myself off of these opioids because I wanted nothing to do with
them. How long were you on those?
They wanted to send me home with them, and I was in the hospital for two and
a half months. Yeah, yeah. But I weaned myself off of them in the first month.
(23:04):
Yeah. just because, you know, they were telling me I was getting up and walking.
I was getting up out of bed. They didn't really want me to.
And every time I did, man, you know, the pain was just phenomenal. Oh, I can imagine.
Yeah. Every time I tried to swing my legs off the bed, I would pass out.
Wow. Because blood would go down there and then it wouldn't get back up. Yeah.
(23:24):
And I remember telling the nurses, you know, giving them a countdown of when I was going to pass out.
Because in MMA training, you know, we practice choke holds on each other.
Yeah. You know, and we'll go out unconscious so we know what it feels like.
Yeah. And we know what it was like to wake up again.
Because that's important. So I knew that. that and was able to tell them.
And from there, basically, that was the biggest first step, just sitting up
(23:48):
until you're going to pass out, pass out, wake, do it again.
And they didn't want me to do that, obviously, and they could only be around
me so often. So, you know, I did what I wanted to do, unfortunately.
But it helped me mentally more than physically. Yeah.
And that's just the biggest game, man, is you've got to understand that no one's
(24:08):
coming to save you but yourself. So if you want to walk again,
you got to do the things necessary to do it.
But I didn't like the opioids because I didn't feel pain on them.
I knew I was in a lot of pain.
And, you know, my muscles had atrophied so badly that I had to get stronger.
And I knew how to get stronger.
And I knew how I needed to get stronger because I was very intimately familiar with my body, my job.
(24:33):
I asked a lot of it and I trained it to a certain degree. So I knew what I needed to do.
And that's why I needed to get off them because I didn't want to hurt myself
further or injure myself further because I couldn't feel the pain I was in.
That makes sense. Your body's going to tell you when to stop.
Yeah. But there's a difference between pain and discomfort.
Yeah. And for anybody who does a physical job, it's very, very important to understand.
(24:57):
You need to be uncomfortable most of the time because that's when you're growing and developing.
Yeah. But you need to stop at pain because that's when you're going to injure yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
So it was two and a half months basically in the hospital, and then they released you to do some rehab?
Yeah, yeah. So I got to come home when I could basically sit in the shower and
(25:19):
do all the things, get on and off the toilet with a slide.
This board that goes from your wheelchair to the toilet, and you can get off
your wheelchair and get in the shower. hour.
And, uh, it was, it was pretty eyeopening, man, because when I came home,
you know, I immediately was just not realistically, you know,
(25:41):
no responsibilities that I really needed to take care of.
But as a guy, you know, you come home and you just see the list of things you have to do.
And man, I almost wish I'd have stayed in the hospital at that point.
But you know, there's no substitute for being around your kids.
Cause they weren't, they weren't going to let my My kids come into the hospital
to see me because of, you know, COVID protocols back then.
(26:03):
So I, you know, it was good to come home so I can be around my kids.
But they were, you know, they don't know and they don't care about how hurt you are, really.
They can't understand that. All they understand is dad can't play with them.
Yep. Or dad's always tired.
Dad's always angry because he's in pain. So that was even more important for
(26:24):
me to get better for them.
It was a good motivator, I'm sure. For sure. Yeah.
And being in a rural area, did they have good physical therapy?
Did they come to your house or was it mostly just stuff you started doing on your own?
Well, you know, I had a swimming pool and I can remember dumping myself off
(26:46):
in that pool and walking for a long time, for hours. Yeah.
I shouldn't have been upright without.
A walker at that point but i knew that you
know how buoyant your body was and how much weight it took
off your joints so i would get in that pool man and
i'd walk and walk and i'd do you know water aerobics i'd
(27:07):
pull myself out and be done but i did that quite a bit and they had therapists
that they would send to me but man i'll be honest those therapists are really
more or less for elderly people yeah their their expectations were probably
pretty low very low and the stuff that they'd put me through,
you know, I dealt with it, but that's not the best I could do for them.
(27:29):
So I didn't, you know, really the therapy came from when I could drive again,
which I'd started doing way sooner than I should have.
But I got back to Fort Campbell and I went to our therapists that deal with combat injuries.
And, and those guys really helped me out quite a bit.
And a lot of it was, you know, getting those
(27:49):
muscles back active and the knots in those those
muscles because when you break your bones like that it shatters it
goes straight through your muscles too so you're severing muscles then you
got to rebuild those so yeah i did have great access to
therapy on base but you know the guys that came out to the house not so
much yeah it was more of us just him to me yeah i think it's just different
mindset for the guys that are on base they've dealt with you know massive injuries
(28:13):
and and and the mindset that you had so i could see why it'd be so different
yeah yeah it was different but it was good man man.
It was, uh, it was good. And you know, man, I'll be honest.
It's, it's nothing that I didn't think would happen to me again at some point.
And it's, it's just an added challenge every day.
(28:33):
And it's, that's something that I'm thankful for. You know, I enjoy challenges.
I enjoy, I enjoy the challenge of being uncomfortable and making myself stronger
with, you know, with this now that I have to work with because it's definitely
different. The body's different. Sure.
So for people who can't see you physically, where are you at now with,
(28:55):
with your, your recovery?
Well you know from the from the waist up i'm pretty good like you know back to where i was.
But i made a living on my feet you know yeah i made
a living rucking and jumping out of planes and
fast open on a helicopter so the shock there's
really very little cartilage left in the knees i've got
cadaver parts in there yeah you know
(29:18):
i'll still i call it a bag shuffle you can
edit that out if it's just a little
light jog because my kids are extremely active
and yeah you know they're still part of me i have a six-year-old son that
says hey man your dad can still yeah beat you
in a race or at least come tackle you and play football yeah
yeah so i could if i need to get from
(29:39):
point a to point b i can it just won't be very quick yeah yeah
and there's you know there's a lot of impact that i don't
want to do anymore on the joints because i just don't want to get my knees
replaced because if i have to get them replaced which they're all telling
me i do all these rods and plates and everything have
to come out so this will be a major major surgery yeah
i'd like to avoid that at all costs but yeah man
(30:01):
i mean you know the job that i do now for kinetic which still gives me access
to law enforcement military guys you know on a flat range i can do that all
day you know in colorado it was painful but i had to follow my kids up and down
these mountains and show them places that I had been prior to this injury.
And that was a big motivator for me to get in good enough shape before I went
(30:22):
to the conference because I'm showing them, you know, we summited some pretty
high peaks that I had done as a, as a mountaineer prior to this accident.
And, uh, it was important for me to show that to my kids and start building
that mental resiliency in them that I learned from nature and how,
just how unforgiving nature can be and how that's such a great teacher of your, I guess,
(30:48):
how far you can go, what your capabilities are, but always working on improving them.
Well, I can tell you from, you know, I sat in your class and I hadn't talked to you a ton.
I had no clue of the injuries you'd been around.
The way you move around is remarkable considering what you've been through the last few years.
So my hat's off to you because I know, you know, we've been talking about it,
(31:09):
but obviously, you know, being in good physical shape before played a huge part.
But the mental part of it is that resiliency and and
i think some people have it in spades clearly you
do you know where it's like i'll get through this and it's something
you know i think is is genetic you know you've seen we see
it in dogs we see it in people you know that some dogs
(31:29):
are just you know a little little bit stronger genetically some
people are you know and thank god you have those genetics
you know otherwise be a very different story right now
i'm sure yeah for sure man yeah yeah the
body can do a lot more than the mind wants to you know
let it believe you just gotta force it to do it i'm sure
there were some dark days in those days do you
(31:53):
mind talking about any of those dark i mean some nights or some days i'm sure
that look that things look pretty grim and and how and what did you do on those
days yeah well yeah you're right man and like i said you know the physical aspect
of the injuries and getting over them was nothing I think,
compared to the mental demons you're dealing with.
(32:14):
You know, my wife would come as much as she could, bless her heart. We have five kids here.
And literally the day that she came back, the bottom floor of our house flooded
from a washing machine overflowing and no one was home.
So she's dealing with home repairs and me in the hospital and still being a
mother to five very active kids. is.
(32:36):
So, you know, at nights and a lot of days I was just alone in the hospital and
guys would come and see me, but man, I never expected life not to go on for them.
They have a mission and they have, you know, a responsibility to.
Do their job like I understand they needed to do it. So there was,
(32:56):
I knew that they couldn't come and just sit with me.
And I really enjoy time alone.
Once a year, I try to do something for a few days to a week by myself where
I just go out on these trips in nature and challenge myself. Yeah.
Well, because I'm the only thing that I can fall back on at those times.
(33:20):
And I've learned how productive that can be mentally for me personally.
So I couldn't do that at this point. So I treated this stay in the hospital
like one of those trips where, you know, you're battling everything.
You're battling not only the physical pain that you're in around the clock,
but all of these thoughts that start creeping when you're at your most vulnerable.
(33:43):
It's uncomfortable for people to continuously place themselves in vulnerable
positions. positions, but I'm telling you, that's where you grow the most as a person and as a man.
And for me as an operator, that was no different.
You're really, there are some times where you're going to be there and you're
going to be able to feed off of other people's strengths and also other people's weaknesses.
(34:04):
You see that and you know that that's not you, so it makes you feel stronger.
But in this certain situation, I was by myself and I'd put myself there before in the a past.
So I went back to that mental space, that mindset of.
Having conversations with yourself you know yeah
those are some of the most productive conversations that you
(34:25):
can have if you're constantly crushing
your self-pity yeah but if you allow that to seep in you know it's not going
to do anything good for you it never has it never will so coming up with a plan
yeah and that mindset can be it's not just physical injury you know cops go
through some crappy stuff their personal lives because of the job then through
(34:47):
the job now especially the way
politics are invading our job in a real negative way.
Some of these cops, the suicide rate's higher now.
So it doesn't have to be physical. It could just be all the pressures from the
job that the same stuff you're talking about could still help.
Start thinking to yourself and clear your mind a little bit by being uncomfortable
(35:08):
for a while and talk to yourself for a while before you make any big decisions about anything.
Anything. Anything, man. I mean, there's a lot of guys that are still going to be dependent on me.
You know, I had kids, I had a wife that were still dependent on me,
but I needed to be dependent on myself, you know, because all that goes away
when no one else is there.
So that's very, very important to be able to look within yourself and understand
(35:31):
because you've challenged yourself before that this is just another one of those
things that you're going to overcome. And now it's, it's fun.
Now let's make this a game. Okay. So now this is where we are.
How do we get, how do we get over?
This is a challenge. You should enjoy these challenges. is if you're the right
personality type and have the right mindset. And that's kind of how I looked at it.
But, man, some dark, dark days. And opioids didn't help, and that's why I got off of them.
(35:56):
I needed mental clarity as much for mental recovery as physical recovery.
I didn't need that fog or that haziness in my brain. I needed to be very sharp
and think about what I needed to do.
And a lot of breathing exercises, man, that I'd learned in shooting,
just to focus on something else other than the pain.
(36:18):
That can be from mental pain. That can be from emotional pain.
That can be from physical pain. Sure.
But there's always a way to get over it. There's always a way out and a way
to conquer it. It's just how...
How good are you at, you know, figuring that out? Yeah.
Well, it's a remarkable story for sure. And I mean, you, obviously you're,
(36:39):
you know, people that are, are, do your profession are already,
you know, a different type of person.
I mean, that was a compliment, but I think there's definitely lessons to be
learned, you know, for, for anybody to be mentally prepared for stuff as it
comes, you know, cause it's going to happen in your life at some point and having that mental,
(36:59):
crisis rehearsal whether it's a critical incident
on the job or something like this that i mean clearly i'm
sure in all your thoughts of ways you could be hurt
driving to train a dog was not in that that planning i'm sure you know no but
but yeah it also comes to you when you're least expecting it yeah yeah that's
(37:20):
always a thing to think and remember yeah so we'll wrap it up real quick but
let's talk real quick about what you're doing with kinetic dog food because
you came out here through Kinetic and did a great class for us and a lot of
good information that was not an infomercial.
It was just good information about nutrition for dogs.
When I first talked to you, I was like, just obviously I can't have an infomercial.
(37:43):
And you're like, no, it won't be in it. It clearly wasn't. I know that they
paid the ticket, and I know that you're working for them, but I appreciated
all the just substantial information that was in the class.
So how are things going with them, and what's that set up like?
Well, really good, man. I found Kinetic when I was a handler at Fifth Group,
and we had a huge problem nutritionally with our dogs.
(38:05):
And when I became the green suit trainer, kind of like the subject matter expert
on dogs at the kennel for my kennel master, he said, dude, fix this dog food problem.
So I went and bought all the most expensive dog foods, and none of it did anything
good for our dogs until we found Kinetic.
So for a lot of reasons, I had to become a subject matter expert on it.
(38:28):
Employed a canine nutritionist and really started understanding the ingredients
that go into the formulation for a performance canine diet, basically.
And when I got out, I'm friends with the owners of the company,
Dave and Debbie Dorsen, exclusively own it now.
They bought their business partner out and they always wanted me to come on board in some aspect.
(38:53):
And now I kind of to run the military law enforcement
side of the house for them but what that gives me access
to is all all the guys like that were at your conference you
know yeah my goal at the end
of my time with them is that i want them to go and make the best informed decision
that they can possibly make yeah they're only going to get that way by understanding
(39:14):
how to read the ingredients that on every bag of dog food they're there legally
for a purpose it's because you are required you They're required by law to tell
you what's in that bag of dog food,
but there's a lot of games that are played with the wording of these ingredients.
That's really the only thing that's going to make your dog successful as a performance
animal. There's three things that make them up, genetics, training, and nutrition.
(39:35):
We all hammer on genetics and training, and we always ignored nutrition,
and we were no different in special operation.
When we rectified the nutrition piece, man, we had phenomenal results with our
dogs being much more successful. So that's really what I do for them is educate
guys on how to properly fuel performance canines.
And I think if you're open to it, I'd like to bring you back on for even another
(39:58):
show and even talk about reading dog food labels because I've been to quite
a few different classes and I understand it to a decent amount.
But I really liked your explanation on a lot of the different ingredients and
why some things sound bad, but they're actually good. And I'd probably like
to bring you back on here pretty soon, and we could just go over that whole
class if you're good with that.
(40:20):
Yeah, that'd be great, man. Yeah. I enjoyed talking to you. You're a great guy,
and I want to thank you for what you do for the law enforcement community. Absolutely.
We need a lot more of it. We're just here to support those guys.
They're our biggest clients by far, which is why I'm so thankful and happy and
fortunate to be working with them. Good, good.
It's a very good company that you're working for, so I'm happy that you're out there with them.
(40:43):
So well this has been I think this is a remarkable show and it's a hell of a story,
if I get some questions or answers or questions you and I can come back on and
do some like a Q&A about any of this and then like I said in the very near future
let's get you back on and we'll do a whole show about reading dog food labels and proper nutrition,
(41:03):
yeah let's do it man I'd enjoy them alright thanks again for all your time and
good luck on continued rehab yeah thanks Jeff I appreciate you man.
All right. I hope you enjoyed that show. Although this one wasn't really as
canine related, I think talking about resiliency for our profession and just
our lives is always a great topic to throw in once in a while.
(41:25):
Ian obviously has a lot of resiliency. If you see him walking around,
you wouldn't have any idea all the different injuries that he's still healing from.
Pretty amazing story and a really good guy.
So I appreciate him coming on and talking about
it we'll get him back on talks about some canine nutrition
real real soon let's wrap up today and
(41:46):
talk about you know it's still heat of summer and heat alarms
are important and the one that I always recommend is ace
canine calm so check out ace canine calm look at all their features I always
talk a lot about the cellular phone option but they also do a door popper they
do several different features on their their alarm so you can set it up to your
(42:07):
car alarm your heat alarm you can set it up just how you want it.
So there's also a feature called no canine left behind.
It's a cool feature that it won't turn off the alarm until you've opened the back door.
So if somehow people sometimes get out of their routine and a dog gets left
in a car, that heat alarm is going to keep functioning until that back door
(42:28):
is open and then closed again so that the heat alarm knows the dog has been removed from the car.
So it's just a safety feature that the owner, owner John Johnson invented,
and it's a pretty cool feature. So check out acecanine.com.
And then finally, record keeping. I talk about it every episode,
but Bob Eden's record keeping with cats is an excellent product.
(42:50):
So check out catsplatinum.com.
Bob is available for any questions you have. You can get his information on
the website at catsplatinum.com.
Give him a call, ask him some questions, and he'll show you that that program
can do anything you want it to do.
It's highly customizable and it cranks out some really
very professional reports both for court and both for your your admin it keeps
(43:13):
us track of all the important stats for you so check out catsplatinum.com very
good product it's been the one that's been around the longest for a reason it's
got the staying power for it so catsplatinum.com thanks for listening everybody.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.