PM Show Hr 2 - ZZ Top Talk

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
With the passing of Frank Beard, I heard from a
lot of folks who had an association in one way
or another with ZZ Top. I heard from people from LaGrange.
I heard from people who had a connection to the
Chicken Ranch. I heard from people associated with the band,
with the tour, with MTV, you name it. And I

(00:22):
had learned some number of years ago, not so long ago,
that before ZZ Top went mainstream and big time and
MTV and Eliminator, which took them to a more commercial
audience and moved their music more from blues to traditional rock,
that they toured the state. And I saw pictures of

(00:42):
this tour, the national tour of Texas. And it was
really more a traveling zoo than anything else. And Frank
Beard would be on the drums and birds would come
and land on his show. And it was, I mean,
the showmanship was off the charts. So I heard about
a guy named Ralph Fisher, and I wish I could
attribute to who said this to me, to who emailed

(01:05):
it to me, because at the time I didn't think
much of it. Hey, the guy who was ZZ Top's
animal handler for that whole tour for three years was
a guy named Ralph Fisher. You should get him. He's
still alive. So I said, we'll find him. And so
some work was put in, and we have tracked him down,
and little did I find out. The ZZ Top stuff

(01:26):
is really cool. It's only the tip of the iceberg.
This guy has led an amazing, interesting, fascinating life. Ralph
Fisher is our guest. Welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Thank you, Michael.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
I'm just in awe. I mean, I have had an
embarrassment of riches. I had the famous angler Bill Dance yesterday.
And now I'm talking to Ralph Fisher. I must admit,
reading your biography, your life is nothing short of incredible
and amazing. So you're born in 1944 in Sugar Land.

(02:04):
You go to Katy High School, blend, and then you
get an undergrad and a master's at Sam Houston State University.
How did you get interested in animals?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, I was raised on a dairy farm, and we
had animals to milk production and for food sources and eggs,
everything else. So that was my, you know, when I
was a kid, we always had pets hanging around, wild
or domestic. So it was always an animal thing for me.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
And then you figured out, so I guess you went
to parochial and private schools, and you were teaching, right,
while still staying involved with the rodeo.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
That's correct.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
And you got involved as a clown at what point?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
When I was in Blinn College, we started a rodeo club,
and we didn't have any money. So they pointed at
somebody and said, you're going to be the announcer, and
you're going to be the pickup man.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
And they pointed at.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Me and said, you're going to be the clown. I said, okay.
So I borrowed some rouge and some lipstick from my
dorm mother, and I became a rodeo clown.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Okay, now let me make sure this is right. You
are 82 years old, and you're in the Texas Rodeo
Cowboy Hall of Fame, but you are still clowning at
the occasional convention rodeo. Is that true?

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Not lately. No, I had to retire. I finally had
to retire. I had some hip problems and shoulder problems and, well, age-related, whatever, so...
It's not really good to be out there, you know,
with a bull, wild bulls, if you can't move too good.
So anyway, but as I fought bulls and saw people

(03:56):
getting hurt and so forth, other clowns, I realized that
I had to do something for the longevity if I
was to last, you know, as a rodeo clown. So
I started developing animal acts, training dogs and horses and
coyotes and everything else, buzzards. and presenting them as an
entertainment during the rodeo. And because of those animal acts

(04:18):
and still bullfighting and working the barrel, I was able
to get some really good rodeos and attain some national prominence.
Not much, but some anyway.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Well, you're in the Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame. That's
a bigger deal. I think you're one of those guys
that's a rodeo guy that downplays what you do, and
I can appreciate that. So I read that you did
it for 46 years. Is that right?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yes, sir. That's right. It's hard to imagine, huh?

Speaker 1 (04:47):
So you are, and I've always admired these types of people,
whether it's Donald Trump or P.T. Barnum or Davy Crockett.
You are a showman. You are a guy that you
are interesting by nature, and other people find you interesting.
I recognize that you have been, let's see, during his
peak years, he was a staple at $ 100. 50 performances

(05:09):
annually gaining recognition for training and presenting various animal acts,
particularly the world's only bullfighting buzzards. Now, who dreams that up?

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Well, I did. I was looking for a different act.
And as a kid, we always had a buzzard hanging
around the house in Barker, Texas. My dad and I
would find them down in the woods and bring them
up and keep them in the yard. And they would
hang around for a year or so. And then they
would gradually fly off, you know, and go back to

(05:43):
the wild, I guess. Yeah. So we always had, and
we always named the buzzard Oscar. So no matter how
many buzzards I have had after that, we always named
them Oscar. And I had four. As a matter of fact,
one time I had four that I could use at
the rodeo simultaneously. Turn four buzzards loose, and they would

(06:04):
come to me and land on the barrel. But anyway,
they were all named Oscar. So when I yelled Oscar, Oscar,
here they'd all come. You know, that's what I wanted.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Of course you did. How do you train a buzzard?
Is it just like anything else?

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Well, they respond to food. And so I'd keep them
a little bit hungry until showtime and then have tiny
bits of food for them in my pocket. And when
they'd come and light, I taught them at home to
light on my hat and get fed. So they knew
that they, in the arena, when they were released at
one end, I was standing on the barrel at the

(06:40):
other end or up, you know, they would come to
me because they knew they were going to get a
little bit of feed. And then after a while, they
got trained to do that and they'd come to light
on me and I have several pictures with all four
of them sitting on me with my arms outstretched and
so forth. But anyway, it was kind of a gimmick.
And now the bull riders didn't like it. The crowd

(07:00):
loved it. The stock contractors, everybody connected with the dollars
and loved it. But some of the bull riders were superstitious,
and they didn't like it. And that's one reason why
I never had a career, much of a career in
the PRCA. I did have quite a career in the

(07:23):
International Rodeo Association and North American Rodeo Commission and the
Texas Rodeo Association, but not much in the PRCA. Bull
riders protested.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, it probably has something else to do. I think
you're downplaying it. Same reason the headliner doesn't want a
really good opening act to outshine them. Hold with us
for a moment. Ralph Fisher. Animal handler extraordinaire and more
coming up. Live, laugh, learn. Doing it big on the

(07:54):
Michael Berry Show.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
I love the photo of ZZ Top performing at the
Little Cypress, More Eastville, which I lived closer to Little Cypress,
More Eastville than I did Orange.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
I just say I'm from Orange, but I'm from Orange County.
I'm actually from a little community known as Mack Lewis
that is outside the town. I was really closer to LCM,
and my brother actually lived in what he could have
fed into the LCM school district if he wanted to.
But they hosted ZZ Top before anybody knew them, just
before anybody knew them, and they didn't have the big

(08:30):
beards at their homecoming. And they were very proud of that,
or maybe it was their prom. There's great stories about
ZZ Top before they became nationally famous nationwide, and MTV
and the Eliminator album had a lot to do with that.
Before that, they were traveling the state as this amazing
zoo on wheels, and Ralph Fisher was handling the animals

(08:51):
for that. Ralph, what was that like?

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Well, they were my animals. I bought them and trained
them and everything, so I had a vested interest in
doing a good job and taking care of them. When
you're traveling with especially large animals like a buffalo and
a A bison and a big Texas longhorn steer, there's

(09:18):
a lot of precautions that you have to take in
traveling coast to coast. I think we went coast to
coast several times in those basically parts of three years.
It was a job for me, and most of it
was related to taking care of my animals. I guess

(09:39):
I made pretty good money in those days. I was
getting $ 100 a day. And $ 0. 25 a mile for my
truck and trailer, which now they're paying about, I don't know,
$ 4 or $ 5. I don't even know what they charge
a mile now.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
It's a lot.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
But I was making enough to pay the bills back
home and, you know. a rear end for my truck
and some other stuff that went bad on the tour.
But it was just traveling and finding safe places to
keep my animals between the jobs.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Well, I read that your animal training spans a number
of species, including? Javelinas, domestic pigs, dogs, horses, mules, burros, coyotes, wolves, skunks, armadillos, buffalo, bulls, cows,
Texas longhorn, Bramman steers, and we'll talk about chance in
a minute, buzzards, and even roadrunners. Can you give me

(10:36):
an inventory of what you took on the road with
ZZ Top in the 70s?

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Well, with them, I had a live bison that I
got in Ogle Island, Nebraska. I'd like to tell you
that story. called all over trying to find a trying
to find a buffalo and uh so i finally talked
some ranchers that had one that they had tamed and
turned loose after they you know petted him and had

(11:01):
him on a bottle i think but he was two
years old and i hadn't touched him in two years
so they got him in the corral and they sold
him to me and then we put him in the
back of a u-haul truck and and put a stick
under the door so he could have air coming back
to houston back to katie and uh and that's where
I got my buffalo. Do you remember what you gave
for him?

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Do you remember what you gave for him?

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, I think it was about $ 2, 000. Oh, okay. Yeah,
and that was quite a bit back in those days also.
That would have been $ 75, 000. And then the steer came
from the famous Mark's Longhorn Ranch. They're now down at...

(11:48):
down at, uh, uh, in the area. Uh, anyway, uh, they, uh,
they sold me a beautiful steer and, uh, And he
was already saddle broke, but he was still a little
bit jittery. So it just took a while. I spent
months actually getting both these animals ready. Then we had

(12:11):
rattlesnakes in a plexiglass container right in front of the band.
It was a pyramid, plexiglass pyramid. And we always had
two or three live rattlesnakes in there. And then two
buzzards sitting on stage. on cow skulls behind, uh, behind Frank,
the drummer. And he looked, he'd look back at old
Oscar and really worry about him all the time. Frank

(12:33):
was kind of a character. You wouldn't think so. But, uh,
Dusty and Billy seemed to get along. Okay.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
With them.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Everybody got along. Okay. With the buzzards, but it was
so unusual that, you know, they had a, they had
a show right there on stage with, and put the
steer and the Buffalo on scissor lips and, on either
side of the stage that were in encased in a shroud.
So after about 20 feet in the air, you see
this Buffalo coming up under spotlight at one side of

(13:03):
the stage and the steer coming up on the other
side of the stage under spotlight, we had glitter, glitter
on their horns and their Wrangler standing there holding them.
And they would only stay there for a few seconds,
maybe 30 seconds. And you know, Half the audience was
all screwed up anyway, and they said, I think I

(13:23):
saw a buffalo. Then the animals came down, and the
spotlight went to the band, and the first introductory song
was always, Get high, get high, get high. And of course,
the snakes were right there in front of them, which
weren't that noticeable, but they were for the press mostly anyway.
And the buzzards were sitting behind the drummer, on cost

(13:46):
calls on opposite sides of the stage. So my, my
job then during the production was to keep an eye
on the buzzards and make sure everything was safe back there,
but they were behind the main noise, you know, the
noise of the drums. And let's see, I had, I
had a coyote on there for a while. We, we, we,

(14:07):
I know we went to new Orleans and the coyote
walked the high wire, walk the ladder and cross the
10 foot high wire span and came back and, And
the audience wasn't real excited about that. And Bill Hamm
was such a magnificent– he had plans that nobody– in
the back of his mind, nobody would have ever dreamed of.

(14:29):
But anyway, he said, you know, I don't think this
college is going to work. He said, I don't want
something that's going to crap and step in it. So
he said, look, go to California and go find me
a wolf. I want a real wolf because it's Lone
Wolf Productions. So he flew me to California, and I
went to a big facility out there that raises wolves.

(14:52):
I found this beautiful little puppy that was just weaned
and I thought within, you know, a few months would
have been full size. They grow so fast. But Bill
was impatient and didn't want to wait that long for
this puppy to grow up. He wanted him to open
the performance sitting on stage with a big howl, you know,
under a spotlight. That's what he really wanted. So I

(15:13):
trained this German shepherd. to do the same thing, and
we painted this German Shepherd dog up to look just
like a wolf, and I borrowed him from a friend
in Katy. And to make this dog howl, I had
to pinch his ear just a little bit. Now, I know, Peter,
people are going to go crazy about this, but I'm sorry.

(15:35):
Some of the training techniques, and I don't consider that cruel,
but just a little bit of a nudge on his ear,
and he would start howling like crazy. So then as
I trained him, all I had to do is just
reach my hand forward. I could do it. So I
finally got I could do it out of the spotlight
for three or four feet away. Anyway, PETA blackballed that

(15:59):
because they didn't like the thought of any kind of
cruelty going on in the training process.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Plus, it was fun. They don't like anything that's fun.
During the break, if I don't have to prep for
the next segment, I will quickly scan emails and see
if there's anything I need to talk about. And I
got an email from a fellow named Robbie. I won't
say his last name. And he said, I need the

(16:25):
number for your garage door experts. I'm stuck in my
garage and can't get out. So I immediately called Cody Johnson.
Not that Cody Johnson, but that Cody Johnson, the garage
door opener guy. He's number two in the list. Cody Johnson,
my buddy. that owns sign press that does the big
signs at the stadiums. He's number three on the Cody Johnson.

(16:46):
And the first Cody Johnson is the guy that holds
the record at the, at the dome or at NRG
for the biggest rodeo crowd ever. But anyway, so he's
on the phone and they're on their way and they're
going to get him out of his garage. Not as
crazy as the life of Ralph Fisher, who gets more interesting.
The longer you talk to him, tell the good folks,

(17:07):
you're not an Aggie by education. You went to Sam and,
but you have a singular distinction at Texas A &
M University that puts you in the record books. Can
you tell that story, please, about Chance?

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Okay, good. Yes, that was quite an experience. When I
was doing photos with people sitting on Texas Longhorns, I
did that for 18 years at a booth at the
Houston Rodeo. People might remember the photo booth there, but
I was always looking for new animals, and somebody called
me and told me they had a Tame Brahman Bull

(17:42):
up in Madisonville. I went up and looked at him,
and I bought him, and he was very, very tame.
He was nine years old at the time, and he
lived another 10 years. And we named him Chance because
I thought I was taking a chance every time I
got around him or got on him, and I taught
him how to ride. He was already... General, but he

(18:05):
wasn't halter broker. So anyway, I'm talking to how to ride,
tell him how to stand still for photos for one hour.
And he became one of our he was on David
Letterman show. You can Google that buzzard and Robin Bull
on David Letterman. And I guarantee you'll see it. He
was all he was in a movie called The Locust

(18:27):
with Kate Capshaw. And he was the main animal character.
And Jeremy Davies and Kate Kapshaw. Anyway, we kept him
and did photos with him for years and years. When
he got older, we found out A & M was
doing a cloning project, which was all brand new. The
only clone they had at the time was Dolly the

(18:48):
Sheep in England. So A & M started this process.
They wanted an unusual looking animal so they could keep
it separate, you know, phenotype looks and all that from
other animals. So we had this big old brahmin bull
with huge horns and all the skin hanging down underneath
the low sheath and all that, which has all changed nowadays.

(19:09):
Even in those days, they had already changed them and
they cleaned them up. They didn't have all those skin
characteristics and all that. So anyway, they... chose Chance to
do the cloning project. They took some skin tissue from
his side. They developed several live embryos inside of donor
cows and then they started experimenting and removing the embryo

(19:35):
and looking at them and they finally got down to
a couple and one died and only had one left
and it turned out to be second Chance that was
born then and he looked just like the big Brahman,
except he was a little Brahman bull. And the mother
cow was not even any kin to him because they
just used her, her emptied egg as a, as a,

(19:58):
as a, as a carrier surrogate. All right. Anyway, uh,
second chance then grew for, and we kept him about
nine years. He, uh, uh he hurt me pretty bad
he didn't have the same disposition as as a donor
but he was quite a quite a story and we
did a lot of international press with him and things

(20:21):
like that and and uh he he hurt me pretty
bad a couple of times by hooking me for no
reason and just you know tore up my shoulders and
a bunch of stuff so uh there's a documentary on
uh what is that, Netflix about ZZ Top's Worldwide Texas Tour,

(20:44):
and he's included in that.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, that's where I learned about all this.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
If by chance we meet again, did you? If by
chance we meet again, I thought you did, you really.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
So that's kind of the synopsis of the clone. He
was the first clone in the world after Dolly the Sheep,
and he lives right here in Swiss Alp, Texas.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Well, so those Aggies are something else. They cloned A
Brahmin steer in 1998. That's almost 30 years ago. That's impressive.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yes, he was a bull. And when he came back,
he came back as a bull. And he remained a
bull the whole... I'm sorry. When he was cloned, he
was a steer. You're right. Because he had a pendulous
testicle that became infected. And as an old guy, we
had to have him castrated. That's right. So he was
a steer. That means he couldn't produce. So that was another...

(21:35):
bright bright spot for them here we had an animal
that looked like nobody else because it breeders had already
changed up the characteristics by then to be leaner and
cleaner and you know whatever and bodies and phenotypes uh
so so that so then they had this this deer
that couldn't produce so when they cloned him he came
back as a bull and uh and then we had

(21:58):
him castrated uh uh No, I don't think he never,
he was always a bull. Second chance was always a bull.
And he lived about nine or 10 years. And he
finally had a problem due with his digestion and the
Vegas nerve that controls the food, the food through the body.
And it was some disruption. They couldn't fix it. And

(22:20):
he died from bloating and being filled up and he
couldn't relieve himself. They had to cut him open several
times to relieve him. He spent quite a bit of
time at A & M then, but, uh, he was doomed. And, uh, Died,
you know, then at about nine years old.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
You know, I'm hearing stories of humans that are doing that.
They start as a bull and then one day they
just announced Sarah Heffer. I don't know how that works.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Michael, only you would come up with that. But that's
the truth. He, she, it. We don't know. Oh, man.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
Ramon said that when you were talking to him during
the break, you said that you follow our show. and
you have followed his story. And I said, what is
your story? He said, I fasted for 43 days. Please
tell me you didn't do that because I'll never live
that down.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
No, no, no. I just mean him doing the advertisements
and so forth, uh, at your direction.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
I prefer people not to know.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
I used to go to the, the, I'm not, I
probably don't have a lot of smut on ZZ Top like, uh, uh,
And Bill O'Reilly interviewed me years ago, and he wanted
to hear it all, you know. So I didn't have anything.
I'm sorry. I had a job to do, and I
did it. I mean, that was it. I had a
family at.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Home waiting on me. I want the opposite of smut.
I think the world is easy top. The individuals, their
music stands on its own. I love them. I want
nothing but positive. But I noticed that your children's names
are Todd, Kimberly, Bryce, and Dusty. Is Dusty named for
Dusty Hill?

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Well, yes and no. Yes, I guess so. We were
choosing names, and Dusty was just, yeah, but it really was.
We never had really admitted that, you know, but I
think so. I was really strong. I'm the one of
the parents that really wanted that name, you know, and
it was a good name, a good name. So, yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
All right, Ralph, I want to ask you a favor.
I want to come back. And I want you to
give us advice of lessons that could be applied across
any animal because everybody's got a dog or a horse
or a cow or something that they may not want
to take on the road on a national tour or
David Letterman or Jay Leno or put them in the movies.
But they'd like to just they'd like to tame them

(24:43):
a little bit so that they interact better. If you
if we can hold on and you would give us
that advice, I would sure appreciate it. Ralph Fisher is
our guest.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Lucky you.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
The Michael Perry Show continues.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
This must be.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Your lucky day. Did you hear him say Billy?

Speaker 3 (25:07):
I guess this is a live version, so that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
So when Frank Beard passed, we were paying tribute. One
of my favorite shows we've done because you folks ran
the show. calling in and sharing your stories and emailing
me your stories, and they were fun. And somebody suggested
that we talk to Ralph Fisher, who I was talking
about the national tour of Texas and the animals that
they would take out in this crazy show they would

(25:38):
put on. And it's all in the documentary on Netflix
about them. It's pretty cool. And I said, Ralph Fisher
is around. You could talk to him. He's 82. He's
alive and well. Get him on the phone. And so
we tracked him down, and he has agreed to be
our guest. And what a fascinating life. I have come
to learn, Ralph. You mentioned that movie, The Locust. I

(26:03):
have come to learn. I've been to the house where
that was filmed, that big plantation house. In Richmond? Rosenberg?

Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
That is owned by a friend of mine named Ray Moore.
I know Ray and I aren't close. I know him.
I've been out to visit him. I've toured his many, many–
I think he's the largest landowner in Fort Bend County.
I could be wrong, but I believe that's true. If
not one of them, he's sold off a lot of them.
But his son-in-law is Cody Johnson, not that Cody Johnson

(26:32):
and not that Cody Johnson, but the other Cody Johnson
that owns SignPrest. Anyway, he said that house that he's
talking about, that movie, The Locust, that was filmed on
the ranch at the big plantation house. You've been to
that house. So there you go. A small world. Yes.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Old Chance, he was the main animal star in that movie.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, well, he sounded like he was. That sounds like
a very, very special movie.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Brahman.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
I mean, of all the things, you had something on
your hands. I have received so many messages, I can't
read them all, from people who wanted to personally attest
to your character and goodness in their friendship. I'll just
pull one of them out, a fellow named.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Lately?

Speaker 1 (27:19):
No, just during this interview. A fellow named Sam Magana,
his son Ricky is, I think, a trooper or a
ranger or something. But I guess Sam Magana is a
friend of yours, and it happens to be It happens
to be his birthday today. So that's why I chose
that one of them all. So real quick, before we

(27:41):
get to the question I asked you, do you still
run Ralph Fisher's photo animals and do you still run
Buzzard Whisperer?

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yes and yes. The Buzzard Whisperer thing is sort of.
gone by the wayside it's non-profit deal you know non-profit
so uh i was doing how i got started i
was doing uh freebie presentations at uh school little school
functions and stuff and taking my i had a wolf

(28:11):
uh i had a nice tame wolf and the buzzards
and armadillo and whatever i'd take them to these little
schools so that's how we started buzzard whisperer and uh
did quite a bit of that but yes the animal
business is still in effect we do photos of people
sitting on texas longhorns like i said we had a
photo booth there in houston for 18 years and we

(28:32):
just we gave it up it was just too much
too much to worry about all right i still do
that at corporate parties we have beer burrows and we
do armadillo races also.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
And I've tried to find a website for you. I
didn't find one. There's a Facebook page. Is that where
people are to go?

Speaker 2 (28:48):
That's probably what it is, yes. The website got sort
of compromised and became a porn site. We had– excuse me,
just let me cut this other phone off. So anyway,
that's kind of how– but the Facebook page is– And
we've had so– you know, I've had so long doing
this business that I don't really scrounge around for extra jobs.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
No, I wouldn't guess you would.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Hell, I'm old. So we did quite a few, though.
You know, I stayed busy.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
All right, so here's what I want. I've got a
German shepherd that I got from George Foreman, and she's
a sweetheart and we love her, but we have a
trainer that was George Foreman's trainer, and he comes once
a month, and then when we travel– She stays with
him and keeps her under wraps because that's a very
aggressive breed, in my opinion. But what is your advice?

(29:38):
And we work with her constantly. What is your advice
for people that have a dog, a horse, a cow?
What are some basic things that everybody can apply to
getting along better with their animal?

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Well, basically, you've got to like them. the animal you're training, okay?
If you don't like him, and there are people and
there are situations where he just don't like him. I mean,
he's either bitten you or refused to do something or
run away or growled at the grandkids, several reasons why

(30:12):
you don't like him. So you got to, I think
you purely have an affection for that animal and To
respect him enough to not be mean and cruel, like
this German Shepherd I was training for ZZ Top, he
didn't want anybody touching his ear. And I don't know why.
And he was a little bit on the aggressive side.
So if you reach for his ear, he would howl.

(30:35):
So that's what it's like. You've just got to learn
each animal and their characteristics. But I see all these
dog shows on TV. I love to watch those national shows.
And they always treat those animals with a little bit
of a little treat after they do their thing. And
I just never did believe in that. But I'm not

(30:57):
going to be opposed to all these magnificent trainers. But
for my personal, a little pat on the head is
what I consider a treat. And if that dog really
likes you, he's wanting that little pat, that little assurance
of your voice even. Your voice can even change enough
in tone to designate that. Like right now, we've got

(31:20):
an old house dog that's dying, okay? He's real slow now.
He hardly eats. He's just going down. But, boy, when
I pet him on the head, his tail starts wagging.
And so that's how I've trained things, just with some kindness,
uh as a reward for what they do that that
may be opposed to a lot of the trainers giving

(31:42):
little candy sweets or whatever they give them but i
i've just mostly given now the buzzard was different i
did have a little bit of a meat treat for
them uh because birds are different than than dogs and other.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
Animals are they harder to train.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
Well, yes, of course. They've got a little pea brain,
you know. But they're also survivors. So you give them
something to survive with, and they're going to go for it.
So that's why they were always faithful to me. Somebody
turned four cages loose with a buzzard in each cage
at the end of the arena, and they fly and

(32:21):
light on me, light on my hat and arm, standing
on a clown barrel out in the middle of the arena.
There's something about me they like. And it's that food attraction,
you know, to begin with. So that's my feelings on that.
There's going to be some people opposed to that. And
maybe you can break the ice with some little treats

(32:42):
and stuff. But that affection to me is probably the most.
But you've got to be firm. You really have to
be firm. I had my best dog would run off
all the time. Sometimes during the act, he'd take off,
she'd take off. So... I took the advice of these
old trainers that have died now. They were with Ringling Brothers.

(33:02):
I'd go to Louisiana and get them to help me,
or I'd go to North Texas and get them to
help me. Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Thank you, and good night.