August 28, 2024 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Ryan Stewart went most of his life unsure of his purpose... But, there was one thing that kept him going -- dogs. He shares his story of how canines have helped him.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts up. Next,
we're going to hear from Ryan Stewart. After going through
life unsure of what he wanted to do for a
(00:32):
long time, he settled on something quite out of the ordinary. Today,
Ryan runs a very successful dog walking business in New
York City. But a job isn't the only good thing
in life that dogs have brought in. Ryan's you to
share about the many ways in which dogs have impacted
his life and continue to do so daily.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and I was given
up for adoption, like immediately, like when I was three
days old. I was handed over to a military family,
and they weren't happy together. You know. It was one
of those marriages where the woman was pregnant, and so
my father thought the honorable thing to do would be
(01:17):
to marry her. But they weren't really a good couple.
So I think they tried to fill that with kids,
and so they adopted me, and then they adopted two
other Taiwanese children, and you know, they had two of
their own, so then they had five. And when I
was six, my adopted mother and my adoptive father divorced
and she left the house and he raised us for
(01:40):
a while alone. My father. Growing up, I always thought
he was really really boring. He didn't talk much. He
did stuff like he ate the same food. I remember
he ate like grape nuts and like almost every morning,
or oats or something like that. And he like peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches. And he, aside from his military outfit,
(02:03):
he wore like jeans and a T shirt and like
a cheap windbreaker. And it never occurred to me that
he was anything more than like a boring man. But
later on in life, now he's my role model. I mean,
he adopted me and two others from Taiwan, and he
put bread on the table. He took no credit, no glory,
(02:25):
no limelight. You know, he was a church going man.
The church loved him. I remember I spoke at his
funeral at the church ten years ago or so, and
I told them, I told a church full of people
that I would be pretty proud of myself if I
could somehow become half the man he was. You know,
they say blood is thicker than water. He adopted me,
(02:45):
so I always think now that sweat is thicker than
blood because he put the work in man. We were
in DC for several years, and I got the crap
kicked out of me, like on a daily basis growing
up in DC. So I toughened up. I've had to
fight every day, you know what I mean. So then
we moved to Europe. He was reassigned and we were
(03:07):
in Holland, and that was interesting too, because then you're like,
you're the Yankee, you know. I remember there was this
big graffiti near like two blocks from her house that
said Yankee go home. I remember reading that every day
of my life there. But for the most part, I
loved Europe. You know. I've got in a lot of
trouble at first because I was used to fighting, so,
(03:28):
you know, I thought, oh, you know what I mean,
like you solve your problems with your fists. Well, you know,
like in nicer areas, you don't do that, you know.
So I was in the principal's office, I was like
his favorite, you know, he's like you again, And then
he would have like a bowl of candy and say, like,
have a candy, sit down, and then he wouldn't even
discipline me. He would just sit there and talk about
his childhood and I would just listen to him. I
(03:51):
also accelerated grades, so I apparently was very smart when
I was young. I don't know what happened, you know,
where it went, but when I was young, I was
very very smart, and I would be like that kid
who you get an hour to take a test. I'd
finish at twenty minutes and slap it on the teacher's desk,
and then all the kids would look up, you know,
and glare at me, you know, and then I got
(04:13):
beat up for that. So slowly learned fighting wasn't that,
you know, the way to go. And then we moved
from Europe to the Saint Louis area, Saint Louis suburbs,
and I got picked on a lot because I was
small and young. But fortunately my sisters were pretty popular,
you know, homecoming queen stuff like that. So a couple
of the guys who became my friends wanted to get
(04:34):
close to my sisters, so they would sort of try
to get close to me, you know, and so that
helped me a lot. I finally probably stopped getting picked
on when I was maybe like a senior. So you know,
we had chores. One of my sisters would maybe be
doing the dishes, and my brother maybe has to mow
the lawn, but I had to walk the dog. So
(04:55):
I always had the dog's company and something that sort
of so I saw me through my solitude was my
relationship with dogs, and I don't know what I would
have done without them. Years later, my girlfriend at the
time got a new puppy and she got a trainer,
and I watched the trainer. You know, I followed the directions,
(05:16):
and the trainer looked at me and says, you have
a natural talent with dogs. You know, have you ever
thought about working with dogs? And so what I did
with that is nothing, But I did read some dog
books and I taught that dog maybe forty or fifty
tricks like walking on its hind legs, or walking or
belly crawling like an army soldier, or turning circles one way,
or turning circles the other way, or you know, playing
(05:37):
dead or rolling over, you know, all all kinds of tricks.
And we used that dog for like commercials in New
York City and stuff like that, and that got me
hooked up with a commercial agent for animals, and so
she would always call me. And so I've done, you know,
I've been the trainer on set for dogs on stage,
dogs on runway, dogs on commercial sets, dogs on short
(06:02):
film sets. So I wasn't really full time into it
at that point. I was just kind of beating around
the bush, you know, picking up some commercials here and
maybe like sometimes waiting tables. And then I'm not sure
how appropriate this is, but I started selling mushrooms. So
this was like eight years later. I was going out
(06:22):
with a different woman now and she said, what are
you doing with your life? You know, like, what's you doing?
It's not that she was a nice person, but she
was smart, and I said, well what should I do?
And she said, well, you're good with dogs, why don't
you try working with dogs? And basically she said, if
you don't quit all this nonsense that you're doing, I
am going to break up with you. And so I
(06:45):
almost got forced into the dog business. I looked into
working in a dog daycare. Just the money wasn't good enough,
training wasn't steady enough, and I looked into dog grooming.
I just wasn't into grooming, you know, it just wasn't me,
and so I just settled on dog walking.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
And you're listening to Ryan Stewart share his own stories,
not only about his passion for dogs, but about everything else,
from his father to his girlfriend telling him to essentially
grow up. When we come back, more of Ryan Stewart's
story here on our American Stories. Here aret our American Stories.
(07:30):
We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
need to be told. But we can't do it without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love our stories in America
like we do, please go to our American Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
(07:51):
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories. And Ryan Stewart, owner of Ryan for Dogs,
(08:14):
a successful dog walking business in New York City. When
we last left off, Ryan's girlfriend was pushing him to
grow up and to get a life, and we'll get
serious about his life. Let's pick up when we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Being a dog walker. It's scalable, like if you walk
three dogs at once, that's three times the money of
walking one dog. Although I wasn't really like the goal
wasn't to make money. The goal was just to get
a regular job so my girlfriend wouldn't leave me. So
it was a little slow going at first, because you're
gonna go into someone's house with their keys and take
their precious dog out for a walk. So the most
(08:51):
important thing is having the people who hire you trust
you to go into their house. So you start off
slow and you have to build a rep So the
first couple of years are kind of slow, and I'm
not making a lot of money. But as the years
progress and you do a good job and you work
hard and you don't kill any dogs or lose any dogs,
(09:12):
then you get more of a reputation. Then more and
more people hire you. And it's just I didn't imagine
this would turn into like I mean, it's fifteen years
later now, so it wasn't how I imagined it would
turn out to be. But it's what's known as life
beyond my wildest dreams. I actually like who I am. Finally,
(09:32):
I work with dogs every day, seven days a week,
and I haven't taken a vacation since two thousand and eight.
It must be because dogs are great. So when I
first started walking dogs, it was a bit of a
novelty to get large groups together, you know, because then
it's sort of fun because you know, like, wow, how
many like you want to stretch your limits? Parents out there?
(09:55):
That's why your teenagers drives ninety five miles an hour
and gets arrested because they're testing their limits. So when
I first started, of course, I'm like, huh, I can
walk three dogs together, Let's try four, Let's try five,
And so I would go up to twelve all at once,
sometimes on a bike. Sometimes I would be riding a
bike with like ten dogs on one side. The thing is,
that's really hard, So I would prefer not to make
(10:18):
my job harder because what happens is if you have
like twelve dogs and one of them stops to poop,
you sort of have to kind of shift all the
other or eleven to one side. You've got twelve leashes,
and you have to get your poop bag out, and
then you have to somehow it reach over and get
the and still keep the other twelve from fighting each other.
And pick up that poop and then get it to
(10:39):
a trash can and then like whoof, that was like
two minutes of hard work getting that poop up. Let's
be on our way and you take three steps and
then another one starts to poop, So like three or
four or five you get a lot more done. Plus
people don't stare at you and take your picture. There
was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that you know,
where the guy scoffed at dogwalkers and said, anyone can
(11:00):
walk dogs, let's not even call it a profession. And
he might be right when it comes to one dog,
or maybe even two, but if you want to walk
six or eight or ten, you have to be good.
You have to have some talent. There's certain types of
customers who like me because I'm no nonsense like at all.
(11:21):
I'm actually considered a bit rude. But I'm not trying
to be rude. I just don't feel like bsing. And
I've noticed that amongst a lot of good trainers that
I've known, good dog trainers is so to the point
that it's almost considered rude. Like we would be at dinner.
My mentor, her name was Linda. She would like in
(11:41):
the middle of dinner, she'd say, I'm not feeling very well.
I'm gonna go home, and she'd stand up, you know,
throw sixty dollars on the table and leave. And I'm
in the middle of like my case idea. You know
what I mean. Dogs are to the point. That's what
dogs understand. So, but you work with dogs for years,
(12:01):
you just to the point. Eventually, after several years past,
I was popular enough where I had too many dogs
to walk myself, and so I hired a guy, and then,
you know, another couple years past, and then I hire
another one. And I looked at it and I knew
I could hire more and more and more, and I
could become a manager or owner of a large operation.
And very quickly I saw that when you have people
(12:24):
working with you or for you, they're human beings. So
they have their flaws. So some of them are late often,
or some of them don't communicate well or you know,
and so that can be very annoying. So I thought, well, gee, like,
if I keep hiring people, I'm going to be annoyed
all the time. And I'm like, that's not what I
signed up for. I signed up to work with dogs.
(12:45):
And so I held three people. I also do dog
training on the nights and weekends, and I could do
that like a lot. But training is difficult for me
because I will go and meet a dog owner and
their dog, and I will tell the dog owner what
to do, give examples, and they will nod their heads
(13:06):
and say that's completely makes sense, and then they will
go back to doing exactly what they were doing before.
So that's not easy for me to get paid to
be ignored, and that's what it feels like. So I'm
not overly fond of training, but I do it. I
have a Rhodesian ridge back that came first a German
(13:27):
shepherd and a little he's like a little terrier mix.
They were all owner surrenders, so they all have their
little problems. I had known this little terrier. They hired
me to walk their dog, and the owners finally gave
up on him after five years of trying and trying,
and they knew they wanted kids. And he's a bier.
He bites them, he bites other dogs. He was gonna
bite their kids. And they said, we can't keep them.
(13:48):
We're gonna turn them into a shelter. And I knew
that like he's gonna be killed, you know, because he's
gonna bite his next owner. So I kept him myself.
He's not my favorite dog. Sometimes I wish I didn't
have Often I wish I didn't have him. He's a
pain in the but I see a lot of myself
in him. I was given up more than once like him,
(14:11):
and it's like personal, like, I'll be damned if I'm
going to give up on him. Now. I take dogs
into juvenile detention facilities for a job, and they tried
several people before me, and they don't last very long,
like a week or two. Because you can't just want
(14:31):
to help. You have to be able to mingle with
like eighteen year old convicted murderers and be comfortable with them.
And coming from a tough background, you know, that helps
me a lot. And also having made so many mistakes
in my life helps me not judge others. And I've
been working there for about a year and a half now.
(14:54):
I'm trying to get youths to engage and to bring
them out, you know, and get them to talk about
themselves and try to get some of them to learn something.
And sometimes that's not easy because they're very guarded. I'm
working with teens who have shot someone, most of them
have killed. I bring the dog in and it grounds them.
You know, their feet don't touch the earth anymore, and
(15:15):
the sun doesn't kiss their face. So if I bring
a dog and they can touch the dog, and then
they touch the earth by touching the dog, and perhaps
just for that, for that minute, they feel human again.
You know, despite the horrible things that they did, there's
still children of God. And I'm not saying I want
(15:36):
them out on the street to kill again. But that's
what dogs did for me. They kept me from straying
too far off base when I was in my darkest.
I think they have helped me be very in the moment.
So that's what I use. I use that ability when
I'm in the juvenile facility because I don't care what
they did in the moment, like a year ago or
(15:58):
like six months ago. I just try to get them
to engage with me. Now, these are hardened murderers, but
some of them are still fifteen or sixteen, so there's
still a child in there. And so then you get
the dog there and sometimes you can see the child
come out, and that's pretty heartwarming. Like one time I
saw this big guy, you know, he always acts tough,
(16:21):
and I brought in a French bulldog, and French bulldogs
are like kind of you know, kind of interesting looking.
They look like little frogs. And he stopped acting cool
because he just forgot who he was. He was jumping
up and down off the ground, this big six foot
two guy who killed someone, and he's jumping up and
down like a little kid. And I looked at that.
(16:41):
I'm just like, yep, some of them are still kids,
you know. So dogs have done a lot for me,
and also like dogs. I was taken from my original
mother and rehomed immediately, so all dogs are that. So
basically I'm a dog. You know, it's not really glamorous
(17:02):
to be a dog walker, but I find that I
care about that less and less.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
And a beautiful job on the storytelling in production by
Madison and a special thanks to Ryan Stewart, owner of
Ryan for Dogs and what a story. Starting with his dad,
who at first he thought was a boring man, and
soon came to see his dad as a role model
and right up to his girlfriend pushing him to get
a job, to him admitting I like who I am.
(17:30):
Finally and helping these kids who have done some bad
things in their life and using dogs to make their
lives better. I still have a picture of twelve dogs
on a bike. I don't know how the heck that happens.
Glad he got down to three and four and five,
the story of a professional dog walker and how dogs
changed his life and shaped it. Here on our American
(17:51):
Story
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts up. Next,
we're going to hear from Ryan Stewart. After going through
life unsure of what he wanted to do for a
(00:32):
long time, he settled on something quite out of the ordinary. Today,
Ryan runs a very successful dog walking business in New
York City. But a job isn't the only good thing
in life that dogs have brought in. Ryan's you to
share about the many ways in which dogs have impacted
his life and continue to do so daily.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and I was given
up for adoption, like immediately, like when I was three
days old. I was handed over to a military family,
and they weren't happy together. You know. It was one
of those marriages where the woman was pregnant, and so
my father thought the honorable thing to do would be
(01:17):
to marry her. But they weren't really a good couple.
So I think they tried to fill that with kids,
and so they adopted me, and then they adopted two
other Taiwanese children, and you know, they had two of
their own, so then they had five. And when I
was six, my adopted mother and my adoptive father divorced
and she left the house and he raised us for
(01:40):
a while alone. My father. Growing up, I always thought
he was really really boring. He didn't talk much. He
did stuff like he ate the same food. I remember
he ate like grape nuts and like almost every morning,
or oats or something like that. And he like peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches. And he, aside from his military outfit,
(02:03):
he wore like jeans and a T shirt and like
a cheap windbreaker. And it never occurred to me that
he was anything more than like a boring man. But
later on in life, now he's my role model. I mean,
he adopted me and two others from Taiwan, and he
put bread on the table. He took no credit, no glory,
(02:25):
no limelight. You know, he was a church going man.
The church loved him. I remember I spoke at his
funeral at the church ten years ago or so, and
I told them, I told a church full of people
that I would be pretty proud of myself if I
could somehow become half the man he was. You know,
they say blood is thicker than water. He adopted me,
(02:45):
so I always think now that sweat is thicker than
blood because he put the work in man. We were
in DC for several years, and I got the crap
kicked out of me, like on a daily basis growing
up in DC. So I toughened up. I've had to
fight every day, you know what I mean. So then
we moved to Europe. He was reassigned and we were
(03:07):
in Holland, and that was interesting too, because then you're like,
you're the Yankee, you know. I remember there was this
big graffiti near like two blocks from her house that
said Yankee go home. I remember reading that every day
of my life there. But for the most part, I
loved Europe. You know. I've got in a lot of
trouble at first because I was used to fighting, so,
(03:28):
you know, I thought, oh, you know what I mean,
like you solve your problems with your fists. Well, you know,
like in nicer areas, you don't do that, you know.
So I was in the principal's office, I was like
his favorite, you know, he's like you again, And then
he would have like a bowl of candy and say, like,
have a candy, sit down, and then he wouldn't even
discipline me. He would just sit there and talk about
his childhood and I would just listen to him. I
(03:51):
also accelerated grades, so I apparently was very smart when
I was young. I don't know what happened, you know,
where it went, but when I was young, I was
very very smart, and I would be like that kid
who you get an hour to take a test. I'd
finish at twenty minutes and slap it on the teacher's desk,
and then all the kids would look up, you know,
and glare at me, you know, and then I got
(04:13):
beat up for that. So slowly learned fighting wasn't that,
you know, the way to go. And then we moved
from Europe to the Saint Louis area, Saint Louis suburbs,
and I got picked on a lot because I was
small and young. But fortunately my sisters were pretty popular,
you know, homecoming queen stuff like that. So a couple
of the guys who became my friends wanted to get
(04:34):
close to my sisters, so they would sort of try
to get close to me, you know, and so that
helped me a lot. I finally probably stopped getting picked
on when I was maybe like a senior. So you know,
we had chores. One of my sisters would maybe be
doing the dishes, and my brother maybe has to mow
the lawn, but I had to walk the dog. So
(04:55):
I always had the dog's company and something that sort
of so I saw me through my solitude was my
relationship with dogs, and I don't know what I would
have done without them. Years later, my girlfriend at the
time got a new puppy and she got a trainer,
and I watched the trainer. You know, I followed the directions,
(05:16):
and the trainer looked at me and says, you have
a natural talent with dogs. You know, have you ever
thought about working with dogs? And so what I did
with that is nothing, But I did read some dog
books and I taught that dog maybe forty or fifty
tricks like walking on its hind legs, or walking or
belly crawling like an army soldier, or turning circles one way,
or turning circles the other way, or you know, playing
(05:37):
dead or rolling over, you know, all all kinds of tricks.
And we used that dog for like commercials in New
York City and stuff like that, and that got me
hooked up with a commercial agent for animals, and so
she would always call me. And so I've done, you know,
I've been the trainer on set for dogs on stage,
dogs on runway, dogs on commercial sets, dogs on short
(06:02):
film sets. So I wasn't really full time into it
at that point. I was just kind of beating around
the bush, you know, picking up some commercials here and
maybe like sometimes waiting tables. And then I'm not sure
how appropriate this is, but I started selling mushrooms. So
this was like eight years later. I was going out
(06:22):
with a different woman now and she said, what are
you doing with your life? You know, like, what's you doing?
It's not that she was a nice person, but she
was smart, and I said, well what should I do?
And she said, well, you're good with dogs, why don't
you try working with dogs? And basically she said, if
you don't quit all this nonsense that you're doing, I
am going to break up with you. And so I
(06:45):
almost got forced into the dog business. I looked into
working in a dog daycare. Just the money wasn't good enough,
training wasn't steady enough, and I looked into dog grooming.
I just wasn't into grooming, you know, it just wasn't me,
and so I just settled on dog walking.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
And you're listening to Ryan Stewart share his own stories,
not only about his passion for dogs, but about everything else,
from his father to his girlfriend telling him to essentially
grow up. When we come back, more of Ryan Stewart's
story here on our American Stories. Here aret our American Stories.
(07:30):
We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
need to be told. But we can't do it without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love our stories in America
like we do, please go to our American Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
(07:51):
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories. And Ryan Stewart, owner of Ryan for Dogs,
(08:14):
a successful dog walking business in New York City. When
we last left off, Ryan's girlfriend was pushing him to
grow up and to get a life, and we'll get
serious about his life. Let's pick up when we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Being a dog walker. It's scalable, like if you walk
three dogs at once, that's three times the money of
walking one dog. Although I wasn't really like the goal
wasn't to make money. The goal was just to get
a regular job so my girlfriend wouldn't leave me. So
it was a little slow going at first, because you're
gonna go into someone's house with their keys and take
their precious dog out for a walk. So the most
(08:51):
important thing is having the people who hire you trust
you to go into their house. So you start off
slow and you have to build a rep So the
first couple of years are kind of slow, and I'm
not making a lot of money. But as the years
progress and you do a good job and you work
hard and you don't kill any dogs or lose any dogs,
(09:12):
then you get more of a reputation. Then more and
more people hire you. And it's just I didn't imagine
this would turn into like I mean, it's fifteen years
later now, so it wasn't how I imagined it would
turn out to be. But it's what's known as life
beyond my wildest dreams. I actually like who I am. Finally,
(09:32):
I work with dogs every day, seven days a week,
and I haven't taken a vacation since two thousand and eight.
It must be because dogs are great. So when I
first started walking dogs, it was a bit of a
novelty to get large groups together, you know, because then
it's sort of fun because you know, like, wow, how
many like you want to stretch your limits? Parents out there?
(09:55):
That's why your teenagers drives ninety five miles an hour
and gets arrested because they're testing their limits. So when
I first started, of course, I'm like, huh, I can
walk three dogs together, Let's try four, Let's try five,
And so I would go up to twelve all at once,
sometimes on a bike. Sometimes I would be riding a
bike with like ten dogs on one side. The thing is,
that's really hard, So I would prefer not to make
(10:18):
my job harder because what happens is if you have
like twelve dogs and one of them stops to poop,
you sort of have to kind of shift all the
other or eleven to one side. You've got twelve leashes,
and you have to get your poop bag out, and
then you have to somehow it reach over and get
the and still keep the other twelve from fighting each other.
And pick up that poop and then get it to
(10:39):
a trash can and then like whoof, that was like
two minutes of hard work getting that poop up. Let's
be on our way and you take three steps and
then another one starts to poop, So like three or
four or five you get a lot more done. Plus
people don't stare at you and take your picture. There
was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that you know,
where the guy scoffed at dogwalkers and said, anyone can
(11:00):
walk dogs, let's not even call it a profession. And
he might be right when it comes to one dog,
or maybe even two, but if you want to walk
six or eight or ten, you have to be good.
You have to have some talent. There's certain types of
customers who like me because I'm no nonsense like at all.
(11:21):
I'm actually considered a bit rude. But I'm not trying
to be rude. I just don't feel like bsing. And
I've noticed that amongst a lot of good trainers that
I've known, good dog trainers is so to the point
that it's almost considered rude. Like we would be at dinner.
My mentor, her name was Linda. She would like in
(11:41):
the middle of dinner, she'd say, I'm not feeling very well.
I'm gonna go home, and she'd stand up, you know,
throw sixty dollars on the table and leave. And I'm
in the middle of like my case idea. You know
what I mean. Dogs are to the point. That's what
dogs understand. So, but you work with dogs for years,
(12:01):
you just to the point. Eventually, after several years past,
I was popular enough where I had too many dogs
to walk myself, and so I hired a guy, and then,
you know, another couple years past, and then I hire
another one. And I looked at it and I knew
I could hire more and more and more, and I
could become a manager or owner of a large operation.
And very quickly I saw that when you have people
(12:24):
working with you or for you, they're human beings. So
they have their flaws. So some of them are late often,
or some of them don't communicate well or you know,
and so that can be very annoying. So I thought, well, gee, like,
if I keep hiring people, I'm going to be annoyed
all the time. And I'm like, that's not what I
signed up for. I signed up to work with dogs.
(12:45):
And so I held three people. I also do dog
training on the nights and weekends, and I could do
that like a lot. But training is difficult for me
because I will go and meet a dog owner and
their dog, and I will tell the dog owner what
to do, give examples, and they will nod their heads
(13:06):
and say that's completely makes sense, and then they will
go back to doing exactly what they were doing before.
So that's not easy for me to get paid to
be ignored, and that's what it feels like. So I'm
not overly fond of training, but I do it. I
have a Rhodesian ridge back that came first a German
(13:27):
shepherd and a little he's like a little terrier mix.
They were all owner surrenders, so they all have their
little problems. I had known this little terrier. They hired
me to walk their dog, and the owners finally gave
up on him after five years of trying and trying,
and they knew they wanted kids. And he's a bier.
He bites them, he bites other dogs. He was gonna
bite their kids. And they said, we can't keep them.
(13:48):
We're gonna turn them into a shelter. And I knew
that like he's gonna be killed, you know, because he's
gonna bite his next owner. So I kept him myself.
He's not my favorite dog. Sometimes I wish I didn't
have Often I wish I didn't have him. He's a
pain in the but I see a lot of myself
in him. I was given up more than once like him,
(14:11):
and it's like personal, like, I'll be damned if I'm
going to give up on him. Now. I take dogs
into juvenile detention facilities for a job, and they tried
several people before me, and they don't last very long,
like a week or two. Because you can't just want
(14:31):
to help. You have to be able to mingle with
like eighteen year old convicted murderers and be comfortable with them.
And coming from a tough background, you know, that helps
me a lot. And also having made so many mistakes
in my life helps me not judge others. And I've
been working there for about a year and a half now.
(14:54):
I'm trying to get youths to engage and to bring
them out, you know, and get them to talk about
themselves and try to get some of them to learn something.
And sometimes that's not easy because they're very guarded. I'm
working with teens who have shot someone, most of them
have killed. I bring the dog in and it grounds them.
You know, their feet don't touch the earth anymore, and
(15:15):
the sun doesn't kiss their face. So if I bring
a dog and they can touch the dog, and then
they touch the earth by touching the dog, and perhaps
just for that, for that minute, they feel human again.
You know, despite the horrible things that they did, there's
still children of God. And I'm not saying I want
(15:36):
them out on the street to kill again. But that's
what dogs did for me. They kept me from straying
too far off base when I was in my darkest.
I think they have helped me be very in the moment.
So that's what I use. I use that ability when
I'm in the juvenile facility because I don't care what
they did in the moment, like a year ago or
(15:58):
like six months ago. I just try to get them
to engage with me. Now, these are hardened murderers, but
some of them are still fifteen or sixteen, so there's
still a child in there. And so then you get
the dog there and sometimes you can see the child
come out, and that's pretty heartwarming. Like one time I
saw this big guy, you know, he always acts tough,
(16:21):
and I brought in a French bulldog, and French bulldogs
are like kind of you know, kind of interesting looking.
They look like little frogs. And he stopped acting cool
because he just forgot who he was. He was jumping
up and down off the ground, this big six foot
two guy who killed someone, and he's jumping up and
down like a little kid. And I looked at that.
(16:41):
I'm just like, yep, some of them are still kids,
you know. So dogs have done a lot for me,
and also like dogs. I was taken from my original
mother and rehomed immediately, so all dogs are that. So
basically I'm a dog. You know, it's not really glamorous
(17:02):
to be a dog walker, but I find that I
care about that less and less.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
And a beautiful job on the storytelling in production by
Madison and a special thanks to Ryan Stewart, owner of
Ryan for Dogs and what a story. Starting with his dad,
who at first he thought was a boring man, and
soon came to see his dad as a role model
and right up to his girlfriend pushing him to get
a job, to him admitting I like who I am.
(17:30):
Finally and helping these kids who have done some bad
things in their life and using dogs to make their
lives better. I still have a picture of twelve dogs
on a bike. I don't know how the heck that happens.
Glad he got down to three and four and five,
the story of a professional dog walker and how dogs
changed his life and shaped it. Here on our American
(17:51):
Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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