Mike Ritland Reveals The Dangers of Your Dog's Food | Digital Social Hour #100

What was the acceptance rate?

Like how many people entered with you and how many actually became a SEAL?

So we started with 206 when we classed up and 17 originals graduated.

In ultimate test in physical and mental fatigue and so period Sunday afternoon until Friday about that same time around dinner time or late afternoon, that entire six-day period you get about two and a half hours of sleep total.

Not per night, that's for the entire time.

So being in a helicopter getting shot at and clipping power lines and almost crashing, or getting ambushed

right outside of Saddam's palace in Takrit, or, you know, I mean,

any host of other stupid things.

You were a part of that?

Yeah.

You got ambushed?

Yeah.

Welcome back to the Digital Social Hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up?

And our guest today, Mike Ritland.

How's it going?

Mike?

Good, good.

I appreciate you having me.

Absolutely.

Navy SEAL, man.

Man.

First Navy SEAL, right?

He's our first Navy SEAL.

First one.

First Navy SEAL.

I mean, if I can pop the cherry, I'm happy to do it.

That's always good.

So what was that process like when you were deciding to become one?

Did you want to, or did it just sort of happen?

So when I was in high school, I was a runt in high school.

Like my freshman and sophomore year, I was tiny and I got beat up a lot.

And

a combination of that and both my grandfather serving in World War II, which I don't know how dated this will be, but today being the Normandy anniversary, I was just really heavily influenced by both of them and kind of service to the country and just felt frankly obligated, but I was incentivized or motivated to serve.

And it was just always something that I wanted to do.

And

so it was kind of a progression that way but there was a kind of a light switch moment for me when I was in high school with just reading a popular mechanics article that had everything about the SEAL teams in it and it said it was the you know the toughest US military training and kind of described the process the missions the equipment and really from that day forward I was just I was pretty hell-bent on doing it so

so you like doing tough things well I mean sort of I mean it's kind of like with most people I think that I like to challenge myself and I like to

test, you know, my ability or capability to overcome certain adversities.

And,

you know, for me, because it was labeled, you know, the U.S.

military's toughest training, that made me want to do it.

Was it tough?

It was tough.

I mean, you know,

just like with most things, there's, you know, I did every bit of research I could, you know, to prepare for it.

And there were things that surprised me both ways.

There were things that weren't as hard as I thought that they would be, and there was things that were 10x harder than I thought that they would be.

What was the acceptance rate?

Like how many people entered with you and how many actually became a SEAL?

So we started with 206 when we classed up and 17 originals graduated.

Whoa.

That's under 10%.

Yeah.

So it's a pretty high attrition rate.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Well, they put you through some strenuous training, though, bro.

They do.

I will say it.

It was like the hardest thing.

The hardest thing that you've done in training, you was like, how in the hell did I even get past this?

You know, for me,

it's hard to pinpoint or pick one specific instance.

It's all hard.

It's all hard.

But I will say,

for me, I think that that's really the hardest part is that

it's a succession of every single day getting kicked in the nuts over and over and over.

And it feels like it's never going to end.

I don't think like if you were to take any one day of training, most people could gut it out, you know, if they're reasonably healthy and in decent shape,

could push themselves to get through a day of training.

But doing it for six and a half months straight every single day, it just wears on you.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Six months.

Yeah.

You get weekends off, though?

In some of it.

It depends on what you're doing.

Yeah, that's like.

I thought we were talking about six weeks here.

At max.

Yeah, it's six and a half months of buds, which is basic underwater demolition seal training.

And then after that, there's another year and change of training before you get the trident pin that actually says you made it and you're a Navy SEAL.

So

it's a long process.

And

yeah, I mean, like I said, I think for most guys, you know, like when I graduated, I had seven stress fractures in my legs, and most people do.

There's a lot of injuries, pinched nerves, and broken bones, and compressed spines or cracked vertebrae.

You know, there's a lot of kind of overuse injuries like that that just break you down over time.

And

all of that kind of set aside for a second, the toughest part about it really is the mental aspect is kind of the mind games that they play.

An example would be

surf torture, which is where you're interlocked arms with the guy on either side of you and you march out into the water about to you know knee deep.

I've seen that.

I seen that.

I seen that on a documentary.

Yeah, and then they have you lay down and you just lay there, and the waves crash over you.

And this is in San Diego where the water is not particularly warm, especially in the wintertime.

It can be down in the 50s.

And they have specific dive tables or charts that they'll say, okay, if it's the ambient temp is 60 and the water temp is 58, we can keep them in for 17 minutes before we have to take them out for this many minutes, and then we can put them back in for this amount of time.

So it's very structured that way based on hypothermia and what the body can withstand.

But they push that envelope non-stop.

But then they also add an element of mental fatigue where,

you know, we as students, and I spent the last three and a half years as an instructor, so I got to see both sides of it.

But as students, you have no idea when you're going in or how long you're going to be in when you're getting out.

And so they would act like we're going to go back in.

You know, like we've been in and out five, six times.

And then they would say, you know, okay, forward march.

And we'd walk out, you know, and get to the point where you're just about ready to sit back down.

And then they would pull you back out.

But on the way back out, half a dozen guys would quit because they'd just be like, this, I can't do it.

So the water is splashing in your nose and your face?

Yeah.

So it's almost like drowning.

It is.

I mean, it's like getting waterboarded almost.

But keep in mind, this is salt water with sand and kelp.

And, you know, you get to where, you know, the entire time in training, you're pretty much always wet, you know, and so in full clothes, you're running out, you get, you know, wet and sandy and roll around in the sand.

and so you've got salt water and everything's chafing, you know, your thighs and your nipples, I mean, everything is just torn to shreds and you're constantly wet and going back and forth.

And I mean, it's just getting punished and tortured almost every day, all day.

That's wild.

And I've heard about Hell Week.

So what's different from Hell Week versus just the normal training?

So Hell Week is kind of...

an ultimate test in that in everything that I've talked about and physical and mental fatigue.

And so they they move the time period around a little bit.

It's generally a little past halfway through the first phase of training.

There's three phases.

Each are about two months long.

And so

around that fifth or sixth week of first phase, you go and it starts Sunday afternoon, early evening.

So you've been up all day at that point getting everything ready.

And then they do what's called breakout, which is where it's kind of like kicking a hornet's nest over ambush style where there's guns going off and smoke bombs and fire hoses and sirens and it's just total chaos for you know a few hours and you're running back and forth to the surf zone and they're grabbing guys and hiding them and making you do head counts and screaming and it's just total chaos.

That lasts for a few hours and then it goes into from that period, Sunday afternoon until Friday about that same time around dinner time or late afternoon.

That entire six-day period, you get about two and a half hours of sleep total.

Not per night, that's for the entire time.

And so that whole rest of the time, you're running with boats on your heads, you're carrying logs, you're swimming, you're paddling boats out past the surf zone.

You know, you're running.

You run several hundred miles that week, and you're in boots and pants.

And there's all of these specific evolutions that have been around for decades that are designed to challenge you and get people to quit.

And so, you know, for me, one of the

wilds,

one of the things that really kind of drove me, honestly, was when I showed up, I was the same height I am now, but I weighed 140 pounds.

And,

you know, so I was a smaller guy, and you'd see guys that had played Division I football, you know, college wrestlers that were all Americans, hockey players, you know, you name it, water polo studs.

These dudes that physically were, you know, much, much more talented or gifted than I was.

And I would see them quit, you know, in front of me.

And for me, that just

overwhelmingly fueled me to keep going, to see a a guy that I would look at, and most people would look at and be like, yeah, that guy's going to make it, this guy isn't.

And to see that guy quit.

And really where you see the difference is that, you know, the more gifted the athlete, the more talented they are, generally the less hard that they've had to work.

You know, they've had coaches that have coddled them or it just wasn't that hard for them.

They didn't have to work as hard as the guy that wasn't talented but was driven to do it.

And so you would see this kind of paradigm shift mentally in the class or in students as you went along, where it would kind of weed out the guys that just didn't have what it took, you know.

And that's really the

meat and potatoes of the entire training process: it's a selection process.

It's really the Navy trying to weed out the people that when you're overseas and goes completely sideways is they want to know that you're going to be there, and no matter how bad it gets, that you're just going to keep going and

forming under chaos.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

And, you know, so they make it as chaotic as possible, but you can only make it so chaotic and still be training.

You know, we all knew that ultimately, like, yes, people do die in training, and sometimes

it does happen.

You know, but it's rare, and it's certainly not the norm.

And the intention is that they mitigate every

potential disaster or life-threatening scenario to the best of their ability.

You can only be so safe.

It's kind of like racing cars or motorcycles or whatever.

You can only make things so safe.

But at the end of the day, you still know it's training.

It's not real world.

And having been to Iraq and been put in positions where you're in a town where the majority of the population of that town is actively trying to take your life,

that just puts a different spin on everything.

No matter how much training you've been through, no matter how tough it's been, no matter how challenged you've been, going into that environment where now it's real and people are shooting back at you.

and you also know that that if God forbid you get wounded and not and they capture you, you know, the atrocities that are going to take place if that happens, you know, those are all things that you're thinking about as you're doing

different operations.

And so

that you cannot replicate.

No matter how tough training is, it's still not real world.

So they get as close as they can,

and they do a good job.

I mean, it is tough.

So how do you feel that training or being in those and being in that situation situation shaped you and shaped your life moving forward?

I would say the biggest, to pinpoint the biggest thing, it would be confidence.

Not that I was insecure or

lacking a ton of confidence going in.

I mean, I felt good and was confident, but the minute you make it through Hell Week and you go from wearing a white t-shirt underneath your

BDUs to wearing a brown t-shirt, As dumb as that probably sounds, like the shift of knowing like I made it through Hell Week and the percentage of people that join the Navy and ultimately try to become a SEAL,

there's so few people that make it to that point.

It's, I mean, it's very much like a light switch of confidence where, like, now you feel like you can do anything.

And, you know, the reality of it is, and this is for all human beings, is that most limitations that are put on ourselves are 100% self-imposed.

You know, and your body and your mind and just your abilities are far higher than most people ever realize, conceptualize, or maximize because

they just don't have that mental puzzle piece

that kind of finishes that puzzle and makes people understand that they're capable of so much more than they realize.

And so

there are a lot of other things, whether it's physical confidence,

just understanding what my body was capable of,

from a training standpoint,

you get competent at certain skill sets with, you know, whether it's combative, shooting, demolition, diving, parachuting, all of those things.

It certainly makes you understand what you're capable of there.

But the biggest thing that really kind of, I would say, overshadows all of that is just that mental confidence of realizing like, I can do whatever I want.

I can do anything, you know, and that's served me very, very well business-wise and entrepreneurial.

And that, you know, no matter how things are,

like, I never panic.

I'm always...

You weather the storm.

Yeah, you know, I don't ever sweat anything because, you know, again, when you compare it to being in a helicopter, getting shot at and clipping power lines and almost crashing or getting ambushed, you know, right outside of Saddam's palace in Takrid or, you know, I mean,

any host of other stupid things.

You were a part of that?

Yeah.

You got ambushed?

Yeah, so we were in Iraq.

We had moved our way all the way up from, we drove from Kuwait after taking down the oil rigs right before the war started

and drove all the way up to the northern part of the country into into Takrete which is Saddam's hometown he had a palace there that that our goal the night before as we rolled up to the southern edge of the city was to move in and with the first marine division take down his palace and so kind of had all of our

marching orders if you will and we were we were dirt diving the night before we had pulled up on this road and and we were meeting with the Marine leadership there and all of a sudden it was like all hell broke loose.

And

so we all got into a quick kind of lazy L anti-ambush formation, got our night vision on, excuse me, and noticed there was a guy from

about 25 yards away that was in a trench coat with a ski mask, crouched down and he had an AK and he was just kind of looking around.

We could see him.

He couldn't see us because we had had night vision.

And so we communicated to the Marines that the problem was is that where we were, which was kind of like this, he's right here.

And then there's a column of Marines two miles long right behind him.

So, you know, him and a group of other guys, which

as it would turn out, a couple of Marines went to go to the bathroom out in a field behind this little tree line that was paralleling the road and stumbled upon a group of insurgents that were

talking over and kind of dirt diving, literally like drawing a map in the ground of how they were going to attack us.

And so they stumbled on them.

They zippered them up and opened opened them up.

They came running back wounded.

And then that's when everything just kind of went to.

But we didn't know that at the time.

We knew that there were contacts in between us and the Marines.

So we radioed to them like, hey, you know, we're the suppressed fire.

We're going to be

taking a few shots.

So don't light us up.

And so we take care of him and some of the other guys that were part of that little crew.

and then moved our way through.

So you guys killed him?

Yeah, we did.

Oh, okay.

Well, they couldn't see, so you just killed him.

Yeah yeah

so we took care of him and there were a few other guys in the

in the field behind him that

as we moved through were taken care of and then

and so that was basically it but the not knowing what was going on at the time

there was a an 84 millimeter rocket that was shot from

from the Marines into a what's called a technical which is a like a little jeep or small light pickup with an anti-aircraft artillery piece in the back, shitload of rounds.

And so this rocket hits that, it blows up, and now all these anti-artillery rounds are blowing up kind of sympathetic detonation-wise.

And so

we thought we were being, you know, overrun, and we thought it was either grenades or RPGs or whatever.

And so stuff's blowing up everywhere.

And that, I think, is kind of a classic example of even though that environment is supremely chaotic and

just, you know, a lot to kind of sift through our process, we all kept our calm and made sure that we were going about business the right way and nobody panicked or did anything stupid or what have you, which is easy to do in that environment because, you know, you don't know what's going on.

And so had we just opened up and started waylaying and throwing a ton of rounds downrange, we would have shot a bunch of Marines and they would have shot back at us,

which does happen sometimes, unfortunately.

But I think, you know, again, that calm under pressure component is

a big takeaway from training.

And when did you get into the canine training?

Because you're a huge advocate of training dogs.

Yeah, so on that same deployment, up in that same area,

there were a group of Marines that had a bomb dog with them.

And for me,

that was the inspiration is that we didn't have dogs with us.

The scenario that they were in, we'd been in a similar scenario of just doing direct action missions of taking down targets.

And this dog saved a bunch of Marines' lives.

And for me, that was just, again, the kind of catalyst that said, why are we not using dogs?

And from that day forward, I just couldn't get enough of it and have been doing that ever since.

Wow.

So you train dogs, have a

I mean, not specifically to kill,

but apprehension training or bite work training is part of it.

I do detection work.

I do personal protection dogs.

I do basic pet obedience with this team dog on.pet.

It's an online training site even for normal everyday house dogs.

I mean my goal from a dog training kind of big picture aspect is to try to bridge the gap between humans and dogs in terms of how they think and how they learn.

Because while there are some parallels, there's some significant disparities.

And that's where most normal dog owners screw up is two main things, which is not putting yourself in the dog's shoes and not thinking like a dog, and then just not being consistent and putting the time in.

Yeah, because dogs are really, really smart.

Some of them, yeah.

They're simple is the thing.

And I think where humans screw up

more often than not is not thinking like a dog.

And the most simple way I can put it is if you think about just in the, you know, however many minutes we've been sitting here, the amount of information that we've exchanged is pretty significant, but it's all verbal.

Like the amount of body language or action that's taken place in our exchange of information thus far has been almost zero.

But you think in a language, you dream in a language.

When you're problem solving, you have an internal monologue that is the English language for us speaking English that you work through to figure things out.

Now, now try to imagine being a dog where that doesn't happen, right?

There's no inner voice, there's no thinking in a language whatsoever.

So for them, everything is a simple association.

It's A plus B equals C.

A good example of that would be, you know, grabbing a leash is A, connect it to the dog's collars, B equals C.

We go for a walk.

So when that formula is correct enough times for that dog, the presence of A will equal the anticipation of C.

So he's getting ready to go into walking.

Right, so now just A being present equals C.

And so they're making that simple association.

But it's that way with everything.

It's

food, it's going to the bathroom, it's pulling on a leash, it's dog reactivity, it's sitting down and going to a place, jumping on people.

All of those things can be reduced down to that A plus B equals C formula.

If C is something you want, then you make A plus B equals C enough times to where that formula works in the dog's mind.

If C is something you don't want, i.e.

pulling on a leash, which I'll talk about in a second, then you make A plus B not equal C enough times to where the dog stops expecting it.

If we use the leash example, I'm going to take the leash, you know, take it off the wall, wrap it around my waist, click it to

his collar, unconnect it, and then I sit down on the couch.

And now the dog's looking around, you know, like, well, what the fuck just happened?

Like, his mind is blown

and has no idea how the world works all of a sudden.

You know, the math is wrong.

And so,

you know, if you do that enough times to kind of deprogram that formula in the dog's mind, then they stop being an obnoxious

pain

every time you grab a leash, pulling on a leash.

Another example, you know, most people will say no, slow down, stop.

They'll start pulling on the leash and tugging and fighting with the dog or nagging, you know, pulling on the dog's neck.

Something as simple as just stopping.

You know, and so I stop, start to walk again, he starts to pull, I stop.

You know, that A plus B equals C formula works again.

And that, you know, the dog understands that every time that there's tension on his neck, then the walk pauses.

You know, and so instead of saying no or stop, which don't mean anything to him if you haven't taught him that to begin with, you know, just your actions are going to dictate to the dog what the right formula is.

What about the jumping?

Because my dog, he doesn't do it to me.

He doesn't jump on me at all, but he'll jump on everyone else.

Yeah, so a good way to combat.

He knows I don't like it.

Yeah, a good way to combat that is twofold.

I mean, one of the first things I do with any dog

is feed through training.

And so, you know, however much you're feeding, let's say it's two cups of dog food, you put it in a pouch, you've got your clicker, and you just, as soon as you let the dog out of the crate or outside or whatever, you're basically ignoring the dog and waiting for him to make eye contact with you.

And then I'm going to market, give him some food, and then I'm going to walk away and ignore him.

I'm not saying his name.

I'm not looking at him.

I'm not doing anything.

And I'm purposefully,

you know, like

ignoring him.

Taking that approach, the dog very quickly realizes that, okay, when I look at my owner, I get fed.

When I go, you know, if I'm checking something out on a fence line and I walk over to him, I get marked and rewarded that way.

You know, that resonates very, very well in that same A plus B equals C thing.

So I'm teaching him to pay attention to me.

Once he'll pay attention to me, then, you know, for the jumping up, using a dog bed as a place command.

So before people are coming over, just teach them to go to his dog bed, and you can call it place or home or whatever you want.

in that same manner as that I'm teaching him to go to it and he's getting fed because he's going to his dog bed and then I teach the command of, let's say, its place.

So now when somebody comes over, I'm going to send him to his dog bed.

I'm not going to let him greet people at the door.

I'm not going to let him just wander around on his own.

He has to stay there.

And so something that simple where you're just positively reinforcing him going to a specific piece of

property or territory and not allowing him to get up and jump up on people.

If you've got a dog that the stimulation of somebody that coming through the door is so high to where where

that breaks his long stay on the dog bed, use a leash inside your house.

And similarly, walk him back over there, put him down, mark and reward him eating, and just going through training sessions like that.

Biggest thing is just being consistent and, again, putting yourself in the dog's shoes where you're thinking about it the way that they would think about it.

And what about dogs that are aggressive?

They attack other dogs or humans.

So, same thing.

You know, so many people, I think one of my biggest, I guess I would would call it a pet peeve with

people, if they've got a dog that's reactive,

every time my dog's on a leash, he wants to go after other dogs or vice versa, is that they start talking about socializing and how important it is to socialize your dog with other dogs or kids or whatever.

And I disagree with that.

And that, you know, to me, I don't want my dog to interact with other dogs or strangers, kids, whatever.

What I want them is to tolerate them and ignore them and to be right next to them and completely ignore them.

And the way that you do that is just just like I mentioned earlier with the feeding through training, is getting them to focus on me first when nothing is going on.

So most people will address the problem when the dog's mind is at 12 out of 10, i.e.

they're on a leash and they're reactive around other animals.

That's not the time to try to train that out of them.

You want to take a few steps back and say, okay, First, if I can't get the dog to pay attention to me when nothing is going on, there's zero chance I'm going to get him to pay attention to me when another dog's barking at him and trying to get at him.

And so,

first things first, get him to pay attention to you, and then slowly introduce stimulation at a lower level.

Let's say it's something as simple as like a bucket.

If you go in your backyard and there's nothing there, and you go through a couple weeks of feeding through training, like I'm talking about, and then you just take a Home Depot bucket and set it out there, like that's going to be distracting.

He's going to want to look at it, smell it, piss on it, whatever.

And so, I want to use that as kind of the bridge to slowly ramp up that stimulation, get him to ignore the bucket and pay attention to me.

Then, maybe it's another family member that's off in the corner of the classroom or backyard, wherever you're doing your training, and getting them to ignore that.

Then, maybe it's a dog on a fence line, or you know, maybe even scatter food out there if the dog's not crazy food-driven, and get them to ignore that and come back to me.

And, you know, slowly ramp up and gradually get

to where you've got them around there.

Because no different than

trying to take kids to Six Flags and teach them algebra.

If you're trying to teach your dog something when they're in that super high stimulated environment, they're not going to listen.

And it's not even going to register.

You're either going to have to punish them to a point where it gets their attention, which is usually pretty significant, or they're just going to completely blow you off.

And now you've lowered yourself in

the family hierarchy, and that's not good either.

You seem like you were able to pivot very well out of the military.

I feel like a lot of people struggle after they serve.

Yeah.

How were you able to pull that off?

The short answer is the meaning of life is purpose.

I think that that's key with everybody.

I get a lot of advice questions from other

veterans getting out that are struggling, that don't know what they want to do.

And to me, that is the single biggest thing that either...

makes people happy or makes them miserable is having a reason to get up in the morning and being passionate about what you're doing.

And for me, it was dogs and owning a dog company that provides dogs to the military, to police, to personal protection, high net worth individuals,

providing training now that the food treats and supplements and all of the different products that I have that are dog related.

For me, it's a chess game and it's something I love.

I'm passionate about.

And

it's a dream come true for me, really.

I feel fortunate to have had that because a lot of people don't.

And so,

you know, a lot of people listening may say, you know, what if I don't know what that is?

And to me, there's a very simple solution to that, too, which is pick something where you're volunteering to serve something other than yourself.

Like, if you have no idea what you want to do, at least pick something.

I don't care if it's Boys and Girls' Club.

I don't care if it's a soup kitchen, you know, helping the homeless, walking, you know, shelter dogs, I mean, whatever it is, pick something where you're at least a net positive on society and you're not miserable and you're doing something that's providing a service.

And most of the time, that will lead you to something that you either stumble on or that is what you decide you want to make your life's work or purpose about.

And even if you spend your entire life never figuring that out, you've done something good and you've helped other people the entire time.

So

to me, that's unquestionably, for me, why it was very, very simple.

I'm not going to say it was easy because there were plenty of struggles starting a business and having a young family and

all of those things.

But the process was very simple.

And I never got into the, you know, I'm depressed and have PTSD and I don't know what I want to do.

And let me turn to booze or pills.

Or like, I've just never, I never had to kind of go through that.

That's rare.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of most getting out of that situation is

suffer from PTSD.

Yeah, it is unfortunate.

So you don't feel like you have any PTSD or you ignore it?

I mean,

I will say this.

I mean, you know, to me, I think it's kind of relative or subjective in that, I mean, everybody has been through things that are traumatic.

Everybody.

You know, and what is traumatic to one person may not be to the other and vice versa.

So,

you know, to almost kind of value or devalue somebody's trauma over somebody else's, I think does everybody a disservice.

That's the first thing.

And the second thing is, you know, I don't think it's good for anybody, myself included, to ignore things that they've been through.

But I also don't think that you should trip over the obstacles in the rearview mirror and let them continue to make you stumble over and over.

Understand what happened, process it, deal with it however, you know, feel it, let it affect you how it's going to, and then move past it.

You know, I mean, to sit and dwell on it and think about it and let it continue to make you stumble is

counterproductive.

And one of the things I see in the veteran communities a lot is having lost a lot of friends, you know, really, you know, guys that you're even closer than your own family with, that you've been through things that, you know, nobody else would understand, et cetera, is that they miss those guys and

they feel sorrow and despair and depression because their brothers are gone.

You know, I've lost dozens of guys who were I would consider good friends of mine.

And to me, the simplest way that I've always dealt with that is on its most root level is I think if the roles were reversed and it was me that was gone and I had an ability from the afterlife to look and I saw this guy who's here feeling sorry for himself or feeling sorry for me and being depressed and turning his back on his family and being a shitbird drinking and abusing things and doing nothing with the opportunity that I don't have, I would reach through and slap the s out of him for it.

And so, you know, for me, it's that simple.

It's that, you know, like I was given a gift of I'm still here and they're not.

And to me, I'm going to honor those guys by maximizing every single opportunity I have to the best of my ability.

I'm not going to waste it.

I'm not going to squander it.

I'm damn sure not going to sit around and feel sorry for me still being here.

And I think, you know, for anybody that

finds themselves in that position, that's the best way to honor guys.

And it doesn't have to be military.

It can be friends that you lost for whatever reason, family members, is that if you want to honor them, take advantage of the opportunity that they no longer have.

Right.

Be successful and make them proud.

I like that.

Yeah, I love that.

Mike, what's next for you, man?

Yeah.

It's really the, you know, the dog food, you know, it's just the team dog.

The online training, the dog food is kind of the big

pivot from service to product, basically, where,

you know, that's kind of the long game is just building and kind of scaling the dog food and treats and supplements company and getting it to a point where it's

kind of rocking and rolling.

Right.

Let's touch up on that real quick.

So a lot of large breeds only live to like seven to ten years old.

Is that due to a poor diet, you say?

It's for sure part of it.

I think two things are at play.

One is substandard breeding practices.

Unfortunately, here in the United States, a lot of people breed dogs.

And I'm not saying don't breed dogs.

Like, I believe in freedom and liberty.

And if you want to breed your dogs, do it.

You know, I don't like to tell people what to do any more than I like to be told what to do.

But, you know, in terms of breeding, if you don't have a a standard if you're just breeding a dog because well it's my pet and I love him and you know there's the same breed you know four doors down and and you know let's try to make some money and have puppies

the outcome genetically is generally less than

desired when you're doing that I mean if you think about

In the last hundred years, I mean, I've got an AKC book of dogs that's called from like the 1920s that has a breed standard for every single breed.

And if you look at what the standard is now,

it's a far cry from what most breeds are.

And really, you know, in the United States, you've got

the American domesticated house dog, and then they have different paint jobs.

I mean, that's really what it is because,

you know, whether, I mean, pick a breed, like if you look at what they were originally bred for,

as opposed to what they're bred for now, it's

almost an embarrassment, you know, and

again, like,

I'm not, you know, downing a companion animal, like they serve a purpose.

And

to me, it's important to value, you know, dogs' roles in everybody's lives for different reasons.

However,

when you're not maintaining a standard

and you're just breeding either for looks or, you know, for

designer markings or certain physical attributes that are very specific and non-functional,

then you really downgrade the breed's virility and longevity and overall health

in every way, really.

And so that's a big part of it.

In conjunction with just like us as human beings, I saw a stat talking about colon cancer in like 20 to 40 year olds has gone up 200% in the last couple decades or the last decade.

And I think it's largely because we're eating a lot of things that we're not supposed to eat, you know, that your body just isn't designed to ingest.

And unfortunately with most dog foods, it's that same thing.

And that's really, you know, Team Dog was born out of my frustration with the dog food industry of going through this with so many different brands where a brand would come out and it's a little mom-and-pop boutique kind of joint that, you know, really high-quality food for a year or two years, maybe five.

And then, you know, one of the big guys gets threatened by them or sees this huge customer base that's super loyal and valuable.

They come in, they buy them out, and they, you know, buy their customers and their brand and now make it in their in their house and put a bunch of garbage in it and fillers and what have you.

And so after going through that with you know six or seven good brands at first that ended up going to sh,

I just said, you know, I'm going to make my own and I'm going to make it exactly how I want it and

spent a couple years kind of beta testing it on a lot of different dogs in a host of different working capacities.

And now here we are.

That's so relatable.

Whenever I go grocery shopping for my dog, it's like I'm dodging landmines.

Yeah.

Like all the food's so unhealthy yeah yeah yeah i only stick to one you can't even go to walmart none of those are good yeah no i only go i only feed my dog victor so victor as a classic example uh we fed fed our dogs victor for a number of years a brazilian company bought them out it was made in mount pleasant which is about an hour from where my kennel facility is it was a great food until they were bought out and then a pe firm bought bought them out again uh and so now it's it's a very different formula than it was a few years ago well see see, mine has a, he's a bully, so he has a particular skin allergy.

So it's the same,

was it like salmon or rice or fish and rice or something like that?

So they're the only one who has it.

And

he doesn't, you know, it doesn't affect his coat.

So, yeah.

I will say

this brand, we do have a salmon and herring meal blend that comes.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

So is yours real food or is it kibble?

It's kibble.

Oh, it's kibble.

Yeah.

I've gone through the full gamut of doing raw food and dehydrated and and all different types.

And again, you know, there's 90 million dog owners plus in the United States alone.

99% of those aren't going to feed raw food, even if it is, you know.

I'm not doing it.

Yeah, I mean, most people aren't.

It's expensive.

It's expensive.

No, the cost is too high, bro.

The cost is high.

You have to feed them raw food every day.

And it's inconvenient, and I get that.

And so, you know, for me, it was okay.

I understand that the overwhelming majority of potential customers are not going to feed this, no matter how good it is, no matter what you can claim, no matter what results you can show from feeding it.

So, how can I maximize and make the biggest impact that I can with what most people are going to end up feeding anyway?

And so, that's why I've now transitioned or pivoted to dry food.

And then, a friend of mine said, if raw food is killing human beings, then what do you think it does to dogs?

In terms of

as far as like the food that we're eating, it's not good for us.

Oh, yeah, I mean, how is it good for him?

Yeah, I mean,

like with anything, it boils down to where you're sourcing it from and how it's raised.

You know,

there's plenty of documentaries for and against everything, you know, whether it's

pro-vegan, anti-vegan, pro-carnivore, anti-carnivore.

You know, the one kind of, I think, missing link with all of those studies is that it doesn't really talk to or address how the food was raised.

So if you're doing an anti-meat campaign and you're taking feedlot, you know, choice or select, you know, barely passing the USDA's grading system from from a feedlot where there's 5,000 cows per acre where they're stressed out and pumped full of a bunch of shit if that's the meat that your subject is eating on carnivore that's not gonna not gonna do you well same thing with with vegetables too though if you're taking shit that's GMO hybrid covered in fertilizer and pesticides and whatever but oh I'm vegan like well you're you're poisoning yourself you know so I definitely overlooked that yeah you know and and so that I mean the reality of it is is you know, whatever food your food is eating is every bit as important.

You know, so if the food that your food is eating is shit, then guess what?

Ultimately, you're still eating shit.

I mean, there's healthy and unhealthy versions of everything out there.

So I think that that's the single biggest component that gets overlooked,

which is why I've...

exhausted so many different avenues in sourcing the ingredients that I source and where I source them from for the formula of food.

And, you know, you can look at our reviews and see case after case after case of people that have tried nine different foods and three of them were prescribed from a vet, you know, and now they switch to this food and it cleared up.

I mean, pick anything, whether it's skin issues, teeth issues,

you know, stool issues, impacted anal glands, I mean, you name it.

So obviously, I'm a big proponent of it, but not just because I own the company.

I mean, again, like, I didn't start out thinking, oh, I want to own a dog food company.

Like it was never something I ever thought I would do.

And I did it really out of necessity.

I mean, as much as I'd love to say it was

not reactionary, it was.

You know, it was 100% because I was frustrated with going through this process over and over.

And so

I wanted to ensure that every single ingredient going in there had a purpose.

None of them were fillers or just to help increase profits or bottom line or what have you.

And I'm very proud of the product that we've made.

Love that.

I can't wait to see where you take it.

I'll trash them out for my dog soon.

I'll be happy to send you guys something.

Awesome.

Any closing comments?

I just appreciate you having me on.

I know it's a little bit outside the wheelhouse, but I love what you're doing.

I think this platform, the guys that you have on, speaks for itself.

And I'm honored to be here.

So I appreciate you having me.

Appreciate it so much, Mike.

Yeah, Wayne.

Thank you guys for watching the Digital Social Hour.

Thanks for tuning in.

See you guys next time.

Peace.