How His Dog Saved His Life When Doctors Couldn't

Welcome And Meet Zach Skow

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show. So we are here today with Zach Skow from Marley's Must. But before we get into you, Zach, how about we talk about Cora?

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Let's do it. What's her story?

SPEAKER_00 0:32

What's her story?

SPEAKER_01 0:33

We're here with Zach Scow of the Cora Rose fan club. Um Cora Rose is a double amputee. Prior to her, I had another double amputee. Her name was uh Noelle, and Noelle came to us with bilateral fractures of her front legs, which is a kind of common injury when you've been hit by a car. We tried to save her legs, couldn't save her legs, had to amputate them to save her life. Um, up to that point, it was not a viable injury. So you'd be euthanized if you had that injury and you came into a shelter. We didn't amputate the front legs of dogs. It was considered like kind of cruel and unusual. So when Noelle, you know, her predecessor went through that and did it successfully and learned how to walk on her back legs, learned how to use a cart and was successfully adopted. A whole bunch of rescues and shelters who were having bilateral fractures come in started to contact us. So Noelle got Noelle got adopted, and Cora came in three weeks later. Oh, wow. So the shelter in Madeira, we had shelters in Los Angeles, all these people were sending us dogs who may need a bilateral amputation. So Cora had broken legs, shattered pelvis, broken back, and was just in bad shape. She had been casted on both of her front legs for like two months at this shelter, hadn't been set, hadn't been treated properly. So when we took the one cast off, you know, it was in worse than bad shape. So she had a uh basically terminal bone infection that had already crept up a good portion of her elbow. So we had to amputate that leg immediately. We tried to save the other one, that was not possible. So we ended up having to do the same surgery with her. So believe it or not, the the most significant injury, which is the losing of the legs, was not her biggest issue. Uh her pelvis was broken in like eight places. And when your pelvis is broken, you can't really peeing's hard, eating's hard, walking's hard, sleeping's hard. Like you can't do anything. So um, it was quite horrific. It was it was quite um a shock to the to the eyes, to the systems, to your conscience, just to be looking at a dog that has a scar all the way across its chest and going through what she was going through. So in the beginning, with her in particular, I thought, man, did we do the right thing?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Like, was this was this? So you had to thought about putting her down.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah, I mean, we not only have we thought about putting her down, the the lead veterinary technician of the hospital would not sit in the surgery because they believed it was cruel and unusual that amputating a dog, the dog should just be euthanized.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Um, ironically enough, that same veterinary technician, about two years later, when we had brought another dog in, walked me out to the car and said, Hey, I just want to let you know I was the vet tech that wouldn't sit in on the surgery. Just want to tell you that I'm sorry. And I think what you're doing is great. And she by that point now worked on three of our double front leg amputated dogs. We had a big one. We had a German Shepherd double front leg amputee. So he had a bilateral avulsion. The the nerves in his shoulders had popped out from being ejected out of a pickup truck. So when you when you land, if you've if you are a dog in the back of a pickup truck and you flop out into the street, your your legs will splay out really quickly, and that process will like rip the nerves out. So he had this these like palsied legs.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

And uh so we we've had the whole spectrum, small dogs, big dogs.

Cora’s Surgeries And Long Recovery

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Well, how did it go from her to the surgery to you keeping her? Well, falling in love with it.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, what happened was Cora, uh, you know, Cora's predecessor, I had had her for six months. I really fell in love with her. She got adopted, which was great. Um, but Cora came in after. Her process was just a little more laborious. You know, we were that much more attached to her because her her recovery was very difficult. I had little ones come home at the same time. So my my daughters were born at the same time around the same time. So her whole she integrated into our family very, very easily. And she just got better and better. In the beginning, she couldn't do anything, she couldn't stand up to eat, she couldn't walk. She couldn't. But now she's like a normal dog just sitting in front of legs. Absolutely. So I mean, every ever it just goes to show like what you can accomplish when you apply yourself a little bit every day to getting better, right? Just every day she'd apply herself a little bit better to getting better, and she would get out of her comfort zone always. You know, she was always trying to do things that she shouldn't be able to do. So how old is she now? She's probably 11. She was four when she came to us. She was a street dog too. So um she looks like a princess now, you know. But she and it's funny because I say that because she looks like a princess, she looks like some you know, like royalties dog, but she is a street dog from Modesto. Like she will rip open a trash bag in two seconds. She has like no manners, she's uh complete violator of privacy. Like she she's uh she's always scavenging love and food. That is her.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

In reality, watching her, you know, take it up, take all the love in here. Is she is a princess now. Oh she's become one.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Well, you know, Carrie, uh, my she's my doctor, and she has a rescue dog from our foundation.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeremy Shepard.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Beautiful dog. So when you have problems with John, do you just like take it out on the I love that dog. That dog was like it was like a skinny thing, right? Now, how much is your dog weigh?

SPEAKER_03 5:43

Yeah, he was 40 pounds less than he is now. So he was around 70, I think, at the at the rescue.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

But you gotta know what I'm talking about when we adopt out dogs to friends. I've adopted hundreds of dogs out of people that I know. And every once in a while you'll run into something and be like, hey, you remember that uh remember that dog I got from you? And they'll start complaining about like what the dog is.

SPEAKER_03 6:08

We weren't looking for the dog. He kind of called us, caught us off guard. Hey, can you help us out? You know, we we need to replace this dog. And we're like, oh, we're not really looking for a dog right this second. But honestly, I tell you, we say all the time how thankful we are.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

And don't you like make this? I mean, this dog is this dog, this dog's a princess. This her dog's a king.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

I have a 26-pound turkey right now thawing out in the fridge that I have to cook him tomorrow night. So yeah, he's a little spoiled.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

It's not quite Thanksgiving, but nice.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

No, no, he doesn't wait. That's just his October turkey. That's well, that's his October this week.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Where does he sleep and how does he guys get up in the morning?

SPEAKER_03 6:44

He gets up in the morning, he gets four raw eggs. Look at this.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

She well, she digs her, makes her bed with her non-existent front legs. That aren't she's making her comfy back. Oh, wow. Isn't that the greatest?

SPEAKER_03 6:55

That is the greatest.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

She does it every night before we go to bed. Not at our house, oddly enough, but in hotel room beds, she always does this. She'll always make it.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

She thinks she's digging like our dogs do that.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

She's instinctually kneading her bed. She has phantom limb.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Yeah, she's kneading her bed. So she literally doesn't know if she's missing legs.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Oh, she knows. I mean, she knows, especially to, you know, um, the way she introduces herself to other dogs and even to people. She's she's very I don't want to say she she's uh back of the pack like that, kind of submissive, but she acknowledges that she's got an injury to almost every dog. So dogs greet each other by by sniffing, by investigating one another. And how she moves herself upside down to like give herself completely, she always like exposes herself to new dogs to basically have have them notice you know what kind of impediment she's got. She does it like right off the bat. And almost all dogs, even you know, because my home was filled with reactive pit bulls, Kane Corso's mastiffs. I had prior to her, believe it or not, I had just a litany of very large troubled dogs for like a decade. So she's a huge departure from the normal type of dogs that I have. But for whatever reason, with a lot of those dogs, she has this aura about her and the way she presents herself and the way she's kind of like adapted to her injury, she uh is like ubiquitously accepted. I've never seen a dog not accept her, which is kind of rare. Uh also with poodles, they tend to perk the attention of a lot of dogs because they're poofy, she's got colored hair, things like that. But for whatever reason, she's very um everybody finds her.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

She brings out the softer side. She does, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Which is not Ranger's pretty aggressive, which is not Ranger at all.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

No.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Well, his name's Ranger. What are you gonna say?

SPEAKER_03 8:35

Well, his name wasn't Ranger, it was Boo Bunny when at the shelter at Love Pup. But yeah, it didn't quite fit the whole personality of that dog. So he's he's uh From Boo Bunny to the docile 17 pound. He is a badass 110-pound German shepherd with attitude.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Was that like a whole personality transition? Did you have to explain to him? Be like, all right, none more of this little boo bunny shit.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

You know, he fell right in line really quickly, which was good. It didn't take a lot of education.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Mommy needs protecting. I don't need a boo bunny, right? I need a ranger who's capable of violence.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Let's jump, let's start, let's shift gears to get to your story.

Phantom Limbs And Dog Social Rules

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Like, I I remember I had you on my radio show with a lot of people. Well, can we just finish with her really quick? What else? What else?

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Well, first off, it sounds to me like you've completely changed the mindset of veterinarians all over the country.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Well, yes to understand that there's options. A number of um, and I know your wife will attest to this because it's it's probably like one of the things that really brought her into our organization, but we've always prided ourselves in in trying to provide opportunities to dogs who don't have them, who would otherwise be cast aside, sort of throw away dogs, dogs with injuries or behavioral predicaments or all kinds of different things. So our first one was Hooch. And Hooch had had his tongue removed. You know, we he came into the shelter, his tongue was cut out, ears were cut off, and this was an injury that nobody had seen. You know, how do you deal with a dog with no tongue?

SPEAKER_00 9:59

They can't like tortured, or it was a mistake.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah, like it was a fight, maybe, could have been cut out, could have been fought up, but his ears had been definitely cut off just rudimentarily with like a uh he was a big French mastiff. He came into Kern County Animal Services and beautiful dog. He had pneumonia at the time. And when I went in to meet him, I had no idea, I didn't pick up that he was missing a tongue. Nobody did. So we rescued him, took him right to the vet, and the vet called me a couple hours later and said, um, she was like in tears. And this was a tough gal. And she said, Um, hey, you know, we went to intubate this boy, you know, and and move his tongue aside to tape the intubation tube in, and there's no tongue. And we're like, what do you mean there's no tongue? She's like, it's severed at the epiglottis, like at the base of his throat. So when you have a dog like that, a huge dog, he's brachycephalic, so you know, underbite, um, they can't regulate their body temperature, they can't drink, they can't eat. So all of a sudden, we have this dog who's terribly skinny. He's obviously been losing weight ever since he's been at the shelter. Um, they didn't understand why he wasn't eating or what his problems were. And so all of a sudden we're going, oh boy, what are we gonna do with this dog? You know, and he was such a special boy. Like, so he teetered on the precipice of euthanasia or rescue there for a few days. They put an esophageal feeding tube in his neck, and he started to come around, and he started to come around, and we kept him at the veterinary hospital for a while. We got him a Bailey's chair, which is for dogs with mega esophagus, which helps them sit upright so that gravity will help food go down their throat. And within a couple of weeks, we dialed in this process of feeding him. We were able to take out his esophageal feeding tube, which was giving him food and water. He started to drink out of a mop bucket in the hospital that was deep, almost like a horse. Like, because you can't lick. He so we would create this suction effect, and all of a sudden, we've got this viable, tongueless dog who is eating out of our hands. So we would basically scoop in soaked dry food into our hands with water and pour it down the back of his throat. And we did that his whole life for nine years or ten years. We cared for him. Uh, he learned how to drink, like I said, relatively quickly. We learned how to feed him, uh, of which there was a couple methods. We would do protein balls, but usually dry food just out of our hands. And you're he's a hundred-pound French mastiff with no ears and no tongue, and you're sticking your hand on his throat to feed him. Um, but he was just an absolutely incredible dog. So that was the first injury where we kind of convinced the veterinary community and the rescue community that this is a viable injury. And of course, right after that, tons of people started reaching out. We've got a dog with partially missing tongue, fully missing tongue, and we've had, I think, five or six of them since then. And Hooch went on to become a therapy dog. He lived an illustrious career, hero dog of the year in 2016, and um, just an incredibly special dog. My dad really bonded him in the end. And so that was one of the first examples that taught us hey, you know, let's look at this a little bit differently. And uh, so Cora is kind of along that line where we could have euthanized her, we wanted to try and give it a shot, and because we did, it's now considered a more viable injury that can be treated as opposed to euthanized.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

So people come to you still every day. Can you take this dog? Can you take this dog? Yeah, yeah. How do you say no? Uh because it's tough with those injuries, any kind of dog.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah, for oh, any dog, you know how it is. Yeah, yeah. People are reaching out constantly. And you know, I'm um, if you're anything like me, you're a bit of a people pleaser and you want to make people happy and it's and you don't want suffering, you know. Um, yeah, it's one of the hardest things.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Well, when they get a hold of me, that's when it's hard. I like to push them off to my wife, I push them off to some of the people in the staff that have no problem saying no. Exactly. That way it's you know, you know what I mean. Or if they message me on Instagram, I like to ignore them as much as I can. I have like a theory that if if I ignore them and if they get through to me three different times, then I'm like, I gotta get this dog in here. They tried other places and they're back. Let me bring it in. Yeah, you know. But so there's Cora.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

So Cora's and what where how we've developed her since she's been with me for six years. We've taken her into our miracle mutts program. So we have a big therapy education program with about 30 dog teams. So these are certified therapy teams that we send out throughout the community to we have a contract with Dignity Health, with um Adventist Health. We have like a hundred nonprofit partners, so adult handicapped daycare, schools for autistic children, like everywhere that the human-animal bond uh could be important or could affect change, we try to bring our dogs and bring our teams. So, would you just also at the White House are doing something? We were in 2018 for the for the First Step Act. That was the the first criminal justice reform passed in several decades for our positive change program. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Okay, let's get to you, and then I'm gonna jump around these

Making “Unadoptable” Dogs Viable

SPEAKER_00 14:54

different programs. Okay, so when I first talked to you, I don't know, it was like eight years ago or so. My wife's been a fan of yours for 10 years, and we finally connected on the radio show. Yeah, and I remember you talking about how you got into this, but it started because you lived here. Yeah, you lived here.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Rock bottom was Arizona, baby.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Rock bottom was that what was rock bottom for you? What happened?

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Uh rock bottom was kind of a combination of things. I mean, your your your rock bottom is like a trajectory, right? You know, so I definitely I definitely began it in Tucson on Miracle Mile, baby. Jeez. Yeah. That was where that was, you know.

SPEAKER_03 15:30

What year was that?

SPEAKER_01 15:31

That was 1999.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah, 1999, 2000, 2001. That was when I got into you know, cocaine and crack and making crack and selling you know, you get caught up with certain people and uh didn't have any money and I was failing out of schools. I'd become an alcoholic at that point. And so kind of um that began my my hard drug kind of spiral. But then when I was up here in Phoenix, I was working at the improv in Tempe, which was a great place to work as a alcoholic and junkie. Uh, because you know it's working at a comedy club is interesting because it's you know, you're open from four until like two in the morning, two thirty in the morning. Everybody's on that same schedule. Everybody are college students and kind of hip party folks, so it was a it was a special place to work. But um by that point I was drinking 24 hours a day. I needed to drink 24 hours a day. I was using with whatever other money that I had or I could scrounge, and um my body was just failing. You know, I was getting I was having little issues here and there, but it was obvious to me that um something was gonna happen, you know. About 2006-2007, I started to have just physical anomalies that I couldn't explain. I moved back to California, end of 2007, and then I immediately uh went into liver failure. I started well, I didn't realize I was going into liv liver failure. I knew something was acutely happening to me that was not good, but I didn't realize it was liver failure because I wouldn't go to a hospital. So I started to turn yellow, I started to get huge, swollen, I looked nine months pregnant, started to uh lose my coherence because I had ammonia you know building up on my brain. So I started to not realize where I was. I'd have these, and sometimes you're not aware that you're having those moments. So you have to have someone, someone will look at you and be like, are you are you okay? And you won't be aware that you just have this lapse in being present. You know, when you have ammonia buildup on your brain because your liver's not filtering it out of your system, it it almost makes you uh, you know, half half here, half not. Um so I stayed, you know, I I was having issues with blood coming out of the wrong, you know, places regularly. And I knew when that the first time that happened is when I got scared. Sure. You know, and then that just happened every night or every day, and you just start to think that, well, well, I'm just gonna sweep this under the rug like everything. I was so terrified to go to the hospital because I knew they were gonna tell me it was related to my alcohol and drug use, you know, and and and having to confront that, you know, that would have been the end of me. Like people don't necessarily realize how how inexorably connected you are to your alcohol or your or your drugs. Like I I I couldn't exist without it, you know, period. It was impossible for me to to think about existing without alcohol or drugs.

SPEAKER_03 18:18

But you had more fear of that being taken away than the fact that you were bleeding out of abnormal places.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Oh, definitely. Because I couldn't cope with when I was not, you know, going the the physical the withdrawals that I would have from alcohol were terrible. And you know, those would happen immediately. If I didn't drink, there's a couple times I tried to make it a day without drinking. I'd go into withdrawals by like 2 a.m. Is that a genetic thing, Carrie, or is that because Well, yeah, partially it is actually genetic.

SPEAKER_03 18:43

I don't know if you have any other family members or have a family history of any type of addiction problems, but we you know people say, well, is that because the family members they would live through an addiction problem, or is it's really more genetic than you think. Not everybody will have the same reaction to drug and alcohol. People will d use the same amounts that you used and never talk about liver failure in their entire life. But some bodies are not set up to handle that load.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Well, I was drinking, you know, my grandfather died of liver failure in when he was 41. Uh it's a marvelous story. Yeah. He's he I became connected to him in my recovery, which is very interesting. But but I mean I drank the the thing about alcoholism, you know, I drank every day from probably junior year, senior year of high school, you know, on. I started to to drink, I drank every night. I started to drink every day, all day, from 2003 until I got sick in 2008. And you know, in the end in the last years, I was drinking like a box of wine a day. I couldn't afford anything. So a box of a box of Franzias, $7.99 back then. You're getting five liters of astronaut wine in a bag inside of a box that you can port around with you. And so it was not like I was drinking a 12-pack. I was drinking eight or nine bottles of wine a day.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

You know, it's so weird to hear that from you because when I look at you right now, you look extremely healthy. You'd never know that was where you were at one point.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Yeah, you know, and I needed it. Like, you know, the the chasing that fix as an alcoholic, I needed it. You know, I I um I was so convinced that I was what I I've always struggled with worth worthlessness, you know, but when you're in the spirals of of alcoholism, that worthlessness is is inescapable, you know, and I was even more worthless without it. You know, I uh so much of my personality, so much of my sociability, so much of my just general fear of my surroundings was controlled by alcohol. You know, I I would alcohol helped me get to a point where I felt like everybody else. You know, I had this low-grade, like simmering anxiety and like malaise that I just couldn't couldn't get away from. But alcohol would kind of feel like it would let me breathe, like I could exist without it being such a terrible time to exist. Like just being alive was difficult. You know, just being in my own skin and trying to be contented in me, with me, coexisting with me was really, really challenging. Um, and when you're traipsing around those dark corners of your mind, um, sometimes alcohol is the only thing that keeps you like within the lines, feeling more sane. And when I didn't have alcohol or drugs, I felt absolutely insane. You know, the craziest I've ever been is when I don't have alcohol or drugs, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Um how long have you been sober right now? Just had 16, man. Wow, 16 years old. 16.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Wow, I couldn't do 16 minutes without without a drink, you know. So to take us there.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

How did you so you you have liver failure? You obviously went to the hospital at some point.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

Yeah, so um you must have had friends around you that said, Look, we've got to take care of it.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Oh boy. Well, at that point, I was wearing long sleeve clothes to cover up all the yellow and the bruising because you bruise real easily when you're in liver failure. My eyes were totally yellow, my skin was like yellowish gray, so I would tan, I would sit outside and try to. make myself not look yeah and uh wouldn't be around people and then finally my dad you know really got on to it um knew there was things because he would hear me in the bathroom and so I went to the doctor did all my tests was real nervous about it and then I went in and she called me back to her office this nurse and I had known her from like the streets and I knew her daughter and she said uh she sat me down and she grabbed my hand and she started to pet pet my hand and she was like you know honey and she started to get like emotional you know she said you're in liver failure and you need to go to a hospital and I was like what do you mean she was like you know you're dying and you this could you know this could kill you and you need to go to a hospital right now and we can transfer you or you can go on your own but you need to go to a hospital right now and you know I heard that and like I just remember the wave I remember like every ounce of energy of blood and possibilities and hope and like everything draining out of my body and just go oh well there it is dude I'm dead like I'm dead because I can't do this I can't do life without alcohol and I'm dead because I'm apparently they're telling me I'm gonna die. Yeah and I try to convince her like no I've just been on one for like a week she's like that's not how liver tests work you know you're not just like on a bender that's flared up your liver like so I uh went home and lied. I didn't even I couldn't you know my dad wasn't with me at the hospital so I just went home and and lied and told him I was um I told him no uh hard liquor you know just wine uh just bullshit him because again I couldn't uh I'd never been in recovery I'd never been to a program I'd never been without alcohol or drugs like there was no way how I didn't have the tools to to address this so I hid it for a little while longer and then you know I really started to bleed like badly and I did some research and when you one of the ways you die from liver failure is esophageal varices. It's a miserable death yeah I've witnessed we need to understand that it is the most miserable thing you can ever imagine. Esophageal varices occur when your your liver is not accepting all of this blood and bile that's being pumped through your hepatic duct. So because it can't get through the duct it the it it gets this portal hypertension this this high blood pressure so it essentially goes around your liver and it puts undue pressure on the the veins in your esophagus the the arteries in your esophagus and they will burst and then you bleed out orally yeah so trajectory bleeding. Yeah it's the worst thing I I I had a sponse oh yeah me too I had a sponsee who went through it and they brought in a cash crash cart to solder to burn his veins shut so he's he this is happening while I'm talking to him he goes into an episode with his family present um and and yeah they they brought in a crash cart worked on him and then soldered his veins closed in his throat cauterized him sorry yeah thanks right in front of you yeah yeah I was in the you don't really have any time you're you've got seconds to make it you're like arterially it is as much blood as you can imagine and it will hit walls 15 so did that make an impact on you when you saw that well this was that was after I got sober but when it started happening to me I was having these these like perforations these these agitations so I wasn't arterially bleeding I was I was having like piece like bits of blood and they were trying to figure out they did endoscopies and found out that I had I was swollen but it hadn't you know my varices were there but they hadn't I had and you could see them on the outside you could see you know these they looked like cords blue cords coming down the throat and uh yeah so they were pretty convinced that I could be my varices weren't going to burst even though I was agitating them so

Addiction, Liver Failure, And Fear

SPEAKER_01 25:38

much. Um but uh I I finally came to with my dad you know and and explained to him what I was experiencing physically um explained to him what had happened and he took me to the hospital and they checked me in for long-term care it was at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital. They don't do liver transplant there um I went into withdrawal you know alcohol withdrawal and my kidneys crashed I don't remember like the first seven four or five days um but I remember sitting with my dad in the hospital room and I remember the doctor coming in with his team and I remember them you know just very matter of factly telling my dad you know he needs a liver transplant or he's gonna die and unfortunately he's not gonna get a liver transplant and um he's got 90 or less days to live and um we're gonna try to keep him comfortable you know we're gonna do what we can to try to address your liver. We're gonna give you frozen plasma transfusions all so I had tons of those to try to bring my numbers down so that they could do a proper biopsy. When your um liver is failing that badly your blood is so thin that it won't clot. So if I get cut if I have a any sort of a you just bleed you the the and they can't use blood stoppers because you have other complications so like it's a really um it's a really tumultuous diagnosis because there's so and then also when your liver fails your kidney your pancreas your gallbladder how are you here right now yeah like what what happened did you get a liver transplant?

SPEAKER_03 27:08

There had to be so there had to be a better purpose.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Yeah so um I mean talk about so what they the only thing they could really do to help me uh outside of these plasma transfusions um which were the worst because it was frozen so you just freeze your ass off and you're already so sensitive when you're in liver failure to temperature like you get so cold. Um but they and they would tap my uh it's called paracentesis so they cut a hole in my back and they would drain my stomach because you're just filled with liters and liters and it's so painful. I can't tell you how painful having all this shit built up in your abdominal so your abdominal cavity just fills with blood and bile because it's not being processed by your liver. So it just leaks into your abdominal cavity and it pokes out and you do look pregnant. They look nine months pregnant more pregnant than pregnant wow I still have you know stretch marks all over the both of my sides from from that and uh yeah I mean essentially they what they said is if we can't bring your numbers down if we can't you know get your your bilirubin your AST your ALT all these different metrics down you know this is just what it's going to be like and when you become sick enough you know or when insurance refuses to pay for you we'll send you home on hospice you know because you can't you need six months of sobriety to qualify for a transplant period you cannot get into a transplant program there's only seven hospitals in California that do liver transplant and I was not at one of them. So it was hopeless man to be honest there was just no hope. You know I had some friends coming in visiting me. I don't think people really knew overall how bad it was back then you know what kind of shape I was in um but the first real sense of hope and I got addicted to Delauded immediately.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

Like you want to you want to uh yeah I'm gonna have a whole well I was gonna say addicts switch to the next addiction that's part of the problem is you know we have to use drugs like benzodiazepines to get you off alcohol but then you become addicted to the benzodiazepine feeling and that's the challenge is helping them break the addiction cycle which is much bigger than just coming off the drug du jour.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Yeah 100% I mean I I got into uh I got in there went through withdrawals you know and when I kind of came to they're looking at the pain chart on the wall the smiley face the straight face the frowny face and then the crying frowny face you were the crying crying frowny face all day long baby that means dilatinymorphine every four hours you know and and you know it just like how Cora wants to eat dinner right now you know exactly when your time's coming up you know which nurse to bitch at and complain to and you know within like a week or two weeks I had I was uh a danger to myself and others in the hospital so I had a babysitter attached to me who had to do everything with me and this has got to be a movie at some point. And uh it was wild man. So what happened? How do you did you where do they so then we're I'm sitting in my hospital room and my dad is an engineer. So all he is thinking about is not losing his son and he's there every day. Right. My mom wasn't there I didn't have that my dad was my dude and he still is like that dude rode with me throughout it all and he's driving an hour and a half to get to the hospital every morning. Um and I come come to my room and there's three dudes in there tattooed with like they look like Mormons like short sleeve dress up shirts with ties. Yeah and I'm like what is what is all this and uh it was an AA meeting it was an H I meeting for Alcoholics Anonymous they came to my hospital room to have a meeting of my first meeting of AA right I'm going holy shit this is uh interesting but uh the guy that was in there had gotten through liver failure in prison and my dad is only hearing all this data that is your son's gonna die your son's gonna die your son's gonna die and here's this dude he he went through hepatitis C liver failure which is a different type of liver failure um but nonetheless liver failure so here's this dude looks like a million bucks went through it in prison I'm in a real hospital not prison you know maybe I've got hope and so that was a real catalyst to get my dad motivated to try to figure this out and he just never gave up man again he's an engineer with like a tactful strategic never say die we're gonna figure this out like mentality he's not exuberant like that but he's very focused and like engineering minded you know and so he just was going to find a way to get me a transplant that was his just goal is he my son is going to have a liver transplant we're gonna get this for him it's we're gonna figure it out and um a couple weeks later this nurse that we were working with through my insurance uh she was at UCLA one of the hospitals that did transplant and she connected me with uh the transplant team at Cedars and they had an opportunity for me to come basically apply for the transplant program but I had to be there you know and so we found had this opportunity my dad says we're going we're gonna do it we're gonna take you to Cedars and I was born at Cedars you know in 1997 I mean 1979 and uh so we go to pull everything out and doctors are going you can't fucking leave here you know you're you're extremely fragile like you could die on the drive down there you can't leave this hospital my dad's like fuck you we're leaving you know and he so they bring the legal people down to sign me out against doctor's orders a stack of paperwork he's got to sign pull the shit out of me and we sped down the two and a half hours to Cedar Sinai and we met with Dr. Tram Tran and her transplant team and they admitted me into the program and they said um look this is like really really really close call um but if we keep you here you're gonna die um so we're gonna send you home and we're gonna take you off almost all of your medication um we're gonna send you home to the care of your dad and your dogs and stay close to an emergency room because you're gonna need it. You know so and my dad's going what the fuck are you talking about? We're gonna do what?

SPEAKER_03 32:55

What did they say if if we keep you here you're gonna die what was their thought process the thought process was I was addicted to drugs.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Uh-huh um I was failing you were addicted to dilat it at this point if you graphed my I've been there for five and a half weeks so if you graft my progress I got sicker every day I was in the hospital. I got sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker. Quality of the food was terrible the amount of things they were putting in my body was and they were trying to treat my depression they were trying to treat my insomnia they're trying to treat my pain they're trying to treat my liver trying to treat my kidneys all with pills and another all which are done through the filtering systems of your body which of mine were failing. So you're gonna put more and more shit through my system that my body can't process.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

What your dad must have been going through to see his son going through this is unbelievable. So at what point like when I look at you here in front of me you look like an extremely healthy guy. So where when did things turn on only on the outside when when did someone go we got a liver for you is that is that what happened?

SPEAKER_01 33:51

No, it's not what happened sorry it takes a long time it's just a process. So I got admitted to the program so I'm officially a transplant patient. So if I can stay alive for six months and not drink or use they'll get me a liver transplant they send me home I go through withdrawals immediately which was terrible so I convinced my dad to take me for shots of dope at the hospital a couple of times I fooled him to you know just keep me going. Yeah so now we're going for nar through narcotic withdrawal oh yeah it was terrible it was the worst um if I didn't have my my pit bull Marley with me like I was so suicidal but I could barely move when I was going through that because it was so fragile physically and these were terrible withdrawals I mean you know tremoring uncontrollably seeing things hearing things blood coming down my walls you know the scene like it was I was it's like a Stephen King movie. It was and I just had my remember my hand just on his chest like his solar just like feeling his chest and he was so confident and so sturdy and so present and so there that I just remember and I was just shaking. I just remember going like just holding him just going fuck me let me get through this you know and um and then after that you know when I got through that it there was then it was suicide because I had couldn't put my mind anything productive it's just I'm a waste of space I'm doing this to my dad I'm doing this to myself I'm not gonna live anyway this is all a waste um and sometimes when you have like when you feel like all of your agency is gone from from life you know sometimes all you can do is like take your life you know is like remove yourself from the equation. When you when there's there's nothing I could practically do to like help myself I couldn't walk at the time I it was so ill and uh so I would just sit up there you know with my dad's gun and and uh and just you know rack bullets in put bullets I take them out rack them in pop the clip out pop it in think about where I was gonna go um think about how you know just like I I so I spent several days just like spiraling through that process and um you know it wasn't until it was about it was a few weeks after getting out of the hospital and I had a really terrible moment in bed you know I I you lose control of your bowels very regularly because you're on this medicine medication that does that. Oh annulose and lactose are the worst so they just make you you know lose yourself and um I gotten up out of bed to try to clean myself off and uh you know I walked by the mirror in my bathroom the downstairs bathroom and you know it was wild to think about but um I passed by this full-length mirror and I looked myself in the mirror and you know it was completely yellow. I look like I was 80. My belly was so big and it's just varicose veins this huge belly my belly button's herniated you know it's sticking out I'm rail thin because I've been in the hospital for a month and a half so I got my muscles have atrophied I'm completely purple and yellow and uh my eyes were all sunk into my head and and I looked at myself in the mirror and I just went oh and it was real fluorescent light bulbs and I didn't recognize like any of what I was looking at you know and I remember sticking my like nose up to the mirror and looking at my eyes trying to figure out like is that me? Is that fucking me? You know and I just oh like oh my God this is I can't believe this is where we are you know and I just started sobbing just like you know this is the most pathetic thing in the world. I can't believe you've done this to yourself you know this is what you do when you're left to your own devices this is like well done Scout look what you've done to yourself you know and uh just never a lower moment of and especially as like a we all have a certain level of vanity to ourselves to like see yourself in such a deplorable state and then kind of like looking like death you know meaning like you just kind of know you're not gonna be around it's a surreal feeling you know and uh you know I I looked over at my dogs and uh they're all sitting by the toilet because I spent a lot of time there and uh they're all looking up at me like uh nothing's wrong you know uh like we're gonna be okay and like not only do they see me in there but they see like a future for me that they recognize that I'm still in there that even though I don't see myself I don't recognize my morality my you know who I am physically who I am morally who I am spiritually what the fuck am I I don't I don't see myself anymore I'm I'm looking at somebody who I don't recognize anymore but my dog still saw me and they saw me they saw right through all these physical problems and everything I was going through and they kind of you know acknowledge just who I was that I was standing in front of them that I was gonna be okay that we were gonna be okay you know and I got to thinking about what would happen you know if I wasn't around for them and uh I didn't go back to sleep that night we uh just stayed up and I tried to journal and I just remember writing writing and writing writing and writing and writing that night and then as the sun started to come up I thought myself my handwriting is terrible my spelling is dog shit I'm gonna die next week someone's gonna find their they're gonna go boy he really was a dumbass look at this handwriting and this spelling but I I took a picture of the sunrise that morning and then that next day was like the first day of the rest of our lives like me and the dogs just committed to like rigorously committed to trying to get better.

Sobriety Tools That Saved His Life

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Like every moment of every day was spent trying to get better. And we just started by walking like just walking and I couldn't walk barely at all like down the driveway and back like a few dozen feet and I would walk around kind of the you know the property and um every day I started to get a little bit better and I changed everything that went in my body you know only vegetables grilled vegetables um clean protein sources no complex carbohydrates no sugars um started making smoothies basically vegetable smoothies and trying to eat clean and um the process was like rapid I started to get better like immediately and I got off all every drug I was taking so I was on 17 medications when I got transferred and within the first like month of getting out of the hospital I was on 17 different medicines and none of them were really medicines they were all in some way shape or form killing me or or not doing me any positives. And as soon as I you know really cut down when it went into my body and started to move started to move my body started to replenish my body things started to get better. And at that point I'm going to Cedars every two days uh and then it's then it was like every week for testing you know I was having liver MRIs and CTs and um all kinds of stuff and you know it was about after the first month or two certainly by November because I got out of the hospital September 8th 2008 and by Thanksgiving I was really starting to look different. Like my jaundice was going away I actually went to Thanksgiving dinner like with my family people were supplied surprised to see me and it just never stopped I just kept getting better and better and better. And the whole time I'm trying to you know survive for transplant if I can get six months so and I'm going to meetings constantly I'm going to meetings twice a day I made my home at in recovery my everything I have in life is owed to recovery every single thing I have without exception is due to you know working a program a thousand percent you know there is no other way there would have been no other way for me to find you know salvation or happiness or sobriety the fellowship the structure of the fellowship the acceptance inherent within those programs was like was critical for me if you could graph my self-esteem on a chart just from because I needed to practice I needed to practice living sober. I had no fucking idea how to live I couldn't drive sober. I had driven intoxicated my whole life wildly intoxicated I I mean I was I would genuinely have these panic sensations just driving because I couldn't you know I was so used to being sedated um and and the program really gave me a a place to practice being a human and practice interactions with females and interactions with men and and then I got to bring my dogs around and you know I started fostering dogs about a month into the process for organizations that I had worked for in the past. So like about a month and a half two months after getting out of the hospital you know we had three foster dogs then that went to five and then six and and we had a litter of puppies and then those would get adopted and so all of this time I spent worrying about myself my inadequacies my insecurities I spent on the dogs. I spent on walking them creating structure for them I would write their biographies I would take their pictures and I'd always write their uh their biographies were always like ludicrous it was always uh like prison stories because they come from the shelter so it would be like cookie you know black lab blah blah blah was incarcerated for disorderly conduct or peeing in public or streaking or just dumb dog stories that were completely fabricated and I'd put them up all over stores all through town so like several dozen stores and so I'd go in and I was the yellow dog rescue dude who had a Rottweiler pit bull who was trying to find dogs homes and I was working for a couple different organizations you know fostering and and it just kept building momentum and they didn't do big dogs where we were but I was fostering all the big dogs and we started to have success because these dumbass posters that I was doing and everybody kept saying well you just got to keep doing this. I'm like all right we'll just keep doing it and again all my attention that had previously been put on myself my own shit my ego My this, my that was put into service. I spent very little time thinking about myself. It was thinking about my brothers and sisters in the program, thinking about my dogs, and thinking about being creative with how I market these dogs and being creative with how I train these dogs. So all of a sudden now I'm engaged in creativity and things that I didn't really have in life. I wasn't a very creative person.

SPEAKER_00 44:19

And all the time you're doing this, your liver is healing itself?

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Yeah, I'm just getting better and better every week.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

So you're literally sitting here in front of us without a liver transplant? Yeah. Your liver healed itself.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

Well, I have so I went in for my six-month review at Cedars to be, you know, kind of determined eligible. And, you know, in order to get a transplant, your MELD score has to be essentially above 17 for a particular period of time. Your MELD score is your model for end-stage liver disease score. That score is based on bilirubin, albumin, EST, ALT, all of these factors that spit out uh your creatinine, you know, that spit out a figure. My my score was 26, so I was plenty eligible. But by the time I had six months sober, it had dropped down. I was no longer transplant eligible, and my numbers were continuing to improve. So I had, you know, I was stayed, I was end stage for I think five years, uh, and then I became stage three fibrosis in like six years ago, uh or maybe a little bit longer. So my body continues to, my liver continues to regress in terms of its cirrhosis. And I know this is complicated, we're getting kind of technical, but um cirrhosis is scarring of the liver. You're not supposed to get better. You know, you're you're supposed to kind of like maintain. It doesn't improve, it doesn't heal. Um, but if you're if you're young enough, if you take good enough care of yourself, if you really change what goes into your body, your liver can heal. Can regenerate can regenerate.

SPEAKER_03 45:42

It's one of the few organs that can actually heal itself. But I think age was on your side, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Sure, yeah. I was 28 when I got sick.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

Have you done stuff like hyperbaric chambers and all that stuff?

SPEAKER_01 45:51

Yeah, I do uh hyperbaric chambers with Dr. Eyman for for my brain health. So that's one thing I've been working on with him.

SPEAKER_03 45:57

I do, yes, Daniel Eyman.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yeah, he's awesome, man. His whole thing is hyperbaric chambers?

SPEAKER_03 46:02

He does. Well, she's got hyperbaric chambers, actually. Yeah, he sends clients to us from California.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

We started working with hyperbaric chambers on burned a burned litter of puppies that we had with Dr. Grossman, who pioneered. Oh, I know Grossman. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:15

Is it UCLA? He's in Southern Cal.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Well, his son, yeah, Peter Grossman, uh, Dr. A. Richard Grossman was the the pioneer of the Grossman Burn Centers, the infamous, like world-renowned Grossman Burn Centers. He he was in the Navy and he he pioneered a lot of that technology because they use it for for uh the wobbles when you when you are going underneath water and come back up. You know, he can lose the bends. Yeah, the bends or the wobbles, whatever. Maybe I just make that up. Um yeah, so we we use those with some some burned puppies that we were able to save their lives. If they had skin grafts and the whole nine-yard, he treated them at West Hills Hospital, it was a human hospital that he treated these dogs at.

SPEAKER_03 46:50

I think he's the one that treated Jay Leno.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he passed away. Um Dr. Richard Grossman passed away about uh seven or eight years ago, but his son's still very, very bright.

SPEAKER_00 46:59

But you were doing hyperbaric for brain health? Because I would assume it would help with everything, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_03 47:03

It helps with the liver regeneration as well. But yeah, one of the toxicities we haven't talked about with the alcoholism is the deterioration of the brain cells that comes along with it.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

How often do you do hyperbaric? I feel it. How often do I have lapses in brain? Do you do hyperbaric chambers?

SPEAKER_01 47:16

Uh I do them as often as I can. It's in it's in Encino, so it's hard for me to get to. But I love it. The hyperbaric process is really wonderful because you're in there for an hour, you can choose to meditate, you can choose to breathe. And if you do, it's it's quite nice. You don't um it might be psychosomatic, but but you feel like you're you know in that deep inspiration. Yeah, yeah, I I enjoy it. It's it's nice to be like locked in a tube with no distractions.

SPEAKER_03 47:40

No one can get to you. That's what we I think it's what John Jay and I both say.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

You can go 90 minutes, you can go. I mean, it's it's fantastic, yeah. Get a tan too. And they'll have a TV on the outside so you can watch TV while you're in there if you want, or you can just go to sleep. Yeah,

Building Marley’s Mutts From Scratch

SPEAKER_00 47:53

that's right. So, how do you go from that to this incredible program, Marley's Mutz, and the prison program? And I mean, it's what would just just different splinter cells have grown as you're Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Well, I mean, first of all, it's wonderful to be here. Like, you know, to have people like your wife and yourself, to have other people root on rescuers, you know, we have such an odd culture, and to have you guys root me on like you have over the years has really meant a lot. Um, I pull for you guys too, you know. And and so though thank you for the for the encouragement and the motivation. And um, that's really what what got it going was my community was like, hey, you ought to do this. And I was like, what? They're like, start a dog rescue.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

But like your rescue, Marley's Mutz, is it your own facility? It's not in your house.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

No, no, no. So it started out just in in the house, in the garage.

SPEAKER_00 48:40

It took over our house. Took over the garage, took over the house. We had puppies and dogs in the laundry room. All the the kids sucked with dogs. They were it was it was out of control, and it was ruining our house.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Ruining houses, probably ruining relationships. It was tough, man. Um, yeah, it's it's somewhat addictive because you know, you're trying to address uh suffering, you're trying to address lives and and um it's hard not to be all in, it's hard not to go, you know, neck deep into the into the process and try to save them all, you know. Right. Um, but yeah, it just started out slow like that. It started out with a handful of rescue dogs. I was making those posters, putting them up all over town. But when I got released from the transplant requirements, all of a sudden I'm I'm alive, you know. So it's like, well, shit, what am I gonna do if you're here for a reason, bro? Yeah, but I don't have a degree. I you know, I don't have any skills, I don't have anything. What do I have to bring to this world, you know? Um, but I had shown over the last six months that I could do this, um, that I could be creative with their with their marketing, that I could talk to people, that I could kind of exemplify what rescue was. Um, and yeah, it was just really the veterinary hospital and the the local pet store. They were like, You need to start your own company. And I was like, What does the IRS let like drunks do can I am I allowed to do that?

SPEAKER_00 49:58

You know, when you think about where you started and where you said you were, like you were going to die and then cut to 2018, you're at the White House.

SPEAKER_03 50:05

That was wild.

SPEAKER_00 50:06

I mean, that's a sick.

SPEAKER_03 50:07

It's so inspirational.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

How is Hollywood not done a movie? Or have they talked to you? Because I know you got friends in Hollywood.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

Yeah, no, no one's ever talked to me about him. I mean, people have touched on uh because I have so many students from prison that I'm very close to who have their own miraculous stories of recovery. Brian James is one of them. I'm meeting him in Tucson tomorrow. He he gets in tonight. He did he was a juvenile lifer who did 29 years, and the last chunk of his years was in our program. And um, you know, he adopted his dog out of prison, and his story is just marvelous. So are so many of our trainers that come from the prison program. But um, but to like to to wrap a bow around how Marley's Mutz was created is really just a uh why I wanted to thank you is because it's just grassroots community organizing. It's just people saying they believe in me and saying, hey, you ought to do this and encouraging me and me saying, Well, fuck, because it would have come, wouldn't have come from me. Uh even with the self-esteem I had developed, I still wasn't like gutsy enough to think I could, and I for sure thought the IRS was gonna find like some way to shit on whatever I was trying to develop. And I went and talked to a lawyer, and the lawyer's like, No, no, no, this is possible. I'm like, Are you sure? Because they're gonna figure me out and they're gonna they're gonna deny this. There's no way they're gonna allow it. So for the first like six months, we just operated as a DBA, as like a doing business as, and applied for our nonprofit status in the process. So we've been a company since 2009, been a nonprofit since 2010. Um, and uh yeah, it was really remarkable. My community just kept encouraging me to do what we were doing. The veterinary office gave me a kennel at the veterinarians to like deal with strays. We had some Boy Scouts build some kennels up at the house. Um, we started to develop a foster network based on these posters. So, real quickly, I had a couple of dozen fosters, and Marley, my Rottweiler Pipple, was so incredible at like pack symbiosis. He could really keep the the balanced feel of a pack. He really knew how to address insecure dogs, really knew how to level out more kind of dominant dogs. And so uh Marley's Mutz was born. There was also no, there were like purebred rescues back then, so many of them. There was no like mutt rescues, and we all had mutts, so like it's called Marley's Months. So Marley's Marley's Mutts was born.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

You know, I I keep thinking about like taking this podcast and sending it to some producer in Hollywood listening to your story.

SPEAKER_03 52:22

And say this new I mean please do. Well, because think of the inspiration that we've just talked about in just a few short minutes. I mean, the message that's come out from this. Yeah. And so many lives could be impacted in a much broader way the if the story got out.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Boy, I think about deaths of despair and the number of liver I I don't remember the exact number, but during COVID, the number of liver failures and deaths of despair related to alcohol is wild.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Why are you story could inspire and change the lives of millions of people? I mean, you're here for reason to. I mean, there's that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 52:53

There there are forces of our there are sociocultural cultural forces at work that do not really want to address alcohol and and like what it means to our society thoroughly. Like even the the software.

SPEAKER_03 53:06

Well, I'm gonna say that's a big stance of Dr. Ayman. We brought up his name earlier, has really come out and taken over the last two years. And he's been shunned by the medical community for his stance on alcoholism and and that one glass is too much. And he's a real believer in it, and he's just got a lot of data to support that.

SPEAKER_00 53:21

Yeah.

Hyperbaric, Stem Cells, And Medical Gaps

SPEAKER_00 53:22

So are you 100% healthy now? Or you still have for the most part, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:25

So I have stage three fibrosis. I have advanced liver disease. But um, and what that could how that could manifest is is cancerous nodules growths. So I go in every six months for transplant review essentially to make sure how to do it.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

Can stem cells help him?

SPEAKER_03 53:41

Yes. I was just gonna like say we should we always talk stem cells on like literally, but I know it's hard not to. But absolutely with stage three fibrosis, it could be a true benefit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:53

Wow, we go down to Mexico, her and I.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

Yeah, I've been a big fan. I started learning, I did some research and I started learning about that a couple years ago.

SPEAKER_03 54:00

I was actually thinking more about the health symposium with all the national biohackers in Cabo. He would be an amazing guest from that standpoint. Don't you think?

SPEAKER_00 54:10

You want to come to Cabo with us in January? Dude, are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_01 54:13

Is that a real question?

SPEAKER_00 54:14

You know who Gary Brecca is? You ever follow that guy? Him. It's us two, him, and a couple other people. Yeah, we're gonna have a Pompa and Breca and we're gonna Josh X.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

Axe, Josh Axe, Josh Axe, yeah. I would love to.

SPEAKER_00 54:28

We're down to Cabo and we get stem cells and we hold a little, we're gonna do podcast interviews with all these guys.

SPEAKER_01 54:32

Oh man, I would absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

It'll probably change your life, get you even healthier.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

Bro, let me get away. Well, he's doing it.

SPEAKER_03 54:38

We always talk about this with stem cells all all the time. I mean, for people who are doing all the things right, they have the most uptake, right? They get the most benefit.

SPEAKER_00 54:45

That's the key.

SPEAKER_03 54:45

You gotta do the and he's already doing all that. He's walking the walk, he needs to. He's living a very balanced life. He's avoiding substances in all forms, he's putting only pure foods into his body. He's the perfect candidate for something.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

Let me ask you a question. So, one of the most preposterous things about having liver failure, you know, all of the only instruction I got from a medical professional.

SPEAKER_03 55:09

I'm not gonna be shocked with whatever you tell me.

SPEAKER_01 55:12

What I could do to advocate for myself is don't eat any salt. That's it. Yeah, so I was in acute kidney fail liver failure, kidneys, gallbladder, pancreas, pancreatitis for like a few. Limit your salt intake. Yeah, that was it. Nothing about fruits and vegetables, nothing about fiber. Fiber was very important. I I found at least again, it might be my own delusions, but I I I overloaded on fiber the whole time I was in in early recovery, and I felt like from an absorption standpoint, like I got so much better when I increased the fiber in my diet. And when I cut out, you know, nonsensical carbohydrates, everything started to get better so quickly. Um Right.

SPEAKER_03 55:54

No one ever talked to you about the fact that if you did hyperbarics even at that time, once you became medically stable, of course, but hyperbarics could help take those viable cells that were still viable within the liver and amplify and help heal that. So, no, I mean, doctors in the medical community, they're not really set up or even I have to say, they're not even trained appropriately to talk outside of the pharmaceutical world. That's the problem. They can give you pills.

SPEAKER_00 56:17

Yeah, she's different.

SPEAKER_01 56:18

I mean, it's it's bizarre to me that there hasn't been a step back approach to evaluating some of these protocols and saying, all right, let's this this human being has a a body filtering problem.

SPEAKER_03 56:28

Let's look at his body filtering and let's understand how we can enhance or help him filter in a different way or detoxify.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

Nope.

SPEAKER_03 56:36

I haven't had a that's a side effect of the pressure systems within the liver itself. So the kidney, the pancreas, they're all trying to handle that overflow pressure. So once he starts to drop down on that fibrosis score, then those organs aren't stressed.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

The pain, you really are. I wasn't fibbing when I needed the cry face pain amount. The reason you're in so much pain is your belly is so filled. There's so much, it's like 10 liters of liquid in your stomach, in your belly. And the pressure that puts on all your internal organs is so painful. And like lateral G's, when you're in a car, like taking a corner and you have all that, it's so painful. So they're relieving all that pressure and taking those liters, they're taking like the parasentesis three or four liters out of my stomach.

SPEAKER_03 57:20

The problem is, as you already know, because you went through it, is it just reaccumulates. Yep, it's a temporary fix for a week, a couple days, whatever. How often someone can stick a needle in your back. They're just pulling it off and it comes right back within hours.

SPEAKER_00 57:31

What what do you think when you hear his story of being recovered? I think that he recovered naturally.

SPEAKER_03 57:36

I think it's a story you almost never hear as a physician. I mean, we don't have these stories, we don't have these happy endings, right? We we we talk to people every day in the ICU units and the ER, and we see them come in and we do exactly what he said. Okay, I want you to prepare yourself, get your family around, get your friends in when you start making plans because you're not going to survive this. That's the normal road that we go down, and for a big reason that you already pointed out, because the tools we give you in your tool chest to survive aren't very good from our medical community. We just throw pills at people, pills, procedures. So I'm not when I hear it as a doctor who's been practicing almost 20 years, I've never heard this story before.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

Wow, dude. I've seen a you know, I've I've been in the transplant program for 16 years now, and there's a lot of people that I know that have died. Um, almost all of them to die.

SPEAKER_03 58:21

Yeah, that's the problem. That's the reality.

SPEAKER_01 58:23

And uh I have known a few people who have gotten better, who were younger, who were in some form of end stage failure. Um, but yeah, it's very rare. It's very rare.

SPEAKER_00 58:32

And I look at you in shape, you got tattoos. You had a freaking cool dog, a successful dog rescue. A couple of kids. Yeah, you were freaking at the White House, you're like doing all you're changing the world, and now this story's got to get out. I mean, I thought we were gonna talk to you mostly about the dog rescue, but your health, which is great because we have a doctor here telling you. I mean, that's in it's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 58:54

Well, boy, I mean, if I if there was anything for my story that I that I could impact the world with, it would be um the pattern of care that I was given, how to address the pattern of care for other people who are in liver failure. Because again, you're told, just as a matter of fact, you have end stage. It's not stage four, it's the end. This is the end for you. You're either going to get a liver transplant or you're not.

SPEAKER_03 59:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:17

And they don't um very clearly uh adjust radically adjusting what went into my body and how I moved my body was the key to success. And to not address either of those variables when trying to to come up with a satisfactory equation to treat someone's health is just mind-boggling to me. I mean, how why would we not look at the larger spectrum of treatment? And um, I don't know, it it's it's frustrating.

SPEAKER_03 59:44

Well, I mean, to get and to go down that road, we get into a very uh political situation of how the system is funded and what is really promoted within the medical system. So you have to step outside the box, and you did that on your own. Um, unfortunately, not everybody has the wherewithal to know what they need to do and get that information.

A Family Recovery Story Across Decades

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

What's your dad like now? Does your have you ever had a moment with your dad like dad? Look at me now. Like he saw you.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:10

Well, he's gotta say, I'm so proud of you.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:12

There's gotta be like an is he partner, is he involved with more of these months?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:14

My dad is my best friend. I don't know, I wouldn't uh maybe I wouldn't characterize our relationship as best friend because he's so much of a dad and he he didn't grow up with a dad. My my dad's dad died of liver failure when he was 41. Um we never talked about I might as well go into this real quick because I think he'll like it. Um so I didn't know my grandfather, his name was Kermit. He died in 1961. My dad was 14. He was in World War II, deployed twice at different areas. He was in re-enlisted, went back to Korea. I do have a bunch of pictures of him in bars all over the world. Every picture, he's in a bar with Korean girls or with everyone. And I the way I was taught about him was to not ask about him. We don't talk about Kermit, don't bring him up. Um, I never heard anything about him my whole life, other than you know, the the here or there something terrible. And so I get out of the hospital, I'm desperately dying of liver failure. You know, I'm I'm really having a hard time. And I was in the bedroom in the closet going through some things, and I found my grandmother, found a bunch of boxes from from when she passed away in 2003. I opened one of the shoe boxes, and on the top of it is this 24-hour a day book, this little recovery book. I recognized it because I had one from going to meetings. I'd been going to meet I had to go to meetings, I had to go to recovery meetings per cedar cyanide to qualify for the liver transplant. So a lot of people who are embarrassed about being on court cards in A meetings, I was on a fucking liver transplant card. That's when you're low. Um, so I'm I'm having to go to meetings. I'm starting to learn the process. Although all I wanted recovery for was a liver transplant. When I went into my first meeting of uh Alcoholics Anonymous, I just raised my hand in the beginning of it and asked to speak to the pre- I need to speak to the president of this chapter because I need a liver transplant. You guys need to help me facilitate. And they're like, hey, buddy, you know, we don't have a let me have the vice president. We have a secretary. Would you like to talk to the secretary? I was like, sure. So they just kind of like pushed me off and let this delusional dude in liver failure, like, but they kept me coming back. And so, anyways, back to the so I open this box, find this book, I open it, and there's my grandfather's social security card in it. Kermit Alden Scow. And then it's got a piece of paper that says 730 Cadillac, it says Freedman on it, it's got some numbers, and uh, and then it's marked, it's got a ribbon, it's marked, you know, there's a date marked. So I bring it out to my dad, and I was like, holy shit, dad, check this out. I thought, you know, I found your grandpa's recovery book. And my dad had no idea his dad was in recovery, he just knew he died an alcoholic of liver failure by himself. So I bring it out that I pass to my dad, and he goes, uh, he's starting to flip through it, and my dad doesn't really get emotional, you know, and he goes, I'll be damned. I'll be damned. I go, what? And he goes, it's marked July 3rd. I go, what's July 3rd? He goes, that's the day he died. So my grandfather, who was dying of liver failure, read the change. The last time he opened this book was the day he died of liver failure. Fast forward many decades. I'm opening this book in liver failure looking for a prayer.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:26

Jeez, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:27

And uh, it's my favorite possession. I I should have brought it with me. So I bring it to a meeting that night, and uh it's pretty interesting. So, so the five numbers were his sponsor's phone number. Friedman was his sponsor, that's what that name meant. 730 Cadillac is the men's stag meeting on Cadillac Street in downtown Los Angeles. So my sponsor knew like everything that was on this piece of paper. And uh yeah, it's been like one of my it was my first like god shot, my first connection to to some sort of like communication. And you know what was really special, really, really special about this, and this is so important when it comes to recovery, is being led to a God of my understanding, having permission to engage in a relationship uh with a God of my understanding was so important. I grew up, my my grandfather was a communist, my my I never went to church, never been to church one day in my life. I was militantly agnostic, borderline atheist, started an atheist club in high school to basically battle the religious club and just take them down debate after debate. So I was very um inclined to not be religious, right? And what alcohol, what what a program of recovery really did for me was introduce me to the idea of finding a God of my understanding, not Jesus, not Vishnu, not Buddha, a God of my understanding that incorporates everything in this world, that is my creator, my source, whatever, but something that is not me, first of all. You know, a God that is not me, and and a God that is, you know, really focused on on service and connection. And um, I didn't know what that meant in the beginning. You know, again, I was kind of like, I'm I'm not a God guy. I didn't I hate the word God, you know, forget about all the principles associated with religion. But once I uh once I found that book, you know, I started to pray to my grandfather. I started to just try to close my eyes and try to communicate with something greater than myself, just as a practice, just to communicate, get out of this transom and into something else. And it was the it was the best thing that's ever happened to me in my spiritual development, is is kind of locating uh a source energy and um communing with that energy, if that makes sense, and having the permission to elaborate on what God means to me, what a God of my understanding means to me. And um, having that develop in my life has been probably the the central aspect to my like sustained sobriety is knowing that I have a God of my understanding in my life, active in my life, that I can tune into, that I can connect with, that I can use. To help aid me in that aching loneliness that has always traveled with me. You know what I mean? And that's what I think some people don't allow themselves to get out of recovery. Is God doesn't mean Jesus, it doesn't mean religiosity, it doesn't mean dogma, it doesn't mean all of these things. God means a a source energy, you know, or whatever you want it to mean. Um, but it can be such a powerful connection and and such an entertaining and interesting connection to develop throughout your life, you know. I love going to church now, you know. I love practicing spiritual connection. These were th I couldn't sit still for five seconds, much less like pray, you know. So um that's one of those.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

Dude, you're like a miracle. Absolutely yes. Right. I feel like you know, Cora and you have got some serious connections.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:49

I'm gonna lop off an arm soon just to make it like you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:52

That'd be great if you could do it on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:53

Yeah, or maybe it's just a pinky, you know, something something that's not totally necessary.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:58

Thanks for stopping out and it was a great story.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:01

Can we can we talk about one more thing before we wrap? Is that okay? Absolutely. Not like you all of you don't have something to do in life.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:07

Just gotta go to bed and wake up in 3 a.m.

Positive Change Prison Program Expands

SPEAKER_01 1:07:09

So the reason we're here is you know, we're bringing the positive change program to Arizona. So we we spent all day out here at the correctional complex in Buckeye. You know, we've been running uh prison programs in California for the last nine years.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:23

Shout out to that warden, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:25

Shout out, baby.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:26

The warden was a listener to the city.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:27

So I'm in the car and I let the warden, so he's the warden of all eight prisons, and I let him know I'm doing he goes, he goes, the John Jay?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:36

And I was like, number one with prisoners.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:38

I go Yeah. And he said that um he used to have um employees get in trouble for sitting in the parking lot because they had to finish John Jay segments and didn't want to like miss a special morning segment. So he'd have to like holler at people for uh they're all John Jay fans, they've been riding or dying for decades, buddy. Grateful, grateful.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:58

Thank you, Warden.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:58

So yeah, we're um the state legislature, thanks to you know, some movers and shakers within the Arizona government, have approved uh a decent chunk of money for prison programming related to to dogs. So we're bringing our rescue dog rehabilitation program, our our comprehensive inmate canine training program to Arizona. We hope hope to get it started by January. We were out there touring all day today. We'll be working with you know Maricopa County Animal Services. We'll be working with One Love. Um we'll be working with really as many organizations as possible once we get off the ground because we hope to grow it. Um and I'm just super excited, man. We have 27 formally incarcerated dog trainers working in California and in the pet industry.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:42

So they come to the prison and they bring dogs and they teach the prisoners how to work with the dogs and vice versa.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:48

The dogs it's a little bit more elaborate than that. So the dogs will come from the euthanasia list. Typically, our process is young, large dogs. Young, large dogs are most euthanized because they lack the skills to get adopted and stay adopted. And when a dog is big, it's more of a liability and ranger, all of these different things, right? So the idea was when I started it was we just need more fosters. We we need more foster homes, we can save more lives. We didn't have a ranch at that time, so we were just just working with fosters. So we we went into California City Correctional Facility was our first spot, and um, we've never stopped since. We've been at eight facilities. We've had boys and girls juvenile programs, the first of their kind juvenile program, where you have youth and Asia list dogs come from the shelter, they live in prison for three months. Uh, we're going in every week with professional dog trainers to teach the structure, the the whole curriculum, which is quite elaborate. We have homework, presentations, all kinds of different things. And the goal being to, again, get the dog adopted and stay adopted, and then help provide opportunity to our students to join the pet industry when they get out of prison. And it's been radically successful, and it brings down the violence on the yard. We're in almost exclusively maximum security prisons. So we have come in to teach programs on prisons where there aren't programs because they're high security. It's very difficult to get programming into high security facilities. A lot of organizations won't work in high security facilities. So we really pride ourselves in being able to like come in with the dogs, bring the energy, um, bring the violence down, bring the hope up, you know, lower drug use. That's another thing that dogs do, man. That the maybe we do that on podcast too, from Cabo is the correlation between dogs and recovery, you know, because dogs are a mirror. If you the whole one of the central um principles of positive change is that whatever energy you're feeling, whatever you're experiencing, you're transmitting that through the leash. So you need to truly check in with yourself, check in with yourself, breathe into yourself, breathe into your belly, not into your chest, you know, really process what you're experiencing. Because if you're not responsible for that energy, you're gonna transmit it to your dog and you're gonna throw your dog off. So, um, and in doing that, that's that's really like the first step to uh awareness of of any kind. Um, and so I'm just I'm really excited.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

I think we could we could make how can people people can't get involved or do they donate? Like how no, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:09

Don't you can donate at Marley's Mutz.org. You know, you can find us on social media at Marley's Mutz at Positive Change. It's P-A-W S-I-T-I-C.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:17

It's on on the Marley's Mutt Instagram. You have all the links on there.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:21

Well, if you get if you ever need us, Love Pop or my radio show to help promote.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:25

Are you kidding me? I would love to have you guys around. You know, we we're looking for as many partners as possible, especially. You know, we're gonna be in I'm gonna see you in Tucson, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:32

I'll be there Saturday. Hell yeah, buddy. Or Friday, one of those two.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:35

That's outstanding. That's really cool, man. Thanks for doing that. Um, yeah, so I think um, you know, the animal sheltering system in America is abysmal. It sort of exists in the shadowy, dark crevices of our, you know, as does the prison system, right? You have these cultural black eyes that are really negative karmic forces within our society. And we have a real opportunity to combine those two to make them much better, to make them exponentially better. And um, just what we've seen in the last bunch of years running our program to see how many guys have gotten out and successfully transitioned into the pet industry, how many dogs, you know, we've graduated 600 or 700 dogs, you know, 1200, 1300 inmates. Um, and our students are are marvelous, man. These these guys have so much potential. So yeah, you know, I I um I as with you, man, there's there's just something energetically and like karmically about how we treat man's best friend. We we have um we treat man's best friend like they're our worst enemy, and we've not done anything comprehensive to address that, whether at the municipal, state, or federal level. And we have some real opportunities to make change, and there's just no more excuses anymore. You know, there's there's um there are a lot of good solutions in this world. Um, positive change is one of them. And I think uh I think one of the ways we're gonna limit, we're gonna involve communities that have typically like created the animal welfare problem is by initiatives like positive change, you know, because the reality is like we've blamed the animal welfare problem on like certain disenfranchised communities. Well, it's this community or that community that creates all the problems. All the dogs are coming from here or coming from there. And by working with positive change, you know, most of our trainers are people of color, they're gang members of color, you know. So they're going back to their communities, to Compton, to Chula Vista, to all these places to bring everything that they've learned into their communities. They're being employed in the pet industry in their communities, so they're bringing all this these new ideas um into their community about animal welfare, about sheltering, about best practices for how to be a pet parent, you know. So um I'm excited to see where we can take this, and and I certainly appreciate your help,

How To Support And Final Thanks

SPEAKER_01 1:13:47

man.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:47

Of course, man. Well, thanks for coming, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:49

Yeah. You know, you've never not returned a text message, not answered a phone call. Thanks, man. Either you're getting less popular or I really appreciate it, man. You've always been like um, you know, one of the things about you that I think people should know is like you're uh you're that energy. That is you. Oh, thanks. And a lot of people, you know, turn on that energy when things are on and then it you know it goes somewhere else. But appreciate it. But that's you, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:14

Thank you, man. Thanks, man. Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show.