Daily Dose of English 157
Dogs
Daily Dose of English 157
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about dogs, because why not, huh? Dogs are great. One of the most common pets in the world and they are so very nice, sweet, cute, sometimes ugly, sometimes annoying. There are a lot of different things. They can be useful. There's a lot of different functions a dog can serve. be a guide dog, it can be a support animal, it can be a pet, they can be big, they can be small, they can be whatever. And so I think it'd be fun to talk a little bit about dogs because I've always been a dog person. I grew up with dogs in the house. I pretty much almost, yeah, basically always had a dog or I guess my parents almost always had a dog and I lived with them for a long time. Mostly because my dad is allergic to cats, so we never had a cat, and we always had dogs. And I've had only three, I think, in my life. Yeah. There was the family dog from when I was pretty young, and then he died when I was probably like six or seven. I wasn't very old. And we got a, no, probably a little older than that, but whatever, pretty young, maybe 10, let's say. And then we got another dog who we had for a very long time. He actually died a couple of years ago. He was very old and very falling apart, you could say. But he was such a sweet dog. He was so very nice. His name was Cheddar, like the cheese. And he... was he was so so sweet of a dog and like he almost never ever barked he could bark physically but he just never would bark um and so whenever we did hear him bark it'd be like oh what's what's going on what's wrong with cheddar right now um but There would be something, whatever, he was scared or something, whatever. But he was also super gentle. He never, not even like slightly bit anybody ever. He never hurt anybody. He was just a big lovable lab, a yellow lab. He loved food, absolutely adored anything that he could eat, whether it was edible or not. He put himself in the hospital a couple of times by eating something just disgusting on like the beach or whatever. I remember one time he ate some old washed up fish on the beach and we had to take him to the animal hospital and we were pretty sure he was going to die. He was not having a good time. He also once found a marijuana brownie at the park and ate it. And we had no idea what was going on. We didn't see him, but later that day he was like freaking out and he was like peeing on the floor. He was like so scared. We're like, what is going on with our dog? And I think one of my parents took him in again and the doctor's like, oh, he's just really stoned. And we were like, oh my God, Cheddar. God, what a crazy dog, but he's a good dog. He's a good boy. He was also a rescue. Rescues are pretty common in the US. A rescue is an animal that comes from some kind of a bad situation, whether it was just abandoned on the street, or it was in an abusive home, or many different possibilities. And we got him when he was about like a year old. We don't know if they were abusive of a home, but he was neglected for sure. And what happened is he had a rubber band around his neck. Some kid put a rubber band on his neck, and nobody saw it, nobody took it off, and he grew and grew up, because he was a puppy, and he grew larger and larger, and the rubber band grew into his neck, and it got really infected, and he had to have pretty big surgery. And the family wasn't willing to do that, and so some friends of our family took him in. They paid for the surgery. But they couldn't have a dog, so they tried, they were looking for people to adopt him, and so we found Cheddar that way. And he was a very good dog. The other dog that I had for a very, or that my family had for a very long time was Queen Princess Mabel is her name. And she was a little French Bulldog pug mix. And she was so cute. So she was much smaller. And so they made a good pair. They were a good duo. Cause she was not calm, not quiet. She would freak out. She would bark super loud. She was just very energetic. She was one of those dogs that would run, like when you took her to the park, she would run, if she could, she would run until she died. She would go so hard and so long that her heart would probably just burst. And so we'd be like, okay, Mabel, it's done now. You're okay. You've run a lot. But she loved to play ball. She loved to play fetch. She was a big runner, big sleeper too. She's a very good sleeper. But it was always nice to have a little dog as well, because she's not like tiny, she's definitely stocky, right? She probably weighed like 25 pounds, which is like 10, 11, 12 kilos, something like that. But she would love to sleep on, on the bed or on the couch or like as you're watching tv or something like that so she was very very sweet and very cute she was very popular with everybody because she was just so adorable her little face her ears she also died not too long ago because Also, she just got really old too, right? Both of the dogs just basically got really old. And when dogs get old, they kind of grow stuff on them, like growths or tumors or things like that. And that's a sign when the dog's real old. But yeah, Mabel and Cheddar were our dynamic duo of lovely dogs who were great. And so that's me talking about two specific dogs, but I generally like dogs. I think they're all great. There's a couple of breeds that I don't really like that much, specifically like chihuahuas I kind of don't like. Mostly because they're very often loud and I don't think they're very cute and they're just so small. And so I prefer dogs that are a little bit larger and quieter, but honestly the trick to getting a dog to go outside or to be quiet is to take it outside, to make it get exercise. Dogs are usually very, very energetic, have lots of energy they need to use basically. And so dogs that bark a lot I don't love, but you know. I don't have a dog. They are a lot of work. I definitely plan to get one, but I wanna have a better place for it. I don't think an apartment is a good place to have a dog, just because they deserve a little bit more space, a little bit more outside, right? All I have is a small little terrace, and so they couldn't be outside very much, and I think that's really important for a dog. Plus, it's also like the city and so having a dog in the city is weird. It's not like my apartment is humongous, so I don't want to necessarily share all that space. But when I hopefully am able to have a larger or a house-type place to live, I would love to have a dog or two because they're great. I definitely liked growing up with dogs. I think that's an important thing as well. I've met people that are sort of afraid of dogs. They don't understand how to be around dogs and usually they'd never had a dog. They'd never grew up with one. They didn't understand like the dynamic, I guess, because I definitely understand how to be around dogs better than people who haven't been around dogs, right? You kind of learn through experience. Because they are animals, right? They are creatures that you have to understand how to communicate with and how to read their body language. And then also, especially with your dogs, you can build your own... really a language but sort of a communication style, right? Dogs can recognize words. Not all dogs. Some dogs are pretty dumb. But some dogs are very, very smart and can recognize words and can learn a couple dozen commands and things just through speech. And so understanding a bit more about kind of how they function is important. So I've seen people that either get upset at dogs or sort of neglect them in ways that they don't mean to, right? They're not trying to be mean to the dog, but they just don't understand necessarily how the dog functions or whatever it is. But okay, that's our time for today. I've talked about some very random topics within dogs, but I'd be curious to know, do you have any dogs? What are their names? And let me know down in the comments what you think of dogs, but That's everything for today. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I will see you again tomorrow for another episode of A Daily Dose of English. I'll see you then. Have a good one. Bye.
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