Paw Prints

Red Pilled America

In this episode of Red Pilled America, hosts Patrick Karelchi and Adriana Cortez share a series of deeply personal stories about the dogs that have shaped their lives. The narrative moves

Key takeaways

• Pepper, an Australian Shepherd Border Collie mix, famously destroyed a check worth hundreds of thousands of dollars by eating it.
• An incident involving Pepper caused Adriana Cortez to suffer a severe facial gash requiring 38 stitches.

Main topics

• Personal canine histories
• The responsibilities of pet ownership

Notable quotes

Why are dogs considered man's best friend?

Conclusion

The episode offers a heartwarming look at how pets become integral, al

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Speaker 4 (0:04) This is Red Pilled America. Speaker 2 (0:08) Before we start the show, just a reminder to share, like, and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening to it. And please, give us a five-star rating. It helps us beat the big tech algorithm. Also, if you love Red Pilled America, please consider supporting the show. You can buy one of our 100 % made in America products. Speaker 2 (0:27) We have hats, candles, a book. That's right, we wrote a book. Or you can become a backstage subscriber. Well, you'll have access to our entire archive, or you can just make a donation. To support the show, please visit redfieldamerica.com and click support or shop in the top menu. That's redfieldamerica.com and click support or shop in the top menu. Support what you love or it goes away. Thanks, everyone. Speaker 4 (0:55) I think most family men out there will agree that dogs can be a hassle. Speaker 4 (1:01) All the worst parts of having those critters fall on the man of the house. If the four-legged mammal eats something that ends up reversing course on the way down, it's up to us men to dispose of the bio-waste. If there's a late-night emergency, guess who's making an after-hours trip to the vet? And of course it falls on us guys on the front line to pick up their poop every day. You know damn well that's a job the feminists don't want the genders to perform equally. And that's just the beginning. Dogs smell, they shed. And they just lay down wherever they please. Which has got to make most men wonder, why are dogs considered man's best friend? I'm Patrick Karelchi. And Speaker 2 (1:42) I'm Adriana Cortez. And Speaker 4 (1:44) this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show. Speaker 2 (1:48) This is not another talk show covering the day's news. We are all about telling stories. Speaker 4 (1:53) Stories Hollywood doesn't want you to hear. Speaker 2 (1:56) Stories the media mocks. Stories about everyday Americans that the globalists ignore. Speaker 4 (2:02) You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries, and we promise only one thing. The truth. Welcome to Red Pilled America. Speaker 4 (2:26) Why are dogs considered man's best friend? To find the answer, we tell some stories about how dogs entered our lives and the paw prints they've left behind. I guess you can say that I'm the typical man. Every time my wife brings up the bright idea of getting another dog, I fight it off with every ounce of strength I can muster. And I'm sorry to report that I've lost most of those conflicts. You see, Adriana likes those four-legged creatures more than most people. Speaker 4 (3:00) She's what you call a dog person. So to keep the home pleasant, it's a battle that I anticipate racking up many future defeats. But that doesn't mean I won't put up a fight. I've resisted the entry of just about every single dog that's ever entered this household. But it wasn't always that way. I was around five years old when we got our first dog. It was the mid-70s, and the hottest movie on the planet was a little sleeper called Benji. The small golden mutt stole my heart. and I began campaigning for a pooch. Then one day, Mom and Dad arrived with one. It was a puppy, a German Shepherd mix, and I, of course, named it Benji. Speaker 1 (3:37) Honey, it's a girl dog, Speaker 4 (3:39) my mom clarified. I didn't care. I insisted on calling her Benji. Apparently, I have been knowingly misgendering since I was in kindergarten. Speaker 4 (3:52) We had Benji for about seven years, and that dog did not have it easy. My dad had a thing about cleaning her poop. That is to say, he didn't. So that didn't make for a workable backyard. My parents also got Benji to be a guard dog, but they were probably asking too much of our resident canine. We were robbed more times than Kim Kardashian has attended her own wedding. So our little buddy was spread thin. At one point, robbers kicked in her ribs. She wasn't the same after that. But I do remember some good times with her. She was sweet, but more of a face-latherer than a ferocious defender. Speaker 4 (4:28) At around seven years old, her hind legs gave out. We rushed her to the vet and learned that her time had come. That was one of the saddest days of my young life. I just remember my mom guiding my sister Denise and I into the vet's office to say goodbye for the last time. Both of us hysterically cried. For the longest time, I thought that moment was too harsh for a kid. But in hindsight, I think it was a safe way for a kid to learn about death. Speaker 4 (4:56) All that's to say that my initial experience with a dog left a bit of a mark. All 11-year-old me could see was heartache, flea infestations, mounds of poop, and unthwarted home invasions. No thank you. When we moved to Torrance, California in 1984, we'd eventually get a new dog, a chocolate lab we named Molly. It was a single-parent home, mom and dad had divorced, and again the experience was lacking. Truth be told, my mom had way too much on her plate to worry about a dog. And us kids weren't much help. You see, owning a dog is real responsibility. Cleaning up after it, bathing it, taking them for a walk. These were all things that took a backseat in a fatherless teenager's life. And like parenting, the skill of dog owning is passed down from father to son. And Pops was as bad a dog owner as he was a role model. The one benefit that I had was that I knew I did not know how to handle a dog. So I wanted no part in it. When I moved out after college, the thought of bringing a pooch into my home was not even in the running. I was having a hard enough time taking care of myself. But that quickly changed when Adriana came back into my life. Adriana loves dogs. She often jokes that she prefers dogs to people. I'd like to say that she isn't referring to me, but truth be told, I'm not 100 % sure on that. Our dogs are her babies. Just like her helicopter mom default with our daughter, Her dog mom repertoire is second to none, but she didn't start out that way. All Speaker 2 (6:33) right, if you guys know anything about me, you know that I am crazy about my dogs. And let me tell you something. My English Bulldog, Pablo, had been suffering with the worst skin allergies. And then I started giving him rough greens in his food, and boy, what a difference that made. This stuff is amazing. Now Pablo is a rough greens dog for life. Roughgreens supports long-term health by providing live bioavailable nutrients, including essential vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and omega oils. Roughgreens promotes longevity by addressing common nutritional deficiencies found in processed dog food. I don't just recommend Roughgreens. I depend on it to keep my dogs happy and healthy. Traditional dog food is shelf-stable for years because it's lifeless. Rough Greens brings the nutrition back, packed with light vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and omega oils. Rough Greens isn't dog food. It's a live nutritional supplement you add to your dog's food. You don't have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of Rough Greens. It's that easy, and I promise you, you will not regret it. Don't change your dog's food, just add Rough Greens. Rough Greens is offering a free jumpstart trial bag. You just cover shipping. Use discount code RPA to claim your free jumpstart trial bag at roughgreens.com. That's R-U-F-F greens.com promo code RPA. So don't change your dog's food, just add Rough Greens and watch the health benefits come alive. Welcome back to Red Pilled America. When Patrick and I got engaged, I came into the relationship with my Australian Shepherd Border Collie mix named Pepper. We were basically a two-for-one deal. Pepper was quite possibly the smartest dog I've ever met. I taught her to speak, lay down, roll over, play dead, give paw, and even to smile. Speaker 2 (8:27) But with those smots came something else, a primal instinct to protect her owner. Speaker 4 (8:33) She was perhaps the orneriest dog ever held in captivity. She didn't understand the idea of not biting the hand that feeds you. Speaker 4 (8:42) I still have multiple puncture wounds as an abridged archive of her work. Speaker 2 (8:46) Pepper may have bitten more people than Patrick has hair follicles on his head, but let's be honest, that's not very many. She was a guard dog who took her job very seriously, and I have a lot of respect for that kind of work ethic. Pepper was with me when I first started living alone. I was in a city far away from home, all by myself, and there was a rapist on the loose. Being the genius that she was, she sensed my fear and that triggered the pre-civilization instincts in her. So Pepper would attack any man or foreign object that entered my property. Unfortunately for Patrick, that behavior didn't stop when we moved in together. Speaker 4 (9:22) In those early days, every time our postman slid envelopes into the mail slot in our door, Pepper would attack them. Now, you've got to remember that this was before bills went paperless. So everything came through the U.S. Postal Service. Junk mail, bills, payments, passports, social security cards. Basically, everything important came through that slot. Now, this would become a huge problem. Shortly after Adriana and I got engaged, we started a marketing business. I just got out of a bad business partnership, so when Adriana and I kicked off our new venture together, I was a bit gun-shy at spending a lot of money on infrastructure, or even a P.O. box. Speaker 2 (10:00) Frugal is his middle name. And Speaker 4 (10:03) spending is yours. Speaker 4 (10:09) So anyway, our home became our office. In the rear view, it was a strange situation because at the time, we were a two-man show working with one of the biggest companies in the world and managing several million dollar projects. But the setup was working and we saw no need for the added expense of an office and everything that came along with it. Now from time to time, our clients sent us mail, obviously, and that included payments for services rendered. So right around the time we expected a payment, Adriana and I were on high alert. I remember one time a big check was supposed to arrive. Speaker 1 (10:44) Listen for the mailman, Adriana, I warned. The last thing we want is Pepper to eat a couple hundred grand. Speaker 4 (10:50) Adriana was on a higher DEFCON level of mail watch duty than I because her office was right off the living room where the mail would get mauled. Well, that afternoon, Adriana joined me at my desk to review a presentation we were preparing when we heard it. Speaker 4 (11:06) It didn't register at first, though. We were deep in conversation about a big client pitch. And anyway, that dog literally barked at men on TV. So hearing it didn't always set off any red flags. As AJ and I continued to chat over the presentation, the sound changed from a bark to some kind of thrashing. Speaker 4 (11:27) That's when it washed over us. We looked at each other and yelled, No! As I try to remember it now, the only visuals I can muster up are in slow motion. In our panic, we began to almost wrestle one another to get through the door. I moved with the swiftness of a gazelle, but by the time I arrived at the front door, Pepper was standing over what looked like the output side of a shredder. Speaker 4 (12:02) The only thing that I could hope was that the check hadn't arrived. But as AJ stumbled in, it became obvious. One piece of paper looked like it had a routing number on it. Pepper ate a couple hundred thousand bucks like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet. Luckily, the client was able to cancel the check and reissue a new one via direct deposit. Speaker 4 (12:26)