Episode 113. Therapy Dogs with Douglas Green MFT, LPCC
In this episode, Douglas Green MFT, LPCC, a psychotherapist, discusses his journey with Shirelle, his beloved dog and co-therapist. Green shares how Shirelle's presence influenced his therapy sessions and personal life. The conversation touches on themes of learning through love, therapy with animals, the impact of bureaucracy in therapy, and how Green's upcoming book, 'The Teachings of Shirelle, Life Lessons from a Divine Knucklehead,' encapsulates these experiences. Green also shares insights from his second dog, Aria, and his thoughts on emotional support animals. The episode offers both humorous and profound reflections on the human-animal bond and the lessons dogs can teach us about life.
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:35 The Power of Passion and Focus
01:41 Interview with Douglas Green
02:30 Lessons from Shirelle
04:13 Therapeutic Impact of Dogs
05:14 Shirelle's Therapeutic Interventions
12:06 Personal Reflections and Loss
16:42 The Simplicity of a Dog's Life
17:44 Challenges of Bureaucracy in Therapy
20:07 Navigating Professional Boundaries
20:40 Disciplinary Actions in Therapy
22:26 Lessons from Shirelle and Arya
24:12 Emotional Support Animals: A Debate
25:30 Adopting Shelter Dogs
27:16 Crate Training and Dog Behavior
28:34 Therapy Services and Book Promotion
34:24 Shirelle's Advice Column
35:41 Final Thoughts and Social Media
TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE 113 OF NAKED TRUTH: A THERAPY PODCAST
Trauma to Transformation: Therapy Dogs with Douglas Green MFT, LPCC
You're very lucky with Shirelle. I got Arnie, a Pomeranian that I thought I could use to help me do therapy with folks, but he likes to hump legs. It's either he farts or he starts humping my leg. He only likes my feet. I mean, unless it's somebody doing sex therapy, I don't know if the humping would help or not, but.
Even then. I'm not sure what statement it makes. That's really, really funny.
Learn an enormous amount about who you are and what you are and what you want to be by putting focus on something you absolutely love. And I don't mean like your spouse or your boyfriend girl, but that's too complicated. But if you really love flowers. Look at a flower. A lot. Pay attention. What's the meaning of a rose?
What does a rose have to teach you? Wow, it has these delicate beautiful petals that are so wonderful and it has thorns to protect itself.
That's pretty
amazing. And at one point I just kind of lean on this big beautiful powerful tree and this voice comes to me and says, you need to move out of your apartment and get a dog because currently no one tracks mud into your house.
And that was as weird a moment as I've ever had in my life. There's just so much to learn. Just open yourself up to it. It doesn't stop. That's the biggest thing I will say. You'll have it the rest of your life.
We are so very excited today to interview Douglas Green, who is a marriage and family therapist and a licensed professional counselor. He's basically a psychotherapist, writer, director of film and stage, teacher, and of course, lover of dogs. He's about to release his book, The Teachings of Shirelle, Life Lessons from a Divine Knucklehead.
And here's the beautiful book. Doug, I'm so happy to be interviewing you today.
I really appreciate it. Just to clarify one thing you said. Yes. This is actually the second edition. Oh. The first edition looked like this, but that was a self published book that came out about nine years ago, what, two years ago?
What is happening now is official and I'm excited as all hell about it.
I love it because I think we do need to learn from our doggies. I like your thought process. You're very thoughtful about how you're thinking through what she's doing and how she's doing it and how you're getting to know her.
The fact is I found that she made more sense than I did.
at the time. So watching her made me seriously thinking like, why is she doing things that I'm not doing? Why is she living in a way I'm not living? And that's really the basis of the book.
I connect to this book because I always tell most people that I try to date that I'm like a dog. I'm very loyal. And once I get attached, it's really hard to detach.
So, to self protect, now I'm just not dating. Just like, forget it, because, you know, I've been abandoned once too many times. I'm good now, you know?
Well, when this is done, my second book, which came out a couple of years ago from the same publishers, is about that. It's a novel, but it's about the dog I had after Cherelle, who had been horribly traumatized before I got her.
She was a rescue. She had been abandoned. She'd been beaten. All these different things. And I spent a year trying to figure her out. and trying to figure out what had happened, because the people I got her from were wonderful, but they'd only had her for a few months. And eventually I realized I've come up with an entire story in my head.
I think it's my second book, but it literally is the story of going through all these traumas and coming out the other side, and being able to at least tentatively accept. Love and care, which is the way I got her.
It sounds like you're almost doing a work of a detective, you know, a psychotherapist and also detective trying to figure this stuff out.
How do you see Shirelle's impact on your work as a therapist?
Boy, every single day and Shirelle's been gone for about 15 years, more, more than 15 years, the way that she. Showed how to live and how to enjoy life and how to embrace life, including when it sucks. And that became my view with all my clients of, what are you doing that's getting in the way of you living like a dog?
I mean, a dog's brain is about half of ours. We have what Shirelle had. It's just that we have all this human, intelligent, self conscious stuff that gets in the way. So I don't want to eliminate all that stuff. It's great that we have it, of course, but if it's getting in the way of what are your natural gifts, let's look into that and see where your problems are and try to ease past them.
The other point, and obviously, I mean, you know, it's, it's a major event in the book is. Late in her life, I started taking her to my sessions, and she actually became the best therapist I've ever known. Hands down. She was, again, at this point, fairly old. She had been through cancer and stuff, so she didn't have all her cures.
Crazy puppy strength. So a client would come in, they'd go up pet her. She'd lick their hand and she'd go and lie in the corner and fall asleep. But then at some point during the session, client would be getting something where an emotion's coming up, but they'd be stuck. And it's just, they couldn't talk.
They couldn't do anything. And she would just groan from the other side of the room. Get up, walk across the room and lay her head in their lap. And they burst out crying. And you know, I can't do that. I'll lose my license. But she could do that. And it was so beautiful. It was glorious. The ultimate case was a situation where I was seeing a young woman whose father had abandoned the family when she was young, and she had grown up with a single mom and her siblings, and a very tough, difficult childhood in many ways.
Childhood, teenage, and she had really come through and she was successful in her career. She was moving forward in life as an adult. Things were good. And now her father wanted to have a relationship with her, be dad. And of course, half of her. Is this little girl just screaming? Yes. Yes, daddy. I want, I want my daddy.
And the other half is just the way you described yourself, Alicia, just like, I don't trust this at all. And it was really tough for her. And finally, one day she said to him, I need to tell you some things. I need you to understand some stuff, but I don't feel safe. or comfortable just talking with you.
Would you be willing to come see Doug with me? And we could do it there in a more formal environment. And he agreed. They came to my office. Again, Cherelle went up, licked hands, laid in the corner, everything just fine. Cherelle. We chatted. He was a very nice man. Everything was great. And at some point I said, so should we get on to this?
And they both nodded, and she had a letter that she'd written, and she picked it up and started reading it, and of course it was just devastating. And she's tearing up while she's reading it and stuff. But while she's reading, I see his posture change and stiffen, and his chin goes back, and I realize he's really not taking this in.
This is really tough. And his lips get pursed. And she finally finishes, and she's weeping quietly, and I look to him and say, Is there anything you want to say to her about all that? And he says, Well, I I don't know that I agree with everything she said there, and it was so cold. He was so frightened and cold.
She looks up and looks at me, and we both realize what's happening, and she bursts into complete sobs. It's like, this was the worst. She would have preferred him getting furious and screaming at her. You know, this was just, this So devastating, and he keeps talking, and knucklehead in the corner gets up, walks over to the two of them, but directly in front of the father, just looking at him, and he's still talking, he's trapped in his own little world, he's still going on.
And she just,
and
she was a big dog. She was 65 pounds, very big mouth. So a lot of teeth in there scared the hell out of him. And then she turns around, walks back to the corner, she told him to shut up and we're all kind of staring at each other. And he said, what was that? And I said, I think she must have heard something in another room that we couldn't hear.
And she was barking at it. Oh, okay. And the rest of the session goes, meh. Okay. We say goodbye. I thank you for coming in. Give her a big hug, go home. And I call her maybe an hour later, say, how are you doing? How are you doing? And she says, I'm okay. I'm okay. Doug, I don't think there was anything in another room there.
Neither do I. Not at all.
Neither
do I.
A knucklehead knew that the guy was a moron. Well, or that he I call it how it is. He didn't have any emotional intelligence. Cherelle, the knucklehead, more emotional intelligence there.
Had more than Everybody I know put together. What the message was, was there is something here that is so disturbing.
I can't take it. She didn't know the words he was saying, but she couldn't take the energy. And that was the most validating gift that woman could possibly have gotten. There's nothing I could have done. If I yelled at him, it would have made problems in the family. It This was just a beautiful clear message and it meant she made her choice.
Wow. Cherelle knew it. The guy couldn't figure it out after so many years of being an absent parent in his daughter's life. And then he just couldn't get it still. And the dog felt the energy and stopped it.
This was probably why he was an absent parent.
Yeah.
So it worked out beautifully and she's done great.
And as I say, I could not have done it.
You're very lucky, um, with Shirelle. I got Arnie, um, a Pomeranian, that I fought I could use to help me do therapy with folks, but he likes to hump legs. And so in the middle of a session, it's either he farts or he starts humping my leg. He only likes my feet, apparently.
I mean, unless it's somebody doing sex therapy, I don't know if the humping would help or not, but.
I'm not sure what statement it makes. That's really, really funny. I you're right. You're right. Even in her old age, there was no, I don't think there was ever a flatulence problem with her.
I would say you're
very lucky with her.
I was very lucky. Where it then went, though, to continue the story here, was the cancer came back and the second time she didn't survive it. And I, as well as being devastated by losing her, had this sudden realization, Oh my God, I'm the worst therapist there's ever been. How dare I take a dog, especially when in danger of getting this back, and connect my clients to her.
How selfish. That's terrible. And this amazing thing happened. I think it was the day we buried her. I went to a workshop. I was helping a guy I was going to be working for later, who's a wonderful child therapist. And he did this thing. He had this little spongy ball and started throwing it to people, the people in the workshop, the audience, if you want to use that word, the students, and saying, throw it back.
And as we did, he said, this is communication. This is how you can communicate with a child who doesn't want to communicate. Just play catch. And I saw that and it was, thank you. Thank you. And the next session, I, I phoned everybody and let them know that she had gone. But the next session, I came in with one of her little balls that had a, you know, a bell in it.
And we played catch with her little ball. And I was working in two different offices and this one where I could take her. I had, I think, five clients, every single one of them played with it in a different way, which was just perfect. And then we would have these amazing conversations. It's sort of a theological conversation about what Shirelle actually knew, what she did.
Was she aware of her meaning and, you know, her place in the universe? There was a child I worked with whose parents had divorced a few years earlier, and the child had never been able to grieve the loss of that. It had been such chaos. Instead, all the grief went into this, and this kid. built a shrine to Shirelle in their bedroom with pictures and all this different stuff.
Wow. Everybody was able to do it a different way. And it was okay. It really was okay. Of course, you know, most of them were worried about me. And I was like, Don't worry about me. You're the client. It's okay. One of them actually owned a company that made tiles and made a special, for the people listening, I'll say it's about maybe a foot long, rectangular tile with a photo of her.
And a poem that we had talked about, shared in our session, and it's still on my wall in my office. It's, it's the most beautiful thing. It's, it's, again, everybody just did it in a different way.
What an amazing story. Yeah. The teachings of Shirelle. She keeps on giving, even in her passing away. You know, I really loved how you had a feeling or, you know, you said in the book, I kind of heard a voice in a way internally, not like a disturbing voice, but just something told you, you know, you need to move out of that apartment to go and get a dog.
And you searched for her, you know, it was meant to be.
That's where I'm not a theologian and I'll say it. Anybody who wants to put any reading on it, they got all the rights, but absolutely, I was living in an apartment. I really liked my little apartment. I had been out of film school for about a year and I was very much struggling in the LA film theater world.
And my thought was, I'm going to stay in this little apartment until I've sold the script and then I can afford to move. And I had a very bad cold that was one summer. It was very polluted here at that time. I just couldn't knock off this cough. And so I went off to the mountains just to get some fresh air for a couple of days and I'm walking through.
And at one point I just kind of lean on this big, beautiful, powerful tree. And just what you said, this voice. Comes to me and says, you need to move out of your apartment and get a dog because currently no one tracks mud into your house. And that was as weird a moment as I've ever had in my life. And I don't think people usually buy a dog so that someone will track mud into their house.
But it could have been the title of the book. I could have titled it, Mud In My House, because that's all it is. The gifts of somebody shedding everywhere, tracking mud in. You know,
it's that joy, you know, like you described, you know, dogs have that being in the moment and loving life so, so much. to, to an extreme, to such an extreme that they will roll in the mud, you know, and it's like, we never do that.
Maybe as kids,
we used to, before we got so sophisticated and intelligent, cerebral. Yeah. It's funny. You're mentioning sex therapy. Think about, I've never thought about this before. The whole thing of, uh, men going and watching women do mud wrestling. Right. Is that at a deep level? Don't give me more ideas.
What I'm thinking is Is it something of going back to being a child? And yes, we're making it eroticized, right? And they're adult women. It's not like, you know, so we don't say, Oh my God, what am I doing here? But it's, I've never thought about that before, but it absolutely, I think is getting back to what we used to call the most fun in the world.
And now we're calling it sexy.
The other thing is, you know, and I'm on this rant now for weeks. It's like life got so complicated, you know, and we accept Medicaid in our practice. So when we do therapy and we accept Medicaid, there's so much paperwork that the government has. Yes. So many rules, regulations, policies, little tiny print that you would never think of existed that I just literally want to scream.
And I, I would love to be a dog. You know, I would love to just
roll in the mud. I had one year of working at a place that was here and they call it Medi Cal, but Medicaid centered. And at some point I did the math and realized, I think it was one out of every four hours I was there, I was actually doing therapy.
There was so much work between the company I was working for. And the government stuff. And eventually I realized, Oh my God, the company is a problem. The government thing is a problem. And I understand so well why the Medicaid is that way. You know, you try to get something through the legislature. You've got to argue, Oh no, this is all, we have proof it works.
And here's, we have this proof. Otherwise. Somebody's going to say cut the funding for it. So we have to do all that stuff, but I agree with you. It's so painful and so difficult and infuriating. I
think it's happening across all the sectors. So you look at the police force, you look at the army, you look at, you know, anything that, is somehow controlled or done by the government.
There's just so much bureaucracy and red tape that to do a simple task, you can't enjoy it anymore. You can't do it. You can't complete it. You can't.
Absolutely. Of course, I've had friends who are police officers, friends who are lawyers, whatever. And they just say these things. TV shows or doctors, right?
These TV shows about them are so funny because you really get the idea that being a cop means, Oh, you're out there fighting bad guys all the time. No, you're not. No, you're not doing paperwork. It's so not that wonderful thing. And believe me, I'm not taking away respect for them. I'm saying even more so you're willing to go through that crap to do this.
Yes. Soldiers, firefighters, whoever you want to say like these people, they're, they're glorious.
It's literally, I mean, you know, I, I say I compared to. If I fart, now I have 20 forms to fill out and I have to justify why it was needed, you know, what happened, what did I eat to cause it? And it's like, where, how far can we go away from what the task is and that it just needs to happen?
And, you know, thank you for Shirelle. Like you said, you can't put your head on someone's lap. You can't, sometimes you can't even pat them on the back because somebody's going to make it into a bad thing. And then you spent a year in court trying to defend yourself. It's just like, I can't take it, Doug.
You get the reasons those rules are in place, and I don't think there's an equivalent in other states, which is really a shame. But in California, there's an organization called CAMFT, or California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and every couple of months they put out a magazine. And most of it is stuff about laws that have changed, or what's going on in the state board, or articles about You know, new research on things, but in the back, there's like this 10 pages and it's what everybody loves the most.
Oh yeah. Who lost their license? Who was it? Yes.
It's called disciplinary actions. Yep. And half of them, or more than half are just kind of sad. It's somebody who got their third DUI or something. I'm like, right. There's nothing fun about this. You have a problem. Um, I hope this should work on it or, or they're.
Doing crystal meth and going into the session, like, okay, that's interesting. But, but then you get the stories of people. And I can tell you, it's not because you padded the client on the back, right? That does not get you into it. It's that you start flirting with your client. And then you start an affair with your client.
Then you move in with your client. Then you start an affair with your client's husband. Then you do. And like, wow, there are these crazy people. Well,
I bet you there's lots of forms they have to fill out to justify the treatment plan.
There are no more forms once they get caught. And the fact is, as you know, we constantly are living on the edge.
Yes. You can either be the completely detached uninvolved person or I won't go up and hug a client, but I will say, can I give you a hug? And if somebody wanted to say, you asked a crying child, if you could give them a hug. Yes. Well, someone could say, Whoa, my God, we got to lock you up. Right. That has not happened.
Thank goodness.
It sounds like you're using teachings of Shirelle in your day to day sessions. What about your, you said you have another dog. Are there teachings from that dog coming out soon?
That one, sadly, the, the, the. Your, your verbal tense is wrong. It's had. Oh, okay. She actually caught the same cancer Cherelle had.
Living hell for me, not to mention her. And my argument was that She showed up in my life because I needed to give back what Shirelle had given me. So, this poor thing, again, was so frightened, so traumatized, had so many negative experiences. My job was, can I teach you to enjoy life? Can I teach you to trust?
I had her for about five years and over those years, it really, really succeeded. And she became a very happy dog, certainly with quirks. There were, there were things she never got over. Uh, I will say I have a chiropractor, every dog in the world loves going to my chiropractor's office. She found it the most terrifying place in the world.
I had to drag her down the hall to go in there because she could get, you know, some, some damage, some, some hurt in her neck or something. And I wanted to get it worked on. And I don't know if you go to chiropractors, but he has this device called the activator that makes a, if she heard that she was down the hall by the elevator, just scared the daylights out of her.
We never totally figured it out, but my whole story with her was the opposite. It was, can I use what Shirelle has taught? To help. Yeah. And so the lessons that she had were more almost otherworldly. It's like the part of her that wasn't traumatized was. On a higher plane, she was an amazing being, and she gave me some gifts.
What do you think about emotional support animals? Do you, because some people have different views on that. Some people feel like, you know, the animal shouldn't be supporting you. You should be supporting the animal. I mean, what do you think?
I fly regularly for family things that people are saying that I want to take Aria.
This other dog on a plane. And I said, I don't think I could do it. And they said, well, you could take her as an emotional support animal. I said, good God, I'm her emotional support animal job. What are you talking about? I obviously it gets overused.
Yes.
People use it as an excuse to take their pet where they want to go.
And we all heard that story about that person bringing you a peacock onto it. Airplane saying it was their emotional support peacock. Like,
yes, I don't think so.
At the same time, of course it's real. And there are people I know who really go into a frightening situation and are calmed down enormously by being in the presence of their animal.
And it really helps. And people who can't fly unless that dog is there calming them down. It's certainly a tough situation like anything else in life once you, you find it gets overused. Because it's easy for me to say every pet I've had is an emotional support pet. My goldfish are emotional support pets, but I don't need them to get on an airplane.
So do you have a dog now?
No, no, I'm hoping to very soon. And you said you always adopt from a shelter. Shelter or in Arya's case, from a rescue. I honestly, I mean, people will obviously, you don't need me to go on the rant about breeders or anything like that. But the fact is, for me, I don't want a purebred dog.
We have all seen awful effects of inbreeding years ago. My brother bought a beautiful golden retriever, really smart, certainly hyper, but otherwise you didn't notice anything wrong. And right around the time he turned two, he went completely blind. And it turns out this is a genetic problem that comes from inbred golden retrievers.
So he was hyper jumping on people, not seeing where he was going.
And
it was just awful. It was a great danger. And eventually he. Uh, did run into a, a street and was, was killed and it was just so sad. It was a really sweet dog. And I think that's when I said for life, I was like, I don't want a breed. You want a mutt.
The scientists have determined that all. Dogs come from wolves, which absolutely blows my mind. I mean,
you're a little Pomeranian. Yes. Yes. Well, thank God he's not bigger. That would be hard to shake him off my leg if he was bigger, you know, I'm locking that way.
Yeah. And I'm sure you love him like crazy.
I'm just saying, it's astounding. They're all from wolves, which means breeds. Kind of don't really exist, right? There are things we've created. There weren't Pomeranians on Noah's Ark, right? It was just wolves. So for me, I'd rather both because I want to help the dog that is on death row But also for the health qualities of the dog
I know you mentioned in the book Shirelle at first you were creating her and then you stopped.
She was a monster
Uh, if I had not put her in a crate, she would have either kept me up all night by biting me or destroy the dining room table. I don't know what she could have done, but we had to get her jailed. In terms of crate training, that just didn't fit what I wanted. I don't have a strong opinion, pro or con.
Once she was able to, I had her sleeping on my bed with me. And that was wonderful. And a lot of trainers will say, Oh, don't do that. It's a terrible thing. It's, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I will say Aria, the, the traumatized one, I bought a crate for, and she really liked it. You know, people would come in the house and she would go sit in her crate.
It's funny. Cause it was, you know, it was just a thin bars. You would think like, really, you feel safe in there, but they do. They sense it as a barrier. Depends on the dog. Yeah. So she really liked it. Cherelle hated it. Anything that closed her in.
Mm-Hmm.
always. I bought her a big doghouse and I would walk out and see it'd be pouring rain and she'd be lying in the rain next to the doghouse.
Just hated going in there. Certainly hated, you know, you go to the vets and they put you in a cage. Just hated it. Just hated it.
So if someone wants to sign up for therapy with you, how would they go about that?
Well, uh, what a wonderful question to ask. I'm currently licensed in, let's see if I can remember them all, California, of course, Missouri, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
So Ohio folks could even sign up. Wonderful. Any of those
states, I could see you and we could, Obviously do virtual, if you're not local to Los Angeles, or I have an office in the Valley and an office in West LA, I guess the easiest way to say it is go to my website, which is Douglas Green MFT, D O U G L A S G R E E N M F T.
com. And you can contact me through there. Let's see how I work. And I will say very strongly, if I'm not the therapist you want, but you think I might have some good insights, feel free to call me or write me and say, you know, I want a woman, but a woman who thinks the way you do, I could give you a referral.
Very gladly.
That's perfect. And if someone wants to buy your book, how would they go about that?
That is a great question. It's not out yet. And I don't know when you're airing this, maybe I shouldn't say that, but it's, it's today's June 11th. It's not, it's not out yet. It's coming out in a bit. about a month.
It will be on Amazon. It will be on Barnes and Noble. Please, the best thing you could do is if you have a local bookstore, go up and request it because it helps them. And I love bookstores. I always want to help them out, but also that gets the word out that there's an interest in my book. So maybe they'll get another copy on their shelf.
That's wonderful. That would be great. Or you can go to Circuit Breaker Books. It's probably circuitbreakerbooks. com. I'm not even sure what the website is, but. That's the publishers. They will definitely have ways you can order it.
We also like to do naked truth segment where we share anything that you may want to highlight for the listeners or something that you've learned through years of doing therapy or writing the book or interacting with Shirelle or this conversation.
But my thing is, Alicia's great! Keep listening! Even if you're not a dog lover and you haven't turned it off yet, kind of the key lesson for me with Cherelle was that you can learn an enormous amount about who you are and what you are and what you want to be by putting focus on something you absolutely love.
And I don't mean like your, your spouse or your boyfriend, girlfriend, that's. That's too complicated. If you really love flowers, look at a flower a lot. Look at flowers a lot. Pay attention. What's the meaning of a rose? What does a rose have to teach you? Wow, it has these delicate beautiful petals that are so wonderful and it has thorns to protect itself.
That's pretty amazing.
I heard this great thing yesterday or two days ago in a presentation about Preventing suicide in people and they brought up this story of a caterpillar and the caterpillar is just hates his life It takes it's so long to get anywhere. It's so hard to crawl anywhere birds are constantly trying to come down and eat it It's constantly avoiding getting stepped on by big things like us.
And so it says I've had it. I'm done with this I'm gonna go hang myself from a tree And what happens? A few weeks later, out comes this wonderful butterfly, flies everywhere, does not get attacked by the birds, does not get stepped on by people, and it's the most beautiful thing in the world, and we all love it.
And to say that urge you have for Suicide is actually an urge to transform. There's just so much to learn. Just open yourself up to it. It doesn't stop. That's the biggest thing I will say. You'll have it the rest of your life. That's
beautiful. And my naked truth is I just would want to roll in mud after this conversation.
Just like, you know what, you might as well, it's life's too short. Just go do it, you know?
That's great. I would say take Arnie. Yeah. Arnie will love it. Then you're going to have a tough time with the bathtub or taking Arnie to the groomers. It's worth it. It's
just worth it. That's perfect. Well, for anyone listening, make sure to purchase this, the copy of this beautiful book with all kinds of teachings in there.
We couldn't get to all of them today. We want to so much for sharing with us today and going through some technical challenges here. Yes. I love it. I love it. Technical
challenges are just life. They are. One thing we're missing is the book has pictures and I don't think yours does. You have an advanced copy there.
The ones that are coming out will have, Oh, it does. It has black and whites, but you'll get the full color. Ah. Beautiful version of that Ridiculousness. Beautiful. And that, when I said that Peppy was a monster, there's the monster.
Aw, she's so cute. Not everyone can have a dog at home, but you can have this book on your bookshelf and read about it.
That's exactly right. A compliment I get often is people say by the end of the book, they feel they know her. So if you can't have a dog at home, here's a way to have a dog.
It was like it was written from your perspective, but it felt like she was the primary focus and your life was happening kind of like in the background.
The first draft of the book, which took me a long time to write, and I'd kept a journal, was over twice as long as this. And the main change I did was taking out anything of my life that wasn't about her. It's only what was about her, but there was a lot about her. It's enough to fill a book.
Well, it's a, it's an amazing book and I hope people find it and buy it and keep us posted.
We'll have you again on the podcast whenever you get another dog and write some more teachings or whenever you want to join us again.
Thank you. That brings something else up, which I'd love to throw in. Before the book came out, the, the original edition. I had created a website, which is an advice website, like a Dear Abby, but the advice is from her.
Oh, that's awesome. It's from Shirelle. It's not from me. So it's from her point of view. So if you're interested, please check out askshirelle. com. And feel free to join up and ask Cherelle some questions. She's very wise and she has a lot to say, kind of like Alicia. She has very brash opinions. And most of the letters that have come in have been from teenagers or young adults and a lot of questions along the lines of, Hi, Cherelle.
So there's this boy at school and he's so cute. He's so wonderful. And I, I really love him. And, and I I've never talked to him. Can you, can you talk to him? But do you think he likes me? And Shirell's first advice is, well, you know, what I would do is go and jump on him. Yeah. But we know what Arnie would do.
But then Shirell explains, I do understand as people, you can't quite do that. So here are some ideas.
The second thing would be lick his face. I mean, might as well, if you like him. And you know, it might work. You never know. You never know. Are there any other social media that folks could find you at?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Yes. Instagram. There is a Doug green author on Instagram and on threads. Ask Cheryl is on. Facebook and I think Instagram. If you're a dog lover, it's great. It's a lot of memes and things about dogs and silly dog jokes and terrible puns and all that kind of stuff. It's it's Ask Cherelle posts things from the website, but more often it's cute dogs and dogs doing funny things.
And Cherelle's spirit keeps on living.
It sure does. I think as long as I'm here, it will.
Well, thank you again for your time today and enjoy the rest of your day and let's roll in the mud, I guess, when we get out of here. Let's do it!
Yeah! Woof, woof, woof,
woof, woof!
