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Fourth of July non-celebrations, puppy raising and Joe updates, Claire’s book recommendations and some Crossfit talk!
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This is Joy & Claire Episode 134: Summer Update Show
Episode Date: July 7, 2022
Transcription Completed: August 27, 2022
Audio Length: 58:21 minutes
Joy: Hey guys, this is Joy.
Claire: And this is Claire. Good morning.
Joy: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. I wonder what time people listen to us the most. Is it a morning walk? Is it lulling you to sleep?
Claire: I hope we’re not lulling you to sleep. I think a lot of people listen first thing in the morning, but it does seem to be spread out throughout the day. Some people will listen while they are walking their dogs over lunch or on their commute to and/or from work, whatever you’re doing.
Joy: Hello.
Claire: We’re recording this on July 4. [singing] And it feels a little anticlimactic.
Joy: I was going to say, how are you feeling about 4th of July?
Claire: Meh. Most of you know, the 4th of July is a big holiday in my family. Brandon was very into fireworks. When he was growing up, he and his dad used to be part of this professional pyrotechnics association, and they would go to these conventions every year, which would be held in very rural towns on the big state fairgrounds or whatever. For two or three days, you would just spend all day every day setting off fireworks and firecrackers and building rockets and stuff. For us, it’s really more about having the ability to purchase fireworks. In Colorado, the firework laws are pretty strict. You can’t have anything that leaves the ground. But in Wyoming, which is only about an hour away –
Joy: Just a hop, skip, and a jump away.
Claire: – does not have that law, and they have a bunch of fireworks stands directly across the border.
Joy: Yeah, right across the border. They aren’t messing around.
Claire: You drive across the border, and your next exit is five ginormous Black Cat stands. When I say ginormous, I mean warehouse sized.
Joy: Yeah.
Claire: But we haven’t gone this year. We didn’t go this year, but we went last year. The problem is that last year, for the last five years, we have lived in a neighborhood where everyone is setting off so many fireworks. Starting in June. I know people are listening – there’s a lot of mixed feelings about fireworks. We are really lucky. Our dog does not care about fireworks. Our kids love them. We try to be really respectful. I mean, the kids go to be at like eight. We nine times out of ten are setting off fireworks still in daylight hours. I think you still get a lot of enjoyment out of them.
Joy: sure.
Claire: As you know. So we are not the people who are up until midnight doing them, but we definitely are lighting them off. Our previous neighborhood, everyone let off fireworks all night long for weeks. A lot of our families in our previous neighborhood were either from Mexico or they had extended family in Mexico, and they would go to Mexico and buy these gigantic, like the big professional firework mortars and drive home with them. I mean, for weeks. So this neighborhood that we moved into is a little less firework friendly.
Joy: How do you know this?
Claire: It is obvious because it is more quiet. There are still plenty of fireworks going off, but you don’t feel like it’s a fireworks show in your driveway every night, which is how the other place felt. We decided this year we are going to play it by ear and feel it out. And then next year, we will probably go to Wyoming.
Joy: And purchase the fireworks.
Claire: And purchase the fireworks. Especially for Evie and Miles, their ages, the ground fountains are still really fun for them. Sparklers are fun. They have this thing – they sell it all over, where it is a giant sword, and you light the tip on fire, and it’s basically a huge sparkler but with a sword handle.
Joy: That sounds amazing.
Claire: So as you can imagine, Miles loves that.
Joy: Yeah, of course.
Claire: So, you know, there’s still some fun stuff. All that to say, for us the 4th of July is really about lighting stuff on fire. I’ve never really had a strong patriotic connection to the 4th of July. But this year, even less so.
Joy: Yeah. This year, I feel like just putting on all of my feminist t-shirts. And anything that’s the most non red, white, and blue.
Claire: Each year, I read the Frederick Douglas essay about the 4th of July, and I see a lot of posts about Indigenous folks that I follow about how the Constitution refers to Native Americans as savages. There is one word in particular that I’m spacing on right now, I’m so sorry. Over the years, over my life, it gets harder and harder to ignore. And not that I want to ignore, but I think that it’s something that is easy to ignore if you’re a white person in America. If you want to ignore it, it’s easy to do so. That the 4th of July is really for white colonizers, people who are descendants of colonizers. That’s something to think about. But anyway, the other big news in our house is that Evie just moved out of a crib last night.
Joy: [gasp] That’s big. So what was the decision? I remember a few weeks ago, you were like –
Claire: She’ll stay there until college.
Joy: Right. What was the turning point.
Claire: So Evie is 3.5. She is well beyond the age – kids generally move from a crib to a bed sometime between 2 and 3. Typically that’s because your toddler will learn how to crawl out of the crib and will fall out. And then, you’re like, “I guess you’re sleeping in a bed tonight.” I have friends who kids have had concussions, whose kids have broken their arms. This is a very common thing that the kid will climb out. Evie has never – one time, she had a week where she tried to climb out. She was dropping onto this pile of stuffed animals that was shoved at the bottom of her bed. So, we moved the pile of stuffed animals, and that was that. She never tried it again. There are other physical limits to being in a crib. There are weight limits. There are height limits. We got our crib off of Craig’s List, so I don’t know particularly what that crib’s weight limits are. The weight limits are usually pretty high there. Over 100 lbs. She was definitely not beyond the height limit. She has a real bed at my mom’s house where she sleeps somewhat regularly, and it has these unicorn sheets from Target that my mom got.
Joy: Well, that’s a game changer right there.
Claire: Exactly. So she kept being like, “I want a unicorn bed. I want a unicorn bed.” And we have an extra twin mattress. Miles sleeps on a full bed. We have the twin mattress from when he was a little bit littler, when he graduated to a full. Although, this is a hot tip. If you have a young child, here is a tip coming at you. Buy a full mattress for your child. It makes it so much easier. No matter what type of parenting you do, there will be nights where you sleep in your child’s bed. And if you have a full bed, then you can actually enjoy yourself and not have to be in a pencil next to the wall or on the floor because they are in a twin bed. So we have this extra twin mattress, and eventually we will turn it into a full. We got the sheets, moved her in, and she actually did really well. She has slept in a real bed a couple times when we’ve gone on vacation and stayed at an Airbnb. She’s slept on one at my mom’s. So she’s kind of got the deal. She did get up a couple of times. I would hear her walking down the stairs and just see her face peaking around the stairs. And guess what she said. She came out and she goes, “I just want to talk about my feelings today. Can you come upstairs so we can talk about my feelings today?” I’m like, you little Brandon.
Joy: [laughing] I would like to talk feelings.
Claire: She knows. You’re not going to say no if I ask you.
Joy: That’s so funny, that’s so funny.
Claire: And Brandon was like, “Yeah, sweetie, let’s go back upstairs.”
Joy: Brandon’s like, “Hold my beer.”
Claire: Exactly, exactly. She did that a couple of times, and finally I was like, I’m sitting in the hall. So I did the hall sit, which all parents are familiar with, the hall sit. She fell asleep within 10 or 15 minutes when she realized that I was sitting in the hall. She got up one time in the night and said, “I’m really cold.” Because unicorn sheets. She refused to put a blanket in her bed. She only wanted to sleep with the unicorn flat sheet, so we put her in some thicker pajamas. It’s the middle of summer, she’s been sleeping in shorts and a t-shirt. So we put her in some fleece pajama pants, but she still had bare arms. So when I got up at two in the morning, she accepted the blanket.
Joy: She’s like, “I give in.”
Claire: Yeah. She’s like, I get it now. I understand why you can’t just sleep with a flat sheet. Especially when you’re a kid. Kids kick their blankets off all night. So there you have it. But we were disassembling the crib, and we were like, this is kind of sad.
Joy: It’s a big deal. Those changes are big. It’s kind of like you’re excited for her to move on to a big bed, but this means that she’s not a little baby anymore.
Claire: Yeah. And we’ve talked about this around that feeling of heartbreak that comes with your kids growing up. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t grateful. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love the phase that they’re at. But there is a deep nostalgia for – okay, also, to be clear. It doesn’t mean – as we’ve talked about. I don’t love the newborn stage. I’m not really referring to the newborn stage in this comment. But it does mean that you are nostalgic for all those things about the smaller versions of them that you really loved and took so much joy from, and now those are never going to be there again. These sorts of milestones, you realize how quickly it goes. And you think, wait a minute, that happened so fast. She’s not in a crib anymore. She’s been in a crib for three years. Now what? Now she’s in this little unicorn bed. How long will she be in the unicorn bed for?
Joy: She’s going to college tomorrow.
Claire: It really feels that way. Especially Miles, I’m barely a head taller than Miles, and he is six.
Joy: Yeah, yeah. He’s growing up way too fast.
Claire: And yesterday, we were just kind of talking about what we were going to do the rest of the day. And the kids had watched a movie in the morning because there’s no rules during summer. They’d watched a movie in the morning. They had watched Toy Story, which I love still. So good.
Joy: Such a classic.
Claire: It really is.
Joy: It’s so good.
Claire: So we had just eaten lunch and he was like, “Can we watch a movie?” I said, “No, you guys already watched a movie. We can maybe watch some TV later, but we need to find something else to do.” And I said it just like that. “No.” And he looked at me, and he had tears in his eyes. “Mom, the next time you give me an answer like that, will you say it a little more politely?”
Joy: Hi little sensitive heart. Yeah.
Claire: Okay.
Joy: Feedback is taken.
Claire: Feedback taken. But also, it’s a little six-year-old giving me feedback.
Joy: Oh gosh.
Claire: He did that with Brandon the other day.
Joy: Wait, he said that to Brandon?
Claire: I said something kind of sharp to Brandon. Miles gave me feedback.
Joy: Gave you feedback about that, yeah. Kids are real smart.
Claire: Brandon got home, and I had this new hoodie. And Brandon steals my clothes. If I buy something that’s even on size over size for me, Brandon can fit in it. He’s got really long arms, but his torso is so thin that when it comes to a lot of – he particularly steals my hats as well. But this particular hoodie is a unisex fit, and it’s oversize for me, so it does fit him. He came home wearing it. And Brandon and I just have different opinions on how to take care of our things.
Joy: What do you mean different opinions about how to take care of things?
Claire: He doesn’t take care of his stuff.
Joy: But what does that mean, though?
Claire: He will leave it in a crumpled ball on the floor of the car for six months.
Joy: Okay.
Claire: He will not wash it until it is so stinky that you can’t do anything about it. He’ll be messing with the meat smoker or chopping wood or painting, and he won’t change into – he doesn’t have a set of clothes that are like, these are the clothes that I wear when I have to do something dirty, and I want to change into my crappy clothes that can get dirty. All his clothes fall into that category as far as he’s concerned. That’s what I mean. He just doesn’t really think about it. He does that with a lot of his things. But he just doesn’t really consider them to be – he doesn’t take care of his things, in my opinion.
Joy: Okay, okay.
Claire: So he came home wearing this hoodie. First thing, he walks through the door, and I’m like, “That’s my hoodie. Take that off.” And Brandon’s like, “What? This can’t be yours. It fits me.” I was like, “It’s mine.” And Miles goes, “Mom, maybe next time you should say ‘hi’ to dad first.”
Joy: Yeah.
Claire: And then a couple days later we were in the car and Brandon did something – I don’t know. He did something that, I don’t know, he was obviously not paying attention. Like, he turned out in front of somebody or something and had to quickly make the turn. I was like, “Hey, what was that?” Miles goes, “Mom, maybe dad’s just a little tired.” I was like, okay guys.
Joy: Miles is going to be a therapist. man.
Claire: You guys and your sensitiveness. Talk about your feelings.
Joy: Whenever I was talking with kids and families in family therapy, I would always ask the kids what’s going on at home. Because they all knew exactly. They had it to a “T.” I’d always be like, “You tell me.” Because the kids have their finger on the pulse. They know exactly what’s going on. And then I’d be like, “Alright, parents. Did you hear that?” That’s really funny. What hoodie? Where did you get it then, by the way?
Claire: It’s a Smartwool hoodie. From work. And it’s a nice merino oversized with a hood. It’s not a base layer, but it’s sort of built like one so the hood is like a little cocoon.
Joy: Oh yeah.
Claire: It’s this really cute sort of reddish, almost like a cranberry color, like a reddish purple. So you have had a lot of puppies in your life this week?
Joy: I sure have.
Claire: You had a cute post on your personal Instagram about how being a puppy raiser has brought so many people – and not to mention, puppies – into your life. And it’s been a while since we had an update on Joe. So talk a little bit about Joe. Also, I think it’s so interesting, this puppy raiser culture. Is Denver a hot spot for puppy raisers? Or is it like this everywhere you go?
Joy: I think it depends. I believe every state has a chapter for Canine Companions. Don’t quote me on that. But Denver and the surrounding areas have a lot of puppy raisers.
Claire: Sorry, not to interrupt you. But also during Cadet’s graduation, it felt like half the puppy raisers that were there were from Colorado.
Joy: Yeah, that was interesting too. I don’t know the exact number. I know it exists somewhere, but don’t quote me on it. Because Canine Companions, their main office is in Santa Rosa. And then they have a regional office in Oceanside. And then they have regional offices throughout the United States. So it’s East Coast, South, Southwest. They have all these chapters within each state that represents Canine Companions. So we have the Rocky Mountain chapter. Canine Companions, depending on where you live – so our region is the Southwest region, so our puppies come from the Southwest. Meaning that the people who caretake for the breeder dogs live next to a Canine Companions office in California, and then they ship out the puppies to the Southwest region. So it’s very rare that if you live – during the pandemic, the rules totally changed. But it would be rare if you lived in the Southwest region and got a puppy from the East Coast. They try to keep it closer to the office that you’re going to turn the dog into. Anyway, so what is your question about the puppy raiser culture?
Claire: I’m curious to hear more about it. What you’re describing here is perfect.
Joy: Okay.
Claire: So give us a little update about Joe.
Joy: Joe is doing great. Joe just turned about five months old. He’s so cute. He’s just such a cute, sensitive dog. He reminds me of JT, of what I would imagine JT was as a puppy. He learns commands really fast. He’s much more chill than Cadet. Apparently hearing dogs have a lot more energy. There’s a lot of trainers that will talk about how hearing dogs have to have a lot of energy for the type of training that they have to do. So it’s kind of funny because now with Joe, this just seems like a cake walk. He’s just very chill.
Claire: And also, I always like to go back to the fact that they didn’t know that Cadet was going to be a hearing dog. They didn’t breed her to be a hearing dog.
Joy: No.
Claire: It was more that when she got to advanced training, they were like, this dog is pretty spunky and energetic. Those things lend themselves well to be a hearing dog. Let’s explore that path for her.
Joy: Right.
Claire: It’s so interesting how they have those different options. It’s not just one-size-fits-all, if you have these characteristics, you will be a successful service dog. There are so many different paths.
Joy: Yeah, it’s really interesting. I think over the years, I’ve learned so much about how each dog – for example, we watched a dog named Buena this past week and a half. And her puppy raiser is the trainer for all of our puppy raiser classes. She’s the head trainer. She teaches all the classes. She’s an amazing trainer. And Buena from the get-go. I remember Buena from when she was a little baby puppy because we would be in class with Cadet with Buena. Everyone was always like, “Oh, Buena is such a handful.” And Mitsi who is the trainer was like, “Yeah, Buena is my problem child” and kind of gave her a bad reputation. So whenever we’d be in puppy class, it’s like, “Oh, Buena is a handful.” And she was. She just had a lot of energy. She barked all the time. She was hard to settle. So when we told all of our puppy raiser friends we were watching Buena, they were like, “You’re watching Buena?” She turns into advanced training in a month. How bad can she be? And she’s raised by Mitsi who is the best of the best.
Claire: I feel like a poorly behaved service dog in training is still way better behaved than the average pet.
Joy: Exactly. So they’re like, “You agreed to watch Buena?” And I was just like, this was really funny. To me, it was almost a challenge, where I’m like how bad can she be? She’s fine. She’s like the perfect house dog. She has very good house manners. She’s so sweet. She’s really bad on a leash. She pulls a lot. She’s very distracted. She wants to go. So there’s a part of me that’s like, it will be interesting to see where her energy is channeled. Because most dogs when you go to advanced training, you have to be really good on a leash. You have to learn how to be right next to their handler. So I could see her taking a path that’s not a service dog, but maybe a hearing dog. We’ll see. So for instance, watching her, it’s really funny how – and I was talking about this with my puppy raiser friend yesterday and some other friends I was hanging out with – you could raise a dog and think that you did such a horrible dog, and they could be a super star in advanced training. So you don’t worry too much about messing the dog up if you don’t train the skills right. It’s mostly about socialization. Yeah, for Buena, I would take her and Joe for runs every morning. Because I was like, I can’t manage her and Joe on a leash. And JT can’t keep up with them. So I would take her and Joe for runs. Just jogs, very light jogs. I wasn’t running fast or anything. But that way, she would run next to me because we were going a little bit faster. So you kind of learn to finesse it. Mitsi was like, “If you’re going to take her for a walk, bring a bunch of kibble so she’ll stay right next to you in the walk.” I’m like, I don’t have time for that. I need to walk Joe. I need to walk Buena. So we would do these little runs, and it was great, and then they got tired. Scott and I were talking about this. And I’m like, “Buena, you get a bad reputation, but you’re a good girl.” We were just kind of kidding around. Like, “She’s going to be great. Everyone just labeled her.”
Claire: She was put in the wrong clique.
Joy: Yeah, she was put in the wrong clique. I don’t know what the original question was. But basically –
Claire: How’s Joe.
Joy: Yeah, how’s Joe. I could talk about dogs for way too long. But I think the point of it is, every single dog that you raise, you can think that they are the most stellar dog, and you just don’t know what’s going to happen in advanced training. There’s so many things that can happen. Once they get to advanced training, they could be there and be like, “Yeah, this is fun, but I don’t really want to be a service dog.” That’s when they get released.
Claire: Yeah, so you were saying Joe is super relaxed, super sensitive, super low key. Everything is cruising along with his training and everything?
Joy: Yeah, he’s doing great. He’s doing great. He chases the cats a little bit, so we’ve been working on that. Kind of had to quarantine the cats to the other side of the house. The thing is, our cats run from him, and he thinks it’s a game. He’s like, “This is a fun game,” so he chases after them. If they didn’t run, he wouldn’t care. But it’s that whole prey driving things.
Claire: Also in your cats’ defense, I would run. I mean, you’re not going to train the cat.
Joy: Exactly. But one of our cats, she likes to hiss at him. And he thinks that’s a fun game. So those are the types of things. We start to introduce the cats to him. We put him on a leash, we go say “hi” to the kitties. And then we’re like, “Okay, good job” and we reward him for not chasing after them. So I think he’s doing really well. His confidence is a little – I think he’ll mature out of this. I think he has a little bit of momma’s boy syndrome where he just wants to be next to me. When we’re playing with other dogs, he’ll run between my legs. That’s his signature move is he’s always between my legs. He hides between my legs to check everything out, and then he’ll go play. Where Cadet was fearless. She could get knocked down, rolled over, and stepped on, and she’d be like, “Let’s go!” It’s interesting to see how he’s a little sensitive boy. But we’ll see. I think overall his confidence is building. That’s a big part in dog training. They say if dogs don’t have confidence, it’s really hard to work with. But everything else is going really well. You asked earlier about the puppy raiser culture. If anyone out there is thinking about being involved in an organization like this, whether it’s Canine Companions or otherwise, if you want an instant family and you want a way to meet a ton of great people, I think it’s a really awesome way to do that. I mean, we just have so many new connections that we now call family. We’re always going over to other people’s houses to have dog dates. Or like this afternoon, we’re doing a 4th of July thing with our puppy raiser friends. It’s just a really sweet community. It’s not like you’re going to be friends with every single person in the community, but you get to meet a lot of great people. And also how important it is for them to understand the culture of puppy raising. If you need help with something. It’s just been a really cool way to build our chosen family type of thing. It’s really sweet.
Claire: So the biggest question that I feel like we have gotten recently, and we’ve gotten this over the years multiple times, but we’ve never talked about it directly on the podcast. About people reaching out saying, “Hey, I’m interested in puppy raising. Can you give me more of an idea about what it takes.” The number one question that we get is, can you do it if you don’t work from home?
Joy: Yeah. You can. But I would say – because I didn’t work from home… well, Scott did when we had Cadet. I would say the first 8 weeks is really hard. If you have a pretty intense job, meaning there’s not a lot of flexibility and you can’t be home or have the option to work from home, it would be difficult. I would say it would be difficult if you’re doing it solo. Even with Scott working from home, I would say it was really difficult for the first 4-8 weeks. Kind of depending on the dog. Puppies need 24/7 attention and 24/7 care. It’s not impossible because once they are passed that very early puppy phase, then it’s a little bit more doable. You just can’t really put them in a crate all day and leave them at home and just do puppy raising in the morning and at night. That’s not ideal. Ideally, you need to have them around you.
Claire: Let’s talk about even with a dog that you’re not planning on training to be a service animal. If you get a new puppy – that’s obviously why so many people got puppies during the pandemic – but if you get a new puppy, those first couple of weeks are like that regardless. Do you feel like there is anything in particular about it – because in those first few weeks, we’ve talked about this. You’re not really doing a lot of training. It’s more about getting them comfortable, working on their –
Joy: Routine. You’re just getting them into a routine.
Claire: Routine and getting them settles. Would you say that it’s significantly different in those first few weeks than just bringing home a pet dog?
Joy: Not really. Not really. Because it is routine, getting them used to their name, making sure that you –
Claire: House training.
Joy: House training. There’s little things that you do to train them, but it’s not like you hit the ground running with training. At all. I think that’s one of the biggest misconceptions that people have. Especially around puppy raising, you put a lot of pressure on yourself to have the dog have all these commands. And sometimes you’ll compare yourselves, or you’ll see people posting things about what their dog is doing. It’s really funny because it’s just like, these are dogs. They’re going to learn. I think someone posted recently – we’re in all these private Facebook groups – of my five-month-old puppy won’t stop being interested in other dogs. And I’m like, they’re five months. Talk to us when the dog is a year old, but these are just things that you kind of have to be flexible with when the dog is so young. I wouldn’t say that it’s much different from having a pet dog. It’s just mostly you do have to be involved in the community and go to puppy classes, which are twice a month. It is a lot of responsibility. Just if you were to have a pet, it’s the added responsibility of training-specific commands and being involved in the community. You have to write reports every month of how the dog is doing.
Claire: Well I think we’re overdo for some Joe content on Instagram.
Joy: That’s true.
Claire: It’s been a while.
Joy: It has been a while.
Claire: He’s gotten so big.
Joy: He’s gotten so big. Yeah, it’s really funny because they grow so fast. There’s a lot of times where – I think I just need to get more creative of how I put him on there because so much of the training is just the same. It’s like, oh okay, I’m teaching him up and down and roll and brushing his teeth or whatever. How many times do people want to see this? But maybe they do. And then just kind of most of the time when I’m out training, it’s so hard to get your phone out when your hands are mushed with dog treats. But I will say, circling back to 4th of July really quick as the hot tip that I learned with JT if your dog has any kind of firework anxiety – which I realize this is going to release after 4th of July But if you have any fireworks or thunder or anxiety with your dog is the lick mat that I’ve been posting about. Part of me is like, why didn’t I think of this sooner. But recently, we had some fireworks in the neighborhood, and JT has horrible firework anxiety. It’s my least favorite holiday of the year. Or thunderstorms in the summer. I smother peanut butter – Scott and I realized peanut butter trumps everything with this dog. Most dogs love peanut butter. So we smothered this lick mat with peanut butter, and that kept him busy. So apparently the clicking behavior is very soothing for dogs. And then on top of that, peanut butter. I know a lot of people freeze a huge Kong, and then they’ll lick the Kong. That’s another way to do it. Another thing is, JT won’t eat anything when he’s stressed out. We can’t give him any type of treats or put him in a happy mood and be jolly and then give him a treat because you try to make it a fun game. He won’t have it because he is just past the point of no return with his anxiety.
Claire: Aw, buddy.
Joy: It’s really bad. It is shaking bad. So the other night, he woke me up because he’s like, “Mom, it’s fireworks.” So I went and got the lick mat. And he did it, and then he calmed down. We did try the trazodone last year. Not a fan. Not a fan for my dog. It kind of made him stoned and his eyes all droopy, and he was basically looking at me in this very confused state. He’s still awake but chilled out. I felt like the worst dog owner ever. Didn’t work for my dog. Maybe it works for your dog. Anyway. Okay, that’s the dog content. I just wanted to give that hot tip because the lick mat has been such a savior for us with Joe and JT. And I can post a link if you guys want. I got mine on Amazon. There’s like a million of them.
Claire: However, hot tip. We got a lick mat for River, and she ate it.
Joy: She ate it?!
Claire: Yeah.
Joy: But she eats everything. She ate a couch.
Claire: She eats literally everything. She ate a couch. They make these, they look almost like pumice stones. You can put them in their water bowl. It’s so that their pee won’t burn your grass. She ate that.
Joy: No.
Claire: This was when she was a puppy.
Joy: [laughing]
Claire: It does dissolve over a couple weeks. So it wasn’t a true rock. It was more like a really long release Nuun tablet.
Joy: Oh my gosh, that was so funny. She ate a huge Nuun.
Claire: Yeah, she just eats everything. People are always like, “How does River do with the fireworks?” The honest answer is, she’s too stupid to be scared. She is not imagining this as a danger. She’s like, “Loud noise?”
Joy: Yeah, it doesn’t compute for her.
Claire: No, it’s so funny. It’s wonderful. She’s so great. She has had kind of a little sore throat the last few days. She barks, and then she kind of clears her throat a couple times. Or if she is breathing really hard, she starts clearing her throat. I was like, is she dry heaving?
Joy: Does the have Covid?
Claire: She literally is acting like she has a little bit of a scratchy throat. And it only happens when she barks, and the next two or three minutes she is going [coughing] like she has a frog in her throat. It’s so cute. Her energy is still fine. She is eating everything. We’re watching out obviously for all the warning signs that she actually could be getting sick, and it’s really not.
Joy: Maybe it’s just the dry air because we have had zero rain here.
Claire: Oh, we’ve had some.
Joy: Have you? No, like sprinkles.
Claire: Like sprinkles. But sprinkles are enough to keep it from catching fire at least.
Joy: Is it? Because that makes me sad. I get real worried about the droughts.
Claire: It does. This is what it was like when I was growing up. It would be hot in the morning. It would get really hot in the middle of the day. And then around like two to three to four o’clock, you’d get a little storm that would roll through. It wouldn’t always hit every area, but it would be cloud cover. Every once in a while, you would be the neighborhood that got hit with the rain, and that was really enough to keep everything from catching on fire, which is what we’ve been missing the last several years. Anyway. So let’s take a quick break and talk about our sponsor, Ned.
Joy: Hey Ned.
Claire: Hello, Ned, is what you mean.
Joy: Hello, Ned. So close.
Claire: You know and love them. We know and love them. The makers of our favorite CBD and magnesium products. We love them for so many reasons. One of my favorite reasons, which we talk about a lot, but this is a big deal guys, is that they third-party test all of their batches. The batch number on your CBD tinctures is literally handwritten on the label. You’re able to go online and look up the exact concentration, all the different cannabinoids. A lot of their blends also have botanicals in them, and you’re able to go up and look at exactly the what the breakdown is of what it is that you’re taking. This is not an industry standard. As you know – or maybe you don’t know this – CBD is not regulated by the FDA, so they are not required to do this. This is something that they do that goes above and beyond so that you can really be confident about what it is that you are taking. We think that is shows a real commitment to that transparency. We know that there is still questions out there about CBD. Is it effective? Is it going to actually help you with what you need help with? So the other thing is that with your first purchase, there is a 30-day moneyback guarantee. So you can try it out for an entire month, and if it’s not getting you the results that you want, the thing about CBD and most botanicals and really most natural remedies is that they take longer to take effect in your body. You need to use them for several days if not couple weeks to let them work in your system. Because the changes that they are working on within your system are a little bit more subtle. So it can take a little while for those subtle changes to have the domino effect with the rest of your system you want it to have. So be patient. Give it a few weeks. But if at the end of those few weeks you’re still not seeing results, you can return it and get your money back. As you guys know, I love their Daily Blend and their Mello Magnesium blend. Joy loves their Destress Blend and their Sleep Blend. You really can’t go wrong. Check them out. Helloned.com/JOY or use discount code JOY. Just support this wonderful brand. They’re local to Colorado. We love the founders. They are really intentional about the farms that they use. If you need a CBD product, we hope that you will use this one. Thank you for supporting the brands that support our podcast.
Joy: Thank you guys so much.
Claire: Yay Ned.
Joy: Yay Ned. Okay, I have a quick question for you because a lot of people ask about this with your workout routine and the program that you are doing. Can you just run through that again? Because a lot of people ask about it.
Claire: Yes. So a lot of people have been asking about my skincare routine recently.
Joy: [laughing]
Claire: For the past, what… six or eight months? Have been using HungryFitness workouts. Which HungryFitness is a brand that’s run by Michaela North who is a former CrossFit Games team athlete. And I think she did collegiate sports. I can’t remember what. So now this is her thing. She does this programming. And then she has a team of maybe a handful of other coaches that work with her. I’ve talked to her about it in a lot of detail, and she has said anyone can use this, but we really write this with busy parents in mind. She has four kids. I think most of her coaches have families. So that’s who they program for is somebody who may have an hour one day but only 20 minutes the next day. It’s just a subscription app. You download a specific app to your phone. It’s $20 a month. Or you can start with $1 for the first month. I think there is a code – I think it’s “newbie.” This is not an ad, by the way, obviously. But if you want to try it out, it’s only $1 for the first month. It’s kind of more body building style workouts. And by that, I just mean it’s a lot of free weights. There’s a leg day and an arm day. Versus if you want something CrossFit-y or metcon-y, the choice that most people go to for those types of workouts is Street Parking.
Joy: Street Parking, yeah.
Claire: I tried Street Parking for a long time, and I just came to find that I don’t really enjoy doing those types of workouts by myself.
Joy: Yes, I can see that.
Claire: I really love them in a group, but I don’t want to do them by myself.
Joy: I could see how a program like that with HungryFitness would be more motivating on your won. I do a lot of the Peloton workouts, the strength workouts. They are not metcon-y. It’s just full-on weights. I’ll do a 20 minute one or a 30 minute one of those. I can do that on my own because it doesn’t feel like you need people to be like, “Alright, go!”
Claire: It’s not as intense.
Joy: It’s not as intense, yeah.
Claire: And you’re not doubled over in the middle of the workout trying to catch your breath. I do love those workouts. And sometimes I will catch a whim to do one of those workouts. I’ll just look up online and do a CrossFit one that I know.
Joy: And you’ll go with it, yeah.
Claire: And I’ll do that. But it’s not the norm for me. I like the workouts because each workout maybe has between four and six main sets. So maybe you’ll start out with a warmup set. Like, a leg day would be a warmup set, which includes some jumping squats and some step ups and some glute bridges. And then you’ll have a set of heavy squats, and then maybe you’ll have a set of heavy box step ups, and then you’ll have maybe some banded kickbacks, and then some other lunges or something. The way that she writes it, there is always comments at the top like, “If you’re short on time, prioritize these” or “Here’s where you want to start taking away” – maybe there is three sets of each set. I don’t even know how to call these things.
Joy: Three rounds maybe?
Claire: Three rounds of each set, yeah. So it will be like, “Take away the third round” or whatever. I just like that because it makes it feel very approachable, and they actually expect you to have to modify it a lot of the time. Even though I am an independent woman who don’t need no workout apps to tell me what to do, I also do feel sometimes like – I was doing a Gym Jones program previously. The mentality behind that particular brand is a lot more like, go hard, how you do anything is how you do everything, give your all every time. I can appreciate that too if you have a more all or nothing mindset. But this was a very all or nothing mindset. So a lot of days for me, I’d be like, well I know for a fact that I don’t have an hour to do this. So since I can’t do it all, I guess I’m not doing anything. So that’s what I like about the HungryFitness one. I’ve been doing it for six or eight months. I definitely have gotten stronger. I am trying this summer to be a little bit better about specifically adding in some more cardio, which I hate. With CrossFit, you kind of get it all in one package, and that’s kind of the benefit of CrossFit is you get is all done in an hour. I definitely have noticed that my cardiovascular fitness has not really gone anywhere as my strength has improved. Trying to work in some zone two cardio. I read this book recently called Training for the Uphill Athlete. Maybe I talked about it on our interview with Kelly Lutz. It’s all written for insurance athletes, like mountain endurance sports like trail running and backcountry skiing and cross-country skiing and alpine travel. Just being in the alpine is an endurance. It talks a lot about how a lot of studies that came out in the 80’s and 90’s made us think – and obviously, almost all fitness studies are done on able-bodied cisgendered men. So you know, got to take it with a grain of salt. But almost all these studies had the hypothesis that if you want to increase your lactate threshold or your aerobic threshold, that you needed to train right at your threshold and thereby pushing the limits every time and stretching it out, like the way that you would stretch out a pair of pants. The past several years, they are starting to think, actually what you need to do is go back to a conversational pace or right around zone two where you can say a sentence but not really carry on an entire conversation, and that’s where you actually build your aerobic capacity. That’s where you can teach your body to optimize ATP transfer. So anyway, I’ve been trying to do more of that.
Joy: I think that’s amazing.
Claire: And it’s also nice to not feel like you have to be right at that limit all the time in order for your training to be effective.
Joy: That’s so true. A lot of the classes that I take on Peloton are what they call power zone training, which everyone probably knows what that is. But you do a test at the beginning to figure out your power zones, your own personal power zones. And they have this graph at the bottom so when you take the class, he’ll be like, “Be in zone two” and “Be in zone three.” And most of the time, I think it’s five zones – five or six, most of the time you’re only training in a two or three. You think that you have to go hard and push yourself to the limit. He’ll do like 45- and 60-minute classes where it’s literally going from two to three, maybe into four. I really like that, and it just feels really good.
Claire: Right. It’s not like a HIT workout the whole time.
Joy: Right. Which those are great too.
Claire: Right. There is a time and place for those, depending on what your goals are and if your goal is to really have a workout where you feel exhausted at the end. Sometimes that feels go good and cathartic. Like I said, sometimes I miss that. And sometimes, I’m like, I’m going to go make up a random workout that has a bunch of burpees and thrusters and back jumps, just get that release.
Joy: Right. You know what I’ve been wanting to do lately? Maybe I could do it with a group of people or something. Like, hey, everybody out there who wants to do seven minutes of burpees.
Claire: We used to just do that.
Joy: Yeah, that was an open workout, what? 2014 maybe?
Claire: Oh gosh, no. It was before that. It was like 2011.
Joy: Okay. Okay. So it was an open workout, for all you non-CrossFitters out there. It was so stupid. I just remember the WODcast Podcast talking about some gymnast guy that won because he had the spring and he was lighter. It’s just so funny how it’s stupid human tricks. That’s really what it is. But there is a part of me that’s like, I wonder what I would get –
Claire: 2012. It was 12.1.
Joy: There we go. There we go.
Claire: As many burpees as possible in seven minutes. “Seven Minutes of Burpees Revisited.” This is a Morning Chalk Up article from 2020. Anyway. Back we were trying to do stuff at home.
Joy: You know, all those workouts kind of come and go. I’ve seen a lot over the past years of the 75 HARD Challenge. Have you seen that one?
Claire: Oh yeah.
Joy: Ugh.
Claire: Okay, so hold on a second. They must have done this during the 2020 open.
Joy: Oh, they redid it?
Claire: I think they redid it as a stunt. As a live when they were doing the remote open workouts. Because it says in 2012, the winning numbers were – oh my gosh, it was Kristan Clever got 143. Andrea Ager, remember her?
Joy: Oh my gosh, what has she been up to?
Claire: She had a baby and moved to New York City. She got second. I’ll see if there’s any other names that you guys know. Jolene Grant, I think she won the first CrossFit Games. She got 136. Julie Foucher, 135. The rest of these are names that have faded into CrossFit –
Joy: The distance.
Claire: And then for the men, Scott Panchick, who only retired last year I think, got 161. None of these other names are –
Joy: What happened to Katrin?
Claire: She just didn’t qualify.
Joy: That’s the end of an era in my mind.
Claire: It’s totally the end of an era. And neither did Sarah. So they have now this thing called the Last-Chance Qualifier where if you are the person – because depending on the region that you’re in, I think it’s either the top three or the top four go to the Games. Or is it… top three, top four, top five? They’ve standardized it over the years, and I don’t remember off the top of my head. It used to be Latin America got one and the Atlantic region got four – it didn’t make sense.
Joy: I remember that, yeah.
Claire: I don’t know if they’ve standardized it. But the point of the story is that if you missed the Games – if you were that one podium spot off, then they take all those people and have them compete together.
Joy: Okay, okay.
Claire: Let’s see here. The Last-Chance Qualifier, I think it was last weekend. Based on continent, the athletes eligible to compete are from North America 6th-8th place, Europe 6th-8th place, Oceania 4th-6th, Asia 3rd-5th, South America 3rd-5th, and Africa 2nd-4th. From June 29-July 1, 30 men and women will compete in a series of workouts throughout the weekend. The top two men and top two women will get to go to the Games. Where is the leaderboard? Get me the leaderboard.
Joy: That was last weekend they did this?
Claire: It was last weekend. So it looks like the winners were Timothy Paulson and Jonne Koski for the men. And the women, Arielle Loewen from the States and somebody from Spain, Elena something. Katrin was in third so she didn’t make it still.
Joy: Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.
Claire: Yeah.
Joy: What do you think about that? What do you think about that?
Claire: I don’t know. I mean, it’s been so long since I followed it. I feel like I don’t really have any opinions about it.
Joy: I think I just have a feeling of…
Claire: My only feeling is, end of an era. I think we talked about this a little bit during the regionals, which we watched a little bit of. That first wave of people who were really in the spotlight when CrossFit – kind of the first CrossFit celebrities, CrossFit influencers, that first wave. They are now, more or less, all retired. And now it’s a completely different group of people that I barely recognize their names because we’re just not in the scene anymore. So I think that’s interesting, just to kind of be like, it feels like there’s been a passing of the guard in the last year or two. As there should be. I mean, can you imagine? Katrin, she won in 2015, I want to say?
Joy: It was a long time ago. It’s so interesting to me. I think about obviously our roots are in CrossFit – of podcasting. And I think about Brooke Ence. She had a moment. She had a moment, and then it just kind of went away. She just had a lucky break that day.
Claire: I think it actually was that for her, she really wanted to be a physique focus. She was an extra in Wonder Woman and Fantastic Four. She wanted to go that direction. I think there was one year where she tried to train for both at the same time. She tried to really train physique while she was training CrossFit and was like, I can’t. You can be very fit and active and very good at CrossFit while you’re training physique. But you can’t be a main competitor at that level.
Joy: But physique, you starve yourself.
Claire: Well, that’s the other thing.
Joy: I don’t mean to make light of it, but you are. You’re not fueling.
Claire: Yeah, you’re in a calorie deficit. Katrin has been competing in the Games since 2012. So can you imagine competing at that level for ten years? Doing that to your body for that long?
Joy: Your body is probably just like – they’re calling “uncle.” Uncle, please. And then, I know we’re on a little CrossFit tangent, but we’re going to end here. Dave Castro coming back.
Claire: Also something I don’t know anything about.
Joy: Don’t know much about it. I just saw that Morning Chalk Up article that he’s returning to CrossFit HQ after being fired. I don’t know what that is going to entail, nor do I super care. It’s just kind of like –
Claire: It’s almost like watching life of someone unfold via Facebook that you were close with in college. And then you meet up with a mutual friend, which is you and me, and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, did you see that Tiffany got engaged?”
Joy: He vapes now.
Claire: And it’s like, “Oh my gosh, do you know the guy?” “No, I don’t know him, but he looks really nice.” This is, I feel like, that caliber of a conversation where we’re referring to someone who we used to be close with, we have a mutual close friend, and then we needed some distance from them.
Joy: It’s totally like when I go home to Arizona to all my high school friends and I’m like, “What’s the hot goss?” We still want to talk about the people we went to high school with and what the drama is. We’re like, it’s 25 years later, but we’re still like, “Tell me all the gossip.”
Claire: You still want to know. Who is getting divorced?
Joy: Who is getting divorced? Tell me. Tell me everything. And then I also want to read a really cute email that we got a couple of weeks ago when we did the airport breakdowns. Rosie wrote in and said, “When the book The Fault in Our Stars came out, I thought it was about astronomy. I started reading it at the beginning of a flight – “
Claire: No. No, no, no, no. No.
Joy: “I started reading it at the beginning of a flight and cried until we landed. Thankfully the two strangers on either side of me decided to pretend that nothing unusual was happening as I was shakily turning the pages and blowing my nose for the 20th time.” And then she said, “P.s. if you read this on the podcast, please feel free to shout out my cousin Sarah. She is the mom of two young kids and working full time, basically being a superhero all day every day. She and I have listened to you since the GGW days, and we love you two.” Thank you, Rosie and Sarah. That’s such a great story.
Claire: If you guys don’t know about The Fault in Our Stars, first of all, where were you in the – what year did that book come out? Let’s look it up. Now it’s a movie. The movie came out in 2014, so when did the book come out?
Joy: By the way, I got really confused when people started calling the decade of 2000 to 2009 the “aughts.”
Claire: Oh yeah,
Joy: Have you heard of that?
Claire: Oh yeah, I’ve heard about it.
Joy: I was like, what does that mean? I guess it’s the equivalent term used in British –
Claire: As “the teens” or the equivalent of the teens.
Joy: Noughties, they call it noughties. So now they call it the “aughts.” Interesting.
Claire: Anyway, this book came out in 2012. It’s about two teenage cancer patients finding love. Just imagine how tragic and sad that is.
Joy: So tragic.
Claire: So tragic and sad. I remember reading it. It was definitely an airplane read, but it would be a tearjerker.
Joy: If you weren’t ready. Have you ever been surprised by a movie or a book that you just bawled your eyes out? I have two.
Claire: Go ahead because I don’t.
Joy: It’s stupid now, because you’re like, “Joy, what were you thinking?” Marley & Me.
Claire: I have not. I will not.
Joy: No, no, no. I thought that was going to be a cute story about a dog. I watched the movie. I had a full-on meltdown at the end of that movie. This was even before I had a dog. I can’t imagine watching it now with dogs. And then the other one is Dear Zachary.
Claire: I’ve never even heard of that one.
Joy: Oh my God. So I know I mentioned this at some point in our podcasting tenure here because that movie – it’s a documentary. It’s a true crime documentary. A filmmaker memorializes his murdered friend, and it’s all about this friend’s son. It’s called Dear Zachary. It’s a letter to his son about his father. So it’s the best friend making the movie to memorialize his murdered friend. I think I’ve said this before. I’m sorry if this is a repeat story. But I had a mask on. Not a mask, mask, but I put on a face mask while I was watching the movie. By the end, I was crying so hard that the mask was dripping down my face. So just a heads up if you really want – it’s a great documentary, but it took me by surprise.
Claire: Gut wrenching, yeah.
Joy: Gut wrenching, crying, just oh my goodness.
Claire: I am pretty good about not watching movies that I think are going to be like that. Maybe the only time where I’ve had an experience like that, it was because it had to do with me. I was really sleep deprived, and this movie that should not have made me cry did make me cry. I’ve never done that. I’m pretty good about not watching movies that I think are going to be sad when I’m in a fragile state. But sometimes it’s been more about me than the movie. I’m really tired or I’ve had a big day, and then I’ll watch something. A movie that shouldn’t make me cry – like crying in a Hallmark commercial type of situation.
Joy: Oh totally. When you watch the nature documentaries. I don’t know, something about nature makes me cry.
Claire: Nature is brutal.
Joy: Nature is brutal. Let’s end on a light note. Did you watch anything fun lately?
Claire: Surprising. I always say this. I’m not really watching anything recently. Okay, I did read some books when I went on my surf trip to Mexico that I would like to talk about now. Have I already talked about these?
Joy: No.
Claire: I don’t think so. So I read two books. I used to read all the time. I was an English major in college, which means at any given moment I was reading like five books. And then before I had kids, I read a lot. I was always in the middle of something. Since having kids, I just don’t read as much. And it’s because I am so exhausted by the end of the day. Any little moment throughout the day – it’s really hard to sit down for ten minutes with a book, and when you have kids it’s really hard to find more than ten minutes of uninterrupted time. And when it’s bedtime, I want to go to bed. So I took two books with me on my surf trip to Mexico, and I read them both. The first one I read was Braiding Sweetgrass, which has been recommended to me dozens and dozens of times. It’s written by a woman who is a Native American who is a botany professor. The whole book is about trying to reconcile the current world that we live in with the native concepts of honorable harvest and really recognizing the earth as part of the human – that we’re all connected. Versus as viewing nature and humans as separate and thinking about how humans are part of the natural world, as opposed to humans are managing the natural world. It was really, really good. I will say, it’s a little bit of a slow read. It’s all essays. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but that’s not really what I was expecting. So it was a little bit of a slow read, but I really enjoyed it, and it really gets you thinking a lot of the processes that we take for granted and the availability of things that we take for granted. And the other book I read is another one that has gotten a lot of recommendations, which is the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which I loved also. Very, very different. It went very, very fast. So if you’re going to take those two books on vacation, read Braiding Sweetgrass first because if you try to read that one second, it will feel like you’re stuck in the mud.
Joy: Slowing down.
Claire: I would say it did live up to the hype. The only thing I didn’t like about it, if you’ve read this – this is not a spoiler, but if you’ve read it, I’m curious if you have the same – so what it is is this woman is a journalist, and she is contacted to write the biography of this aging but once very, very famous starlit. It would almost be like if you had been contacted to write, if Marilyn Monroe was still alive today and you were writing her biography, and she’s never written a book or spoken to anyone. It really just follows that. And through that, she tells the story of this actress. The journalist whose name I’m forgetting right now, who is sort of the main character, the only part about the book that I didn’t like was I can’t stand her dialogue. There was something about how her dialogue was written that was too on the nose. It didn’t feel like real human speak. So that drove me a little nuts. But great book, really recommend. I also have been listening to… I am always listening to some random leadership book. Oh, and the other one I was going to say – I tried to start reading The Body Keeps the Score.
Joy: Oh, Bessel van der Kolk, yeah.
Claire: Over 30% of Americans witness trauma in their childhood, witness a parent being beaten. And I was like, “And I cannot.” Got to be in the right mindset for that.
Joy: Yeah, that’s a really intense book. One of the leaders in trauma as far as the counseling world goes, I did a training with him last month. It became kind of hyped up. I think social media hyped it up. It’s been around for a long time. But it basically talks about how you store trauma in the body. This is a big theory in EMDR therapy. It’s good. And it’s intense. But it talks a lot about trauma. I would recommend a lighter version, if you guys want to learn more about trauma and how it shows up in your life, would be to listen or read Dr. Gabor Mate. He is phenomenal, and I would actually prefer him over Bessel van der Kolk.
Claire: That’s good to know. Because a lot of my friends have read The Body Keeps the Score and are like, “It’s so mind blowing, these connections. You have to read it.” And as soon as I started reading it –
Joy: No.
Claire: I was like, I’m going to have some trauma from this book.
Joy: I don’t mean to be critical, but when I did his training, it’s very old-school thinking. He hasn’t evolved much with the way that he thinks about trauma.
Claire: Okay, okay.
Joy: So when I listened to him speaking – he’s done a lot of great work. Don’t get me wrong on that. I’m not trying to be critical critical. But as someone who has been in the field as long as I have, there’s been a lot of evolution on how we treat trauma and how we think about trauma. I always have a chuckle when things become mainstream that have been around for so long. I’m like, but there’s so much different work. So anyone out there who wants to have a different viewpoint of trauma and how you work through trauma and how trauma shows up for you is Dr. Gabor Mate. I’ve posted this a few times, but if you ever go to the Last Day podcast, the interview with him is phenomenal. I feel like I got more out of that podcast than I did sitting in a two-day training with Bessel van der Kolk.
Claire: Okay great. Hot tip.
Joy: Just an FYI.
Claire: Well I think that’s it for us this week. Kind of all over the place.
Joy: All over.
Claire: Don’t forget to support our sponsor, Ned, helloned.com/JOY or use discount code JOY. Check out their stuff. We love it all. You can’t go wrong. And if you feel like you went wrong, then they have a 30-day money back guarantee on your first order, so give them a shot. You can find us on Instagram, @joyandclaire_. You can find us on our website joyandclaire.com. You can email us, thisisjoyandclaire@gmail.com. Thank you for hanging in there with us. We will talk to you next week.
Joy: Bye, everybody.
Claire: Bye.
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