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Here he cuddles. Hello and welcome to Let Me Bore You To Sleep. My name is Jason Newland and my website is jasonnewland.com. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.
Just laughing at this little dog that I've got. What are you doing? Are you going to lay down near my feet? He wants to play. And he whines if he doesn't get to play.
He wants to play right now. Don't you? Yeah? He's trying to bite me now. Oh, so if you don't... Oh, that was a weird noise.
Can you hear him? Hey, I'm playing with you. Still, I can do this and do both things at once. There you go.
Look. Hey. So what I've done is I've got myself, or I've got him, a bark collar or an anti-bark collar.
And it came in the post today. Unfortunately, I need to now get an anti-whining collar. What are you whining for? What are you whining for? What are you doing? That's part of the reason I haven't made a recording for about a week because it just seems that every time I go to make a recording, he starts barking.
Come on. Get on my lap. Come on.
That's a good boy. Good boy. Hopefully, that'll be enough.
Give him some attention. That'll be okay. So, yeah, I made a recording probably about five days ago.
It wasn't one of these. It was a hypnosis recording. And I was editing it.
I had to edit it because he was barking through it. So I just kept quiet while he barked. Then when he stopped, I carried on talking.
It's a little bit distracting, if I'm honest. And the next day, I came to edit it. And I had it on the speaker.
And every time he barked on the recording, he barked in real life. So he was barking at himself, barking. Weren't you? I can hear his heart.
He's got a fast heartbeat. So I kind of just, I got a little bit, you know. That's a cute sound.
He does this little yawn. He does like having his tummy rubbed, though, don't you? Hey, I'm not going to let you go. I'm not going to drop you.
Well, okay, I won't drop you. I promise. Kind of.
Okay, I won't. I might do. I don't know.
Now, I've had him for Saturday. What's this? Two weeks in two days. So in two weeks, I haven't had him for two weeks in two days, because that'd be two days.
He makes the weirdest noises. This is my podcast, Vinnie. It's not your podcast.
It's my podcast. So it'll be two weeks on Saturday. So I've got two more days.
It'll be two weeks. And he's a handful. He really is a handful.
It's not an easy task looking after a little puppy. I mean, he's nine months old, so he's not, he is little, and he is still little, you know. He's never going to get big because he's a Jack Russell.
He's a miniature. And apparently, I looked online to find out where the origins of his breed came from. And according to the internet, which isn't always correct, but according to the internet, his breed was created by a dog breeder who was also a reverend, a reverend Russell.
And he bred this type of dog in order to fox hunt, which is grim, you know. Now the ironic thing is, if you saw him in a field, you'd actually think he was a fox, because he's a fox colour. He's red.
Well, maybe not as red as a fox, but he's not far off it. Definitely is a red colour. And he could be like a fox baby, baby fox.
So it's almost like he's become maybe his grandparents, or his parents, maybe did a bit more than hunt the foxes, if you know what I mean. I don't know. Maybe they sat up high, maybe they fell in love.
Maybe they went down the hole, not a euphemism, I mean the actual, you know, hole in the ground, entered the hole, and fell in love with the lady fox, or the man fox, and decided to stay there, not go home. You think that's what happened? Actually, it makes sense if it was the girl fox, girl dog went down there, and then, you know, fell in love with the male fox, and then had a baby that was red. And then he was part of that, hey? I don't know if all of his brothers and sisters were red.
Were they? Were they red as well? Hmm. Was your brothers and sisters red? He's got his shirt, he's got his, he's resting his chin on my left shoulder. I'm just rubbing his tummy.
Oh. So sorry for those who've maybe missed the recordings. Heidi sent me a message yesterday, or today, asking me where, where are you? I think it was Heidi.
So Heidi, I'm here. Thanks Mary, Heidi, a couple of others that sent messages. Yeah, I'm fine.
I'm just, I did have a bit of a cough, to be fair, last week. So I was kind of having a bit of problems with making recordings. So I was coughing.
Now I'm talking about coughing, I'm starting to cough. But I've been a lot better lately. I mean, I had to miss a family get together because I was coughing so much.
I didn't, I wasn't sure if it was a cold or, you know, because I was sneezing a bit and a bit of a runny nose and I thought, oh, I really don't want to be taking that down to my family and spreading that to everyone. Just in case it was the beginnings of the flu or, you know, or just the cold. I mean, it's very, very inconsiderate of me to take a cold into a healthy house.
Because, you know, they, especially this time of year, and my dad's a bit elderly now, I guess. I don't know what, what constitutes elderly. I mean, he's, I don't know, 77.
It's quite, quite, is that old? It's elderly-ish, isn't it? 77, nearly 80, blimey. And you know, I quite wanted to go and see them, but it's, as I said, I didn't really feel it's right to be going there and coughing over everyone at the dinner table and stuff, and the traveling and that. So I didn't go in the end.
But if I had gone, like, so I was planning to go on the, it would have been the Saturday, I'd have gone up there for Sunday. So I'd have stayed over Saturday night, maybe and come back. I wouldn't have met this little boy, because he needed a home.
And my friend was sort of looking, trying to find a home for him, for someone else, on their behalf. And it was kind of important to try and get it done as soon as possible, and kind of landed in my home, didn't you? Landed on my lap. So if I had gone away, I wouldn't have him here with me now.
So it's one of those weird things, you know, where, okay, it's a shame. It would have been nice to get to go visit and see my brother and that. And I don't see him very often, my little brother.
But on the same side, or the flip side, rather, I wouldn't have this bundle of joy. So yeah, things work in a weird way sometimes, don't they? So I've got him now. And I've, to be, for the last week, was it one, nearly two weeks, for the first week at least, I wasn't even sure if he wanted to be here.
I mean, I didn't know if he liked me, if he didn't like me, if he, you know, I'm not really sure what he wanted, really. And no, don't touch the mic, good boy. And he, he was sniffing the microphone.
What does it smell of? It can't smell of anything, surely. And then when we go out, and I take him out every single day. Oh, you want to get down? Do you want to get down or do you want to? How about this? This is, this is comfortable, isn't it? No? Or do you want to get down? Do you want to get down or do you want to stay up there? Hey, what do you want? What do you want to do? It looks like he wants to get down, but when I hold him, he's holding on to me.
They get kisses. Oh, you want to get down? You want to get down? No? I don't know. I find him hard to read.
You know, I guess I haven't had him long, so it's going to take us both quite, oh, he does want to get down. Okay, there you go. Good boy.
You go and find something to destroy. He's very good at destroying things. Last night, he wasn't in here.
He was in the bedroom and I was in here in the living room. And I thought, he's being too quiet. I can't hear him.
I can hear something, but I can't quite make out what it is. So it didn't sound like. So I don't know if the collar is working or not.
I have to have a re-look at the settings because I don't want it to vibrate when he makes a sound because, you know, I ain't got no issue with him talking to me and just talk, you know, all that. And it's the barking. That's the only time to try and train him to not bark or not bark as much.
I don't care if he barks every now and then, but he has these little barking fits, don't you? Yeah, you do. And one of the times he likes to do it for some reason is at night. So I'm usually in bed by about 10.
I know it's a bit early, but it's just how things are now for me. So I get in bed about 10 and I'm an old man now, an old man. He doesn't want to go to bed at 10 because he's young and he lets me know and he causes such a fuss.
Barking, barking. He's done it for three nights in a row now. And three nights in a row in the end, because he came in the bedroom, jumping on the bed, jumping off, wanting to play, wanting, you know, it's like, it's not his fault, is it? He's a kid.
He wants to play, but I'm in bed. You know, and I don't want him barking late at night. It's 10 o'clock.
It's not late. It is late. It's too late to have a dog barking.
If you live in a flat, a share in a building as I do, it's not fair on the neighbours. I don't want them to be complaining or to be kept awake by him. It's not even being kept awake.
You know, someone's trying to watch telly or, you know, they just, they don't have to hear a dog barking and he's so high pitched. So he's now eating. What was he eating? Bone, I think.
Yeah. So, um, this, we've been going through this ritual the last three nights and I don't really want to keep reenacting it because it's, it's like a defiant child. He just won't back down and I'm not backing down.
And I think, well, he's kind of used to me backing down. I think he's used to getting his own way. And I think he's had his own way in the past.
He's been the boss. And all right. What he's doing is he's ripping up my underpants.
He's basically destroyed two pairs of my underwear. I say underpants, they're boxer kind of boxer underpants things. They're not Y-fronts.
Do Y-fronts even exist anymore? I don't know. I guess even exist anymore. Didn't need the anymore bit, did we really? Even or more anymore.
Do they even exist or do they exist anymore? Didn't need both those words. Nevermind. Hmm.
Yeah. He's, he basically, he had one pair of pants that he got from my dirty laundry at the bottom of my bed and I just had to just leave it because he'd ripped them to bits. Now, I thought that, I thought that the pair that he was ripping up was that same pair, but it's not.
So he's actually ripped and destroyed two pairs of my pants. He's got one of my socks that is now part of his collection, part of his toys. Would not let me remove it.
If I pick it up, he grabs it. And, oh yeah, last night, or was it this morning? Oh, it was sometime anyway. I was sitting here and I'm hearing a noise, but it doesn't, it's not like a familiar sound.
There's always the odd sound going on around here. There's always something, you know, yeah, someone in the garden or the attic. There's the, we've got a zoo up there.
It was something, but it was an unfamiliar sound. So I get up and I sneak into the bedroom. So I walk very, very slowly and quietly because I want to see what he's doing.
I really want to see what he's doing. And, oh no, wait a minute. No, now this is earlier.
This is a different thing right now. He's found a cat, a plastic bag on the floor that he's going to inspect. He's inspecting it.
There used to be chocolate in there. You're right. And you're never going to taste chocolate because chocolate is wrong.
You can't give dogs chocolate, can you? It's so annoying because you know, I look at the chocolate and I'm eating it and I'm thinking, I really wish I could share this chocolate with the dog, but I can't. It's so disappointing that I have to eat all the chocolate all by myself. Oh yeah.
Oh yeah. So this is last night. I wonder what he's doing.
I don't get up actually. I'm still sitting there and he comes running in and in his mouth is one of my shoes. Now, not the shoes I gave him to chew because I was told that he chews shoes and I thought, I'll give him a pair of shoes that I never wear.
I'm never going to wear. He can eat them. No, he decided on one that I wear regularly.
My normal shoes that I wear all the time. I took it off him and I went back. He didn't like that.
And I went back into the living room and into the bedroom rather. There's only two rooms. I should be able to remember which is which.
This is the one with the bed and this is the one with the telly. Well, you don't have a television in your bedroom. No, you know what? I don't have a television in my bedroom.
Purposely. I mean, you could say, well, it's always purpose. No one accidentally has a television in their bedroom.
I don't know if you can hear that. It's a chip man's turned up. Oh, he's not, not bothered by that.
Okay. Fair enough. Not barking.
Now the neighbor's about to come out of his front door. Will he bark at that or not? Cause he's yeah. He's barking.
Barking a little bit. I want to know if the collar's working. All right, mate.
I think the idea of the collar is that it's a training thing. So eventually you won't have to wear it. You're only supposed to have it on for up to 12 hours a day.
So I'll leave it on him for a while, maybe tonight and take it off and during the day tomorrow. And just put it on in the evening so that he doesn't make too much noise. But what was weird is, Oh yeah, I'll go into the bedroom and I didn't even realize at this point that I didn't look inside the shoe.
It ripped out the inner sole. It ripped it. It was just all on the floor.
It ripped it to bits completely. I can't wear it anymore. I can wear it and I will wear it, but only in the garden.
I can't go out in it anymore. I'll end up with like a major blister or something because it's just digging into me. But I can, it's enough.
It's okay to just go into the garden for five minutes. Oh dear. So he basically went for the wrong shoes.
Didn't touch the others. And then today, this is when I went in there, sneaked in there. Was it today or was it last? I don't know.
I think it was today. But the lights, yeah, it was dark in there. So the lights needed to be turned on.
I could hear him and I thought, well, has he got hold of my shoes? Because I put them high up. So how has he got hold of them? No trainers. He got hold of my trainers and he was doing exactly the same thing.
So I turned the light on and there he was with my trainers, sneakers, whatever you want to call them. They're old. They wore, you know, I don't know, for years and they're not very good.
And he was eating one of them. He's basically going to try and eat the entire building, I think, eventually. One thing he likes to do is he likes to bite his lead.
So when we're out, the lead, the leash, whatever you want to call it, he bites it. That's him playing. The thing is, he bites a hole in it.
So I'm concerned that one day it'll just snap, even though it's a brand new one. I mean, I say brand new. I got it Sunday, not this Sunday, but the Sunday after.
Less than two weeks old. But I don't want it breaking when we're on the main road. Because he will just run.
He's got no sense. A lot of dogs don't, you know, like humans don't, do they? But he will just run in whatever direction he wants. And I can't catch him.
He's too fast. To be fair though, I think if I wanted to catch him, I could, but I'd hurt him, if that makes sense. So if he's running away, if I wanted to really grab him, I could, but it would be grabbing him and potentially he'd be hurt.
Which wouldn't matter if I was saving him from going into the road. So that, you know, he has some discomfort, some scratches or whatever, you know, but compared to the alternative, then yeah, that's okay. But I can't do that when he's running around in the house or in the garden when I'm trying to put his lead on, because, you know, I don't want to hurt him.
He's only little. Can't really grab. There's a bit around his neck that's always there with animals, isn't it? Loose skin.
He just barked then. And his, the collar went off. Made his sounds.
I don't know if it's just doing a sound rather than a vibration, but it stopped him in his tracks. Like, what's going on? Didn't like it. And he kind of calmed down really quickly.
It worked. I think what it is, I've gone online and it's said that often you just distract them. You know, if a dog's barking, especially this breed, if they, if they are barking, sometimes all you've got to do is just wave a toy at them or give them a treat.
It distracts them. The thing is, I don't want to give him a treat because it's almost feels like I'm rewarding him for bad behavior. Rewarding him for barking.
So just every time he wants a treat, he'll just start barking. It's, you know, not that barking's bad behavior. It's just natural, but it's just one of those things.
I don't need him to do tricks. I don't need him to do anything really. Just want him to be happy.
But I do need to not have so much barking. Just for the sake of the neighbors and my own sanity. And so that I'm able to make recordings because like he started barking then and he stopped really quickly.
Quite often once he starts, he keeps going for about 10 minutes. Not like solidly barking for 10 minutes, but hello. Hello, baby.
You want to get up? Okay. He wants a cuddle. I always tell when he wants a cuddle because he doesn't try and pull, pull away.
Like it's a, it's a game. Quite often he'll like do that and I'll go to pick him up and he runs away. But he actually wanted to be picked up.
You want to be picked up? You want cuddles? You want cuddles with daddy? With daddy? Daddy cuddles. Daddy cuddles. It's nice to have a dog that I can pick up as well.
I know a lot of people don't like, um, some men don't like little dogs because it's not macho. I want a macho dog. I want a big tough dog.
It's like, you know what? What's the matter? I don't need a big dog. You don't need a big dog. Besides, this is one tough little monkey.
Aren't you? Terry is a tough dog. You were tough, toughy, aren't you? You want to get down? Okay, get down then. Why? You're the one that wanted to get up.
Why are you making, giving me a hassle? What are you giving me a hassle for? Huh? What are you giving me? Hey, stop biting me. Ouch, ouch. Yeah, he's a tough little thing.
I mean the, the old Jack Russell's, those teeth. I wouldn't want to. He snapped at me a few times.
Hello. Oh, he just wants to play. You want to play? Okay, I'll play.
Okay, that's it. There you are. I'll play by letting him bite me.
That's him playing, biting me. Stop biting me. So yeah, he's, um, one of the things that just, well not disrupts him, but he still sees his mum like his previous, the person that he was with before me, for three months.
Because I'm his fourth home. Fourth and last, eh? Yeah. Are you mine forever, daddy? Talking like a baby.
Ow, ow, ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow. So yeah, he loves her.
He really loves her so much. And you imagine, he's nine months old. He spent the last three months with this lady and a boy, her son.
He, you know, he sees her and he just wants to go home with her because she lives literally just across the road. And it confuses him because he doesn't know where he is. He just doesn't know what's going on.
Because every time he sees her, he goes absolutely nutty. Don't you? Eh? And it's normal, isn't it? And why, why wouldn't he? He doesn't understand, like why, why is he suddenly not with her anymore? Eh? Why is he? I imagine because they got, he's got, she's got a little, well no, it's not a little kid, but he's a teenager. I imagine he got a lot of attention from the kid as well.
So they had a lot of play time. Didn't you, eh? Yeah, lots of play. Two people to play with.
And so just an old, an old fogey like me, ow, that's my little finger. He looked at me like, yeah, so just give me another finger then. If the little finger hurts, give me your thumb.
Now the thumb hurts as well. He's still teething. He's still, he's got a couple of teeth coming through still.
So he's trying to, he's just, biting is his thing. He's now sitting on his back legs with his two front hands up. Okay, look, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
Okay, ow. Blimey. I'm surprised he's got any fingers left.
You clearly don't want to go out because otherwise you'd be sort of saying, ow. That hurt. That hurt, ow.
That actually did hurt. I don't see any reason for you to be like that. That was just uncalled for.
Uncalled for. Be gentle. You can be gentle.
Do you even know how to be gentle? Ow. Ow, God, blimey. I'll start biting you in a minute.
I'll bite your back. I'll bite your back. I'll bite your back.
Yeah, I will. You won't like it then. You don't know what it's like to be bitten.
You don't know, do you? You've never been bitten probably. I'll bite you. We'll change you out to den young.
Ow, ow, ow. Now really, the ideal situation is to have something that he bites and I hold, that he's not brought anything for me to play with, which he normally, well, sometimes he does. He brings over his teddy bear or his a slipper or, I don't know, I won't touch the underwear.
Ow. Hey, ow. Stop it.
Stop it. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. That hurt.
Yeah, I was calling him over. He was in the garden. My friend said, shout at him and he'll come up.
I said, no, I don't want to shout. I don't want to have that kind of, if I want him to not bark, then he's going to want me to not shout. It's the equivalent, isn't it? Of shouting.
I don't know if it's the equivalent, but I don't want to be shouting. As it is, I've moaned. I moan too much at him when he barks.
I try to make it into a joke so that I don't get annoyed. Sometimes, sometimes, you know, especially if it's early hours of the morning or something like that. As I pick him up and I say, what is it, Lassie? What is it? Is it a stranded whale? Is it, oh, what is it? Is it someone trapped in a cave? Lassie, is it someone trapped in a cave? Or is someone just opened their door? Someone just opened their front door and gone out? Is that what it is, Lassie? Someone's just opened their door and then closed it.
That was worth letting me know about, wasn't it? Yeah, waking up the whole neighborhood because someone's closed a door. And he looks at me like, you're just, you've got too much time on your hands, mate. You know, I'm a puppy.
What's your excuse for just being like that? I'm barking. I'm just getting to know the world. I've only been in nine months.
You've been there 90 years. I've not been in 90 years. He said, well, you look like you have.
I said, well, yeah, it's because I haven't had any sleep since I got you. Oh, here's what I do. The last three nights, if he starts barking when I'm in bed, I just say, get out.
That's what I do. I say, out. I point to the door, out.
I give him a chance to get on the bed and snuggle or to relax or whatever he wants to do. But if he barks and he wants, you know, he's causing a fuss, out, out. Three times, he leaves.
He walks out. I don't hear from him for the rest of the night. Done.
Now, I don't want him to feel he has to come into the living room and he's got his own bed in here and everything on the settee. He's got his own bed. It's not like a made up bed, you know, like a proper sofa bed with sheets and stuff.
It's actually, it's a dog bed, but it's on the spare seat. And I'm quite happy for him to come and sleep on the bed. The thing is, when he's in the bedroom, he seems to be more reactive to sounds outside.
He didn't make one sound the whole night, like from, I don't know, 11 till six, something like that. Seven, 11 till seven. In fact, I got up twice to go to the toilet.
More information you needed. And I looked in, I left the light on in here. He seemed to prefer to have the light on for some reason.
And he looked up at me. I went to, I was a bit, the first time I was like, I don't know, I didn't have my phone on me. So I couldn't see what the time was, but it's probably one o'clock or 12 o'clock or something.
And then I get up again, I look at him, he looks at me and I just pretty much, I'm too tired to really engage. And then I get up again the next time and it was probably, I think I went, I came and got my phone and it was like 3.30 or something, 3.40, 3.50 in the morning. So I took my phone, put it into the bedroom, just so I can see what time it is later on.
And I went back into bed. Someone opened the door again downstairs and he started barking. And not only did the beep, beep, beep like that, but it also vibrated.
And he was looking for the sound. He was looking, he's still looking on the floor for it. Where did it come from? And it stopped him.
Honestly, within seconds, instead of barking for the next two minutes or a few minutes, it's just stopped him. Almost instantly, he still barked, but then he stopped. And he's like a few and I was like, how weird.
Now this is, the original collars used to be electric, electric, didn't they? Obviously they're inhumane so people don't use, well, they're not really widely used. But I managed to get one. No, I didn't.
And this is kind of the equivalent, you know, in a sense of more just a distraction. It doesn't hurt him, there's no physical pain. It's just weird.
Like he gets a vibration. He gets the sound to start with, which is like that. And then there's the vibration.
If he continues barking, the vibration kicks in. I just heard it. It's like, like that.
And he was like that. Straight away, just stopped. It's amazing.
Why can't I have it on him all the time? I'm only allowed to have it on 12 hours a day. It's, I mean, it might not be the most comfortable thing, but I don't think it's, it's not tight on him at all. It's no tighter than his collar that he's already got on.
It's, I mean, if anything, I mean, if he's going to complain about anything, it'd be the chastity belt. You know, it's got to be a bit more uncomfortable. But you know, I've got to wear one.
He has got to wear one. That's how I see it. So I don't know if it's, he doesn't, he hasn't got any, what's-its.
But his other thing still works. So not still works, but it still, it still, it still makes an appearance. I'm just trying to just be very vague with my language.
It still makes an appearance. And he welcomes the appearance. You could say he almost encourages it.
You could go even further and say he definitely encourages it to make an appearance. And you could take it further that he thoroughly enjoys every appearance. He really makes, I was going to say, makes a meal of it.
He really seems to enjoy exploring. He's very exploring. Look, he took me for a walk earlier and he took me for a walk.
A little bit annoying because at the moment, I don't know where you are or what the weather's like where you are, but it's proper icy now. We had snow on either Saturday or Sunday. I forget.
I can't remember. I think it was Sunday. We had snow.
Very happy. It might have been Saturday, but it was in the evening anyway. It was in the evening and I was very excited, but it wasn't as good as having snow in the daytime because I couldn't see it.
I couldn't see the snow. When it snows during the day, there's something so magical. You know, what I do is I actually open the curtains wide and pull the net curtains across, sometimes even open the windows just so I can see the snow falling.
I love, I love snowfall. But because it was at night, I didn't even know it's snowing. I thought it was just the frost.
I thought, wow, the frost has really spread because the frost had been spreading throughout the afternoon. And it's so cold, like really, really cold. And then it was snowing and it was so cold, it was obviously gonna settle.
There was no way it was gonna thaw. So whatever came down was gonna settle. And I thought, wow, I was like, lovely.
But it was too dark to enjoy it. But then by, I don't know, 10, 11, I went out for a walk with him and it was light outside because of the snow. So that was quite cool.
The problem is it's now ice because it's been so cold. It's been minus for, I think, over a week. And the ice is, now I normally try to avoid going out when it's icy.
But sometimes, you know, you can't avoid it. You can't, you have to go out. But I try to kind of, you know, usually, usually, I say usually, generally, the ice will melt fairly quickly, like on the paths and on the roads because of the cars and stuff.
But it's really sticking around. And the gritters, the council normally send gritters, like they sprinkle this grit, which is kind of like sand and dirt or whatever, onto the roads and maybe pavements to make it safer for the children and the parents delivering the children to the school. I haven't done that this year, not in my road, not where the school is.
And apparently they did something today, they cleared one of the pavements. And it was just like, oh, okay. So I'm waiting for it to, not to heal, but for it to, you know, thaw out.
But I've been wearing these boots, so I didn't, I stopped wearing my shoes, my normal shoes, the ones that he's destroyed, one of them. Bless him. So weird, he's, he's managed to get hold of a Maltesers packet.
And he's lying down and he's resting his chin on the Malteser. It's an empty Malteser packet. The closest he's going to get to eating chocolate.
It's such a shame that he's got, he's got a daddy that loves the chocolate. I could have, if he could eat chocolate, it'd be, it'd just, it'd be perfect house for him. Oh, well, I won't eat your food if you don't eat mine.
How about that? Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much.
So for the last, well, since the weekend, I've been wearing my boots. So they are big, not big, but they're kind of trekking boots that I've had for, I don't know, a couple of years, but I've never worn them really. I've worn a couple of times, but just never really bothered.
So I thought, well, I need to wear them because of the weather. Because I know that my shoes have got holes in them at the bottom. So if they get, if I, if I walk into a puddle or something that's wet, which probably would be a puddle, wouldn't it? What else would be wet? Walk across the sea.
And, or doing handstands in the rain, then, yeah, maybe they'd get wet that way. But generally, you know, walking in the puddle, I guess. My feet get wet.
My socks get wet, which then dampen my feet. So I thought, well, I better wear these boots. And I was quite surprised at how well they held up to the overall weather.
They weathered up to the weather. Perfect for snow. Really good on ice.
I got a little bit cocky, a little bit arrogant when it came to the boots. Started to think, yeah, these are built for this. There's no way in the world I'm going to slip.
And I even started thinking, well, from a physics perspective, I'm 16 stone. If I balance properly, then my weight should keep me steady, should keep me, you know, balanced. And the amount of weight I've got should keep my feet on the ground with the help of gravity, I suppose.
So I got a little bit too overconfident, a little bit too... I didn't think I was Superman. I didn't. Not completely.
I wasn't like, oh, I'm invincible. No, not that so much. Just I started to think, yeah.
And having confidence, I suppose, it's not a bad thing. If you're walking around on ice, if you're walking around with completely no confidence, it's more likely, you know, perhaps that's going to be worse, but potentially, if you're imagining like falling over and whatever. So I'm quite confident.
I'm imagining that I'm staying on my feet and it's treacherous. It's really, really, really bad ice. It's not just, you know, from a negative perspective.
You could see the danger, you know, it's very slippery and I don't want to slip over, to be honest, I don't. And the problem is, with him, he just has a mind of his own and he wants to go different places. And this morning, for some reason, he decided to run in the road.
Now, he didn't get far, but he got far enough if there'd been a car going very fast that he could have, or a bicycle, he could have got hit. He caught me off guard. He like zoomed.
Now, I had him on the lead and, you know, he didn't get more than, I don't know, two foot away from me, but it was still two foot in the wrong direction. So I pulled him back like, wow, I just have to be more careful. Now, I suppose I was a little bit more flexible with him because I knew that there was no one around.
I was looking around and I also knew, well, you can hear the cars coming because of the amount of noise they make on the ice. It's so loud. So, I guess I was more aware than I was aware of.
More aware than I was aware of? Does that even make sense? But he decided to go the other side of the road and I followed him. Well, I didn't, I pulled him back, told him off, said oi. And then we went across and I nearly went over.
I slipped. I managed to catch my foot in. So the stepping off, the curb was higher because the snow, I guess, had been pushed onto the curb.
So it was a higher, so I kind of had to step down onto the road and it was just ice, pure ice, lumps of ice. And yeah, I knew I did slip. So I slipped a couple of times today, not in slip over, but I slid a little bit.
And that's, the next time was when I was in the field and I was coming back and I was like, he was running, he was trying to run home. I kept saying to him, stop. I try and say slow, go slowly.
I want him to get used to walking next to me at the side of the road. Because there's a country area that doesn't have pavements or sidewalks. It doesn't have anywhere to stand.
So if a car was to come round, you need to be right at the side and ideally move even further to the side, if you can, onto the mud or whatever. If there's enough room, then you can just stand still and they can see you and go around you. But he wants to walk in the middle of the road.
And I'm telling him, don't walk in the road. And there's all these humans walking in the road because it was safer than being on the pavement because there was less ice. I'm trying to teach my dog here and you're just doing the opposite.
They said to me, go away. Don't come back. Like, okay, fair enough.
A bit harsh. What's he doing? Maybe he likes the smell of chocolate. That's weird how quickly the collar quietened him down.
Very pleased with that. He's gone back in his, he's now sleeping. He's now gone back to bed in his bed.
Oh, he's lovely. My hope, here's my hope, is that it'll just get him used to not barking. You know, just a programming on what, you know, just to the point where he won't need the collar.
If I can take the collar off him after a couple of weeks or a month, brilliant. I mean, he can't have it on all the time, but you know, if I can take it off of him forever after a few weeks and other than just like playing around, barking and that, because there's different levels. It's different levels.
It's a certain bark, which is fine. It's not loud. And it's just him letting me know this, you know, but when he goes, it's that frenzy bark.
That is, it's not needed, not needed. Thank you, but it's not needed. That's kind of my my theophicy of it.
Anyway, so thank you for listening. My waffling's on about my dog. Waffles, that would be a good name for a dog, waffles.
Wiffle waffle. So I'm going to go.
I've been making quite a few videos for YouTube, been going back over the recordings just from the last 2022, just this year, the hypnosis stuff that I've done and I'm going to turn them, well I think I've done 8 today, I've made 8 videos, they're not uploaded, they're uploaded but they're not being released, they're being released over the next 4 days, one at 4 in the afternoon, one at 4 in the morning, I might change those times though, so it's basically, I'm trying to build the YouTube channel up and, excuse me, blimey, next year because
it's the 15th of December now, so we're half way through the month, next year I have a few plans, now one of the plans is I'd like to build my YouTube channel to the point where it's, well to a certain point that I want to grow it to, I want it to be a certain level, so I haven't decided what level I want it to be at, but I'd like it to be at, I don't know, I've got a huge amount of subscribers, 796 subscribers, it's gone up the last few days actually which is quite
nice, about one a day, still good though isn't it, I mean I started off 10th December, 792, then 793 the next day, 794 the next day, 795, 96, ok so it's 96 yesterday, still 96, 796, so I haven't even got enough subscribers to monetise, I won't be, I will have enough to monetise probably in the next month or so, but I won't until, I won't monetise until 2024 January, so I will spend the next year just trying to build up the audience, maybe get, it'd be nice if I can get like maybe 10,000 subscribers before
the end of the year, and I'm going to be uploading one or two new recordings every day, so that's my plan, so based on that I think 10,000 subscribers could be possible, it's a nice plan, and based on 10,000 subscribers, yeah I should be able to have, it's a nice start isn't it, it's a nice start, I know it's not really a start because I've been doing this since 2007 on YouTube, but this is kind of like a new beginning, kind of, and I started this, I kind of restarted my YouTube journey, journey is probably
not the right word, but yeah I kind of started, is it August?
Yeah August, July, July was a little tester, then August, and I've now got 63 videos, so there's one that was there before, and the rest, so I've got 60, I've made 62 new videos since July, or 61 new videos since August, so September, October, November, so that's three months, so it's two, four, six, twenty videos a month, how many is that a week?
That's a few isn't it, seven, fourteen, three a week let's say, I'm going to be doing two a day in 2024, at least two, maybe three, all new recordings, and my plan, this is my plan, there won't be any adverts on the podcasts for the whole of the year 2023, and then the adverts will start again in 2024 January, and my plan is to make one Let Me Boy To Sleep recording every day for the entire of 2023, every day, a new recording every day for that podcast, now there's a chance I might make some
videos, like proper video videos, not, so I'm making videos, but they're more like graphics, and animation, and stuff like that, you know, swirls, and you know, stuff, you know, with my voice, and some background music for YouTube, different music to the ones I do on here, on the podcast, so I might make some, I might record myself, we'll see, we'll see, we'll see, just see, see, see, see, see what happens, so yeah, I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 scheduled videos, so I must have made 8 today, yeah, I think I have
made 8, 8 videos today, maybe 7, 6, maybe I made a couple yesterday, I don't know, yeah, probably, probably, did I just see my phone light up, oh, yep, it's fairly time-consuming, but what I was surprised about is, considering some of these recordings are from like March time, maybe February time this year, is the sound quality is pretty good, so you know, why are you surprised, well, it's, I don't know, just, it seemed particularly good, just better than I remember, remember, but of what I've got, I've got the microphone stand through today, for my microphone
ears, you know, the 3deos, is it 3deos, 3deo, so I can now start to do the whisper recordings using those, so it's going to take me a little bit of planning, a little bit of preparation, a little bit of playing around to get it how I want it to be, and how I want it to sound, but once that is there, once I've got it in place, it should be groovy, should be really cool, so yeah, and it's a few things, I said I've got planned, the, I'm going to just, just see what happens, but
definitely next year, or in 15 days time, in January, I'll make a concerted effort to make at least one Let Me Bore You To Sleep episodes a day, for a whole year, what I might do is make a few, a few spare recordings, what I mean by that is maybe talk about stuff that's not necessarily about today, or about what's going on in my life, but maybe talk about a subject, or talk about uh, something or other, you know, like just, just whatever, and have a few of those, just as backup, in case some days
that I can't make a recording, or unable to do it for whatever reason, but my plan is to record, or to release one recording a day, well some people when they make podcasts, they will record everything back to back, they'll make, they might make, release three recordings, three podcasts a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but record them all on a Sunday, or a Saturday, all three recordings, and then spend the next day editing it, so yeah, you know, there's different ways of doing things, it's been weird, because it's something, it feels ages since I last did
a podcast, and it hasn't really been that long, hasn't been a long time, about five days, I think, since the last, I did one that I couldn't release, because I, well I've not been able to edit it yet, I can't edit on loudspeaker, I have to transfer it over to the other laptop, put the headphones in there, which I'm not sure how that's gonna work, because the headphones, yeah, that's a good point, how are the headphones gonna fit in there, we'll see, I'll figure it out, there's always ways around, so I'm gonna go, and say
thank you very much, thank you very much for listening, and I hope that you're keeping nice and warm in the weather, if you're obviously, not if you're in Australia, or in Thailand, or in Dubai, or in the Middle East, you know, it might be particularly warm right now, but if you're in a part of the country, or part of the world rather, that is got winter going on, then please keep warm, and I shall speak to you tomorrow, thank you very much for listening, remember to be kind to yourself, I have to think of a
different catchphrase next year, I don't know what, be a good little sausage, maybe that could be my new catchphrase, anyway, lots of love, bye.
Paragraph spacing and recurring name or title errors have been tidied. Because this began as a voice transcription, an occasional word or piece of punctuation may still be incorrect.