Michael Ritland
Appearances
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, so I said, you know, that is my number one thing. Like, I can't have an injury like that. I know there's no guarantees. I just want the training methodology to mirror that that is my number one goal, you know. And so it's been good. I mean, it is a little limited. They are strategic about...
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
you know, bringing certain guys in that, that go to their normal classes or there's times where I'll go to group classes, but even then, like my coach will say, Hey, I want you to roll with this guy or I want you to, you know, whatever.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It's just, you know. I mean, I think it was kind of that same thing with me. Like, we weren't going super hard. Yeah. It was a pretty normal roll, and it was just a weird angle and just kind of the exact wrong place at the wrong time kind of thing.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. What? I will say, compared to boxing, Muay Thai, it's still one that you can at least go easier paced.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, me either. I mean, I do think... Do you guys practice striking and takedowns? Takedowns, for sure.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I do think that's important. I mean, if... the practicality of it is, is a primary goal of yours. Uh, cause that's one thing I do see. I'm sure you see the same thing.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's always been, like, I don't compete. I don't have any interest in competing. And, you know, same with, like... I will say I find myself, even with my coach, kind of reminding him because he does compete. He's a pretty high-level guy. And the gym is pretty successful. A lot of competitors come out of there.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So they're very focused on pans and worlds and all of the big, big competitions. To me, the drawback with that is there's a lot of kind of fancier, this is the new thing right now, you know, type of stuff that I have no interest in, you know.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Well, and I think, you know, Hodger Gracie, I think, is the best example of. Like if you can do the basics or, I mean, whether it's pure jujitsu or even looking at the Dagestanis in MMA, I mean, you look at how dominant they are on the ground and look what they're catching guys like Charles Oliveira with, you know, a basic head and arm choke that he can't keep them from doing.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, it's like, so you don't need to be super fancy. I mean, to me, you were at the command, you know, to me, like I was never there, but I, I know enough about basics, whether it's in shooting or dog stuff or combatives or whatever, is that if you master the basics to the level where you never have to think about them, to me, that's a hard person to beat.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Well, I think also the fact that every SEAL platoon at a regular SEAL team Every time it starts back up, you have a new crop of a handful of brand new guys. So you're always resetting to that lowest common denominator. Crawl, walk, run. Do you ever get out of the crawl? You don't.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because you can't go faster than a bunch of 20-year-olds that just got out of buds. So you're always starting over, whereas... At the command, it's like you're starting with a bare minimum. It's just several years of experience.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I think, I mean, even compared to a regular SEAL team, I don't think they're doing as much combat swimmer nowadays either. But I mean, yeah, to me, there would be no reason to do an underwater mission that's not exclusively relegated to SDV. You know, there's just no reason for it.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I mean, there's so many things that, that can and probably will go wrong in that, that, uh, yeah. I mean, what a, what a horrible fucking environment to have to go into. Yeah. And those guys are masters at it.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, the Achille Loro was probably the closest thing, which I don't know if that was.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I don't remember. The only reason it's even fresh in my mind. Michael, look up the Achille Loro, which I have no idea how to spell.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, I think it's Achille like the tendon and then L-A-U-R-O, I think is how it's spelled. But the only reason it's even a little fresh in my mind is I actually just had Vice Admiral Harward on my show. I don't know if you remember him. I do. He was a SEAL Team 3XO when I checked in and then was the Commodore and...
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
A lot of the workers there, and so it's real hit or miss. It's like some people, you get in, and they're like, oh, shit. It's like they're almost scared of the gun, and they call their manager over or whatever.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So that's the closest thing. One time almost. They were trying. They were thinking very hard about it. I think to pick between a jumbo jet and a cruise liner, I'll still take the cruise liner. Oh, my God.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, there's no way to, I don't know how you, I mean, how do you even begin to try to do that? I've had thoughts. Sleeping gas. Yeah. Yeah.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It seemed that way. Picking it up was super easy. Yeah. Like they brought it out to me, like called my name and asked for my ID. Whereas like in Dallas, it's the huge.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I think, yeah, in just off-the-cuff thinking through it, if you're not going to sedate everybody... It's a pretty good idea, isn't it? It is. I would say that's probably the best idea, is just flooding it with ridiculous speed, where you're blowing past.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Right. But if you consider or think each row is a hallway- And so if you know that there are 30 rows and you have 30 guys and you just, even if it's north-south and you meet in the middle and now you're clearing each one, like, I don't know how else you do it. Like, I'd be curious to, I don't know. I would send in a dozen dogs. Yeah, yeah. Fucking people getting bit. Everyone's getting bit.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. You're not going to get shot. You're just going to get bit.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the misconception because, you know, so many people grew up with dogs and had pets and play fight with them. Yeah. There's a misunderstanding of, you know, when a dog who's bred, raised and trained.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
you know for generations to be very singly singular purposely built and driven to to injure people and you look at just from a kind of a physics standpoint of the you know pounds per square inch of pressure that they have and their pieces of spikes and serrated teeth you know um it's kind of akin to like for the people, because I run into it all the time.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I'm like, well, I'll just shove my hand down his throat, you know? And it's like, it's kind of like saying if you have an 18 volt DeWalt fucking drill bit or like say a wood drill bit, like you're going to spin it and you're just going to grab it and stop it.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of similarly ridiculous. Let me know how it goes.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I think until you get in a bite suit and putting it on, you can feel how heavy and thick. Yeah, it still hurts. It's like being wrapped with phone books. And you're like, I'm not even going to feel it. And they'll still break your skin and rip your flesh open even through all of that. I've been actually bit all the way through a bite suit before. It was actually working with Collin County.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It was a sheriff's department in North Dallas that they had this dog that they were having trouble getting him to let go. And he had, I think, 15 or 16 live street bites. And every single one of them wherever he grabbed was ruined. Like one guy was hiding. Tissue coming with? Yeah, I mean like all the way off. Yeah. And I mean like the entire muscle group.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Like one guy was hidden in a tree stump and all that was visible was his calf. And so the dog bit his calf and pulled his entire calf muscle off. Like not most of it. I mean, the way you would eat a fucking chicken leg, like pulled the whole fucking thing right off.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And that dog, admittedly, like I've worked with a lot of departments and a lot of times guys are like, you know, hey, this dog's a pretty hard biter. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure he is, you know, and. And these guys are like, you know, he bites pretty fucking hard. And I was like, okay. So I go in a semi-comp weight suit, which is like a middleweight.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It's not the super heavy training weight Michelin man fucking suits like most, like if it's your first time in a suit that they'll usually put you in. No gauntlets underneath. And, yeah, I remember when the dog first grabbed ahold of the outside of my forearm, I was just like, man, that motherfucker does bite hard. And it was a cold day.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
About 30 seconds later, my hand was wet and I was like, there's no way I'm fucking sweating. And I looked down and dude, blood is just streaming out of the suit down off of my hand. I was like, holy shit. And, uh, and the dog doesn't let go, you know?
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Well, I mean, it's just like jujitsu is. And for anybody out there that runs into a dog that attacks them on the street, like the pro tip piece of advice I'll give you is take their air away from them. Like you see people sticking their thumbs up their ass, picking up by their tails, trying to set them on fire. I mean, like spraying them with a hose, mace, all that shit.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Like if the dog has a collar, you're 10 steps ahead of everything. And something as simple as like if you take the backhand of your collar, kind of like a twist it. Yeah. Just roll it over, lift and lift straight up. It may take a few seconds. You can always get the dog off you by choking them.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So now from a training standpoint, from my perspective, it's a bad idea because- What if they don't have a collar? I would use a belt. Okay. Like if you don't have a belt, use a leash. I mean, find something.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can try. I mean, it's kind of like with people, like if you're in- Fucking PT shorts, the dog has no collar, and you're out in the middle of nowhere on a gravel road. You're shit out of luck. Um, long story short, have a fucking belt on you.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Why do you travel with your own koozie? It's made out of fucking wool and it's handmade. Okay. So that's really the gist of it. Yeah, it's a sentimental thing. Like everywhere. If you go anywhere, you take that thing with you. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, yeah, I mean, I traveled here with it. I flew with it.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But, um, if you don't like, yeah, you can try to grab their throat, uh, very, very minimal amount of success, uh, you know, with trying to do that though.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Um, and I would say that that behavior generally is also created, uh, you know, not to get too far in the weeds, dog psychology wise, but
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
That's, you know, for dogs that are bred that way, that's their kind of highest level of reward is being able to bite, which is why you probably ran into dogs that get really amped up when guys are stacked on a door and they're barking and fucking spinning.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Well, it's like a pressure cooker, right? Yeah. So it's the best way to think of their mind in that environment is like a pressure cooker. And if you use a scale of, say, 0 to 10, where once it hits 11, it explodes. And that's when the dog is redirecting to the handler, to a good guy itself.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Like, I've seen dogs that get so amped up and they're out of reach of anybody, they'll turn around and bite their own fucking leg. They're so wound up. But so in that environment, number one is you have to realize that that when the when the dog's mind is at that level, you're not going to reach it very easily through punishment.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And unfortunately, that's what what most people and trainers and handlers do is, you know, OK, we're stacked on a door. The dog's in the back. This context, the dog seen, you know, 500 times. And in every instance, he's gone in and bitten somebody. So. The one thing I tell everybody all the time is dogs don't think in a language, right? Which is hard to wrap your mind around. Makes sense.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
We, you know, think in a language, dream in a language, talk shit about the guy that you're behind at Lowe's in a language. But so with them, everything is an A plus B equals C, very simple association. And so the problem with that context is that it's always, you know, A is stacking on the door plus B, you know, going in equals C, you get a bite.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so when you've done that enough times to where that formula in the dog's mind creates a pattern where the presence of A is equals the anticipation of C, that's when it's a conditioned response on a problem. If C is an undesirable behavior, which in this case it is.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So the key, and I'm not going to say it's easy, but it's very simple, is you need to make A plus B not equal C enough times to where the dog questions it.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Correct. And so in that environment, instead of putting a prong collar or a remote collar on and punishing the dog, because again, the dog's been bred, raised and trained to be naturally forwardly aggressive and not take shit from anybody. So when that dog is at a 10 or a nine and you, you know, put, put punishment into them, that's when you create conflict between the handler and dog.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Interesting. And then that's when, when those problems now cascade and avalanche into a much bigger problem where now the dog is not going to let go when he's in the fight, because the other problem with, with that part of that equation is in training is the dog is on the bite. He doesn't want to let go. So what do we do? We make him let go, right?
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So what the, it's like an opposition reflex kind of thing. And so, The two ways that you combat that in the first scenario is instead of trying to punish it, I'll stand there with a clicker, which, you know, there's varying degrees of dismissiveness, I would say, within the working dog world as to how to approach it.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
There's still a lot of very archaic old school guys that just want to make the dog do what they want. From my perspective, again, putting yourself in the dog's shoes, just like anytime you're teaching anybody or anything, anything, you have to look at it from their shoes. And so I just wait.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And the second the dog stops barking, even if it's for a split second, I'll click and let him go in and bite. So now he understands when I shut up, when I'm calm, that's when I get to bite. So instead of picking a fight with him.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Right. And at first, it's going to be a millisecond of silence. Obviously, the goal is to cap that drive for, in some cases, maybe minutes.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But baby steps, you know, the first thing is, is get that light switch on in the dog's mind where, oh, it's when I stopped barking, I got to go in, you know, and then you're, you're building duration, you're building distraction, you're, you know, you're, you're working on that, but that's the foundation and same thing with outing.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
is that most times in training, the dog gets to bite for a very brief amount of time because it's part of a bigger exercise. You know, we're doing call-outs, doing vehicle extractions, whatever, and there's a lot of other players. And so the dog goes in, he gets the bite, and now he's on the bite and he's amped up, and nine seconds later, you're screaming at him to let go.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Well, his fight isn't done yet. He's still at that 11. And so just in the same vein is that if you choke the dog off, if you punish the dog off, I'm even more resistant to that type of training because, again, like what you're doing is you're basically either picking a fight with a dog because he's in it, right?
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, just like if you get in a street fight and your wife taps you on the shoulder to stop doing it, like you're going to have no idea. So the amount of... The pressure and compulsion that you have to apply to the dog when they're fighting that way is severe enough to one of two things is going to happen.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You're either going to pick a fight and he's going to turn around and start fighting you now, or it's going to be so overwhelming to where the dog quits, basically, and the pressure is so intense he gives up and shuts down. both of those things are equally problematic. Uh, and the last thing I want with a dog that I'm putting, you know, potentially my or my guy's lives on that dog shoulders.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
The last thing I want is a broken spirit and a lack of confidence going in a room with a twice convicted felon on meth with a screwdriver. Um, so same thing is that, uh, like when I work with departments and this is something I'll do fairly regularly is problems with outing is one of the most common issues with working canine programs. And so
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I'll get in a suit and let the dog come in and I'll do like a, you know, the jujitsu reference would be a flow roll or, you know, we're just kind of going easy. I'm giving enough stimulation to make it enjoyable. I'm not putting a lot of shit on the dog, but I'm basically going to wait until that dog is physically exhausted before I even ask him to out that first session.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, you got your little. We'll call it a satchel. Okay. Yeah, I keep kind of everything in here. Indiana Jones cares one. It's no big deal. Yeah. Michael doesn't get that reference at all. He's pretty masculine. Yeah, I mean, I just keep all the same shit that anybody would carry, I guess.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And sometimes that may take several minutes. If it's, say, northern Colorado in January, which I worked for the department, it was like an hour and 20 minutes. You know, because it's four degrees outside. And the dog's young and in good shape and an ass eater. But no matter how long it takes, you wait until the dog is now, like, you see the eyes relaxed, the pupils aren't so dilated.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Like, he's calm and you can tell he's fucking worn out. And so now... I'll bring the handler in and say, okay, you know, straddle the dog, pet him really, really calmly and whisper in his ear to let go. And, and then the dog is like, okay, you know, now, now that pressure cooker is boiled way the fuck back down.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so now when he does, and you can feel it, one of the reasons that sucks being a decoy is you need to be in basically the lightest weight suit so that you can feel the dog and the dog can feel you because Especially in the real world around here, two months ago, everybody's wearing puffy jackets and shit. If the dog grabs material and just starts pulling, he's not hurting the guy.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So I want to teach the dog to find me in the suit, which hurts, but you can feel it. So when that dog starts to get ready to let go, you'll feel a little bit of typewriter-ing. That makes sense. You'll, you know, be pulsing in the jaw and you can feel him kind of backing out and not countering in as much and things like that. So you get a feel for it as a decoy, you know, years of experience wise.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But so then as soon as he lets go, similarly, I'll have a clicker in my hand. I'll mark it or I'll have the handler say, yes, and I'll feed it back to him and reward him with getting another grip.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
At that point, the dog is exhausted, so you're probably only going to get maybe half a dozen quick reps in, but I'll give him a little bit of stimulation, have the handler tell him to out again nice and calm, give him a re-grip, and so I'm rewarding the dog with,
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
of letting go by giving him a re-grip so it's not that the game's over and I'm taking away from you what you want nine seconds into it which is going to create a bunch of problems and so it's really simple stuff but it takes there's a fair bit of nuance you know the decoy has to be pretty skilled to understand how to get that out of the dog and bring the handler in and get the handler to handle the dog exactly how you want them to in that environment and it really needs to be driven by the decoy not the handler because you know
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
everything about where that dog's mind is at by what his mouth is doing on you.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, I would say, I mean, like me picking the right dog is important. You know, a seasoned dog that isn't, you know, doesn't have a 12 inch long muzzle with, you know, that could do like tendon damage. Yeah. I wouldn't use one of those dogs. Thanks.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Well, I think there's a similar statistic, maybe even higher of most grown men that think they can fight. Yeah. You know, and it's true. And it's the standard, like, no, when I go to this place, When I see red, it's the, I see red player. Yeah. You know? Um, yeah. Most people don't even know that they can't fight, you know, they think they can. And I think it's the same thing.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Got a firearm in there. You got stuff to stop bleeding as well? No, actually, I don't. So, you're supposed to be your first responder, but... sometimes I will carry a tourniquet but the smallest one I have is still like I find that it uh, kind of gets in the way, you know, it's like, I don't like anything bigger than that to carry.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You fly helicopters. Helicopters seem way more complicated for some reason.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, to me, I get asked a lot what your favorite breed is. I don't really have one. Obviously, I work with Malinois and Shepherds predominantly. You know, I've seen some really remarkable dogs in every breed, and I've also seen very poor examples in every breed, even in Malinois and Shepherds and you name it.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So what I will say is I do have, I would say, a very healthy appreciation for function. It doesn't really matter what the function is, you know, as long as the dog can do something that we can't. And they can augment our lives in whatever capacity, whether it's a seeing eye dog to a rat terrier to a fucking herding dog. You know, of course, you know, I'm a little biased.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I've also seen so many remarkable things from Malinois and shepherds. They are an amazing species. Yeah. You know, are there dogs that can do certain things that they can do better than them? Yes. But in every case that I've seen, that's the only thing they can do at all. Everything else. I mean, yeah, there are. You know, some some hunting dogs that can bite harder. Yeah.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, or kill things faster or damage more, but not not by much. You know, some dogs are faster. Some dogs are a little more athletic. Some dogs are maybe cognitively a little more advanced and can learn a little faster. Some of the border collies. But for a utilitarian dog, if I was.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
If it's Last of Us or Zombie Apocalypse, like 1,000%, it's a 65-pound Malinois that's well-trained would be my go-to dog.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Well, so right there, the second he stops doing it, that's when you feed him. Yeah. But he also just ate.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And, uh, to go like full blowout kit, you'd need something bigger than that with all the other shit I have in it.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Can you walk me through the mindset or the mental process as to why that breed? So...
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I will say that breed and many Corgis are very popular ranch dogs in Texas.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Is that reasonable? It is. I would add one key component to it, though. Okay. In keeping in tradition with the A plus B equals C or making certain contextual associations, obviously he loves food, right? Oh, yes. So how far is the helicopter normally from where you guys actually live? Ten minutes. Okay. It's a pain in the ass, but what I would do is start feeding him in the helicopter. Okay.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, at a minimum. Like right when he gets into it or like maybe when the evolution is ending? No, I mean, at first, I mean, if he's already been there and had some exposure, I would say just now. bring him in there and set the bowl of food. I don't know how big it is inside there, but just feed him in there and then leave. He's with me all the time anyway.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. So I would just start doing that, do it for maybe a week before you ever turn it on. And then I would recreate that same process. And then when you're feeding him, turn it on while he's in there. While he's eating. While he's eating. Yeah.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
The guy who sent me the vest sent me the whole thing, so. Have you put the earmuffs on him?
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You should. I mean, like if you think about it almost from like, think of it like a swimming mask. Okay. So get them up inside of there? Yeah. I mean, even just covering, it's better than nothing at all. But the most protection is going to be where the entire ear is stuffed in there. You do want them big enough to where it's not like crumpling their ears. His head's not that big.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So I would make that as part of your routine is put... put them on them before you even get to it. Yeah. Walk them in there, feed them with those on, uh, and then, yeah, do it for a handful of sessions and then start it while he's in there.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Cause there's, there's less, um, from his perspective, less chaotic, overwhelming stimulation by already being in it when it started, then walking up to it while it's on.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Um, I mean, similarly, I would probably start it with, uh, Walking him in there, feeding him, starting it up while he's already in there, and then flying. That way you're not overstimulating him on the way there so that now when he's in there, he's already a little bit frazzled. He's already in there. You start it up. I would feed it, start it up, maybe even shut it down.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I don't know how long that process is or how big of a pain in the ass it is. But shut it down and then bring him out after it's shut down and kind of build him up to where you're walking him in. uh, there while it's turning. If that's something you ever would do with them.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And then when would you take the food out of that and just, um, just like once it seems like he could give a shit, you know, if that's the first time, great. Uh, he may not give a shit. Uh, how is he like you take him to like home Depot or he just hounds around He just sniffs and just cruises. Do you ever see the apprehension? No. No, he just goes. Fucking psychopath.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
He's probably not going to give that much of a shit about it then. If he'll walk in and out of powered doors. I love Home Depot because there's people ripping sheets of plywood and kids walking around with ice cream cones.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
We have traveled with him a lot. Yeah, it's probably not going to be that much of a challenge for him then. Because that's the thing, you probably saw dogs jumping out of planes.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But the thing with that, though, is the dog at least is not rationalizing that you're jumping out of a plane. Yes. So to him, it's windy, it's loud, and there's a feeling of weightlessness. Same of going in a fast elevator if a dog's never been in one. He didn't enjoy the cameraman that was buzzing around.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. So I would do the first few trips where you're bringing him in before you started up after you've been feeding him in there a little while. But again, it sounds like between how food motivated he is and how environmentally he's, how environmentally sound he is everywhere else, it's probably not going to be a huge challenge where you'd see where I would be more concerned is
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And say maybe baby step that a little more spread out as if taking him to Home Depot, he's spooked by the doors opening. He's at the coffee shop all the time, cruising around.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, I don't have the red dot. But it's a little bit tricked out on the trigger and the grip.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It's kind of all the same thing. Again, the environmental exposure component to especially working dogs is the most common reason I'll wash a dog out is... The double-edged sword of Malinois and bite dogs are that edge that gives them such a great advantage on being suspicious enough and kind of civilly aggressive enough to be effective in the field.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
If there's even just a little bit too much of that defensiveness edge, a lot of times it will manifest in environmental nerves being a little weak and they're a little bit They're suspicious of everything, not just people. It's, what the fuck is that plastic bag blowing across the parking lot doing? And they're doing that kind of shifty... Those are the kind of things I hate to see.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Because the problem is, if the dog isn't bomb-proof in that way, then who knows what you're going to get into environmentally in a real-world operation. And if the dog is spooked, then they're not going to do their job.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Well, they can't. And so, like I said, that's the most common reason why we'll wash dogs out is because of that.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I am. It's incorrect. Yeah. That's a nice segue. I was thinking about it. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I thought it was hilarious when I saw that segment. Well, it's I mean, I've shared it before, but there's kind of a funny story behind it and that it wasn't a preplanned thing. You know, it was I remember hearing Rogan actually talking about. the controversy about it. About Epstein killing himself? Yeah, or not killing himself. Killer betting man, where would you put your money?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Not killing himself. I would have to agree. To me, I mean, it's... It's like, come on, people. Yeah, I mean, it's insulting, frankly. But God knows what... How can you... Scroll back up.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Jesse Waters. Yeah. Yeah. So two things, I guess. One, it was it was just becoming a thing in the news where where, you know, people were kind of debating it. And they sent a car for me because that's the Fox Dallas studio or whatever. And so I was just in the car, like scrolling on my phone on the way there. And I saw a few different clips of it. Fast forward to the interview.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I like Jesse Waters, but especially at that time, it was the Waters world on Saturday episodes. And to me, it felt like he was being kind of kind of a dick during the interview, like he was asking kind of silly questions like, you know, just like, you know, do dogs lick your ass if they're covered in peanut butter? It was that kind of stuff. You know, it was like, well, hold on.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
What's the answer to that? That can neither confirm nor deny, but there's a high probability.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, there's a contingent of the population, I think, that's into that. But, yeah, it just seemed like he wasn't taking it serious. And, you know, the reason he brought me on there was it was right after the al-Baghdadi attack. raid where the dog, uh, didn't get killed, but yeah, but the guy himself off, right. Yeah. You know, injured the dog. And so I, you know, my intent was, was twofold.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
The, the kind of PSA that I threw out at the end was pre-planned because, um, stuff like that typically will have a lot of people that don't do any research, you know, want to go get one of these dogs and, um, buy a puppy and, you know, a good working puppy makes a horrible house pet, you know?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so I wanted to kind of convey that message, but also just highlight how incredible the dogs are and what they do for us. And it just seemed like he was kind of scoffing at the whole thing. Like he was making more jokes about dogs, generally speaking, and And it kind of irritated me. So it was a complete off the cuff. I just threw it in there as just kind of a fucking with him thing.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And to Fox's credit, though, that was prerecorded like two days in advance and they kept it in there. That's awesome. When I said it, I assumed that they wouldn't keep it in there and they did. And so I watched it and it's like a Saturday night at seven or whatever. And like nine seconds after it aired, Dude, my phone did not stop fucking blowing up for probably a month.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And it was like people that I hadn't heard from in 20 years. Like this one guy was like, yeah, I'm up here in like a Buffalo Wild Wings in North Dakota. And there's this table behind me watching your video over and over laughing their asses off. And it's like a dude I hadn't talked to since high school. So, yeah, I mean, of all the things that... That I've done since I've been out of the Navy.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
The fact that that one is kind of the lead charge on Wikipedia is a little frustrating.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Agreed. Yeah. I mean, it is frustrating to... to have a list of things that are going to happen day one, you know, obviously there's rhetoric there that I think anybody with a half a brain can understand. It's not going to happen.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I agree. I think it was poorly handled, you know, and it didn't reveal anything. You know, it was all stuff that had already been largely known.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, I think that if you look at his background... And how he amassed the wealth that he did based on that background, that doesn't add up. So obviously there's something else there that is completely uncovered or covered rather. I think that he got himself into a network of very powerful people and provided a service and recorded it and blackmailed them and made a shit ton of money.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I have Trijicon night sights, but I still haven't crossed over into the red dot thing. I just, I don't know. Like, to me, it feels kind of clumsy.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I think most of it actually just came from – and I do think like I'm not a huge –
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know New World Order Illuminati guy or anything, but I do think that for whatever fucking reason that there's a higher probability of pedophilia in elite circles of power and wealth I don't know if it's like the a-list actor that you know Gets so much ass that he gets tired of it and now needs something else that pushes the envelope I mean, I don't know what it is
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But it seems like there's a higher percentage of people in those circles that engage in that kind of stuff, including our own U.S. government. And I think that that's probably why you don't see... a lot of it being released is that there are people that are currently in positions of power and influence that are probably on that list. But I think he did two things.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I think he mostly made money in providing a service for people at a very high level for child sex trafficking. And I think whether or not he actually videotaped it and blackmailed them, maybe, maybe not. But I think there's an understanding that he knew all of the people that were doing it.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And there's enough of those people with enough power and influence to say, I don't want that fucking guy going anywhere near a courtroom knowing what he knows.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I could see that. Well, especially in the entertainment industry where, I mean, let's be honest, the people who are famous a lot of times aren't the most talented, especially in music. uh, it's whoever, what label props up and creates and wants to, I mean, take Britney Spears as an example. Um, she's one of the greatest artists of our time. Well, we can agree to disagree.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. If I'm having too good of a day and things are too balanced, uh, yeah, I'll take a look at what she has going on, but It actually makes me feel sorry for people who grew up that way and became that famous that early. Yeah, I agree. And it seems like it happens to most of them.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But I think in the entertainment industry, because not that there's not a ton of money in politics and everything else, but because that's the only thing. They're not creating policy. They're not... You know, doing contracts with foreign governments, you know, there's a lot less intricacies, I think, in entertainment. And so it's pretty cut and dry.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It's just it's all about money and how to make it. And if you can control the people who are making a lot of it and get them in contracts that are horrible because they don't really have a choice. You know, to me, that that makes more sense. Yeah. But but in that exact same kind of framework of it's a broader scale of.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
of using, uh, you know, uncomfortable and illegal things to, uh, to, to leverage people and to just making them do whatever you want.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I admittedly haven't spent a lot of time messing with it either, just because it's kind of one of those... How is that possible, sir?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I agree. I mean, to me, it's kind of the same thing with tariffs and stock market and everything else right now is that, you know, if it takes a hard, excuse me, reset that that is painful for a period of time. But that gets us back to kind of on the right track. I'd be all for it. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I agree. I don't know why so many people are so short-sighted that way. To watch the stock market as an example, and one bad day and people are screaming that the economy is collapsing, and then the next day it goes up 1,200 points. You have to see the bigger picture. I admittedly, too, am not... you know, an economics professor, economics professor.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But at the same time, it's like tariffs seem pretty cut and dry to me. And that, like, if you're going to charge us, it's only fair to charge you back. Or we both say, hey, neither of us are going to charge anything. Like, what's complicated about that?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Isn't it fantastic the things people think about our old... Well, to me, I don't know about... It seems like that is shifting a little with social media and... Guys from our community going and doing things and, you know, I think dispelling some of those myths of being embarrassed or beaten at things that people didn't expect them to be beaten at, you know, type of stuff.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I think it's because of that short-sightedness and that in the interim, it could make people lose jobs or could see a huge spike in normal day-to-day household goods or you know, make vehicles now twice as expensive, you know, for a period of time.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I do think one misstep is the, the kind of lack of understanding from a business owner's perspective to say anybody who has things manufactured somewhere else to just say, you know, Hey, we're going to do tariffs starts in 30 days. If you don't like it, make it here. It's like, you have to know it's not that easy to like, I had this conversation yesterday as if
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, it can't happen, you know? Yeah. And that's the thing that I think that frustrates at least me and I think most people that are for that long-term train of thinking. But there has to be an implementation process that's smarter about going about that or you're just gonna put everybody out of business. Because the reality of it is is that there's a reason why things are made other places.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So to just say to company X who's making product Y in China or wherever, let's say it's Canada, um, you know, to just say, we'll make it in America. If you don't want the tariffs, it's like, even with the tariffs, it's probably still cheaper, you know, or, or even, it may not even be feasible for, for me to make product Y in America and, and charge what I'm charging.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Or even, even if you were to charge whatever you had to, like now you're not selling it because it's so far over price that nobody's going to buy it, you know? And so, um, To me, like, I don't know if we give our politicians too much credit to think that they're thinking from that perspective, but it doesn't seem like they are in a lot of cases.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
yeah yeah and uh and over promising and under delivering i think uh you know is a problem i mean take uh the israel stuff the ukraine war uh similarly you know i mean i remember hearing there was a hard line not long ago of saying hey if all of the hostages aren't released by this date yeah it's going to be hell to pay like where's the hell being paid yeah because there's still like 50 or 60 of them
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
We haven't done anything about it. Why not? And to me, you can't say shit like that and then not do something. I mean, you have kids.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I mean, I'm all for carrying a big stick and making those threats, but you have to follow through with them.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, I feel that way about all foreign policy, like whether it's Iraq, Afghanistan, anything we've been involved in, I think... You know, if you look at it almost like a street fight, you know, if you walk by Black Rifle down the street and there's a fucking bar brawl going on, like you can choose to walk in or you can keep walking.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
If you walk in, I don't care how well-intentioned you are or how you conduct yourself, you're going to create enemies no matter what. Even if you do nothing, you're going to create enemies because you were there and stood by. Now, granted, even if you walk by, you may create enemies. But to me, I'm only walking in that place if I have to.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And I think you can look at that micro example and apply it to the macro of saying... We're not going to send our guys anywhere unless it's absolutely necessary. But if we do, I'm going to let the gloves come completely off and we're going to go, you know, full Tecumseh Sherman, Civil War Atlanta, burn the entire fucking place to the ground and wipe you off the map. And then we're going to leave.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And the next person that fucks with us, we're going to do the exact same thing. So you can just not fuck with us. And we won't mess with you at all. Or if you do it, then that's what's going to happen. And I think as maybe oversimplified as that seems, I do think some of life's most complex problems actually require the simplest solutions. And I think that's one of them.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Well, I think that's, you know, it's to your own game point. You know, it's like...
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
know pushing 50 uh a number of injuries like i'm not doing flying arm bars and inverted octopus guards and you know all these different things that like i can't even get my body to do that let alone be good at it yeah but i do love the fact that people go down those rabbit holes like nothing but respect it just doesn't work for me yeah and my station in life so yeah old man jitsu i'm gonna lay on you yeah and i want to have good fundamentals yeah do you have a uh either a most successful or a favorite submission
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know what I mean? You mentioned Eddie Bravo. I think the EBI platform, not platform, but the gi pants and rash guard top is one of my favorite ways to train for that reason.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I think, you know, jeans and a t-shirt is what you're going to run into a lot too, you know, so.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, I have. I would say I wouldn't, like in a real world scenario, I don't know that I would try to employ it. I haven't done it enough to feel competent enough to actually apply it.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I think, uh, yeah. Closing the distance and either for me, I'm a huge fan of the, uh, Daniel Cormier, I think probably is the best example of doing it at a high level in, in, you know, world-class competition, uh, which is the high crotch, like tilt a world takedown. I'm sure there's a
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
a real name for it that I didn't just make up, but just... I feel like what you named it is what it should be. Yeah, I mean... Tilt-a-whirl. Yeah, I mean, it should be. Like that weird imbalance of just... And not like a collegiate wrestling high crotch where it's almost fireman's carry like, but just... getting in deep right up under their hips and just lifting straight up.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And that weird pendulum of imbalance, just like to, to see it, it looks like your body slamming somebody, but all you did was pick them a foot off the ground and their, their own leverage, you know, and on concrete, like that's probably going to end most fights.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
If it doesn't, then I'm jumping on them, taking their back and same thing, you know, but obviously if you run into a good striker or whatever, then, you know, an arm drag or a body lock or, you know, Some sort of other takedown that is more controlled running away. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I guess it depends on stabbed with what and where. That thing. Oh, fuck, man. Probably shot, honestly. Yes, I agree.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
If it's a through and through shot, hands down. Yeah. If it's... You know, fragmenting bone. I don't know. That's a tough.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Between the eyes, I'm going to take the knife. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, knives are horrible. And, you know, the incidents for infection and like sepsis style infection are way higher with a knife, you know. Like you're almost guaranteed to get fucked up from the aftermath of it, you know, because nobody's knife is clean. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Maybe. I think it depends on – Functionality. Functionality, for sure. If I was as functional as I am now, absolutely.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
That begs a broader question, which is probably a Black Mirror episode or something similar, is that almost kind of the – what was the movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger back where he goes to Mars? Total Recall. Yes. So imagine a scenario where you get to 70, 80, whatever. You're basically an invalid person. but you're still cognitively with it enough to realize that your life sucks.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And you have the option to basically go in a matrix-style vegetative state and go to any period in time, be whoever you want, and do whatever you want, but it's in a dreamlike state where it feels real. And you can do it indefinitely. Like you could go live in the 50s as a teenager driving a fucking 57 Chevy or whatever, you know, Roman Empire. Would you know it's fake? I would say no.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
For me, the biggest hurdle with that is what comes after. Like what actually comes after? Because what are you missing out on? You don't know.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I think what complicates that decision-making process is assuming that physically you're at a point where you're basically useless anyway. Yeah. And so to, to your loved ones, you would be dying because you would go in a fucking warehouse somewhere and sit in a, in a pod, you know, and, and just be technically still alive. But, you know, so to me that like, obviously I wouldn't do that now.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
but you get to a point where you're in an, in a nursing home, you know, like you're in hospice, you have months to live for whatever reason. Yeah. But you have the ability, they have the ability to just keep your brain alive and let you go through that experience. I think part of being a human is knowing that it's going to end.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I think what begs the question, your statement about part of the crux really of the human experience is knowing that it's a finite amount of time. is that while, yes, that's absolutely true, it's true because there's no other option.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so it's like, while that's the human experience, if the human experience evolves to a point where it can now determine whether or not that is actually the human experience or not, it's this weird rabbit hole. It's like space. It's hard to, you really can't wrap your mind around it. Anyway, I completely deflected from your question.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, assuming that we don't have that option, let's say we're getting ready to go on the second half of the lap of our life. Yeah, dogs-wise, I mean, they're something that I'm passionate enough about to where I always want to be doing something with them.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Now, even if you were to compare what my life is like day-to-day now versus, say, 10 years ago, it's quite a bit throttled back in that regard. Like, I'm doing very little travel and working with departments and teaching at conferences, things like that. I do a very, very limited amount of that now compared to, you know, 10 years ago was constant.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Um, same with like selling personal protection dogs or, uh, you know, maintaining the online training, all of those things are, are, they have a shelf life and I don't know how much longer I'll, I will do any or all of them. Um, I would say sooner than later, I'll probably get to a point where I'm not doing much of that at all. It'll be kind of a one-off because I want to do it.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Maybe a previous protection dog client or a friend of mine wants one or I just feel like training a dog or something like that. I will say... Um, it is and has been, uh, exhausting in some ways, um, because there's, it's kind of like toothpaste out of a, out of a tube. Like you can't really put it back in.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Like when you're in the thick of you train dogs and you sell dogs, like it's not a faucet you can turn on and off really, uh, or not very well, especially when that's the main thing that you're doing. And so, um, It's hard to travel. It's hard to take a vacation. You know, you miss things.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
That's true. Just take them with you. Pocket wiener. Yeah. We all have one of those. Two is one, one is none. That's true. Plus, his is pretty impressive, by the way.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, it's kind of embarrassing, really. I mean, I know it's come a long way. But yeah, I mean, I guess to be fair, too, though, is that... taking a step back, if you think about the amount of time that we have to spend on everything else that you have to be really, really good at, it doesn't make sense to spend much time doing that. Having said that, the little bit of time that
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It reminds me of the... Christmas vacation. You ain't seen a set on that one, Clark. Where do you see the set on that one? Yeah. Well, and I think so often people are not used to seeing them because most dogs are not intact. Yeah. But yeah, the dog food company is really kind of the pivot for me because it's more of a traditional business now, which does make it a little less exciting. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Um, you know, but as I get older, you know, you can only work dogs in a bite suit for nine hours straight, you know, several days in a row for so long and, and being gone all the time. And, and, uh, you know, juice being worth the squeeze monetarily working with departments isn't particularly profitable either.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Uh, I, I do think, especially early on in a, in a training career, it's, it's imperative because it gives you a ton of experience, uh, and credibility for the other things. Um, but there is,
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
point at which it's like I don't want to be scrubbing dog shit off of walls when I'm 60 you know and slinging dogs out of the back of a truck you know driving through the night to deliver dogs to people and stuff you know that that gets to a point where I just don't really want to do that at that level anymore so So, yeah, really, I think the dog food is kind of the big pivot.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And the other things that I have going on, whether it's the show or some of the protection dogs, the online training, you know, I still obviously oversee the whole Warrior Dog Foundation. And so that's something I'll do basically until they don't need me to. I'm kind of keyholed into that. You know, I can't really... uh, evict 30 fucking retired dogs, you know?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So as, as long as people want to support it and, and there's a need for it, I'll keep doing it. I would love to, uh, get the federal government and, and Eli crane actually, and his crew have been really, really good about, uh, trying to jumpstart a federal funding program for retired working dogs.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I'd love to get to a point where my organization and the handful of others just like it don't need to exist because to me that's how it should be. I would rather the U.S. government in the interim fund the ones that are doing it
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
via charity, uh, right now, but with the end goal being that they build probably regional canine retirement centers, um, and all working dogs that aren't retired to their handlers or, uh, fellow unit members can, can go there and live instead of just being put, put down. Cause that's, that's why we exist is because that's what happens or happened. Um, man, that's rough. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, it, uh, yeah, I mean, it started back in August, 2010, like it wasn't, wasn't some grand plan of mine that I thought, Oh, I want to start a nonprofit. It was, uh, I was approached by, um, a command, uh, with two dogs that, um, had both, you know, deployed a number of times. You're probably familiar with them actually, but, um,
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But, yeah, it was like they asked me and, I don't know, five or six other dudes in a similar scenario of a dog trainer purveyor of working dogs if we would take them. And my first response was no. It was like two broken old ass eater dogs that the handlers can't even take because they're too dangerous to be around their families. What do you want me to do with them?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
that we did put into it could have been way better spent than it was.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And a month or two goes by, and they ask again. And so I was like, well, I can read between the lines on that. Everybody else has said no. So I just said, what's going to happen to these two if none of us take them? And they said, well, unfortunately, the operational dogs and handlers have all of our bandwidth. We just don't have the resources to take care of dogs that aren't in the rotation.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So we'll probably just euthanize them. And I said, fuck that. Send them to me. I'll figure it out. that opened the floodgates and, you know, here we are 15, 16 years later and, uh, and several hundred dogs from everywhere.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, we've taken dogs from customs, border patrol, secret service, uh, police departments, all different special operations unit, federal law enforcement, you name it, you know, and, uh, And these are all dogs, again, that aren't the norm. I would say they're kind of the Hannibal Lecter of the dog world and that they're ones that the handlers can't take.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Or in some cases, they're not even at their shelf life expiration date. They have bit too many people they weren't supposed to too many times. They gave you Biden's dog? I would have taken it. I would have loved to have helped him with that. What a fucking mess.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
He was a commander or something. Somebody had to run the fucking show. I mean, I can tell you what happened. Like, you can tell by the way he conducts himself that that's most people's problems with their dog when probably the most overused and biggest misconception, I would say, in dog psychology is a dominant alpha protective dog.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Very, very few dogs are naturally genetically hardwired to be that way out of the gate. Almost always, it's a power vacuum. What they are hardwired to genetically is that if there is nobody running the show, then they know somebody has to and they will do it. And that's when you have the worst of both worlds.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You have a dog who's not hardwired to actually be that way on its own, who's filling a power vacuum.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
100% he was. He was dragging Joe around by his nuts, his shriveled old bag. Yeah, that's what happens. You've got an anxiety-ridden dog that is doing something that they're unqualified for that they don't want to do. And then that's when you have dogs that are biting everybody for no reason and not paying attention.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, for me, there's a few things. I would, I mean, I know this is kind of the standard answer for a lot of people. I want to travel. I do want to travel. That's my answer too now. There's a lot of the fucking world that I think deserves to be seen that I haven't seen and that I would love to see.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, for me, the couple of things, business aside, you know, on a personal side, like I wanted my kids to be on their path first before I do really any of that. Because when I go, I want to go for me, you know, like, yeah, I would love to take them to certain places and do family things. Trips that way.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But a lot of the places I want to see, I want to go experience and kind of go balls deep into it and really, you know, get every drop out out of that experience that I can. And so I don't there's a lot of things I would want to do that I just wouldn't feel comfortable taking them on. Um, outside of that, I do, uh, really enjoy jujitsu. Uh, I will probably continue to do that until I can't.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Um, that only takes so much time though. And we were talking the other day, I do have a problem with pacing, uh, more than I should for where I'm at, but, um, having said that, you know, just my body responds how it does. And like for everybody who gives the appropriate feedback, you're done for the week. Yeah. It's a good, it's a good feedback loop for sure. Uh, yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You're not, you're not going to do it for a while, whether you like to or not. Yeah. Um, yeah. So for me, I like to train like every other day or every couple of days, but, um, But anyway, so I really enjoy, I've gotten into speed, frankly, not the drug, but motorcycles and cars.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, for me, you know, coming from 18 to 30 in the military and doing that and then spending the next 15 years continuing to kind of scratch that itch from an adrenaline and excitement, dopamine standpoint of, you know, cause getting in a bite suit is, is exciting. You know, Mike will find out here shortly. Get pumped. Um, yeah. Cujo sick balls, right?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
The last one we'll do is, is we call them flea or escape bites where you just say, take off running. And I always love it when the guy, the new guy in the suit says, well, for how long? It's like the dog will tell you, you won't get to decide when you stop.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But yeah, so, you know, to me, especially motorcycles, like there's a lot of track and cars, but there's a number of tracks here in the United States and in Europe that I would love to spend some time on. Do you do streak or dual sport? Or both? For bikes? Yeah. Kind of everything, really. Okay. I would say it depends on my mood.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Like when I walk into the garage, my mood dictates which bike I get on 100%. I already like this. Yeah. What's your street bike of choice? People are going to call me an elitist, but 100% Ducati, in my opinion, can't be beat. I used to have a Ducati Monster 1100 EVO. Oh, nice. Yes. So you know the deal. Excellent bike.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, I have it actually. I mean, it's the Ducati V4R, which is their track homologated bike. Okay. I don't know how familiar you are with their line. I mean, Michael, why aren't you pulling pictures of this shit up? What do I even pay you for? Yeah. Other than bite suits. Yeah. Well, they also have kind of even a step above that.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, they have their street bikes and they kind of parse it between 1100s and 1000s. So their 998cc is the homologated race bike that is trickled down from the MotoGP and World Superbike stuff.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And it pains me that Ducati doesn't just put the race exhaust on instead of that triangular vacuum cleaner-looking thing. Yeah. Because mine has the dual wheelbarrow fucking race exhaust. It's two pipes that are right under the tail section. That is actually a very. And it's incredible. I mean, like, don't get me wrong. Like, BMW is a very close second.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Especially the M1000RR, which is kind of their version of that, is an amazing bike. And it's actually a lot easier to ride. To me, what I love about Ducati is that they are harder to ride. So, again, if I want a fast, fun ride without having to overthink it, I will take the BMW.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
If I want to get in a fight with a motorcycle and blow off steam and feel like I'm riding a fucking bull, then I'm going to take that one, you know, because it takes a lot more mental energy, a lot more input from from the rider to get the most out of it. But it's it's more rewarding when you do.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, I agree. I mean, the amount of hand-to-hand altercations or interactions in combat, while limited, can absolutely be the difference between life and death. So I don't think we should be professional MMA fighters, but there needs to be a minimum standard level of competency that for sure wasn't there. I don't know if it is now or not. I hope so.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But again, like there's times if it's been a long day or whatever and I just want to kind of have fun and relax, maybe I'll take the BMW. Now, I also love like the bagger stuff. Like I've got an Indian as well that, you know, you can put your feet up, Bluetooth, fucking lean back. I mean, it's like sitting on a couch.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, that's fun, too. And it has its place, you know, overnight trips or a long Sunday ride or whatever is fun. I would say lately I've found myself riding BMW makes, it's technically an adventure bike, but not really. It's their M1000XR. Look that up, will you, Michael?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, so the thing that's really neat about this, especially for where I'm at, like if I was up here, I would probably have a 1250 or like the Ducati Multistrada. Um, you know, you're not, you're not even going on gravel where I'm at, you know, so like those are, are street track tires, you know, hybrids. Yeah. I would not take that on a logging road. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, even if, even if you put the suspension as soft as it goes and put knobby tires, that still wouldn't be the bike you'd want to take on it. But, but what I love about that bike is it's, it has the, the sport bike, a thousand CC engine in it. So it's a 200 horsepower bike. and will almost hang with a sport bike. I mean, it's almost as fast.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But you're sitting in a seating position that you can ride for four or five hours and not get exhausted. Whereas the sport bike's like... You really, for me at least, like where I'm at age-wise, experience level, injury, 30 or 40 minutes on one of those is about as much as I want to spend on them. And then my body's kind of similar to jiu-jitsu.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It's like, all right, your lower back and neck are finished riding for the day.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Like I said, they're, they're fun for 30 or 40 minutes. And then, you know, so to me, like, because, you know, with the dogs, especially like traveling is difficult and, you know, vacations are, are almost laughable in that, in that regard.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So, um, you know, for me, I take 15, 20 minute vacations most days, you know, I'll go jump on a bike in the middle of the day and go, there's this like 20 mile loop around my house that you hit some, um, Some pretty good kind of rural-ish roads with big sweeping bends and some long straightaways and some pretty good curves.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And it's a good 20 or 30-minute little rip that just kind of resets you or whatever. So I really enjoy that. Car-wise, it's a little different. To really enjoy and experience pushing the envelope on them, you kind of have to be on a track.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, you can have fun on the street. It's just... Not the most responsible thing to do. With a bike, it's one thing. You're probably not going to hurt anybody else. You're going to kill yourself on it. But you can also have fun riding these at 30 miles an hour. Whereas in most of the supercars, the 650 and above horsepower Euro exotic supercars, those aren't that fun to drive easy.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
They're almost kind of begging you to push it. Ducati is very much that same way in the bike world. What's your dream car? So I guess it depends on the price.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Of course, we're billionaires. Probably, it's not out yet. So I would want to maybe see how it does in the real world. But McLaren is coming out with, it's called the W1. Dear Michael. Yeah, this thing is fucking incredible. I'm going to guess it's just probably completely carbon fiber. It's a lot of carbon fiber. Whoa.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Ooh, the gullwing doors? Yeah. Yeah, so this thing, it's not out yet. Scroll down, Michael. Let's look at this thing. Yeah, it's a monster.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You have to be a billionaire in your mind palace. Yeah, well, that's true. You've got to manifest it. Well, I mean, like, you know, a lot of people would say Bugattis or Koenigseggs or Paganis. You know, the several million hypercar. The problem I have with those is, like, this is more driver focused. Look at that engine. Yeah. It's a work of art. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Now, under a million dollars is a tougher question. I will say I've been very fortunate in what I've been able to either drive or have, and I would say that the two cars that I've enjoyed the most out of everything that I've driven, and again, The car and bike scene is pretty big in Dallas. Yeah, I bet. And so I know a lot of guys that have, you know, garages full of cars like that.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so I've been fortunate enough to drive pretty much everything I've wanted to drive. And I've had, you know, a number that... I've really enjoyed, too. And I'd say that the two that are under a million dollars that I think are the two best cars out for the money is the Ferrari 488 Pista and the new McLaren 750S. Those two, I think, bang for your buck. It's all relative.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, they're still very expensive cars. But for what you get in performance and The emotion, the connection to the road. I think Ferrari is very similar to Ducati in that way. If the act itself of driving is what motivates you to do it, Ferrari is a tough brand to beat. What is your daily driver? And don't say Prius. No, it's an F-150 truck.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. It's one of those things where... I think the best way to try to relate it would be parachuting versus flying. Okay. You know, or, yeah, I mean, I guess, so it's like, take flying as an example. If you're piloting a 757, the experience that you get from that is what it is, right? Probably pretty sterile by comparison to jumping into an F-16, right? Oh, yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, I think so. And I know for me, like we, I had a similar experience with the, uh, combatives program, you know, cause we were around the same time and the head striking. Yeah. To me, the, the thing that always, uh, People would think I'm joking. I just got fucking hit in the head for a week. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So to me, that's kind of the difference. And where I would throw motorcycles in is piloting a jumbo jet is normal cars, trucks, et cetera. Jumping in a fighter jet is like driving a sports car or super car, and they're going to have different personalities. And they surprisingly do if you're into that. Now, if you don't really give a shit,
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
and you just want to be seen in a Lambo or whatever, then it doesn't really matter. Get whatever you like the way it looks the most. But if the experience and the connection to the road and the emotion, the sound of the exhaust and shifting with paddles and...
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
and pushing that envelope and really testing yourself as a driver competency wise, then you are going to notice a huge difference between a Porsche, a McLaren, a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, you know, whatever. And so, um, to throw motorcycles into the mix, I would say that's where free fall and wingsuits come in, you know, is that even when you're flying, um,
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
There's still a two-dimension aspect to it compared to parachuting. Being on a bike is that 360-degree 4D experience, whereas even in the fastest, most exhilarating sports car, it still is not the same way that it's exciting on a bike. So for me, personality plays a big role, and I'm sure people would think it's ridiculous hearing that a car has personality, but they do.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Again, if you're into it and you know and have done it enough to know the nuance between... What's what you can absolutely tell between the way a suspension is on one car versus the other throttle response, turbo lag, even tires make a huge difference. Like if you have, you know, more kind of all season type, better traction in shitty conditions, tires versus tires.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
street legal almost road slicks um there's a huge difference in how the car behaves it seems like a never-ending rabbit hole it is people who go down that path yeah i mean it's probably the same with wingsuits for sure it's the same as uh people who nerd out on electronics or you know another guns guns i was gonna say anything yeah like for me i'm not into guns that much where you know if you put if you blindfolded me which wouldn't be a smart idea when you're handling guns but uh
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
If you lined up a SIG, a fucking staccato, a Glock, whatever, am I going to be able to tell the difference? Probably not. Maybe. But yes, do I like a little bit lighter trigger? Do I like a little stifling on the grip? Yes. But am I going to know stock performance? to modified, sure. But I'm just not that into it. To me, it's like, I like that gun. I don't need to have nine other ones.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I will say that, that fucking bone in your hand, like it is an effective striking mechanism for in close.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So I'm just not into it that same way, where for whatever reason, cars and bikes are that way. And it's interesting, because I was never that kid growing up. Like, I was never the guy that had the Lambo Countach on the wall. You know, I didn't give a shit about, you know, what Crockett and Tubbs were driving in Miami Vice. Like, it was cool, but I didn't care.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, and it wasn't until I was in my late 30s, early 40s to where it just kind of all of a sudden, for whatever reason, clicked. And for, I mean, I was driving, I want to say six, seven years ago, I was driving a Subaru Forester. That was my daily driver. And I had three of them over the course of 10 years.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Had a truck before that and then went back to a truck and then just kind of got into into the cars and bikes. I think, you know, on the on the personal protection dog side, you are typically dealing with very high net worth individuals that generally are into that. And just over the years, I think it kind of rubbed off.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And then, you know, sometimes it'd be like, hey, you know, you want to drive this? And I'm like, no, no. And then they're like, shut up, drive it. And I drive it, and I'm like, holy shit, it totally makes sense now. And it is.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Well, I'm like, hey, if you said drive it, it's insured, and you told me to do it.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But there's a childish keeping you young. It's like when we were seven playing with matchboxes. It's like the adult version of that. Yeah. And I don't like the hybrids like, you know, Ferrari, McLaren, Lamborghini, they've all come out with these hybrid.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. No, I mean, it's like a, it's one thing. I mean, to me it would be like focusing in jujitsu on one technique. Like let's say it's. I mean, whatever it is, but that's all you focus on. It's like, well, if you can't get in a position to strike somebody that way, then it's fucking useless. If somebody's keeping range on you, you're fucked.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And in the true kind of definition of hybrid, it is performance wise a cool mix of a traditional internal combustion engine that's generally twin turbo or supercharged, some sort of force induction engine. with the instant torque and punch of an electric car.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so historically, whether it's naturally aspirated or forced induction, there's a certain amount of lag down low and a lack of throttle response. Some cars are better than others. That's the best car I've ever driven in terms of being a twin turbo car that doesn't feel like it has any lag whatsoever. I mean, it rips your face off the second you touch the throttle. Porsche is probably the worst.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
No, McLaren. I would say McLaren 720S and older has the worst turbo lag in the world. Like you step on the throttle and you're like... waiting, you know, and then it rips your face off, but it's, it's very, well, it's got to spool up. Yeah. It's very dissatisfying.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so now they're coming out with cars that have, you know, two independent front motors that are electric with a twin turbo V8 in the back. And so you step on it and it gives you Tesla plaid punch. And then when the fucking turbo kicks in, it just never stops, you know? And so performance wise, like They're just ridiculous. But they're not as fun to drive for some reason.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
They feel more numb and less engaging and just cheap. It's really strange. I mean, it's kind of like, did you grow up driving a stick shift? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's kind of the same. We're probably the last generation. For sure. I mean, you almost can't buy them anymore. Yeah. BMW Cadillac actually makes, they've got a... Do you know how to drive a shift, Michael? Yeah, I drove one for a long time.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
He's 19. He's never seen the boondocks since. Yeah, that is kind of criminal. Yeah. But yeah, so, you know, different strokes for different folks, I guess. But yeah, to me, just that connection and feeling to the vehicle is what I enjoy probably the most. And same with the motorcycles. Like there's just something about it that is just, I don't know, it's hard to explain.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Just go do shit. I think it depends on on your age, too, but especially if you're younger. To me, the right answer is find some level of service. At a minimum, you can feel a sense of purpose and what you're doing matters. At a minimum, you should have that in your life.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And to me, the biggest thing, the thing that I had the biggest problem, even knowing nothing, Was the stance, you know, and the, you can kick me in the knee all fucking day. If I stand like this, it's like, no, you can't. No. Like if you run into anybody who knows how to throw leg kicks, you are fucking screwed.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I agree with you. Yeah. And I think Adam, again, like even if that doesn't help you figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life, um, It's at least doing something that's net positive to society, and it's giving you a broader spectrum of exposure to things that may help you find what it is that you want to do.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I think the veterans who struggle when they get out, I think that's the biggest reason for that. I don't think it's exposure to traumatic experiences. I think it's losing a sense of identity and purpose, and they feel useless. They go from feeling very needed, which especially for men I think is crucial, And valuable and competent and respected to none of those things.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And I think that's far greater negative and depressing and puts them on that path of going down a dark, dark road than something they experienced overseas, I think.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Yeah. It's a tough shift. No, that's a great point too. Cause, uh, Yeah. I mean, I think most men, yeah. I mean, to me, that's kind of the secret sauce is you want to feel like you matter.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Who wants to feel like they're useless? And if what you're doing doesn't give you that feeling, I mean, how do you, how do you succeed with that? You know, I don't think you can, you know, but. How long ago did you get out? What year did you get out of the teams?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Your thoughts? I would say similarly, they've definitely shifted. I wouldn't say in a negative way, but there was a certain component of naivete and just feeling like that was the right thing to do. Wanting to challenge myself, see if I could do it, you know, kind of all the normal cliched reasons why a lot of guys do what we did.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Um, to me that the biggest shift I think is, is looking upward into the echelons of our government and realizing, um, you know, that, that the assumption that I had, that they had our best interest in mind, uh, is not there. And to me, that's probably the most disheartening. Now, it certainly doesn't take away from the sense of pride that I gain from having done what I did.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I'm glad I did it to do it all over again. I would do it all over again. Same. I wouldn't do it now. Not that they would even have me back now, but...
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, I think, you know, as the world has gotten smaller through, I think, technology and social media and everybody having a 5K camera in their pocket at all times and seeing some of the things that our government has done, things they've been involved with, how they've handled things.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It becomes very apparent that, you know, the most cliched and cringy, typical political response of like support the troops, you know, the Bill Clinton half thumb is total bullshit. You know, I think there are some that absolutely feel that way. But I think if you were to take our government as a collective organization,
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
There's a lot of things I don't like about it when it comes to how they employ the military, what they do with military members afterwards, what they don't do. And so I don't question anybody, including myself, the commitment and and the kind of. nobility and honorable nature with which service exudes.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
What I would say is that it kind of further makes a distinction for it was about the fact that I was saying, hey, and I find this about all military, or this is how I feel about them, is that I have the utmost respect for somebody who's willing to volunteer for to possibly give their own life in service of their country, however their government sees fit.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And they're just trusting that their government has their best interests in mind and is going to use them in the best way possible. I don't think that they do that. I don't think that that takes away any honorable nature with which people serve their country though.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so I still look on it favorably and I still would encourage and respect the hell out of people who continue to volunteer to serve now. But it does leave a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth in relation to how our government uses us and just how they conduct themselves on the world stage on our behalf.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Or, I mean, like some of the actual Muay Thai fights in Thailand where they're just sitting there teeing off on each other for 15 rounds. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I mean, of course, it's easy to armchair quarterback everything. But to your point, I think, you know, you can go back a few millennia. And I think that that was still the case. Oh, for sure. You know, so human nature is what it is. Some things never change. And I think this is as good of an example of that as any. But
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Um, but yeah, I, you know, whether it's Vietnam, you know, the world war two guys, maybe I do find myself kind of looking at that period. Not that any of us were around then, but that seemed a little different, you know, than anything else.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, even going back to, I mean, maybe the revolutionary war, but even that, like, um, you know, I've done some tours in new England, uh, pretty in-depth historical tours and hearing other sides of, uh, Even the Revolutionary War, like John Adams and how he was kind of a tabloid whore and manipulated some of the news sources to make things seem a certain way when they really weren't.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But World War II does seem a little different. Now, maybe it's the way that it's portrayed, but it does seem like...
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
the uh i think it's called koteate training like the bone hardening where you like lightly tap your forearms and your shins to slowly build up fuck that yeah i mean i went more in the into the uh shiatsu training little massage sit on a comfortable couch happy ending maybe i mean it's
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
If there were a existential crisis sitting on America's doorstep that needed to be addressed, like if I look at our nation's history and just as kind of a broad stroke, that to me seems like it stands out as being the most appropriate or reasonable for our involvement and not just getting involved, but when we did, how we did. The fact that it's, hey, it's not a six month deployment.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You go over there and you come home when you're finished. You know, and the way the entire country got behind it. You know, of course, that's our side. You know, like we don't know. what anybody else's side is in terms of whether it's Nazi Germany or the Japanese. Obviously, they thought they were the good guys, too. It's hard to understand how that's possible.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But how much of that is state-run media that portrayed things? Who knows? But, so, yeah, I mean, I guess coming back to my original point is that I just think nations and the world needs people who are willing to do that in a big enough number to kind of keep the balance, you know, globally. But it is heartbreaking, I think, when you think about
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
so many fucking great men that you and i know loved trusted lived with cared about you know that that are no longer here um because of the decisions that our government made uh you know it's pretty fucking hard to or the impact of those decisions that you know terminated their loss of life after service yeah there's a huge difference between the price and the cost you know i i and this is something i didn't think about when i was in i mean i was i look back now
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
to help with that but it's it's invisible yeah you know well i think um you know to the cost aspect of it um there's a difficulty i think in in a double-edged sword in technology specifically with uh air traffic the fact that you can fly over there in a day and fly home in a day you know if you look at manned combat in its entire scope for as long as we've known. Oh, it never happened.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. And, and especially before even ships were involved, you know, you think about like Spartans, you know, a three month hike back after that to decompress and be with just the guys and rationalize it. You know, you're hunting together, you're sitting around a fire at night,
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Like the difference between coming home that way and nine hours ago I was in Baghdad getting shot at and now I'm holding a two-year-old. Like, holy fuck. Like that's not normal or healthy or it's like it shouldn't come as a surprise as to why that doesn't pan out well. And so to me, again, to your point of the cost is that our government needs to look at both of those instead of just the price.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And they don't do that. And it's the same with dogs. It's even worse with dogs. They're considered a line item. Consumable. Yeah. And so it's a travesty. And I also think the government could do a better job at incentivizing people. Um, you know, post military service too. I think things, you know, simple things.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Um, and I don't know, you know, again, I, I may, maybe the numbers don't shake out, but something as simple as, as far as making guys feel like they're taken care of. Like, what if, you know, the U.S. government implemented, hey, if you served and you're discharged honorably, whether you went to combat or not, is it for the rest of your life you're not going to pay any income tax?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, like, the percentage of people that fall into that category, like— It's 0.05% of the population. Like, does that adjust our budget and deficit? Probably not. I doubt it, you know. But think about what that would do for everybody who's ever served their country. Like, it would be life-changing.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
So I have two kids and when they were kind of in the late elementary, junior high timeframe, there was a pretty decent MMA gym there. not far from where we lived. And I just wanted to put them in it, basically. And so put them in it. They were in it for a little while. And then I would go and watch. And I was like, fuck, why don't I give this a shot? And did.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And that should be a simple thing to do. Same with health care. I've had a number of issues with the VA. I think a lot of guys have. To me, if you look at the amount of money that's spent on the VA's budget, but when you consider the fact that there's real estate, there's utilities, there's equipment, there's... the system that is the VA, how expensive that is.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Now, again, far smarter people than me could tell me maybe this is a pipe dream and it would actually be way more expensive. I don't think it would. Maybe it would overwhelm our current medical care system. But if you were to say, okay, we're disbanding the VA entirely, And now you just, again, when you get out honorably, here is your veteran insurance card. You go wherever the fuck you want.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Wherever you live, you go to your nearest doctor, whoever you choose, and you just hand them that card and they bill the government. I would bet that that would be cheaper than what it costs to run the VA.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so to me, it's cheaper. The standard of care is a thousand times better. You get to pick. It's right down the road. Why wouldn't you do that? Like to me, that seems like a no brainer. Those two things, you know, financially, I don't think would hurt the country.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But those two things would make the overall getting out of the military experience for every single veteran that's ever served life changingly better. It seems like a simple solution to me. Maybe it isn't. But I don't know. You know, I would love to hear, you know, somebody who's in the weeds in that realm to to pick that apart and tell me why it's not. Uh, I don't see the downsides, you know?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Simple. I mean, to me, cause it's like, you see the, uh, I don't know what the fucking company's called, but like the, the VA mortgage.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I mean, so it's, it's like, to me it's insulting, you know, it's like, we're going to let you borrow a hundred percent of your home loan. You don't have to put 20% down. How is that a way better deal? It's like you're going to let me go further in debt.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. I mean, we're going to let you borrow more money. We're going to let you be more irresponsible. But, you know, they have it through.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But I think, again, like, you know, now you compare that to you don't pay income tax. You know, there's a big difference between those two things. Yeah. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But, you know, to me, the way that, I mean, even some of the things that I do see now with whether it's tariffs or, you know, the $5 million. Oh, the golden visa? Easy pass for like.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Very Florida. Yeah. I mean, I actually like that idea. You know, with the stipulations that you have to invest X number of dollars and start a business and employ so many, you know, there's got to be some. It's not even a unique idea. There's countries in Europe that do that as well. I don't know if they call it easy pass, but they should. If they don't, they ought to.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, you know, but I guess, you know, to me, even if, let's say, hey, it would make a noticeable difference, you know, especially when you see, you know, Doge has its pros and cons.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And probably not too dissimilar to some of your experiences early on, when a 16-year-old, 112-pound kid Makes you feel like you're getting raped by an octopus. I was like, this is embarrassing. And so then, yeah, I just kind of went full tilt into it. And I did get pretty injured or pretty badly injured early on. I had a full tricep tear with an avulsion fracture.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I think it's mostly pros, but the amount of waste that's already taking place, like, you know, you could clean so much of that up and still come out way ahead, you know, if there was some sort of piggyback program where it was like, you know, hey, if we do this, we have to cut from, you know, wherever. I've always been a, obviously a proponent of, of a healthy budget for the Pentagon.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But man, if you can't fucking pass an audit for eight years, like you don't deserve it.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. It's like, it's like the most obnoxious gaslighting, you know, it's like, and it's Jon Stewart. He's like, I was Jon Stewart. You're right. And he's not even being a dick about it. He's just like, wait, he's like, if you didn't pass the audit, how do you know where the money is? We do. Okay. Well, where is it then? We just can't show you. We can't, you know, we're not exactly sure.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It's like, so you are, you're not like to watch that. You're just like, Holy fuck. What is she in charge of? You know? Yeah. I mean, Maybe. I have no idea who that woman was. I mean, I think you could, in that same realm, you could pay our soldiers probably double what they pay now, give them better equipment, better housing, better everything, and still cut... Billions.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, probably fucking trillions over a 10 year period from from our defense budget and still be in better shape if it was just done appropriately. I do think I think going back, I think it was Socrates that said, I think it's around 40,000 people. Like there's this magic number of whether it's a city or I mean, obviously there weren't companies back then, but.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Past a certain size like there is no efficient way to run it, you know And I think that's part of the problem is it's so big.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah Like one person can't be in charge of all those things so there's just so many people in the middle that there's just by default a Certain level of inefficiency and right hand not talking to the left hand that there's not really a way around Doesn't mean that it's acceptable But it doesn't seem like they're really even trying to fix it. You know, it's like the one.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And I think you and I can can speak to it maybe more frankly than. Well, I mean, your average taxpayer has just as much fucking reason to be to be bitching about it. But I think for guys like us to say, I'm OK with and actually support. a reduced defense budget, but be smarter about it. Yeah. I think carries more weight. Cause we're not just saying fucking give them whatever they need.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It's like you could give them whatever they need, pay them more and take better care of them and still spend less money. If you would just do it smart.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
For sure. And I think, you know, and it's on the smallest scale at supply departments, at individual commands, all the way up to the big defense contractors that now have.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
General What's-His-Nuts on their board of directors, and he still has a bunch of friends that are in the military that if, hey, if we go to war with so-and-so and, you know, our defense budgeting committee allocates fucking McDonnell Douglas with this $47 billion contract every three months, everybody wins, you know, except the United States.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It was a pretty seasoned blue belt that was a fair bit bigger and stronger than me. And I was in his guard, and he just went to trap my arm for a sweep. And it was almost more like a palm strike.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, and I think it's really that simple is that, I mean, because you see it, Even just a little bit of uncovering of Doge of, like, to me, one of the biggest ironies is the NGO thing, the loophole of, you know, sitting members of Congress that have a sister, you know, that starts whatever fucking nonprofit.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, it's like it by its very definition and in name is a non-governmental organization.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Why is it being funded by the government? Like, does that not completely... Because it allows them to do shit outside of the government purview.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. And so now my sister's, you know, making two fucking billion dollars a year and I'm getting 10% of that, you know, because it's just... The biggest problem, I think, is we can sit here and bitch about it and people can run for office and whatever.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But the reality of it, it's a system that is a hamster wheel of corruption where to try to fix it, it's like asking the fox to audit himself in the hen house. Like, of course, he didn't do anything wrong. Of course, whatever chickens he killed, he was supposed to or deserved or whatever. It's like...
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You're never going to get people who don't need to hold themselves accountable, who are benefiting superiorly from it to actually do the right thing when they don't have to and nobody's looking over their shoulder. What's the saying?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, man, you see it day in, day out, you know. I'm sure you get asked like, were you ever going to run for politics? Like, no, like I'm not dragging my family through that.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Why would I do that? You know? No. I mean, I have a theory on that, too, that I put in my Un-Fuck America book, which looking back on it probably wasn't the best title to use.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Sales would indicate that it was. If that's your metric, it wasn't a good title. No, but from a politics standpoint, I'm not the trees of liberty need to be watered with the blood of tyrants type of guy that thinks that we should burn the whole fucking country down. However, the current system, I think most people could agree, is not working.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Uh, and I think I just had, you know, beat up elbows and tendons from, you know, uh, the job, but it just like, I don't know if it just hit me right at the right spot at the worst time or whatever, but it just snapped. Uh, and it wasn't violent, you know, it wasn't like, you know, being thrown really hard or, or posting really hard or anything like that.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You know, when you look at favorability ratings at whatever fucking department or group or whatever entity you look at, they're embarrassingly low. And so...
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. And I actually am stealing this idea from rural Texas jury duty. And so they do these six-month stints, basically, in the county where my kennel is located. Back when I was living out there, I got summoned to do jury duty, and it's grand jury duty. So it's a six-month period where basically the entire voting base of the county—and I would do the same thing for the House of Representatives.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It's not going to work at the high level of president— But I think because the House of Representatives is the gate with which everything else, whether it's spending bills, and this is obviously including the Senate, whether it's judges, cabinet members, you know, vetoing president's bills, like the amount of power that should be actually used and not partisan parsed out is actually significant.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And I think it's the most powerful branch by a long shot. But so in that same realm is you have every region, whether it's a county. I mean, how you're going to separate it out, I think you would just piggyback the counties.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But each voting base of the county basically has to put a list of 10 names together of people that they think who have been living here long enough, who aren't felons, who pay their taxes, etc.,
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so now at the end, everybody, you know, submits their list of 10 people and the top, however many, 12 or 14 with reserves or whatever, get summoned and says, hey, enough people put your name down to where now you're one of the grand jury personnel that has to sit for the next six months and review these cases and decide whether or not they go to trial.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And I thought about it and I was like, you know, you could do that at the same level for Congress. You know, take whatever, you know, this district for Congressman 3A in Texas or whatever, you know, whatever it is, use that same metric and say, you guys decide who's going to be the person. Now you're removing the elbow rubbing of funds, right?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Like I own a construction company and I give you $5 million for your campaign. And hey, by the way, when the public works, Contract comes up, you're kicking it to me. It removes all of that. It removes nasty ads like nobody even knows who it's going to be until it's too late. And so now it does two things. One, it removes the I'm sure there's still a potential for corruption.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I'm not saying that this is a an open and shut, flawless idea. But but I think it's without doing a hard reset where you're completely overthrowing the United States government. But restoring the the power to the people to decide who who goes to office and they're most accurately representing the wishes of their actual constituents. I think it's the best way forward.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
And so now you don't get a choice. Like if your name is the top guy or gal in that district, you're basically just like with jury do. You don't get a fucking choice with that either now. There'd have to be some sort of stipulation where, depending on what the circumstances are, let's say you have a special needs kid. I mean, I'm sure there's some waivers. But that's why you have the top 10 people.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I mean, it was just a very simple, just kind of little trap like that. And And it just snapped. And immediately I was like, fuck, you know, I mean, it was like I wouldn't say it was super painful. I mean, it was painful, but it was that burning like hot poker feeling. Something's not right. And immediately, like I laid on my back and I tried to raise my arm. And it just went like that.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Maybe it's the seventh person on the list because the first six had reasons why it just didn't make sense. But now you've got a collective mean average of the most well-suited by the majority of the population with no other bias or influence, political, economical, financial, whatever.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
being forced to go do that and you're also getting rid of the terms you know you're you're instituting term limits by default you know so now the people because i truly believe if you want to run for office that should fucking disqualify you you know i mean there's a reason why you want to do it and and show me the good one i mean yeah there are a handful of guys even some from our community that i think are there for the right reasons eli would absolutely be one of them
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But but I think, you know, if you put somebody in a position where they don't want to do something and there's an and there's that sense of civic duty of saying, holy shit, like I didn't realize that many people in this region, county, district, whatever, thought that I was the guy that they want representing.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I'm like, to me, that should be a sense of honor and pride and make you want to go forward. serve your country and you don't have a choice but i think you know that sets the stage for now any uh supreme court nominations you know are going through that body of people via the senate all the cabinet member picks any of the bills and i would also separate um any foreign spending
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Any type of foreign aid whatsoever should be a standalone voted on by itself by the entire fucking House of Representatives. Because you should have to look your constituents in the face and say, I sent your fucking money to Egypt. Like, I said yes. Yeah, you shouldn't be able to bury it in other shit. Yeah, you shouldn't be able to earmark that into anything.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Any foreign aid for any reason, I don't give a shit what it is, should be a standalone bill. I think, you know, that's as good of a step forward for a drastic change, but not so drastic to where you risk losing the entire country over it. I'm sure there would be some flaws. There would be some hurdles.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But to me, it's like that seems like a good way to reset that that corruption button and now make it way more difficult for a lot of the things that. seem to, to happen and go unnoticed or unchecked now, no longer to, to do so. And you can only do it for, you know, three years, maybe. I mean, I don't know what the right, right amount of time is, but, uh, cause I, I do think two years is too short.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Six is probably too long. Uh, you know, maybe it's three or four, I don't know. But, um, I, I think that's a good, good way to, to at least try to, to unfuck the problems that, uh, that are started because, um, Everything has to go through them, you know. And again, you can't do that on a presidential level because it's just too big and in scope.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But if, you know, a region of a couple hundred thousand people all say, you know, Jim, Jimmy Jones is my guy. And that many people want him representing their region in Washington, D.C. I think that's as good a fit as any.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Is there anything that sticks with you to this day? Accountability, you know, not to sound cliched. That seems to be a lot of people saying. But I think, you know, one of the things that bothers me the most in my adult relationships, whether it's personal, professional or even looking at our elected politicians, is people who can't say I fucked that up. Because so few people do it.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
It was completely disconnected. And so that took almost a year to get back to where I could just do like pushups really, you know, normally.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I wasn't responsible for that. Because that carries over into the political divide, partisan-wise, too. It's like if you can't hold your guy to the same level that you're holding the other guy, you can go fuck yourself. And I think that has hammered into us so well. As a new guy in a platoon where it's like, dude, if you fuck up, you better own it and fucking tell me right now.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. And it's like, hey, who did this? I did it. I fucked it up. My bad. Yeah. All right. Here's your punishment. Fucking don't do it again. You know, maybe end up taped up in a closet with Tabasco sauce down your ass crack. But. That in and of itself is a video number six. The happy hat with Tabasco and the nuts.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. But yeah, I do think, uh, I think that's what our, um, what our society lacks probably the most is just general basic accountability. Yeah. You know, um, And I think, you know, whether it's, you know, a parent with their kids, a teacher with their students, coach with their athletes, I mean, pick an element of society.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Um, and so I took another probably six or eight months from that time until I started rolling again, but I was really hesitant to do it because especially with doing what I do for a living with dogs, like having one arm completely immobilized me, I could put me out of business, you know? I mean, that was a really negative impact business wise. So
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I think nothing builds and breathes resentment like a lack of accountability and nothing. I think reinforces elements of leadership, like owning your mistakes and being accountable for them. And it's not that hard to do. It just sucks. I mean, to me, if anything, you know, the initial brunt is like getting the tip of your dick caught in a mousetrap, video number seven.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Why aren't you writing this down, Michael? I want these to be forgotten.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But yeah, I honestly think though, after that initial sting, it's actually a relief, you know, because when, to me, like- People respond to it as well.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. And I think, you know, the more entrenched in a leadership role that you are, the more imperative it is. Yes. You can do that because, I mean, I don't know how it was with your kids. It took me a while to learn this. But, you know, telling your kids that you made a mistake is huge.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
You have to do it. Yeah. And I think they, A, they respect you more. They value your level of authority or it- It highlights where you are in the hierarchy better. You know, it dissolves some of the resentment kids have for their for their parents. Not all of it, because I think all kids resent their parents a little bit. But until they become parents, they go, son of a bitch. For sure. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
But yeah. And but I think it's, you know, it's that way with kids. It's that way with employees, too, you know, because it's like. As an employer, the last thing I want is to say, hey, who fucked this up? And everybody points their finger. No, I want somebody to say, I did that. I fucked it up. I'm sorry.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I have way more compassion and wiggle room and empathy for somebody who's like, yep, I did it. As opposed to me having to... you know, Sherlock Holmes didn't figure out three days later, not, I've just wasted three days of my time and you fucking lied to me. You know, it's like, that's how you get fired. Yeah.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Like I don't need you working for me if you can't, you know, so it goes up and down, down the chain both ways. So, um, I will say, you know, I have said this a number of times and I'll repeat it till the day I die. I mean, to be able to spend from 18 to 30 around a group of men, you know, 200 and some odd other older seasoned.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Couldn't handle dogs, couldn't catch dogs in a bite suit. Yeah, it's just not worth it. Yeah. You know, so when I came back and we had that conversation a few months ago about primarily doing private lessons for that reason. And so- I went to an academy, a checkmat academy, for a few months, and it just wasn't a good fit.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Guys who've been around the world who have been doing a dangerous job like to be in that environment like you couldn't pay to put people in that age range in a better environment. I think, you know, and I'm I'll be forever grateful that that I was fortunate enough to be in that environment because, man, what a what a fucking breeding ground and learning opportunity. I agree, man.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Dude, we've been at it for three hours. It doesn't feel like it.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
I have beaten her one time. No shit. Is it usually a stalemate? No, no, no. You don't understand. As I was... That's impressive.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Wow. It's not worth it. Like at home or it's not worth what's going to happen?
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Not to draw this out, I know you got to go. I am curious, at what point in your path did you realize that you could? Was it not until you were a black belt or was it before then? It was before then. Yeah. Purple? Brown? She's not going to listen to this, right? God, I hope not. Somebody's going to tell her probably.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah. Um, in terms of your question, how would I close it out? Uh, I mean, for me, just, I appreciate you bringing me on and, uh, and for anybody, you've had an open invite for years. Yeah. Well, I appreciate it either way. And, uh, I'd love to have you come, come back down for sure. If you ever find yourself, I'm not coming in the summer. Yeah. Yeah. I don't blame you. Maybe October, November.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Even October is still hot. But yeah, I'd love to have you back on. I mean, because shit, you were one of my early guests. It's been six, seven years now, probably.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Yeah, no, just for anybody listening, I appreciate any of the support. Warrior Dog Foundation is the thing I would plug and not any of the companies. Just any help on that front, we always need it and appreciate everybody's support. But yeah, just thanks for listening and I appreciate you having me on.
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Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
Ended up going back to the coach that I originally had my kids in and then did that for several years, and he ended up moving. So now I'm with a bigger gym in Dallas for the last couple of years that – is good. I still do primarily private lessons, but the nice thing is the coach understands all of what my injuries are and is very strategic about our training.
Cleared Hot
Episode 385 - Mike Ritland
When I went to every one of these guys, I said, you know, my number one priority over learning jujitsu is to try to not re-injure myself to that level.