Jocko Underground: Dog Ownership. Personal Branding. Weapons and Tactics.

Dog ownership. Weapons training, gear, and tactics. Being too out of shape for Jiu Jitsu. What it takes to live in the mountains. Personal branding. What is that? Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number forty-three. Echo Charles, sitting here with me. We had a false start momentarily. Oh, good. A second ago. I read the wrong number. I said the wrong number. Wasn't even close. This is forty-three. I said what? Thirty-two. Imagine where my mind is. Imagine where my mind is that I'm thinking forty-three and I'm saying thirty-two. I, yeah, it's hard for a brother. Even the strongest have their moments of fatigue. Maybe you're just a little fatigue. Breaking down. We've been, we've been podcast recording today for five hours at this time. Yes, sir. Okay.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  So, you recently mentioned to me the possibility of the Charles family unit acquiring possibly a dog. A canine unit? So, I figured this is a good opportunity to discuss real quick, because we got some really good questions. Just understanding theoretically and pragmatically, dog ownership. Okay. Okay, so, I have a dog.

• 1:10Jocko Willink?

  I want to make sure that you, and everybody kind of knows this, dogs are work. They are a lot of work. They are not only a lot of work, but they are a lot of responsibility. And as a dad with four kids that are now older, I'm gonna go on a limb here and say that in some ways, especially a puppy, in some ways, a dog is the same kind of responsibility as a kid, in some ways.

• 1:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, you have to feed them, you have to walk them. They never grow out of that phase. Like eventually your kid can go to the bathroom, right? Yeah. Your dog never learns how to use the toilet. Right? That's not happening. So you have to be home, you have to go home. They can't get out if they need to get out. Now you get a dog door. I have a dog door, by the way. Yeah. Digital, electronic, like, yeah, like they're caught. My dog's collar opens the little gate. Oh, damn. So if he needs to go to the bathroom, we're good. Food, if you want to travel. This is probably the biggest adjustment. If you want to travel, you have kids, you take the kid with you, right? With a dog, that's not necessarily possible, right?

• 2:28Jocko Willink?

  You gotta get a crate if you're taking it on a plane or in the car. Certain hotels, you can't stay, there's a bunch of issues. You can't just leave it at home. You can't, you can hire like a house sitter, but then you're hiring a house sitter, right? There's a lot of things, I'm saying you gotta think about that. There's a lot of responsibility, there's a lot of work. By the way, you have to train this individual. You, you, you have to train the dog, just like you have to train your own children. And I know that sounds a little bit twisted to say you're training your children, but you kind of are. You are, nevermind, kind of. So before you just run out and buy a dog, cause they're cute or whatever. Think about the level of work, think about the level of responsibility. Now, what are the rewards? Some massive rewards.

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  Number one, security. No better security than a dog. Criminals do not like houses with dogs in them. They don't, they're gonna go away, they're gonna go to the next house. That's the, that's the single biggest deterrent for crime, for household crime, for breaking an entry is a dog. So if you have a dog, even the little scrappy dogs, like little small dogs, they're a deterrent. Just because they're annoying, right? Criminals like, this is too annoying, I'm not going in there. If you have a dog like my dog?

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a deterrent.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  Then you're deterred, like the whole neighborhood's kind of deterred. So, Mike Ritlin, Mike Ritlin called my dog a man eater. I said, that's appropriate.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  That makes sense to me.

• 3:58Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, if you're getting into the dog game, check out Mike Ritlin's information. Read his book, uh, he's got a bunch of great stuff on dogs. I'm just giving you my sort of semi amateur, I'm not, I'm obviously not a professional dog trainer like Mike, but I'm a professional dog owner, cause I legitimately own a dog. So you have the security aspect, which is awesome, you have the fun aspect, cause dogs are fun. Like they're just fun. They're like a little weird person that doesn't talk a lot.

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  But they give you looks. They know what's up. Like with my dog. If I just like turn my head quick, my dog goes in alert mode.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  For real?

• 4:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I test him with it and I reward him. So you know, I'll be able to sit and sitting down. You know, working on something and all of a sudden I'll just perk up and look and he goes into alert mode. He goes, his ears go up. He's ready to go.

• 4:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's kind of fun. And plus they're good to hang out with a dog. They're, they're super cool to you. They're nice. They, they will go the run with you. They'll work out, not necessarily do the workout, but they'll be in there chilling with you cruising. Like participating in their own special way.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Accompanying you to the workout for sure.

• 5:14Jocko Willink?

  There's so something that's important about all these things. Is that discipline equals freedom. So if you have a dog that you train. Then you're set. Then it's awesome. If you have a dog that you don't train and it's just a wild animal on a leash. That sucks. My dog don't even need a leash. I just go for runs with him. He stays with me. If he sees something or he's doing something I don't want him to do, I can tell him stop, he'll stop. Like I'm talking cats. You know what I mean? He will, he listens to me. He doesn't, for instance. There's a security perimeter at my house that he knows that he patrols and he stays within the perimeter.

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  So it's awesome. So I was gonna not say that because I didn't want a criminal to think that they could stay outside. That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen. Go to JacoUnderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we're doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain. As is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors.

• 6:41Jocko Willink?

  And we're doing it so we can give you. More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So, thank you. It's JacoUnderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.