#5 Mike Ritland - Navy SEAL / K9 Dog Trainer (Part 1)
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- This episode of the "Sean Ryan Show" is brought to you by SimpliSafe. - We took a guided missile cruiser, jumped on that and hauled ass all the way to Bahrain. We were in Bahrain for a little bit and then we were scheduled to go do some other shit and then that's when the coal got hit. - Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A total of six sets of remains have been found on board the coal during the course of today. - Hey everyone, it's 2020

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starting with the main entrance. I used the doorbell cam to catch porch pirates. Trust me, there's a lot of people that want to grab my package. The next thing I did was use the window and door sensors on every opening window, on every opening door throughout the office. I used the motion sensor to track motion.

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It's triggered by motion. There's a carbon monoxide detector. There's a smoke detector. There's a freeze detector that you can put on your pipes. There's a panic button for when I get scared. And there's a water detector that'll let you know if your washer is overflowing or maybe there's a flood. All of which

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As you're walking, you could actually see a fucking dungaree and a boondocker from about the knee down hanging out of the fucking where now it's a ceiling, it was a floor, now it's a ceiling. Somebody's fucking leg just hanging there. We had a 60 gunner and a couple of snipers and a law rocket. Clint Emerson and I actually were the two guys that zeroed in on him and fucking just swarmed him and backed him up. And he was like, oh shit, you know, had MP5s down his fucking throat and

I mean, just the smell of 19 semi-submerged, blown up dead bodies trapped in a fucking boat. The bodies were in there still. You had a fucking Navy SEAL operator quit on target in the middle of a fucking operation. All of a sudden, all fucking hell breaks loose. Like, gunfire just erupts, and it's every fucking where. Like an Iraqi flag, like, coming down and crushing the fucking skull apart.

Fucking insane. I mean you kicked the fucking goddamn war off. Welcome back to the Sean Ryan Show. This is episode 005. We've brought you a very special guest. But for starters, I want to thank everyone who's become a member and is supporting the show on Patreon. You're gonna see the benefits of that support. We've hired an entire film crew and we're hoping they stick around.

I would also like to thank all of you who took the time to go over to iTunes and leave us a review. We now have 5,300 reviews on iTunes. We continue to be a top 100 show in the category, and that's because of you. If you haven't done that yet, please go to iTunes, leave us a review, and

Type in a word, even if it's just one word, that's what we need to make this show rank. And lastly, ladies and gentlemen, every single guest that has been on this show is the definition of an American hero. We want to bring these heroes the most exposure possible. We want to take this show to Netflix. I've posted a link. I put it at the top of the comments. Click the link.

Request The Sean Ryan Show, hit submit. That lets Netflix know who we are. Let's take this thing to the next level. Which brings me to my next guest, 005.

Ladies and gentlemen, he is a world-renowned canine trainer. He trains dogs for the SEAL teams, for the SWAT teams, and just about every other government agency you can think of. He's been on the New York Times bestseller list three times.

He is a vetrepreneur powerhouse that I personally look up to. He was on the initial invasion of Iraq. He responded to the USS Cole. We've broken this into two different shows. The first part, all of his combat time as a SEAL. The second,

The life of a canine warrior overseas in combat, what those dogs go through, and what they deal with when they come home. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very proud to bring you my next guest, Mr. Mike Ridland. Mike. Sean. Sfagatum to the Sean Ryan Show. Did I butcher the shit out of that? I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to. Is that a Norwegian fuckin'...

That's my best attempt at saying welcome in Tagalog. Oh, okay. Where the fuck did you learn Tagalog? I learned Tagalog at North Island Naval Base or Naval Air Station, I guess. And it was after my, it was after a deployment and it was during the whole Force 21 thing. And so our platoon got back from deployment like in mid-February or so and

And we weren't forming up until the following January because of the whole reorganization bullshit. So it was kind of like everybody had to go find shit to do. I had re-enlisted prior or on that deployment for Arabic. But when we got back and all of the shuffle and reorg stuff, this was right before 9-11, was that they said...

Turns out you guys are now a Southeast Asia platoon. You're going to Guam and the Philippines. So if you're not going to Arabic, you're going to Tagalog. And I was like, but it's in my contract. I reenlisted for fucking Arabic. And they're like, yeah, tough shit. You're going to Tagalog. Oh, nice.

I spent about, I don't know, I think it was five, six months of all day, every day, Monday through Friday. Like that was my job. Me and there's, I don't know, seven or eight other people, mostly team guys. There was a couple other, I don't know who the fuck they were or why they were in there. But yeah, we sat there all day, every day from this older Filipino lady that was teaching us fucking Tagalog. And of course, like,

The true team guys that we are, we conned her into teaching us all the shit that she wasn't supposed to teach us. The important stuff. And making her blush and feel uncomfortable. How do you say ass fuckery in Tagalog? Can you teach us how to say that? But yeah, so that's the story behind it. We did end up going to Guam and then ultimately to the Philippines.

for about six weeks, which was neat. At the end of that, I wouldn't say that I was fluent in it, but I was conversationally, like for basic conversation, I was pretty close to fluent. As long as it's been, I have forgotten a lot of it. I could probably pick it back up in a matter of weeks if I really tried, but a lot of it I don't remember. Yeah.

You never knock the dust off, see if it's still there? No, not really. I mean, once in a while, like, you know, I'll run into somebody that you can tell speaks it by, you know, their accent or they tell you they're from, you know, wherever, and I'll string together some bullshit and they'll laugh and, you know, because I probably butchered half of it. Yeah. Or insulted their mom or whatever. But, yeah, no, that's, I mean, where are you going to use it in Texas, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, man, I'm really excited about this. And I've been wanting to have you on for a long time. And I think we canceled two or three times. But I just want to say I am fucking ecstatic that you're here sitting in that chair. And props to you, man. You are a great role model for people. And I think...

You're a huge inspiration for guys that are starting businesses, that are coming home, especially in the veteran community and the combat spec ops guys coming home. And, I mean, you're one of the guys that, honestly, that I really look up to in the business world. You've kept your business all class, you know, and a lot of these vet companies, it's all fucking...

tits and ass and and uh fuckery and and that's all cool but when your entire model is based off of that i mean we've seen it you they come and they go and uh you've been in business for quite a while and it's stood the test of time and uh you just continue to grow and and uh i think anybody that's in the business world especially the guys uh coming back they got

great example by looking at what you're doing and it's fucking amazing what you've done and I can't wait to dig into it. Yeah, so I Almost don't even know what to say that other than I appreciate it very much at its

Certainly not anything that I feel like my level of competency has contributed to it. I think I'm just stubborn and have tried to always do the best I can with what I have and look at it from a long game standpoint. But I would say I feel that exact same way about you and yours. It's really neat to see guys that I know and trust and

and like doing well and being successful and trying new things. You've really set the bar at such an immediate or early phase with your show. And it's just, to me, it's really neat to see. I love seeing guys that I know, love, trust, and like succeed. So hats off to you right back. I appreciate it. Thank you, man. Yeah.

Well, I always kick this thing off and I love to give presents. So if you look right over there. That's some Johnny Carson shit right there. Hey, you know, any guesses? Well, I see my book in there. Is that your, I wanted, that was just a recommendation. I thought you might like to read that. I know the guy that wrote it. Yeah, who's this asshole? That's fucking classic.

There's two other ones that guy wrote, but believe it or not, they're fucking hard to come by on Amazon. Yeah, I know. They still haven't arrived. I must admit, I have cracked into these, and Jesus Christ, they are good. Everybody that says they're the best they've had, I was like, yeah, whatever, they're fucking gummy bears. But on the no bullshit, these are phenomenal fucking gummy bears. Thank you. Those will be gone before I leave here probably. Right on. Yeah.

Oh, the ass blaster. Now that is the ass blaster 4,000. 4,000. So... Dude, that's fucking great. God damn. Oh, shit. So the next time we all run out of toilet paper, you're good to go. Yeah. That's fucking great. I'm sure there's some people that are like, what the fuck does that mean that didn't watch our...

our quarantine zoom call that we all had but uh that's great man i love it that's why i'm gonna roll the clip right now from that video so uh for those of you that don't know here it is

You have two ass blasters, Sean? Yeah, we did. That's the first thing I did when I saw there was no shit paper. I was like, all right, we're good. Mike, he actually sent me the link for like the homemade bidet thing. Maybe I've been watching too much porn during this quarantine, but ass blaster means something totally different. Can I crack into these now or what? If you want to, I'm going to open them. I'll eat them on camera even.

So I checked out your Wikipedia page. There's some interesting shit on there. So they give you credit for kind of starting the Epstein didn't kill himself. Really? Yeah, on there. You didn't know that? I didn't know that. Yeah, it's right there on, I think, second paragraph. I also for sure didn't kick that shit off. Joe Rogan did. Did he? To my knowledge. Well, they gave you credit. It's on your Wikipedia page.

So do you want to make another statement? Because his right-hand woman just got picked up. I'm assuming Maxine Giswell didn't kill herself either. Not yet. Yeah, it's amazing. What do you think? Is she going to make it to court? Yeah, I think so. With her, I think it's maybe a little different in that I think they have far less on her. Obviously, they have enough to arrest her and all that, but

I don't think it's as slam dunk probably as it is with Epstein. So I suspect that with the, I mean, she for sure has dirt on people, but I think it seems like from everything that I've heard preliminarily is that it's more like he said, she said. It doesn't seem like they have near as much

of a case against her. Again, not that they don't have one, but, um, so I think it's largely going to depend on how that, that shakes out. I think, you know, she's probably not in, in as much danger as he was, but you never know. I mean, I don't, you know, pretend to have, uh, any, any knowledge of the inner workings of that whole, you know, fucking clown show. So, um, I will say this, like if something did happen and the country doesn't fucking explode because of it, then we're fucking doomed, you know? I mean, so,

I do find it odd that they sent her to the exact same fucking place. I saw that. I couldn't believe that shit either. Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, I don't know if that's like rubbing our face in it or what. I honestly thought that was a fucking meme when I saw that. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm still fucking surprised that that's on the Wikipedia page. I didn't know that. Yeah, yep, check it out. There's some interesting shit on there. Maybe I don't want to look at it. Yeah.

But, alright, well, I did a lot. Honestly, I thought you were going to be really easy to research because there's so much information out there on you. And it turned out to be the exact opposite. There's so much information out there on you that I just, I wish I could have covered it all, but I couldn't. And I wish I could have you here for a fucking week to dig into that head of yours, but...

so i think we're gonna break this up into two podcasts actually i'm gonna do uh this one uh which will be all your personal stuff and then uh the next one to be um all the dog stuff which is um you know phenomenal information and uh but i just kind of want to start with uh you know quick overview of your childhood i know you grew up in iowa and um but just a brief overview overview of your

your childhood and we'll kind of go from there. So I was born in Northern Iowa in the late 70s. And, you know, it's weird looking back on it now. I think a lot of people have feelings of nostalgia towards their childhood, kind of almost wherever they're from, because that's what they know. That's their childhood or whatever. But

for me it's become increasingly so that way with the things that are going on now like i find myself kind of longing for that 80s childhood of no cell phones no internet you know riding your bikes everywhere watching macgyver knight rider a team rambo playing guns listening to ac dc and guns and roses and it was just like life was so much simpler and not just because we were kids

I think America was a much simpler place. I think the world was a simpler place that way. I think it's one of the double-edged swords to the internet. But growing up in that environment, it was just a really neat time and place to be at.

The town that I'm from, Waterloo, is not a big town, but it's not a town of 300 either. There's 60,000 or 70,000 people, and so you have kind of all the amenities that you would like, but it doesn't have that big city feeling. You can drive 10 minutes in any direction and be out in the middle of fucking cornfields or be isolated and away from everybody and whatever. So it's a pretty slow-paced town.

It's not too dissimilar to where you're at here in terms of kind of the pace at which people operate and how they take care of things and how they treat each other and what have you. So I liked that growing up. But it was...

Just a fun time to be a kid. I swam competitively. I had two older brothers, a younger sister. And our family, it's weird. It was like fucking leave it to beaver, honestly. I mean, my parents never fought. To this day, I've never heard my parents argue, not one fucking time. So they're still together? Yeah, still married. They've been married for almost 50 years.

And, you know, I've never heard them raise their voice at one another, not once, you know. That's awesome. Never argued about anything, never fought about anything. You know, they get along great. And they had a—and I will say, as a father, you know, I look to them, you know, honestly in awe at this fucking point, you know, now that I have kids that are teenagers. And I don't know how they—

they parented the way that they did. They did a far better job than I'm doing for sure. It's just,

I marvel at their ability to be strict enough to raise good kids that are well-behaved, but not so strict to where your kids are doing shit despite you. And that's what I've kind of struggled with. So looking back on that aspect of my childhood, my parents were fucking amazing. My family was amazing. The school system in which I grew up in was mostly good. High school had some bumpy parts there.

How big was your class, graduating class? Graduating class, I think, was just shy of 400, maybe. The school itself had, I think, 2,000, 2,500. It was a pretty big school. But at that time, it was, you know, the early 90s, 92 to 96 is when I was in high school. And, you know, race relations then were fairly tense, kind of similar to where they're at now. They got better, and then now they're worse. I mean, it's fucking weird that way, but...

My high school, there's only two public high schools in my hometown. There's East and West. And the east side of town is more predominantly black and the west side of town is more predominantly white. There's a river, the Cedar River, that splits the fucking town in half or thereabouts. And so there was a lot of busing. That was a time in different states where...

experimenting with you know bussing a bunch of kids from one side of town to the other side and vice versa and so there was there was a fair bit of that going on and it just caused fucking problems um you know there was there was like i said some racial tension that was pretty significant rodney king riots uh when they happened is when i was a freshman in high school and uh there was a you know some some rioting that happened in our high school where i got the fuck beat out of me

And so my high school experience, I'd say elementary and junior high was pretty fun to look back on. High school, I didn't particularly fucking enjoy. It was kind of a mess. I was glad to be done with it. Well, on just about everything I've researched, you always bring up an incident that happened in high school. I'll correct me if I'm wrong, but...

It's one of the things that actually it was a major motivator for you joining the SEAL teams, if I remember correctly. And so what kind of happened there? I know you got fucking jumped. Yeah. So I was a freshman in high school and I was fucking small. I was five foot four and one hundred and five pounds.

It was a Friday and it was during the swim season and as a freshman swimmer They do these initiation they did that but they probably don't do them anymore because I'm sure it's considered hazing or something fucking dumb like that, but You know we had to do stupid shit like where where your speedos over your clothes You know and wear goggles and you know just dumb little things like that on Fridays they would fuck with you and make you wear stupid shit or or whatever and

But my second oldest brother was a senior when I was a freshman. So we went to lunch together. He had his license and drove my dad's car to lunch. We came back. We were running a little bit behind in true fashion, my second oldest brother. Love you, Jake. But let's be honest, you're always fucking a little behind. The halls were relatively empty and it was a three-storied high school. And so

I came back and I was on the third floor. I was running down a hallway and I remember a good friend of my dad's actually was a chemistry teacher and he was, he like nodded, you know, tipped his cap or whatever to me as I was running past and kind of shook his head like, you know, there's fucking George's son running behind, you know, laughing or whatever. And I went open these two double doors to go down a set of stairs all the way down to the first floor because I was going to Spanish and

And as soon as I swung the door open, I was like, holy shit. And as I'm getting ready to step down the first step, I just see just boom. I just get fucking blindsided. And there was...

Two single file column rows of there's probably between 40 and 50 black students that were, you know, taking up the entire stairwell because there was that many of them running up and they were just running through the hallways, beating the fuck out of anybody that was white. And they were, you know, throwing trash cans through fucking windows and knocking water pipes.

drinking fountains off the fucking wall. I mean, just trashing the place and beating up white people. Oh, so this was like, they were fucking kicking the shit out of everybody. Everybody. Yeah, it wasn't just me. It was like a race riot almost. There was a bunch of people that got fucked up. Oh, fuck. And so I start walking, or I start running down the stairs. And again, you know, it was like running a gauntlet. I mean, textbook gauntlet.

I'm trying to make my way down. And as I'm going, it's just, you know, they're all taking their fucking turns while they're running up and I'm running down. And, you know, luckily they didn't stop and corner me. And, you know, they probably would have fucking beat me to death, honestly. But I managed to make it all the way down, just, again, getting pummeled the whole way down. By the time I got there,

down to the bottom. You know, every time I got hit, again, I was a little fucker, and so I'd run into, it was a brick wall, you know, going down, and so the whole right side of my face was all fucked up. The whole left side of my face was all swollen and fucked up, and I kind of stumble into Spanish class.

And the teacher, the teachers at that point, they knew what was going on. And even then, like our administration and the staff, they were scared of, like they didn't know what to do. You know, like they didn't want to stop them because, you know, they would probably be considered racist. You know, and they didn't want to discipline them. So nobody got in trouble. At that point, there were no security cameras either back then. So they didn't do shit. You know, they did absolutely nothing about it. You know, and I stumbled in, I sat down and

I'll never forget, you know, I was sitting there and there was three or four black guys that came in several minutes after I did Breathing Heavy. And I knew they were in on it. And, you know, just that was a very pivotal moment for me for a couple of reasons. Number one was that the way that my dad responded to it was not what I expected. Looking back on it, I thank fucking God.

whatever universal power you believe in that he handled it the way that he did in much more of a tough love scenario and that a lot of parents and I think even putting myself in his shoes would you know storm down to the fucking high school and demand some sort of consequence and that action be taken and whatever and

he didn't have the you know i'm scared policy at all it was life's not fair people are gonna with you people are gonna are gonna do mean to you and you've got to figure out how to deal with it i know you're scared you probably don't want to go back you're going to go back tomorrow and you're going to face whoever the did it and you're going to deal with it you know and uh you know for me i like at the time i was like what the you know i was like why are you not going and doing something about it and and again i

Looking back on it now, I'm really glad that he handled it that way because it forced me to do that. It was the shit or get off the pot moment for me as a 14-year-old of realizing that

you know, if I can't fucking figure it out, like nobody else is going to hold my hand and make sure that everything is fucking perfect, you know. And for me, that was, especially going into the community of Naval Special Warfare, that was an incredibly valuable fucking lesson I learned at that age that, you know, don't depend on any motherfucker else, you know, to make sure that your shit's taken care of. You figure it out, you know. And so...

I was the other kind of part of that. I think that was pivotal is that the the motivation that that Just instantly fucking instilled in me was huge, you know like that. I was already a pretty competitive Athlete and and you know I hated to lose and I you know I worked really hard at sports and everything that I gave a shit about I was really, you know hyper competitive But this took it for sure to the next level, you know because I just kept thinking about that and even

There were times like in Hell Weekend and Bud's training where I kind of flashed back to that if I was wavering a little bit in motivation or whatever. The second I thought about that, I was fucking pissed. It put me right back on track of saying, fuck that. I'm going to do this. Does that still fire you up to this day? No, I haven't. Fuck, I haven't thought about it since the last time somebody asked me about it. It's for sure not something I think about anymore and haven't for a while. Yeah.

But early on as a young man kind of coming into manhood, it absolutely was impactful that way. Yeah. How did that create the motivation for you to go into the SEAL teams?

So I wouldn't say that that necessarily motivated me to do it. It for sure played a role. It was a combination of that coupled with just being a competitive swimmer growing up, being pretty competent in the water and just being drawn to military service because of my grandfathers. Both of them were in World War II and

And I was always really fascinated by their service and that generation and that war and was kind of a history geek that way growing up. And I was just always kind of motivated to want to do something like that. And for me, it was, you know, I read a Popular Mechanics article and saw this story of who the Navy SEALs were in conjunction with watching the movie with Charlie Sheen in it. And I was just like, man, these guys sound fucking awesome.

So, you know, all of that kind of combined was really what drew me into doing it. And I spent, you know, the last several years I was in high school being pretty laser focused on doing nothing but that. Yeah. What...

So I know you enlisted or signed up in the delayed entry program at 17 and then went into 18. What year did you join? 96. So I graduated high school. I was still 17 when I graduated, so I did the delayed entry program right at graduation. I didn't turn 18 until later that summer, and then I went to boot camp two weeks after I turned 18. Wow.

Hardest thing for you at Bud's? San Clemente Island. No shit. Unquestionably. Why is that? It was El Nino. It was a summer Hell Week. I actually went through Hell Week. It was my 19th birthday, I want to say two days after we finished Hell Week. So that was in July, right? It was fucking warm.

And then going out to San Clemente Island in February, January, February, it was an El Nino winter to boot. So it was kind of extreme weather conditions. It was cold as fuck. And I just, you know, it was kind of like all the things that I'd read and whatever was that, you know, that's where you actually learn stuff. And, you know, you get to fucking blow shit up and shoot guns and everything.

you know, patrol and kind of start to learn real frogman shit. And Jesus Christ, we went out there and it was like the staff just hated us. Like the third phase cadre just fucking murdered us over and over. Yeah. Part of it too was that I got rolled. I started with 214, uh,

And I got rolled six days before they went to San Clemente Island. Oh, damn. And so then I got rolled back, spent, you know, seven weeks in fucking rollback land and then joined up with 215 day one of third phase. And so, you know, that certainly didn't help, you know, enjoying it. But, yeah, just, you know, they fucking hated us. And, I mean—

We got about two and a half hours of sleep every night there and just got the fuck beat out of us nonstop, you know. So I didn't make it easy on myself either. There was one night where we patrolled. We did a patrol gig where it was, you know, cold and rainy and, you know, cactus and it was just miserable. And we got back at like two in the morning and

admittedly it was a total shit bag move on my part like we get back we're in the armory cleaning guns and taking care of our shit and me and two other guys ran to the fucking galley quick to get like hot chocolate because we were just fucking freezing right so while we're in there I don't even remember what fucking instructor it was walked in there while we were fucking getting hot cocoa while everybody else is cleaning their shit you know and so of course he's like you've got to be fucking shitting me you know he's like

out on the fucking beach now, you know, and so we run out there and dude, I'll tell you, it was probably the worst beating of, of my entire time at, at Bud's is that they took our, our M fours and broke them down in the, to, to the lowest level.

fucking form possible. We completely broke them down and put them in five-gallon soda-sorb buckets that were half full of sand and salt water. Oh, shit. And buried them in there and made us fucking... and beat us while they were doing that. We had to disassemble them and it was like buddy carries down to the beach, fucking surf towards your back, push-ups, monkey fuckers, jumping jacks, buddy carries, you know, just... It was like three hours of just getting the fuck hammered out of us. All because of you? Yeah.

Well, because of me and the two other guys. I mean, it was three of us. Fuck. And so they took all three of our guns, right, and put it in one bucket.

Right. So, I mean, down to the fucking sear, the firing pin, you name it, all the way fucking down. Three weapons in a bucket full of sand and salt water. And after several hours of getting the shit beat out of us, hand us the bucket and we're like, we'll see you at fucking zero six for a weapons inspection. Shit. And so, you know, we stayed up the whole rest of the night and, you know, we're sitting there, hands all fucked up and frozen, you know, digging through shit.

pouring shit out on the grinder with flashlights trying to find our shit because they made us sift through it there before we could take it back. And it was fucking miserable. But the whole island was that way for us. I mean, it was just, it was like a nonstop kick in the dick the whole time we were there. And it was cold. I mean, the water was like 48 to 52 degrees the whole time we were there. And it was just, it was shitty. Yeah. What was the rest of the class doing when you guys were getting your ass beat? They finished cleaning their weapons and went to bed.

So, yeah, I mean, as we're getting the fuck beat out of us, we see them trickling out of the fucking armory after all their shit's done, hitting the rack. I mean, we deserved it. Again, it was a good lesson learned. Even though we were just going to run and grab hot cocoa, bring it back, and try to warm up while we were doing our shit, it was like just got caught at the wrong place the wrong fucking time. I think it was a warrant officer. It was one of the more senior guys walked in and was just like,

Hell no, you know, he kicked the door open and just fucking trashed us. But damn. So moving on past buds, you checked in to what team? So I went to went to Fort Benning for jump school first. We went there right after we graduated before we even went on leave. So went straight from graduation, Fort Benning jump school.

Then we had 30 days leave and then I checked into SEAL Team 3. You stayed at Team 3 the entire time until you became an instructor? Yep. What was going on at that time period? So this was, you know, before 9-11. I mean, this was, I graduated from Bud's in February of 98. And so, you know, it was still, you know, Bill Clinton was still fucking president.

You know, funding was not great. Morale was okay. And, you know, it was kind of the old school 80s and 90s teams back then still, you know, in terms of the way the teams were structured. You know, SEAL Team 3 was the CENTCOM or Desert Warfare Platoon. You know, Team 5 was Jungle. I'm sorry, Team 1 was Jungle. Team 5 was Korea and cold weather. You know, and so we all kind of had our...

if you will. You know, we were the only ones that were, our working uniform was desert camis, you know, of the whole community. We were the only ones wearing desert camis back then. And so everything was kind of structured toward desert everything. I mean, whether it was reconnaissance stuff or, you know, you name it, is that everything was kind of geared towards long range desert type of operations and,

uh, went through SQT and, uh, you know, did the whole back then it was six months of, uh, of getting your, all of your qualifications done. Once, you know, once you graduated, you had that probationary period. And so it took a while to get your tried and you had to take a chief's board and they fucking grill you for, for hours and ask you every question under the book. And, uh, just, it was a pretty painstaking process from the time you graduate buds until you actually got your tried and it was almost a year. So, um,

I kind of prefer it that way. I think it did a better job at kind of policing the new guys coming in and making sure that they kind of earned their trident the right way. That's my take on it. Of course, I'm a little biased. But yeah, so I checked in there and jumped into a platoon and

It was an ARG Alpha platoon, which is Amphibious Readiness Group, which means we were on a ship. We had an almost two-year workup and then a six-month deployment, and we spent a lot of that time on ships. So I actually spent a pretty significant amount of time on a lot of different Navy ships, which at the time kind of sucked, but I'm glad I did because it was a good experience, you know, getting to –

Most team guys now have never been on a fucking boat. If you came in in the last 15 years, you probably have never even been on a fucking ship. I'm one of them. The only time I've ever been on one was doing VBSS training, which for those of you that don't know, that's boarding ships and taking them down. So that's a rarity nowadays. But rewind in just a little bit.

you had mentioned that you really liked hearing the stories of your grandparents serving in World War II. If you could serve in any war and to include, you know, the ones you did serve in, would you have changed it? Is there any particular war that

you would want to serve in? I mean, part of me says, uh, world war two, just because of the gravity of, of the impact that it had on the entire planet. Yeah. To me that, that war, not that Afghanistan wasn't justified, uh, but it just seems more, more justified, you know, uh, like the entire fucking country was behind it. And there, there is a part of me, I think that is almost jealous of, of,

that time in our nation's history where, I mean, literally it was like 9-12, you know, but for five fucking years straight, you know. And so to me, like, that kind of jumps out as being,

Maybe it's over romanticized because, you know, the way that the press was back then was very different and very filtered. And the American public did not have access to a lot of the same things that it has access to now as it relates to what goes on in war and things of that nature. But I still just think that, you know, there was there was a pretty clear cut line in the sand of good versus evil, or at least it sure fucking seems that way more so than it does now, even, you know, to me. Yeah.

Not that fucking terrorists aren't evil. It's just those lines seem a little muddier now. And again, maybe it's because we're living in it. In World War II, we're looking back and weren't a part of it. But it just seems like such a powerful moment in mankind's history. I think that would have been pretty neat to be a part of. Yeah, as fucked up as it sounds, it's for United States modern day history.

That was definitely our high point and it seems like it's been kind of slowly watered down ever since that point in time. But moving past that,

A lot of times guys have like an area of operation or something where they want to serve. Did you guys have Dream Sheet when you were coming out? Yeah, we did. I actually picked SEAL Team 2 as my number one choice. SEAL Team 8 was my second choice and Team 3 was my third. So I did get one of my choices. But I think a lot of us, I know for my class or at least that kind of era,

It seemed like the instructors played a huge role in inspiring guys where to go, what they wanted to do. Like we all wanted to really emulate the cadre, especially our third phase guys. But most of the SEAL cadre when I was a student were East Coast guys for whatever fucking reason. And so, you know, most of us picked East.

East Coast teams because you know, they they talked fondly and talk shit about you know, West Coast Hollywood fuckers and whatever and so Yeah, I mean we all kind of picked that but there was an element of even back then this was you know prior to 9/11 there was something about Team three and then just the whole Middle East fucking component that that was intriguing to me And so that's why I put it on the list also, but all fucking worked out. I mean out of all the teams you know - dev group but

To my knowledge, it seems like Team 3 probably throughout at least the earlier years in the war got the most experience. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we were just, you know, again, like with most things, right place at the right time. And, you know, to be the team that kicked the Iraq War off,

You know, in the operation that we did with the go plats and the manifold metering station, I mean, the entire, all of SEAL Team 3 did an operation together. You know, it's never been done before or since. Yeah. You know, so to have, you know, all fucking every platoon at SEAL Team 3 on one singular huge fucking mission at once was pretty fucking cool. Yeah.

We'll get into that in a minute, but why Team 2? That was UCOM, correct? Yeah, it was just, you know, again, like... UCOM is Europe, for those of you that don't know. A bunch of the first phase instructors were Team 2 guys, and a couple of our third phase instructors that...

that just, you know, really had a huge impact on me were team two guys also. And so I think, you know, as a fucking 19-year-old, I was very impressionable. I was like, well, fuck, these guys seem like badasses and have cool stories. I want to go where they went. You know, it's really that simple. Interesting. I was at eight and then went to two. Oh, yeah? Yeah. But, all right, so you're at team three, and...

What was the check-in process like for it? Were they welcoming or did they fucking hate your guts? It was actually, it was kind of underwhelming. I was expecting it to be more prevalent than it was. I think, you know, they were all busy and it was kind of three sheets to the wind. So it was a lot of like, this is the fucking SEAL team? Like, where is everybody? You know, like everybody was fucking gone, like training. And I actually had...

When I was home on leave, I got a call from Master Chief Huey, Al Huey's son, who Camp Al Huey, which is the camp that the San Clemente Island compound is named after. It's his son, was a Master Chief of Team 3, crusty old fucking guy. He actually called me on leave. He was like, are you fucking coming? And I was like, what?

you know, I was like, I have 30 days leave. I don't give a fuck. Get over here. It's like, okay. So if I can, I was like, I guess I gotta go. And I go and check in. And even then, like he wasn't there, like finally you're here. He'd like, he just called the whole list of guys that, you know, that were gone. It was like, fucking get your ass here, you know? And like SQT was, was starting up. And so they were just like, we, you know, there, there was very little of it. Uh, I mean, they fucked with us a little bit of like, you know, the, the, um,

The training cell guys would pull us in the office and be like, sit down. You know, you'd sit down and be like, no, not there. You know, just fucking with you like that. And like, fill out your school's request sheet and you better have underwater knife fighting and fucking basket weaving on there. You know, and we're just like, okay. And it's like not even a real form, you know, like just stupid, you know, new guy on the job type shit that they would fuck with us. But there was a little bit of that. But otherwise, it was really like...

I was just like, Jesus Christ, like what, what are you guys doing? You know? And so there, there wasn't, you know, a bunch of cool stories about all, all sorts of crazy shit. Like a lot of guys have, it was, it was very, like I said, underwhelming. And I, I was only there for a matter of, of a couple of days and then started SQT, which at that time, uh, it was STT, uh, sealed tactical training. And it was, uh,

Basically all, similarly, it was right as they were starting, all of the new BUDS graduates were going through STT together, whether you're going to an East Coast team or whatever. Because right before that, you actually did STT at your own team. Like each team ran their own little STT where their training cell guys, you know, on top of training the platoons would train the new guys and put them through a little pipeline with just a handful of them. As you can imagine, that's not really efficient training.

or effective, but there were some pros to it, I think. But so we were one of the first full class, you know, all BUDS graduates, irrespective of team that you're going to, to go through STT together on the West Coast. And then once we finished that, then we went back to the team and then it was more structured. But, you know, then I'd been through STT and was assigned to a platoon. And so I kind of jumped right in there fairly quick and we got started. But

I don't know what it was like for you as a new guy. For me, in the late 90s as a new guy in a SEAL team,

Non-war time was fucking brutal. Yeah. You know, and having an almost two-year workup. I mean, we got the fuck hazed out of us all the time. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah. We got, I mean, fucking taped up and the shit beat out of us and mini blast machine getting electrocuted. I mean, fucking you name it. Yeah. Like, we got fucking hammered all the time because they were bored, you know, and we had a long time together. How many new guys were in there with you? Half the fucking platoon. There was eight of us. No, eight? Eight.

Eight new guys? Yeah. Damn. Glenn Doherty was one of them. So there's a million fucking stories with him. God rest his soul. It's actually his 50th birthday today. Yeah. So eight of us. And the one, I guess, benefit to that is there were so many of us, it was harder for them to haze all of us. They'd have to get us one or two at a time.

Because if all eight of us were together, they'd have a hard time with us that way. But, you know, I will say this. I mean, again, it's kind of like the speech that my dad gave me about going back to high schools. At the time, it was kind of miserable and sucked. But looking back on it, I don't think you could pay to put yourself in a better circumstance as a young man.

you know, to be surrounded by barrel-chested fucking pipe hitters that teach you how to be a fucking man, you know, and how to handle things and how to live your life and how to get things done and how to adapt and how to, you know, not make fucking excuses and how to hold you accountable and really, you know, teach you how to fucking kick ass, you know. I mean, you just...

To me, I wish every fucking young man that as a 19 and 20 year old, you know, had the ability to be surrounded by 180 fucking guys like that the way I did. I mean, I'll, I will be forever grateful that, that I was able to, to finish growing up in the SEAL teams. You know, my parents laid a great foundation and did a standup job. The SEAL teams absolutely fucking finished, finished their job. And, and, uh,

I would not be where I'm at today and nowhere near it had it not been for those guys. I mean, they really fucking showed me how to do it. Yeah, I'm right there with you. I mean, that's definitely a fucking lost art these days. And if it teaches you anything, accountability and fucking consequences, which are...

few and far between these days hard to find people to take accountability and The consequences are fucking so minimal now that I think it's ruined entire generations I agree and it's also Motivated slash inspired me to try to be that for whoever I can You know male or female. There's you know in the canine world. There's a lot of you know female potential canine handlers or people that have questions or whatever and you know writing the books and

has had a tremendously rewarding impact on me also that way in getting letters from people like, hey, I read your book and I joined the Air Force and I'm slated to be a handler and it's because I read your book and whatever. To me, to be able to do anything even remotely close to what the generations before us did for us in the SEAL teams,

If I can accomplish a fraction of that, I'll be glad that I at least was able to do something. Because if people don't take the time, if they're selfish with their time and just focus on them and not try to put that back into the following subsequent generations, then we as a nation are completely fucked. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. So kind of moving past check-in and your beginning time there,

What year was that? What year did you finally check in? '98. '98. What was your first real op? First real op was the USS Cole. No shit. Yeah. So you went for what, two years before you did anything real? Yes, I mean, so when I checked in, like I said, we had a two, I mean, it was like a 22-month workup, right?

We were training for almost two years before we deployed. And then when we deployed, we deployed on the USS Duluth, part of an amphib deployment. So there was a big group of amphibious ships all leaving from San Diego, steam all the way to the Middle East and sit there for six months and come back. We flew actually on a fucking C-130 from San Diego to Hawaii, California.

hung out in hawaii for a few days met the ship there did some training and flew from hawaii to quadulane guam and then ultimately hawaii or australia and spent about a month in fucking australia which was awesome for all the reasons you can probably imagine and uh what is a bunch of board team guys doing australia everything you can think of we did we actually did a bunch of dumb shit uh

We had a couple days out. We were training with the Norforce guys, the Northern Force guys up, and we were in Darwin, which is the outback. I mean, it's not like the rest of Australia. It's much more the McDundee fucking outback type of experience, but it was still neat. But we had a couple days off, and we actually told our officer in charge that we were just going to go camp at Litchfield National Park, which was like an hour away, right there in the outback.

And we jumped on Qantas Airlines and flew all the way to the fucking Gold Coast without telling him. Oh, shit. Without telling him and flew there. There was four of us, I think, and dove on the fucking Great Barrier Reef and pub crawled like for three days. We were staying in hostels and scuba diving and getting shit-faced and just totally fucking going nuts. And he thought we were camping an hour away and we were like a fucking five-hour flight. Yeah.

But anyways, we came back, had a good time, and then ended up going from there. We took a guided missile cruiser, jumped on that, and hauled ass all the way to Bahrain. We were in Bahrain for a little bit, and then we were scheduled to go do some other shit, and then that's when the coal got hit. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

A total of six sets of remains have been found on board the Cole during the course of today. We are working to identify the remains and to contact the next of kin of those individuals and that notification and identification process continues as we speak. My prayers are with the families of those killed and injured and

with all the brave men and women in uniform who serve our country every day around the world. So we jumped on the USS Tarla and steamed down to the coal and then we sat on the coal for two fucking months. Rewind real quick.

How many days passed between when the coal got hit and you guys arriving on the coal? It was like a day and a half, two days. I mean, it was quick. How fucking fired up were you guys to do that? I mean, it was nerve-wracking and fired up at the same time. You know, jumping on a ship that's doing 12 miles an hour, it's almost like the Austin Powers. Where he's getting ready to run the guy over and he sits there screaming for fucking two minutes like,

You know, there was an element of like, Jesus Christ, we need to get there, you know, and it was a few days. You know, it wasn't as quick as, you know, jumping on a plane and being there that day. But, you know, they weren't hanging out like dog's balls for too long. But, yeah, it was nerve wracking because, again, it's hard to even put people in that frame of mind of this was still before September 11th, you know. Yeah.

Knowing that you know, I mean even the name Osama bin Laden like it was like who yeah, even then it was like Al Qaeda What the fuck is that? You know like I I had a little bit more inclination on who they were and what they were about because I was the Intel rep for the platoon and we were going to the Middle East so I was a little more read in than most people but but it's still it wasn't obviously anywhere near like it is now and and so

It was a bigger deal in that respect and that, you know, this is a U.S. warship that suicide bombers fucking pulled a tug laden with explosives alongside and blew themselves up. Interestingly, they tasked a guy to videotape that whole fucking thing. And he fell asleep and didn't get it on film. You know, their propaganda wing of Al-Qaeda. I mean, I think they...

I don't know if they executed him, but it came out years later that they had actually tasked a guy to get that on film. I kind of wish they had. Maybe that's a sadistic, creepy thing to think. But for their uses, the propaganda tools are pretty powerful. And that killed like 15, 19 sailors and then a lot of casualties. Yeah, and it was fucking creepy for us because...

Coming on board, you know, obviously the crew was to say that they were rattled as a fucking huge understatement Yeah, you know because the the goal of of the entire mission was to actually sink that fucking ship, you know It wasn't just to bomb it and the whole reason that we were there was because they threatened to to sink it you know, they came came over the open airwave Mar band radio and

And threatened the captain and they were like, you know, this is fucking Al Qaeda Your ship is not leaving our fucking harbor, you know We like we will sink it or whatever the fuck they said something to that effect And so that's why we went down there and so we sat there for two months and from sundown to sunup Every fucking night we had two ribs two boats, you know floating around with a couple guys on it then we had a 60 gunner and a couple snipers and a law rocket and

guy on the bridge of the ship kind of keeping, you know, overwatch and we were out on the boats. And there was a number of times where small boats would come, you know, test the perimeter and see what they could get away with and whatever. And we were always right there. Never mixed it up with them, but a couple of pretty, you know, fairly close calls where, you know, if things had gone maybe a little different, it probably would have gone pretty bad for the boats that were trying to come any closer. But

Any shots fired? Nothing. Nothing? At least nothing from any of the boats I was on, and I don't recall any of the other guys having any. There was a couple of close calls where, again, it was like, you know, they went a little too close, and guys would get and haul ass out there and, you know, maybe draw down on them or the fucking, you know, 50 Cal guys on the rib and fucking be like, hey, motherfucker, you know, or whatever. So they never really tried anything past that because I think they knew, you know, that it wasn't going to fucking pan out well for them. But,

Where it was fucking creepy was going inside, you know, the first couple of days we were there, we actually, you know, we stayed on board the coal and, you know, they had 19 empty racks. Well, guess where we fucking slept, you know, so we're sleeping in these sailors bunks that were just fucking blown up.

And there's USS Cole fucking coffee mugs with fucking powder blasts on them in the galley and people's personal effects. And a lot of the crew, you're laying in some dude that the rest of the room is fucking devastated. And you're laying in his bunk jerking off. No, I'm kidding. But they're looking at you like...

what the fuck, you know, they just can't, can't wrap their mind around it, you know, and it was, we didn't know any of them. So it was just very different for us coming on board. But, but, uh, you know, it was a powerful fucking moment for us because, um, it was the first, you know, kind of like, holy shit, you know, this is a real, a real fucking deal and they're testing the water. And so, uh,

There was also the stench from, you know, being in 94 degree fucking water, saltwater, you know, and having now a ship that has no running power on it in terms of AC and stuff. You know, I had floodlights and stuff in some of the barracks rooms on enough generator power, but nowhere near enough because of the damage to the ship to actually keep it cool. And so, I mean, just the smell of 19...

Semi submerged blown up dead bodies trapped in a fucking boat You know in that kind of water and that kind of heat day in day out for a couple of months was fucking brutal And they were that the bodies were in there. So yeah, they couldn't get him out Since we're from about the knee down in in the galley so the the witness reports were

When the blast hit, it hit during lunch, and it was right at midships, which is where the galley was located in that area. And so...

Everybody that was in there said that it was like a fuck... The floor was like a fucking sine wave. Like the floor went like that. You know, a metal floor moving like a fucking wave from the blast. And so there was a section of the ship where the floor became the ceiling. And it just fucking meshed up and that was it. And there was one spot where...

As you're walking, you could actually see a fucking dungaree and a boondocker from about the knee down hanging out of the fucking where now it's a ceiling. It was a floor. Now it's a ceiling. Somebody's fucking leg is hanging there, you know, right there fucking plain as day. And then the other 18 people were, you know, in different places.

parts of the boat fucking mangled and and uh dead just sitting there fucking rotting but fuck man so you guys um damn how long uh how long were you guys on there two months two that boat sat in that uh harbor and and aiden for two fucking months two fucking months yeah so you can imagine like the smell didn't get any fucking better and then the bodies were there the entire time yeah what um

How'd you guys get the boat out? So the USS Marlin Spike, which was a floating died rock, came from Louisiana and came all the way out. And it took, you know, between spinning them up and outfitting it to accommodate the coal and all that, it took two fucking months to get there, 63 days. And they came about 12 miles off the coast.

And then they took tugs and bumper boats and shit and drug the coal out to it. And then the way the floating dry dock works is it's this monster fucking boat, right?

And it has the ability to sink itself. They drag the boat on and then it raises back up. And so, I mean, you can Google pictures of Marlin spike and coal and you'll see this fucking ship that has a USS warship that looks like it's a fucking toy on it. It's, it's that much bigger, you know? So it,

It fucking dry docks the coal on a boat and then it's steamed all the way back to Louisiana. Damn. Took them a couple years to completely refurbish the ship, but they did. They completely repaired it. And to my knowledge, it's actually back out at sea and doing deployments again. But one thing...

while it was being drug out there because it took you know a couple of days you know because it was the one thing it was it was severely listed i mean i don't know how the fuck it didn't sink honestly i mean i think it speaks volumes to the crew for doing such a good job uh damage control wise of having all their ducks in a row and handling their processes the way they were supposed to because they kept the the boat from sinking it's a monster fucking hole in it and uh

So it took them forever to drag it out. Well, while it was being drug out, we actually got spun up to do a ship boarding. You know, we had thought like finally, you know, 63 days of

Night after night fucking guarding this goddamn thing. You know, it's dragging out and now we can kind of relax. Well, on its way out, there was a fucking boat hauling ass straight towards it that our ship picked up on the radar. So they spun us up. We get all our shit on, hop in the ribs, go fucking assault this little miniature fucking tug tanker thing that was, it turned out it was just bringing oil out.

out to the Marlin spike. I guess there was, you know, they didn't deconflict or whatever, but there was a Yemeni army officer with a fucking Beretta on board and then the rest was just a crew. And of course we assaulted it like it was Al-Qaeda coming back. We almost shot and killed the fucking Yemeni guy because he kind of had an attitude and started to put his hand on his fucking pistol. And Clint Emerson and I actually were the two guys that

zeroed in on him and fucking just swarmed him and backed him up. And he was like, oh shit, you know, had MP5s down his fucking throat. And he got his hand off his gun immediately and decided he didn't want to fuck around. But so, you know, once we finally got that done, then we actually did a follow-on op with, because of that. And so at the time,

You know, U.S. ships were pulling in everywhere. And that's what was happening with the coal in Yemen is they were just pulling in for a resupply. And so once that happened, the U.S. Navy said no more resupplies anywhere other than Dubai. Or actually Jebel Ali, which is just south of Dubai. And so we went to Dubai. We jumped on a USNS fucking merchant marine ship there.

and hauled ass to Dubai. And we were in plain clothes, relaxed grooming standards, fucking cover stories, the whole bit. And every fucking Navy ship that came in, we would dive on the tugboats and ensure that they didn't have any bombs on them or explosives or whatever.

Went through the whole warehouse, personnel, pallets. We had a sniper overwatch on one of the towers. I mean, we had a whole fucking thing going on of every time a shit pulled in, we made sure that that shit wasn't going to happen. So we spent about a month in Dubai doing that. Do you remember what your cover was? It was fucking lame. It was just like we were government contractors doing like electrical work or something stupid like that. It wasn't anything fancy. Of course, if we were out in town, we were a fucking American rugby team or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Well, did you... You know, Yemen is a very fucked up place. And I deployed there several times. And, you know, probably doesn't mean shit to you, but I got to see where the, you know, coal happened. I used to drive by it every fucking day. No shit. Yeah, and...

And me and Glover had a couple incidents there, and there was always shit going on in Yemen, especially in Aden. Did you guys get to go out in town at all? No, we were on the ship or in that port area, and that was it. Okay. So we had very limited exposure experience to any of the actual local populace. I mean, a little bit from...

you know, people coming and checking it out or, you know, interacting with people on board or whatever. I do remember, it just kind of flashed in my memory, you know, at that time I was, I think I just turned 21 right before we deployed on that. And so, you know, as a 21-year-old, like I'm still pretty young, you know, by parent standards and whatever. And so anyway, on a sat phone, I scared the shit out of my parents, you know, because they heard about it in the news and they knew I was overseas and they hadn't heard from me in a while. And all of a sudden I call them

And my dad had gone home like he'd forgot something and went back after lunch and went back into the house. Because even this was before really everybody had cell phones.

And so I call him on a sat phone at the house phone and he picked up and he hadn't heard from me in weeks. I was like, guess where I'm staying? And he's like, where? I was like, on board the fucking USS Cole half sunk in the water. He's like, what? He's like, Jesus fucking Christ. Like, you know, he's having a heart attack. Like, what the fuck are you doing there? Are you okay? You know, all this other shit and the...

But yeah, it was just one of those moments where, almost like fate, like he, I wouldn't have gotten a hold of him otherwise, but I had the opportunity to call him and it was just kind of neat. We look back on that and laugh once in a while. Yeah. You know, just backtracking a little bit more too, even though there was no shots fired, just for the audience, I think...

That always kind of surprises me because there hasn't been shit going on, you know? And you spent two years at the fucking team preparing to go to war. And like when I showed up, we knew what we were going to do. And there was nothing going. And then this happens, which, you know, gives you the adrenaline. And I'm assuming the entire platoon was hungry as fuck to get some action.

And I guess where I'm going is the discipline that it takes to not shoot a potential threat when you know you can fucking get away with is, uh, it's, it's, uh, there's something to be said about that, you know, and a lot of units don't have that fucking discipline. And, and, uh, that's one of the things that separates, uh, special operations units from conventional units. So, uh, I just want to kind of, uh,

reiterate that or bring awareness on how much fucking discipline that actually takes. I mean, well, yeah, I appreciate it. I think, and I agree, I think half of it is what you're talking about in terms of, you know, having clear thinking, you know, not overly aggressive people, you know, knowing when to use aggression, how to apply it, and also when to turn the fuck off when it's appropriate, when it's not appropriate.

And being clear-headed to know the differences is necessary. But I also think there's an element of leadership that exists, at least within our chain of command at that time it did, where we knew absolutely what the fucking right and left flank was. Here is our fucking bubble and nobody comes inside that. I don't care if they're five inches from it, you don't fucking engage them.

You know, and so they were smart enough to see and test, you know, our perimeter and see, you know, if we go here, what happens if we go like and so we would ratchet it up where, you know, if they were getting close, we'd start heading that way, you know, and they'd get to a certain point and they'd fucking full throttle it out to the edge. And so, you know, they honestly like a fucking dog that is testing a goddamn electric fence.

That's basically what they were doing. And so they were measuring our response as it relates to their behavior and figured out how far they could get and what we were going to do. And yeah, there were a couple of times where

you know, we made it abundantly clear, like, any fucking further in your fucking history. Yeah. And I think they just recognized that and decided, you know what, we'll live to fight another day and this isn't worth it. Yeah. I mean, even just the revenge factor, you know, I mean, fuck, you're eating chow with fucking decaying legs hanging through the ceiling and, you know, which are Americans and our brothers and sisters, you know, that are servants. So, fucking...

Kudos to you, man, and your team and Clint. Yeah, I thought, you know, it's funny. I talked a little bit about this with Nick and Remy talking about race and policing and not to get too off on a tangent. But I think the one of the starkest contrasts between the U.S. military and U.S. police forces is that.

is that, you know, there's elements of police, and granted, not all of them. There's plenty of them that aren't that way. But I think that there are too many holdovers of when things happen. You know, there's times where cops get away with shit that they probably shouldn't.

And there's almost never a time where that happens in the military. You fuck up this much. It's like the Top Gun quote. You fuck up this much, you're going to be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong. You fuck up that much and you're going to be breaking big rocks into little rocks at Level North. And everybody fucking knows that. And so to me, that's really the secret sauce. It's not even in selection or training or whatever that's going to take...

of revamping and billions of fucking dollars in funding. It's like have an accountability system so stringent that people know absolutely like you fucking, this is okay, this isn't okay. Have the leadership with enough directive and balls and ability to communicate what the black and white contrasted right and left flank are so that guys understand what the fuck they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. And I think the military just does a way better job at that.

Yeah. Well, let's take a quick commercial break, and when we come back, we'll move on. This episode of the Sean Ryan Show is brought to you by Vigilance Elite Patreon. Vigilance Elite Patreon is how you support the show. It also has an entire library of tactical training and...

Behind the scenes footage of the Shawn Ryan show go to vigilance elite comm click the training tab It'll take you right to vigilance elite training on patreon get a subscription support the show Thank you. Let's get on with it. All right, Mike, so we're back from the break. We were just in Yemen USS Cole and You said you were there with Clint Emerson so

I just happened to have Clint on the line here. So... That's fucking great. Hey, Clint, how's it going, man? Hey, how you guys doing? Doing pretty good. So I got your buddy Mike Ritland here, and he was just talking about boarding a small boat and shoving some MP5s in somebody's face. So I was wondering if I could get you guys to kind of relive that. I remember, and it wasn't that fun.

Were they, were they, did he have bigger nuts than Mike does? Mike Big Balls Ritalin? I remember, you know, size, consistency. I just remember that was... I actually do remember that. Yeah, we were just getting, like we were on the loading bay or whatever, you know, like where you climb back up on the ship and I was like, what the fuck are you doing? So that's no shit. He's not even joking. He did grab my fucking nuts. He's kind of liking someone

with humor, you know, I tend to, I get nervous and so I think it only gets worse over time, at least for me, with antics getting up sometimes the most serious moment. Oh, you grabbed Mike's nuts. I grabbed his nuts instead one time. Oh, shit, I thought you grabbed the Yemeni's nuts, the Yemeni guy's nuts. After the Yemeni, I'll just play with Mike instead. Never a dull moment. Yeah, no, it was, I don't know if you guys have gotten into it or

I've told people time and time again, if there's one thing that'll take patriotism up a couple of notches is rolling up on an advanced destroyer like that listing in a Yemeni's harbor. It was like, holy shit, you know, this is actually real. And there's that overwhelming feeling like, wait a minute, these guys are this capable? You know, it was just a surreal experience when we first arrived there. So,

And then everything after that was without a doubt time for a lot of stuff. And, you know, we were all just figuring it out as we moved along.

Yeah, I was telling him, especially because it was pre-9-11, you know, so just the mentality of the SEAL teams and the country and the world at that point was very different. And so it was even more impactful that way. You know, not that it wouldn't be if it happened today again, but just because it was so out of the blue and, you know, Al Qaeda was...

was not a household name at that point the way that it is now and and it uh yeah the the crew was pretty rattled and we were all kind of sobered up real fucking quick coming from bahrain hanging out fucking off you know on the tail end of a of a month in australia doing the same shit it was kind of a slap in the face of like hey this is pretty fucking serious how bad did you guys want to go back to australia once you uh were on that ship for about a month yeah yeah when we uh we ran we're

Nice. Well, uh...

We're going to wrap this up here real quick, but you got anything to say to Clint? Oh, just, you know, keep it clean over there, and I'll be home soon. I miss you, honey. You take care. Careful coming home. Right on, man. Well, hey, Clint, thanks for the call, man, and we've got to get you on here. Bye. Been waiting. You guys take it easy, and, yeah, wear your mask, wear your gloves, put your puppies. All right. Talk to you later. Be safe, man. That's classic.

Well, fuck, man. If I would have known you guys were together, then that would have been planned a little better. Yeah, I was going to bring him with, but I didn't want to announce it on the show. I guess the cat's out of the bag now. That's cool, man. That's cool that you guys got that history. Yeah. So anyways, let's just keep moving forward. So...

We're out of Yemen, and I kind of want to get to the invasion or the oil rigs, whichever one's first. I've heard you talk about both of them in one of your books, and I heard you talk about the oil rigs in one of your books and the invasion on several different podcasts. But I'd like to go in depth with whichever one of those came first. Yeah. So...

The deployment that the Colt was on was prior to the Iraq invasion deployment. And it was, you know, we did the Colt, we were in Dubai for that, you know, month or so, and then scattered around a little bit after that and then made our way back home. Got back in February. Platoon didn't start up until that following January. We got home in February of 2001, though, so...

I went and did a couple different schools, went to Tagalog. We were slated to go to Southeast Asia, which we did, but then 9-11 happened. I actually did a six-week exercise in Jordan right after 9-11, which was treated much more differently than just an exercise because of what happened. They almost kind of treated it like a forward staging area in case they wanted to send some guys straight

straight from there. So we took that exercise quite a bit more serious also. Ended up not doing anything other than just working with Jordanian special forces and SEALs there. And then

ultimately platooned up, did about a year workup and then deployed. We still originally went to Southeast Asia. We based out of Guam, went to the Philippines, went to Singapore, went to Thailand, and then kind of got the, hey, we're going to be moving you over to Kuwait. Iraq is probably going to happen, you know, because we deployed in October, September, October of 2003, 2002, rather. And

And, uh, so early 2003, they said, you know, Hey, we're sending you to fucking Kuwait and you guys are going to stage out of the Kuwaiti naval base in case Iraq kicks off, which we expect it to, you know? And so at that point, you know, we didn't have any of our desert, anything like we had to have all, you know, shits shipped over and we're painting guns and robbing Peter to pay Paul, trying to get desert stuff together and, uh, went over to Kuwait and we staged out of there for about six weeks, uh,

And, you know, hearing the stories of the staging for the bin Laden raid is actually kind of similar in that we had, you know, a solid almost two months and we had the whole oil platform staked out in the fucking sand, you know, because it was 1600 meters long, which I don't think people realize how big of a fucking target it was. It's 16 football fields, you know, that this whole target consisted of that we had to take down. And so, you know,

We practiced the actions on the objective for that over and over and over for six fucking weeks before we hit it. No shit. Yeah. So we were... To say we were... From a CQB and room clearing standpoint, our platoon was...

as well-oiled as any fucking SEAL platoon could have been. You guys had every fucking detail, contingency, all of it was mapped out? For the most part. Where it was a little shaky was the intelligence coming in for that mission was, and I was the intel rep, it was not very easy to corroborate what was accurate or what we thought was accurate or not because it was very conflicting.

Some reports said, you know, there's a handful of people on board and, you know, there's basically there's no intelligence that indicates that there's going to be any resistance on one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, there's over 100 people on board. It's rigged with explosives. They're going to clack it off the second you guys fucking step on and every fucking thing in between. You know, so there was there was a lot of conflicting intelligence there.

Do you have any idea how many different sources they were running for that? It was mostly four, which I can't name which four, but there were four that we were working with predominantly. And even within those four, it was changing. You know, one day it would be this, and then it's like, no, there's more people, no, there's less people. They've got, you know, anti-aircraft artillery pieces on board. They have fucking, you know, we see that there's pipes rigged with explosives. My...

My AOIC, the assistant officer in charge or second in command, and I jumped on a helicopter and flew above it, hanging out the fucking window, taking pictures with our most powerful digital cameras at the time, which, you know, again, this is 2003. A lot of technology has transpired since then, so it wasn't great. And it was super fucking overcast, so we didn't get great intel. But it was kind of a neat experience.

you know, a neat op that way and that it was, you know, a little bit of an offshoot from some shit that we would normally do. But so we took a bunch of pictures of that, came back and really ultimately determined that there are at least a few dozen people on board. And we've had multiple reports that there are explosives on board and that there's a good chance that, you know, certain pipes are rigged to blow if we try to take it down, you know. So that was kind of

you know, the, the final picture that was painted, uh, for us as, as we were getting ready to take this thing down. Now, at the same time, there was a manifold and metering station, uh, on the coast, which was about 25 miles away from, from where the go plat was. And all of the rest of SEAL Team 3 was tasked with taking that down at the same time. There was a problem with, um,

you know, this 26 miles of pipeline, they're 48 inch pipes and there's four of them and they're filled with oil. So if they were to blow, you know, either end or the pipes and that amount of oil spilling, it would have been like 30 Exxon Valdez spills worth of oil in the Gulf. And we would have been, you know, the bad guy because it was our fault and blah, blah, blah. So

It was imperative that the entire team was working in cahoots with one another to be able to take all of it down at the same time. Yeah. Which, as you can imagine, is a hell of a logistic undertaking. Yeah. But so we managed to get ready to do it. We took Mark Fives out for a ways and the ribs followed us.

So we were hanging out in the Mark V just kind of relaxing. And once we got about, I don't know, three or four miles out maybe, we jumped in the ribs and got all of our shit on and got ready to go. I mean, we were basically stacked on the ribs, you know, fucking rock and ready to go and

haul ass up there. We had practiced diving. We had practiced fast roping. Ultimately, we ended up just taking a boat and fucking hauling ass up, jumping off the boat and just taking it down in kind of a swarm type of fashion. Climbing up? Yeah. I mean, basically just jumping off the boat onto the lowest platform. Okay. And then taking it down bottom to top. Now, at one end, there was a birthing section

And the rest of that 1600 meters, there were little stations every, you know, couple hundred yards, you know, where there was, you know, a little office or, you know, kind of a building that, you know, was an observer observation deck or something like that for the ships pulling up or whatever. But the

The majority of the concentration of people and things that we were worried about were at the birthing at one end. So we jump on board. Real quick, let me interrupt you. So how many different elements are there between the pipeline and the platforms?

Um, I mean, it's, it was really all one big fucking thing. So, um, you know, it was like, uh, I mean, it was almost kind of, it kind of looked like a long tanker in and of itself, but it could accommodate up to four oil tankers, two on each side at the same time and load them with oil. And the reason why there was significance, uh, strategic significance is that that it was that, uh, uh, what was it?

Maybot and Kayot. It was the Mina al-Bakr oil terminal was the name of the facility. How the fuck I remember that, I don't know. So four tankers would come up there and that's where Saddam was fighting or going against the embargo and smuggling oil even though there were sanctions against his country to be able to sell oil. That's where they were doing it from, was from that terminal. The Kayot, the Khor al-Amaya terminal

uh, oil terminal was completely empty. And the, and the Grom guys took that down at the same time that we were doing it, but they, we, we knew that there was nobody on there and that's the target. They just wanted to make sure it was secure so nobody could come on and fuck with it. Um, so we, uh, we jump on board and, uh, there ends up being, I want to say, uh, 26, um, you know, whatever you want to call them, uh, enemy fighters on board that were a mixed bag of, uh,

Iraqi intelligence, Special Republican Guard, Navy, and kind of a handful of other people that just had different roles in Saddam's military. There was a couple of Navy divers, and there were a significant amount of explosives on board. And they, through interrogations afterward—

actually revealed to the interrogators that they were instructed to put the explosives all over the pipes and put them in certain places and blow it when we came on board. So they were expecting you guys? Yeah. Do you think it's because of the helo op for pulling surveillance? No. I think it was two reasons. The helo op, we were at like,

I mean, we were stupid high. We were almost O2 levels or close. I mean, we were thousands of feet above, and I don't think that that tipped them off. We took it down in the first Gulf War, and from a strategic standpoint, it was kind of a no-brainer that they knew it would because that was the only operational oil terminal that Iraq had at the time in the Gulf that they could load tankers with oil. So they knew we would come secure it.

It was Saddam's goal, again, learning well after the fact that like we anticipated that it was his goal to to blow that and frame us or pin it on us for, you know, having a huge ecological disaster, you know, because we fucked with it.

Just like they did with the Kuwaiti oil rigs in the first Gulf War of setting them on fire. They wanted to accomplish that same thing. So it was a pretty high-value strategic target for sure. But we managed to get on board without most of them knowing anyway is that most of them were asleep.

And so, you know, we we didn't really have any resistance in terms of them firing or putting up a huge fight. There were some of them that were hiding or that were locked in different rooms. And we went through and breached all the fucking doors. Shotguns with no ear pro. And you were the breacher. That was one of them. Yeah. Shane and I were the two shotgun breachers. So we breached a fuck ton of doors.

caught guys in rooms, you know, and a lot of them had guns and whatever. We just, we were very fortunate and, you know, we were able to capture, you know, 20, 27, 26 prisoners and, you know, not have any casualties on our end whatsoever. Holy shit. 27 fucking prisoners? Yeah. Did you say you rolled up in a rib? We did, yeah. Okay. So rib is kind of like, those of you that don't know, it looks kind of like a

Zodiac which is a rubber boat but it has a metal bottom and a lot of times they have a canopy over the it's a center console yeah but um and then uh I'm just curious it's kind of a weird question but uh what were you guys wearing were you wetsuits or no it was all flight suits and mp5s I mean that's like an old school recruiting video holy shit yeah mp5s were you guys running optics

Just, what was it? It was the Trijicon. The Reflex. Reflex sights on pretty much everybody's rig, yeah. Damn. Yep. And again, that platform there was appropriate because it was mostly metal everything. I mean, fucking everything was made out of metal, close quarters. So, yeah, MP5s, even looking back on it, I would use those again. I mean, what we were wearing, I think, was...

was the right call for it. We did have body armor and helmets on, but yeah, a classic visit board search and seizure, you know, type of kit and set up. Nighttime? Say that again? Was it at nighttime? Yeah, it was. It was probably around midnight, one o'clock, somewhere in there. And it took us about four and a half hours

to secure the whole fucking thing and obviously most of that time was down at the birthing area dealing with all the people i mean we hog tied them and put fucking sandbags over their heads and corralled them all into one area and some guys were crying some of them literally shit themselves and pissed themselves um you know some of them were were you know in a man pile to begin with all fucking all over each other and like what the fuck but

Yeah, it was a filthy fucking birthing area, as you can imagine, you know, out that far with no real resupply other than kind of the bare necessities. But, you know, ultimately, we were able to get on there before they could do anything. They didn't blow anything up, and we managed to capture all of them. How many operators were there? There was, I think, 31 or two of us. We had a—

We had an SDV platoon with us also. So it was two SEAL platoons. Did they roll in with the sub or were they on the ribs? So they did an op on or with an SDV that, you know, prior to that from an intelligence gathering standpoint to try to, you know,

fill in some of the gaps also and really weren't able to provide much more intel than we already had. They weren't able to confirm any of the suspicions of pipes laden with explosives or anything because ultimately there wasn't. They had the explosives on board but they weren't rigged

the way that they would have need to have been to, to actually blow everything up when we stepped on. So they got fucking lazy, huh? Well, you know, there was one guy that made a comment in the post interrogations that said, uh, you know, they told us to, to do that, but,

We all kind of looked around and realized, like, well, what the fuck are we supposed to do then? You know, we're 25 miles off the coast with no boats and you want us to blow this up? Like, well, that's going to fuck us up too. So I think that's probably most of why they didn't do it is they didn't want to turn into fucking suicide bombers, you know. Wow. They'd have blown themselves up. I've never heard that before. Everybody's always seems to be...

Pretty willing to volunteer for that. Yeah. You know, again, I think, you know, when you're talking regular Iraqi military, even the special Republican guard guys, it's more mafia style than it is, you know, hardline Islamic terrorists, you know. So in dealing with the actual Iraqi military, most of those guys have no interest in,

dying, you know, so or are scared of it at least enough to not do something like that. But yeah, were the prisoners pretty compliant or? Yeah, they were scared shitless. Yeah. You know, they they didn't didn't really fight at all. I mean, some of them a little bit of scuffle here and there, but you didn't get the impression that they wanted to fight. That's for sure. Were you guys on running knots? Then you were a white light.

I mean, there was enough light there already that we just didn't need them. We did have white lights and there were parts of the berthing where we used it, like some bathrooms that were dark or, you know, some sections of it that were, you know, lower lit that we that we white lighted a little bit. But I mean, then not even all of us had fucking nods, you know, in in terms of, you know, a two two.

Or a binocular setting like I had a fucking I think it's what is it a PBS 14 the monocular fucking yeah, you know I had to do some driving with with a fucking monocular for for a while, you know So we were I think under outfitted a fair bit, but damn, it's fucking crazy. How far off yeah, I

Everything's come, you know, it's relatively short amount of time. Yeah. I mean, there were, you know, once we went in country, we were in, uh, in four Humvees. None of them were armored. Uh, two of them didn't even have fucking doors on them, you know? So the two that did, they were those just thin skin, like vinyl, uh,

that we hung body armor on the fucking doors to give us something, something extra like we'd throw our body armor on the fucking, you know, out the window and over the door to give you some kind of fucking protection on the doors. Damn, dude. Yeah. So is that where that op ended or? Yeah, so we finished that and then there was kind of a turnover team. There was, you know, interrogators and I think a Marine FAST group came on to,

basically, you know, hold it for however long until they brought, you know, I don't know, contractors to operate it or, or what, but yeah, we just, we took it over and when we finished, it was right at when the sun was coming up. And so, uh, our replacements showed up on a helo and we jumped on, uh, on back on the ribs and then ultimately we loaded the ribs onto a fucking fast cat, like a big fast catamaran and rode that back to, uh,

Back to K&B, Kuwaiti Naval Base. So we get back there, do the whole debrief thing. And at that point, I mean, that's basically what started the war, right? That happened the night before the invasion. So we went from Kuwaiti Naval Base up to Ali Asalim Air Force Base in the northern part of Kuwait.

and loaded all of our shit up. We had to steal a Humvee from the Air Force because we only had three of them, and it was green. So, like, overnight we had cans of paint and a couple of paintbrushes, and our new guys fucking hand-painted a green Humvee tan. And we loaded all of our shit up in it and then drove across the border up and drove all the way to Nazarene.

in one fell swoop. Well, before we go there, I want to go back. So that op that we just discussed, correct me if I'm wrong, but was that your first interaction with taking something down with dogs? No, we didn't have dogs on that at all. You didn't have dogs, okay. No, the first time there was even...

mention of them was towards the end of that deployment up in the northern part of the country into Crete. There was a marine contingent that had an explosive detection dog by where we were at. So we end up going up to Al-Aslim and end up there was the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit that

was taking some pretty fucking heavy casualties in Nazarea along a main supply route. A lot of the Saddam Fadain guys were heavily concentrated in Nazarea and they were given them all they could fucking deal with. And so Mattis, who was the CEO of the 1st Marine Division at the time,

Ask Commodore Harwood if he would let some of our guys come up and ambush the ambushers that were fucking with his supply route. So we went up into Nazarene and spent a couple of weeks there disrupting every fucking thing we could.

And we spent kind of a blue gold. We spent that time doing kind of a blue gold thing with another platoon from Team 3. And so we would go out one night and do operations and they would be our QRF. And then the next night we'd flip flop. We did a couple of ops where we went out together and, you know, we would drive or they would drive, you know, and kind of all go out as a group. We hit a train station once.

As a group, that was one of the times where I had to drive on nods, totally dark for like three and a half hours on the insert drive.

And we pull up and hit the train station. We establish a perimeter and whatever. And it was on that was the first mission where we found actually found like CBR, the chemical, biological, radiological suits and two PAM chloride pens and bags of white powder and all kinds of like chemical weapon training suits and a bunch of shit in there.

that we turned over and never heard anything more about it. What was the pucker factor? Huge. Yeah, I'll bet. Yeah, I mean, when you're coming across that shit, you're just like, holy fuck. You know, like, are we stepping into a fucking, you know, cache of goddamn, you know, chemical weapons or what the fuck is this, you know? So we spent two weeks there just, again, trying to disrupt operations, spent a lot of time

you know, blowing up fucking like we'd, we'd find caches of, uh, of weapons of, of, uh, you know, crates of RPGs, you know, shit like that. Uh, we had some UA, we had a UAV guy at the time that, uh, that program was just kind of starting to come online. And so it was a team guy, UAV operator that went with us and we'd launch it from the Humvee. And it was awesome because like we would drive along and it would be up above and, you know, at a certain level, uh,

On the ground unless you kind of really know what you're looking at You can't tell if that's a real fucking plane or a UAV if it's high enough, right? Yeah, you could draw out, you know the fucking insurgents because they'd start shooting at it You know, and so we would use that as much as a fucking decoy as we would You know actually getting the real-time intelligence of what's ahead is that you draw out people start shooting at it and stuff so

Um, you know, we would, uh, you know, spent, like I said, spent a couple of weeks just doing tit for tat, trying to disrupt the network of people that were fucking with the, with the convoy routes for the Marines. And, uh, it seems like we did a, at least an adequate enough job to, to keep them from getting fucked with anymore. So what was the resistance like? Were they, uh, pretty dedicated or no, it was real mixed. Um, most of it was, you know, again, this was at the start of the war. So I think,

Just my kind of assumption was that they didn't really understand. It was kind of like the guys in Yemen is that it was more like testing what they could get away with or not. So it was much more cat and mouse kind of shit, you know. And because of that, I think, you know, they based a lot of what they did after that as, you know,

teams came in and established fobs and whatever is that, you know, that kind of set the tone, I think, for what they knew they could start to get away with or not, how much of a fight they could put up with before they had to, uh, you know, retreat or, or bound back or, or bag ass and live to fight another day, you know? So, um, a lot of it was, you know, and for us too, some of it was us feeling them out, you know, as you know, if we shoot through these windows and we take fucking shots from, from here, you know, how we, uh,

How we respond what does that dictate you know in terms of their response and you know whether or not we use the UAV if we You know blow up caches do they come to see what the fucking explosion was if you know if we blow up like we blew up vehicles You know or shot water tanks like we'd come across little areas that That we knew you know people had just been there like there was fresh food and a little like almost campsites and

at different checkpoints and places, you know, or, you know, you'd take shots from somewhere and you'd go check it out and they would leave and you'd find, you know, crates of fucking ammo and AKs and, and, uh, RPG rounds and fuel tanks and vehicles and shit. And so we would swoop in there and just place fucking standard charges on everything and just blow the fuck out of all of it, you know? And then sometimes we would, we would probe in further. Sometimes we would go back and see if they would come back. It was just, it was a lot of that kind of

you know, back and forth, cat and mouse bullshit of figuring out, you know, what the fuck they're going to do based on what we do and vice versa. Yeah. But you got, so you guys were fucking engaging. Uh, in, in some cases, yeah. You know, it, it was pretty light though. You know, it was, it was very, um, what I guess I would call it. It was more, um, reconnaissance driven, you know, on both ends, you know, both in fire and effect and everything else. But, but,

It wasn't until we went up to the northern part of the country where it was a legitimate fucking like holy fuck gunfight, you know, where there was bullets flying every which goddamn direction, you know, into the Humvees and right past your fucking head and in the ground next to you. And I mean, it was it was like kicking over a fucking hornet's nest when we when we went up there. But between Nazarea and the northern part, we did hang out. We were in Baghdad. We took down a scud base there.

That's fucking awesome. Which was pretty neat, especially growing up in the first Gulf War and seeing how big of an impact Scud's had on everything. And so this was the Iraqi Army's main Scud training facility base. And I took pictures of, they had murals, these crazy anti-American murals that had all sorts of twisted shit like,

He'd have like a blond-haired, blue-eyed, muscular guy on his knees with his hands behind his back and like a muscled-out, Iraqi-looking guy with his shirt off.

with an Iraqi flag wrapped around the American's neck, like choking his eyes until they're bulging out and falling out of his head. No shit. You got pictures of this? I do. I'm going to put them up on screen. Like a skull painted like an American flag with a fist painted like an Iraqi flag, like coming down and crushing the fucking skull apart. Just weird shit like that, you know. But, you know, again, thinking of it like if you were to go to –

you know, NAB Coronado. And like, that's what it was like these crazy anti-American murals, like all over the base, you know, it just was weird, but. You know, people don't fucking realize how anti-American it was over there and how much they wanted to fuck us up. And, and in Afghanistan too, I remember seeing the rugs with, did you ever get those? They had the little prayer rugs with the twin towers. Oh no, I never got those, but. Yeah, they had rugs with twin towers on them and it had the plain rugs.

uh, the planes crashing into the fucking twin towers. I used to pray on them. And, uh, yeah. But anyways, yeah, it's, it's, it's weird to see that. I mean, when you're in, you know, a foreign country and you're on military bases, you know, basically fighting, fighting their military and taking their, their facilities down, seeing that shit. It did again. It's kind of like the, the same sentiment as being on the cold is that it makes you realize exactly that it's like these people fucking hate us. Like it's ingrained in their culture. It's, you know,

uh, pervasive in their military. Like it, it's just, uh, it's ever present, you know? So, uh, similarly there is that, you know, as soon as we would roll up, a lot of times they would just bag ass and, you know, they'd take pot shots and it'd be a little bit of back and forth, but they, they ultimately didn't want to fight a whole lot. Um, that was in the Northern part of Baghdad. So we spent, you know, some time in Baghdad doing a few different things, um, like that, and then went up to the Northern part of the country. And, and for reference, um,

The entire Iraq campaign originally was supposed to be, I want to say it was the third armored division and the first armored division were supposed to come together. Basically, the third AD was supposed to come down out of Turkey and take Mosul into Crete and even the Sunni triangle and then ultimately set up shop on the northern part of Baghdad. The first armored division was supposed to come out of Kuwait

and do the same thing, go through Nazaria and end up at the southern part of Baghdad. And then that was going to be like the meeting point where they kind of crush Baghdad together from the north and the south at the same time. And so you had a shitload of army troops that were on ships going through the fucking straits that were going to go through Turkey. And Turkey at the last second decided, you can't use our fucking country to assault Iraq from.

Like right before we were supposed to launch it. So, you know, in true Murphy's Law fashion, it was all right, well, I guess, you know, change of plan. We're going to go south to all the way to fucking the Turkey border. And so it was the first AD and the first Marine Division, you know, about half of the amount of troops as we had planned on using and just swept out.

from the southern border all the way to the northern border. So it was literally, it was like a front line just moving, you know, similar to you hear shit about World War II and you watch, you know, documentaries on this front was here and whatever. It was very much old school conventional military planning that way and front lines and whatever. And so we were with the 1st Marine Division, specifically with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit most of the time. And we would go ahead of their convoys and scout out bridges and routes and

make sure areas were cool for them to come through or whatever and

So that's most of what we did from when we left Nazarea and moving up north as we accompanied them and just kind of did that. Were you still in shit Humvees pulling reconnaissance for them? You weren't in low pro vehicles or anything like that? Nope, shit Humvees with fucking no armor. Jesus Christ, dude, that's fucking ballsy. Yeah. Damn. And also, mind you, we were going ahead of where the armor was.

You know, so you've got these front lines of, you know, tanks and LAVs and LARs and all this, you know, heavy fucking shit. Yeah.

And we're in these thin-skinned fucking Humvees with nothing but small arms and a couple of Gustav rounds, fucking driving 20, 30 miles north of where the fucking most northern American troops are at, scouting out their fucking routes like a bunch of dumbasses. Damn. You know, and we just, yeah, we just fucking pulled it off. Fuck, man. I mean, did you guys get hit or no IDs? No.

I mean, I guess it's brand new. But then there really weren't any IEDs, any IED threats. There were, you know, pot shots here and there, you know, similarly, like people trying to figure out. I mean, it was almost like hiding in plain sight is that it was so unexpected that it was kind of like catching them with their pants down because they're just like.

Are those our guys or who? Like, yeah, they would never expect four Humvees by themselves, you know, to be 20 miles fucking north of where American forces are at. So I think a lot of times they're just kind of looking around, not knowing what the fuck, who the fuck we were, which is dumb, you know, on our part. But but anyway, so that's what we did. How far ahead are you? How far how far ahead of the Marines were you?

It depended on the route, the terrain, what direction they were going. We did it multiple times and we would usually do it at night. I mean, we always did it at night.

Five minutes out, 24 hours out? No, I mean, it was usually a few hours. So if you got into a tick and you took some heavies, you're looking at two hours fucking time before anybody's coming to get your ass. On the ground, yes. The one saving grace that for sure made us all feel better about it was we had an Air Force fucking...

um, CCT guy with us as well as our comm guy was fucking shit hot. And we did have a dedicated fucking AC one 30 above us that, uh, if we needed and we did, uh, we called them in once and those motherfuckers were on station. I'm not shitting you in like 45 seconds. No shit. Just, they were fucking right there, you know? So it was awesome. I'll get to that in a minute, but

So, yeah, we had them on the line, you know, basically accompanying us when we were doing it most of the time, or at least to my knowledge. Who knows? Maybe ROIC and AOIC just said that to make us feel better. Fuck, I don't know. But like I said, we did have to call on them once, and they were right there. So I'm assuming it's legit. But as the, you know, Baghdad falls, and so now it's like, okay, well,

You know, this is the kind of the that was the big push that we were worried about. Now it was we've got to create in Mosul.

to Crete is Saddam's hometown. So we end up with the entire 1st Marine Division, right? It's like 25,000 fucking troops and it's a couple miles of tanks and LAVs and LARs and, you know, fucking Humvees and you name it. As far as you can see, all the way forward and all the way behind you, I mean, miles of convoy and SEAL Team 3 Echo Platoon, right? 16 fucking team guys and 25,000 fucking Marines. So...

We're a convoying up to Crete and we're planning on taking it down the next day. So it's getting to be nightfall. We pull up and we're on the southern edge of the city. And it's basically we're on this main highway that runs into town. And then there was like a commuter ring kind of road that went around the city. And we stopped at that intersection. And when we pulled up,

There was, you know, a number of head shed Marines that were sitting there kind of planning out the next day. And when we pulled up to kind of dirt dive the next day's operations with them, you know, the first thing we asked was like, hey, did you guys fucking secure this area? Like, have you probed out? And oh, yeah, everything's fucking good. OK, so we pull our Humvees up and, you know, like a bunch of assholes, take our boots off and fucking start eating chow and fucking white light headlamps on and, you know,

Like we're on a fucking S&R mission at Fort Irwin in July. You know, like just totally fucking no discipline, you know, really. Because again, we're like, dude, we're with 25,000 Marines and they, you know, like they've been here for the last two hours. Like, I think we're good, right? No. So we're literally like maps on the hoods fucking talking over what we're going to do. And they're saying...

you know, tomorrow we're going to have, you know, this fucking group take this part, this group take that part. You know, SEAL Team 3 Echo, you guys are going to come in from the east with this group and you're going to, you know, circle up and take this route and hit the fucking palace and take it down. As we're planning this, all of a sudden, all fucking hell breaks loose. Like, gunfire just erupts and it's every fucking where. I mean, you know,

There's explosions and looking back on it now, the road that we were on in that ring, there was a kind of a little nest of trees and then a tree line that followed that road heading east. And there was a group of insurgents that were in that fucking tree nest, literally probably 20 yards from where the fucking convoy paralleled. Just sitting there, fucking ski mask, trench coats, AKs, fucking a little, you know, cachet nest of fucking stuff.

Right behind that, they had a couple of vehicles with a couple of technicals that had anti-aircraft fucking pieces on the back. And the beds of the trucks were filled with fucking shells. And so what ended up happening is two Marines walked out into that field to take a shit and fucking literally bumped into a group fucking all on their knees in the dirt, fucking dirt diving how they were going to ambush us.

Uh, so these guys, you know, like, Hey, well, you know, not, not the most brilliant fucking plan, but like they walk out and they startle them instead of just fucking shooting them right there while they're not paying attention. Like they confront them. These guys jump up and fucking zipper the fucking Marines up.

And that kicks off. Now Marines are fucking shooting at them. They're shooting at us. And we're caught between both the insurgents and the Marines fucking shooting at each other. Oh, fuck. Shit. And so there was a Marine AT-4 round that hit one of the fucking technical trucks. And it blew up. And again, we had no idea that the guys were there or that the trucks were there at the time. We're sitting there just. I mean, I jumped into the front seat.

I'm trying to throw my fucking shit on. And I mean, there's rounds coming in the fucking dash zipping past my fucking head, you know, hitting the fucking engine compartment, hitting the dirt right outside where my feet are at. I mean, hitting the fucking windshield, you name it all over the fucking place. And, uh, and so, you know, we get all of our shit on, we get into like a lazy L ambush facing the contact to try to figure out what the fuck's going on. Cause we also know, Hey, there's fucking blue forces right there. Like what the fuck is going on? And so, uh,

When that AT-4 round hit that technical with all the rounds in it, well, it sent, you know, dozens of fucking anti-aircraft rounds scattered, half detonated all over the fucking place. And they start blowing up sympathetically, like, and intermittently, making us all think that, you know, there's this monster force ambushing us, right? Because all we see is, you know, it's like artillery's fucking going off.

And so we get on our fucking night vision and we start to identify, you know, what's what. And there's a fucking dude that's like, he's probably 25, 30 yards away, crouched down,

ski mask on trench coat fucking AK and he's just like sitting there crouched down just kind of turning his head looking like this cool as a fucking cucumber he doesn't have nods at that point most of our guys did and so we get him on we get in this L-shaped ambush we de-conflict with the Marines we all had suppressors on so they actually didn't even realize we were taking care of that guy and then the nest behind him but so most of our guys fucking engage this dude and

What was interesting is there was six or seven of us, I think, that all took shots at basically at the same time, fucking center mass and drilled him. And that motherfucker dropped his gun and ran for probably 50 or 60 yards before he fell down and fucking died. This happens a lot. What kind of rounds were you guys using? Green tip. Fucking pinpricks. Green tip. You know, we had that same shit happen to us and...

It still blows my mind that after all the after action reports that were coming out that we didn't fucking change from green tip because it was just zipping right through. Yeah. And a lot of times guys didn't even know they were being fucking shot. Yeah. It's a good case for 300 blackout. Yeah. Especially a fucking 124 grain, not a 205 grain. But anyway, so we end up neutralizing that guy. He goes and there was some interesting things once...

you know everything fucking dies down uh the two marines that got zippered up one of them i think ended up dying the other one got medevaced out and was actually saved by he had like a fucking tom tom clancy novel shoved down his in between his flak jacket and his fucking chest and one of the rounds fucking stopped halfway through the fucking book um and had like his half of his ass shot off too like he took an ak around in his ass and blew you know most of his ass cheek off but

Our corpsman fucking helped them out and got them as patched up as they could and what have you. But upon further investigation, once we got the Marines to stop shooting, the sympathetic detonations from the technical fucking artillery pieces stopped going off.

And we kind of get in a leapfrog forward, moving through the area where we were ambushed from in this nest. And similarly, like these guys were set up for, you know, several days worth of food and, you know, lots of ammo and, you know, explosives and fucking RPG rounds and all sorts of shit. But when we finally came across the one guy that we shot and took off running,

He had some really weird fucking personal effects. He had absolutely no identification on him whatsoever, like not a wallet, not a driver's license, nothing, you know, no papers whatsoever. But he had on like a fucking John Wayne gun belt, like a legitimate, like something you would buy out of a fucking store, like a toy. And it was a plastic fucking pistol in it.

You gotta be shitting. He had a toy plastic pistol and a cheese dick fucking John Wayne gun belt. He sure as fuck had a real AK. And when we found the AK and looked at his hands...

This was totally by fucking luck, but both of his hands had bullet wounds right through the meat of his hands and both the pistol grip and the forward grip of the AK had bullet holes and blood on the fucking gun where he dropped it and took off running. Good shots. Yeah, I mean, again, totally by accident, but shot the fucking gun out of his hand.

And and then he had a number of rounds in his fucking chest cavity. But was again, he was about 60 yards away. Yeah. You know, when we actually found him. So needless to say, after that, you know, trying to get some sleep and get ready for the next night wasn't the easiest thing. I mean, at that point, again, there's no fobs like the entire time we were there. We were either sleeping in little two man tents that we brought with us.

Most of the time we would just throw a ground pad underneath the fucking Humvee and sleep under it, you know, and that's how we slept 90% of the time. And so no different there.

Same plan moving forward. We're going to take down the palace the next day and take down the entire town of Tikrit with 25,000 fucking Marines. And so we did. And we got up at sunrise, fucking just a mass swath of fucking U.S. forces swept through the entire town of Tikrit and took the whole fucking thing down in a matter of about a half a day. Damn. And there was resistance. There were pockets here and there. It wasn't Saddam's last stand by any stretch.

I think, again, is that, you know, they were they knew how outgunned they were, you know, and they put up fights and tested certain areas here and there and got handily defeated pretty quickly and decided, you know, we need to figure out a more guerrilla warfare insurgent style tactic if we're going to have any fucking, you know, potential success against these guys. And so, you know, again, there were pockets of resistance or gunfights here and there, some rooftop shit here and there.

So we go to the palace and same thing, like it took us a couple of hours to take that down. And, you know, it was just, I mean, that's about a fucking episode in and of itself in terms of just what the palace was like. I mean, it was just the opulence that existed in that fucking place was of biblical proportion. Like it was just crazy the amount of fucking nice shit in there. I mean, from...

the hand inlaid tile ceilings to fucking everything's made out of gold to marble floors, marble pillars, fucking, you know, you had gold soap dishes and gold toilet brushes. I mean, it was just fucking nuts. Before we go into that, I can't wait to get there. I'm just curious, like,

So you guys had pretty fucking shitty living conditions, sleeping under fucking Humvees and... Yeah, I mean, no running water. But what I'm curious about is the morale. I mean, you guys were working your ass off and... It was high. We were fucking loving it, you know, because it was...

It was like it was finally the fucking big show, you know, because we were at team three when 9-11 happened. We didn't go to Afghanistan. And so and then they were like, yeah, Afghanistan's going off, but you're going to the fucking Philippines. Like, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. You know, so then Iraq kicks off and we finally, you know, we trained for almost two months to hit one fucking target where we take down fucking, you know, 26, 27 dudes with guns.

you know, very little resistance. And so, yeah, it's like now we're, we're finally fucking doing it, you know, it's, it's fucking crazy because you take the gunfight out and, uh, you know, I'm betting that morale would have been at an all time fucking low. And, uh, you know, I've heard you say it a hundred million fucking times about, you know, a dog's not happy unless he's working and you direct, uh, you relate that directly to humans. And, uh,

You guys are doing exactly what the fuck you are trained to do. And if I was a betting man, and I am, I would bet that there is nowhere else in the world you would rather be than ducking down in a ditch, taking gunfire and fucking returning it. Yeah. Yeah, it was the finally, you know, feeling. Yeah. So...

It was a neat – and it was really neat from a historical standpoint in that it was a very tangible existence in terms of the front lines and, you know, the historical, I think, relevance of what we were doing and where and when. You know, just it was the initial invasion of the Iraq War. It's fucking insane. I mean, you –

Kick the fucking goddamn war off. Yeah. That's... Yeah, it was pretty neat, for sure. Pretty fucking badass. Yeah, just, you know, again, it was the right place at the right time. And, you know, so, yeah, we enjoyed it. It was a neat time to be there, for sure. Yeah. One thing I didn't mention is we actually had a platoon member quit after the go-plat, though, not to counter that thought process, but just to make people realize, like...

You know, even even in those circles, there's there's people that decide, you know what, this isn't fucking for me. We had a guy that, yeah, he even leading up to the go plat, it was his first platoon and he was fucking scared and and was basically like, hey, at what point is this just fucking too dangerous and we're not going to do it? And we were like, it's not motherfucker. Like, we have to fucking do this.

You know, like, yeah, I know that the last report I gave you was that there's 115 people on board and there's four 48-inch fucking oil pipes rigged with explosives to blow up when we step on board. But guess what? We're still going on it. So, you know, grab a hold of your nuts and that's what's happening. And he froze. Like when we got on there, I remember the fact that the very first room that I entered on there was a fucking dark-ass bathroom.

And he was we went through like this small little corridor and then he was supposed to be the number one guy and he froze right in the fucking doorway. And I grabbed him and fucking just threw him to the fucking side. And me and the two guys behind me finished clearing that bathroom. I mean, he was like a deer in a headlight, just completely fucking frozen. You had a fucking Navy SEAL operator quit on target in the middle of a fucking operation. Yep.

And so our OIC grabbed him and just said, get in the fucking back and hold rear security and stay with me. I mean, at that point, he was a fucking liability, a huge liability. Might as well be a fucking prisoner. Yeah. And so he stayed in the back, fucking, you know, scared out of his fucking mind. And and then when we got back, you know, like I said, we went right up to Al-Asaleem Air Force Base.

We were getting in our vehicles, getting ready to fucking go into Iraq, to drive across the fucking border into Iraq, loaded down to the gills to go ambush the ambushers, so to speak, in Nazarea. And he stood there right there and said, I can't do it. He's like, I can't. I'm sorry, guys. I can't fucking do it. Holy shit. He's like, I got a wife. I want to have kids. I just, I'm sorry. I can't fucking do this. And we were all like, you motherfucker. He was a 60 gunner for us, too.

And so and so no shit. And this guy is now a team guy. I think he's still on active duty. So I'm not going to mention his name, but as a fucking as. No, no, not the guy that I'm mentioning now. So he left. He went home and fucking got out, you know, separated and was fucking done. I'll get to him in a minute. The guy we had an Intel rep. Right. This guy's an IS3, like 20, 21 years old.

He's been through fucking boot camp and IS school and has been an intel guy for, you know, group one or whatever the fuck for a couple of months. And he's at that same base. And I'm not shitting you, this dude's like, I'll fucking go. And we all kind of looked around and we're like, you know how to fucking shoot a saw? And he's like, nope. And we're like, well, here's the fucking belt and here's the trigger. You're fucking coming with us. Holy shit. And we drug a fucking IS-3 that hasn't been through BUDS, hasn't been through SQT, hasn't been on a fucking range with us.

Hand him a fucking saw and we go in country with him. And he fucking accompanied us the whole goddamn way. And he and I actually sat on the rooftop. I talk about this in the Trident book, sat on the rooftop of Saddam's palace and almost got fucking mortared. That's a whole nother story. But this guy, again, he ended up going through buds after that. He came home after that deployment because he stayed after we left because he was on a different rotation trip.

Did his fucking pull there, went to Bud's, graduated, and has been a SEAL for the last fucking 20 years. I think I know this fucker. Yeah. Was he of Russian descent, Bud Shantz? I don't think so. Maybe, okay. Yeah, I don't think so. I'll tell you his name off camera, and maybe you know him, but fucking great dude, you know. Sounds like it. I mean, you talk about balls of fucking steel, like, doesn't even know what he's doing. He's like, fuck it, I'll sit in this fucking spot with a gun out the window, and yeah, he fucking went with us.

That's awesome. Yeah, he went with us to take the palace down, too. Damn. He sat in the back left fucking window with a saw out the fucking window pulling fucking vehicle security while we were driving through the town to get up to the palace. Damn. Kudos to that dude. Yeah, great fucking dude. Yeah.

When we ended up getting back, nobody would talk to the guy that quit. I mean, nobody would even fucking look at him. You know, he tried to, hey, guys, fucking welcome back. He was still on the team for like...

Don't know ten days a week two weeks maybe something like that while he was out processing or whatever and nobody would even fucking look at him You know wouldn't talk to him nothing. Yeah, I said I almost feel bad. I don't I still don't fuck that guy Yeah, I mean he fucking left us hanging he can go fuck himself. Yeah, and I have no doubt that You know, he'll spend the rest of his life living in a world of regret for doing that, but he should yeah, you know, so that's uh, I

I've never seen that fucking happen. Not... Well, I have seen that happen, but not in a unit like the fucking SEAL team. Yeah. Never. Not once. Yeah. Wow. So, the Palace. So, the Palace. The Palace, again, it was...

It was everything you would think, you know, in terms of just how it was made and how fucking big it was. And the attention to detail that was put into constructing that fucking thing was mind-boggling. Now, did you get any souvenirs by chance? There were no souvenirs to be had.

Yeah, zero. All right. It's completely empty. Nothing to it. Nothing to see here. Nothing to see here. And so, I mean, in all seriousness, it was mostly vacated in that, you know, that was –

While it was his hometown, it was not a palace that he spent a lot of time in, so it wasn't filled with Saddam's personal effects like the Baghdad palaces were. There was stuff in it, but again, not like he was living there all the time like the ones that he did in Baghdad. I know there was a lot of good shit in some of those palaces. So I've heard. Yeah. Yeah.

But, yeah, so the palace was, again, it was, in terms of actually taking it down, it took a couple hours. It wasn't, you know, some heavily guarded fucking institution. At that point, it was, that part of the town was a ghost town. Again, I think there were indicators that, you know, that people had been there recently, just like a lot of the other places, but had just left. And, you know, thinking of it now and looking back on it is that,

To have a crew of almost 30,000 U.S. soldiers, many of whom in armored vehicles, rolling up towards... I don't care how many of you there are in a palace. They're either going to knock the palace down or whatever. You're not going to stand a chance. I think the pockets of resistance that we did run into were we either caught them off guard or they were just seeing how hard we would fight back or go after them or whatever. But

There weren't these like epic fucking four hour gun battles. You know, there were shots here and there and it was no, you know, no real fucking dug in and, you know, pulling fucking grenade pins and dragging people out of buildings. It just wasn't that, you know, for that. But once we secured the palace, though, then we kind of set up shop there. And at that point, like we were finally done moving out.

through the country. You know, we, we had spent that entire time in country constantly, you know, bump, bumping forward and coming back and bumping forward and coming back, moving our way from, from the, the Southern edge of the country all the way to the North. So, I mean, in that respect, it was kind of neat to have fought our way the entire way of the, the entire fucking country, uh, during that initial invasion period. But, uh,

But once we got to the palace and took it down and set up shop there, then we were static. And that's where we were the static for the most and for the longest.

And so we started doing like some sniper overwatch shit. We'd go out in town from there and, you know, and set up similar operations of kind of what we were doing down in Nazarea and in the southern part of Baghdad of just kind of going out and getting our own intel and figuring out what the fuck's going on. And if anything was to be had or to be done, then we did it. But there was a 24-7 watch on the rooftop because it was the highest point in the city.

And I remember the Air Force had bombed the shit out of the airfield in Tikrit, which underneath it had a cache of, I wouldn't even call it a cache, I'd say it was a weapons storage facility of, you know, like legit airplane munitions and big fucking explosives. And so at nighttime, because they bombed it, you know, all the stuff was going off sympathetically for like,

fucking two weeks, you know, shit was blowing up nonstop. And if you looked at like thermal or, uh, or even on night vision, like it looked like you were staring at, uh, the surface of the sun during like a solar flare flare up, you know, it was just like shit was blowing up fucking nonstop all over the place. So it was almost like watching this crazy fucking, you know, uh, apocalyptic, you know, firework show. Yeah. But as we're fucking around and me and this guy that, you know, again, was the IS that, uh, that accompanied us, uh,

Uh, we're sitting there and all of a sudden just off to the left and probably five or 600 yards away, you see three little flashes of light. And I was like, did you see that? And he's like, yeah. I was like, the fuck was that? He's like, I don't know. And then all of a sudden straight South of us, about 300 yards, boom, boom, boom. And it was like, and we both kind of look at each other and you see three more blips.

And then about fucking 200 yards south of us, fucking three big explosions. Sure. And then three more blips. And then now it's just fucking south of us, three more big explosions. And as soon as we look at each other like, dude, we got to get the fuck off this rooftop. Yeah. Just as we're starting to go bail down, all of a sudden on the other side of, I can't remember if it's the Tigris or the Euphrates, whatever the fuck river that his palace is on into Crete. All of a sudden from the other side of the river, it sounds like,

a fucking transformer is having a seizure right like optimus prime is fucking getting his ass pushed in i don't know like it's this weird fucking rumble and whiz and fucking metal moving and and then you just hear like and all these flashes of light from across the river and where those three blips came from just fucking decimated we didn't even know they were there there was an army uh counter artillery battery across the fucking river set up

with their fucking whiz-bang goddamn satellites and whatever the fuck else. And it took three iterations for them to pinpoint where they were, and then they just fucking nailed them. We had no comms with them. Like I said, we didn't even know they were there. I mean, I wouldn't be fucking sitting here 100% if they hadn't been there because, I mean, we couldn't have got off that rooftop. The way it was situated and the way that we were up there, it would have taken us probably 30, 40 seconds to even get there.

Just on the first part of the stairwell to get down off of there and we'd have been fucked. Yeah, you know but Yeah, just one of those fucking lucky moments, I guess but a lot of those. Yeah damn. Well, um, let's go back to C 130 and Scuds, yeah, so where the C 130 came into play was was during that that ambush that I spoke of and

our combat control and, and, uh, comms guy got on the radio and had, had a C one 30 on station fucking right away during that. Um,

The downside was, is for that specific scenario, while it was awesome that they were right there, where the contact was coming from was 25 yards away. It was just way too fucking danger close to do anything about it. So we weren't able to use them in that scenario, but they were there, you know, and there were a lot of other times where when we were out and about, if we had run into anything like that and not had 25,000 Marines with us, we would have been able to use them, I think, probably a little more effectively, but...

There were just too many fucking blue forces everywhere for them to be able to engage comfortably, especially then. Yeah. You know, but... What were you guys marked with or were you marked? Were you using strobes? If I remember correct, I think we were just using little fucking squares of fucking IR tape on our helmets. That's it? Like super old school, yeah. Oh, damn. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, at that time, like...

a lot of the the mechanisms and and kind of protocols put in place were put in place because of how little were there when it first started yeah you know so well just for the audience the reason i asked that is because um that's how air deconflicts that's how they know where the good guys are is they have a ir strobe that blinks on top of their helmet or um on the vehicle or wherever and uh so that is how

air assets like a c-130 knows where the good guys are um that way they can be sure they're shooting the right people and uh not their own so to not to just have some glint tape yeah uh is uh that that's that that could go bad pretty easy yeah our com guy may have had a an ir strobe and a in islet or something or not a little bit of a green beam pec five or something i don't know something

I just, you know, I wasn't the comms guy, and so I don't know what the fuck they had or didn't have. I just remember, I think we all had glint tape on our helmets. No good. Yeah. Well, let's move on. Yeah. So from there, we spent several weeks in Tikrit, again, just basically, you know, solidifying our presence there, which was, you know, the start of setting up forward operating bases. And the way I understand it is that that fucking...

palace ultimately ended up being like a State Department office or an Intel building or something like that and I think is still still manned by US forces today I believe but so we basically just kind of handed it over to them and then from there made our way back down to Baghdad and at that point SEAL Team 5 was coming in to relieve us you know at that point we had been on deployment for eight months

And so SEAL Team 5 came in and we did, you know, about the most half-assed turnover with them because it was just a quick turn and burn. Like we didn't have, hey, this is the FOB we've been in for the last six months and here's all of our target intel, you know, packages or whatever. There weren't any. You know, we had just finished basically taking the entire country over. And so it was like, okay, now you guys –

You've got it. High five. And that was it. And so from there, we made our way back down to Kuwait and then flew commercial air out of Kuwait back to the United States. Damn. So that was a rough but a good deployment. And you guys didn't take...

No casualties. No, no. We had, you know, one guy got injured and it was nothing serious. It was during the go plat, actually. He fucked his hand up on, during, I think it was breaching one of the doors and windows is that he fucked his hand up fairly well. I mean, he stayed for the rest of the deployment, but...

That was it. You know, everybody had, you know, little things here or there, but nothing that was, you know, deployment ending. So, yeah, we were pretty fortunate. You know, we'd been in a number of gunfights, had...

you know, taken a number of enemy fucking KIAs with us and had no real fucking problems of any of our guys other than the one that quit. That was the one casualty we had, I guess. Yeah. But, yeah, we were pretty fortunate. Damn. I can't believe that fucking guy quit. Yeah. That's... Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, it's weird. I mean, I actually got a message from him not that long ago on Instagram. I didn't respond. But it was just like, you know, hey, good to see you're doing so well. Fucking cheers or whatever. And I was just like, fuck this guy, man. It was just like I had that same reaction that I did, you know, when I first saw him when we came back. I was like, dude, fuck you. Wow. You know. Just to fucking reach out. Yeah. I mean, you know, I can't put myself in his position, but.

I wouldn't. I wouldn't reach out to me if I was that guy. Like, I would, I just wouldn't do it. Yeah. But, I don't know how you don't feel, you know, the amount of shame to just say, like, I'm not going to fucking talk to these guys, you know, I don't know. Probably his way of trying to make good one way or another. But, well, fuck, man. Let's just take a quick commercial break and we'll pick up on coming home. All right.

I hope you guys are enjoying the show. I think this is a pretty good one. Hit pause, go over to vigilanceelite.com, pick yourself up one of these sweet shirts. And if you're lucky, maybe these hats will be in stock too. All right, so we're back from the break and you just had a eighth month deployment that was fucking completely full of action.

You kicked off the war in Iraq, which is something to be said about that for sure. That's fucking incredible. And so now you're coming home and let's go there. What are you doing when you get back? So it was a quick transition, really. I mean, I when I got home, it was it was kind of surreal in that, you know, there especially then there was no transition time.

you know so it was literally like when i was i remember actually getting pulled over my parents came to surprise me uh you know to welcome me home and so my wife at the time um and and them uh you know i spent the first you know night with the wife and then the next day my parents you know surprised me at the house and then we all went out to dinner and on the way i got pulled over um i don't even remember what the for but you know the cop

You know was giving me shit about either my license was fucking Expired or one of the tags was or whatever and you know, I was like 36 hours ago I was in fucking Baghdad and Like now you're pulling me over cuz it was like I just got home from an eight-month fucking deployment or whatever He was super understanding but it was that moment that it kind of hit me It was like there should be a better process for integrating back into civilian life after a deployment, you know

I know that there is now. At least it's better to what I understand. But, you know, for me, it was weird going from that environment just being shit right into Southern California civilian fucking life, you know, and having a couple weeks leave. And then I had to check into SQT, SEAL qualification training as an instructor because my time at Team 3 was up.

So it was a quick turnaround. There wasn't a lot of fiddle-fucking around, which I think ultimately was good, is that I didn't have a bunch of time to just fucking sit around. That couple of weeks was filled with doing shit around the house because having been gone for eight months and we owned the house and it was an older house, I had shit to do around there and then get ready to check in to SQT. And my plan from there was to screen and hopefully go to Dev Group and...

When I was about seven or eight months into being an instructor, I developed valley fever, which I've talked a little bit about. It's a lung, fungal lung infection where it spreads through your lungs like mold. And I lost about 40% of my lung capacity. And so I was on convalescent leave for about 10 months.

And then from there, it was basically the infectious disease captain at Balboa tried to medically retire me at that point. And I had a meeting with him and I just said, you know, hey, my first child is on the way. I don't have a college degree. I was planning on staying in and going this route. Can we fucking figure something else out? Like, I don't really want to get just medically booted out of the fucking Navy all of a sudden.

And so, you know, he said, well, you've got to go somewhere where you're not around lung irritants, you know, for a while, for a couple of years and try to let your lungs heal up as best they can. And I was like, well, fuck everything we do is irritating to our lungs, you know. So the only other place to go where, you know, it was minimal exposure to lung irritants was being a BUDS SEAL instructor. And so...

the master chief at, uh, at SQT and the master chief at, uh, at bait on the basic side, got together and just worked a fucking deal to send me over there. And I spent my last three years there. Uh, I got, got a college degree, um, had both my kids and, uh, and then fucking jump ship out of there while I was there. Uh, it was when I, you know,

really focused heavy on dog training. From the end of the deployment to Iraq to when I was first kind of exposed to them during that time being sick, I was, like I said, on convalescent leave for almost a year with a lot of free time to focus on training and things of that nature. And then while I was an instructor, I kind of got

Got to where I was working a little bit with the West Coast canine guys and went to some training with them and was offered a position there as a handler and then turned it down and got out and started my own company. And that's where that kind of all started. What did the lung disease, where did that come from? Do you know? My best assumption is Nyland because it was...

just based on the incubation period and kind of where they caught it. It was determined that, you know, yeah, I got it. I picked it up somewhere out there. Yeah. I'll bet that was... So you went to training...

And then you wanted to fucking screen to go to damn neck to go get some more. And then, and then you find out that's a slim to none chance. Yeah. I mean, you know, from the guys that I knew that, um, that I'd done platoons with or knew from the community that had gone there and done well and talking with them about it, you know, it, it seemed like, and I think for a lot of them too, it seemed like what you thought the seal teams would be before you joined. It was more like,

Dev group than the regular seal teams were not that there wasn't good shit going on in different pockets of the seal regular seal teams, but you're always kind of hamstrung by the influx of new new guys into your platoon kind of resetting that that lower standard right out of the gate every platoon, you know, so you just can't you can't grow that much I think in a regular seal platoon the way you can at damn neck and so my thought process was if I

go to SQT as an instructor because my time at three is up. I could use that as a springboard to still be, you know, within the kind of relevant scope of tactics and training and teaching, you know, the guys getting ready to go to SEAL teams. And while I'm there screened to go to dev group, I could get in good shape. And it's one thing I will say the time spent in Iraq, you know, wreaked havoc on,

on all of our physical conditioning because of the conditions were so dire. I mean, we were eating two MREs a day and that was it, you know, and no weights and no fucking, you know, it was wearing, wearing kit around and whatever, but it was, you know, like, fuck, I dropped about 30 pounds and was in pretty bad shape physically at the end of that. And, uh, so I wanted to

You know, again, get in really good shape and get ready to screen and then go. But at least while I was doing something still somewhat relevant or felt more relevant in the community while I was getting ready to do that. But then once I picked that up, it threw a wrench in fucking everything. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, it definitely, I mean, would you say it turned into a positive? Yeah, you know, I look at it and even, you know, when I was at the crossroads of whether or not to get out or stay in and be a handler, that was a tough, really tough decision because I wanted to be a handler. It was a fucking really kind of enticing and attractive offer to stay in and do that. Where I struggled with that is in twofold is that physically, you

I knew that I was not at the capacity that I was used to operationally, physically.

Honestly, I was fucking scared that I wouldn't be able to fucking operate at a level I needed to to not be a fucking liability to everybody else. To be at a point where your lungs are fucked up enough in the SEAL teams to get offered a medical retirement, that doesn't happen for a fucking chest cold. So for me to be at that level, I was scared slash worried that I wouldn't be able to pull my fucking weight and I didn't want to be that fucking guy that...

you know, people have to make accommodations for. So that was part of it. The other part was just realizing that, you know, from an impact standpoint, I've always tried to look at every decision I make in the long game of most bang for your buck in terms of what impact that's going to have on my life, big picture. That's why I joined the SEAL teams. That's why I, you know, took the route that I took. That's ultimately why I got out is I felt that, you know, if I

imported dogs and trained dogs and handlers and was a trainer at the MPC command on the West Coast and all of the other things that I've done, to me, that's going to have a much broader reach and impact than me with one dog going overseas doing deployments. So it was for sure a tough decision, like I said, but ultimately between those two factors, it just seemed at the time like it made sense and

You know, I'm absolutely glad that I did. I, you know, I wouldn't change anything. I wouldn't be where I'm at now, uh, had I done, done it different, you know, and I, I am really happy with, uh, with how my life's turned out. So, um, you know, I, I think it was for the best. Yeah. I mean, well, I definitely would say you made the right decision considering, you know, you got dogs that,

the teams and agencies all over the fucking world. And, and, uh, so you're definitely making a major impact, but, um, so, so, um, how was, uh, did you hit any like real dark spots coming home from that being addicted to drugs?

Combat or any of that, you know, I never did I never you know it's one of the things where I've seen a lot of guys that I Know really well and respect the hell out of have a lot of fucking trouble with things I Never did you know it never there was never a time where I felt like you know, either I was missing out or that I felt bad about any of the things that we did or

or saw or whatever. I don't know why. I don't know if I'm fortunate, if I'm fucking oblivious, if it's a combination of the thing. I really have no grasp of why. Again, whether it's things that you saw or did or whatever, or the missing that, being in camaraderie and feeling like you're not in the fight anymore or whatever. I think for me, I

I would count myself as uh really fortunate in that I was able to transition into a career that still had a lot of adrenaline in it you know when you as you'll find out here shortly is when you jump in a bite suit and have a dog fucking coming after you like that that will give you the same fucking rush that a lot of things that we've done in the seal teams will do for you um

being around high drive dogs that make your asshole pucker when you just clip a leash to them and they look at you like fucking you know you want some chief you know they give you that look and it and it it's uh exhilarating for sure uh plus you know coming back as a trainer for the west coast multi-purpose canine program a couple years after i got out like i was working with guys that i was that i'd been in with guys that i was instructors with guys that i'd you know been to war with like it was

It was really the best of everything, you know, it was because I was doing what I was passionate about in the dogs. So being able to select dogs from anywhere in the world, uh, you know, of the highest caliber and working with guys that I know, love and trust and consider brothers in arms and marrying those two things up together and sending them overseas to, to operate, you know, to me, it's like, how do you fucking get any better than that? Yeah. You know, so, um,

There's no question that played a huge role in me never sinking into that kind of depressed, like, fuck, I'm not part of the community anymore or I'm not associated with the teams or I don't feel like I'm a SEAL or whatever. Whether it's that or working with police departments and SWAT teams or taking in retired Warrior Dog Foundation dogs or whatever, I still feel...

like I'm still kind of part of it enough, you know, for me to not just, just not have that feeling of, of darkness or depression with it. Did you have any, it sounds like you pretty much stepped out and I mean, it doesn't sound like you had a whole hell of a lot of downtime when you did get out. And so did you kind of step right into your business? Not exactly. There was about a

about a year period, um, that I did a little bit of contract work, uh, here in the States teaching basic pistol and rifle, um, to some army guys as a warfighter focus contract through a, uh, a company in Arkansas. I did that for about, uh, three or four months and, uh, and then transitioned into a job at ExxonMobil as a drill rig supervisor company man for, uh, for about six months, uh, where I went to, uh,

I was the drilling rig supervisor on a fucking on a natural gas rig in northern Colorado for two weeks on two weeks off and you know my experience with with oil rigs at that point had been taking them down that's that was my knowledge of a fucking oil rig so I had no no fucking clue what I was doing but Exxon takes a neat position and that they hire the type of person that they want and then they teach them what they want to know and they're very very good at doing that but

Uh, at any rate, I was, I did that for about six months and then there was a security supervisor walking through doing rounds, uh, and kind of got all the specs on everybody who was there. And he, he came to me, he's like, what the fuck are you doing here? You know? And I was like, I mean, I didn't hire me. You guys hired me, put me here, you know? And he's like, you should be working for me in security. Do you want a job in, you know, being a security advisor? I was like, yeah. You know? So I, I went and tried to do that. That was an executive position. And, uh,

For me, I realized very quickly that that was not my fucking cup of tea. They wanted to send me to Papua New Guinea to work on this multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline project between China, Papua New Guinea and Australia, implementing security protocols into this pipeline project being built. And once I started kind of looking at what they were trying to do and

and the security protocols that they wanted to implement, I realized some changes needed to be made and they didn't want to hear what my changes... They had no interest in what my opinions were. They just wanted me to do what I was told. For me at that point, I was at the point where I had my dog business about ready to start anyway.

I'll be the first to admit, I mean, my entire plan the whole time with taking that job was a springboard out of the military while I was setting the dog business up. So, you know, my intention was never to be there for very long anyway. But at that point, it just made sense to bail out anyway. It was a little earlier than I wanted to in terms of, you know, my kennel facility wasn't built. I just had a couple of slabs thrown down with some cheese dick kennel paneling up. And so, you know, for the first...

Year or so, you know, my kennels were pretty pretty rough elementary kennels with not a lot of creature comforts, but you know like with anything that's how you start and you build from there and and That's that's how I did that and then started the business right after that So not a lot of downtime, but I didn't start the dog business right away I did that for you know, about 10 months 11 months. All right, so

Well, you know, we did have a conversation the other night about boozing and, you know, shit like that. And so... And I kind of want to revisit that here because this part helps a lot of guys. But we both, I think, were... I mean, I definitely was a full-blown fucking alcoholic, raging alcoholic, bar-fighting, and...

ruined all my relationships, whatever. I've said it a million times. But how long after you left did you kind of, I mean, kick that? You've kicked it now. And that's not fucking easy to do. Yeah. I mean, so for me, I would say it never seemed like it was a problem for me in terms of of it causing causing any issues is that what I found for me was that

if I casually had a drink, which is typically how I've always been, I've never been a big drinker, but you know, in getting out, what I found myself doing was, you know, especially like in the winter time and living out at the kennel facility and,

you know, having a fire going is like most nights I'd want to have a glass of bourbon. And then it was, I found myself like every night wanting to do that. And for, and for me, like that was enough for me to say, I know where this is going to lead. Like I never, you know, would get drunk or, you know, it was never a problem like that. It was, it was more of a, I can see this pattern in going from, you know, having a couple of drinks a month to a couple of weeks to now I, I,

I just like subconsciously find myself having a glass of bourbon every night, you know, after dinner or whatever. And to me that that's when it was like, I know I've seen too many guys go down this fucking path. And I know, you know, I have a very OCD personality that way or addictive personality, whether it's chewing tobacco or cigarettes or, you know, fucking fast cars or whatever is that, you know, when I do something like it's just, you know, it's never enough. You know, like if I'm

driving a certain car or whatever like it feels fast and then it doesn't and then I need something faster and then that's cool for a little while and then it feels normal and then now I you know need faster and it's that way kind of with everything and so again I think just seeing so many guys go down that path for me was enough just for me to realize that it would turn into that if I didn't just stop doing it and so that's why I mean it's been I mean even I mean I've been out for over 10 years now

And, you know, I just, I mean, I can say probably in the last eight years, seven years maybe, you know, I just, I haven't drank hardly at all. You know, it's a couple times a year and that's really about it. Yeah. You know, so, but my personality is very much that way. I think where...

Again, I just feel very fortunate in that, you know, the things that I've allowed to to become addicted to, you know, are mostly chewing tobacco, which, you know, we talked about that. I haven't done that in a few years because it was causing problems with my mouth. You know, sweets, same thing. It's like I just don't keep them in the fucking house as an example.

i open this this is gone yeah so you know i had a whole bag of gummy bears sitting here like you know sweets and nicotine and caffeine you know things like that i i know how i am with stuff like that and i if it's there i will take it so i just stay away from the things that i know if you do consume a lot of that it's going to cause serious problems i just stay away from it entirely so you just you know you do not know moderation

Not with the things that I enjoy. It's like I want as much of it as I can fucking get. So yeah, for the things that I know that if you take that, it's going to cause life-changing implications, I just fucking stay away from it altogether, including fucking booze. That's some fucking discipline. Do you think you replace that with...

with your business? Do you know moderation when it comes to business? Yeah, I would say there's probably a healthy or healthy, not maybe not the right word to use a heavy dose of that. And that, uh, I, you know, I don't take vacations. I don't take time off. I get, you know, a lot of people that are close to me regularly telling me, dude, you need to take a fucking vacation or like, you need to take some time off. You need to find something to, you know, to, to relax and,

and put that, you know, turn the fucking business mind off and work on nothing for a little while or whatever, you know, so. Have you been, I'm curious because I have that problem, but have you found any success in fucking turning it off? Not really. What I have found is, at least for me, and maybe I'm lying to myself, you know, of course I'm a little biased in thinking maybe I've struck a decent balance in,

I work out, I swim, and I like to drive. That's kind of a good decompression. Or go to movies, which even that hasn't happened in a few months now. They're only being fucking closed. Or a good meal out to dinner. Similarly, those two things have kind of been turned off the last few months. But to me, instead of trying to carve out days or a week of time to relax and vacation and get away from work,

you know running my dick into the ground business-wise um i i take shorter breaks because for me it would it would be almost torturous for me to go on a vacation where like my phone was off for a week like i would probably lose my fucking mind yeah you know because i would constantly be worried about well you know what if something happened out of the kennel with one of the dogs or one of the employees or one of my client dogs what if there's a problem like it's just not

not being able to be gotten a hold of is kind of a problem for me mentally, I think, just because there's a lot of people that depend on me, you know, and it's not uncommon to get a call at any fucking time of day by, you know, a client that has a question about a dog, not necessarily a problem, but maybe the dog got hurt and they don't know what to do, you know, whatever it is, you know, or with my kids, you know, or my ex or whatever is that I just, I kind of always have that

almost panicky feeling of, you know, if I just unplug and nobody can get a hold of me, there's too many people that depend on me that I don't want to fucking let them down, you know? And so one of the downsides of having a kennel with fucking almost 30 dogs in it is that, is that you kind of feel...

indefinitely chained to the kennel in a way and that, you know, it's, it's always there. You know, if the employees decide, you know, I'm fucking tired of this, you know, you're, you're one person being tired of cleaning up dog shit away from meeting to be out there doing it day in, day out, you know? So, uh, it just makes it really hard for me to, to completely unplug. So for me, again, the kind of the way that I've,

kind of tried to take the middle ground with that as movies and driving and working out and swimming and you know just taking maybe a half day here or a few hours to go fuck off and do whatever I want or whatever and try to mix that in a few times a week but yeah that's uh that's sounds like pretty sound advice maybe I should fucking take it but uh I mean had it not been for uh you know business and your uh passion with dogs

Do you think the drinking would have been a different story? Probably. I think I'd be a fucking miserable wretch if I hadn't started my own business and done what I've done. If I had to work for somebody else doing some other fucking job or like stayed at Exxon, I can't even fucking imagine how just much of a miserable piece of shit I would be to be around if that was the case. I mean, I'm a big enough pain in the ass to be around as it is, right?

You know, so yeah, I think a lot of things probably would have panned out pretty shitty had I not, you know, followed what I'm passionate about. And for anybody listening, like...

I can't stress that enough, you know, is that money isn't going to make you happy. Stuff doesn't make you happy. Fucking women don't make you happy. Drugs won't. Booze won't. Fast cars won't. All of those things, you know, may be satisfying here and there or, you know, augment your life to a certain extent.

The only thing that's going to truly make you fucking satisfied and happy is if what you do is something you truly fucking believe in. Yeah. You know, because if it's not, you're going to be fucking miserable your whole goddamn life. You're going to be chasing the next fucking thing, the next paycheck, the next job, the next gig, the next fucking chick, whatever. Is that you're never going to be satisfied and never going to be happy if you don't strongly believe in what the fuck you're doing. Yeah. And I can't fucking stress that enough. Yeah.

Yeah, I definitely would agree with that. I think, uh, I think starting a business is actually probably saved a lot of lives because it, it, uh, it becomes, especially for guys like us coming home, uh, it, it, it becomes the new addiction that never fucking ends. And, uh, and it's, it's a, uh, you know, it's a positive addiction because you, uh,

you have fucking purpose now. And I've seen a lot of guys, to include myself, that have pulled themselves out of pretty deep rut. And once they kind of get going in their business and they see that, holy shit, this is possible, they see guys like you, you know, who started at the ground level. It's,

Like I said at the beginning of the show, it's very inspiring. I would encourage anybody who's in that fucking rut that's listening to consider becoming an entrepreneur and making something of themselves. To me, if you don't,

I mean, you can almost guarantee being fucking miserable, you know. And if you think about, you know, every great product that's ever been made, every, you know, big fucking decision that ever fucking panned out right or, you know, any moment in history that was worth fucking writing down, right, is that prior to that, there was a choice to be made. And there was a bold fucking choice to be made that somebody said, you know what, I'm going to grab a hold of my fucking nuts and I'm going to goddamn do this. And they went and did it.

You know, and had they not, you didn't it would never have become a historic event. Yeah. You know, that shit doesn't happen by accident. It doesn't fall on your lap. You know, you don't just walk out the door going for a fucking stroll and shit like that happens. Like you got to fucking get after it. And a lot of times it is fucking scary. You know, a lot of times.

There is no guarantee. You don't know what the fuck's going to happen next. And you can't control a lot of the intangibles that are going to add stress to your life. But, you know, if you believe in what you're doing and you give it everything you have, that fucking struggle will fuel you, you know, to be successful and ultimately to be fucking happy with whatever it is that you're doing. Right on the money, man. Yeah.

Did you, were you always in Texas? Did you start your business in Texas? I did. Yeah. I, you know, growing up in Iowa, went to San Diego and was on active duty there the whole time. And then as, as I was getting out, moved to, to the kennel facility property where, where I'm still at. I, uh, I have a different residence that I live in, uh, that's not co-located with the property anymore, but, uh, but I own both of them and, and, uh,

Yeah, I've been here ever since. So it's been 12 years now, almost 12 years now. So how did Tricos start? Tricos was your first company, correct? Tricos was actually my second company. It's your second company. It is, yep. So the first company I started, I'm not going to mention the name of it. I had two business partners, one of which was a ranger, one of which was a seal. And it was kind of the perfect trifecta on paper in terms of, you know, I had the dog knowledge and contacts within the industry, right?

One of the other guys had a lot of high-level government, you know, connections and contacts and knew all the right people in the right places. And then the last guy was an officer. He was a SEAL officer that, you know, was a pretty decent business mind and had some good connections in, you know, investment banking and hedge fund managers and startup funding and shit like that. And so...

you know, again, starting out, it was like, well, this is a perfect fucking relationship. You know, we'll do dogs and contracts and, you know, we kind of have all, all bases figured and ended up having a falling out. I, I'm not going to get into all of the details. It was a pretty shitty fucking scenario for me and the other guy. Um, you know, the, the third party, uh, just frankly fucked both of us over. And, uh, and so at that time, uh,

Basically fucking disbanded. A bunch of shit happened and I had to completely fucking start over after building a seven-figure dog company in a matter of a few years. Holy shit. And then having to completely fucking start over. So Tricose is 2.0. So when I talk about picking your fucking nuts up and just doing it and not letting anything discourage you, I don't say that from a perch of not having been through any of that. And at that time, I mean, I was coming back

from the West Coast with about $2,300 in my bank account and a brand new fucking Jeep Grand Cherokee that I leased like a fucking idiot with no job and no fucking company and absolutely no revenue coming in, going back to a family of four with two young fucking kids, a mortgage, the whole fucking ball of wax, and no goddamn idea how I was going to fucking make it. Shit. And a good friend of mine who we went through buds with together said,

Um, and a guy in Colorado that, uh, I will say his name because I, I would not be where I'm at without him. His name's Harvey. And, uh, you know, he, he, in conjunction with my buddy, Sean, both of them, uh, you know, I kind of told them what was going on because just coincidentally he wanted to buy a dog from me and he wanted a personal protection dog. And, uh, and Harvey was his business mentor, uh,

And so, um, you know, just coincidentally at that same fucking time, you know, he was, he was just like, Hey, I want to get a dog house, things going, whatever. And I was like, dude, fucking terrible. It's like, here's what happened. He's like, Jesus fucking Christ. He was like, let me, you know, let me talk to Harvey. Let me see what's up. And, and, uh, so they basically helped me get, get started, uh, you know, to at least get the business formed and help with, uh, with some, you know, startup funds and, and, uh,

you know, buy, buy some dogs and start selling them. And just, you know, at that point it was, it was just me doing it, but, you know, so the work had now tripled, um, you know, but there was at least, you know, some, some assistance and, you know, to this day, had it not been for, for his help, I, there's no way I would have made it. I don't think, you know, so, but, uh, so he helped me out to, to get back on my feet, get started. And then,

I just ran with it from there. And, uh, you know, here we are fucking eight years later. Yeah. And, uh, and it's, you know, back far more successful than my first dog company. And it's, and it's just, just me that owns it, you know? So, um, without a doubt, the, you know, the trials and tribulations and difficulties that exist, you know, are, are not unique to just you. I don't mean you, I mean, anybody that's listening that thinks like, Hey, I got fucked over or whatever. Like,

You know, there's always a fucking way you can figure out, you know, a way around it. There's somebody that you know that can help you or even if it's just having to rely on you and getting a second fucking job or doing something else, you know, while you set that business up or whatever. There is always a way, you know, that you can get to where you want to be and ultimately fucking be successful if you just never fucking give up, you know. Yeah.

I'll be the first to admit like there were times where it was a fucking struggle, you know, it was putting bills on credit cards and fucking moving money around from this credit card to that credit card because it was a lower interest rate or what it was a zero interest for three months. And so, you know, I put three credit card balances on this one because it was a lower interest rate. I mean, there was several years of of it being that fucking tight, you

You know, and not knowing, you know, how I was going to make fucking shit happen this month and next month. And then that's the that's the rub with owning a business. You know, it's not a guaranteed paycheck. And not only is being an entrepreneur not for everybody, fuck, it's not for most people. Yeah. You know, because that stress of never really knowing, you know, if you're going to fucking make it that month.

And that usually is present for a while before you get to a point where you're financially can kind of take a breath and say, you know, even if I didn't have money coming in the rest of the year, we'd still be just fine. Like it takes a while to get to that fucking point, you know, and so.

You know, to me, again, the lesson is just no matter how bad it seems, just don't fucking stop. Just keep grinding it out. And and that is the one the one thing that I've noticed in all the people I've met in the last 12 years of owning my own business and networking and selling dogs to incredibly fucking successful people and people.

And that's the one common denominator with all of them is that, you know, they've all been through bankruptcies and nasty divorces and getting fucked over by business partners and losing everything and having to start over. And, and the one fucking thing that all of them have in common is they just never fucking gave up, you know, and they fought with everything they had all the fucking time when they were, when they were struggling and when they were down. Yeah. You know, I'm, I wasn't expecting to go down this road at all, but I'm glad we did. And, uh,

You know, I mean, you mentioned that nothing fucking falls in your lap. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, they they they see where you're at now or, you know, even me. They see they think they see where I'm at now. But it's a shit's fucking hard, you know, and yeah.

you get a lot of the, oh, that must be fucking nice shit. I hate that shit. But, you know, they didn't see the fucking sacrifices that you made to get there. They didn't see, you know, everybody's getting fucking paid from your business except you. And I can totally fucking relate to that. I mean, shit, I've been...

Vigilance Elite's been going for five years and I just took my first fucking paycheck ever last week. Well, congrats, god damn. Thanks. But yeah, you know, it's easy for people to...

write it off and say, oh, I can't fucking do it or, you know, that guy's fucking, you never know what the fuck's going on behind the scenes. And, you know, I said it once, I'll say it again, like, it's awesome to see how

I didn't know that you got fucked over like that and to start all over from scratch and to see where you're at now, I mean, I think a lot of people would probably be jealous, but I think it's just fucking incredible, you know. I appreciate it. Like I said, you know, to me, I see some of that sometimes of the...

fucking comments of, you know, must be nice, you know, like something as dumb as like posting a picture of a, of a inexpensive steak or something like, well, I wish I could afford that or whatever. And it's like,

Yeah. If you've got the time to post that, then you're not working hard enough. Yeah. Like if you've got enough time to sit on your phone on a fucking social media platform and bitch on somebody's feed about how you can't afford something, then you're fucking wrong, period. You know, then you're not working hard enough. Like you shouldn't be on your phone bitching about how you can't afford something if you can't afford something that you want to buy. Yeah. You know, so I can't stand that shit. Me neither. Yeah.

but, uh, but it's there and it's always going to be there. And to me, it's, it's just important to, to ignore it, uh, you know, and let, let your success do the talking a, and, and if there's any wrongs that have been done, I mean, to me there, there is no fucking better revenge than success. Yeah. You know, I don't need to fucking say anything to the people that either doubted me or tried to fuck me over or, or even still to this day, you know, don't like the fact that, that, you know, the success that I've had, that I've had and, and, uh,

you know, I don't, I don't need to argue with them about it. I'll just keep doing it, you know, because it's, it's fucking pointless and it's counterproductive. So, um, but yeah, I hear you a hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, maybe if, uh, you get off your fucking ass and do something, you could afford the fucking steak, but, um, moving on with your business, uh, there seems to be, um, what I'm learning is there's turning points in business. And, uh, I'm kind of wondering if you've had turning points and I'm,

What I want to know is, was your book a major turning point for your business where you felt like maybe you cleared a hump and took it next level? Yeah. You know, strangely enough, not really. I think most people would probably assume that, and I certainly understand why. And I think, you know, to a large extent, I would have thought that it would have felt that way more than it did. It really didn't. It was cool.

It was a great experience. But in terms of all of a sudden feeling like, wow, I made it, even hitting number four on the New York Times bestseller list, what does that really fucking get you? Nothing. If that's not accompanied by a revenue stream that's recurring that gives you the ability to have the freedom and flexibility to retire early or

you know, invest in somebody else's business or whatever, then what good does that ultimately do if being an author isn't really what you do for a living? Yeah. You know, so it really doesn't mean a whole lot as far as, you know, the reality or the tangible application of writing a book that does really well that way. So when it's with a major publishing house, also similarly monetarily is there's not a lot to that for the author, right?

Really? No. You know, if you self-publish, you know, and, you know, you're making 97 cents of every dollar that's spent on that book, then that's a different story. But when you're making 15 cents, you know, of every dollar spent on that book, then it's very different. So, you know, what I would say is that, and I think that this kind of really highlights my point of tenacity as it relates to business, is that there wasn't any one

like no shit turning point even being on 60 minutes like there was a nice little bump of interest and whatever same with the book same with you know different interviews that have come along you know or big uh magazine articles that i've been in or whatever you know it gives you a little a little bump but that swell goes away real fucking quick you know and so to me what what it's been is just it's been a nice natural fucking linear progression

And there hasn't been like a holy shit, here's where I'm now over the hump. It just kind of eventually got to that point for me. Okay. In a large part because I just kept doing it. Once I got to this point, I would take some of the revenue from this stream and try to create another one. And some of them have completely bombed.

You know, there's been products or services or things that I've said, yeah, let me try this. I'm going to dump a bunch of time and money and resources into trying this for a little while. And it just doesn't fucking pan out. There's been a number of them. You know, you can't let that get you down. You're not going to knock everyone out of the fucking park. I think business is largely about base hits, just like the fucking game of baseball is. I mean, everybody wants the grand fucking slam. But base hits and RBIs and shit like that are what win the game, you know, and just being consistent, you know.

and in a steady state of moving forward and pushing and driving and and and going for the the small wins You know if all you ever do is swing for the fucking fences I think as I know you can attest to you're probably gonna strike the fuck out, you know, so Yeah, it's just it's been it's been that natural progression pretty much the whole way but slow and steady wins the race Yeah well, I mean

Your books, they were all bestsellers, correct? Yeah. And so, I mean, did you feel like a huge, maybe it didn't benefit you that much financially, but was that a huge, did you get a great sense of accomplishment after that first one? I mean, to a certain extent, yes. Like I said, I mean, for me, the way I looked at it, it was an honor to

Have that as an accomplishment, you know, and so for a little while it was kind of that like holy shit Like I'm a New York Times best-selling author. That's fucking weird to even say that yeah, you know And then the second book the same thing and then the third book the same thing, you know So yeah that to have three New York Times bestsellers is even more fucking weird but again, I've always you know with most things like that I've always kind of tampered my enthusiasm with what does that really fucking translate to and

And if it doesn't translate to anything that I can tangibly fucking wrap my arms around, then I'm not going to spend very much time dancing in the end zone over it. And I really feel that way with everything is that take the wins, but use what you get from that to now help you try for the next one within reason. I mean, to me, you get to a certain point, and I'm certainly not –

you know, in a position where I've not, you know, enjoyed things or treated myself in certain ways. I mean, you can't just put every fucking dime back into the business for the rest of your life. And I mean, to me, like, what's the fucking point? Yeah. You know, but to me, you shouldn't start treating yourself until you're at a point where it really fucking makes sense to, you know, there's,

There's a difference between being able to buy something and being able to afford something, you know. And I think, you know, once you realize where that fucking contrast is and where that line goes from, yeah, I can actually afford this, that's when you start, you know, whether it's buying a watch or a car or a fucking new house or, you know, whatever it is, like, you know, enjoy the fruits of your labor and hard work. Just don't be a fucking idiot about it, you know. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know.

you know what's cool about the books and and everything you've done is i mean you're you're this is important to me and uh i'm sure it is to you too but i mean your name is stapled i mean you it will always be out there forever you know and uh there's not a whole hell of a lot of people that can say that so uh i think that you know is uh very self-gratifying uh to know that when you're gone

your fucking name is going to be wiping their ass with the pages. Yeah. But, um, but, and yeah, so I, I think that that's shit's fucking cool as fuck, man. But, uh, how did, uh, how did you kind of start with business? I mean, it seems like you have kind of, uh, fuck, I can't even count all the components, uh, of your business, but you've got,

teamdog.pet which is a training online training you've got Troycoast which is the real training and products correct yeah then you have the Mic Drop podcast which is a huge success and also a staple that will always be there and you have the Warrior Dog Foundation so am I missing anything

And I'm a dad. To me, that's a big part of my life and something that, as hard as it is and has been, it's something that I take very serious and have a lot of pride in seeing the kids grow and hopefully turn into productive members of society. But yeah, other than that, that's more on the personal side. But on the business side, that's pretty much everything. I mean, I'm always...

you know, thinking of new avenues or revenue streams, whether it's products or

product-based business with you know implementing new things into the team dog training site or adding another product or you know things like that but to me I feel like I'm kind of at a point where I mean I don't want to say I feel like I kind of have it figured out but I at least feel more comfortable in what I'm doing and I don't get up every day thinking just like holy fuck I'm overwhelmed and I don't know which goddamn direction is up I don't feel that way anymore I feel like

Like I'm in a pretty good rhythm and the different components of my business are all operating fairly efficiently and successfully. But I also feel like I'm, you know, that's about as much as I can fucking handle, too. You know, there's not really a whole lot more I can add. I mean, and the bitch of it for me, I think, is I have a lot of good ideas.

But I'm realistic to the fact that I can't implement any of them without just half-assing the shit out of them and ultimately them not working. There's times even right now where I feel like I probably have more things going on than I should and feel a little behind the power curve scheduling-wise on a pretty fucking regular basis. Yeah, I think, I don't know, maybe part of that might be I think some of us with our background...

we kind of create that pressure because we work well under pressure subconsciously. But, you know, where did you start? You started with three dogs the second time around, correct? You said your friend helped you and you got three dogs. Oh, well, so I got a few dogs. I don't remember even exactly how. I think it was maybe five, but...

um you know it was it was a combination of doing a of three main things which was breeding importing dogs for whether it was police departments military groups or personal protection candidates clients rather and then the actual physical hands-on training whether it's you know doing seminars or working a contract for you know police military what have you so that was kind of the

Those were the main three things that I started working on. And then shortly thereafter, the book Opportunity presented itself. And that's when I tried to capitalize on that and did. And then years went by, and the Warrior Dog Foundation was a component early on then too. But that was not something that I came up with. It was just there was a couple of dogs that needed a place to go, and nobody would take them.

And they were, you know, tier one fucking pipe hitter dogs that had been on a number of deployments, saved a bunch of fucking dudes lives. You know, and I was like, well, if nobody takes them, what the fuck is going to happen? They're like, well, we'll probably put them down. I was like, fuck you, send them. I'll take them. Yeah, not happening.

But, you know, so because of that, you know, I was pretty singular focused on, you know, from a from a business standpoint, all service based industry stuff. You know, it all required my fucking time. Yeah. You know, and so after years of that, of and this was probably the hardest lesson I learned, the no shit hard way was.

was that not only people talk about time being money and fuck you, time is way more valuable than money because you can't make any more of it. The time that you and I are spending, that's gone. Today is gone. Tomorrow when it's done, it's gone. You can't reinvest it. You can't make more of it. You can't give some to your kids. So because of that,

I got to a point where I was like, I'm going to wake up when I'm 60 years old scrubbing dog shit off of fucking kennel walls, road tripping seven fucking ass eaters from Texas to fucking New York or whatever. I'm just running my dick into the ground and I'm going to wake up and my life is going to be behind me financially in the same fucking boat I am now if I don't do something different. And that's when it was okay. I need to figure out how to have a more product-based lifestyle

at least equilibrium business wise there's always going to be a service component to what I do whether it's you know protection dog or a seminar or a

a fucking phone consult, I mean, whatever, like people are going to take my time up, but it can't be just that. And so I've kind of crossed over into the more mainstream and that's where TeamDog.pet really comes into play is that that's for your average everyday dog owner, as well as, you know, a lot of the products that I have, the dog crate, the collar and leash, the CBD oil, the food and treats,

they're all, you know, for your average everyday dog owner. And so it's kind of, you know, heading into that realm of, you know, where, you know, it's a product, it's a tangible product that people can buy and they don't need my fucking time to do it, you know. And so I've kind of spent a fair bit of time bolstering that and trying to get that to where it's a much more relevant aspect of the business.

Speaking of TeamDog.pet, and I'm getting ready to dive into that as soon as you leave with Tony. But how many...

How interactive are you in that? And how many videos are in there? How much content is in that portion of your business? Which is, for those of you that don't know, it's online dog training. Again, teamdog.pet. And it's all Mike. Yeah. So really what it is is that the last book that I wrote, Team Dog, it's the video representation of that. And so...

All of the concepts that I talk about and the reason why it's called Team Dog, How to Train Your Dog the Navy Seal Way, is not to teach a Labradoodle how to be a fucking bite dog. It's the reason that the seal teams have, and this is my bust for being this complicated in a fucking book title. That was a lesson learned is I shouldn't have gone that deep in it because most people don't give a fuck.

But is that, you know, that the SEAL teams have the reputation they have, not just because SEALs are good operators. You know, if you think about all of the other components that go into SEALs being good operators, it's a hard selection course. It's complicated.

Crazy fucking consistent training and lots of it. It's good funding. It's great fucking intelligence assets. It's high speed equipment. It's great fucking leadership. It's all of these other environmental factors and intangibles that, you know, all in conjunction set us up for success to be as good at what we do as we are. And with training a dog, it's no different is that if you just focus on training, you

you know, you're really cutting yourself off at the heels. It's what do you feed the dog? How much mental engagement do you interact with the dog? What is their body composition? Are they a fat fuck? Are they malnourished?

Are they getting enough sunlight? You know, are you utilizing the different tools that they have genetically to aid in your training? I.e., you know, a dog that could fucking care less about a tennis ball. Then you shouldn't be using a tennis ball to train the dog. If the dog likes attention versus not liking it, you know, it has high food drive versus not all of these different things that kind of go into it. Yeah.

or what contribute to you being able to teach your dog, whatever the fuck you want relatively easy and pretty quickly. Uh, and you know, so I, I found myself having a lot of these conversations with people, you know, at speaking events or, or, you know, what, wherever I was going, traveling, people say, Oh, I have a dog that's doing this, you know, how the fuck do I fix that? You know? And there's not, it's kind of like saying, Hey, I've got a fat gut. Like what,

What crunch can I do to fucking fix my abs? Like, well, it's not, it's more in the kitchen than it is in the fucking crunch, honestly. Like, and with training, it's that same way. Like there's not this magic bullet little technique that fucking fixes everything. It's like, you've got to put the time in, be consistent. Yeah.

and set all of the other intangibles up for you to be successful or for the dog to be successful, for you to be successful training the dog. And so that's what it is. In terms of how interactive I am, I get in the message boards every Monday morning and I answer questions. Sometimes, depending on my schedule, I may pop in throughout the week here and there to grab a question here or there. But most of the time, it's Monday mornings.

It's 99 bucks for unlimited access to all the content. There's about 900 minutes of videos right now. And, and, uh, I just finished filming a puppy series and a couple of, uh,

uh, adult supplementals that, uh, that are going to get added here shortly. And my goal is to, you know, is to just, you know, drop in new, new content, you know, when it, when it makes sense, when, when I need to regularly, uh, so that there's kind of a fresh and steady stream of, uh, you know, of new, new things for people to watch. Um, the, the goal with it

And it may sound like, you know, pie in the sky or, you know, unreasonable, but it really is to transform, you know, Western society in terms of how they communicate with their dogs. You know, is that there are so many dogs out there that are just poorly trained or completely fucking untrained. And where I take it personal is the shelter stats. Is that, you know, 3.3 million dogs every year are surrendered to shelters. That's a lot of fucking dogs.

About 800,000 of them are euthanized every year that comes out to over 2,000 dogs every fucking day in this country are getting the blue juice Damn, you know over 2,000 fucking dogs every fucking day are put to sleep in this country and most of them not all but most of them are because of we teach them inadvertently behaviors that we don't like and condition them to do things that make them a pain in our ass and

throw them in a fucking shelter and they end up getting fucking killed for it. And to me, that's a shit fucking deal on human beings part. And so, you know, if I can reach, you know, the bulk majority of the 90 million dog owners in this country that, that, you know, could use a little bit of assistance and help and teach them how to do it themselves, you know, not that you need to, you know, go spend fucking $5,000 on a board and train and have a professional trainer train your dog. Yeah, there are cases where that makes sense. And I recommend it.

But for most people, you can do it yourself. And frankly, you should do it yourself. You know, it's good from a discipline standpoint. It's fantastic from a relationship standpoint with the dog, because now he's going to view you as this is the motherfucker that trained me. Not this is the guy that's upkeeping the training that some other asshole did. It's that, you know, this guy taught me every fucking thing I know.

You'll be proud of it. Your dog will think of you higher for it. And your life will be much easier with all your dogs, you know, that way because of it. So I really do, you know, it's not just a fucking business idea for me. You know, for me, I truly want to help.

you know, get that number of, of 2000 plus dogs every day being euthanized down to, you know, as close to zero as possible. Yeah. Um, and I think, you know, it starts with, with you, you know, it starts with, with you as an individual of, of, you know, putting the fucking time in, you know, being dedicated and, and being consistent and, and giving enough of a shit to try to train your own dog and, and learn how to communicate with them. Cause it's not complicated. It's, it's really simple stuff. It's just,

Most people are lazy and consistent and just don't know any better. 2,000 dogs a day. That's pretty disheartening. Yeah. You know, I mean, the good news is that, you know, if you do the math on that, that's 2.5 million that aren't. But the problem is that, you know, and what you don't want is for that 2.5 million to be a considerable contributing factor to the 3.3 the next year. And so the dog is in a fucking hamster wheel situation.

turnstile revolving door in and out of a shelter because people don't know what the fuck they're doing and create more problems and then you know the dogs in and out with three or four different owners over a couple years and then ultimately gets euthanized because everybody does the same dumb shit with them

So to me, when you actually look at those numbers and realize that's a lot of fucking dogs being killed every single day, and there are some of them, admittedly, that that's probably the better option is euthanasia. But I will say that it's a fraction of the number that actually are euthanized. Most of them are.

didn't start out that way. They weren't abused. They weren't fucking abandoned. You know, they were owned by people that just didn't know what the fuck they were doing. And it was a dog, you know, that probably has some thin nerves and is maybe a little environmentally weak. And when you couple that with inconsistent, confusing, unclear communication, that's a recipe for fucking disaster. Yeah. And that's unfortunately where a lot of dogs end up, you know, in that position because of...

Did that play a role in you starting the Warrior Dog Foundation? Sort of. I mean, in a manner of speaking, in terms of, you know, I didn't want the same fate, especially for dogs that have served this country. Yes, absolutely. And that it was born out of necessity is that, you know, there is no federal funding for dogs.

retired working dogs, whether it's military, police, you name it, you know, Customs, Border Patrol, there is no fund set up, no grants, no facility that they can go to. There's no canine VA. There's nothing, you know. And so if the handler doesn't adopt the dog out, then the dogs get euthanized. Would you say the majority of handlers do adopt the dog? They do. Do they? The overwhelming majority do. That's good to hear.

For those of you listening to say, hey, I want to adopt one of those dogs, I love you for wanting to do that. Realize, though, that of the 50 or so thousand working canines in this country at any given time,

you know, 49,000 and change are adopted to their handlers. And those are the dogs that you're, that you were thinking of when you say I would adopt one of those dogs. The dogs that we get are the dogs that their handlers can't take or won't take, or that even get washed out before they're even of a retirement age because they've bit too many people too many times and just have too many fucking issues for that department to deal with and realize that

For a department to get to the point where they're going to wash a dog that they've got tens of thousands of dollars plus a handler salary and all the equipment and a couple of years of their time into like they're not going to get rid of that dog at the drop of a hat. You know, it's got to get to a point where that dog is such a liability to where it's it's.

It's better for them from a liability mitigation standpoint to get rid of the fucking dog, even if it means euthanizing it, than it does to keep it on board. Those are the dogs that we get. So these aren't the dogs that like, oh, I've got nine grandbabies and four chihuahuas, and I'd love to take one of these dogs. Again, bless your heart, but these dogs are nasty, frankly. Two of my three kennel staff...

have been bit like put in the hospital bit in the last fucking week and a half you know by two different dogs and that happens you know fairly regularly you know um so these dogs are are used to to doing that they're very confident and comfortable fucking people up and they enjoy it frankly most of them you know and so

we're taking them understanding that that liability, A, exists, and B, that it's our job to try to rehabilitate that out of them to the best of our ability. And with some dogs, we're successful. There are dogs that we get in that we manage to spend several months with or even over a year in some cases and get them to a point where we can actually rehab them sufficiently enough to live a normal house life in a civilian home. And we've got a number of dogs we've done that with.

We've got a lot of dogs that we've not been able to do that with. We're just basically a sanctuary for them and give them an opportunity to live out their life in dignity and grace as best as we can to avoid having to just put them down like they were going to. I remember being at your place, I think we're going on two years, when I came down to do your podcast and

And you showed me, you know, the dogs there and I never had the opportunity to work with a dog like that. But to see to see it's fucking eerie going in there. You know, I'm not going to bullshit you. I'm not used to that being around them.

And we're going to get into a lot more of this dog psychology and kind of what they go through with their training and what they're actually capable of tomorrow when we do part two. But that was a real fucking eye-opener for me because I was the asshole that you talk about that's like, oh, yeah, if a dog's fucking...

bite me i'm just gonna punch the shit out of it and get it off me and and the minute we walked in there and i saw those um those dogs which have uh you know probably seen more fucking combat than me and you both um i was uh i came to the realization that uh yeah that's not good so yeah um and uh you know and and and you know it's fucking crazy as as

to know, you know, those dogs have done more than 99.9% of the people in this fucking country that sit at home and enjoy their pretty little fucking lives. And then for you to say that they're getting euthanized after services. Yeah, it's criminal. Yeah, you know, and so, I mean, that's...

Again, that's fucking amazing that you started that and I can't fucking wait to breach into that subject tomorrow with the Warrior Dog Foundation and everything that those dogs do because it's... It's remarkable for sure. Yeah. But...

But well, Mike, I kind of want to wrap this up for now. And then we will pick back up tomorrow and it's going to be all dogs. But, you know,

If you don't mind giving us your handle on the IG and YouTube and your websites. Sure. So on Instagram, it's just at mritland. The biggest thing is go to mikeritland.com or teamdog.pet. That's the online training that I encourage everybody to sign up for if you have a dog.

Twitter, it's same at M. Ritland, Mike Ritland on Facebook. Two websites are, again, MikeRitland.com and Tricos.com. Both of those websites, you can get all the things that I have going on, including stuff on Mic Drop Podcast, all the products that I have, dog sales, speaking engagements, you name it.

Warrior Dog Foundation is www.warriordogfoundation.org. And again, we've got 26 dogs right now. I've got another one coming tomorrow and one or two more coming in the next probably month.

So, uh, no federal funding. Uh, I can't thank, you know, those who have already supported enough for your support, uh, but also realize that, uh, you know, not there, there are no days off and taking care of them. It's a 24 seven gig and we constantly have dogs coming in. So any, any support from, uh, from folks out there is, uh, greatly appreciated. And that's, uh, that's the gist. Well, I think you're going to be getting a lot of support after this podcast. And, uh,

For those of you that do have pets that are dogs, go to teamdog.pet. And by the time this episode airs, I'll already be deep in the middle of it and probably talking all kinds of shit to Mike on how much my pets have improved.

And donate to the Warded Bog Foundation. If what he just said isn't enough, then I guarantee you part two of this podcast will strum your fucking heartstrings and force you to open those wallets and fucking make a donation like you should. So with that being said, Mike, you've got a hell of a fucking story, man. And I really wanted to cover...

Your story and not the dog story yet because I haven't heard I haven't heard it now and I don't think anybody's heard it and I just I mean you're a fucking lawyer and Your story is fucking incredible and everybody that comes here you know, just like we were talking downstairs a lot of people don't think that that

You know, their story measures up to some of the other guys, but I'm here to tell you that your fucking story definitely measures up. I appreciate it very much, and I can't thank you enough for having me. The show that you've created in such a short time is nothing short of fucking mind-boggling, so I couldn't be prouder of you and happy to see you

not just the success you've had, but continue to just blow it out of the fucking water. I can't wait to see where it goes. So I appreciate it very much. Thank you, man. Amen. Pick it up tomorrow. All right. Finding suitable mental health medications can be a challenge. The gene site test may help. Did you know that genetics can play an important role in gaining insight on how a person may respond to various medications? Understanding this may help reduce medication trial and error.

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