Learn English with Nate Bargatze - How to tell your kid their dog has died(Stand-Up Comedy)
Transcript
There was… Nothing was wrong with her. I’m just really busy right now, and… She was… No, she was very sick. That was a joke. All right? She was… That was a joke, and she would have loved that joke, so don’t you worry about it. That’s the type of humor she had. She was a rescue. It’s not your labradoodle humor, all right? It’s a little darker. She, uh… She was a wonderful dog. We loved her. And, uh, her name was Annie. And the reason we got her was my sister worked at a vet, and people do put dogs down for no reason. So, if someone brought a dog in that was fine, they just didn’t want it, uh, my sister couldn’t do it. So she would walk the dog back and then just steal the dog. Like, I don’t know the laws on all that, but… I’m sure now people are finding out their dog is still alive right now, like, they’re like…
So, uh, we got Annie. Annie was getting put down. She was a hunting dog, and she was terrible at it. And she was bred to be a hunting dog, and she was just like a misfit toy that just couldn’t, didn’t do it. She got shot once, and that’s ’cause the guy, like… He would be, like, doing target practice, and then she’d just walk in front of the targets. He would hit her, and he was like, “What are you doing?” And she was like, “What are you doing?”
She had, uh, no awareness about her, like the senses that dogs have. We had turkeys in our backyard once, and I let her out to go chase these turkeys. You know, retired hunting dog. I figured, “That’s fun.” And… we have a very normal backyard. It’s not Yellowstone Park. You can see all of it at all times. I, like, push her out, and she just pees and then comes back in the house. Never sees the turkeys. I’m looking at her like, “You didn’t feel anything? Nothing was going… Like, I sensed it as a human on the couch. I felt there was turkeys outside. You wanna take just one lap around, see if…”
The guy used her a lot for duck hunting. So he would shoot a duck, she was supposed to run and go get it, and then bring it back. So what I like to picture is he shoots the duck, she runs out, comes back, no duck. She’s like, “I don’t even know what we’re doing, all right? I did not… A million things flew in the air when you shot that gun, and I’m supposed to know which one you hit?” And the guy’s just looking at her, and then she’s like, “You’re not even the guy that I came out here with. Uh… Do you see… Is there another guy out here by any chance?”
Our daughter would put birthday cone hats on her, and one time, one slipped over her eye, and it was like that for six hours. I was just trying to see how long… Like, how’s it accidentally not coming off? And she was just going about her day. Just eating, drinking, like, “Yeah, I can’t see out that eye no more, all right? That’s the cards I was dealt, and that’s okay.” Then I pulled it off her. She was like, “Ah, I didn’t know you were a doctor.” I’m like, “I am a doctor.” Just two dumb animals talking to each other.
So she had skin cancer, and she would get all these spots on her. So we kept getting them removed, but it was really starting to take a toll on her and she was older. So we knew the day was close. And our daughter, she’s six now, but she was five at the time. This was her first pet. She was best friends with this dog. Annie was the first thing that was gonna die in her lifetime. So it’s a lot of stuff to have to explain to a kid, you know? So I was talking to my wife about like, “How are we going to tell her?” At first, I was like, “Let’s just act like we didn’t have a dog.” Five-year-olds are smart, but if we stick together on this, and she comes home from school and is like, ‘Where’s the dog?” And we’re like “What dog? Like, I don’t… I’ve never seen a dog. Don’t you think I would know if there was a dog?” But I read an article about the long-term damage of that. It’s pretty good. So… I was just honest with her. I sat her down. I said, “Look, Annie’s very sick, and she’s older, and she’s gonna die soon. This happens, so just love her as much as you can right now.” And she took it as good as a five-year-old can take it. So, the next day, I told her again. You gotta tell kids over and over again. I kept telling her. I didn’t want this to be a surprise. And then Annie surprised us by living six months longer. I mean, we were way off on when we thought she was gonna die. But I already started telling my daughter. I didn’t want to stop and then have to start it again. So I just kept it up for six months. Every day, I was like, “She’ll die. All right? She will die. She will die. I will die. Your mom’s dead.”
So… we get… Finally, the day was here, and our daughter was at school. And so my sister and my wife, they took Annie to go have to put her to sleep, and I went to go pick up our daughter to tell her. I’ve already been telling her. And so I picked her up, I told her. It was brutal. Very sad. She took it as if this was the first she’s heard about it. We get home, and my wife was like, “How was it?” Which is already a dumb… Like, “It was great. -You know? I… …loved it. Can’t wait for the next thing to die. Uh… Nice to say ‘I told you so,’ you know.” I told my wife, “It was terrible,” you know? And then my wife goes, “You didn’t tell her that I did it, did you?” I was like, “No, why would I say that?” Like, I didn’t even think about it, you know? I looked at her like, “Is that what you would have said? Would you have told her that I did it?” “Your dad’s been talking about the dog dying. Well, he’s finally had enough.”
Difficult Phrases and Words
put dogs down - to kill a dog to prevent it from suffering more.
lap - move around something in a circular movement.
cone - a shape
birthday cone hat
spots - a small round or roundish mark
removed - take (something) away or off from the position occupied.
take a toll - to have a serious, bad effect on someone or something over time
damage - physical harm caused to something in such a way as to impair its value, usefulness, or normal function.
brutal - extremely hard or uncomfortable
terrible - extremely or distressingly bad or serious.
Discussion Questions
Do/Did you have pets?
Did any of your pets die? How was that for you? Did you ever have to put down a pet?
Do your pets run laps around your house, your yard, or the park? How active are your pets?
Nate’s daughter would put birthday cone hats on the family dog. Did you put hats or clothes on your pets?
Nate’s dog had cancer spots. Was there a time when you had a lot of spots due to cancer, mosquito bites, bee stings, chicken pox, pimples, etc?
Nate said that they kept removing the cancer spots, but they were taking a toll on the dog. Was there a hard time in your life when something took a toll on you? (poor health, a job, a bad colleague or boss, a bad friend, bad boyfriend/girlfriend, etc.)
Was there a time when you or a pet created a lot of damage?
Nate said that telling his daughter that their family dog died was brutal and terrible. What was a brutal and terrible time for you?