6 Ranch Podcast
The Kevin Rogers Episode
Dr. Kevin Rogers returns to discuss his journey from vet practice owner to pet orthopedic specialist. We share our love of the outdoors and following our passions. Dr. Rogers will talk about the importance of a positive outlook on success and happiness.
We'll also tackle pet health and nutrition, canine diets and owner decisions about surgery and making tough decisions about your pets quality of life. This episode is about the bond between humans and dogs, and how to keep them healthy and happy.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Dr. Kevin Rogers returns to discuss his journey from vet practice owner to pet orthopedic specialist. We share our love of the outdoors and following our passions. Dr. Rogers will talk about the importance of a positive outlook on success and happiness.
We'll also tackle pet health and nutrition, canine diets and owner decisions about surgery and making tough decisions about your pets quality of life. This episode is about the bond between humans and dogs, and how to keep them healthy and happy.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Try to culture an attitude of yes. I see people that are fundamentally yes people, fundamentally no people. Do you want to do this? Whatever it is? And if they think of 10 reasons why not, they're probably a no person. If you ask somebody else, they're like yeah, you know, I could probably rearrange my schedule, I could do this, I could do that. They're probably fundamentally a yes person. And if you measure the life accomplishments of yes people versus no people at the end of a protracted period of time, I bet you would see a considerable difference. Maybe not in their happiness I mean, who knows what makes one happy or not but at least as far as getting shit done, they are doing it.
Speaker 2:These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch Podcast. This episode of the Six Ranch Podcast is brought to you by DECT. That's D-E-C-K-E-D. If you don't know what that is.
Speaker 2:Dect is a drawer system that goes in the bed of a pickup truck or a van and it'll fit just about any American-made pickup truck or van. It's a flat surface on top and then underneath there are two drawers that slide out that you can put your gear in, and it's going to be completely weatherproof, so I've never had snow or rain or anything get in there. There's also a bunch of organizational features like the deco line, and there's boxes that you can put rifles or bows or tools all different sizes. There's some bags and tool kits. There's boxes that you can put rifles or bows or tools all different sizes. There's some bags and tool kits. There's a bunch of different stuff that you can put in there. But the biggest thing is you can take the stuff that's in your backseat out of your backseat and store it in the drawer system and it's secure.
Speaker 2:You can put a huge payload of a couple thousand pounds on top of this deck drawer system. There's tie-downs on it so you could strap down all your coolers and your four-wheeler and whatever else you've got up there. It's good stuff. This is made out of all recycled material that's a hundred percent manufactured in America and if you go to decked comm slash six ranch, you'll get free shipping on anything that you order. This show is possible because companies like decked sponsor it, and I would highly encourage you to support this american-made business and get yourself some good gear. Welcome back to the show, dr kevin rogers. You were there for the second ever six ranch. We're back in Hell's Canyon and right now we are sturgeon fishing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how sweet it is too. It's really, we were talking about this yesterday. But just you run these rivers and whether you're floating them or in a powerboat, it kind of just starts to become like an everyday thing. And then you suddenly look around you and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm in one of the more amazing spots on the planet earth and I've been lucky.
Speaker 1:I've lived idaho now for 34 years yeah and um done some pretty hardcore exploring that this state has to offer and seen some beautiful sites and it's still really exciting to find new spots and see old spots and get to the point in my life where I'll reminisce a little too about some things we did 20 30 years ago when the knees worked a little better and the horses were a little faster, but still having fun still, sturgeon fishing and checking out the canyon. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Thanks for inviting me along oh yeah, no, this is fun.
Speaker 1:This is our third or fourth river trip together yeah, second bear hunt in a row and third or fourth river trip just for general purpose fun yeah, uh, you're still a practicing veterinarian I am, I am.
Speaker 1:I went from a practice owner with all the associated headaches to the medical director. I've got a fancy title. Now I sold my practice to a national company and it's actually been a really good transition for me. I work three days a week and I get to specialize in some more specialized orthopedic surgeries for dogs and some cats. It's something that keeps me motivated and wanting to go to work still and excited about helping families with their pets and doing some things that some other colleagues just have not. I mean, they certainly could learn to do the surgeries I'm doing.
Speaker 1:They're not mysteries, but they're a commitment to learn some of these more advanced procedures, and so I'm still excited about what I'm doing and happy to work with the same crew that's been with me for 15 to 20 years now, and that's a source of pride there to know that we've got a work environment that people are happy with and have stuck around and been through the highs and lows and seen our area grow and the industry change.
Speaker 1:No more middle of the night runs to pull a calf at least not where I I live anymore. In fact that's been probably the single biggest transition from my veterinary career. Is is from a mixed animal practice like dr pole to you know pretty snooty nose in the orthopedic surgical specialty almost. But no, I'm not a specialist by any means. But the point is we used to literally do anything that walked, crawled, slithered, galloped.
Speaker 2:I think we've got a fish that might be working on this red rod. Sorry to interrupt you.
Speaker 1:No, that would be pretty special to catch a sturgeon while we're podcasting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, special chaotic, Wegeon, while we're podcasting. Yeah, special chaotic. We'll see what happens Exactly.
Speaker 1:I'll probably jump up there to grab the pole and yank the earphones out of my ears.
Speaker 2:It's hard to tell what's current surge and what's a fish you know, but that I don't know. Yeah, that's a bump, they just bumped. Yeah, all right, do it, just do it. That would be awesome. Okay, so orthopedic surgeries on pets. Are you like preparing ACLs on dogs?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's become, oddly enough, one of the primary areas that takes up most of my day is it's a common injury in pets, and particularly, you know, your working dogs, your labs, your hunting dogs. We see a lot of a lot of pit bulls with that injury, but it's a common if injury and in dogs it's a catastrophic injury. It's. It's nigh on to breaking your leg.
Speaker 1:They're very dysfunctional without a cruciate ligament intact, and so there is a specialized procedure called TPLO that I was fortunate enough to be able to train and learn, and the company that bought my veterinary hospital invested in the specialty equipment to do that procedure and so a lot of veterinarians in the area send me cases and it keeps me quite busy and the results are so good. That's what makes it fun. I mean, these dogs go from barely able to get around to back to playing and doing whatever they do?
Speaker 2:does it occur in one breed more than another?
Speaker 1:um, yeah, I'd say probably labrador retrievers. Well, I mean, of course, it's a very popular dog too. So the numbers are out there. But right, labs and pit bulls. It seems like the um, super muscular, um legs of the pit bull breed challenge their uh ligament attachments more than some, and their both legs don't help either, and their owners are often very committed owners. And so if they, if, they go down they. A lot of them want to get them fixed.
Speaker 2:You know, one of my labs got mouth cancer last year and I talked with Weston and Coriel and I know they talked with you about it a little bit. My knee-jerk reaction was well, if my young dog you know, six-year-old dog, you know has developed cancer, then it must be from the food that he's eating. But what I learned from you was that some of the dogs that you've seen age to you know the most they have gotten the oldest have just eaten like basic kibble.
Speaker 1:You know I think we as veterinarians and pet enthusiasts if you will used to think you know a 10-year-old dog is way into his senior years and a 12-year-old dog is about to run out of calendar time and now we see lots of dogs in their mid to late teens and I have to think that good, better nutrition and quality veterinary care are playing a big role in that, and attitudes too.
Speaker 1:You know there was a time where families you know I do a lot of cancer surgeries. They're not internal widespread cancer surgery with bowel resections, that kind of stuff. They're lumps and bumps on dogs and a lot of them turn out to be cancers and those dogs can go on to live for years after a properly executed surgery. But the attitude plays a role. People are willing to give that surgery a chance to see if it will work and a lot of dogs are winners because of that. Not all, but a lot. And you know there may have been a time where if the veterinarian says, yeah, it looks like cancer, maybe they they chose to euthanize a pet and that still happens a lot.
Speaker 1:I don't mean to suggest, and that's not a bad decision sometimes but people's attitudes adheres to their pets lives, no question about it, and quality nutrition plays a big role in that. There's. There's, you know, been a a lot of fad moves over the years raw diets, grain-free diets but the biggest thing is just, you know, coming to recognize that animals like us are what they eat. If you eat junk food, you're not going to be around when you're 100 years old, at least not with, you know, a serviceable body.
Speaker 2:What do you feed your dog?
Speaker 1:I feed Hill's Science Diet. It's a good quality, reliable brand with good distribution. I think there's probably certain brands that might be. You know have superior ingredients. They're very good quality ingredients. You know have superior ingredients. They're very good quality ingredients. But in the pet food industry, shipping and transportation and freshness play a key role, particularly when they don't have preservatives. You can't have a niche brand that has a poorly thought out distribution system and no preservatives. Otherwise you open up a you know $75, 20-pound bag of food and it smells like old Fritos.
Speaker 1:Right and you know it's just no longer fresh and there's a lot of fats and oils that are highly volatile and won't last it just gets rancid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it just gets rancid.
Speaker 1:So there's better ways to feed pets, I think, than straight-up kibble. But across the board, for the average family, the busy you know, they want to make a good choice for their pet.
Speaker 2:Just buying the best they can afford and making sure their pets look shiny and seem healthy? Does more expensive dog food typically mean that it's higher quality?
Speaker 1:To a certain extent. There are some ultra niche brands there are individually portioned. They're catering to the fanatical type A pet owner that wants nothing but the finest. But a recent study showed outlandish levels of E coli in a lot of these raw diets.
Speaker 1:I don't really want to go down the rabbit hole of what diet constitutes the best, because I'm no authority. I just have my opinions based on years of experience. But the bottom line is pet owners and pet nutrition companies and veterinarians and veterinary owners as teams have produced lots of 17, 18 year old dogs that are still wagging their tail and having a good time, whereas before, you know, 25 years ago, maybe that just wasn't the case the standard issue grocery store dog food was pretty junky stuff and bottom of the barrel.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But that's not what keeps me motivated.
Speaker 2:I mean mean, there are veterinarians that have devoted you know, a lifetime to nutrition, just like there's horse owners that have, and there's and um, I'm more of a dog mechanic these days well, you're really good at taking something that's complicated and emotional and there's a bunch of hype and fads, like you say and then just making it accessible and common sense. And that's a bunch of hype and fads, like you say, and then just making it accessible and common sense, and that's the reason that I ask you about it. So a tough question. You know, recently I had to put my older lab down. She was 11 years old and that's a very hard thing and it's something that dog owners go through.
Speaker 2:Right, and when I, when I posted about it, there were so many people that wrote back and said either you know, we just had to put our dog down, it was terrible, or, um, or our dog's getting really close. A question that I had, because this is the first time I've had to do it personally, is how do you know when it's time? So what, what advice do you give to people as far as knowing when it's time to put their pet down?
Speaker 1:You know there are to say that the gray area is an understatement of the century. There are some hard and fasts. I mean, if a dog is crushed in an automobile accident and it's in exceptional pain and there's no coming back, you know lingering for four or five days just to. You know, gather, the family seems cruel and I will be blunt with owners when it's those rare situations. What's more common is, like you described, an older pet. They're wearing down, their mobility, is suffering. They've fought the good fight or maybe they have, like you, a mouth cancer.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So eating is becoming a chore. So the first thing I do is just ask a family what's life like around your pet, you know, I mean, what are you seeing? And what I'm trying to get at is if they see suffering and that's what they articulate to me and they are just trying, without saying it, to get permission, so to speak, from somebody they view as an authority on the subject that it's okay to let go, because their heart of hearts knows that it is you have to, you have to see that and you have to hear that, and and if that's what you're seeing and hearing, and then you know, I try to gently let them know it's okay.
Speaker 1:And your heart is probably the best guide. No amount of science and x-rays and, you know, going to the vet school for an MRI is going to change what they already know in their heart of hearts. But if they're on the other end of the spectrum and you know they just can't let go and you know they've got a diabetic animal that's urinating in the house and the animal can barely rise and they're covered in their own waste, you know those people sometimes need a little nudging, a little reality check, and so threading that needle, without being overly blunt or overly anything, and just listening, is what I found to be the way to transition into a place where the owner is comfortable. They may be sad about it and they may mourn the loss, but they know they made the right decision and that's something I've passed on to associates and veterinarians that have worked for me, or just colleagues.
Speaker 1:When we have this conversation is when the decision has been made. Be supportive, remind them that they're making the right decision. I even go as far as to say now you're going to go home and find yourself second guessing the decision you made. Why don't you just trust your heart and know that you struggled with this choice and you made a decision and it was the right decision because your heart said it was and and honestly I get more cards and letters of thanks from clients regarding that particular facet of veterinary medicine than I do for fixing a horribly complicated fracture. It. It's a challenging, emotional, difficult time that the average person that's ever experienced really doesn't comprehend until they have to go through it with a beloved pet. And it's a challenge and if the challenge is met, you know in a way that they that compassion and ending the suffering, I mean it just all comes together.
Speaker 1:Then there's a weight lifted off of their shoulder and there's an old pet that's gone gracefully to the other side and it all works out okay.
Speaker 2:And you know, you don't hear, I'll never have another pet, I'll never do this, I'll never do this.
Speaker 1:So you know, don't hear I'll never have another pet, I'll never do this. I'll never say you know, it's part of life and and and so it's something that's a challenge, and and veterinarians and owners have come together on that in a thousand different ways, but for me listening and talking and trying to get inside their head a little bit to understand what their perspective is from the outset has served me well.
Speaker 2:In our clinic double-arrow vet clinic they could not have been more gentle and compassionate and graceful and professional. Through that ordeal and when you're dealing with difficult things like that from your perspective, with difficult things like that from from your perspective, like you're dealing with people who are, who are emotionally distraught, animals who are, who are suffering and hurting you know there's all these different levels to it. What, what are you doing to help your own mental health?
Speaker 1:um, you know, that's a good question and I think that's something that veterinarians of different personalities coming from you know vastly different backgrounds have dealt with, some better than others. They talk about compassion fatigue in veterinarians.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm sure it happens in all health care industries where you know to that person that you're dealing with this is the most emotionally charged event of their year. Maybe For you it's the fifth one of the day, right and you know that's. It's but right or wrong, my motivation as a veterinarian, because I actually got into veterinary medicine as a large animal horse cows. You know how I transitioned over the years into somewhat of a bone and joint mechanic is a little bit.
Speaker 1:That's a story in and of itself, but what I was getting at was I've always come at veterinary medicine from the standpoint of more the family and the person you know. The hardest ones for me, for instance, are the elderly man or woman. They've lost their spouse, they've got this pet that sits in their lap all day long. They're fairly sedentary and they may be at the end of their you know lives as well within you know five, ten, who knows years.
Speaker 1:But they've got this pet that's been a 10-15 year companion, maybe back to when their spouse was with them, and you know that that loss is going to be huge, and so somehow my mind goes towards the person almost as much as the animal itself because I see what kind of impact that loss is going to have for them and try to be, you know, exceptionally tender because you know and and it depends on who you're talking to sometimes the biggest, burliest guy that's a logger or a bulldozer operator or a oil field. You know the tough guy attitude is the tenderest, most sensitive, hurt by this, more than you know the spouse or the kids. But you just, if you know your clients, it's easier if they just walk in you know off clients.
Speaker 1:It's easier If they just walk in off the streets.
Speaker 2:It's more challenging. Well, I don't know whether people think that I'm tough or not, but I can guarantee you that I'm not when it comes to my dogs.
Speaker 1:Well and I think that that's a sensitivity that veterinarians have to have is to understand that it's not how many cows is on your hand, it's how many times that dog has comforted you and hard times, or how many times you. You know the old lab that's got bone cancer and could barely walk and it's still dropping a tennis ball at your feet you know, it's just pretty hard to say goodbye to.
Speaker 1:So yeah, um, yeah, it's that that part of veterinary medicine scares a lot of. Otherwise I'd love to be a vet. I mean that they think about that. But honestly, um, the bigger challenges and I think the thing that would dissuade people from being a veterinarian after they've actually been in the trenches doing it for a while is not so much that aspect of it that actually can bring comfort to the family and to the owner it handled well is, you know, bigger challenges like just how to pay off a $250,000 student loan when you're making you know as much money as a as a you know well qualified electrician or something like that.
Speaker 1:It's not a it's not a high-value industry for the people that participate. So there has to be a high level of passion for it, to make it make sense for you.
Speaker 2:Now you told me that as much as 95% of veterinary students are female.
Speaker 1:Now that you know. I would hate to be quoted to that exactly.
Speaker 1:But we can say the vast majority yeah definitely the vast majority, and that's been a transition. I graduated from veterinary school in 1989 and, um, you know, we were about 50, 50 and we had professors that said I went to russkohl when, you know, there was one woman in the class and so in, you know, the last say 60 years it's gone from a male-dominant profession and this is something you and I were talking about too. Historically speaking, you know, going back maybe 125 years pre-World War, I, let's say this is fascinating.
Speaker 1:Veterinarians were in charge of so much of our society's most basic needs that we don't even think about today. But, for instance, you know, animals pulled the plow of our society's most basic needs that we don't even think about today. But, for instance, you know, animals pulled the plow, so a veterinarian kept the tractor running.
Speaker 2:Right, they were the mechanic.
Speaker 1:And veterinarians transported you to town, or, you know, chase your cows, or you know to pull the Queen of England around town. A horse was the transportation system and a veterinarian was in charge of that. Veterinarians were in charge of the food system. You know everything, from a pig to a cow to a, you know. And so food, veterinarian transportation, veterinarian, war fighting, you know cavalry charges just transporting troops dragging cannons around. Even into World War I they were using. So veterinarians as a vital part of our society's basic fabric were critical. And now our role is food animals, still in the right parts of the country, but um more so companion animal, I mean, that's dominates. What veterinary schools are graduating is companion animal right which is a luxury.
Speaker 2:You know too in some respect absolutely, and uh, you know to take that a little bit further, so few of these veterinary students who are going through right now are interested in large animal, and for good reasons. It's dangerous, there's less money in it and, you know, not everybody wants to live in a rural area where that's going to be the thing You're going to be on call for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on call is a huge one to be the thing you're getting. You're going to be on call for sure. Yeah, on call is a huge one. I mean the veterinarian lifestyle just as a complete and wholehearted 100 in commitment. Call me any time of the day, at night, you know it's a rare find to find a veterinarian that still relishes that.
Speaker 1:They usually got a fair bit of gray hair um, you know, in other words, the younger generation of veterinarians have just not really had to experience that, unless they are in a food, animal production or small town environment where emergency hospitals and the like are not common.
Speaker 1:And I remember when Post Falls Coeur d'Alene finally got an emergency veterinary hospital and I quit having to carry a beeper for the small animal stuff. It was a huge improvement in my quality of life. You know, yeah, it's hard not to get a little bit jaded when people you know are calling you in the middle of the night with silly questions and things like that.
Speaker 1:I mean, even if it's legitimate emergencies, it's still you only have so much energy in your body to devote to something and you know you got a kid crying or a, it's just there's only so. Yeah, the lack of enthusiasm for hardcore food animal you know, pulling calves, uh, dehorning goats, just whatever it is is, um, is a challenge, and the way Idaho has faced it is they offer student loan forgiveness for the veterinarians that will commit to living in smaller communities and providing a very much needed service. But it actually got so bad I think they recently declared the entire state as a small community.
Speaker 1:So, if you're willing to do food animal work, the state of Idaho is willing to help pay off your student loans.
Speaker 2:What an incredible opportunity.
Speaker 1:Oh it is. And then there are savvy people that actually have an enthusiasm for it, that maybe don't want to do that forever, but they're willing to commit to it. It's a little bit like joining the military service for the college. You know the.
Speaker 1:GI, Bill or whatever it's like. Well, I don't really want to be a soldier, but on the other hand, I'd like to go to college and become an engineer or whatever, and maybe they'll like the service and stay in it. Maybe they just do their obligation and move on. Yeah, so that's a thing, but it is a huge dynamic shift in the overall.
Speaker 1:But you know it's like everything else. There are very dedicated veterinarians graduating now that have a passion for what they're doing. I've seen no negatives. Maybe if you're a rancher out in the middle of eastern Montana and you can't find a veterinarian to come out and help you with a C-section so you lose your cow. You may cuss the changes that happen and that is unfortunate, but it is what it is, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, it might just get to the point where more ranchers are going to have to be able to perform those tasks on their own.
Speaker 1:That's going to be part of it. I think there's going to be a, you know, just like in human medicine, where physician assistants, nurse practitioners, have taken over a lot of the family health type roles that family doctors traditionally did. Um, you know, they're very well trained, they're experienced, they've got um. You know, doctors, that they can call on for advice, so it's an access thing, and it's, it's a compromise.
Speaker 1:You know you could say, well, maybe we'll just double the number of medical doctors, we're graduating and solve that problem. But you don't necessarily need to. But you need training and you need professionalism. You need standards too, so that there's not suffering, you know, or abuse of the system, or but I think that's probably where it will go is a as a as a technician level nurse level training for large animal veterinary.
Speaker 2:It already is.
Speaker 1:I mean artificial insemination work, embryo transfer work in horses and cattle is for the large part done by non-veterinarians.
Speaker 2:What's the brightest part of the job for you?
Speaker 1:Well, I used to say going home and cracking an ipa. No, I, I love my outside interests and they um. My personality dictates that I dive in head first and whatever it is and um there.
Speaker 1:I've had a passion that's lasted me 30 plus years for exploring the mountains of Idaho and hunting and fishing and boating, and whether it's kayaks or high powered jet boats. I love it all, but as far as my professional enthusiasm, it still comes from the people that I work with. Going to work and saying hello to them. That matters a lot. It's so much still comes from the people that I work with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, going to work and saying hello to the, that matters a lot so much and and you hear of these clinics that have what you know they call it quote-unquote toxic environment. They're just, you know, there's infighting, there's this, there's that. I just shake my head and go, I wouldn't do it. I mean, I'd rather bail hay than put up with that.
Speaker 2:So dig fence and rocky ground something, yeah and um but that's my thing. Whenever I'm up against a task that I'm like just dreading, I just think at least I'm not digging fence and rocky. Exactly that's a grant jackson original that I'm stealing well, yeah, that, something like that that was for sure a hit on that red rod just now we need a little action then come on, mr fish.
Speaker 1:We need some commitment here yeah, we don't get a sturgeon on the line.
Speaker 2:You're gonna have to listen to me yammering on and on about my 30 years as a veterinarian well, speaking of jet boats, um and uh and, admittedly, emotional decisions, you and I are talking about trading boats.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's funny. Boat owners are a funny bunch, I'm convinced of that, in the first place At least. But when it comes to highly specialized crafts like one capable of navigating Hell's Canyon in whitewater, this river's pushing 30 plus thousand feet per second in a very narrow slot and you better be game on or you're gonna have some problems it's so much energy yeah, it's, and it's unforgiving, and there's a long ways from the nearest cell phone yeah things, but they so.
Speaker 1:The all the well-made whitewater capable jet boats have a certain common features, but there's there's subtleties that make them more suitable for what activity you're into. And my boat? I built it as a hardcore whitewater access boat that can also keep you out of the weather. It's got a full hard top.
Speaker 2:And I don't want to gloss over this. You built it Well, Like talk about diving deep into something, Like you took a hole and then you turned it into a boat.
Speaker 1:That's amazing well, like I said, when I get going on something, my latest, uh, my latest passion has been forging um, yeah, forging knife blades and the damascus work you've and honestly, I don't think you were making knives the first time we did a podcast together.
Speaker 1:No, I wasn't. I wasn't Well, unless you count the two or three knives I made when I was about 14 that I ground out of an old file. But it's something that's intrigued me. In fact there was a phase of my life that was all about martial arts. There was a phase of my life that was all about martial arts and during that six, seven year stint as a student of martial arts, rather passionately I got into Japanese samurai sword collecting and study and learning about how they did that, how they did that. And I've had a lifelong fascination with that, metallurgy and how. You know people with primitive uh, not primitive skills but primitive tools and they you can't do a scanning electron micrograph of a you know the last sword that broke in a sword fight in 1500s. You have to just look at the metal and think about how you made it and what you might be able to. So they they brought metallurgy and edged weaponry to a level that has not been really I mean, I wouldn't say it hadn't been certainly a magna cut.
Speaker 1:You know, super steel is probably better than some 1400s japanese, but what they were able to do with the tools they had, it's not 600 years better. No, exactly, exactly. So. That's been my current passion, and I suffered a injury a few years ago and during my prolonged convalescence. It's a good thing I healed up because I spent a lot of money while I was laid up I bought blacksmithing tools traded in my pickup truck for a new one.
Speaker 1:I probably would have bought a couple of horses if I could have gotten out of the house long enough, but but yeah, so I'm in blacksmithing and building knives and have you been to japan?
Speaker 2:no, no, I haven't, so I'm. I'm probably to go next year, right, I've got it as a plan. I would love to buy a sword while I'm there. Do you know anything about what to look for and not get ripped off on some tourist thing?
Speaker 1:You probably ask a lot of questions and there is a society of Japanese sword. It's not just collecting It's's knowledge, and there's a museum and there's um. There's a lot of. With the internet, of course, information is as um. But a handmade sword in japan, in america, if it's, if it's not expensive, it's probably not legitimately handmade, because how expensive is expensive I have no idea on their standards, but in america, if you just say, got enthusiastic about the society for creative and activism, you wanted a broad sword that looked like something you know yeah a knight would have.
Speaker 1:You could expect to pay a couple of thousand bucks for it right and if it's a reputable japanese swordsmith doing everything by hand, you could probably pay 10 times that much easily. But that's not to say like. The only japanese blade I have left is a very old blade. That's a short blade. That was once a long blade and it broke and somebody reworked it into a shorter blade and it's not particularly valuable, but it has all those characteristics of a good japanese blade. You know the hamon line, that the temper line. It's had the tang reworked. It's just, it's beautiful to me. It's not even even in a scabbard or have a suba or you know, it's just a raw blade. But I picked that up and I wonder, you know, did this spill blood? Did this? Who made this? What? You know, the changes that have happened in the world since this thing was crafted are just mind-numbing to think about, and so that's.
Speaker 2:Was it folded steel?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so it was a damascus style of yeah, damascus is a term that comes from, I think, probably damascus, syria that there was a, a group of bladesmiths that had a very secretive method of metallurgy where they folded the metal much like the japanese swordsmiths did. But, um, and I think it was the crusaders that encountered those blades much of their, uh, misfortune, because they were wickedly better than an english blade and they usually wound up on the short end of the stick, so to speak, with that encounter, and they wanted to know what they did.
Speaker 1:Nobody would tell them, and so people have been trying to reverse engineer. Damascus steel but it's a term, then, that has now come to more commonly encompass just layered steels of two different alloys, and when you etch them in acid, you can see the different alloys because they show up, and people have taken advantage of that phenomenon and layered them in ways that create very specific patterns that are aesthetic. Really, I mean, it's a way of expressing yourself artistically in a blade by creating these layers in very predictable patterns, and I won't bore your audience with how you do that, but it's complicated.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that of the stuff that I've seen of yours, the feather damascus is visually very striking. Yeah, and I love feather feather is created.
Speaker 1:Everybody can think of layers of steel like stack of pancakes. Imagine if or or stack of, let's say, red and white play-doh and you stack them up like a tall stack of pancakes and then you took a relatively dull knife and mashed it down through the middle of it and, as it it, it wedged its way through that stack of red and white play-doh pancakes. It drags them down and then if you heat it up to 2500 degrees and smash it a bunch of times and put it back together, it has that, that wedge, and that's what creates that feather pattern. And then when you draw it out to make it into a blade, it starts to look like a bird feather and it's a very graceful pattern.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating. It's kind of you see people's eyebrows furrow as they look at it. It's like, how did you do that? I mean, I don't even understand quite what you did there Versus, you know, just a typical straight layered, simple to mask, because it's more complicated. But yeah, people have, and that's what I'm trying to learn and trying to emulate, and I've taken some lessons from some really accomplished bladesmiths and it come a long ways in a short amount of time, I think. But I still have lots and lots to learn something that I admire about you a lot.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I've told you this when you get into these, these new skills that you, you know, you dive, dive all the way into it, you really commit, commit to it and and you end up performing at an extremely high level. You take the education portion of that really seriously, and it's always funny to me when you start to talk about you know something and I don't even want to use the word hobby, I'm trying to avoid that word but you get into one of these pursuits and you'll always end up saying, oh, I went to this school and then that school and really studied it, rather than just experimenting and kind of brute forcing your way into the result.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an interesting observation on your part, because that to me is key and it doesn't matter. I've branched off, if you will. It's part of my mad science mentality. I mean I I probably wired different than some people, but um, it's, it's been fun. I mean, I'm 62 years old and I think back on. You know, people talk about bucket lists.
Speaker 1:My whole life's been a bucket list I've just when I get psych excited about something I I try to pursue, I try to keep it in in context. I don't make my sam family suffer.
Speaker 1:You know I don't there is a balance and and my personality is, you could easily swing your balance way too far, I guess. But yeah, the passion of learning and staying curious. And whether you're just, you know, I admire the people that are disciplined enough to stay with one passion their entire life, and artists that's. You know brushstrokes are so fine that it's just their choice of colors. You know, because they've been doing the same thing for 60 years and that they're a master of their craft. I'll never be an absolute master because my personality won't let me. I'll move on, probably once I gain some level of proficiency and I've come to accept that.
Speaker 2:I used to struggle with that.
Speaker 1:I get seven-eighths done with a project. My wife would probably say two-thirds done.
Speaker 2:But hey, fractions are hard.
Speaker 1:Exactly. But you know and I talk sometimes to the veterinarians that I work with about how you know success and how to achieve it, and I've always tried to convey to anybody that was curious enough to or given me the courtesy enough to listen to what I have to say is to just try to culture an attitude of yes. I see people that are fundamentally yes people, fundamentally no people. Do you want to do this, whatever it is? And if they think of 10 reasons, why not? They're probably a no person. If you ask somebody else, they're like yeah, you know, I could probably rearrange my schedule, I could do this, I could do that. They're probably fundamentally a yes person. And if you measure the life accomplishments of yes people versus no people at the end of a protracted period of time, I bet you would see a considerable difference in maybe not in their, happiness I mean, who knows what makes one happy or not but at least as far as getting shit done, they are doing it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I find myself vacillating between those two categories and it kind of just depends on how I'm living, it seems like. But during the times of my life where I'm saying yes to opportunities, uh, those, those are the good times, and the times where I'm saying no, or the bad times, and it's, it's complicated, it's always complicated, but uh, I encourage people to to look for the yes and and as far as like achieving success, before you can ever step out to achieve it, you've got to define it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for me it's been to be able to do the things that I am fascinated with.
Speaker 1:I'm a do it person, I guess, if you had to. You know I love being able to do outdoor adventures with my son, my daughters they're, they're both wired completely different. One's very art, one's very science, and, um, one, the science, one likes to forge a little bit. She spends more time, you know, with her homework, thank goodness, and she does at the forge. And my other daughter, you know, she likes to share her passion for art and philosophy and I try to my best to you know, to be enthusiastic about that. But when I can find something to share with them, that that I like to, it's magic to me and that's why trips like this with Weston you know he's a busy man now trying to build a house and get his career going and all that. So it's hard to find the time to break away and do things like this, but they're awesome.
Speaker 2:Weston's such a good friend to me and I treasure the times that we get to spend together and especially, you know, for whatever reason, we've gotten to spend time together in a lot of really cool places and, uh, I think that that that helps strengthen that friendship and and give it a lot of color too. Um, he's just a terrific guy to be around. He did a good job of raising him well.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I learned a lot from weston. You know we're he. He shares some of the same passions I do, but we we come about, it seems like, from a little bit of a different perspective and and I try to keep he may not think I try to keep my mouth shut, but I do sometimes because I enjoy listening to his perspective on things and and um his courtesy, said he affords people that I might be well, I try not to to be abrasive, but I might push back more so, but I don't know it's, it's a.
Speaker 1:I'm a lucky. I'm a lucky man. I've got, um, you know, family that I enjoy. I've got interests outside of my profession that I enjoy and I've got a profession that I enjoy.
Speaker 1:So what else can you ask for my faith and my friends and my passions? Um, you know, they make me because I'm like everybody else. I mean, every day is not roses and sunshine. I I got my demons too. I suppose we all do but learn how to face with them and cope with them and and remain productive and not become soured. I mean, lord the political climate we're in today, you could become bitter and mean. I don't have any use for it?
Speaker 2:No, it doesn't help. It doesn't help at all. What?
Speaker 1:would help is a sturgeon jumping on this pole and zinging off half the bearings of that reel right there. But we'll just have to wait, it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:We're going to have to chase him downriver here too.
Speaker 1:I know this is not.
Speaker 2:I didn't really calculate for that when I, you know, concocted this plan, but he's not there at the moment. But he'll be back.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Should we talk about the speaking of successes, the saga of the Gosling?
Speaker 1:Oh the Gosling of the gosling, oh the gosling. Now, if that isn't a story for the ages, I don't know what is for your audience's benefit we were sitting around camp trying to hide from a pretty constant rain yesterday under a tarp um doing what bear hunters do day before yesterday sit around bullshitting, but yeah, day before yesterday, and we kept hearing this and I thought it was like a kill deer or an osprey on the other side of the river.
Speaker 1:But it slowly got louder and louder and dang if we didn't look down and there was like a four or five day old goose gosling, waddling up the bank like we were its long lost mama. And you know, all us natural born killers jumped up and started offering it gold, chip crackers and worms and yeah, I busted out the sat phone.
Speaker 2:I'm calling my mom to see what baby geesey you know we're.
Speaker 1:We're breaking apart nutrigrain bars and giving it worms and we were all deciding he was going to take it home and let their children raise it up proper. And this little goose. I think it had gotten chased out of its nest or gotten swept up in the current.
Speaker 2:Well, the river's pretty high, the river's flooded up right now, and so we were thinking, wow, and then.
Speaker 1:So we made it a nest for the night. And then, and James got up several times in the night to check on the boats. But the water fluctuating, you don't want to leave your boat, you know, washing down the river or high and dry if the river drops. So he was checking on that and about daylight, the little gosling left us.
Speaker 2:Yep 6 am.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess it wasn't meant to be. You know, hopefully he found his mom and then we're downriver. Was it the next day or just later that afternoon? Yeah, so this is the next day.
Speaker 2:Yesterday morning it left at 6 am and because I'd been listening to it, peep all night long and we're like, ok, you know, maybe it swam away, maybe a skunk got it. There's a world of things that can happen badly to a baby goose. It's all on its own. So we're miles down river, river, like multiple miles down river. Uh, in the afternoon sturgeon fishing and we hear a beep, beep.
Speaker 1:we're like no, this thing swims out of the rapids into the eddy weston jumps out of the boat makes a beeline for weston and this thing swims straight to weston, jumps out of the boat, rugs down the bay line for west and this thing swims straight to weston and he scoops it up and like it's bad I can't believe it. We're like are you kidding me?
Speaker 2:okay. So then we figured out that it really liked to eat caddisflies. So now everybody's running around, you know, scooping up caddisflies and we're feeding this thing and it's just making the sweetest little happy goose noises and we're like gosh. I guess you know we scooping up caddisflies and we're feeding this thing and it's just making the sweetest little happy goose noises and we're like gosh. I guess you know we're really going to have to bring this goose home with us. Weston makes it a little nest box and it didn't love the nest box, so he ends up, you know, bringing it onto to a sleeping bag all night long, where you know it didn't sleep well. It peeped all night long and then this morning we're drinking coffee and we were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we set the gosling down and it swims out to these two adult geese that have one other gosling with it, and then they turn around and head back up river. Successful wildlife reintroduction it rarely happens up river successful wildlife reintroduction.
Speaker 1:It rarely happens magic. I've been involved raptor rehabilitation, working with this biologist. She brings us these broken eagles, broken owls broken, and it's a rarity, honestly, to put one back together and get a successful release. And here we pulled it off like we've been doing it forever. So it was crazy. I know we're going to be laughing about that little gosling for 20 more years.
Speaker 2:And you know that's the type of thing that happens when you get out in the wilderness Like goofy stuff happens that you could never have made up or could have predicted or imagined would happen. You know, and we've yet to see a bear on this trip we haven't seen a ton of wildlife. Fishing has been slow, but in the years to come we will remember the absolute magic of that gosling and just how cool it was.
Speaker 1:But when you know? Here's a perspective for you. James, you said we haven't seen a ton of wildlife, and it's true we haven't seen the bears we've been looking for. But you know, we saw on the first day, just on one hillside, two bands of elk, way up high, a couple of stray mule deer and what we originally thought was five beautiful bighorn sheep rams originally, that it finally turned out to be 12 once we finally picked apart the mountain, and one of them was just an absolute stud. I mean, you could go your whole life and never see a bighorn.
Speaker 2:So it's a matter of perspective within like 15 yards of them, got some great pictures, some great pictures.
Speaker 1:We've seen mule deer. We've seen geese, bald eagles carrying fish. We've seen sturgeon rolling in the river. We've seen elk, mule deer, goslings, mama gooses. So yeah, we've seen some stuff. We are just spoiled beyond words about what our expectations are.
Speaker 2:That's the truth.
Speaker 1:That's because we live in the magic spot. Yeah, and I'm not telling anybody where it is, because most you'll want to move here and then it won't be as accessible.
Speaker 2:Well, and they'll probably die Just trying to get here. Anyways, you know.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Gosh I about did. I took the wrong road on the way in and got lost and then went up this extremely steep road and then had to come back down it and my uh, my brakes overheated really badly, almost ran out of gas. Um like it. It was about as white knuckle as I've been. But you know what, I made it down, got some more gas. I, you know, very unfortunately showed up a couple hours late. You guys had to wait on me, which was a huge embarrassment to me. But we got here and we're doing the thing and we've got a couple more days. The weather's only improving from this point forward, according to the forecast. The weather's only improving from this point forward, according to the forecast, and at any moment.
Speaker 1:This fish could commit and swallow this bait. The bearings of this antique pin reel. You know I have a buddy. He lives in Houston now. He's worked in the oil industry until he retired, and so he's lived in.
Speaker 1:Houston he's lived in Alaska. He's lived in the middle of lots of different places related to his job, but he's always found time to come to Idaho and hunt with me or just join me on adventures. We've hunted Alaska together a couple of times. When I drew a desert bighorn sheep, he joined me on that hunt, and so we've shared a lot of adventures, and some of them have been up Hell's Canyon in the jet boat, and he told me that he fully expects a near-death experience almost every time we get together. Thankfully, uh, it hasn't actually happened, but to his otherwise, um, not as exciting or adventurous of a life, um, I seem to always provide him with a lot of good stories and fodder for for, um, what happens when you go to Idaho and spend a week with Kevin?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, cool stuff happens.
Speaker 1:It does. And if you're not out there, you know, giving it a try you'll never know what would happen. And honestly, it's when you pull off a big adventure, particularly a self-made one, I mean you're not just hiring. Nothing against hiring outfitters. And as I have a little bit more discretionary income, you know I love to take advantage of the unique opportunities that guides and outfitters can provide. But when you're, you know don't have two nickels to rub together and you still want to get there, you get creative. But when you don't have two nickels to rub together and you still want to get there, you get creative. And so I used to do these backcountry horse trips and I didn't have a string of mules.
Speaker 1:I had a couple of animals and we usually put too much stuff on it. But at the end of the day we would penetrate these wilderness sections and it was challenging, a little little bit dangerous, but it always left me supercharged thinking if I could do that, what else could I do? And um, so that's been, you know, finding some success and certainly some failures. Like my friend michael I was just mentioning, he and I've had some, some real failures, and one time we did just get completely defeated. We got snowed out of the frank church horses. A friend of mine told us this perfect place to go and he went there in september. We went there in october and the meadows that the horse was supposed to graze in were covered in two feet of snow and the fog made it hard to find our way and it and anything below I don't know five 000 foot elevation was dumping rain.
Speaker 1:So, finally, three or four days, and we traveled light, we had backpack tents, and so it was just a failure waiting to happen. And and I caused a horse stampede by shooting a grouse with a derringer shotgun, while riding it, and that was a bad idea.
Speaker 2:I won't do that again and um.
Speaker 1:Did you get the grouse?
Speaker 1:I got the grouse but I damn near got killed in the process and our horses ran about a half mile down the hill and um, yeah, that was not my best decision ever, but we, we came down off of the mountain below the snow line, let the horses fatten up and tried to hope the weather would break, and it just never did, and so we rode into. We drove into elk city and found a laundromat to dry our stuff out in a hotel room for the night. We went to the bar. I think the locals played a dirty trick on us. We asked them well, our trip didn't work out any. You guys got any suggestions and they told us, I think, some completely worthless animalist canyon to go try, because they were just you know yeah, out of town spirited and what.
Speaker 1:We tried it for a couple of days and got soaked again and michael vonny said you know, I think we should go to missoula, find a place to park these horses and just drink micro brews for the four or five days we've got left for this trip, so that's's exactly what we did. We found a veterinarian that was willing to keep our horses if we shovel their crap, and we parked our horses at his vet clinic and enjoyed Missoula for a few days.
Speaker 2:What's one piece of advice you'd give to your younger self, say 16-year-old Kevin Rogers.
Speaker 1:Oh boy, that's a really good question. Well, you know, I don't know I'd have to think on that one, and we probably don't have time for me to really think, but the thing that I wished I would have made my life easier. I always knew that I wanted to get an education. My grandfather was a medical doctor, my father was a medical doctor, my mother was a music teacher. Everybody in my family had achieved a level of success through education, and I wanted that for myself, and we lived at the time in a really small town that had a very less than quality educational experience.
Speaker 1:And I was just joking that you know, I'd never written a composition when I graduated from high school. I'd never written a read and assigned book.
Speaker 1:I read lots of books just because in fact I read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z before I finished junior high. But that was just because I was curious. But I guess what I'm getting at is it's hard to tell a 15, 16-year-old farm boy to study and to get a good education and take every opportunity to learn even the things that you don't think you will need, like your algebra or your chemistry or whatever, because you just don't know when those tools. I mean it's unlikely I'll ever have to solve an ideal gas law equation ever again in my life, but if I would have known a little bit more about that, getting through college, achieving those benchmarks to get into graduate school or whatever, would have been so much easier, and it was a major stress in my life that plagued me until I finally graduated from college.
Speaker 1:I just wasn't sure it was going to happen, because I just was unprepared really.
Speaker 2:So your advice would be to seek out the study prepared really.
Speaker 1:So your advice would be to to seek out the, the study. Take it if if you have any inclination that you want to achieve higher education goals, it's not going to happen just because you wanted to got to work at it. Some people are more gifted than others. I'm more of your. You know your. What is it? Ant grasshopper, I'm an ant. I just keep going, going, going until I get to where I want to go. I don't, you know, burn it out and but I guess, do the work yeah do the work, the preparation, whether it's backcountry horse trips, finishing vet school.
Speaker 1:you know it's old-fashioned advice, but just you got to do the work. If you just expect stuff to land in your lap and take the chances too, that's the other thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is. You know I don't fault people that take a fairly easy out. You know not an out, but you know an easier path versus one that doesn't have a certain outcome. But if you've got a passion for that, just at least give it a try, give it a go. Coming back from dead broke is not that hard. I've been broke for a long time. You can't go to vet school and not know what poverty feels like. I mean, that's a fact. And my friend who was an electrician straight out of high school got a journeyman electrician, eventually his contractor's license. I was still slugging it out in vet school and he was making fat stacks and I was starting to think maybe I didn't make such a good idea. But you know, do what you want, but plan to work at it.
Speaker 2:I think that's great advice. I think that's great advice for people of any age.
Speaker 1:And any endeavor, whether it's accounting or rope and steers, you know the more time you spend doing what you want to do, the better you're going to get at it.
Speaker 1:And if you get really, really, really tired of it, find something else to do that lights your fire, if you can. I mean, I know that that's a luxury that, um, not everyone is afforded, um, in other words, if you get vested in a job and you are sick of your supervisor, you don't just walk off the job just because the wind takes you. I don't mean like that, but you, we live in a country where you literally can get what you want if you're willing to work at it, whether it's through education or just straight up hard work or passion or whatever it is. I still believe in the American Dream and it makes me sad when I hear people say the American Dream is a fleeting experience. Me sad when I hear people say the american dream is a fleeting experience. You know, when so many people are pouring into our country to, uh, try to they, they still believe in it and they're getting it.
Speaker 2:They're getting it, and I think the difference is the willingness to work. If, if you have the willingness and the ability to work today, you have a greater advantage than somebody who had that same willingness and ability 30 years ago, because you're in the minority now. So I think that work is having its moment right now in a really special way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I still think the opportunities are limitless, really, in ways that I could not have imagined quite a few years ago. I was fortunate to grow up surrounded by overachievers and people that you know. My grandfather graduated from medical school in 1929. I think he delivered like 15 000 babies during his career.
Speaker 1:he pioneered numerous very important ob-gyn related surgeries. He lectured all over the world on surgery. So you know, he was a real inspiration to me and to see the passion that he had, and my father too. He was a radiologist and he had, like me, he had hobbies, he liked to restore antique cars and he just did what he wanted to do, so to speak. But he worked really hard at it and I saw that.
Speaker 1:and so, um, working hard for the things that you want to do has been part of my hard wire and I like it when I see people dig in and burn the midnight oil.
Speaker 1:You know yeah and and it's part of it too is our expectations. You know, I drive through post falls and we've experienced so much growth there. When I moved there there were 3 500 people there and nine sawmills, and now there's no sawmills and 40 or 50 000 people. But a lot of those old homes are still there. You know, in these everybody talks about, well, you can't afford a home these days, can't. If you look at some of the homes that these people were proud to own back in the 50s or whatever, when they were built, you know they were literally probably 400 square feet. You know they think that we invented the tiny home these days. Just drive through Post Falls and some of the areas where the Solomon's were Little homes, little families, you know, just living the American dream. They weren't getting rich, but they were getting. They were free. That sounds cliche, but it's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and were getting. They were free. That sounds cliche, but it's true. Yeah, yeah, and we can have it too. Uh, and it is hard, it is hard today, but but it's doable, just like weston's doing right now, yeah, so absolutely well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna wrap, wrap this up, freshen up these baits, see if we can feed this fish. Uh, he's there, we got to get him well, um, thanks for the conversation.
Speaker 1:It's been fun getting back together. Like last year, we went up the salmon river, this year the snake, and what a blessing. So thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Thank you for being a part of it. It's always a pleasure. Thank you, sir, you bet I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who's sent emails, who's sent messages. Your support is incredible, and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander. Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch Podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.