JOEL AND HARRI

by Michelle Ransom-Hughes, featuring Joel Werner

Joel

I’ve always been in two minds about whether, knowing what I know now, whether I’d do it again.

I think it was this wonderful experience for him. And you know, living a freelance life it was really good for me to have a dog there.

It was also really stressful for him, and really stressful for us, and really expensive.

Michelle

That’s Joel Werner. He’s an audio producer now, but he first trained in science.

Typically, Joel’s good at making rational life decisions.

But this story is about a period of time - between falling in love with Katie - and them having kids...

that Joel made a bunch of decisions based largely around... a dog.

Decisions that cost a lot of money. And caused no small amount of angst.

Joel still can’t quite believe it, but a couple of years ago he moved from Sydney, Australia, to New York, New York; and back. With his dog.

I’m Michelle Ransom-Hughes, this is Oh My Dog, and this is a story of Joel and Harri

Oh My Dog theme: Run To Me by Seja

Joel

So Katie, my wife, was really pushing to get a dog, way harder than I was.

Ah I remember at first there was a litter of Cocker Spaniel puppies, that we didn’t go and look at.

Because I think it was just like, ‘We don’t need a dog’, you know?

And then, there was this litter of spoodle puppies, or whatever he is, Frankenspoodle puppies.

Um, And we went and had a look at them.

And there was one dog that they’d named Big Boy, who was clumsy and goofy…

And you know, he was the one that was still like a cartoon dog.

All the other dogs would run to the food bowl and he'd be running there and his feet would be frantically moving, but he wouldn't be going anywhere.

And then he’d be the last to the food bowl.

And I just immediately fell in love with him and um, we bought him.

You bought him on the first look?

We went to the local Indian restaurant, and had dinner and a bottle of wine...

And so most of that dinner was spent writing a list of potential names.

Yeah… we were playing around with a Chewbacca/ wookie, sort of motif for a while.

There were some classics. Like I think Ace was on there…

But yeah, we settled on a ridiculous portmanteau.

So his full name is George Harrison Ford, which is a ridiculous combination, of my two childhood heroes: George Harrison and Harrison Ford,

the quiet Beatle and Han Solo - you know

That’s a lot to live up to.

A lot of names for a dog as well. A lot of names for a dog that’s like maybe not the brightest dog on the block.

Is it like a kid, who gets called their full name when he’s in trouble?

Do you know what, I don't think I’ve actually ever yelled his full name out loud.

But he’s always been Harri, and yeah, he’s definitely Harri.

Michelle

Joel and Katie had not long moved in together when they brought Harri home.

Joel

There was definitely a sort of like putting a flag in the sand…

that um, that this was serious and it was long term, and Harri was definitely a part of that.

So the idea of taking a dog on… was always gonna be,

He's gonna be exercised and we’re gonna look after him, and he’s gonna live a good life with us

and so, yeah, you sort of weigh that sort of stuff up before you go and buy a dog, I think

Michelle

Joel already knew very well, what it could mean to have a family dog.

Joel

I had a dog until I was about 10 or 11 I think. A dog called Frodo.

My mum was a bit of a, ah, you know, pre-Lord of the Rings movies, um, when she was at uni, she was a bit of a Tolkien fan.

How did she even know about him then?

(laughing) She must have seen into the future one day.

But so we had, like her car was Bilbo, the cat was Baggins, and the dog was Frodo. I was almost Gandalf.

And it's like the one time my Dad’s forcefully stepped in and gone, “You shall not pass”.

But you know, “No son of mine will be called Gandalf”, kind of thing.

Thanks Dad.

I know I really dodged a bullet there

Thank him every year.

Yeah, I do.

So what kind of dog was Frodo?

Frodo was Half German Shepherd, half Golden Retriever. So he had this beautiful long, long golden coat with the face of a German shepherd

Oh wow

I have a really visceral memory of hugging him around his chest and how soft he is.

And um, he was a really wonderful dog for me as a kid, I loved growing up with him.

He was a really smart dog as well, like I remember as a kid, he did this thing where they'd give him a hard boiled egg, and he’d take the shell off and eat the egg.

Whereas Harry can't walk past your microphone without pulling all your gear over

Good boy.

You know, I spent a lot of time in my childhood down on the south coast of New South Wales

And so like, we’d go round the rocks and he’d bark at all the crabs. And you know, he was a very big part of our family growing up.

Musical interlude

Frodo was like 14. And had some illness where he needed to be put down.

You know, it was a sort of humane decision to put him down.

And Dad went in with him, and he had a last meal of bacon and eggs and stuff. And Dad stayed with him.

I think it’s the first time I’d sort of seen my Dad, but anyone in my family, express a really intense grief.

Like I don’t, I haven’t seen my dad that upset, like even when human family members have passed away.

Like I think it’s like Dad just deals with it in a different way.

And I’m sure he’s felt like even more strongly. But that dog passing away really affected him.

Joel was about 10 years old.

His parents didn’t shy from explaining what was happening.

So even though he did understand it, what Joel remembers most is his father’s overwhelming sadness.

When Dad was in with Frodo when he was getting put down, he made a promise to him he'd never get another dog.

And Dad’s never had another dog. And that was 1986. And he loves dogs - like he’s a dog person.

So like when we got Harri... My Dad and Harri have a really special bond.

And Dad just is the staunchest sort of grandparent-level defender of Harri and Harri’s interests.

So - what sort of dog did Joel’s new puppy become?

Harri’s nine now, and to look at, at least, he has the best parts of a cocker spaniel, those velvety ears, and paws.

He is a gentle dog, he's a loyal dog, he is loving, and he’s a bit goofy as well.

He has kind of hairy chops around his mouth, like I do. I think it runs in the family

So when he drinks in his water bowl he’ll lift his snout out, and walk back through the house, dripping water every step of the way.

So we’ll have a couple of towels around his water bowl. And it’s like, I always think of myself, as, You know those kids at the NBA?

And if a basketball court gets a bit sweaty, in between plays they’ll go out and they’ll mop the sweat up?

I think of myself as one of those kids, with the dog’s drippy beard water. just going out and constantly following the dog around, mopping his trail of beard water.

Joel says this is Harri’s most annoying habit so you can conclude, he’s basically a perfect dog… a good and handsome boy.

Now let’s go back a few years: it’s 2013, Obama is in the White House, Joel and Katie have been married a year or so,

And Harri’s just about out of his puppy stage.

Joel’s happily working at the ABC, and Katie’s working for the NSW State Government, where change is in the wind.

One day Katie Googles around for work in her field -

She types in ‘climate adaptation jobs’. And up pops a job... in New York City.

And so she sent off an application, like literally on a whim, on her lunch break, you know.

So much so that she didn't even mention to me that she’d applied.

Until, they wrote back and said, oh we want to interview you.

Then there was a quite intense series of interviews, and at each stage it's getting sort of more real that this is a possibility.

Um, until, yeah she got offered the job.

We were very settled at the time.

We had an apartment, we had a dog.

We had a life here that was like very comfortable.

But there’s nothing to debate.

They can both see it - the job in New York is an incredible opportunity for Katie.

We thought a lot about whether we'd take Harri.

Um, my parents lived on the beach, in a kind of secluded part of the New South Wales south coast,

so I think it's like dog Christmas when he goes down there.

I think in the back of my mind I was thinking, Oh maybe he could live with my folks for a few years,

He lives at the beach... has a comfortable life down there...

It wasn't that Dad didn't want to have him...

But Dad was just like, “No, like your dog’s part of your family, and if your family’s moving, your dog should move with you”.

I was definitely leaning towards not taking him until I had that chat with my dad.

After that conversation… yeah, I was convinced. Like, it was a really good chat to have.

And it made me go, he’s right,

If we’re doing this we can't just not take the dog because it’s easier to not take the dog.

Um, we’re gonna take the dog.

And then it happens, in September, Katie moves to New York

Joel follows in October, after leaving Harri with Katie’s folks.

And he has a month in New York, BUT...

Joel being Joel has just one more project to squeeze in, before he can properly relocate…

I’d signed up to do this co-pro with the BBC World Service,

that involved travelling around the Pacific from October to December making this four part documentary about ocean science.

He made it back to New York, on the 23rd of December.

So I went from sort of you know, sweating and having really bad diarrhoea and food poisoning on the beach of Kirrabass

in 40 degree heat and 80-something percent humidity,

to turning up in New York to minus 15 degrees weather, and the polar vortex snow kind of piling in.

But really, what good is a white Christmas without your dog?

They needed to find a place where they could live, and where Harri could be too.

Renting with pets is massively challenging in Australia, but New York landlords seem to get it

I think also we weren’t being very picky.

We had this tiny shoebox, like it was a studio apartment at the top of a four storey walkup.

So no lifts, but had great views down to Coney Island over Brooklyn, and it was directly across the road from Prospect Park.

Harri didn't need a passport or a visa to enter the United States.

Yeah they had to prove he’d been vaccinated, but he didn’t need to do time in quarantine

Because, all the diseases a dog might bring in - are already in.

So, back in Sydney, just like any other piece of freight, Harri’s taken from Katie’s parents’ place, in a van, to the International airport.

And then the dog gets put in a crate, and flown from Sydney to LA...

The dog goes underneath?

Okay, I’ll break this down.

So um, we had to buy a crate which is like, you know those cat boxes you see people take their cats to the vet in?

It’s like that but the kind of McMansion version of that, right?

In terms of where they go on the plane, they don't go in with the luggage, because they'd freeze to death because it’s not pressurised.

But then also not in the main cabin.

So apparently, there’s parts of a plane that have the same temperature, and the same pressure control and same air control air system as where the human passengers are,

but it's where pets and living things go - so he goes in there.

So the dog has no preparation?

(laughing) What do you mean? How would the dog prepare? I think the less they know the better right?

So there's no drugs?

No, no. Definitely no drugs.

(Sounds of a passenger jet in flight)

Harri’s got this thing... I remember learning about it at uni, this idea called ‘learned helplessness’.

So back in the 60's when science was a lot less ethical than it is now, they'd do experiments on dogs and all other sorts of animals.

And one of the experiments they did on dogs was to have a dog in a confined space and then have the floor be able to be electrified.

To give them an electric shock, and to see how quickly the dog would run away.

Right it’s a pretty dumb experiment.

But, then they had a condition, and this is like, just... trigger warning - yeah - like, it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it

Then they'd have a situation where there was nowhere for the dog to go to.

So they’d run an electric shock through the floor. And it’s like non-lethal, but it was uncomfortable for the dog.

And what they found is that dogs have this condition called learned helplessness, where once they realize they can't escape, they just lie down and wait for it to pass.

And um that's brutal, that’s really brutal unnecessary science.

What were they trying to test?

I don't know to be honest.

And I think when Harri is stressed or whatever… like he doesn't respond by tearing up the couch, or you know barking his head off.

His energy doesn't go up, he just kind of like finds a comfortable spot...

We don't electrify anything in our house!

He finds a comfortable spot, and just chills you know, and waits for it to pass.

And so in my head, how I imagined Harri on the plane, was him realising, okay I’m here until I'm not here,

and I’m just gonna, um, just gonna chill out and wait for it to pass.

And so it was that lying inside a large plastic crate, within the darkened, pressurised cabin, of a Lufthansa jet, Harri flew.

High above the Pacific Ocean, for hour upon hour upon hour, 14 hours,

without a clue that - after a brief and troubling stopover in Los Angeles, and then another 5 hours in the dark,

he would next sniff the open air on the tarmac of the John F Kennedy Airport in New York City.

If you’ve ever sent your dog (or your child) unaccompanied - you'll know there's something so vulnerable,

and... beyond your control, about innocents on transcontinental flights...

that holding your breath until the flight lands, is somehow quite natural

So there was all the dog crates, there was like three or four dog crates, with people waiting to come and get them,

And he was just lying there, you know, chilling out.

All the others were anxious and pacing their cage, and he was just waiting there.

And you know got him out, and it sort of took him maybe thirty seconds to recognise it was me, I think.

Was just excited to be out. And then we had a big cuddle and he went and did a big wee outside.

And then yeah - came and lived with us in Brooklyn.

In New York they all landed on their feet.

Katie’s job with climate organisation, C40 Cities, was working out incredibly well,

And not long after he arrived, Joel found a great story to report,

He was soon picking up work with the best radio programs in the country.

Harri was also loving his life - because down four flights of stairs,

And across the road from their apartment... was a mighty fine park.

Prospect Park is this massive park in the middle of Brooklyn.

It’s bounded by Park Slope um along one side, Prospect Heights along the other, Flatbush along the other,

and Windsor Terrace, which was where we lived, along the other side of the park.

It's about a 6k loop if you run around it.

It was designed and built by the brothers who designed Central Park

And, Brooklyn locals like to tell you that they fixed all the problems with Central Park.

I think the brothers themselves were like, “We’re gonna get it right this time, We're not constrained by the, you know, the avenue system in Manhattan

We’ve got all this land...”

And it really is, it's a natural wonderland. You have a massive lake, you have ah hills with forests on them, you have little waterfalls running through.

You have these big massive, ah lawns, like these huge open grass fields.

Um, and it really undulates between different types of ah, ecosystem I guess. So you have sort of tall tree forests, shrubby mountainous forests...

And dogs are totally allowed?

Yep. So there’s off leash areas. But um dogs are allowed anywhere on leash.

We were in there twice a day, I'd go running around that park, would ride my bike around the park. It was really a place we spent a lot of time.

Joel still remembers taking Harri to the park for the first time

Ah, his nose was twitching across the road, like before we even got in.

He was just clearly and obviously overwhelmed by what was in this place.

And I don't think he saw his first squirrel on that walk, but he definitely smelt all of these unfamiliar creatures.

American creatures

Yeah. Right? And um then when he saw his first squirrel he almost ripped my arm off.

And then every subsequent squirrel, he saw he almost ripped my arm off, chasing them.

And there’s chipmunks. So chipmunks make this like really kind of off-putting, ethereal, high-pitched warning sound.

So when you’re walking through a bit of woodland they'll be calling out to each other

like a ‘Ping bing bing chee chee chee chee chee chee’

Kind of like that, but higher.

And you'd see the chipmunks as well so you know,

There was this one time we were standing in the park

And I just casually had Harri’s lead in my hand, and he was sitting behind me and we were having a chat with our friends,

And what I didn't know had happened was that Harry had spotted a squirrel…

And the extenda lead had pulled out as he chased it, and then when it got to the end, it yanked my arm and I was sat on my butt by my dog.

I still haven’t lived that down.

And when people ask what I miss about New York, I don't think they ever expect you to say, “I miss the park”. But I miss that park every day.

Hey sit. sit. good boy.

Yeah, so, you know, dogs eat stuff in the park and they get upset stomachs, and um sometimes they just need to go.

And that could be really conveniently, when you're taking them for their daily walk, or it could be at two or three am, in the middle of the night.

So I'd just feel a little paw on my arm when I was in bed. And um, that would mean you have to get up, and take me outside.

What did that involve ?

Well, most of the time that was just a quick trip downstairs and outside.

But in winter, when temperatures are minus 15 minus 20 degrees Celsius... there's a whole complete rigmarole that I need to go through,

to make sure I don't die when I go outside.

You can’t just nip out and be okay?

No, no. So there's like, you know, you-need-to-clean-your-freezer-out levels of ice covering the footpath, there's snow piles on the side of the road,

the streets are getting salted and scraped a couple of times a day, just to keep the snow and ice off them.

Um and you feel this stinging frostbite on your skin, whatever skin’s exposed.

And then, you know, I don't think we need to go in massive amounts of detail, but dog diarrhoea on snowy, icy ground at 3am in the middle of a park in Brooklyn

It’s like not one of my proudest moments.

Frostbite aside, this was a golden time for them.

They made lifelong friends, and did great work.

I mean New York Public radio is fantastic. Like there was this morning where I was working on Freakonomics at WNYC,

and um, I got to work and literally everyone in the office had just listened to Serial season 1, episode 1 and Serial had just broken.

And everyone there knew that everything had just changed forever. I’m sort of pinching myself that I'm sort of here to witness this.

But it was um, yeah, it was a very New York experience.

Why would you walk away from that?

For the best of reasons... Katie was pregnant with their first child. And her sister back in Australia was due at the same time.

With this in mind, Joel was ready to give up the New York hustle. And go home to their Sydney family, apartment and regular paycheck.

So yeah, we’d sort of done our research beforehand,

and it's a seven month process, to get the dog cleared to come back into Australia.

Seven months. It all starts with a blood test - which hopefully clears your dog of disease, and sets a baseline.

Then, every month for seven months you visit the vet to repeat the test.

If and only if, all the tests come back clear, Australian quarantine says you're good to come back in.

… there's nothing cheap about this sequence of events.

You get used to handing over money in 80 bucks, a hundred bucks, 300 bucks…

It’s just this constant like… “Sending us broke!” you know?

About four months into this process, JoeI gets a panicked call from his vet

He was like, “Joel can you come up?

I think there's been a problem with the process of getting Harri back to Australia”

And it was our neighbourhood vet, so I got on my bike and rode up

Turns out when the vet did Harri’s initial test, Harri’s microchip number had to be written on the vial of blood, and on the paperwork.

But the vet had just written the number on the paperwork, put the unmarked vial of blood in the bag, and sealed it up.

That apparently was enough to invalidate that blood test. Which basically means we had to start again.

Seven more months of testing. By this time, Joel and Katie had loosened all the ties binding them to New York -

Given notice at their jobs, given up the lease on their apartment.

And by now Katie was properly pregnant

Um, we, we had to move back.

And so then it was like… what do we do about Harri? And that broke my heart.

It was so, it was so, just torturous, to think about moving back to the other side of the world, and leaving your dog back in New York.

But the plan being well and truly in motion, after 3 months - Harri was taken in by friends in upstate New York.

And Joel and Katie flew back to Sydney, Australia - sans dog.

The friends handled the whole regimen - all the vet visits and endless paperwork, with great care and kindness.

Yeah, we came back to Australia, I went back to work.

Katie had a little boy, Finn. Then when Finn was six weeks old, it was time for me to go and pick up Harri.

So, there's an amount of paperwork that you have to clear at both ends of the transit, that's like a mini PhD.

It’s literally like a cartoonesque stack of papers.

Back across the Pacific again to New York went Joel.

Upstate to sleepy hollow to get dear Harri.

Back down to the city to present Harri’s stack, 7 months of new paperwork, signed off by the vet, and a rather large fee.

But, the government dept that handles biosecurity can still reject any application, vet or not vet.

So I was sweating it…. I was going if there's something wrong

If we’ve missed something in this paperwork... I’m here in New York, and I can't take my dog, and they cant keep my dog and I don’t know what we’re gonna do.

Why is it so complicated?

American bureaucracy is just completely ridiculous like that.

And it’s all based on what I think the Australian government needs, to let animals clear quarantine at this end.

It’s not like dog extradition?

I wish. Maybe he should have committed a crime, It would have been faster. You should have seen what he did to the squirrels…

Yes - Harri passed - he was good to go.

No further delays... just one more transcontinental flight for man and dog.

Having been a dad for 6 weeks by now, it could be said that Joel and his old friend sleep had lost touch.

And as jet-lag set in Joel felt more guilty about leaving his family on the other side of the planet.

On day 4 of the caper, Joel and Harri flew without incident from JFK to LA.

The next day at the dog check in, however, Harri seemed wise to Joel’s plan.

He hated me putting him back at the crate at LA. He was whining as I left him, and barking,

And um, yeah it was really hard. I walked around to get my flight and went to the bar, and had a beer and whiskey,

“Just have a neat bourbon and a pint of beer, thanks”. And calmed my nerves.

I think I called Katie up from the airport and was you know, teary.

Just going, let's just get the dog home, and never do that again.

So I did a five day door-to-door trip. That's basically as quick as you can leave Sydney, fly to New York,

pick a dog up, fly him to LA, put him on a plane in LA and then fly back.

Five days was as tight as you could do it.

But even that wasn’t the end of it. Not for Harri.

Joel flew straight home to Katie and the baby

But Harri had a little period of incarceration in Australia's centralised quarantine centre - in Melbourne.

And so he went there for ten days in the end. And then my parents, which was very kind of them, drove down and got him.

Have you ever done the numbers on how much it cost?

Deliberately not. No. Definitely haven't. We used to say it's a small car. But it’s like a nice small car.

It’s a European small car…

It's like one with the blinker on the wrong side of the steering wheel.

So, if on a whim, the family was called to go far away? Would he do it again?

Joel

You know I think, like, I always feel like I just have to check my privilege a bit as well,

cause you know it feels very middle class, going, Oh you know, “Should we or shouldn't we take our dog to New York with us to live?”

But at the same time, it’s kind of like that is contrasted with this very universal relationship that you have with your dog.

You know he’s great. we love him. he hangs out with us, and he’s a part of us.

And you know, I think that's the thing… I think I would probably do it again.

Because there were these moments, there were these moments that transcend all of the other stuff, right?

So like the dog playing in snow for the first time. Like snow’s falling, there’s a thick blanket of snow on the ground, and the dog’s never seen snow before,

And he's going out and jumping around in it and loving it.

And being the only people in Prospect Park as the sun’s coming up, and you know walking down by the lake.

And ah, yeah - So I’d definitely probably do it again.

But I might, you know, bolster the savings a bit before hand.

Where’s his happiest place?

Sitting on the couch between Katie and I.

Michelle

I think Joel’s dad called it: your dog is family, where you go - your dog goes.

Big thanks Joel, for telling me this story. And introducing me to Harri and the family, on a windy Saturday in September.

Thank you for listening and make sure you check out Joel’s incredible podcast it’s called “Sum of All Parts”

There’s a recent episode about the inventor of the Labradoodle, I think you’re going to love it.

Oh My Dog is written and produced by me Michelle Ransom-Hughes.

Seja Vogel is our sound designer, composer and mixer.

Rebecca Armstrong helped out with script-editing this episode.

Stick around to hear a brand new song Seja’s composed especially for George Harrison Ford

SONG: Harri (written and performed by Seja Vogel)