Furball Confidential

To a lot of people, Anna Maria Tremonti is known as a hardnose journalist unafraid to ask the tough questions. A former foreign correspondent for CBC News and longtime host of The Current on CBC Radio, Henry Kissinger famously once hung up on her because he didn’t like the question she asked. But to see another side of Anna Maria, look no further than “her puppy” Zuzu - her now 4-year-old golden retriever who happens to have Anna Maria wrapped around her little paw. “I have a whole little language for Zuzu,” Anna Maria says. “I say all sorts of crazy little things to her, which make no sense.” We get a beautiful window into Zuzu’s world with Anna Maria in this episode - broken rules, stolen items, manipulation, special little languages and all. Listen to the end to hear why this episode is a particularly fitting one to cap off Furball Confidential’s first season.

As a writer, how do you know when the work day is done? For Dean Koontz, it’s when a golden retriever throws your hand off the keyboard at exactly 5pm. A self-described “workaholic” who has written more than 100 books, Dean says adopting his first dog Trixie transformed his schedule and his life. Dean opens up about Trixie’s mystical side, what it’s like to care for a “perfect soul” and the jealous rage he felt when her debut book (co-written with Dean) outsold his own first novel. And he talks about coping with the immense grief of losing Trixie and how he and his wife Gerda knew they were ready to love another dog.

They’re belligerent. They talk back. They scheme. And if you’re a husky person like Jonathan Brinksman, that’s all part of the furry appeal. Jonathan grew up with two huskies, and is now proud husky dad and “crazy dog mom” to Archer and Leia, known to their millions of social media fans as Siberian Derpskies. In this super fun conversation, we get into the good, the bad and the hilarious when it comes to living with huskies, and why Jonathan is so drawn to  the breed when others might yell “run!”

Jonathan traces his own long history with pets, which started when he was a kid and his “animals were a safe space” from bullies. (“Don’t worry,” Jonathan says, “it all worked out”). His connection runs deep: “My animals have never been just animals to me. They are the part of me I wish it was all the time.” Plus, Jonathan weighs in on cloned dogs – and let the record show that we taped this episode way before Tom Brady went public with his own.

Haviah had her heart set on adopting the underdog. Or, undercat, as it were. Black cats are often overlooked in the rescue world and as a young Black woman growing up in Canada, the experience of being an underdog resonates deeply with Haviah. But in the end, after a long back and forth at her local rescue, the award-winning rapper realized that the cat who most needed saving was not black. It was Buster. Haviah tells the whole story, which is quite frankly one of the most remarkable pet origin stories we’ve ever heard. She explains how Buster became Thirteen - a number that shows up a lot in her work and life and has deeply poetic, meaningful origins. Haviah also talks about what it was like to adopt Thirteen, only to find that at first he didn’t want anything to do with her - and what she learned from that as a new pet parent. And she shares how Thirteen has taught her to slow down and “find a better baseline.”

Sit. Stay. Safely jump through a fake glass window with dozens of people watching you. Ok, maybe that last command is best reserved for the pros. And it doesn’t get more pro than Sherri Davis.

Sherri wears many hats but her main gig is Executive Producer and Lead Dog Trainer for Hudson & Rex, the police drama that stars a crime-solving German Shepherd named Rex. Rex was originally played by Sherri’s beloved dog Diesel, who was diagnosed with late-stage cancer and died while they were shooting season 7. Sherri reflects on what it was like to lose her colleague, friend and “son” all at once. And she shares, with immense pride, how she trained Dillon - Diesel’s nephew - to fill those massive pawprints and take over as Rex in Season 8. Sherri says she was “born with” an uncanny ability to communicate with animals and knew she always wanted to help them. She shares the crazy story of how she got into training animals for the screen - and just how many types of critters she has wrangled (a lot). And she takes us behind the scenes of Death Row Dogs, her effort to save pups others don’t think can be rehabilitated and saved.