Best Pet Ever: Writer/Producer Jessica Vitkus talks about Cookie and Coffee, her guinea pigs

How To Train Your Dog With Love And Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman, School For The Dogs

Introducing a new series: Best Pet Ever! Wherein Annie talks to interesting people about their interesting pets. Inspired by Betty White's 1970s show, The Pet Set, Annie interviews one of her closest friends, Jessica Vitkus. Jessica is an East-Village based writer and TV producer — she was Annie's boss ten years ago on the Animal Planet show, Too Cute: Puppies and Kittens. Jessica, her kids and her partner Stephen recently got a pair of Guinea Pigs. Jessica talks about the world of Guinea Pig rescue, Guinea Pig Pavlovian Conditioning, and about how rodents may be an underused tool in couples therapy. Like this podcast? You can support us by leaving a review on iTunes and/or shopping at StoreForTheDogs.com

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Partial Transcript:

Jessica Vitkus:

I didn't expect Guinea pigs to be so fun and funny and comical. They are ridiculous furry potatoes in appearance. But also their behavior. A Guinea pig learns that a knife on a cutting board means maybe there's food coming. So anytime we cut on the cutting board, we hear “week, week, week, week.” They make this sound, they call it weeking. And it's “week, week, week.”

Anytime plastic crackles, they think it's lettuce coming out of the fridge. So any crackling, if I am like taking batteries out of a deli bag and the bag crackles, they're like, “week, week, week.” They just, they know us. And now I think even the sound of the knife drawer opening, they get excited. “Week, week, week, week.” And also when they're happy, they cluck like chickens. It's hilarious.

[music]

Annie:

Last week saw the passing of 99 year old actress and noted animal lover and advocate Betty White. In one of the obituaries for her, I read that in the 1970s, she had something of a talk show called The Pet Set, where she basically interviewed her friends about their pets. And I thought, huh, that sounds like a fun thing to do. Her friends were 1970s celebrities. Mine are not 1970s celebrities, but they're celebrities in my life. And I will grab at any opportunity to talk to people about their dogs. It's what I love to do.

At first I thought maybe I could make it more focused and talk to people about their first dog or a dog that they've lost. But then I thought that would rule out me talking to so many of the dog owners who I've come to know at School For The Dogs who are our clients, both human and canine. So why limit things?And also, I thought why limit it just to dogs? In fact, the first person I realized I wanted to talk to for this series has a pet who is not a dog at all, but is a kind of animal I would really be curious to learn more about.

So for the very first entry into this series, which I am going to call “Best Pet Ever,” I am speaking to my good friend, Jessica Vitkus. Jessica is a writer and TV producer. We have been good friends for nearly 20 years. And about 10 years ago, I was lucky enough to be hired by Jessica when she was the executive producer for the show Too Cute: Puppies and Kittens, which aired on Animal Planet. She hired me as an associate producer/animal wrangler/dog nerd on site with facts and training recommendations.

Anyway, it was a fabulous job, really great experience for me. And during that time, I know that Jessica worked with lots of different kinds of animals, not just cats and dogs, and learned about all different kinds of animals, including pigs that people kept as pets, and hedgehogs.

Full Transcript at SchoolForTheDogs.com/Podcast