Listen to the chapter here!
[Nickisha]
I gotta go pick up another dog.
[Neil]
How many dogs you got?
[Nickisha]
Uh, five and I'm gonna pick up a sixth one.
[Neil]
So you're walking five dogs now. What's your max? How many dogs can you walk at once?
[Nickisha]
I've walked like eight.
[Neil]
Eight! Can I ask how much people pay per dog?
[Nickisha]
Um, so right now I charge twenty-two.
[Neil]
Twenty-two, what, per dog? Per what?
[Nickisha]
It's for an hour.
[Neil]
Oh, you walk them for an hour. That's actually a good deal.
[Nickisha]
By the time I pick up the dogs, it's about an hour.
[Neil]
And you have to drop, it might even be longer. You have to be very thoughtful about your route. I notice you dip and dive through all these different alleys.
[Nickisha]
Well, usually I only came this way because I'm walking with you, but I usually go that way.
[Neil]
Oh, okay, you like hanging out with me.
[Nickisha]
Well, no, that's not it. I'm having a conversation with you, so.
[Neil]
Okay, let's be one thing clear. You don't actually like me.
[Nickisha]
You're a lovely person.
[Neil]
Oh, thank you. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Nickisha, the dog walker.
And is it N-I-C-K-I-S-H-A?
[Nickisha]
N for November, yes.
[Neil]
Okay, and you prefer Nick or Nickisha?
[Nickisha]
Either or works.
[Neil]
Either or worse?
[Nickisha]
No, either or works.
[Neil]
Oh, okay, okay, okay.
[Nickisha]
Nick or Nickisha. I don't know, I just never really...
[Neil]
When you grew up, did people call you Nickisha or Nick? So, N-I-C-K-I-S-H-A. Yes.
And what's your... Do you go by any other names, or is that your full name? Whatever you want to share.
[Nickisha]
I have a last name, but Nickisha is my full first name.
[Neil]
Okay, so Nickisha the dog walker, we're okay with that?
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
And could you describe what you're wearing and how you look, however you would like to? You can use pronouns, you can use clothing, but just it's a podcast, so, you know, people can't see you.
[Nickisha]
I am wearing some bright blue leggings. Also a bright blue hoodie.
[Neil]
Yeah, I love the bright blue, bright blue double feature.
[Nickisha]
Light blue sneakers.
[Neil]
What kind? Dog walker?
[Nickisha]
These are Asics.
[Neil]
Okay, Asics dog walker approved. You probably walk more miles, more kilometers than anybody in the whole city.
[Nickisha]
I walk about 20 kilometers a day.
[Neil]
20K a day. Seven days a week?
[Nickisha]
Not seven days a week.
[Neil]
Five days a week?
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
So 100 kilometers a week you're walking?
Yes. Okay, so just to put that in perspective, Toronto to Montreal is, you know, what, 500 kilometers? So every month you're walking from Toronto to Montreal.
That's crazy.
[Nickisha]
Pretty much.
[Neil]
That's far.
That's like a one-hour flight. Yeah, you're like walking to New York City.
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
Yeah, that's crazy. That's far. And so you must also have to take care of your body, like your legs, you're stretching your calves.
[Nickisha]
I just started doing Pilates.
[Neil]
Pilates. Okay, okay, we're going to talk about Pilates later.
But now we haven't got to your outerwear, your leashes, your leash setup here, and your hair and your sunglasses. Because you got very interesting, cool hair.
[Nickisha]
Well, it's getting redyed tomorrow.
[Neil]
Okay, so it's blonde, would you say? Or green?
[Nickisha]
I'm a fake blonde.
[Neil]
Fake blonde?
[Nickisha]
You know what?
[Neil]
I love the blonde.
[Nickisha]
I do like the roots coming in, but I also like when I get a fresh color.
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Nickisha]
And I don't know.
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Nickisha]
I look different.
[Neil]
Right, right. Now, what I'm most curious about on your persona, although thanks for sharing about your thick shades, are those like Ray-Bans?
[Nickisha]
No, they're some $20 sunglasses I got off Amazon like two years ago.
[Neil]
Uh-huh. So when you're walking 100 kilometers a week, you got to take care of your eyes.
[Nickisha]
Yes, my eyes are super sensitive.
[Neil]
Yeah, of course. Everybody's are, but we just don't take care of them.
[Nickisha]
I wear contact lenses, and I mean, I'm usually wearing glasses.
[Neil]
Yeah, and they're big, chunky sunglasses. They're like three inches per lens across.
[Nickisha]
Have to cover my face and my eyes.
[Neil]
Uh-huh, uh-huh. But what I'm most curious about, like I was saying, is your rig. So basically, you've got like a fanny pack strapped sideways diagonal from your right shoulder, and you're holding it on your left hip.
It's got a whole complicated series of zippers. Inside the middle fat zipper, it's unopened. You've got a chain rig with like 20 different keys.
Like you're holding like, you know, the set of keys you'd see on like the superintendent of this Empire State Building.
[Nickisha]
Yes.
[Neil]
You know what I mean?
You are holding like, and they're all color-coded. You don't put people's addresses on them, though, that's good.
[Nickisha]
No, it's just a thing.
[Neil]
Because if you drop it, they would know what house to go to to steal stuff. Yeah, which way are you going? Oh, past this traffic?
[Nickisha]
I know, that's why I stopped here.
[Neil]
Okay, well, just tell us the name of the five dogs in the five breeds.
[Nickisha]
Okay, so there's Milo. He's a Labrador. And then there is Brooke, who's a Border Collie.
[Neil]
How should I say hi to these dogs? Like, what do they want? Do they want hand up, hand down, scratch their face? Nothing?
[Nickisha]
Some of them are sensitive, so.
[Neil]
Okay, so don't touch the dog.
[Nickisha]
There's Opie.
[Neil]
Border Collie.
[Nickisha]
A Portuguese Water Dog.
[Neil]
Okay, Portuguese Water Dog, that's like a big black dog. That's like a tall one.
[Nickisha]
Sylvester, he's a Havanese.
[Neil]
Sylvester's a Havanese.
[Nickisha]
And Whistler. Whistler is an Aussie Doodle.
[Neil]
Aussie Doodle.
[Nickisha]
So, Australian Shepherd and Poodle mix.
[Neil]
I'm surprised you only have a 20% doodle ratio here. When I walk around, it's like 75% doodles.
[Nickisha]
I do have days where I have a few doodles.
[Neil]
And you got four big dogs and one small dog.
[Nickisha]
I'm getting a second small dog.
[Neil]
Okay, great.
[Nickisha]
Great.
[Neil]
Well, you told me one book already. The Five People You Meet in Heaven.
[Nickisha]
The other one is, oh my gosh. Hayden Caulfield. Catcher in the Rye.
Catcher in the Rye.
[Neil]
J.D. Salinger.
[Nickisha]
Love Catcher in the Rye. I've read it like five, six times.
[Neil]
Can you come closer to the microphone?
[Nickisha]
Yes.
[Neil]
Oh my gosh, great nail polish, by the way. Epic.
[Nickisha]
Needs to be done. Getting done today.
[Neil]
Oh, you don't gotta change your look. You look great.
[Nickisha]
Yes, so Catcher in the Rye. And oh, I also love The Kite Runner.
[Neil]
Oh, Khaled Hosseini.
Oh, wow.
[Nickisha]
I love reading. Yeah.
But I haven't been able to read a book in a long time, just because I think I have attention issues.
[Neil]
Yeah, me too. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD.
[Nickisha]
But I used to read like three or four books.
[Neil]
Not diagnosed. I was recently, it was illuminated to me that I have it. Because my son has and I clearly have it when I read the books.
[Nickisha]
I used to read like three or four books a week. I was an avid, avid reader. Not in the clinic, but I love reading.
[Neil]
So when you grew up in Jamaica, which city?
[Nickisha]
Kingston.
[Neil]
Kingston, capital. What are we talking, 70s, 80s, 90s?
[Nickisha]
80s.
[Neil]
80s. So you grew up in the capital city, Kingston, Jamaica, in the 80s. And you grew up reading.
[Nickisha]
Pretty much.
[Neil]
Was the school system, sorry to ask, I feel like Jamaica is like an English colony, right?
[Nickisha]
It's on the British system, yeah.
[Neil]
Right, so you were doing like British school?
[Nickisha]
I guess so.
[Neil]
And so of those three books that you just mentioned, The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I think it's H-O-S-S-E-I-N-I or something. He's a doctor in like San Francisco, I think.
I think he's in Afghan diaspora, right? Because all his books take place in Afghanistan. I've read the other book as well.
So was J.D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye, was that the first one?
[Nickisha]
Yes. I read that book in high school, in Jamaica.
[Neil]
Why don't I pause it, we walk by the construction, then I'll catch you on the other side.
[Nickisha]
I met a dog just now.
[Neil]
We'll wait for you. Okay, I'll wait right here. No rush.
Okay, see you in a minute. I'm on like a side street in downtown Toronto. Toronto is one of these cities that's really unusual where there's a really vibrant, healthy downtown core that's busy morning, noon, night and overnight.
And it's not scary and it's totally safe. And there are throngs of people from tourists going to see Broadway, well, you know, Canadian Broadway shows, The Lion King or whatever, to couples who live in condos downtown that are like 80 stories tall, like going out on like a date night to like a Furkin for like beers and wings and maybe watching a Jays game or a Leafs game or a Raptors game or a Marlies game. Or an AFC Toronto game.
Shout out to the new Toronto girls soccer team coming in. And, you know, it's got an active, vibrant subway system and the streetcar system. And there's the CN towers there and the Skydome is there.
And, you know, Air Canada Center is there. Like that's where Taylor Swift played six nights in a row last year, right? Three nights, one week, three nights the other week.
The city was so grateful, gave her a key to the city. And, you know, she infused something like $300 million in the downtown core. So it's got this active, vibrant downtown core.
And it's surrounded by houses. Like that's what's unusual. So you can actually live in a house, a townhouse, a row house, you know, a mixed-use house, a three-unit house, a basement apartment of a house, an attic of a house with five guys from your frat at University of Toronto or like, you know, the love of your life after college or like, you know, your family with like a kid or like as an older couple, like, you know, downsizing.
Like every functional kind of family, yeah, you could live in a house here. And affordability has skyrocketed severely in the last 20 years. Toronto and Canada being like this big kind of, I think, a center point of global migration and especially climate migration, especially political stability migration.
There's tons of Americans who live on my streets. Like I have a friend that's from Seattle. My neighbors across the street are both biologists from the West Coast who came here to like work at the university and never left.
And so now their kids are Canadian. And, you know, we also have exodus from here. Like Jordan Peterson used to live around here.
And he just announced that he's moved to the U.S. So there certainly is travel both ways. But we got lots of people here. Like the guy that just fixed my kid's bike is from Cuba.
Nickisha, who we're talking to today, you know, she's from Jamaica. There's such a great mix everywhere. I just met this Russian guy.
I showed him Nick Sweetman's wall. I was like, what do you think of the wall? He's like, I prefer brutalist concrete.
So, you know, we got everybody here, you know, as you heard in our chapter with Lewis Mallard. And so it's kind of cool because you've got like the things that come with the neighborhood, right? Nickisha, you've got like dog walkers and paper boys and, you know, you've got like a little neighborhood ice rinks in the winter that everyone comes together and skates on and you've got like a corn roast and you've got like the, you know, the big barbecue and there's alley parties like in the alleys and there's graffiti going up everywhere and you've got this vibrancy.
And so to celebrate the vibrancy, I thought, hey, you and I talk a lot. How long have you been doing this?
[Nickisha]
Four years on my own.
[Neil]
Four years on your, oh, you broke away from the giant dog walking conglomerate.
[Nickisha]
I knew I wanted to branch out on my own. And, well, I was gifted eight dogs.
[Neil]
Gifted eight dogs?
[Nickisha]
Yeah, another dog walker decided she was going to do something else and gave me eight dogs.
[Neil]
Okay.
[Nickisha]
So that helped.
[Neil]
It's a pretty good book to start with.
[Nickisha]
Yeah, yeah.
[Neil]
You're not starting from scratch.
[Nickisha]
And I am quite visible as, you know, in the neighborhood, so people see me.
[Neil]
What do you mean quite visible? Are you talking about the blonde?
[Nickisha]
Oh, no, no, but people see me all the time. Like, I'm outside all the time.
[Neil]
Okay, okay. Everybody knows everybody if you're outside a lot, you know?
[Nickisha]
So, yeah, I like being outside. I hate it in the cold. But I like being outside, so.
[Neil]
Okay, we're walking through an alley right now. There's boarded up graffiti on one side. On the other side, there's a new condo going in.
This has happened a lot. So they tore down probably like a four-story condo and now they're building like an eight-story condo. So there's a lot of this kind of stuff, like increase the density, which is great.
And then in these laneways, you know, as you're seeing, Nickisha, there's a lot of laneway houses going in now. So they're taking these lanes and someone's taking an old garage that they've had for 100 years or 150 years. They're paying 300 grand or 500 grand or maybe 700 grand.
And then they have like something, you know, they have a laneway house that they can then rent for three grand a month or whatever, right? Am I right?
[Nickisha]
That is correct.
[Neil]
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's not affordable housing, which of course is what the city wants. I'm going to go whichever way you're going because we're having a conversation on three books right now!
How are you, brother? Good, you? Good, man.
Just walked by a construction guy, big orange vest, like yellow crisscross. He's got like orange shades on, a white hat, and he's building this condo here. Sometimes they build condos.
Sometimes they build like skyscrapers.
[Nickisha]
Yes.
[Neil]
You know, I think it's like condos, yeah, skyscrapers, no. Do you kind of, people don't like living under looming, ominous, dark towers from the, you know, from like, you know, Lord of the Rings. You know what I mean?
Like, it's like intimidating. You get tons of dead birds. You get dog shit fucking everywhere.
Do you pick up your dog poo? Not everyone does.
[Nickisha]
I do.
[Neil]
I mean, what would you do? What would you guys do? Your dog poos, you don't have a bag.
What's the game? Nikesha's game is going back afterwards, right? So, you're hitting the button here on the crosswalk.
We're on Lansdowne Avenue. We're, you know, kind of in a grittier part. Here comes a big bus here.
Careful. Like, the buses smoke you, you're gone. Like, that's what I always tell my kids.
Like, you don't cross the street until the bus stops. Because if the bus doesn't stop, you know, it could bonk you. So, if you're making $22 an hour per dog now, and you've just got a, you've just added what?
A seventh dog here? One, two, three, four, five, six. And is that your max today?
[Nickisha]
For this walk, yeah.
[Neil]
Because some people want two walks a week, and some people want three walks a week, and some people want two walks a day.
[Nickisha]
True, like Sylvester. He's a Havanese.
[Neil]
And how would you describe the personality or size or look of that dog?
[Nickisha]
He's sweet. He loves to eat. He's very, very food motivated.
He just turned 14, I believe. And he's a calm dog.
[Neil]
And he's like brown curls.
[Nickisha]
Right, he's a caramel wavy.
[Neil]
Wavy caramel. And what size would you say he is?
[Nickisha]
He's a small dog. He's a small dog. So, he's probably about 15 pounds.
[Neil]
15 pounds. So, you measure dogs in weight, right?
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
Like, a small, like a Chihuahua is probably like three pounds. You don't walk in a Chihuahua size.
[Nickisha]
I do not have any Chihuauas.
[Neil]
Any other species of dog that you walk that we haven't mentioned yet, so I can pass it on to our dog-loving listeners?
[Nickisha]
I walk a few doodles.
[Neil]
Doodle, yeah, like I said, the doodle percentage is high.
[Nickisha]
I walk, so this may be a rare breed. It's called a Norwegian Buhund.
[Neil]
How do you spell that?
[Nickisha]
B-U-H-U-N-D. Picture sort of a husky, but smaller. That's kind of, she looks actually kind of like a fox.
But she has fur, like a husky, and she loves being outside in the cold. What other breed? Australian Shepherds.
I take photos of the dogs, so I'll be doing that now.
[Neil]
Really?
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
You take photos for the owners?
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
What, they get a free picture every dog walk?
[Nickisha]
Some dogs, some owners don't really care whether they get a photo or not. It's called Dale's Tales.
[Neil]
It's called what?
[Nickisha]
Dale's Tales.
[Neil]
D-A-L-E-S-T-A-L-E-S?
[Nickisha]
That was an option.
[Neil]
T-A-I-L-S, of course that makes a lot more sense.
[Nickisha]
Both make sense, I think.
[Neil]
At Dale's Tails.
[Nickisha]
Oh, I only have 266 followers.
[Neil]
No, no, no, I would not say only.
[Nickisha]
I have 266 followers.
[Neil]
What I would have thought is if you have, you know, say 30 dogs on the week, you have 30 followers. I thought what you were telling me was you post them on Instagram for the people to see them. Instead of having to send 10 different texts every which way.
[Nickisha]
Oh, yeah, I do both.
[Neil]
A carousel.
[Nickisha]
Sometimes I forget to post on Instagram. I'm tired. So sometimes I'm just like.
[Neil]
266 followers is a lot. And by the way, my old boss, Dave Cheesewright, who was a guest on the show Chapter 96. Dave, the CEO.
And he's a three booker as well. Hi, Dave. He, he was the CEO of Walmart.
He's the CEO of Walmart, Nickisha. And you know how many followers he had on Instagram?
[Nickisha]
Two?
[Neil]
Like 12. And then his kids would make fun of him. They'd say, Dad, you only got four likes.
Or you only got eight likes. And you know what he'd say? I got 33 to 66% likes.
How many percentage did you get? And they'd say, oh, I got like 5%. He's like, yeah, you got a lot, a lot more friends.
But you know, it's the level of interaction.
[Nickisha]
I once had a video that had over 118,000 views. I'm still shocked as to why.
[Neil]
Did you pin? I hope you pinned it.
[Nickisha]
Oh, no.
[Neil]
You should pin that one at the top left. Some people go, they're like, oh, yeah. Go pin it now.
That one we send our listeners to at Dale's Tales.
[Nickisha]
It's like two years old. I've got to go through.
[Neil]
Well, just pin it. Pin it. So now what are you doing?
You're also simultaneously taking out like one, two, three, four, five, six dog treats. You use the treats to, uh.
[Nickisha]
To get them. Okay, so I can take one of them.
[Neil]
Oh, nice. You want me to help you? You want me to hold the leashes?
[Nickisha]
Here. Oh, no, it's okay.
[Neil]
I can hold them. I will say if a dog were to run away from me, I have no idea what to do.
[Nickisha]
Don't chase them.
[Neil]
Oh, really?
[Nickisha]
Don't chase them.
[Neil]
Oh, really?
[Nickisha]
When you start chasing them, they think it's a joke. So don't, um.
You just stay where you are.
[Neil]
Nickisha's now squatting here in this park. It's like wet, muddy ground. Snow.
There's still like little chiseled corners of snow here and there. But for the most part, it's like a lot of dead leaves. The trees are not blooming.
It looks like a maple tree at the corner here. It looks like it has its first day of like fresh buds. You can sort of see little white flowers with like wreaths of thick maroon little sprouts, which you know each of those sprouts is going to be a leaf, which is pretty cool.
So we had like one warm day and then a cold day. And spring's like that, right?
[Nickisha]
Spring's like that.
[Neil]
Up and down.
[Nickisha]
Which is, uh, not a fan of spring.
[Neil]
Well, you don't like winter.
[Nickisha]
I don't. The only season I like is summer.
[Neil]
But you're outside every day.
[Nickisha]
I know.
[Neil]
So how do you get over that mentally?
[Nickisha]
Oh, you know, I, um, I'm actually miserable most days.
[Neil]
No. It's true. Well, that's why we got to get you into the audiobooks.
Well, that's before I hit the recorder while we were talking about that.
[Nickisha]
What?
[Neil]
You know, downloading Libro FM, which is the app I use. And we talked about reading Born a Crime by Trevor Noah because you and I were both decrying some of the, you know, perceived racism that's happening right now with, you know, deporting Venezuelans and deporting Ukrainians and sort of causing this, like, tremendous emotional jilting for all of us. Like, we're all immigrants here.
You know, what if they... My mom had this happen. She was growing up in Nairobi, born in 1950.
And when she's 16, 17, 18 years old, Idi Amin, you know, in Uganda, says to all the Indian people, like, get out, get out of here. Like, you got to leave the country. So all the people that are Indian in, like, you know, Kenya and in, you know, Tanzania, they...
Which is how my mom says those words, by the way.
[Nickisha]
I always thought it was Tanzania.
[Neil]
Well, of course. That's how everyone says it. But just my mom says Kenya and Tanzania.
So I don't know. I kind of go with her pronunciation. Tomato, tomato.
[Nickisha]
Am I saying it wrong?
[Neil]
Tomato, tomato, tomato, tomato. Red Wing Blackbird calling there.
So, yeah. So, you know, we're already... Like, it kind of creates that stress and tension.
So then we got to talk about Trevor Noah's wonderful book, Born a Crime. And then we were talking about downloading the Libro FM app. And then we discovered that you were a big book lover.
And then I flicked it. I flicked on the mic just to see if you'd hang out. And you've been into this, which is fun.
[Nickisha]
Well, it's been an interesting Friday. This was not on my...
[Neil]
Bingo card? On your bingo card? Well, plus, you haven't even told me, you know, when you were in high school in Kingston, Jamaica, and you were assigned the book The Catcher in the Rye, you haven't told me about that experience yet.
[Nickisha]
Because I don't know if I remember the experience. I just remember thinking, this is a great book. And I read it there.
And I think I read it when... Because I finished high school here. And I think I read it again here in high school.
You got assigned twice. And I've read it just on my own because it's a great book.
[Neil]
It's a great book.
[Nickisha]
It really is.
[Neil]
Well, it's a great book.
The vivid writing of that book is, like, amazing. You know, I don't know if you know there's a store on Queen Street called 18 Waits. The number 18 and the word W-A-I-T-S.
It's a men's clothing store. And I buy, like, shirts there to, like, give speeches in and stuff. And he's amazing.
And the guy who runs it, his name is Dan Torchman. I call him Dan the Tailor. He's a sixth-generation tailor.
His dad's a hatter from Montreal. And he wears a big hat. He's got long hair.
And he's lost his voice from removing his larynx. So he speaks with his fingers on his throat. And he's like, time it like this.
And he's a wonderful guy. And I love him dearly. And we go see Flaming Lips concerts together.
One of his three most formative books, Akisha, was The Catcher in the Rye. Pretty sure. Yeah.
And he loved the book The Americans, too, that photo book of, like, that time of the U.S. Do you know that book?
[Nickisha]
No.
[Neil]
Oh, I should get it.
I would love to get you a copy of that. Yeah. And then what about when you read Five People You Meet in Heaven? How old were you then? Well, what did you read next?
Was it that one or was it the one before?
[Nickisha]
I think I read Five People You Meet. Wait, what was the one before? Well, you said— I've read a couple of his books.
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Nickisha]
But I also feel like I read— Tuesdays with Maury. Tuesdays with Maury. So I think I read Tuesdays with Maury first because I feel like I heard about him from Oprah.
[Neil]
Of course. Of course. Everybody—hey, Oprah makes or breaks it, you know?
[Nickisha]
Yeah. So I think—so I think I actually read Tuesdays with Maury first, which is also a great book.
[Neil]
Were you in Canada or Jamaica?
[Nickisha]
I'm pretty sure it was here.
[Neil]
Because that book was definitely worldwide.
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
That was like—what year was that? Like, how old? Like, I feel like I read that, like, 1990, maybe?
1995? Is that right? Or 2000?
I don't know. It's old anyway.
[Nickisha]
It would have been after 1996.
[Neil]
I studied it. I studied it in my fourth-year commerce class, 2002 Leadership. We had to read it.
So it was at least 2002.
[Nickisha]
I think it was in the 2000s for sure.
[Neil]
Yeah. So you were in your 20s?
[Nickisha]
Yes.
[Neil]
Right.
[Nickisha]
I was in my early 20s then.
[Neil]
What were you doing?
[Nickisha]
I worked for a travel company.
[Neil]
Oh, cool.
[Nickisha]
So I worked in travel until 2019.
[Neil]
Oh.
[Nickisha]
Mostly on, but I had, like, maybe two years off. So I was actually working at a travel company, Flight Center.
[Neil]
Like the ones in the mall?
[Nickisha]
There is one down at King's, but I don't know.
[Neil]
Yeah, people walk by. It says on, like, a little sidewalk sign, you know, Go to Punta Cana for $699 this weekend.
[Nickisha]
I don't think they had that sign there.
[Neil]
No.
[Nickisha]
Because they were more corporate traveler in the sense of they helped with corporate company bookings. But I worked there from 2019, and I quit in 2021, middle of the pandemic, to do this.
[Neil]
Oh, you became a dog walker in the pandemic.
[Nickisha]
Well, full time.
[Neil]
Well, everyone needed a dog walker.
[Nickisha]
It's true.
[Neil]
Because everybody had this crisis of life happening. Heading up and down. Yeah.
I think that's a girl learning how to drive. I can see her, like, dad, and the girl driving looks like she's, like, she looks like she's 14, so she's probably 16.
[Nickisha]
Yeah, yeah.
[Neil]
You know? It's shocking when you see someone really young driving a car sometimes. Even though everyone did it.
What's the driving age in Jamaica?
[Nickisha]
I don't know. Because I left before.
[Neil]
Oh, you left before 16?
[Nickisha]
Yeah, I left when I was 16.
[Neil]
What was the context of you leaving?
[Nickisha]
My mom was here.
[Neil]
So when you grew up, you grew up with your dad?
[Nickisha]
No. I know. No.
I grew up with my mom until she moved here. And so we were separated for about six years.
[Neil]
And then you lived with your dad?
[Nickisha]
No.
[Neil]
Oh. Who'd you live with? Oh, so when you were 10, you started living alone.
[Nickisha]
I know. I've been self-sufficient since I was 10, no.
[Neil]
You've been self-sufficient?
[Nickisha]
No, no. No.
[Neil]
I didn't mean living on the streets. I didn't mean living alone. I meant you have been independent of mother or father figures from age 10 to age 16.
[Nickisha]
Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I do. There were.
[Neil]
Older aunts or uncles or cousins or, yeah. Would you live in a house with like 20 people or something?
[Nickisha]
No. That's kind of crazy.
[Neil]
Nickisha is bending over and picking up the dog poo.
[Nickisha]
See, I'm doing it.
[Neil]
Yeah, of course. You're a dog walker. Word would get around pretty fast.
If you're like, you know who's leaving all the dog turds around? The lady with seven dogs. We'll get her.
That truck was freaking wailing down the road. So I'm driving my bike the wrong way on a road. But it's a tiny residential road.
You know, there's like houses on the side. Some of the houses are like, you can see six doorbells on the outside. So like six apartments are inside.
Some of them you see three mailboxes. There's little street signs here saying, I support my neighbors in tents. There's little street signs here saying, stop the 413.
Less highways, more green space. There's little signs here saying Pro Safe Supply Movement, which of course we are too. Chapter 49 of this podcast, we talked to Dr. Andrea Serrata, who's a leader of the Pro Safe Supply Movement. And when I met her at the Top 40 Under 40 in Canada, that's where I met her. She said, what do you do? I said, I'm a writer.
I said, what do you do? She said, I give drugs to drugs users.
[Nickisha]
She said that?
[Neil]
Yeah, she said that. And she laughed. And she has dark tattoos and dark glasses.
She looked at me like, is this guy going to get that? And I was like, what? And then we had a podcast at the Sherbrooke Health Clinic, and I really support her work.
Basically, if you read the book Chasing the Screen by Johan Hari, who we also had on the show, basically the thesis is just so freaking clear, the research is so freaking clear, that the way to get someone off heroin, as I understand it, is to give them methadone, and then to continue to monitor the quality of the supply, and then change the dosage down.
[Nickisha]
That's why they have those clinics.
[Neil]
That's why they have those clinics, because they actually legitimately help people and work. The thing that kills is actually the tainted nature of the street stuff. So if you give people clean needles and a clean place, then they won't die, and you'll help them live a better life.
It costs a bit more money. You actually got to pay people to work there and stuff, but everyone likes it. And I'll tell you straight up, Nikesha, this is maybe going to get edited later.
I'll have to ask Leslie if she's okay with it. She went to drop one of her kids at school. He's like three years old, my kid.
So she's driving a three-year-old down an alley to park at this little school. He goes to this little tiny Montessori school, and my older three kids all go to public school. So we are supporters of the public school system, but below age three, there's no public school available.
Kindergarten doesn't start yet. So anyway, and we love the Montessori system, so that's great. So she goes down the alley, and guess what she sees?
A woman, legit, right makes eye contact with Leslie, eye contact, right as she's shooting up, her eyes go back into her head, and she falls down backwards, and Leslie's like driving past her, dropping my kid off to school, like at like, you know, eight in the morning, on like a Tuesday. So that's what you get when you close the needle places. You know what I mean?
So I love these signs that we're seeing on people's houses.
[Nickisha]
It lacks compassion, you know, and it's sad.
[Neil]
And it also lacks following like the science, like when you rip out bike lanes, you say, oh, well, we need that space for the cars. No, you get more cars. Like all the people on bikes are not driving.
So it's like helping take way more cars off the road, and it helps the environment, and it helps traffic, and it helps the air quality, and it helps the congestion. And when you go to Amsterdam or wherever these other countries are, hey, we were just in Mexico City, and you know what? There's bike lanes on every street there.
Every street has bike lanes, separated bike lanes on almost all of them, not always separated, but often there's like a metal pole.
[Nickisha]
Right. So I've been to Amsterdam, and it's incredible. And it was in Munich that I saw like the separation of the bike lanes from the actual street. And I'm like, Toronto should do this.
[Neil]
Well, we're starting to do elevated ones in some places. Like on College Street, they got these new, like the bike lane's like six inches higher than the road. So if you were to hit it, it's like you're hitting a curb, like you're tire punching a curb.
So you can still run up on the bike lane if you have to deliver a package, which is unfortunate because Amazon delivery guys, if you're listening to this, stop doing that, please. But, you know, it's at least better than just like, you know, a tiny painted line of like, you know, 18 inches wide or something, right?
[Nickisha]
Yeah. I mean, I just don't see why we can't coexist. And the, I think also one of the issues is with the new, like they're going to tear up the bike lanes, is them putting a clause in that if somebody dies, they can't be sued.
So they are very well aware.
[Neil]
Yeah. This is the Doug Ford government. That's the provincial government.
Ontario has put a clause in the contract saying when we take the bike lanes out, if someone like dies, they can't sue us. They know right away how much unsafer it is, but they put that clause in the contract.
[Nickisha]
They did. And says a lot about them.
[Neil]
What does it say about them, Nickisha?
[Nickisha]
You know, they're intolerant. They don't want anything good for the climate. So I'm not a fan.
I am not a fan.
[Neil]
See, this guy did it right. He slowed down. He sees me coming.
I go on the sidewalk. Then I wave him down. He nods at me.
He waves at me. That's community.
[Nickisha]
You should have seen what happened to me a few weeks ago when we had all that snow.
[Neil]
What happened?
[Nickisha]
This guy almost ran me over. I was walking in the middle of the street because there's so much snow. It's difficult to walk.
[Neil]
The sidewalks are interversible. And you're walking 100 km a week.
[Nickisha]
It's difficult to walk the dog. So it was at night. It was around 7.
It wasn't daylight saving yet. And I had a dog who stopped to poop right in the middle of the street. So I stopped to pick up the poop.
And I can see him coming.
[Neil]
Who's him? What's the car?
[Nickisha]
It was like a Toyota.
[Neil]
How far away is he from you?
[Nickisha]
He wasn't far.
[Neil]
Like 30 feet, 40 feet, 100 feet? As far as that construction guy is?
[Nickisha]
No, he was closer.
[Neil]
That construction guy is like 400 feet away.
[Nickisha]
So he was probably 100 feet away from me. And I'm picking up the poop. And he sped up.
[Neil]
No.
[Nickisha]
He did. Are you kidding me? And then he stopped the brake just as to where I was.
He wasn't far at all. How far was he from you? He was probably 100 feet away.
[Neil]
No, but when he hit the stop...
[Nickisha]
Then he was right. We were face to face.
[Neil]
I'm standing at probably what? Like two feet from you? One foot from you?
And there's a yellow lab in between us?
[Nickisha]
We were pretty much that close. He went down the window. And he went like this with his hand.
[Neil]
What? He just did like this. What is this hand?
What are you doing? You're putting your palm up. You're doing it in front of you.
You got your head backwards. And you're putting your palm sideways.
[Nickisha]
So he did like this.
[Neil]
Like you can walk? Like you can go?
[Nickisha]
No.
[Neil]
What does that mean?
[Nickisha]
It's more like, what are you doing? Like, why are you in the middle of the road? And I'm like, well, I'm just picking up the...
[Neil]
Dog poop?
[Nickisha]
The dog poop. And I'm like, what are you doing?
And then I started getting angry because I'm like, he sped up. And he's like, no, I didn't. I'm like, yes, you did.
And I took a photo of him. And once I took the photo, he started apologizing.
[Neil]
What did he say after you took the photo?
[Nickisha]
He was like, no, that's not what I was doing. That's not what I was doing. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I'm like, that's what you did.
[Neil]
So what did you do with the photo?
[Nickisha]
I didn't do anything with it.
[Neil]
Did you want to do anything with it? Did you want to post it on Dale's Tales?
[Nickisha]
No, I'm not going to do that.
[Neil]
You know what you should do? You post it. You blur the license plate because you're a nice person.
[Nickisha]
I didn't have the license plate. I just have his face.
[Neil]
Oh, well, yeah, you don't want to post that.
[Nickisha]
Yeah, I just have his face.
[Neil]
You don't want to get into like vigilante. It's hard to get into like vigilante territory.
[Nickisha]
It's a tough line, you know? I had to think about it because I was going to post about it on my Facebook page. But I didn't.
I was just like, you know what? It is what it is. Perhaps.
[Neil]
So you posted on the Facebook page, the neighborhood Facebook page, the community Facebook page. Then what? You know, like the local 500 people, they see that guy, then they could.
Yeah, that's an interesting idea because you know what? There was an Amazon delivery truck that was wailing down the street last year right in front of my house. And guess what?
Me, another guy and another guy saw him. He comes up on the curb. OK, like six houses south south of me.
And he completely smashes into a 50 year old cherry tree that comes up six feet and splinters into three branches. And he completely knocks off one branch. I see the guy.
I start running there. Somebody else sees him. There's another dog walker.
There's a lady that lives in the house. She's also from Jamaica, by the way. But wait, guess what he does?
He grabs the branch of the tree, puts it. Yeah, there's another car. Look at this truck.
He's like coming down, contracting ink. Dude, just give me a minute here. I'm walking off the road here.
Thank you. Yeah, the problem with living downtown is you could get run over anytime. No, but wait, but wait.
He grabs the branch. It's still hanging off. It's still hanging off.
So he runs out to check out what's happening. The branch is still on the roof of his truck. He just drives off.
We see him go. There's like a little park at like another couple hundred feet away. So he goes there.
He stops the car. He guns around the side. He grabs a branch.
He throws in the park and he takes off. He does not deliver the package. But she said it's an app.
I know it's I'm getting like an Amazon delivery. But there's no way to track the guy because Amazon, you know, they have all freelancers. They don't they don't know.
It's not like a UPS truck where it's like driver number 2786. It's not like that with Amazon. So as a result, the lady gets the city to come because it's a city tree.
Trees planted within the first 10 feet of your property in the city of Toronto are owned by the city, planted by the city and changed by the city because they are managing the ecology, you know. And so, you know, a whole street of Norway maples, if they all die out or have a virus, they might change it to birch trees like they do that stuff. So they come and check it out.
They send an arborist from the city to check out the cherry tree. You know what they say? It's dead.
He killed the tree.
[Nickisha]
He killed the tree.
[Neil]
Well, he killed it. And then this year, I'll tell you what happened because it was a year ago. That tree ain't dead yet, baby.
There's stuff coming out of there.
[Nickisha]
I need to know what number.
[Neil]
I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you. Are you getting another dog here?
[Nickisha]
No, I'm dropping off.
[Neil]
OK, go ahead. OK, go ahead. Drop off.
How do you drop off a dog? What are the steps of that? Three steps.
OK, well, I'm going to articulate your steps so I can learn. $22 an hour per dog. Eight dogs today.
That's great. And then you have to do an afternoon walk, too. It's still hard to get by on that, though.
Like when you were working for the company, what cut do they take?
[Nickisha]
Like probably 50%.
[Neil]
50%, right. And then minimum wage right now in Canada, or at least in Ontario or in Toronto, minimum wage, I think it's a provincial thing, is $17. $17.25 or something. $17.25. It's gone up a lot. When I had my Quiznos restaurant in 2003.
[Nickisha]
You had a Quiznos?
[Neil]
In 2003.
[Nickisha]
Where was it?
[Neil]
Whitby, Ontario.
[Nickisha]
Oh, OK.
[Neil]
First one in town.
[Nickisha]
Was it?
[Neil]
It wasn't so hot when there was five in town the next year.
[Nickisha]
I enjoyed Quiznos. There used to be a Quiznos on Eglinton.
[Neil]
No way. Yeah, in Mount Pleasant. Five dogs are latched up at that porch.
One dog's getting brought into this porch. No treat for the drop off?
[Nickisha]
Yeah, I tossed it to them.
[Neil]
Pardon?
[Nickisha]
I tossed it to him.
[Neil]
Oh, so you do a treat for a photo and a treat for a drop off. Are those the only treat times you use, or do you do a treat for a hello?
[Nickisha]
Sometimes I get a treat for a hello, but not most of the time.
[Neil]
What do you use for your treats?
[Nickisha]
A bunch of different stuff.
[Neil]
Uh-huh.
[Nickisha]
Is that your papa?
[Neil]
Opening the door to a nice house. Kind of like hardwood floor. See lots of plants.
White carpet on the staircase. So this is part of where the kind of conversation about density comes from. Is this a great use of space?
Well, I mean, obviously you could chop this down and build a condo. But it's right in the middle of like four other houses. Like they're all attached.
It's like one brick house. They're all like two stories high with a third story window. So it's decently high.
I can see basement apartments. So they're like, you know, there's basement apartments. Maybe someone rents it out.
And then, you know, you also get a neighborhood. You get the benefits of a neighborhood. You get people tending to their gardens.
And you get, you know, signs in the windows. And you get people walking to work. And, you know, it's kind of like a Catch-22.
We're a very expensive city. But what Torontonians may not always realize is we're very affordable on the global scale. Like Toronto is still cheaper than Sydney, Vancouver, England, New York.
Like, you know, you go to most big western cities, it's more expensive. Nickisha is getting on her knees. Squatting.
Getting some squats in. Taking pictures of all the dogs. That's a lot of work texting all those later.
Texting everyone. Half your job is texting photos. That's probably true.
That is probably true. So if you walk in 20K, no, 20K a day, that's 10K in the morning, 10K in the afternoon? Or do you do an evening walk, too?
[Nickisha]
No.
[Neil]
So you do a morning walk and an afternoon walk?
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
So you're out of the house from when to when?
[Nickisha]
I'm out of the house from like 8.45 until... I sometimes get a break in between, but from around 8.45 until around 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
[Neil]
Okay, that's a great schedule.
[Nickisha]
And then I do another walk around 3.34.
[Neil]
Til what time?
[Nickisha]
Until around 4.15, 4.30.
[Neil]
How come the first walk is so long and the second walk is so short?
[Nickisha]
Because the second walk is just usually with this guy.
[Neil]
Oh, yeah. Oh, because only one dog needs two walks a day.
[Nickisha]
Right.
[Neil]
Every other dog is one walk a day. So the two walk a day, those people are paying $44 a day to walk their dog.
[Nickisha]
She gets a bit of a discount, but...
[Neil]
Bulk discount buy two walks.
[Nickisha]
Someone else used to walk.
[Neil]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Nickisha]
So I just sort of continued with it.
[Neil]
That's nice. That's nice. What's the dog walking price range in Toronto?
So, like, if Leslie and I and the kids get, like, a golden retriever or something, now no one's home during the day, so let's just say, you know, someone's got to walk it. What's the cheapest I can pay and what's the most expensive I can pay? Your pricing is premium, though.
It includes photos.
[Nickisha]
Oh, true.
[Neil]
And three treats that they're not paying for. You have to pay for all the treats. And what kind of treat do you use, by the way?
[Nickisha]
There's different types of treats I have. Sometimes I have cod, salmon. I used to have beef liver a lot because dogs love that, but not so much anymore because some dogs are...
It's a bit rich and some dogs...
[Neil]
Cod and salmon, you sound like a falconer, you know? Birders often use very, very small pieces of, like, dried fish for, like, owls and falcons, you know? You might get an owl come swoop down from a tree and grab it.
[Nickisha]
I know, I know. And they'll have a full meal.
[Neil]
Really?
[Nickisha]
Come on.
[Neil]
Okay, she's down to four dogs now. We got two dropped off. Hey, luckily I'm heading the same direction.
So weird. So what's the price range on dog walkers in Toronto?
[Nickisha]
It's... You know what? Some people start at $25.
Some people charge by the minute.
[Neil]
No way.
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
By the minute?
What do they charge per minute? It's like a massage.
[Nickisha]
30 minutes, it's going to be $30.
[Neil]
Wow, yeah. Like a massage is like, whatever, $60 for 60 minutes. So, you know, you're like, if they're a minute late, you're like, come on, this is costing me a buck or two.
[Nickisha]
The pricing varies.
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Nickisha]
Because some people do private walks, which is just kind of one-on-one.
[Neil]
Okay. Oh, private walks. Wow.
It's like therapy.
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
Group therapy or one-on-one.
[Nickisha]
Right. Some may do...
[Neil]
Do some offer, like, dog back massages and short stories to the dogs?
[Nickisha]
I don't know. Maybe.
[Neil]
There's a $50 price range we should talk to you about, Nickisha, where you give each dog, like, you know, a special back rub or something.
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
And you have to take a photo of it.
[Nickisha]
Yeah, I may not offer that.
[Neil]
Just joking around.
[Nickisha]
Oh.
[Neil]
Well, hey, listen, two dog treats and a photo, that's expensive. I think you're actually... I think you're underpriced.
If people are starting at $25 for a walk and you walk them for a full hour and you give them two treats and you take a photo and you're good and you move, you're not a slow dog walker. You're like... Yeah, oftentimes you're dropping and picking up, so it might be like, hey, you got an hour and a half.
[Nickisha]
I'm walking slow because you're here.
[Neil]
Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry, dog owners ripping you off today.
Okay. Would you recommend the dog walking business and the dog walking lifestyle?
[Nickisha]
Yes. I mean, I love it. You know, it gets me out.
Gets me...
[Neil]
You know everybody.
[Nickisha]
I know a lot of people.
[Neil]
Because everybody knows you. Because everybody sees you every day.
[Nickisha]
I know a lot of people.
[Neil]
You got a lot of Neils in your life. I'm not the only person that says hi and talks to you. Like, you got, like, lots of me and you got...
Our guest in Chapter 42 and 43 was Pete Holmes. It might be 44, actually. I think it was.
Pete Holmes, he's a comedian. He lives in L.A. And, you know, one thing I've often wrestled with is in 2010, I got too popular. I got too famous.
Like, I got publicly noticeable. I got, like, people buying me meals at restaurants and I never saw who they were. People stopping on the street when I was in...
[Nickisha]
You're a famous writer?
[Neil]
No. No, I was 15 years ago. You know, I didn't like that.
And it was unnerving for me. And, of course, I've tried to lead, you know, a more private and anonymous type of life. Because it's important to me that, like, I don't put my pictures of my wife and my kids on Instagram.
You know, I don't say my kids' names publicly. Like, I don't... You know, I'm not...
I'm not... I don't want to, like, pimp out my kids. You know what I'm saying?
I don't want my life to be about getting likes. So, five people who love you worth a lot more than five people who like you. Okay.
And then I want to ask you more about why you recommend the Dog Walker Life, who it's good for, and how someone should start their business. Oh, I don't know.
[Nickisha]
I just kind of do it.
[Neil]
Get someone to give you eight dogs to start with.
[Nickisha]
Well, I mean, I fell into it in 2014.
[Neil]
Yeah. You fell into it in 2014. Early.
But you get also really good at it. You get known in the neighborhood. You don't get advertised.
Like, everybody knows you.
[Nickisha]
Yeah, I never...
[Neil]
Hi, I'm friends with Nickisha. Hi.
[Nickisha]
Oh. I'm being interviewed. Because I'm now famous.
[Dog Owner]
You are. You're fancy.
[Nickisha]
See you.
[Neil]
Bye. Thanks for letting us... Thanks for letting us walk your beautiful dog.
There's a few house sparrows chirping in the dead bush out here. Nickisha's seemingly brought some medicine for the dog from the pharmacy. Just so nice of her.
Some European starlings above us, kind of squeaking. A few grackles just flew by. American robins are everywhere.
I saw my first mockingbird yesterday of the year. So yeah, birds are coming back. Cardinals, of course.
Any other birds you've seen today?
[Nickisha]
I don't think I've seen any birds.
[Neil]
Okay. Well, we just walked by a whole bush full of house sparrows. And there's some starlings on the wire.
But yeah. It's not birdie. It's not full birdie season yet.
[Nickisha]
It's happening, though.
[Neil]
It's happening. It's happening. I saw my first mockingbird.
[Nickisha]
You did?
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Nickisha]
Where?
[Neil]
You know up on like... Kind of like Lansdowne-DuPont area? They're often on like the big hydro poles.
Like by the train tracks. Yeah, mockingbirds are interesting because they come up really well in the Merlin Sound ID app. So I usually hear them on my app.
And then I say, Oh my gosh, there's one around here. And then I start looking for it. And then I find it.
So I'm kind of cheating a little bit. Because they mimic over 200 other birds' calls. So there might be a mockingbird, but it sounds like a robin.
So you think it's a robin, but you know. Or it's like, it's doing a cardinal call. It's going like this.
So you think it's a cardinal. But then, you know, then it changes. And then it changes.
And so the app knows that's a mockingbird.
[Nickisha]
Is that why they're called mockingbirds?
[Neil]
That's why they're called mockingbirds. We were talking, of course, about the northern mockingbird. There are also, I think, tropical mockingbirds.
They have like a bit of a more of like a white stripe on their wing. Grade 10. Kingston, Jamaica.
Nickisha Reads. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Prompted something.
Opened something. Remembered something. She comes to Toronto.
She was living away from her mom from age 10. But her mom, until age 10, she comes back and reunites with her mom. Lives up near Eglinton in Toronto in the 90s.
[Nickisha]
Did you?
[Neil]
No, you did tell me that today.
[Nickisha]
Eglinton?
[Neil]
Well, you said Eglinton.
[Nickisha]
I did?
[Neil]
Yeah.
You said somewhere near Eglinton, I think.
[Nickisha]
I did.
[Neil]
Okay.
[Nickisha]
I grew up in Eglinton.
[Neil]
Yeah, yeah, you grew up in Eglinton. And you went to whatever high school up there.
[Nickisha]
No. So I lived at Jane and Finch.
[Neil]
You lived at Jane and Finch. A notoriously rough neighborhood, I would say.
[Nickisha]
And I went to C.W. Jeffries.
[Neil]
C.W. Jeffries. Where that kid got murdered.
[Nickisha]
Yes.
[Neil]
Were you there when there was that murder?
[Nickisha]
No.
[Neil]
Oh man, that was the worst.
That was like... I think a kid gets murdered in a high school in Toronto like once every like decade or two. Like that's very rare up here.
[Nickisha]
Yeah, it was a while ago.
[Neil]
Uh-huh.
[Nickisha]
And I was probably too young to go to high school by then.
[Neil]
Yeah, that's scary though.
[Nickisha]
Yeah, no, it is scary.
[Neil]
I went and spoke up there after that happened. I went there. I gave everyone a free book.
I went to the gym. I did this whole listening session with the whole school. Or all the grades 7s and 8s, I think.
No, not grades 7s and 8s. 11s and 12s. I don't know, something like that.
Yeah. So it was like this cool JV. Like it was like, you know, I get to go around to a whole bunch of high schools.
I went to tons of them. And it also helps get the books out there. And people get it.
But the kids are getting the books for free. In fact, that's the name of the charity, First Book. It's often giving kids their first book, which is sad to say.
So I think we gave Book of Awesome or something.
[Nickisha]
I loved reading.
[Neil]
Yeah. That's in my book, by the way. I got to sign you a copy now.
The Book of Awesome. Oh, I love reading. Keep going.
[Nickisha]
No, yeah, no, I, well, loved reading. No, I just love listening to a book.
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Nickisha]
But I've been reading since I could read, which was at a very young age, probably like three or four. And I would just read and read and read.
[Neil]
These days, kids here learn at like five, six, seven to read. It's that. So you were really reading very young.
[Nickisha]
Well, I don't remember when I learned to read.
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Nickisha]
But I know because in Jamaica, we start school at a very young age.
[Neil]
Oh, really?
[Nickisha]
So we probably start school like maybe around two, three.
[Neil]
No way, like kindergarten?
[Nickisha]
Yeah.
[Neil]
It's called kindergarten?
[Nickisha]
I don't know what it's called.
[Neil]
That's the German name, so probably not.
[Nickisha]
But, yeah, I mean, it helped me sort of navigate through childhood.
[Neil]
How so?
[Nickisha]
Well, it was kind of my escape, you know, like to read.
[Neil]
Do you remember any of the books you read when you were a kid, like a little kid?
[Nickisha]
I remember at a young age, at like 10, 9, 10, I was reading Daniel Steele books.
[Neil]
Whoa.
[Nickisha]
That was way above what I should be reading.
[Neil]
Wow. Yeah, my mom used to read those on the beach. Is there like sex in those or like softcore sex?
[Nickisha]
I don't know. I wouldn't say soft porn at all.
[Neil]
No, not porn. I'm not judging, certainly. I'm just like how far, how racy is it get?
It's not Sydney Sheldon. It's not like.
[Nickisha]
I used to love Sydney Sheldon.
[Neil]
Okay, but it's not Fifty Shades of Grey. It's not like sex scenes, is it?
[Nickisha]
No, it's not.
[Neil]
It's like just before the sex scene. It's like the softcore movie where they like, just when the characters get in bed and you see their like feet or their butt or like the, and then it cuts to the next morning breakfast.
[Nickisha]
It's just, it's, for me, it was, it's like reading that book and kind of wanting like a lifestyle kind of thing.
[Neil]
Whoa. What was the lifestyle advertised in the Daniel Steele and Sydney Sheldon books?
[Nickisha]
People having a comfortable life.
[Neil]
People are rich.
[Nickisha]
Yes.
[Neil]
Oh, it's about rich people.
[Nickisha]
Well, they were poor and poor.
[Neil]
Yeah, but it was relatively rich for you. But no, but you were saying relative to your upbringing, as I was describing my mom's family. By the way, my mom's family lost everything in the India-Pakistan partition, became a poor family, which is why my parents met.
Because normally with the caste system and with arranged marriages, you would never marry like a rich and a poor. True. But my mom was newly poor.
You know the new rich? She was the new poor.
[Nickisha]
That sucks.
[Neil]
Yeah, well, that's why she's so educated though. She like knew eight languages. She went to Kenya High.
She got a scholarship, was the only one in her whole, she got like top mark in the country. Her roommate was Jomo Kenyatta's daughter, the founder, the first president ever of Kenya. The airport in Nairobi is called Jomo Kenyatta airport.
And everyone else was white. Everyone else was a colonialist and she didn't have to pay because she got a scholarship because she got a high mark. So she learned Latin and she learned German and she was reciting Shakespeare and she like did a boarding school university and she like got to become like the top FCCA, like accountant you could become.
She could like memorize numbers. She memorized all the license plates in town when she was a kid on her front porch. And she ended up with this villager from India whose only criteria to marry her, because you know, she's going to get a Canadian passport.
That's a big part of the deal here. But the only criteria was, does she eat a hamburger? Because he didn't want to marry a vegetarian.
Once she ate the hamburger, they got married the next week.
[Nickisha]
No cows?
[Neil]
They got married the next week.
Yeah, it was specifically beef. My dad's transgressive and sacrilegious too. Yeah.
He's a physicist. He wasn't that into the religious doctrine. My mom, they were both Hindu.
My mom was religious and is religious still.
[Nickisha]
Do you speak Hindi?
[Neil]
I wish.
Back then the thinking was talk English at home so your kids learn English. Now it's all like teach your kid Mandarin.
[Nickisha]
Assimilation?
[Neil]
Assimilation, assimilation.
[Nickisha]
It's kind of sad.
[Neil]
Very sad. In today's context, you realize how sad it is. When I was a kid, people would sometimes say, oh yeah, if I was at a party with all these Indian people, like in Brampton, like with my parents' friends or something, they'd be like, oh, you're whitewashed.
They'd say to me, you're whitewashed. You're like a coconut. My cousin once called me a coconut, my older cousin Vanita.
She was probably like 16 and I was like seven or something. And she was like, you're a coconut. I said, what's a coconut?
She said, you're brown on the outside, you're white on the inside.
[Nickisha]
Yeah, I don't like that.
[Neil]
That's mean, eh?
[Nickisha]
And people have said that to me too, just because I've kind of lost my Jamaican accent because I quote unquote assimilated. And I don't like it. I don't like when people say stuff like that.
[Neil]
They don't say coconut, though, for a black person. What do they say for...
[Nickisha]
They say oh you're so white.
[Neil]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just, I'm just... I know, I know, but it says road closed and they've got like, what is that?
Like a 40-foot crane? What are you guys doing? Oh, you're taking a tree out.
Wow. Wow. What a tree that is too.
Wow. Wow. You know what?
If you sliced that giant, huge log that you have there, which has got to be like three foot wide. What kind of tree is that?
[Tree Remover]
Norway maple.
[Neil]
And why are you taking that out?
[Tree Remover]
It was dead.
[Neil]
It was dead?
And then the owners called you and said, could you take that out?
[Tree Remover]
No, this is where we're contracting for the city.
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Tree Remover]
The city's coming.
[Neil]
And then on the thing it says, it's under contract to Toronto Parks, Forest and Recreation, Urban Forestry for more info call 301. But your truck actually says, Weller Tree Service from Georgina, Ontario.
Four generations of tree care, which is cool. My name is Neil Pasricha. I'm interviewing Nickisha the dog walker for a podcast called Three Books.
But I just was curious, like, okay, one day, five guys, how tall was this tree?
[Tree Remover]
I'd say about 60, 65 feet tall.
[Neil]
Wow.
And what do you cut up, the small branches first or the big branches first? I'm coming with you. Yeah.
So I can't believe you could do all that one day. Wow. Thanks, man.
Any advice on tree care you'd give us? What's the number? No.
What's the best advice to grow trees in the city?
[Tree Remover]
Lots of water.
[Neil]
Just lots of water.
And if there's not enough rain, you should water it.
[Tree Remover]
Yeah, for sure.
[Neil]
I do not water my tree ever.
[Tree Remover]
Yeah, lots of water.
[Neil]
Like how much?
[Tree Remover]
As much as you can, really.
[Neil]
There's no such thing as drowning a tree.
[Tree Remover]
You know, if it's really heavy rain, you're not going to water it.
[Neil]
See you guys. There's so much stuff you just can't learn on the internet. You know, like, that's kind of what I want this podcast to be about.
Like, would you know if a dog walking business is good for you? Yes. You like the outside.
You can handle walking 20 kilometers a day. Even in the middle of four feet of snow. You are good with pets.
You know how to take pictures of animals. You have good customer service. You have to walk into people's house and you have to like fit into their vibe, their culture.
There's like barefoot dudes with beards and t-shirts getting their dog. And then there's also like, you know.
[Nickisha]
You know, my social skills are pretty top notch.
[Neil]
I know. Because you just pulled off an hour and a half's podcast out of the back of your pants as if it was no big deal. What's that?
You're a great conversationalist. You know how to tell your story. You have passionate views.
[Nickisha]
Thank you.
[Neil]
Yeah. And now that you've enlightened us about how deporting, oh, there's another dog walker.
Dog walkers unite. Are dog walkers friendly with other dog walkers? It's not like a business where you're trying to compete.
[Nickisha]
Oh, I'm competing with him all the time.
[Neil]
Really?
[Nickisha]
I'm like, come to me. Don't go to him. Don't go to him.
No, I don't do that.
[Neil]
She's joking.
[Nickisha]
There's enough dogs for all of us.
[Dog Walker]
It's kind of a friendly competition.
[Neil]
Yeah. And I actually was thinking about getting a dog, Golden Retriever. We're thinking about it.
My wife's mom has one. How much do you charge per dog, per walk?
[Dog Walker]
$250 per walk.
[Neil]
That's the smart answer. That's the smart answer. What do you charge?
[Dog Walker]
No, no.
[Neil]
$25. Okay.
And it's an hour walk?
[Dog Walker]
Yeah.
[Neil]
That's great.
Okay. Thank you, sir. $250 was a good answer though.
Three construction guys walking towards us. And enlightening us about the safe supply movement and enlightening us about kind of the rights of pedestrian traffic in Toronto and like, you know, the passion we have for like urban walking and urban cycling. Is there any other issues that are happening in the world right now, Nickisha, that you feel comfortable telling us your view on?
Because there's a lot happening in the world right now.
[Nickisha]
There's so much. I mean, it's also sad deporting people back to a place that is filled with such violence. There's a war going on there now.
And it's cruel.
[Neil]
It's inhumane.
[Nickisha]
It's very inhumane.
[Neil]
It's anti-humanist, I think Kurt Vonnegut would say.
[Nickisha]
Very subhuman.
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Nickisha]
So it's sad. And it's especially sad to see people cheer this on. Because you know what?
Our lives can be in the complete reverse. And the things that we wish for people could also happen to us. So it's been a good time.
[Neil]
First they came for them, then they came for me.
[Nickisha]
Oh, and they will come for us.
[Neil]
And if I can just quickly recap, after moving to Toronto, growing up in Eglinton, you were assigned Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Sounder again in high school. Then in your 20s, you used the Five People You Meet in Heaven from Mitch's album, not for aspiration towards like a kind of better quality, more comfortable quality of living, but more for like, I feel like that's a more spiritual book.
[Nickisha]
Yeah. No, it is. It's a very spiritual book.
And it's also kind of grounding. I did enjoy, and I've read the Five People You Meet in Heaven, I think, a couple times, as well as probably the other one, Jesus is Mori, because I don't know. It's very kind of retrospective.
[Neil]
Well, you know, there's something Buddhist about dog walking. And I feel like Mitch's album embraces a lot of these tenets.
[Nickisha]
It's very calming.
[Neil]
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's spiritual. It's soul soothing.
[Nickisha]
Yes. I like it.
[Neil]
And then Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Were you in your 30s?
[Nickisha]
I was probably in my 20s when I wrote that.
[Neil]
Uh-huh. Yeah, because that book came out 20 years ago or whatever.
[Nickisha]
The other book. I can't remember the name of the other book.
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Nickisha]
I'm pretty sure I read two of his books. The Kite Runner.
[Neil]
Yeah.
[Nickisha]
Thousand. Splendid Suns.
[Neil]
Yeah. Well, you know, I found it very not depressing and not sad. I found it a beautiful sunny day walking around for like an hour with you.
And talking to you about your three months former book. I've known you for years and years and years. You started dog walking kind of full time 11 years ago.
And then you started again kind of full time in the pandemic. You are an amazing dog walker. But more importantly, you are an amazing person.
And I have known that.
[Nickisha]
Stop it.
[Neil]
Well, why do you think I have such a kinship connection with you for so long?
[Nickisha]
Thank you.
[Neil]
It was 11 years. I've been seeing you everywhere and talking to you.
[Nickisha]
No, I haven't been around you.
[Neil]
No, but in the pandemic. Yeah.
I was probably like taking my trash out every day trying to get not go crazy. Newly looking at birds.
[Nickisha]
And a baby.
[Neil]
Yeah. Always a baby around here. Do you have one final piece of wisdom or closing advice for everybody out there? You're going to be reaching people in every country with this.
[Nickisha]
Oh, gosh. The only thing that I can say is just be kind. In a world where there is so much hate and so much weird things going on.
Just be kind. You never know how someone will feel.
[Neil]
Pick up the dog poo in the middle of the street. And when you see someone stop 100 feet away, don't hit the gas. And wave at them to cross.
[Nickisha]
That and that too.
[Neil]
You are a beacon of kindness. You are. Your smile radiates not just the street, but the city.
You illuminate us all with your presence. The reader. The lover.
The dog walker. The Kingston, Jamaica born Toronto, Canadian living. Nikesha, the dog walker.
[Nickisha]
Tess me.
[Neil]
Let's do a hug. Oh, my gosh. That was so fun.
[Nickisha]
I will see you around. You'll probably see me again in a minute's time.
[Neil]
Hey, everybody. It's me again. Just Neil.
Just sitting in my basement. Literally sitting on the floor of my basement on the carpet. My kids are bonking around upstairs.
I'm trying to find a little bit of quiet to go back and listen to that. Fun recent conversation with Nickisha, the dog walker. So many quotes jumped out to me.
What jumped out to you? First of all, I didn't know you shouldn't chase a dog when it runs away. So don't chase them.
When you start chasing them, they think it's a joke. I feel like there's a metaphor in there. I felt sad when she said the only season I like is summer.
I'm actually miserable most days. She has been a ray of sunshine in my life, and I guess it's just a reminder for me and others that sometimes when somebody is filling you up with their smile and their waves, you don't know what's going on on the inside. So good to check in and give them your love if you have some to give, to spare.
And then she said, I'm sad by the world we're living in right now. I hate all the racist rhetorics. I hate the anti-immigrant talk.
It bothers me because I am an immigrant. So yes, I'm speaking about that personally. They may not be talking about me, but it's hurtful to me, which I thought was a powerful quote.
And then the last quote, I may as well just do her closing. We live in a world where there is so much hate and so many weird things going on. Just be kind.
You never know how someone will feel. Thank you so much to Nickisha, the dog walker, at Dales Tales. If you want to follow her at D-A-L-E-S-T-A-I-L-S for adding a few more books to add to our top 1,000.
Catch her on the ride, by the way, we're not going to add. We're going to put an asterisk on number 721, which was given to us by Dan the Tailor in chapter 94. We are going to add the five people you meet in heaven.
So that'll be number 571 on our list by Mitch Albom, who was our guest in chapter 15. We will also throw an asterisk besides Tuesdays with Maury, since we mentioned that and talked about it briefly. That was given to us by Adam Grant in chapter 72.
And then we will also add, I'm excited to add number 570. I'm excited to add all the books, but 570, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Thank you so much to Nickisha for commenting on three books.
Are you still here? Did you make it past the three second pause? If so, I want to welcome you back to the end of the podcast club.
Let's kick off the end of the podcast club like we always do by going to the phones.
[Scott]
Hey Neil, this is Scott Kirkwood in Washington, D.C. I just discovered your book club thanks to Austin Kleon, who mentioned it in his email. And I quickly found a lot of books that I'd already read. I love The Long Walk by Stephen King.
And I just, I love your taste. So I'm thinking there'd be more books for me. I was thinking about telling you, given your taste, that you might like the book Boom Town by New York Times writer Sam Anderson.
It's all about Oklahoma City, which seems random. But I saw it in a Denver bookstore with a recommendation. And I picked it up and it's amazing.
And I saw in some one of your other posts that you mentioned The Flaming Lips and being a huge fan. And they are a big part of the book. So I'm guessing maybe you've already read it.
If you haven't, you'll have to get it ASAP because I think you'll love it. Thanks for what you're doing. Appreciate it.
Bye.
[Neil]
Thank you so much, Scott, from Washington, D.C., for the shoutout, for the love. Hey, Boom Town by Sam Anderson, the big orange and blue cover. You know, I'm embarrassed to admit I have that book.
I have not cracked it open yet. You know what's funny? I think it was actually Austin Kleon that sent me off to that book, hilariously.
Austin being a bit of a connector for both of us here. I love The Flaming Lips. They are my favorite band.
I've seen them live six times, including last year with my son. And I dress up. I run to the front.
I'm jumping up and down. These are some of the funnest days of my life. So if there's a book that talks about The Flaming Lips, I need to read it.
Sam Anderson's Boom Town has been added to my list. By the way, I love the subtitle on it. The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, its chaotic founding, its apocalyptic weather, its purloined basketball team, and the dream of becoming a world-class metropolis.
That's a great, great, great long subtitle. Nothing like a good long subtitle, I think. Okay, now let's go to the letter of the chapter.
And we didn't do one at the beginning today because I kind of just jumped in with Nickisha. I wanted to give that vibe of what it felt like when I just kind of bumped into her. And I will, however, read a letter right now.
This letter comes from Connie. Subject is, I love your podcast, but, Hey Neil, I'm a big fan. I enjoy three books.
I constantly add new books to my want-to-read list as a result of listening, but I have one request. Can you do anything about the sound? It seems like one person, usually the guest, can be heard loud and clear, but I can barely hear you unless I turn up the volume to an uncomfortable level.
I can't imagine I'm the first person to mention this. Maybe it's just a matter of getting a new microphone, but the sound definitely needs to be balanced better so you and the guest can be heard equally. The discrepancy discourages me from listening.
Please see what you can do. Connie. Thank you, Connie.
I wrote back. I think it's time we merged the audio and abandoned the left ear, right ear thing. I've been working so hard on that for six years, but it seems no matter what, you know, even though we try leveling and stuff, you know, different people have different speakers, different people have different, you know, Bluetooth headphones, et cetera.
So it just doesn't work some of the time for some of the people. So I think we're going to go back to one-track stereo sound. This is kind of a funny one to say because I recorded this one on my iPhone because I just bumped into her.
But going forward, we've merged Angie Thomas, so we just re-released Chapter 26 with Angie Thomas, so that's come out. So that should sound not left ear, right ear. And then we're going to do that from now on.
So I hope that helps, Connie. And Scott, please drop me a line with your address so I can mail you a book to say thank you. And now we're going to do the word of the chapter.
Let's go back to Nickisha.
[Nickisha]
Quote, unquote, assimilated.
[Neil]
Yes, indeed, it is assimilation or assimilate. Assimilate. Assimilate is a verb that means to take into the mind and thoroughly understand or to take in and utilize as nourishment, like the body assimilates digested food.
But it also means to absorb into the cultural tradition of a population or group, to make similar. Hear that word, similar? That's the Latin root origin there, people.
It's ad, which means to, and similis, similis, which means like or similar. Assimilate means to make similar. I know it's right there in the word, as it so often is, hidden in plain sight.
Thank you so much, Nickisha. Thank you so much to all of you. We are going to be coming back to you hot and heavy pretty soon.
We're going to replay Mark Manson, and then we've got a really special one that Leslie and I did together on the streets of Toronto with Ginny Yurich from the Thousand Hours Outside Movement. Coming soon! We're going to have a fun spring together, everybody.
Thanks so much for being here. And remember, until next time, you are what you eat and you are what you read. Keep turning the page, everybody, and I'll talk to you soon.
Take care.