Patty Devery and Justin Cummins

00:00 First.

00:01 Awesome.

00:02 Okay. Hi, my name is Patty, and I'm 40 years old. I don't know if they're supposed to do the whole thing, but I'm here in Colonia, New Jersey, and I'm with Justin, who is my one small step conversation partner.

00:17 Hi, Patty, I'm Justin. I am 32 years old. I am in Atlanta, Georgia, and I'm here with my one small step partner, Patty.

00:28 Great. So, Justin, I guess I'll read your bio now. Hi. My name is Justin. I am 32 years old and a father of a 13 year old daughter. I recently got married and have a lovely family with two dogs and a foster dog. I'm a part of a lot of political discussions, but don't often contribute.

00:49 Awesome. And then this is Patty's bio. I am a 40 year old CIS woman who lives in New Jersey with my husband and corgi. I am the youngest of four sisters and was raised in the suburbs of Chicago in a Catholic house. I attend a Catholic school through my 8th grade. I am an atheist and no longer active in any church, though I still recognize some traditions secularly Christmas, feast days, et cetera. Attending a public high school allowed me to see beliefs beyond what I had been taught, and I have tried to keep that open minded ethos. Awesome. Corgi.

01:32 Yes, my corgi. And you have foster dogs as well?

01:35 I have two German shepherds who are my dogs, and then I have the one foster dog. He was astray and we found him in the woods and yeah, I just couldn't send him to the shelter. They're so overpacked right now. Yeah, so we're trying to find him a home now.

01:56 That's nice. Also, according to your bio, you recently got married. I also recently got married.

02:03 Really? When?

02:04 Yes, I got married in December.

02:06 Oh. Mine was in November.

02:07 There you go. So you have a whole month on me.

02:14 Yeah. That's awesome. Where'd you all get married at?

02:16 Well, we were supposed to do a courthouse wedding. I was going to say partner, but my husband and I have been together for ten years, and so we didn't necessarily need a big celebration, but we wanted to have a nice ceremony, and my parents were coming to visit, so we were going to do a courthouse wedding. And we surprised them like, guess what we're going to do on your trip. And then I got COVID. And then Chris also got COVID. But in that time, we had pivoted to doing an outdoor 30 deg December wedding so that we could still celebrate. We found an efficient online, and my parents, who had been staying with my sister in Brooklyn, made a trek an hour out to New Jersey to stand in the 30 degree weather for about 15 minutes to see us get married.

03:12 That's awesome. Yeah, I love that, the cold weather and all.

03:17 Yeah. And like I said in my bio, I'm from Chicago. Chris is from Wisconsin, so it's in our blood. We were absolutely fine in that 30 deg weather.

03:27 That's awesome. Chicago. My wife is from Chicago.

03:31 Oh, yeah.

03:32 She grew up in Gurney.

03:34 I know, Gurney. And that's where Great America is. I went there this summer.

03:39 Yeah, we'll be going up there for Thanksgiving.

03:43 Nice.

03:44 Yeah, we spend a lot of time up there. I love the city, though. It's so amazing.

03:49 Yeah, I like Chicago, too. I wish I had spent more time there because living in the suburbs, it was like, essentially you're a tourist, you'd go in for the shopping. Or like, I'd go in to see shows. And then when I talk to people after being an adult and they're like, oh, that must have been so cool to be so close to the city. And I was like, I never went. I don't know what it's like to live in Chicago, but I have friends who live in the city now, and one day I plan on having a sneaky trip to Chicago to visit my friends that live there and not tell my family because I can't not see my mom. She would be very upset if I stayed at Susan's house and didn't stay at home. But I also just want to visit my friends.

04:41 No. And I think that's completely okay. I'm from Nashville and my family lives 30 minutes outside of the city and I will plant like, I'll get a hotel, I'll do everything and I'll sneak up there and I won't say a word to my family because I got to do that's. What you want to do. You want to spend time with friends and stuff. And I think that's okay because all my friends are in Nashville, too, and it's know, one weekend's not going to hurt anybody. And I highly recommend it because those are some of the best weekends because there's no pressure. Yeah, you feel a little bit bad, but I mean, it is what it is.

05:18 Yeah.

05:19 You deserve that time and you should use it and you should take it.

05:24 All right. If my mom gets mad, I'm sending her to you.

05:28 Yeah.

05:28 She finds out about it.

05:30 Yeah. Just blame it on me. Just be like, yeah, one of my coworkers told me to do it. I'm never going to listen to anything he says again. Blame it on me.

05:39 So what was your wedding like?

05:43 So my wife kind of went overboard because of COVID We were together for, let's see, we're almost hitting our one year. So we're together for four years before we got married. And of course, at like the three year mark or two and a half year mark, I was going to propose. COVID pushed everything back and pushed it back. And then we finally got engaged and everything was pushed back from all the weddings that got right.

06:17 Yeah.

06:18 So we had like a year and a half to plan the wedding. And during that time, my wife was like, okay, like something small, and then it turned into something a little bit bigger and then buying more and more and then doing this and this. So we ended up having a I think it was like around like 130 people in Savannah, Georgia.

06:40 Savannah.

06:41 And we booked out we did it at Forsyth Park in front of the big fountain and stuff. So we did that, and then we had booked the actual venue at a music venue and stuff. And yeah, it was amazing. It was crazy. I flew in one of the bands from Nashville that I'm really good friends with, so it was like being in Nashville, and it was great, but we spent way too much money, and I feel like we're going to be paying that off forever.

07:21 But it was worth it for you.

07:23 Yeah, I mean, it was great. I cried like a little baby. Literally, my background screen saver is like a photo album flip thing, and half the photos, I'm crying in them. It was amazing. It was so much fun. And then yeah, it was great. I used to be one of those people who was like, you know what? Save the money, don't spend it and stuff. And then now I'm just like, you know what? It's worth it at the end of the day because you see how happy your wife is and it's really cool. And then my daughter was my best man.

08:08 That's so sweet.

08:09 Yeah, so it was awesome. I loved it.

08:14 Good. That's great. I know we just sort of didn't plan and then that's why we ended up doing it, because then we're like, when are we going to get married? I did some nominal looking around, knowing that the backlog existed, so I hadn't even reached out. And then it was just sort of like, well, you know what? My parents are coming to visit. We both sort of had that thought in our heads and said it to each other, let's just do it and maybe we'll have a party. We told everyone we have one this year, which we didn't do. I don't know, maybe for our ten year anniversary. It's just so much work. What you described, it's so much work.

09:01 It is. I mean, my wife is a planner, like 100%, and she had a binder, I'm not even joking. 100 pages for our wedding, like all the vendors, everything. If you have the option, and if you're like a type person who's down to go to Mexico or something like that to do like a vowel renewal, I would recommend doing that because the honeymoon place where we did our honeymoon at, god, it was gorgeous. And their vowel renewal things were beautiful. Like on a balcony overlooking the ocean. And then you have all your friends and family come and it saves you guys a ton of money. I would go back and do that in a second. That's an idea, but it is amazing.

09:54 Well, congratulations.

09:55 Yeah, congratulations to you. So how old's your Corgi?

10:03 He's just over nine months. He's a puppy. He's around here somewhere. He was in the background, and then he trotted off. He's a nightmare. But Devery cute and getting there. I mean, he's a puppy. Yeah, I love German shepherds. I love that. You have German shepherds.

10:28 Yeah, that's actually one of mine there.

10:31 With a little crown.

10:34 Yeah, my wife got that made for me for my birthday last year.

10:39 What are your dog's names?

10:42 Ulysses and Shiloh.

10:44 And have you named your foster dog?

10:47 Yes. His name's Link.

10:48 Link?

10:50 Yep. Abraham Lincoln.

10:52 Oh, Abraham Lincoln. I was thinking Zelda, but yeah, I was too.

10:57 Yeah, my daughter I wanted to name Sirius, like, Serious Black, because he's black, and I thought that was so cute for a dog name. Serious. But my daughter overruled me, and she wanted to stick with the historical.

11:12 Sure, yeah, yeah.

11:15 But what's your fargo. Fargo. That's cute.

11:19 Yeah. So there's a funny name with the story. A funny story with the name. We've been talking about a dog. I mean, honestly, like I said, we've been together for almost ten years, or at this point now, ten years, but we talked about a dog within the first year. Of course, that didn't happen because we had no money and we were living in a small Brooklyn apartment. We were able to move out to Jersey. We've got a house. So we finally were like, let's get serious about getting a dog. And we're talking about this imaginary dog, and I didn't want to just keep saying, like, the dog, or whatever, so in my head, I was like, I'll just say a name. And I was like, blah, blah, blah. And then when we get Fargo, we can do this. And Chris was like, what's that? And I was like, oh, I just said Fargo. I just used it as a name. And he's like, I kind of like it. I was like, I like it too. And then literally, I think it was either the next day or the day after. We were just looking around, and we'd been looking at rescues and breeders and trying to decide which way we wanted to go, but we were looking at Corgi puppies, and there was Fargo. That was his name.

12:35 Oh, wow.

12:35 And so we were like, well, we have to try and see if we can get this dog, at least, because he was our dog.

12:43 That is awesome.

12:45 Yeah. And then he was the only one left of his litter, so he was.

12:49 Like, for us, that is awesome. Yeah, that's, like, meant to be.

12:55 I know.

12:58 That's so crazy. So he's nine months old.

13:02 Nine months old.

13:03 I bet he's a rascal right now, just, like, running around, grabbing socks, shoes, whatever.

13:08 He loves a little sock thief.

13:11 Oh, yeah.

13:14 Well, he's a herding dog too, right? So he herds me he really focuses on me. And in training classes, he listens to me really well for commands, but I need to figure out how better to assert my dominance, because in those situations, when he's being mischievous, he's like, you're not serious. He doesn't listen to me in those situations. So I got to do a better job of that.

13:43 With the foster, I think he's maybe a year old. He's still got a lot of puppy behavior. I started using a spray bottle.

13:56 Oh, sure.

13:57 I don't know if that would go along with the training and stuff like that. I didn't use that kind of training with my dogs just because I obviously had them from the time they were pups and stuff. I used treats, incentives. But the spray bottle, I don't know what it is. I just have to reach for it. And he's just like, no, I'm good.

14:16 Yeah, it's mostly positive, treat based training for the fun stuff, but maybe sort of for that harder stuff, the behavior issues. Maybe a spray bottle would work. I know some people use, like, cans, like rattle cans, whatever, because I use.

14:35 It mainly for when I'm cooking. I don't want them in the kitchen. And my dogs know, I'm like, hey, go lay down. They'll go lay down. But with him, I haven't had time to reiterate. Even with a treat, I'd have to stop everything I'm doing, grab the treat, and then keep feeding them and keep telling them what to do and stuff. So just grabbing the spray bottle, he's like, no, I'm good. Bye.

15:01 Okay.

15:03 It's worth a try, but I would definitely bring it up to your trainer. If you guys are paying for training and stuff like that, run it by them, because I don't want to undo anything that positive.

15:15 Yeah, I don't think she'd be on board with that, to be honest, but it's a thing to consider. I think we'll try and keep it that positive for a while, but sometimes you got to do what you got to do.

15:30 Yeah, for sure.

15:33 Of course. He's very low to the ground, so if he's doing that, he can get kicked or I can get tripped, for sure. Yeah.

15:46 Awesome. Well, you have to let me know how it goes. I've always wanted a corgi with the German shepherd pups, just because I think they love corgis when we go to the dog park, and they're, like, obsessed, which I think is so cute. Just like the big and little.

16:03 Yeah.

16:04 But I don't know if we can ever do another dog. Twos a lot and then foster yeah.

16:13 We don't really have the resources for a second dog just yet, but I think we might eventually, especially with him, I think because they're so high energy, whether we get another corgi or another sort of high energy ish dog that they can feed off each other and wear each other out.

16:30 Yeah, for sure. It does help, but then whenever you try going to bed, you have two dogs in the bed.

16:39 He doesn't really sleep very well with us in the bed. He's been in our bed a couple of times, but mostly he sleeps in his crate. He'll wake up in the middle of the night and sort of start barking in a way that he's just sort of, like, woke up. Like when you're in a hotel room and you're like, Where am I? And then we put him in his crate, and he just goes right back to sleep. So usually that's where he spends his night.

17:00 Oh, that's awesome.

17:01 Yeah. Also because we didn't want him to get used to sleeping in the bed at first because he is so small and can just fall out. Yeah. With his spine and stumpy little legs. We don't want him to get hurt.

17:19 My dogs push me out of the bed. I'm sure, but awesome. I don't want to hold you up. All right, I think we get our five minutes.

17:28 I think we got, like or something, but that's great.

17:32 Awesome. Well, let me know if you need anything.

17:35 All right. Thanks, Justin. This was nice. It was nice to talk to you.

17:38 You as well.

17:39 All right, have a good day.

17:41 You too. Bye. Or wait, do we just hang up?