The Specific Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Las Vegas, NV

Time it's my pleasure to introduce our main speaker, Ben w from Edmond, Oklahoma. Are we right? I'm Ben Wilson. I'm an alcoholic. Yeah.

I'm English by birth. I'm Irish by disease. Scotch by absorption and American by adoption. I've been doing this thing wrong for a long time. I just want to thank, Bob and Rick for asking me to be here and, I've been doing that short simple prayer and asking because, it's only because there's a tape recorder going that I don't use the f word.

Now, it has absolutely nothing to do with cleaning up my mouth because the big word big book is specific about this. It says we describe spirituality in everyday language. So tough shit. But I want to tell you why why I'm not going to use the f word unless there's a power cut. I I was speaking one day and there was a power cut and I I just managed to slip it in and it wasn't on the tape.

But, I was I was speaking in a place called Benicia in the Bay area about 10 years ago. It was Christmas meeting, big meeting like this and I I I finished speaking and I and I had mentioned the f word just socially a couple of times. And and and at the end of the meeting, the secretary came up and and announced and said does anybody here drive a black Jaguar? And, of course, I wanted everybody to know it was mine. And a tree had fallen on it.

So I'm I'm really very careful about this. Those southwestern planes do not withstand trees very easily. I've been sober since December 12, 1970 and, my definition of sobriety is outlined on page 411 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven't, poured anything down my throat, up my nose, in my arm, or up my ass that would change my mind. As I say, this is not the party line, I'll tell you.

I I'm a great believer in in in doing it wrong but doing it. And, and that's probably what'll come through this because, I I get I didn't get sober right and, I probably haven't stayed sober right and I've dated too many newcomers and, I've done all the things that are wrong, quote, but, we buried the people who were being critical. I was in a meeting in San Francisco a few years ago and there was a young man who felt offended because something he'd mentioned in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous had got back to him. And, I got to Cheyenne right after that and I said, you know, that, we in San Francisco, we used to have Charlie Manson and Jim Jones attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and and if you're complaining about somebody else's behavior, guess who's sick. The spiritual malady of alcoholism is mentioned in the big book.

It's on page 64 and, it talks about when the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. And the spiritual malady as I see it, and this is not the description in the big book, is a 4 part problem. It's that, I have bad luck and I blame other people and I drink and then I feel shitty. And and then I blame other people and I feel shitty and I drink and I drink and then I blame other people and I feel shitty and I have bad luck. And it's continuous.

It's like it's like the squirrel in the cage. And, what happened when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I quit drinking and I blamed other people and I had bad luck and I felt shitty and absolutely nothing changed except they took a drink out of the square and it became a triangle. And until we quit quit blaming other people, very little changes. Wow. I was in a meeting about 20 years ago and a newcomer, he just raised his hand less than 30 days sober, and he'd said, if you want to feel better, quit complaining.

Never seen him again. Just came into my life and, changed it. You know, and the things that I hear in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous that, changed my life are those that I'm willing to put into practice. This isn't about, profundities and theories and and all that other stuff. It's about doing the deal.

And, I I drank enough to get to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'll share that with you. I I loved booze. I really did. It made me important.

I just loved it. I mean, it was great. I I used to drink with important people and that made me feel better. And, things good things happened when I was drinking and bad things happened to me when I was drinking, but I just drank. I knew that was the deal.

I don't come from a an underprivileged background. Oh, I I was in a meeting at lunchtime. This is fractured, this pitch, so just put a comma there and maybe we'll get back to that. But somebody was talking about about high bottom drunk. So I I really want to tell you that I'm a high bottom drunk.

And some of you are new and you don't realize that there is really is some status in Alcoholics Anonymous. And and I'm a high bottom drunk. And my claim to being a high bottom drunk is that I took my last drink in 1970 on the 4th floor of a maximum security penitentiary and that's my claim to being a high bottom drunk. And we buried all the low bottom drunks. I was sort of wandering along through the story of my alcoholism, my drinking and I was saying I didn't come from an underprivileged background.

We had horses at home and if if you ever rode horses, it it's easy to look down on the other people. I I I became an officer in the cavalry and our status was from some 350 years of looking down on the people who walked. On my 13th birthday, my father gave me a silver flask. It it was a half pint flask. It wasn't an American flask, it was an English half pint.

It was 10 ounces. I I want to tell you that it's really important for you to know that I had to drink 25% more than you to get to Alcoholics Anonymous. Because when I drank a pint, it was 20 ounces. But this was a half pint flask and my father filled it up with sherry. And I went out fox hunting that day, and it came back empty.

And, the fences got smaller. And, on my 16th birthday, my father filled it up with scotch whiskey. He said, young man, I think you've graduated to scotch whiskey. And, I brought it home empty that day. The horses had got bigger and the fences continue to get smaller.

We call it jumping powder. Great description of alcohol, jumping powder allowed allowed me to jump big fences. And I I was a coward. It's it's this is not a socially acceptable word in in my family, but on reflection, I was a coward. It, came out of my 4th step quite by chance.

And I did things to overcome cowardice. I didn't like discipline at home and I was a coward and so I joined the army. And then I went to a place where they invented discipline which was the place that West Point is modelled after. It's a place called Sandhurst. And, and they shouted at me a whole lot.

But, there were some brave people who were in and out of our house. We had some resources at home and and the people who were around us, who were my heroes, were steeplechase jockeys because they were always getting injured and and they didn't seem to care about it. They'd get strapped up and a morphine injection and ride in the next race. And, so they were my heroes. So that's what I did.

I became 1. I was a skinny little kid and, I could ride at a £140 and, and and that's what I did. And, one one afternoon, some long long time ago, I I went out on a horse of ours. He he sort of alcoholic horse. He'd sought out lower companionship.

He'd run-in the French Derby and ended up in our yard. So he'd come a long way down, I'll tell you. And, I I rode this horse and and he won and 10 minutes later, I'm shaking hands with the Queen of England and, you imagine what that did to a young alcoholic. I had arrived. I had really arrived.

And, a little later on, I I got injured quite a lot and I find it was easier to sit on barstools and talk about it than ride them. And, so that was my sort of career of drinking and I was in the military and I went abroad and the booze was cheap and all this stuff. And I've I've recently sort of coined a phrase that seems to gel with the way I live which is I'd rather make bad decisions and have good luck than make good decisions and have bad luck. And it sort of explains 5 broken marriages, bad decisions and extremely good luck. I've managed to be single today after all that.

I ended up, as I said, in the penitentiary. I'd I'd gone a long way down very quickly and I and I think that's great for the alcoholic. I I just hope you don't have soft landings because it's so easy to try and sort of reorganize things on plan b. And I went as I said to the penitentiary and that's where I took my last drink and after that, some miraculous things happened. A man put the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in my hand and he said, you can borrow it for the next 24 hours.

Thank God, he didn't say I could borrow it for a week because I'd have put it to one side and and I wouldn't have read it. And I read the big book in a day, and it's real easy when you have a learning disability, a reading disability like mine at that time. If I read the word God, my eyes would drop 3 or 4 lines and then I'd read a bit and then it came to God in 3 or 4 lines and turn the page. And so I'm through it pretty quickly. Started in the middle looking for vicarious pleasures and maybe some casual sex and then and then got to the beginning and, got to page 32 and it doesn't mention God on the whole damn page.

Had to read about that guy. What a jerk. 30 years old, quits drinking, not really in trouble. He was doing some spree drinking. Now, I have no idea what spree drinking is.

I'm I'm sure it wasn't my idea. And and he quits for 25 years and he starts drinking again and within 3 years, he's dead. And I said, Ben, you must never ever drink again. And the next morning, without the benefit of ever having met any of you, I went on my first 12 step call. Now I know the counsellors here will tell me I was too new to go on a 12 step call.

There are people whose sponsors would criticise this, but I haven't had a drink in the ensuing 35 and a half years as a result of going on that 12 step call. I walked the exercise yard of the oldest penitentiary in England, and I fell into step with a guy called Ralph. And I said, Ralph, if you and I join Alcoholics Anonymous, we need never come back here. And when he was discharged about a year and a half later, by that time, I was free and I was out and, you know, I got a good job and the girlfriend had come back and we had a house and cars and all that stuff. And I was there waiting for him to come out of the the joint and be discharged.

And I did what it tells me to in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I took him home. 12 step work includes taking people home. I didn't keep him for long. It also says, don't keep him for long.

I don't know where he is today, but I know where I am and I haven't taken a drink since. There were 400 meetings in the British Isles when I got sober. 55,000,000 people and probably less meetings, I don't know how many there are in Las Vegas. Certainly, less than half the meetings in San Francisco spread over the whole of the British Isles. And so I am one of the greatest per I I'm sort of anti something.

I'm not anti a whole lot, but I am anti that ridiculous saying about 90 meetings in 90 days. You cannot have a numeric solution to a spiritual malady. You know? Shut up. It, you know, it got it got born in Minneapolis somewhere and is permeating Alcoholics Anonymous like the plague.

Talks in the book about we have a daily reprieve for God's sake. And somebody's 90 ed it. I got to less than 9 meetings the first 90 days I was sober. The nearest meeting was 18 miles away. I didn't have a car.

I didn't have a driver's license. The bus came at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, dropped me off in my hometown. It was the middle of winter. The library closed at 6. The only places open were bars and I had to wait for the meeting till 8.

And then I always had to walk the last 5 miles home. And when anybody talks to me about how difficult it is to get to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, the furthest I've ever hitchhiked in a day is 300 miles to a meeting and back. Very recently, I went to a meeting up in Northern California because there's a friend of mine, Mike Zander, who lives up I 5, a long way up I 5, and he's always asking me to speak and he also asks a lot of other people to speak. They always turn him down. It's too far.

When anybody asks you to speak, the answer is yes, please, not where is it. If you want to stay sober, it's yes, please. I just want to share one of those trips I had. It was a little over 400 miles round trip, and, I got there and it was at, a prison, a conservation camp up in the mountains, And it wasn't a you know, I get to speak occasionally at meetings like this and much more often at meetings like that because that's what I do. I drive 400 miles in a night to go to a meeting and speak to 6 people in orange jumpsuits.

But you see at the end of the meeting, I had a spiritual awakening. We're saying the Lord's Prayer and I look across the circle, there's 6 6 guys in orange jumpsuits, 3 of us from outside and the warden who is my litter mate in Alcoholics Anonymous. He got sober the month before I did and Don Kevornan standing there in the full uniform of the warden of the camp with a gun on his belt, holding hands with 2 guys in orange jumpsuit. And you can't experience that driving less than 400 miles in a night. It does not happen around the corner.

The benefits I get from 12 step work are directly proportional to the inconvenience suffered. One of my great heroes who I he didn't live long enough for me to 12 step him was Winston Churchill. And I and I want to I just want to share his definition of success. He said that success is moving from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. He had just described AA sponsorship.

There's a guy gets a mention in the big book of alcoholics anonymous for 6 people he was sponsoring and they didn't get sober. I took somewhere between 23 100 people to their first meetings the first 3 years I was sober and none of them got sober. None of them on my watch anyway. One of them was my baby sister. January 1971, I took her to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

She looked around and said, what a wonderful place for you, Ben. And added that if her husband was ever to get sober, it would be the right place for him. She didn't go to another meeting for 18 and a half years. And after a second meeting, she has been continuously sober for 17 years. My girlfriend of the time, the bimbo of the year, We got arrested together.

I was the bad dude who led her astray. She was nonalcoholic. And in January of 1971, I did what it tells me to in the big book. I walked into the police station at home, my hometown, and I told the sergeant on the desk about Alcoholics Anonymous. It tells me to spread the message.

I went in there and I talked to him and and I took Gwen with me as moral support. I was 6 weeks sober. Now I know the HNI committee and the public information would say I didn't have the sobriety requirements of that job, but I was the chairman of that particular committee. Now we didn't have an election. I was the only person sober in that town.

That's how I got the job. And the desk sergeant knew who I was. I mean, we're not a low profile family in that town and he knew who I was and I'd had my picture on the front page of the paper several times. I I'd won some races and had my picture there. But most recently, it had said, cavalry officer jailed for fraud.

He knew who I was and I'm telling him that if he has a drunk who is so bad that he can't handle him, I'm the go to guy and here's my telephone number. And at that particular and precise moment, Gwen fell out fell down and passed out drunk on the police station floor. You would say you might say it was an inappropriate public information call. There would be people here who could be critical. Last year in November, she celebrated 30 years of continuous sobriety.

Doing it wrong is the way to stand by the gravesides of the people who are insisting on doing it right. This is a deadly disease. You know, I I had a day when 2 people I knew very closely in Alcoholics Anonymous committed suicide the same day. It gets your attention. This is a really, very unpleasant illness.

And yet, we who have been privileged to come in from the cold can stay here but we can only stay here if when it's very easy to stay here, we work like sons of bitches. And then when it's difficult, somebody will reach out and give me a toe, and I'll give me a pull through the the bad times. I've had some bad times in sobriety. I I love to hear people who are on that pink cloud and it's all wonderful and I haven't got any resentments and, isn't it great? And we'll be here when you come back, Sonny.

Woah. Tell tell you about a day in 1973 and the same woman we we lived together at that time and she went off and lived with a guy to live with a guy I sponsored. It was a bad day. The corporation I was running had just gone bankrupt and they repossessed the the Jaguar of the week. And it was a bad week.

And I got a ride to a meeting in Maidstone that was about 70 miles away. A guy drove 70 miles to pick me up and drove back 70 miles and another guy did the shift taking me home. And I walked into that meeting, there were 6 of us in a church basement and we had the moment of silence and the 2 of them walked into that meeting. And, I know your therapist would say go to another meeting but I'll tell you what, it was a little over a 100 miles further on up the road. That night was the nearest other meeting.

I had to stay there and do Alcoholics Anonymous. The 2 of them were not to stay sober, though she got sober later on, and I stayed sober. The next day, I'm on the train and I'm wanting to drink so badly. And the loving God of my understanding, the person I gave the the decision and the task of doing the not drinking allowed me to want to drink in a train without a corridor, without a club car that wasn't stopping. And I was beating on the seat and crying, wanting to drink just so bad.

By the time the train got to London, I was okay and I was on my way to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. You see, I don't want the choice. I'm a bad chooser. I've got 5 ex wives. Bad chooser.

I don't want to choose about drinking because it works only until I choose to drink. And I chose to drink that morning. I I left Oklahoma City in 1983 to sit visit an old sponsor of mine in in in Southern New Mexico. And halfway there, I'm wanting to drink. Things were not going well.

I wanted to drink so badly. And I'm going through a little one horse town in West Texas, and I slowed down at the last building on the right hand side, which was a bar, and I slowed down. And as I got level with the bar, I looked up and there was a real estate sign screwed across the front door. It said for lease. It was closed down and I said the f word and drove out of town.

And said thank you God. If if if you're new or jaded, you you might like to hear the next thing that I I I just a suggestion. And really we're not in the suggestion business but I can't help it occasionally. People talk about making gratitude lists and I think gratitude lists are wonderful. It it it took somebody telling me to do this for me to get grateful for the things I was grateful for.

But if you want to grow up in Alcoholics Anonymous, write out a list of everything you're ungrateful for and get grateful for them one at a time. I had this old time sponsor. I love Paul. He died 2 years ago. We did it from 1971 until 2 years ago.

And, he he would tell me a couple of things that are not socially acceptable in Alcoholics Anonymous in 2,006. Grow up and get over it. Woah. That's not socially acceptable if you just come out of treatment. Pat patting on the head and talking about the inner child.

My my inner child is pissed off. I'll tell you that. Oh, I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I I love working with people and, it changes my life that I can do the things that are talked about in chapter 7, To see a fellowship grow up about me. There's somebody new who's moved here.

Harry Williams is sitting in the front row. He and I played golf together every Friday for, what, 15 years in California. He's sponsored by a guy I sponsor. A guy who's lying in hospital at the moment or I think he's at home now. He's dying of lung cancer.

And, it's a tough it's a tough business being an alcoholic. I'd like an easier, softer way sometimes, but, I don't think there are the rewards that we get for going through things. My mother was dying and, oh, God. I can't remember when, 1981, I think. And my father called up and he said, if you don't fly home today, you won't see her.

Well, he just thought, oh. And so I I arranged with a guy who came to meetings occasionally, he was sort of part time AA member travel agent, to get me a ticket and, I was sitting on the bed getting getting my things together, my passport and credit cards and money. And the telephone rang and it was Saturday morning. And we did a a answering service on Wednesday nights. And this is Saturday morning.

And a man on the other end of the line said, is this Alcoholics Anonymous? And I said, no. It is not. I was really pissed. And I said, but it is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And then something softened in there and I said, how can I help you? It's a guy called Carson and I'm looking for Carson. I've been looking for Carson since 1981. And if there are 2 Carsons, it's a guy with a blue Pinto. And Carson had been 16 years sober 2 days before and he was drunk at a pay phone outside a liquor store and he got me.

And I said, stand still there. He told me where he was. I said, don't go anywhere. I will get someone. No.

I did not use the volunteer list because I know how few of the volunteer lists will go. I'm not a cynic. I'm practical, and I've been doing it for a very long time. I went through my list and, everybody was out. And I'm turning the page.

I got the telephone down and it rang again. And the guy said, are you open sell literature this morning? And I just went for him like a rat up a drain, you know. I said, this is not Alcoholics Anonymous office. And then I said, where are you?

And he was a block away from Carson. And I put the 2 of them together and I got on a plane and I flew home and my mum died 4 hours after I arrived. And, that phone call got me sober across the Atlantic when I couldn't have done that on my own. And, when I got back, I met the guy who'd gone on not Carson. The guy who'd gone to see Carson and he'd poured out his booze and he'd taken him home and he done all the right things and he said he'd come at 7:30 to take him to the meeting.

And he was an old old hand at it. He said, I'll be there at 7:30. Got there at 10 past. That's the that's the hint for you if you're new. It's the hint of the day because at 7:15, they go grocery shopping rather than let you take them to a meeting.

You get there at 10 past. And he got there at 10 past and the guy was still there and but he changed. 2 days of drinking in 16 years had changed him, and this is the disease of alcoholism. I got to see a guy in San Francisco 3 years ago in the middle of the afternoon. My business partner, Paul Peterson, who's in the program, he's sober a long time also, and we got to go to the Hilton in the middle of the afternoon, and we met a guy who flown down from Brunswick New Brunswick, Canada to a conference and he'd been 26 years sober on Sunday and he was 4 days drunk on Thursday.

And he was sicker and looked worse than anybody else I've ever taken to detox, and I have taken hundreds of people to detox. The longer we're sober, the tougher it is when it goes wrong. And all we've got to do is follow these simple instructions. There's no graduation, there's no promotion, it's still the same deal. I heard of a guy the other day who I knew real well who would be 32 years sober if 12 years ago he hadn't started drinking a couple of beers a day.

You know, there's great joy in here but all the alternative needs to be recognized. We're more afraid of the solution than we are of the problem is the human condition of the alcoholic when we come into sobriety. And unfortunately, it's very difficult for people to assimilate that very, very simple concept that it this is about comparative fear. We're more we're more afraid of staying sober than we are drinking, however bad the drinking has got. Until something frightens us so badly that we move into sobriety for just that window of opportunity.

And, anybody here who hasn't done the 4th step out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous proves that they're more afraid of taking the 4th step than they are of drinking. They may not see it that way, but it is that way. About 12 years ago, I got 6 new guys to sponsor at the same time, like, over a 2 week period and all of them been over 10 years sober. Now I ask people who had had any time and have drunk again, I ask them some questions. I never ask, why did you drink?

Because I do not want to hear the ramblings of somebody who is insane. But I can ask some very pointed questions like, did you do the 4 step out of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous? And they, you know, they go 3 for 6, something like that. And and then I ask other questions to prove whether they're right or not. But these 6 guys, one of them had been almost 20 years sober.

I asked the questions, have you done the sex inventory out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous? You know, I I can look around here and see people's eyes roll back when I start talking about the ideal sex life. Twelve component parts of that particular action requirement in the 4th step. Just to buy somebody likes history owls, they're the guy who likes history. There was a misprint in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous from 1955 to 1988.

Continuously a misprint that was never found until 1988 because it was in the middle of the 4th step. Uh-huh. So I asked these these 6 guys one more question. Have you ever shown anybody how to do the 4th step out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous? They went 0 for 6.

And if you're a taker, you're one of the people sitting in this room right now who has done the 4th step and has not started to show other people how to do it, and you are on borrowed time. This is a giving proposition. If you've really taken the 4th step out of the big book of alcoholics and honors, you can't stop showing other people. So you're probably missing something. Maybe in the middle of that ideal sex life.

It says ideal 5 times incidentally. If you've missed it, it says it 5 times. It means it. It means best possible solution. And perverts and deviates of my type don't believe that that's possible.

It's a wonderful life, isn't it? I love to I love to end with a couple of 12 step stories, but I just want to tell you what's been going on in my life recently. I moved to Oklahoma 2 years ago and, some things changed. I I got to be the subject of some ongoing miracles about my heart. And I I was lying on that, gurney in the emergency of the heart hospital last, December And and my business partner was looking at the monitor and I got stuff up my nose and in my arm and not up my ass actually, but things weren't I wasn't feeling terribly well.

And Jerry's looking at the television. There was nothing else to look at except me. And, he's going uh-huh. Uh-huh. And then he went, oh shit.

And, my pulse dropped down to 32 per minute and, I tried willpower on that and it didn't work terribly well. But but they got it fixed and a little later in the afternoon, they're putting a pacemaker in. And I was being wheeled to the operating theater and and I had my cell phone with me. Wouldn't I? And I get a call from a guy who said, Ben, Parko is my sponsor and he tells me to call you.

And I said, okay. And I'm just starting the long run to the OR and he's talking about 9th step amends and he killed 2 people and he didn't know how to make amends to them. And, I've done that. I've only won, but I did it and, I know how to make amends. And if you killed anybody and you don't know how to make amends, talk to me.

And, by the time we get into the OR, I'm laughing. He's laughing on the other end too. Everybody else is serious. They've all got masks on. They're not smiling.

And I'm the guy laughing. And one more time, the hand of God at just that moment when I should have been nervous and, you know, why would I be nervous? I I've had all that stuff done to me. You know, I mean, today, there's not much you can do to me that's new. And, I'll just share a 12 step story and it's about to get to the right moment, you know.

I I like it's probably about the length of the tape for Al, you know. I'm I'm tailoring it to be you'll hear a lot of stuff around Alcoholics Anonymous. There are excuses for not doing the deal. And the deal is that we go. And the deal is that we go whether there's anybody else to go with or not.

Because if Bill hadn't gone and he'd waited for somebody else to go with him, there wouldn't be Alcoholics Anonymous. And I got a call one night about 25 years ago in from a guy in Folsom, California. It was a Wednesday night. I didn't have time to find anybody else. I just got in my car and drove.

And, I drove past the fulsome Wednesday night meeting just as it was issuing out into the parking lot. And so I pulled in and, 2 of the best friends in the world that I have, Bobby Burton and a guy called Whitey Haney were there and I said, I got a 12 step call. Jump in. And we went and and we went to see a guy called Ed. And Ed was very very drunk.

Extremely drunk. And so we had a meeting. 3 10 minute speakers. I don't know whether he heard a word we said, but we each had a 10 minute pitch and then we got up to leave and we're in the hallway and he said something like you're good people. And and, you know, I'm a smart ass.

You probably understood this. And and I and I said, yeah. We beat the fire department, didn't we? He said, no. He said, the dog didn't bite you.

I'm looking around for the dog and we're all being brought up with animals, all 3 of us. And there's white and he's got a dachshund licking his fingers. Well, this dachshund is a savage dog that has to put away be put away when they're visitors. But because the dog knew we were about our father's business, he was licking Whitey's hand. I mean, this is a very stupid story.

Except that because the dog was white was licking Whitey's fingers and didn't bite us, Ed was standing on the porch the following night at 7 o'clock when I came by to take him to his first meeting and the last time Whitey saw Ed he was 10 years sober in Carson City, Virginia Nevada. And, so I'll I'll suggest to you, if you're new or jaded, particularly if jaded, that you go on the call, you go with somebody or without somebody, but just make sure the dog doesn't bite you. Thank you very much.