For every episode of DogCast Radio, we find a dog themed joke for the final word - which (as regular listeners will know) always goes to Jenny.
With more than 180 episodes, that means we've had to find over 180 doggy jokes. All our jokes have to be funny, family friendly, and feature a dog in a funny way without being at all negative about dogs, or likely to offend any dog lovers.
That's a lot of hoops to jump through, but there's one more. We try to avoid repeating material, so having found what we think is a suitable joke, we often scratch our heads, stare at each other and ask, "Have we used this before?" If the answer is, "Yes," it's back to square one, and the search continues.
When we finally identify a joke that meets all our criteria and is not one we've used before, the next step is to record it. That is not always as easy as it might seem, because when Jenny and I are left in a room with a microphone and a job to do, we often get an attack of the giggles. And as you may know, the giggles are difficult to shift once they set in.
The occasions when we get some of our worst giggle attacks are when we try and do the joke as a two-hander, rather than Jenny doing it on her own. The joke in the latest show was one which leant itself to us sharing out the lines, so we duly allotted the lines and set about recording it. Here's how it was supposed to go:
Julie: I threw a stick for Buddy the other day it went 5 miles, and he still managed to find it and bring it back.
Jenny: Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.
We managed to get about three versions of this recorded, complete with giggles, mistakes and partial lines which tailed off into unintelligibility thanks to the laughter. Thanks goodness for editing, because thanks to being able to cutout all the nonsense, I thought I'd be able to piece together a usable version - then something struck me. I'd been concentrating on all the other hoops so much I'd overlooked an important fact; you mustn't throw sticks for dogs because it's too dangerous. The stick can get viciously lodges in throats and between teeth not to mention that possibility of the poor dog impaling himself on a stick as he hurtles after it in hot pursuit.
So back to the drawing board it was.
We thought for a while and came up with a ball, but then had its problems too, because if a ball is too small for a dog's mouth, it can slide into their throat posing a risk of choking or suffocation. We did consider the line could be, "I threw a ball for Buddy the other day which was the appropriate size for his mouth and too large to pose a risk of suffocation or choking, and it went 5 miles, and he sill managed to find it and bring it back" but we felt it lost a little of the humour in all the accuracy.
So it was once more back to square one. We were about to abandon the joke and start the search for a different one, when inspiration struck. We simply made the item being thrown a Frisbee, and the joke was saved. So then, all we had to do was soldier though the giggles again, which by this time had reached hysterical levels after all the false starts, retakes, silly discussions and the pressure of time building.
I hope you found it funny when you listened to the episode - Episode 182 Canine Arthritis Management and The Buddy Foundation of Maryland - and please if you know any good jokes we could use let us know, you might just save our sanity!
Take care,
Julie xx