Emily & Dave | Betrayal Weekly

[instrumental music plays] My name is Emily MacLeod.

The biggest thing you have to understand about Emily is that she loves animals.

To look into the eyes of an animal is to see their soul, and to see beyond the fact that they're just a four-legged furry being.

And animals do feel sadness and hope and joy and happiness and delight.

As far back as she can remember, animals have been part of her life.

Emily grew up with her parents and older brother in northern Alberta, where the Canadian winters are long.

As a kid, she'd roam around outside in the snow, enamored with the wildlife.

I would always find injured animals and bring them home, and bottle-feed the baby bunnies and the baby squirrels and the birds.

Emily's parents kept a full house, with an ever-expanding cast of furry, feathered, and four-legged animals.

We always had a dog growing up, and she was a springer spaniel.

My brother always had snakes and lizards and toads and frogs.

Emily's parents taught her that each creature deserves special care and attention, and years later, she carried that lesson with her to Kansas City, where she studied to become a chiropractor.

Even my chiropractic career has had a trajectory toward caring for animals.

I became certified in animal chiropractic.

It's a unique career.

There are only about 1,600 animal chiropractors in the world, and Emily is one of them.

She runs her own practice, where she spends her days treating racehorses, pigs with hip dysplasia, and cats with arthritis.

But there's one animal that will always have her heart.

I love big dogs, and I had a couple Labradors.

Labradors.So she was excited when, in 2012, a local dog breeder reached out to her.

I get a call from this really nice person who had a lot of very hard questions for me.

She had a dog that was called a Cane Corso dog, and she asked me if I knew what a Cane Corso was, and I did not.

The woman explained Cane Corsos are special dogs.

They're muscular Italian guard dogs with enormous heads, gentle in nature, but a fierce-looking exterior.

And she very kindly called and wanted to make sure that I wouldn't have any troubles interacting with this dog.