I used to know of Josh only from his posts on this and other boards/forums. I'll admit that based only on those, that I thought the guy was a self deluded, self absorbed, shamelessly self promoting douche bag.
When I went to Bremond I had numerous folks come up to me and tell me that Josh wanted to meet me and talk dogs with me. I politely ignored the requests. I figured that if he wanted to meet/talk with me so badly, he could pull himself away from his L3 billboard on wheels (his truck) and come find me. I wasn't hiding, and everyone else seemed to be able to find me to tell me, why couldn't he just come talk to me himself? I walked away from the bay comp convinced he was even more of a douche than I had originally thought.
A few weeks/months later I got an email from a friend of his asking me to call him. I thought, "Man, this guy is like a bad rash, but... what the h___, I'll call him, then maybe he'll leave me alone."
So I called him and an funny thing happened... I found that I liked him. We talked for a few hours. What I realized was that he wasn't the obnoxious blow-hard he seemed to be on the forums. He wasn't a shallow braggart. What he is... is a true believer. He not selling anything... he just really believes it, that strongly. In person he's actually quite humble and contemplative, he's just enthusiastic about his work.
He asked me if I'd be willing to help him with something, and I agreed to try. I've been working off-and-on on it for a few weeks now and just recently found I had hit a wall and won't be able to help as I had hoped, but the point is that I made a serious effort because he really won me over to thinking that he is actually a good guy that has some good knowledge/insight on dogs and doggin'.
So after reading that article/interview, the only thing I can say about it is that I am so very disappointed in him.I'm still inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I still think that he's basically a good guy... but giving those interview responses showed a serious lack of judgment at best, a betrayal of his fellow responsible doggers at worst. In all likelihood it was an unintentional betrayal, but a betrayal all the same.
