Boyd Varty – Live Like a Tracker

**Boyd Varty** (0:24)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:49)
An interesting question that I think about a lot, how do you balance exploring the new with savoring what you already know and love? Most of the time, I prefer to explore, but the best part of this podcast experience for me, has been meeting people who have become close friends. For episodes 99 and 100, I'm bringing back two of the most popular past guests who are now both dear friends. This week's episode is split into two parts, today and tomorrow. Today's episode is with Boyd Varty, and tomorrow is with both Boyd and his sister Bronwyn. The incredible Varty family hosted me in South Africa, so you'll hear birds and elephants in the background as we talk. This conversation with Boyd is about our shared experience called Track Your Life, which I could not recommend more highly. We tracked animals on foot for five days and learned a ton from the environment itself. While we discuss our time together, this is much more about how to live. My original conversation with Boyd had a huge impact on me, and this continues the exploration of Boyd's idea that we should all be going our own way, in the right way, instead of simply following well-trodden paths. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Boyd, and check back tomorrow for another conversation with the Vartys.
I thought a fun place to start, given that it was definitely the most profound of the many profound experiences that we had this past week, would be to hear through your telling of it, the story of our encounter with the five wild dogs.
And from there, we'll explore all sorts of interesting stuff.

**Boyd Varty** (2:11)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things that I see happen is that the group arrives at Londerlozee, and everyone's working on something. Everyone's got a piece, and very quickly, I notice things in the natural world start to show up as teachers. And the arrival of the wild dogs on this property was immediately, I knew, okay, something's going to happen here. So one of the things about wild dogs is they cover huge distances, and we can go weeks without seeing them, sometimes months without seeing them. So suddenly, you know, the groups together, we arrive here and a pack of wild dogs runs onto Londerlozee. And then we hear about it via someone who is driving into the reserve, thinks they saw some dogs, a school group, they had some school kids with them, that they were like reports, we think we saw them. So it's a bit, all a bit up in the air. We go out that afternoon, and one of the other guides finds a pack of sleeping dogs. We get ourselves into that position, and the dogs are fast asleep and just in this deep state of rest.
And I'm looking at them and I'm thinking, oh, you know, these dogs may be well-fed. They may just sleep here through the entire afternoon. And as I'm thinking that, like, basically, it's nice to see them, but nothing's going to happen. One dog gets up and he starts stretching.
And they're just these beautiful creatures, like this painted color, the big ears, the athletic body. One dog stretches immediately as that dog starts to stretch, the second dog gets up and starts to trot off. And then the other three get together and they start greeting each other.
And what I was struck by is that pack mentality. The first thing that they do when they get up and they look like they're gonna start to get mobile is they connect first. First, it's about the relationship of the pack. Is the greeting, there's the connection, they rub up against each other, they jump on each other. And it's like, we're a team. You can see the bond is primary.
And, but I'm still thinking, maybe they're gonna just move a little bit and you'll remember they moved and sat down. Okay, they're just moving to shade.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (4:13)
We almost left.

**Boyd Varty** (4:14)
Yeah, we almost left. I mean, we literally started the engine we were gonna drive and another dog stood up and he started to move.
And as he started to move, I could feel his energy shift. And I realized, okay, this dog is gonna get on the move.
And when wild dogs move, they're hunting. You know, when they're on the move, they start to hunt. And so he started that dog trot, the other dogs fell in, and then there was some impala up ahead and immediately the whole energy went up a gear.
And the one dog broke away from us. And then these dogs that had been like right around the vehicle for a few minutes, suddenly they were on the move, they were moving fast and they were into a thicket and gone. But I knew they're now moving into intensity.