Pair’s “Knuckleheaded” videos gaining social media following
A man and his dog — best friends, kayaking buddies, bikers.
Some of those are fairly uncommon descriptions of the typical relationship between man and dog, but they’ve become pretty much the norm for Aaron Dean, an Ellijay homebuilder, and Knucklehead, a two-and-a-half-year old pit bull.
“He’s a blue Razor’s Edge, which is a (pit bull) breed,” said Dean. “He’s a 60-pound pit bull that rides a motorcycle, kayaks and can climb up and down ladders. ”
Dean and Knucklehead have recently become popular on several social media platforms thanks to an ongoing video series, “Knuckleheaded Adventures,” which documents their travels.
“It started with him going with me everywhere, but the only place he couldn’t go was on the motorcycle,” said Dean. “He would whine and cry when I’d leave, so eventually I was like, ‘come on, you wanna go?’ He jumped on the back of the bike, and we went around the block. So it was like, ‘OK, I guess he wants to ride.’”
The videos started as a way for Dean to show some of the pair’s adventures to friends and family, but they’ve quickly grown a following outside his immediate circle.
“Everybody kept saying how they wanted to see him ride a motorcycle with me, so I just started filming it. About the only way to put it out there for everybody to see was to put it on YouTube,” he said. “Then we ended up making a TikTok, and it just blew up from there.”
Some of the most popular videos have been of the two riding the Tail of the Dragon, a popular twisty section of Highway 129 in the North Carolina mountains. “Knuck” rides in a specially made box that Dean, a carpenter, designed himself.
“It’s made of welded aluminum with a 1-inch thick yoga mat cut and glued in,” he said. “I designed it to be able to move between a dirt bike and a bigger bike, a 2020 Harley Davidson.”
Dean said the two have probably ridden around 13,000 miles together in the last year alone, and one of their videos garnered almost 40 million views in about a month between Facebook, YouTube and Tik Tok.
“We’ve filmed on the Cartecay River, and kayaked down the Nantahala. One of the most famous videos is him climbing a ladder and getting on a roof with me,” said Dean, who runs the homebuilding company AMD Homes. “It’s gotten crazy. We started mainly in June and July (of last year), and we now have 135,000 (followers) on TikTok. We did have 70,000 following on Facebook, but hackers got us, so we had to close that account and start over. Even after having to start over about three weeks ago, we’re already back up to 14,000 on Facebook.”
Dean has raised his traveling buddy up from a pup. The two were connected shortly after he had to say goodbye to another dog, Rex, a 14-year-old pit bull, who had to be put down.
“I was actually driving to church one morning, and a lady was broke down on the side of the road. She had a crate of puppies in the back,” Dean said. “Because I stopped and helped her out, she called me about two weeks later and told me I could come get the pick of the litter.”
Now that the two have a social media presence, Dean, who served as an Army combat medic in Iraq, hopes they can do some good for veteran-related charities and nonprofits.
“We have a microphone, so we might as well use it for something good,” he said. “Riding around doing what we do is cool, but I feel like God gave us a microphone for a reason.”
They recently partnered with GI Garage Ltd., a Cumming nonprofit that represents veterans. Dean hopes that will lead to involvement with other veteran-related nonprofits.
“They help veterans get reliable transportation and give them a spot where they can work on their own vehicles,” he said. “We gave them a motorcycle that they’re rebuilding and are going to raffle off. All the proceeds will go back to them and what they do.”
Dean also hopes their videos will help show the public that not all pit bulls are dangerous.
“Were trying to break that stigma of people seeing a pit bull and immediately getting scared,” he said. “Knuck just wants to lick on you, mostly. He loves kids.”
Knucklehead is on his way to adding another accomplishment to his already impressive resume — becoming a trained psychiatric service dog, his owner noted.
“He’s almost completely trained,” said Dean, who’s been working with some area trainers to get that certification done.
In the meantime, fans of the two can soon hear Knucklehead’s new theme song and see a music video featuring both man and dog doing some adventuring.
Dean’s been collaborating with a team from Nashville, which includes songwriter Bill DiLuigi, singer Greg Mangus, guitarist Jessie Garcia and producer Shay Watson, to put that project together.
“The theme song is done. It’s called ‘Be a Knucklehead,’ and the video is a compilation of our stuff featuring some local sites,” he said.