Dog the Bounty Hunter Reveals Major Heath Change He’s Making

Duane “Dog” Chapman appeared on The Dr. Oz Show again Monday to provide an update on his health, including his ongoing effort to quit smoking. While Dog has no problem tracking down criminals, quitting smoking has provided him with a difficult test. Chapman has been open about his efforts to stop smoking since he got engaged to Francie Frane last year.

Chapman, 68, said he is down to four to five cigarettes a day. He found it hard to stop smoking after eating or when he drinks coffee in the morning. “I have never, Doc, since I was 12, had only four to five cigarettes a day, so I’m almost completely there,” Chapman told host Mehmet Oz. He later said he did not want to disappoint Oz or Frane. “So, that right there will overcome anything,” he said. “I’m using all those antidotes to be able to say, ‘Yeah, I’m smoke-free. I quit smoking.’”

When Chapman appeared on Dr. Oz in November, Frane joined him to discuss their efforts to help Dog quit smoking. “We all don’t like change, especially when it comes to things that we have relied on for such a long time. And so my tactic is love and encouragement,” Frane, 51, explained. “I need him around for the next 20 years at least, so I just keep telling him that.” Frane believes that when people are “constantly picking at us,” we often do the opposite of what they want. “It’s reverse psychology, maybe, and loving him out of cigarettes,” she said.

Chapman thought he had another health problem to worry about. He was supposed to film his latest interview with Oz a few days earlier, but he was not feeling well. Oz asked him if he thought he had the coronavirus. “I didn’t have Covid, but I sure felt like it because I had this, I couldn’t even get out of bed,” Chapman said, reports The Sun. However, Chapman said he did not get tested. He just felt fine during the days after he was ill. “I thought I was almost dying,” Chapman told Oz. “I was like, just saying my last prayers.”

Frane and Chapman got engaged in May 2020, less than a year after Chapman’s wife Beth Chapman died from cancer in June 2019. The two connected over the mutual loss of a spouse, as Frane’s husband died shortly before Beth did. Some of his fans criticized him for getting engaged so soon after Beth’s death, but he defended the decision and said he will never forget Beth. “I will never forget. But I’ve got to get out there,” he told PEOPLE last year. “I’ve got to be able to say, ‘I came out of this and you can, too.’ As a human being, I don’t think you look for — not a replacement, because you can never find one. I’m learning that right now.”