Learning from Dogs

Concluding this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

Part Four is here.

Part Five is here.

By Paul Handover

Another wonderful story about a dog rescue

Having recently published a couple of posts about Los Angeles firemen rescuing a dog from a swollen river it was wonderful to catch a short story on the BBC about another dog rescue, this time a dog that had floated miles away from land on an ice floe!

Baltic the lucky dog

Anyway, the BBC have a nice video clip that will put a smile on your face.

By Paul Handover

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

Part Four is here.

By Paul Handover

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

By Paul Handover

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

By Paul Handover

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

By Paul Handover

This may be of no surprise to dog owners!

The BBC recently screened one of the most fascinating programmes in ages (OK, subjective comment!).  It was about the relationship between dogs and humans.  The hour-long programme demonstrated just how important that relationship between dog and man really is.

Indeed, within the first few minutes of the programme, one of the contributors says that without that early domestication of dogs, civilisation of man might not have taken place!

Luckily someone has uploaded this programme onto YouTube.  This Post contains the link to the first of 6 parts with the following 5 parts being presented on this Blog each day.

Please, please take time to watch these videos – they will amaze you, and very possibly bring tears to your eyes.

So if you are a dog owner, prepare to see your dog friend in a totally new way.

By Paul Handover

The Los Angeles Times update on this wonderful story.

The Los Angeles Fire Department firefighter who rescued a panicked dog from the brown, rushing waters of the Los Angeles River this afternoon said that unless firefighters acted, someone else was likely to have ventured into the concrete wash and wound up a casualty.

Joe St. Georges, 50, the firefighter who captivated much of  Los Angeles as he was lowered by a tether into the churning waters to rescue the hound, told reporters late Friday that he suffered a bite to his thumb but was otherwise OK.

“I didn’t have time to establish a rapport with the dog,” St. Georges said, in a classic understatement, as he held his heavily bandaged hand in the air. “He did what dogs do.”

Joe St. Georges and 'Vernon' the dog!

The dog was taken by [human] ambulance to a Downey shelter run by the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority, which serves 14 cities, including Vernon.

Animal Control Officer Justin Guzman said the 6-year-old German shepherd mix was cold and wet, but otherwise unhurt. He showed no further aggression, and shelter staff named him Vernon.

“He’s really lovable,” Guzman said. “He’s appreciating all the attention he’s getting here.“
Guzman said there were a “million” ways and reasons Vernon could have gotten into the river channel.

“Whether he got scared by the thunderstorm and jumped the fence, we don’t know,” he said.
The dog was never really swept away, but managed for the most part to maintain his footing on a slender ledge in the middle of the river, the officer said.

The dog will be quarantined and watched for signs of rabies.

Marcia Mayeda, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control, said the disease is extremely rare in domestic animals. Untagged and loose, the dog was technically in violation of city codes, but the owners will face no repercussions if they step forward and take him home, Guzman said.

If they don’t, the shelter by early evening already had a list of 20 people who want to adopt Vernon.

Mayeda said she was very impressed by St. Georges’ actions.

It’s a great and lovely story.

By Paul Handover

Learning from Dogs big time!

This Blog came about because of a conversation with fellow Blog founder, Jon Lavin. Jon was talking about integrity and how it applies to us in the sense of Truth and Falsehood: that leading truthful and integrous lives is much more than the rather warm and patronising way that the phrase might come over.

Pharaoh

Indeed, understanding the power that comes from leading truthful lives and how an individual’s power and level of consciousness can be enhanced through greater integrity, understanding, and compassion could be the most remarkable discovery that any one person could make.  Dr David Hawkins, who has written extensively on this subject, has said;

A science of consciousness developed which revealed that degrees of truth reflect concordant calibratable levels of consciousness on a scale of 1 to 1,000. When this verifiable test of truth was applied to multiple aspects of society (movies, art, politics, music, sociology, religion, scientific theories, spirituality, philosophy, everyday Americana, and all the countries of the world), the results were startling.

Returning to that conversation with Jon, it was pointed out that dogs have been calibrated as having a level of consciousness of 210. As a score of 200 is the boundary between truth and falsehood, according to Hawkins, this made dogs integrous, hence the inspiration for starting this Blog.  My German Shepherd, Pharaoh, sleeping on the floor close to Jon and me, made the point.  Despite being a difficult dog at times, he had always demonstrated a consistency of integrity that was impressive.

Anyway, to the point of this Post – a dog called Faith.

Read more about Faith

Bringing out the best in us.

As I visit some of my clients, I am becoming aware of an unusual phenomenon – I think some people are actually becoming less selfish. We are used to hearing stories of institutions reaching heights of greed and selfishness during this recession but not many that are about the other way round.

I don’t go to supermarkets very often because I’m usually out working when my wife goes but by a fluke, I kept her company recently. We have been trying to support the local farmer’s markets in the area but this is proving difficult as it’s much quicker to do a one-stop visit to a supermarket than lots of small visits since we both run our own businesses.

It is of course cheaper at the supermarket as they have systematically forced food prices down to a level that prohibits most small food producers from supplying them.

Anyway, I digress. In our local supermarket works an ex colleague and friend of mine. He was made redundant just over a year ago for the second time and decided that he would go for the stress-free, safe option. He used to organise procurement for a large, global communications company so he has his head screwed on around organising things. I guess the supermarket job means that he can just switch off away from work, something he could never do before.

I saw him with a large trolley, checking shelves and we stopped for a chat. He was fine and generally enjoying his work. He asked about mine and I mentioned that things were a bit tight at the moment. We got talking about how training is carried out at his work and how they work with developing employee’s interpersonal and communications skills. He mentioned that there was a new HR manager at the branch, or is it “in branch?”, and would I like an introduction as they were always recruiting new people and they needed training?

I was flabbergasted as we weren’t necessarily that good friends and he didn’t need to say or do anything but went out of his way to be helpful.

I have also noticed this phenomena in other companies from time to time, in the form of clients arranging meetings and spending time, something previously they really didn’t have time for. Maybe we get more of what we notice and by focusing on the positive, we attract more of the positive into our lives?

Is it because when the going gets really tough, for example, in times of national crisis or great hardship, that we remember that we are all interconnected?

By Jon Lavin