A complete change of photos but I guarantee you will love these!
My son, Alex, and his partner, Lisa, recently returned from a vacation on the Isle of Mull. This is a Scottish island lying off the west coast of the mainland. (Home for Alex and Lisa is just outside Bristol in the south-west of England.) Between them they took many photographs.
For the next two Sundays I want to share the photos that Alex took of the otters, eight today and seven next Sunday.
Here is the introduction that Alex wrote on Facebook.
Was very lucky to spot this Otter Family whilst on a guiding trip with Brian Boyes and Lisa Williams on the Isle of Mull, the Mum fed the young pups three fish, we watched from the road and then later using Brian’s advice, quietly settled into the rocks and watched the Mum come right past us, a fantastic encounter and these are only a few of the photos I got.
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These are absolutely gorgeous and that’s an understatement!
When Maile Trist checked her email last week, she opened up a message she assumed was a prank. Her beloved dog, a senior Chihuahua named Jazzy, was at the Cowley County Humane Society after being found wandering around a nearby rock quarry.
The email didn’t make sense to Trist because Jazzy had passed away two years ago.
When Trist first met Jazzy at San Diego Humane Society four years ago, she ignored the “Do not pet” sign on her cage. Somehow she knew they’d have a connection.
“I came across my gorgeous girl, I stuck my hand in the cage, and she automatically walked right up to me, tail wagging, and put her head in my hand,” Trist told The Dodo. “I started crying because I had found my dog!”
Two years passed, and Trist moved from California to Kansas. Overwhelmed with the move and a new full-time job, she felt she didn’t have enough time to give to Jazzy. So she asked a dog-loving couple she was friendly with to watch her pup until she got settled.
However, when Trist tried to get back in touch with the couple, they ignored her calls and deleted their social media accounts. She couldn’t find them anywhere. Then, six months later, Trist’s fiancé managed to track them down and asked for Jazzy back.
“The lady told him she had died three months prior,” Trist said. “About a year and half went by, and lots and lots of grieving. I felt horrible for ever giving her to them because I thought I wasn’t there for her last moments.”
Trist thought she’d never see her beloved dog again, but luckily, Jazzy had a microchip. And when she got the news that Jazzy had been located, she dropped everything to be with her dog again.
“I automatically headed home from my job and got in the car and headed to her,” Trist said. “I was crying on and off the whole way there, which was almost a three-hour drive. I couldn’t believe she was still alive and I had no idea how she ended up that far away, but in those moments, I did not care.”
When Trist arrived at the shelter, and watched Jazzy walk towards her again, she couldn’t hold back her tears.
Jazzy recognized her mom immediately, and her little tail started wagging uncontrollably.
“She kind of went to sniff around, but came right back to me and gave me even more kisses,” Trist said. “She would not leave my lap or my arms the whole car ride home, either.”
Now, Jazzy is home and the little dog is not letting her mom out of her sight ever again.
“She’s been so, so happy ever since and she will not leave my side or let me go anywhere without her,” Trist said. “And I feel the same way!”
What exactly happened to the senior dog remains a mystery, but what’s important is that she’s safe and ready to spend her golden years in comfort, surrounded by her loving family.
“She’s a little more white than she was from the last time I saw her, and her hips are a little more sore,” Trist said, “but she’s still the same old lady she was before, and I’m so glad she stayed loving through these last two years.”
(All photographs by Maile Trist.)
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Yet another example of the love between people and their dogs. I would like to say that it doesn’t get any better than that but I would be wrong. It is a perfect case of unconditional love and there are hundreds and hundreds of other stories out there.
Hopefully a few of them will be featured on Learning from Dogs!
Nasa’s James Webb telescope is awesome beyond words.
The recent launch of this telescope, as a successor to Hubble, can see right back more than 13.5 billion years. The universe was formed 13.78 billion years ago. The reach of the James Webb telescope is therefore 98% (97.96) of the life of the universe. But the superlatives about this telescope are almost never-ending. For example it will, in time, be able to explore the tiny planetary worlds far, far away. We may in time see signs of life, as in water, vegetation, or industrialisation, connected with those planets.
The James Webb is in orbit some million miles away from Earth and will, in fact, be orbiting the sun.
One could go on and on speaking about this achievement but I will resist. I want to share a three things with you.
First the release of this early image and a portion of the associated text:
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Webb’s First Deep Field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.
Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying more distant galaxies, including some seen when the universe was less than a billion years old. This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks. And this is only the beginning. Researchers will continue to use Webb to take longer exposures, revealing more of our vast universe.
Second, why is it named after James E. Webb (1906- 1992)? James Webb was NASA’s second administrator and known for leading Apollo, the series of lunar exploration programs that landed the first humans on the Moon. (A good Q&A is here: https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/faqs/faq.html )
Last thing to share is some music! ‘Floating in Heaven’ by Graham Gouldman and Brian May
Learning from Dogs 