Author: Paul Handover

Better than pills

I’m talking about dogs, of course!

 

Perfect!

 

 

Don’t know where today has gone but my plans to write a long, thoughtful piece have evaporated much like the snow that fell over the week-end.

So I am taking the liberty of reproducing a piece on About.com showing the health benefits that come from being close to dogs and cats.

When thinking of ways to reduce stress in life, usually techniques like meditation, yoga and journaling come to mind. These are great techniques, to be sure. But getting a new best friend can also have many stress relieving and health benefits. While human friendsprovide great social support and come with some fabulous benefits, this article focuses on the benefits of furry friends: cats and dogs! Research shows that, unless you’re someone who really dislikes animals or is absolutely too busy to care for one properly, pets can provide excellent social support, stress relief and other health benefits—perhaps more than people! Here are more health benefits of pets:

Pets Can Improve Your Mood:
For those who love animals, it’s virtually impossible to stay in a bad mood when a pair of loving puppy eyes meets yours, or when a super-soft cat rubs up against your hand. Research supports the mood-enhancing benefits of pets. A recent study found that men with AIDS were less likely to suffer from depression if they owned a pet. (According to a press release, men with AIDS who did not own a pet were about three times more likely to report symptoms of depression than men who did not have AIDS. But men with AIDS who had pets were only about 50 percent more likely to report symptoms of depression, as compared to men in the study who did not have AIDS.)

Pets Control Blood Pressure Better Than Drugs:
Yes, it’s true. While ACE inhibiting drugs can generally reduce blood pressure, they aren’t as effective on controlling spikes in blood pressure due to stress and tension. However, in a recent study, groups of hypertensive New York stockbrokers who got dogs or cats were found to have lower blood pressure and heart rates than those who didn’t get pets. When they heard of the results, most of those in the non-pet group went out and got pets!

Pets Encourage You To Get Out And Exercise:
Whether we walk our dogs because they need it, or are more likely to enjoy a walk when we have companionship, dog owners do spend more time walking than non-pet owners, at least if we live in an urban setting. Because exercise is good for stress management and overall health, owning a dog can be credited with increasing these benefits.

Pets Can Help With Social Support:
When we’re out walking, having a dog with us can make us more approachable and give people a reason to stop and talk, thereby increasing the number of people we meet, giving us an opportunity to increase our network of friends and acquaintances, which also has great stress management benefits.

Pets Stave Off Loneliness and Provide Unconditional Love:
Pets can be there for you in ways that people can’t. They can offer love and companionship, and can also enjoy comfortable silences, keep secrets and are excellent snugglers. And they could be the best antidote to loneliness. In fact, research shows that nursing home residents reported less loneliness when visited by dogs than when they spent time with other people! All these benefits can reduce the amount of stress people experience in response to feelings of social isolation and lack of social support from people.

Pets Can Reduce Stress—Sometimes More Than People:
While we all know the power of talking about your problems with a good friend who’s also agood listener, recent research shows that spending time with a pet may be even better!Recent research shows that, when conducting a task that’s stressful, people actually experienced less stress when their pets were with them than when a supportive friend or even their spouse was present! (This may be partially due to the fact that pets don’t judge us; they just love us.)

It’s important to realize that owning a pet isn’t for everyone. Pets do come with additional work and responsibility, which can bring its own stress. However, for most people, the benefits of having a pet outweigh the drawbacks. Having a furry best friend can reduce stress in your life and bring you support when times get tough.

Sources:

Evenson RJ, Simon RW. Clarifying the Relationship Between Parenthood and Depression. Journal of Health and Social Behavior. December 2005.

Siegel JM, Angulo FJ, Detels R, Wesch J, Mullen A. AIDS diagnosis and depression in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study: the ameliorating impact of pet ownership. AIDS Care. April 1999.


Want more? Then go to this article on The Huffington Post published last December

Dog love

The great gift that dogs grant us.

That is the ability to feel in our hearts and souls what unconditional love really is.  Both the giving and receiving of that unconditional love.

As regular readers know there has been a number of articles on Learning from Dogs in recent times about the relationship that we humans have with this genetic off-shoot of wolves with an origin literally in the mists of time.  So it is an honour to share with you all, a poem about a very special dog, written by the grandniece of a good friend of ours here in Payson.

That grandniece is Meg and her dog’s name is Siku.  Here is Meg’s love poem.

SIKU

My best friend in the whole world is Siku.

Siku is a smelly, thick-fur, cute type of dog.

Siku has a wet nose, round eyes and pointy ears like shark teeth.

She is a happy-go-lucky free-minded smart dog and I am so lucky to have her in my life.

She also is a fun-funny, hip-happy type of dog.

Siku is a run-running, camp-camping, playing games type of dog.

Siku loves to train with me, go sledding with me, and she loves to catch the squirrels and torture our poor little stressed-out cats.

When I am with Siku I feel like the whole world loves me.

I feel smart, cool, funny and loved.

 

SIKU and Meg.

 

 

Now this is real time management!

With grateful thanks to Janet and John Z.

If you’ve ever worked for a boss who reacts before getting the facts and thinking things through, you will love this!
Arcelor-Mittal Steel, feeling it was time for a shakeup, hired a new CEO. The new boss was determined to rid the company of all slackers. 

On a tour of the facilities, the CEO noticed a guy leaning against a wall. The room was full of workers and he wanted to let them know that he meant business. He asked the guy, “How much money do you make a week?”

A little surprised, the young man looked at him and said, “I make $400 a week. Why?”

The CEO said, “Wait right here.” He walked back to his office, came back in two minutes, and handed the guy $1,600 in cash and said, “Here’s four weeks’ pay.  Now GET OUT and don’t come back.”

Feeling pretty good about himself, the CEO looked around the room and asked, “Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-ball did here?”

From across the room a voice said, “Pizza delivery guy from Domino’s .”

(How come I was never that lucky?)

Government Taxation Departments, don’t you just love them!

Sent in by John Lewis, an old (English) friend of this Blog.

Apparently this is a real reply from the (UK) Inland Revenue. The Guardian newspaper had to ask for special permission to print it.

Dear Mr Addison,

I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise.   I will address them, as ever, in order.

Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a “begging letter”.    It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a “tax demand”.    This is how we at the Inland Revenue have always,  for reasons of accuracy,  traditionally referred to such documents.

Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the “endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat” has been noted.    However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer I would cautiously suggest that their being from “pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers”  might indicate that your decision to  “file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies”  is at best a little ill-advised.    In common with my own organisation,  it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a “lackwit bumpkin” or, come to that, a “sodding charity”.    More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain , with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.

Which brings me to my next point.   Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay  “go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services”,  a moment’s rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to “stump up for the whole damned party”  yourself.    The estimates you provide for the Chancellor’s disbursement of the funds levied by taxation,  whilst colourful,  are,  in fairness,  a little off the mark.     Less than you seem to imagine is spent on “junkets for Bunterish lickspittles”  and  “dancing whores”  whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to,  for example,  “that box-ticking facade of a university system.”

A couple of technical points arising from direct queries:

1. The reason we don’t simply write  “Muggins” on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system;

2. You can rest assured that  “sucking the very marrow of those with nothing else to give”  has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn’t render it irrelevant,  the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.

I trust this has helped.   In the meantime,  whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other,  I ought to point out that even if you did choose to  “give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India ”  you would still owe us the money.

Please send it to us by Friday.

Yours sincerely,
H J Lee
Customer Relations
Inland Revenue

Magical nature

Big thanks to Dogkisses’ Blog for highlighting this video from National Geographic.

Nothing to add to the video – just watch it, be enthralled and reflect on our need to be in spiritual harmony with our beautiful planet Earth. (N.B. for whatever reason, I was unable to embed the code in this Post so you will have to click here to watch this short video.  But do it’s magical.)

Then if you want more, watch this:

Welcome Sweeny

The pain of losing Poppy dissolves with the love of Sweeny.

Regular followers of this funny old Blog will recall that last Friday we lost our sweet little Poppy out in the forest on one of our regular walks.  Jeannie has been in such pain since then despite trying very hard to move on really because Poppy was the only dog that she could cuddle and call her baby.  Even though Jean has no issues with not having been a mother in her life, it was clear that this tiny little dog had been answering Jean’s needs to nurture something that could be held close to her.

So today (Wednesday) we have been to our local humane society and found a little fella who can fill the void in our lives.  He is a puppy with the name of Sweeny.

And due to being very short on time just now, I trust you will accept a few pictures for today’s Post.

Arriving home
Welcome, little Sweeny
How cute is that!

 

Hi! I'm Pharaoh, going to be my buddy?

Total, utter madness, Pt 4

Continuing the review of Lester Brown’s book World on the Edge.

Regular readers will be aware that I have been summarising each chapter of this pivotal book.  Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are part of the section that Lester Brown calls A Deteriorating Foundation.  But I am aware that wall-to-wall gloom is often too much for people to take in so I wanted to let you know that the third section, The Response: Plan B, is very much a realistic and pragmatic approach to the alternative, a planet that will let countless future generations live in harmony and sustainably.

So please take in the dire situation that we are in by reading these summaries or, better still, buy the book!

Chapter Four, Rising Temperatures, Melting Ice, and Food Security.

  • The Petermann Glacier calves an iceberg that covered 97 square miles on August 5th, 2010.
  • Scientists for some years have been reporting that the Greenland ice sheet was melting at an accelerating rate.
  • Richard Bates, from the University of St Andrews, part of a team monitoring Greenland ice melt, was reported as saying:

Dr Richard Bates, who is monitoring the ice alongside researchers from America, said the expedition had expected to find evidence of melting this year after “abnormally high” temperatures in the area. Climate change experts say that globally it has been the warmest six months globally since records began.

But he was “amazed to see an area of ice three times the size of Manhattan Island had broken off.

“It is not a freak event and is certainly a manifestation of warming. This year marks yet another record breaking melt year in Greenland; temperatures and melt across the entire ice sheet have exceeded those in 2007 and of historical records.”

  • A temperate rise of between 2C and 7C would cause the entire Greenland ice mass to melt – raising sea-levels world-wide by 23 feet (7 metres)!
  • In the United States last year saw record hot temperatures on the East Coast.
  • On September 27th Los Angeles recorded an all-time high of 113 degrees F, then the official thermometer broke.
  • A nearby thermometer survived to register a temperature of 119 degrees F, a record for the region.
  • Crop ecologists use a rule of thumb that for each 1-degree-Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum during the growing season, we can expect a 10-percent decline in grain yields.
  • Temperatures are rising much faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.  Winter temperatures in the Arctic, including Alaska, western Canada and eastern Russia, have climbed by 4-7 degrees F. over the last half-century.
  • This record rise in temperatures in the Arctic region could lead to changes in climate patterns that will affect the entire planet.
  • Even a 3-foot rise in sea level would sharply reduce the rice harvest in Asia. It would inundate Bangladesh, a country of 164 million people, submerge part of the Mekong Delta ( a region that produces half of Viet Nam’s rice).

That’s enough from me, simply because although this chapter in the book continues with many more frightening facts, I can’t continue to list them in this particular Post.  If the above doesn’t cause you to think and want to change, then a couple of dozen more facts aren’t going to do it either.

Just look at the photograph below and ponder on what we are leaving our children and our grand-children.  Indeed, if you are, say 50 years or younger, ponder on what the next few decades could offer for you.

We have to break our addiction with our modern way of living – or Planet Earth will do it for us.

A mother of an iceberg!

On Aug. 5, 2010, an enormous chunk of ice, roughly 97 square miles (251 square kilometers) in size, broke off the Petermann Glacier, along the northwestern coast of Greenland. The Canadian Ice Service detected the remote event within hours in near real-time data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The Petermann Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 70-kilometer (40-mile) long floating ice shelf, said researchers who analyzed the satellite data at the University of Delaware. Taken from here.

This most beautiful of relationships

That of man and dog.

A number of items have crossed my screen that, together, present the most wonderful story of the intensity and length of the time that mankind has shared his life with the dog.

First is this piece from Anthropology.net from 2008 when this was big news.

A Possible Domestication Of Dogs During The Aurignacian: 31,700 Years Ago

Both Dienkes and John Hawks have shared news about the latest research on the domestication of dogs. The researchers analyze 117 skulls of prehistoric canids from sites in Belgium, Ukraine and Russia. They conclude that a 31,700 year old canid from Belgium is ‘clearly different from the recent wolves, resembling most closely the prehistoric dogs.’

The draft can be found in the Journal of Archaeological Science under the title, “Fossil dogs and wolves from Palaeolithic sites in Belgium, the Ukraine and Russia: osteometry, ancient DNA and stable isotopes.” If the dating, and phylogenetic analysis is correct, these remains makes them the oldest known remains of domesticated dog, pushing back domestication time by 17,700 years, since the second oldest known dog, found in Russia, dates to 14,000 years ago as explained by Carl Feagans.

Doral View of the Goyet Cave Dog (a) and wolf skulls (b & c)Doral View of the Goyet Cave Dog (a) and wolf skulls (b & c)

Prehistoric dogs are distinguished from both prehistoric and extant wolves in having a shorter and broader snout, relatively wider brain cases, and a general reduction in skull size. Palaeolithic dogs in the study conform to this pattern. The researchers extended their anatomical analysis to mtDNA and stable isotopes on the Belgian samples. All fossil samples yielded unique DNA sequences.

This is a fascinating article, read the rest of it here.

Next a further explanation of the history of the dog from About.com Archaeology:

Dog history is really the history of the partnership between dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) and humans. That partnership is based on human needs for help with herding and hunting, an early alarm system, and a source of food in addition to the companionship many of us today know and love. Dogs get companionship, protection and shelter, and a reliable food source out of the deal. But when this partnership first occurred is at the moment under some controversy.

Dog history has been studied recently using mitochondrial DNA, which suggests that wolves and dogs split into different species around 100,000 years ago; but whether humans had anything to do with that, no one really knows.

Just think about that – 100,000 years ago!  But even if one assumes that early man wasn’t linked to this species divergence, the hard evidence of dogs being special to man still goes back a very long way.  Continuing the piece above:

The oldest dog skull discovered to date is from Goyet Cave, Belgium. The Goyet cave collections (the site was excavated in the mid-19th century) were examined recently (Germonpré and colleagues, cited below) and a fossil canid skull was discovered among them. Although there is some confusion as to which level the skull came from, it has been direct-dated by AMS at 31,700 BP. The skull most closely represents prehistoric dogs, rather than wolves. The study examining the Goyet cave also identified what appears to be prehistoric dogs at Chauvet Cave (~26,000 bp) and Mezhirich in the Ukraine (ca 15,000 years BP), among others.

However, I am told that what the Goyet Cave skull represents is not a “domesticated dog” but rather a wolf in transition to a dog, and that the physical changes seen in the skulls (consisting primarily of the shortening of the snout) may have been driven by changes in diet, rather than specific selection of traits by humans. That transition in diet could well have been partly due to the beginnings of a relationship between humans and dogs, although the relationship might have been as tenuous as animals following human hunters to scavenge, rather like the behavior that is believed to have existed between humans and cats. You could argue that cats never have been domesticated, they just take advantage of the mice we attract

As they say, dogs have masters, cats have slaves! Millions of dog owners have a relationship with their dog that is close to spiritual, and that also isn’t new. Let’s read on:

A burial site in Germany called Bonn-Oberkassel has joint human and dog interments dated to 14,000 years ago. The earliest domesticated dog found in China is at the early Neolithic (7000-5800 BC) Jiahu site in Henan Province. European Mesolithic sites like Skateholm(5250-3700 BC) in Sweden have dog burials, proving the value of the furry beasts to hunter-gatherer settlements. Danger Cave in Utah is the earliest case of dog burial in the Americas, at about 11,000 years ago.

Haplotypes and Grey Wolves

A recent study led by Robert Wayne (vonHoldt et al., below) at UCLA and appearing in Nature in March 2010 reported that dogs appear to have a higher proportion of wolf haplotypes from grey wolves native to the Middle East. That suggests, contrary to earlier studies, that the middle east was the original location of domestication. What also showed up in this report was evidence for either a second Asian domestication or a later admixture with Chinese wolves.

Dog History: When Were Dogs Domesticated?

It seems clear that dog domestication was a long process, which started far longer ago than was believed even as recently as 2008. Based on evidence from Goyet and Chauvetcaves in Europe, the dog domestication process probably began as long ago as 30,000 years, although the oldest evidence for a broader relationship, a working relationship, is at the Bonn-Oberkassel site, 14,000 years ago. The story of dog domestication is still in transition itself.

14,000 years ago people buried a dog with a human!  That is so beautiful.

Finally, National Geographic have been showing a series on this wonderful relationship between man and dog.  Enjoy this introduction video.

Poppy, Be in Peace

A tragic loss of a wonderful dog.

Little Poppy

On Friday afternoon, Jeannie and I were out on our usual walk along a trail through the Granite Dells.  This is spectacular scenery with magnificent granite boulders, escarpments and mountains all around.  The trail that we use is a Payson Area Trails System/United States Forestry Service designated walk.

As it happens it’s just over a mile from where we live and it has been a regular place to walk Pharaoh’s ‘pack’ most days.

Pharaoh’s little group of dogs includes Dhalia, Hazle and Poppy.  Poppy is a small terrier/poodle mix and like Dhalia and Hazle is a rescue dog.  Indeed Jean rescued Poppy many years ago from a Mexican rubble site practically hairless and surviving, just, off food scraps she could beg, steal or find.  Poppy, at 15 lbs, was also the closest buddy of Pharaoh, at 90 lbs!  Pharaoh is our German Shepherd dog whose face is the subject of the home page of this Blog.

We walk all four of them most days along the trail described above; Friday was no exception.  The only difference was that when we were almost back to the car we stopped and chatted to a neighbour, Bud, who was in his truck with a couple of his dogs.

Bud then drove off and we immediately noticed Poppy wasn’t with us.

One minute she was with us, the next Poppy had simply disappeared!

And that really is it.  I could go on about the hours spent going over and over the area, re-walking the trail, staying there until nightfall on Friday, going back at 06.30 am on Saturday morning, then again twice more on Saturday and again on Sunday with an inch of snow on the ground and with heavy sleet pelting down.  Not a sign, not a whimper, not a clue.

Thus she remains lost in weather that for the last 48 hours has been brutal; it is unrealistic to imagine that she survived despite us praying for a miracle.  Jeannie is devastated; I the same.  What hurts so much is not knowing what happened.

So dear little Poppy we hope you are at peace and we thank you for the great love you have given Jean and then later on me and Pharaoh.

“There is one best place to bury a dog.
“If you bury him in this spot, he will
come to you when you call – come to you
over the grim, dim frontier of death,
and down the well-remembered path,
and to your side again.

“And though you call a dozen living
dogs to heel, they shall not growl at
him, nor resent his coming,
for he belongs there.

“People may scoff at you, who see
no lightest blade of grass bent by his
footfall, who hear no whimper, people
who may never really have had a dog.
Smile at them, for you shall know
something that is hidden from them,
and which is well worth the knowing.

“The one best place to bury a good
dog is in the heart of his master.”

Ben Hur Lampman —
from the Portland Oregonian Sept. 11, 1925

Poppy is beautifully placed in the heart of Jeannie, me and all her doggie friends.

Taking the day off.

We have had a bit of a sad situation over the week-end, which I will write about tomorrow.

So please forgive me, dear reader, for keeping my head down this day.