A wonderful story that mustn’t be allowed to fade away.
Togo
A week ago, I wrote a post called Sticks and Stones. Towards the end of that post, I mentioned Togo,
In 1925, a ravaging case of diphtheria broke out in the isolated Alaskan village of Nome. No plane or ship could get the serum there, so the decision was made for multiple sled dog teams to relay the medicine across the treacherous frozen land. The dog that often gets credit for eventually saving the town is Balto, but he just happened to run the last, 55-mile leg in the race. The sled dog who did the lion’s share of the work was Togo. His journey, fraught with white-out storms, was the longest by 200 miles and included a traverse across perilous Norton Sound — where he saved his team and driver in a courageous swim through ice floes.
and added that I would write more about Togo. Here it is.
Togo (October 1913 – December 5, 1929) was the sled dog who led Leonhard Seppala and his dog sled team as they covered the longest distance in the 1925 relay of diphtheria antitoxin from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, to combat an outbreak of the disease. The run is commemorated by the annual Iditarod dog sled race.
Annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race
Togo was a Siberian Husky, his coat was black, brown, and gray, and he weighed about 48 pounds (22 kg). Seppala’s lead dog during the 1914 All-Alaska Sweepstakes, and was a precocious leader. At the time of the serum run Togo was twelve years old.
Within that entry, under the sub-heading of the Great Race of Mercy is this,
The first batch of 300,240 units of serum was delivered by train from Anchorage to Nenana, Alaska, where it was picked up by the first of twenty mushers and more than 100 dogs who relayed the serum a total of 674 miles (1,085 km) to Nome.
Togo and Seppala traveled 170 miles (274 km) from Nome in three days, and picked up the serum in Shaktoolik on January 31. The temperature was estimated at −30 °F (−34 °C), and the gale force winds causing a wind chill of −85 °F (−65 °C).
The return trip crossed the exposed open ice of the Norton Sound. The night and a ground blizzard prevented Seppala from being able to see the path but Togo navigated to the roadhouse at Isaac’s Point on the shore by 8 AM preventing certain death to his team. After traveling 84 miles (134 km) in one day, the team slept for six hours before continuing at 2 AM.
Before the night the temperature dropped to −40 °F (−40 °C), and the wind increased to 65 mi/h (105 km/h). The team ran across the ice, which was breaking up, while following the shoreline. They returned to shore to cross Little McKinley Mountain, climbing 5,000 feet (1,500 m). After descending to the next roadhouse in Golovin, Seppala passed the serum to Charlie Olsen, who in turn would pass it to Gunnar Kaasen and Balto.
A web search for ‘Togo’ including a mention on a website called Find A Grave that has this,
Birth: Oct., 1913
Death: Dec. 5, 1929, Poland Spring, Androscoggin County, Maine, USA
A sled dog for Leonhard Seppala. In 1925, When a diphtheria out brake happened in Nome Alaska. Seppala, Togo and a team of dogs ran to Nenana. He ran 10 times the distance of a average sled run. However another dog named Balto got nearly all of the fame. After the run, Seppala sold Togo to a friend in Poland Spring Maine were Togo was euthanized on December 5th 1929. He was stuffed and was put on display at Yale University. He was eventually moved to the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Museum in Wasilla Alaska, where he is today.
Burial: Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Museum, Wasilla, Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska, USA
Looking at the human-animal relationship, from the perspective of the animal.
This is a guest post from Virginia Ingram. Virginia is becoming more involved in the animal rescue movement. As such, she knows only too well how vital it is to give so many precious animals a second chance.
In a very real sense we, as in mankind, owe our humanity to dogs and other animals. As I wrote here in the essay What is love?
“But understanding animals and empathizing with them also triggered other changes in humanity’s evolution, Shipman said.
All those things allow people to live with people. Once people have domesticated animals, they start to live in stable groups. They have fields, crops and more permanent dwellings.”
We owe so much!
So with that in mind, here is Virginia’s guest post.
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WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Recently I started to question the time I spend on the internet reading articles, essays and recommendations of books about all things concerned with animals. I receive animal stories from friends, acquaintances and business associates from all corners of the globe. I love to get them because, well….. hey, I really enjoy them!
After I read them I forward them to others who I think will also enjoy them. They make me feel warm and fuzzy. They are enlightening, poignant, humorous, inspiring and sometimes heart-rending. I find I cannot ignore any cute email containing animal pictures even though I may have already seen it a dozen times before. Give me a story about a dog who ate a popsicle and to me ‘that’s entertainment’ as they say. We human beings love to feel moved by great stories and these communications are full of it. I am such a sap when it comes to animal stories; so many of us are.
But here is the rub. What do the animals get out of it?
We chuckle and get our jollies from these incredible beings from a distance on the World Wide Web but the fact of the matter is that so many of these wonderful creatures end up unwanted, uncared for or even starved and beaten in shelters across the world.
Unknown and uncared for!
What gives? Why is there such a disconnect? How can we love animals from a distance and not be concerned with the abuses that go on in our own environment?
We know that there are those who don’t understand that animals have feelings and emotions, that they experience deep loss and sadness as well as happiness and joy. What can we do raise to the consciousness of human beings who don’t get it?
I think it involves sticking our collective necks out. I think that we need to be ready to risk some things. It might involve changing or damaging a relationship with someone who is acting in irresponsible ways towards animals. We need to be ready to risk it.
Do you see it on your own street? Maybe it’s a neighbor who leaves their dog on a chain in the yard on weekends regardless of weather or exposure to other animals. Maybe it’s the guy next door who ‘forgets’ to feed his animal.
Let’s stand up for these animals who have no voice. Let’s be advocates for these amazing creatures who cannot be their own advocate. Let’s hold humans accountable. Let’s risk a friendship and say something, make that difficult phone call on behalf of a animal. Let’s talk to people about animal issues and problems. Let’s try to change the weak laws that do not properly address animal cruelty. Let’s summon our courage and do the unpopular things which will enhance the quality of life for these precious beings.
Can you imagine how animals feel when they have been turned over to an animal shelter by the person whom they loved more than themselves? Trust me, the sense of abandonment and fear, the bewilderment in their eye is excruciating to observe. I have seen it not from the distance of my computer but in person. Let’s DO something to change all this. It’s time to get involved.
By all means keep the cute emails going but for every minute we spend on the internet, reading the books and enjoying the emails let’s put the same amount of time into getting something done to improve the lives of animals. Stand up, walk out the door, volunteer or donate money. We can help the suffering. We can make a difference.
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Powerful words indeed. Don’t know about you but I read a strength of feeling that was very moving. A clear message that we must never turn the head, never just ‘tut tut’ but do something. Even if only befriending a stray animal. Because one might argue that even that feral dog without a home is demonstrating something all of us on this green planet need to understand; living a sustainable life!
Finally, living proof of what we can give an animal when we care and love it. The dog in the picture below is Loopy, a dog that Jean rescued in Mexico many years ago. She was so badly hurt by humans that it took Jean six months before Loopy would let Jean touch and hug her.
When I came on the scene, my gender was against me. It took me twelve months before Loopy trusted me. Now she will come to me and let me place my face against hers in the most loving, caring embrace that one can imagine.
So why the fearful look on Loopy’s face as she turns away from the camera? Somehow the camera is reminding Loopy of some sort of weapon that was used to beat her!
Loopy
As Virginia so lovingly wrote, “We can help the suffering. We can make a difference.“
Patience, yet something else we can learn from dogs!
My friend, Neil, of many years back in South Devon, England, recently sent me a link to a website called Patient Dogs. From where one can view the following.
As I said, more lovely examples to be seen here. Thanks Neil!
Remaining with the theme of love, love lost and new love.
John Hurlburt sent me the following last week and it is so perfect as a sequel to the writings of the last two days. That was John’s poetry last Saturday on Learning from Dogs, by the way.
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Two lost souls
After losing his parents, this three year old orangutan was so depressed he wouldn’t eat and didn’t respond to any medical treatments. The veterinarians thought he would surely die from sadness.
The zoo keepers found an old sick dog on the grounds in the park at the zoo where the orangutan lived and took the dog to the animal treatment center. The dog arrived at the same time the orangutan was there being treated.
The two lost souls met and have been inseparable ever since. The orangutan found a new reason to live and each always tries his best to be a good companion to his new found friend. They are together 24 hours a day in all their activities.
They live in Northern California where swimming is their favorite past-time, although Roscoe (the orangutan) is a little afraid of the water and needs his friend’s help to swim.
Together they have discovered the joy and laughter in life and the value of friendship.
They have found more than a friendly shoulder to lean on.
Long Live Friendship!
I don’t know, but some say life is too short, others say it is too long, but I know that nothing that we do makes sense if we don’t touch the hearts of others. While it lasts!
May you always have love to share, health to spare, and friends who care…..even if they are a little hairy at times.
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I must say that the generosity of so many of my readers in sending me these beautiful examples of what is really important in this world of ours touches me deeply. Thank you, John. Thank you, one and all.
A most beautiful conclusion to this reflection on animals and love.
Yesterday, I took a personal journey through the subject of love. I closed that post by saying, “So let me close this essay by asking you to come back here and read the guest post tomorrow from author Eleanore MacDonald, where Eleanore writes of the loss of their dog Djuna. You will read the most precious and heart-rending words about love.”
So an enormous thank-you for being granted permission to republish the tribute Eleanore MacDonald wrote upon the loss of their dear dog Djuna. I guarantee you will need a handkerchief or tissue close to hand!
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one of the seven great dogs
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” Anatole France
Djuna Cupcake, my heart of hearts, photo by Breelyn MacDonald
A great squall came upon us here on our farmlet a week ago. I saw it first from a distance, in that dawning of the morning when Djuna usually announced the coming day with his gentle, breathy ‘woooof’, his polite plea to join us on the bed. Mysteriously disturbing, it surely was a sign of things to come, but we didn’t know how dangerous it really was until it was upon us.
And when it was suddenly there, a Great Joy was sucked from our world and an overwhelming sadness took its place … a raging stillness, hot and stifling, no breath, no heartbeat.
My springs of Joy are dry … (a sentiment stolen in part from that great old song, Long Time Traveler)
Djuna Cupcake was one of the Seven Great Dogs. If you’ve seen the film ‘Dean Spanley’, you will know what I mean. If you have loved and been loved by a dog of pure heart … one who was a great teacher of presence, of patience, one who was the dispenser of unconditional love and the blessings of an incomparable joy … one who was a great listener, guardian, and the embodiment of Buddha, Coyote, the Goddesses Eleos and Kuan Yin all in one soft coated body … one who was your loving shadow because he or she felt that it was their job to see you safe at all times … you will know what I mean.
He died quite suddenly. Like that squall, his death came with no warning and for days after Paul and I were sucked deep into that great black hole of grief. The dread attacked us at every turn, where we would always see him but now only a glaring emptiness stood. I felt as though my heart and soul had a raw, oozing, gaping, searingly painful wound where he had been torn away from me. Stolen. We cried a lot.
Some people will never understand. I try to feel compassion for them, rather than issuing the big ‘EFF YOU”, but I am only human. What is this BS about a ‘three day’ rule? What? Because he was ‘just a dog’ we should be over it all in 3 days? Djuna was surely a better person than most Humans and I will never stop missing him. I feel so deeply sorry for those people who have overlooked having such grace and beauty bless their lives –– the companionship of a great dog (or cat or horse, or human person) –– so that, when the monumental end comes and they’ve come through the great fires of sorrow, and have been washed by the flush of a million tears, they come through to the other side where they are able to see the remarkable love, joys and lessons they’d been gifted by that companionship. I can only hope now to ‘be’ the person Djuna thought me to be.
3 days and 3 more and 3 million more and even then more just won’t do it.
Paul and I were with Djuna on our bedroom floor when he died. I lay with him next to my heart, whispering love, my arm draped over his neck … and as he was leaving us, I saw him standing just beyond Paul. Alert, ears akimbo, head cocked, eyes bright, a wad of socks in mouth, standing in his particularly great exuberance, as he did each morning when the time for chores presented itself – “Come on! It’s time to go! Get with it you silly humans! There’s work to be done, there’s a barn to clean and a day to sniff, there’s delight to be found!” And then he left.
My ‘joyometer’, my daily dispenser of mirth, and my constant reminder of the importance of presence, has gone missing – his lessons of ‘Be Here Now’ measured in doses of ’Oh, sense the beauty in the music of the wind!’, ‘Let’s just run in circles and laugh’, ‘I love, love, love you!’ … gone. It is wholly up to me now to remember to stay in each moment, to just be a nice person, cry whenever I must, to laugh as much as possible and dance for the sheer joy of it. And when the cacophony of the deafening silence has quieted and the colors of sorrow have muted and gone transparent and I’ve had some time to let the Aegean clean up those bloodied wounds in my heart and soul, there will be room again here for another one of the Seven Great Dogs. And the cycles will continue on.
Almost every evening Djuna and I took an evening stroll down our quiet lane. I loved watching him dance his great joy, nose to the ground scenting all of the news of the day or nose to the sky, sensing what was coming on the breeze. On our walks I watched the seasons change, the rising of the full moon, the greening of the new spring and the evening skies, like snowflakes, no one ever alike … I watched the Canadian geese come and go, the Red Tail hawks courting in the air above me, and let the build up of my day fall away as I tread softly with my gentle friend. It took me several days after Djuna’s death for me to realize that here was yet again another gift he had left for me in his wake, and one I should continue to enjoy. The sky was black to the West, we’d had heavy winds and rain all day, but when there was a break I set off on ‘our’ walk. Wrapped tightly in sadness and hardly breathing with the missing of him, I shuffled along about a 1/2 mile and turned for home before the rains started up and the chill wind began to blow, fierce again, from the south. That wind battered and bashed me until it freed the tears from my eyes, and the freezing rain lashed my face until I grew numb. As though suddenly realizing I was about to drown, I surfaced, taking in great gulps of air as though I’d not been breathing for several days, and began to climb free of the suffocating bonds of my sadness.
Part of our family
My Djuna, my Cupcake … My Heart of Hearts who knew my soul, my every thought; great lover of Paul and I, and of Breelyn; great lover of his mare and his pony, of socks and his furry toys and his GWBush chew doll; great lover of his evening walkies and of riding in the car, and feeding the birds; great lover of sofa naps and sleeping in late with us on the bed and chasing BALL and rolling on the grass and of eating horse poop; bountiful bestower of stealthy kisses; joyful jokester, Greek scholar (he knew about 15 words and understood several phrases spoken to him in Greek; something we did only after he’d begun to understand words and phrases *spelled out* in English! ‘Car’, ‘dinner?’, ‘play with the ball?’, ‘feed the birds’, water, pony, get the goat, etc!); Djuna, beloved Honorary Cat, our timekeeper, our guardian angel, our boss, our playfully dignified friend (thanks for that Marija) and family member, and one of the Seven Great Dogs – we will love and miss you forever.
But now – there’s work to be done, there’s a barn to clean and a new day to sniff, there’s delight to be found!
love – photo by Breelyn MacDonald
Copyright (c) 2012 Eleanore MacDonald
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When I originally read this, I left a comment, “Achingly beautiful words. One of the most precious pieces of prose about a dog that I can ever remember reading.” Few will disagree!
As I replied in a recent email to Pat Shipman in response to Eleanore’s words above, “That really does endorse the proposition that, in a very real sense, our humanity is the product of our ancient relationship with animals.“
Dear Eleanore, thank you so much for allowing me to republish your beautiful thoughts.
How the relationship that we have with domesticated animals taught us the meaning of love.
This exploration into the most fundamental emotion of all, love, was stimulated by me just finishing Pat Shipman’s book The Animal Connection. Sturdy followers of Learning from Dogs (what a hardy lot you are!) will recall that about 5 weeks ago I wrote a post entitled The Woof at the Door which included an essay from Pat, republished with her permission, that set out how “Dogs may have been man’s best friend for thousands of years longer than we realized“.
The following day, I wrote a further piece introducing the book and then commenced reading it myself. Please go there and read about the praise that the book has received.
What I want to do is to take a personal journey through love. I should add immediately that I have no specialist or professional background with regard to ‘love’ just, like millions of others, a collection of experiences that have tapped me on the shoulder these last 67 years.
I would imagine that there are almost as many ideas about the meaning of love as there are people on this planet. Dictionary.com produces this in answer to the search on the word ‘love’.
love
[luhv] noun, verb, loved, lov·ing. noun
a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
sexual passion or desire.
a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person;sweetheart.
(used in direct address as a term of endearment, affection,or the like): Would you like to see a movie, love?
But, I don’t know about you, those definitions leave something missing for me. Here’s my take on what love is, and it’s only by having so many dogs in my life that I have found this clarity of thought.
Love is trust, love is pure openness, love is knowing that you offer yourself without any barriers. Think how you dream of giving yourself outwardly in the total surrender of love. Reflect on that surrender that you experience when deeply connecting, nay loving, with your dog.
Here’s how Pat Shipman expressed it in her book:
Clearly, part of the basis of our intimacy with tame or domesticated animals involves physical contact. People who work with animals touch them. It doesn’t matter if you are a horse breeder, a farmer raising pigs, a pet owner, a zoo keeper, or a veterinarian, we touch them, stroke them, hug them. Many of us kiss our animals and many allow them to sleep with us. We touch animals because this is a crucial aspect of the nonverbal communication that we have evolved over millennia. We touch animals because it raises our oxytocin levels – and the animal’s oxytocin levels. We touch animals because we and they enjoy it. (p.274)
Pat soon after writes,
From the first stone tool to the origin of language and the most recent living tools, our involvement with animals has directed our course.
Thus it is not beyond reason to presume that tens of thousands of years of physical and emotional closeness between humans and their animals have developed the emotion of love in us humans, so eloquently expressed in art and life.
There’s another aspect of what we may have learned from dogs. In Alexandra Horowitz’s book Inside of a Dog, she writes of the way that dogs look at us,
Having been folded into the world of humans, dogs no longer needed some of the skills that they would to survive on their own. As we’ll see, what dogs lack in physical skills, they make up for in people skills.
AND THEN OUR EYES MET ….
There is one final, seemingly minor difference between the two species. This one small behavioral variation between wolves and dogs has remarkable consequences. The difference is this: dogs look at our eyes.
Dogs make eye contact and look to us for information – about the location of food, about our emotions, about what is happening. Wolves avoid eye contact. In both species, eye contact can be a threat: to stare is to assert authority. So too is it with humans. In one of my undergraduate psychology classes, I have my students do a simple field experiment wherein they try to make and hold eye contact with everyone they pass on campus. Both they and those on the receiving end of their stares behave remarkably consistently: everyone can’t wait to break eye contact. It’s stressful for the students, a great number of whom suddenly claim to be shy: they report their hearts begin to race and they start sweating when simply holding someone’s gaze for a few seconds. They concoct elaborate stories on the spot to explain why someone looked away, or held their gaze for a half second longer. For the most part, their staring is met with deflected gazes from those they eyeball.
Then a few sentences later, Alexandra continues to write,
Dogs look, too. Though they have inherited some aversion to staring too long at eyes, dogs seem to be predisposed to inspect our faces for information, for reassurance, for guidance. Not only is this pleasing to us – there is a certain satisfaction in gazing deep into a dog’s eyes gazing back at you – it is also perfectly suited to getting along with humans. (pps 45-46)
No apologies for now inserting the photograph of Pharaoh that adorns the Welcome page of Learning from Dogs. Underlines what Alexandra wrote above in spades.
Now that is a gaze!
OK, time to start bringing this to a close.
The Toronto Star ran a great review of Pat Shipman’s book from which I will just take this snippet,
“But understanding animals and empathizing with them also triggered other changes in humanity’s evolution, Shipman said.
All those things allow people to live with people. Once people have domesticated animals, they start to live in stable groups. They have fields, crops and more permanent dwellings.”
In other words, we can see that living with animals took us from nomadic hunter-gatherers to living with other people in stable groups; the birth of farming. It is my contention that the evolution of communities and the resulting more stable relationships elevated love leading to love becoming a higher order emotion than just associated with the ‘grunt’ of reproduction.
I started by saying that it was Pat Shipman’s book that stimulated me to wander through my own consciousness and realise that when I bury my face in the side of one of the dogs, say on the bed, it resonates with the most ancient memories in my human consciousness. Indeed, I am of no doubt that my openness and emotional surrender to that dog enables me to be a better, as in more loving, person for Jean.
So let me close this essay by asking you to return here and read the guest post tomorrow from author Eleanore MacDonald, where Eleanore writes of the loss of their dog Djuna. You will read the most precious and heart-rending words about love. Thank you.
Regular followers of Learning from Dogs will know that Dan and I go back a long way; far too long! In fact the occasion of me becoming aware of Mr. Daniel Gomez was at a Commodore Computer users conference in Boston, Mass.
I was giving a talk promoting a word-processing program that I was marketing for the Commodore. That software was called Wordcraft and I think the year was 1979, possibly 1980. Anyway, I used the word ‘fortnight’, which back in England is a common word meaning two weeks. Immediately, a voice called out from the audience, “Hey Handover, what’s a fortnight?”
The session deteriorated rapidly thereafter! Dan and I became very good friends and his LA company Cimarron became my West Coast USA distributor for Wordcraft. And it was Dan’s sister, Suzann, who invited me down to Mexico for Christmas 2007 which led to me meeting my beloved Jeannie! Funny old world!
On to the video
The male golden dog on the left-hand side of pool is Willis, a two-year-old Golden Retriever who has cataracts and is practically blind. Then there is Gwendy who seems to have been with Dan for an absolute lifetime.
Then the black dog is Bella, a flat-coated retriever, that belongs to a neighbour.
When I spoke with Dan over the phone about Willis, Dan said that he is not in any way a disabled dog. In the pool, he listens to where the ball lands, swims towards it and then lets his nose locate it precisely. Out walking, when Dan throws the ball, Willis is just able to see Dan’s arm move through the air. Willis then computes where the ball is heading, runs in that direction and, again, uses his power of smell to pin down the ball exactly.
Nature, once again, shows the value of loving contact during those crucial early years.
I’m writing this at 7.45am on the 30th. Coincidentally, Jean and I were chatting in bed about an hour ago about this ‘touchy – feely’ stuff. This was a bed having four dogs on it! One of those, Hazel, was laying alongside my left leg just sucking up me stroking her head and tummy. Jean and I were musing that for animals and humans, how we are touched by our parents, especially our mother, during those first few years of growing up has profound implications for how we as adults respond to being touched and hugged.
So then I opened up my mail box and there was this sent by Cynthia Gomez serving as a wonderful reminder of the power of touch. Thanks Cynthia, great timing!
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Some pictures just don’t need captions.
There is nothing like Mom’s lap no matter who you are. This is precious !!!!
This is a newborn offspring of Taskin, a Gypsy Stallionowned by
Villa Vanners of Oregon ..
These pictures were taken immediately after his birth on April 6.
The mare laid down, and then he trotted around and
Dianne was unaware when she contacted me that her timing was exquisite! Why? Because it had recently crossed my mind that many readers must wonder why a blog with the name of Learning from Dogs so infrequently had articles about dogs! Hopefully both the Welcome page and my piece on Dogs and integrity make it clear that it is the qualities of dogs, the examples they set to mankind, that inspire these writings. As I say in Dogs and integrity,
value and cherish the ‘present’ in a way that humans can only dream of achieving
are, by eons of time, a more successful species than man.
So it is a double pleasure to offer Dianne’s guest post today because it reminds us, so clearly, that the qualities of dogs are something very real for mankind.
Dianne Gray
Dianne is a writer. As she explains on her blog site,
I live in Australia, have a sensitive-new-age Rottweiler called Kitty and a German Shepherd (in desperate need for The Dog Whisperer) called Sabre.
I’ve had interesting jobs, including working in a crocodile farm in Far North Queensland.
Sabre came into our lives in November 2004. He was seven weeks old. We were lucky enough to get Sabre from Bob Knight, a German shepherd breeder in Canberra, Australia. For those of you who don’t live in Australia you wouldn’t know that Bob was tragically shot and killed in 2010 while driving his truck through Sydney – the innocent victim of a gang war taking place several blocks away, he was hit by a stray bullet.
Bob was very passionate about his dogs and would interview those who were interested in buying one of the litter. If he didn’t think you were capable of managing a German shepherd he would not sell you one. He also ensured that each and every one of his puppies were brought back to him weekly (if possible) for free puppy training. So for over twelve months we (and the others who had bought one of the litter) met at the lake to take our dogs for a walk and training.
We live in the inner city and have an enormous yard so Sabre loved playing catch and patrolling the borders of our property. We live adjacent to a laneway and had some trouble with junkies shooting up near our fence and threatening to kill him if he barked at them. When he was two years old he became very ill very suddenly (it was Good Friday and near impossible to find a vet). We took him to the out-of-hours vet in the city who just looked at him and ($A800 later) told us not to feed him for the rest of the weekend.
By Saturday morning he could hardly move. We called Bob who told us about a woman called Jan who would be available to see him who lived in a nearby town. She was a country vet and looked after horses and cattle – so we loaded him in the car. This was the best move we ever made because, as it turned out, Jan would save his life a couple of times. When Jan saw him she couldn’t believe another vet would tell us not to feed him. “You don’t feed animals, they die,” she said. She gave us some horse paste (I still don’t know to this day what it was) and told us to put some in his mouth every hour. She said to try and give him his favourite food as often as possible and to call her every hour and tell her if he had eaten anything. She said he had the classic symptoms of having ingested a common bait (I’m not revealing what it was publically) and if we couldn’t get him to eat within four hours we had to bring him straight back to her. Basically he was starving to death.
We put the paste in his mouth as often as possible and tried to tempt him with cheese (his favourite) for three hours. Finally, he took a small mouthful of cheese and we celebrated like it was Christmas! We took him back to Jan for the next three days and he got stronger and stronger and within a week was back to his old playful self.
Twelve months later he began to walk with his head to one side and then he’d shake it and basically seemed very uncomfortable. We took him back to Jan who looked in his ear to find he had a chronic ear infection. She gave him antibiotics and cleaned his ear, but weeks passed and it just didn’t want to budge. We took him back to Jan every weekend and she would clean his ear (he wouldn’t let us touch it) and give him a penicillin injection. I surfed the net trying to find out what I could do to get rid of this damn infection – we were trying everything possible and it still wouldn’t budge. Then I read somewhere that yoghurt in a dog’s diet can be good for this kind of thing. I added yoghurt to his diet and within a week he was looking better. We still had him back to Jan’s every weekend for a few months and I still put yoghurt in his diet!
Six months later he started to change and became obnoxious and aggressive with us. We thought it may have had something to do with the ear infection so we took him back to Jan. She laid him on his back and felt his testies. He was kind of shocked and so were we, but she had definitely done the right thing because at this stage he had testicular cancer in both testies. She operated and found that the cancer was at the advanced stage. She was pretty sure she had got it all, but told us the signs to watch for over the next few months. She put him on ‘girly hormones’ as she called them and he was on those for about twelve months – and what a pleasure he became. He was behaving himself and not cranky or aggressive like before the operation. He was a different boy! If you have a male dog that is not de-sexed and he becomes even the slightest bit aggressive, I strongly suggest you have him checked for testicular cancer!
Because we’d had so much trouble with the junkies I decided to get cameras around the outside of the house. It was such a novelty at first – I’d come home from work and check the cameras to see what had happened during the day, but then I noticed something really sad. Sabre would say goodbye to me at the gate every morning and then just sit there ALL DAY waiting for me to come home. It was heartbreaking, I’d never realised until this time how lonely he was. I’d watch the tape on X30 and it reminded me of one of those television advertisements where someone stands still while everything around them speeds past. So hubby and I decided it was time for another dog. This is where Kitty comes into the picture. From the moment Sabre saw her he absolutely loved her and she loved him. She is obsessed with his tail and when we go anywhere she grips onto his tail and follows him.
First meeting Sabre and Kitty.
Sometimes when they’re playing in the yard she grabs his tail and runs past him so fast he ends up running sideways! Kitty has had her fair share of problems as well. She was spade (by a vet other than Jan because she doesn’t have the capacity or equipment to spade female pups) and three months later she went on heat! I took her back to the other vet and he had only removed one ovary. So she had to be spade again, the poor darling. Meanwhile, Sabre must have had enough male hormones left in him to want to mount her every five minutes. So what I did was rub eucalyptus oil on Kitty’s back and this was enough to keep him away (the smell made him sneeze). Now we find Kitty has arthritis (she’s only fifteen months old) so we’re back to see Jan every other weekend for treatment. We’re kind of like a family now!
Sabre and Kitty today.
Kitty and Sabre are a wonderful pair and now when I watch the cameras when I get home from work all I can see is the two of them playing all day long. It’s a wonderful life!
oooOOOooo
So back to me! Couple of items to close this lovely story from Dianne.
“Writing has nothing to do with publishing. Nothing. People get totally confused about that. You write because you have to – you write because you can’t not write. The rest is show-business. I can’t state that too strongly. Just write – worry about the rest of it later, if you worry at all. What matters is what happens to you while you’re writing the story, the poem, the play. The rest is show-business.” — Peter S. Beagle
Not quite how you would expect a crocodile to behave!
With thanks to Christine over at 350 or bust who published on Saturday, 30th June.
Then a web search found a more extensive video.
Pocho, the “domesticated” Costa Rican crocodile that gained international attention for a weekly show he performed with owner Gilberto Sheedan, died Tuesday at Finca Las Tilapias in the Caribbean-slope town of Siquirres. Olga Valle, Sheedan’s wife, said the nearly 1,000-pound croc died a natural death at age 50. A funeral will be held for Pocho on Sunday at 1 p.m.
“All of the people in the village have offered their condolences and assistance,” Valle said.
On past Sundays, Pocho and “Chito,” as Sheedan was better known, performed a show for visitors in a 100-square-meter artificial lake at Finca Las Tilapias. Chito, 54, declared the one-eyed crocodile “domesticated.” He could command Pocho to do tricks such as winking its one good eye, lifting its head and tail out of the water, rolling over and permitting Chito to stick his head inside the massive reptile’s maw.
Chito found the 5-meter-long crocodile near death on the shore of the Parismina River, in the Limón province, 17 years ago. The crocodile had been shot in the left eye. Chito and several friends loaded the animal into a boat and took him to Siquirres, where Pocho was nursed back to health. Chito even slept with the crocodile during its recovery.
After an employee saw Chito swimming with Pocho one day, word of the duo’s friendship spread. In July 2000, Costa Rica’s Channel 7 filmed the unusual pair. Chito and Pocho became stars, receiving attention as far as the United States, Chile and the United Kingdom.
The Environment, Energy and Telecommunications Ministry allowed Chito to keep the crocodile as long as they could monitor it. Chito worked with a veterinarian and a biologist and fed Pocho 30 kilograms of fish and chicken a week.
Chito never imagined the fame that would come from the unique friendship. All he wanted was an animal companion. A sign on his ranch emphasized that relationship: “Chito and Pocho are best friends.”
“I just wanted him to feel that someone loved him, that not all humans are bad,” Chito told The Tico Times in 2007. “I love all animals, especially ones that have suffered.”
Love is really the solution to practically every problem in the world!
Learning from Dogs 