Category: Animal rescue

A dog’s love.

And the pain of loss.

Su Reeve is a good friend of Learning from Dogs as yesterday’s picture parade underlined.

She is also a passionate friend of the many needy feral dogs down in that part of Mexico where she lives with husband Don.

I write this to set the context of an email that came in yesterday from Su addressed to me and Jean.

Diamonte2

I found her July 2nd in a parking lot in San Carlos (Mexico). I fed her and her mom, who were looking for food. At least the mom was looking for food for her baby girl.

She was about 6 months old and a beautiful, darling little girl.

She came to live with me the 28th of July … and she was the light of our lives. I have written about her before, and at this time do not want to go into it again.

Because at around 9 am this morning, this wonderful, impish little baby girl died suddenly of Acute Pulmonary Edema. She was healthy, happy, fully alive and wonderful. Two minutes later, she was dead …. at 10 months old.

My gardener came in to the house and told me he had the worst news ever…..”please come with me“, he said. I went out to the garage and saw her lying there. I rushed up and pushed on her stomach area and rubbed her body and talked to her for 20 minutes, but she was gone. She had defecated and pee’d and then died.

Oh my dear God, I cannot stop crying. She was so precious. She now is buried in my lower garden with many of my and Jeannie’s dogs and cats, guarded over by a statue of Saint Francis, the Saint of all animals.

Now I must go on and I don’t know how.

Rest in peace, my little one.

Jean and I were aghast at the news and Jean felt the pain as if it had happened to her. I wrote Su asking for permission to publish her email, which was granted promptly as Su’s reply explains.

Diamonte was the most fun-loving, active, playful dog of all of them put together. She was always smiling and happy. I just cannot believe it.

I thought at first she got her collar caught and expired that way, and I heaped all of the fault on myself … tough to bear …. but on second look, there was no movement in the puppy corral and it was not out of place. It was a lot quieter this morning, as she was also the most vocal of the lot …. but I’d give anything to hear her barking this morning ….. 😦

I just cannot believe she is gone. Can’t stop crying over her death.

Please post if you’d like.

Then a little later Su sent me this poem.

I EXPERIENCED A TERRIBLE LOSS YESTERDAY.

IN MY AMATEURISH WAY I WANTED TO LEAVE A TRIBUTE TO A WONDERFUL DOG, AND TO SHARE IT WITH ALL OF YOU.

Diamonte - just nine months old. — Diamonte – just nine months old.

I promised your mother I’d protect you, little one.
And now, the only thing I want to do is run.
You died from your heart not wanting to beat.
Your life was so short, but ever so sweet.
You were the one who made us all laugh,
and I am so devastated on your behalf.

I hope that I see you again some day,
And please know we miss you and oh, by the way,
We love you little one.
Even though your life is done,
You lie in my garden with Poncho and others,
along with sisters and brothers.

God wants you with Him to help people see,
That His name spelled backward on earth is the key.
Learning From Dogs is what we must do,
To know how to best live our lives ….. love Sue.

Goodbye little Diamonte,
I miss you so much.

The love we humans experience from our dogs is as close to perfect unconditional love as one can get. It is the one lesson above all others that dogs offer us.

The famous words from British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson come to mind:

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

I know that everyone who reads today’s post will offer up thoughts of love and compassion to Su.

Utterly beyond words!

A connection with a wild animal doesn’t get better than this.

You may wonder, dear reader, how I “square the circle” in terms of a post title, Utterly beyond words, and then reaching out to you with the use of words! My answer to that legitimate question is that if I reflected for the rest of my life, I couldn’t verbalise adequately the feelings (but note p.s. at the end of the post) that went through me, and through Jean, when a mother deer and her young fawn, crossed the boundary between their wild, animal world and our human world.

This is what happened.

Last Sunday afternoon, around 4pm, I was pottering around the area of fruit trees just above our stables. We were fully aware that deer were coming in to our property to eat fallen apples as many times we had caught a glimpse of them through a window.

Anyway, on this particular afternoon outside by the stables, I noticed a deer eating some fallen apples and, somehow, picked up the idea that this gorgeous, wild animal was not stressed-out by me standing there looking at her from some twenty feet away.

After a few minutes of just watching, I quietly went across to the garage where we keep a bag of cob, or cracked corn, that we use to feed the deer during tough winter times. I collected a small amount in a round plastic tray and went back into the orchard area and sat with my back against the trunk of an old oak tree, spread my legs apart and placed the tray with the cob in between my knees.

The mother deer was still hunting around for fallen apples but within a couple of minutes looked across at me, clearly smelling the cob.

Slowly but steadily the beautiful creature came towards me and, miracle of miracles, trusted me sufficiently to eat from the tray. Her head was well within arm’s reach of me!

I was totally mesmerised by this beautiful, fragile, wild animal, head down, eating cob less than three feet from my face! I had the urge to touch her.

Slowly, I reached forward and took a small handful of the cob from the tray and with my other hand pulled the tray to one side. My hand with the cob was fully outstretched; my heart was whispering to the deer that I would never, ever harm her.

Softly, gently the deer reached towards me and nibbled the cob from my left hand.

Later on, when I relayed this incredible event to Jean, I said that if it was at all possible we must try and take a photograph of a wild deer feeding from our hands.

Moving on to Monday afternoon, camera ready if necessary, we kept an eye out for the return of the deer. There was no sign of her. Looked as though it wasn’t going to happen.

Then just before 7pm, I looked up from my desk and there, just outside the window, was the deer. But even better, this time the mother was accompanied by her young fawn.

I grabbed the camera and quickly told Jean to meet me outside with a refill of cob in the same plastic tray. We both sat down on the flat concrete cover of the septic tank; me with the camera, Jean with the tray of cob.

Over to the photographs! The daylight was fading fast and I was hand-holding the camera, thus these are not the sharpest of pictures. But so what!

The mother deer not even startled by the sound of the camera shutter!

oooo

Mother deer reaches down to feed; the tray is about three feet in front of Jean and me.

oooo

Jean reaches forward and gently draws the tray closer to us. Mother deer continues to feed.

oooo

Then, unbelievably, the wild deer continues feeding as Jean fondles the deer's ear. — Then, unbelievably, the wild deer continues feeding as Jean fondles the deer’s head and neck.

oooo

The trust between the deer and Jean then enabled the deer to feed from Jean's hand. — The trust between the deer and Jean then enabled the deer to feed from Jean’s hand.

oooo

There was a rustle in the leaves some twenty feet away and we saw the fawn watching her mother feeding on the cob. Jean pushed the tray away, just by a few feet, and the fawn came right up to her mother.

oooo

The culmination of the most magical of experiences: mother deer and her fawn eating together some three feet in front of us.

When I published my post Space for Nature a little over a week ago, a post that included a photograph of two deer some thirty feet from Jean’s car, never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what took place last Tuesday afternoon.

Words truly do seem inadequate.

P.S. It is at times like this that we need poetry. So how about it: Sue? Kim? How would you describe in poetry what Jean and I experienced?

The wonderful, accidental heroine.

The pet hotel entrepreneur who saved hundreds of animals post-disaster Fukushima.

An article sent to me by my sister who lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.

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OCTOBER 2014

Accidental Heroine

By Elizabeth Handover

Three years ago, in the days following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, a phone call from a woman in distress catapulted Isabella Gallaon-Aoki into an unforeseen selfless and courageous rescue of hundreds of abandoned animals.

Gallaon-Aoki, who is part British and part Italian, originally came to Tokyo to learn Japanese. She met her husband here, and after several years moved with him to Niigata, his native home.

After having two children, she became interested in animal welfare, joined a local animal help-group and was trained in animal rescue techniques. The animal group focused on saving as many abandoned animals as possible from the local welfare center, by getting them adopted or at least finding temporary foster homes.

After adopting a rescued dog of her own, Gallaon-Aoki personally observed how many animals were put down as the welfare center deadline hit before new homes could be found.

She became convinced that an animal shelter was the answer, as this would be more efficient and sustainable. It could save many more lives by providing a place to house animals for longer periods of time, until they could be adopted.

Isabella also saw a market need for a pet boarding facility. Many existing pet hotels, despite being expensive, only offered accommodation in small confined cages, and the care was unsatisfactory. Every time she travelled, she took her pets all the way down to Kobe, where they could have more space.

She felt that other pet owners, when given the opportunity, would naturally prefer to leave their pets in a spacious, pleasant environment with fresh air and opportunities for exercise.

This was exactly what Gallaon-Aoki and her husband were in an excellent position to offer; they could provide an enjoyable holiday for pets so their owners could enjoy their own trips with a clear conscience.

Gallaon-Aoki was also motivated to try her hand at an entrepreneurial venture, by establishing a profitable pet hotel business. This, in turn, could help fund an animal rescue shelter. Animal Garden Niigata was thus started.

All went well at first, business increased steadily, and the Animal Friends Japan shelter was set up shortly thereafter.

Call of duty

Then the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami hit.

Gallaon-Aoki’s first response to the disaster was to set off for Sendai and then go up to Iwate, to help animals in need. But when she got there, she found no animals to rescue. All had been swept away, together with their human owners.

Soon she started hearing reports about the situation in Fukushima. On March 21, a call came in from a woman whose dog had been left behind when the family was evacuated from Okuma. No one had been allowed to take pets, and evacuees had been told that they would be back in their homes within two to three days.

In reality, the family had been shipped out immediately to Nagasaki. The woman was crying with desperation as she described how her dog had been left chained up with no food or water. She begged Gallaon-Aoki to go to her house and rescue him.

With no thought for her own safety or the consequences of the actions she was about to take, Gallaon-Aoki immediately agreed to do whatever she could.

She realized that it would be hard to access the exclusion zone. But, having lived in Japan for many years, she gambled that barriers would be manned by police only during daytime hours. What she hadn’t reckoned on were the impassible mountain roads, which had been damaged or cut off by massive rock falls.

That first trip took many hours and involved inching along perilously narrow roads with no guardrails. This turned out to be more life-threatening than entering a radiation fallout zone. At nightfall, she successfully snuck in through a checkpoint, found the woman’s dog, and took it back to Niigata with her.

In the weeks that followed, the calls for pet rescues came flooding in, and she kept returning to Fukushima. She ended up rescuing a staggering 700 animals altogether, including cats, dogs, ducks, chickens, rabbits, and even a pig. This was far beyond anything that Gallaon-Aoki had expected.

She reached out to the community for funding, and many people kindly supported the shelter with donations, which made the huge project possible for the time being.

Gallaon-Aoki’s initial plan had been to take in the animals temporarily and care for them until their owners could reclaim them. She hoped to find homes for unclaimed animals in due course. But as time went by, she was faced with growing difficulties.

Many pet owners never returned to claim their animals, and very few people were willing to take in a pet that they feared had been irradiated. Furthermore, month by month, donations were drying up. Thus, a project intended as a short-term solution became a long-term logistical and financial burden.

Yet, Gallaon-Aoki has stayed true to her courage and convictions. Through dire necessity, she has honed her entrepreneurial skills, using creativity and resilience to keep the shelter going for over three years and to care for her huge extended “family” still in residence.

The accidental heroine is putting her entrepreneurial skills to good use in rebuilding her business. Times are changing, the economy is finally growing, and Gallaon-Aoki is gradually bringing her pet hotel back to commercial success.

With an increasing number of people going abroad for vacations, she is confident that more and more clients will employ her services.

There are many beautiful pets still waiting for homes at the shelter.

For more information on pets for adoption, visit www.animalfriendsjapan.org. To learn about the countryside accommodation at Isabella Gallaon-Aoki’s Animal Garden boarding facility, go to www.animalgardenjapan.com, or email Gallaon-Aoki directly at animalfriendsjp@yahoo.co.jp.

Elizabeth Handover is co-chair of the ACCJ Women in Business Committee and president of Intrapersona K.K., Lumina Learning Asia Partner. elizabethhandover@ luminalearning.com — Elizabeth Handover is co-chair of the ACCJ Women in Business Committee and president of Intrapersona K.K., Lumina Learning Asia Partner.
elizabethhandover@
luminalearning.com

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Wonderful story – thanks Elizabeth for sending it to me.

Please find Lucy!

A dear dog has gone missing.

With a sub-title regarding a missing dog, why on earth would I lead with a picture of fine food?

I will tell you.

In the last hour, Jean and I have come back from a meeting with the General Manager of a restaurant nearby in Grants Pass: the River’s Edge restaurant. That picture is on the home page of the restaurant’s website.

The GM’s name is Missy Clements and she is also the banqueting manager. Jean and I have previously enjoyed wonderful meals at the River’s Edge and the reason for meeting up with Missy was to kick around some ideas for a future event at the restaurant.

Anyway …..

During the meeting the conversation inevitably led to dogs and Missy, with obvious pain in her voice, explained that her six-year-old Boxer mix, Lucy, had recently gone missing.

I offered to post an item in this place, hence this coming out an an unusual time.

Please do all you can to share this, especially if you are in the Southern Oregon area. The address where Lucy was last seen was Crooks Creek Road, a few miles North-East of Selma in Oregon; Selma being 20 miles to the South-West of Grants Pass. If you have any questions or, even better, think you have some information on the whereabouts of Lucy then Missy has given me permission to publish her email address; that is: clements (dot) missy57 (at) gmail (dot) com

Finally, here is a recent photograph of Lucy.

Please hold Lucy in your heart.

Good news is never far away

We all need a reminder of the many good things happening in our world!

It’s common knowledge that homo sapiens is wired to react to the threat of danger in a rapid manner. But while the danger of a bear or a lion jumping on us from out of the trees is much diminished in the 21st century, our fear-response circuits are still alive and active. One of the fundamental reasons why so much of the media ‘sells’ stories via alarmist headlines.

Thus it was a real delight to come across a magazine with the simple, yet powerful, brand name of YES!

Even better than coming across YES! was receiving a complimentary subscription for Jean and me! (Thanks John H!) Jean and I took to the magazine immediately. Not only because of an active blog but also because of their support for sharing their content. I quote:

Reprints & Reposts

We want you to pass along the work of YES! Magazine. All we ask is that you follow these easy steps:

Text

For all material designated Creative Commons (cc):

(as used herein, material means the text of the articles, and does not mean titles, images, or illustrations)

Use the same byline information that we have placed at the end of the article. For reposts, keep links intact.

Material is free except for commercial use.

Do not alter, change, or add to the material.

Please notify us that you are reprinting by sending an email to reprints [at] yesmagazine.org.

For full details, see the Creative Commons license.

Copyrighted © text:

We have adopted Creative Commons licensing beginning with our issue #44. We readily grant reprint permission for earlier copyrighted material, upon request. Just ask us at reprints [at] yesmagazine.org. We occasionally reprint or excerpt material that is copyrighted by others, and this material is NOT included in the Creative Commons license.

Moving on to the next good news item.

I forget how but recently came across the Buy Nothing Project. As the ‘About’ page explains:

Buy Nothing. Give Freely. Share Creatively.

The Buy Nothing Project began as an experimental hyper-local gift economy on Bainbridge Island, WA; in just 8 months, it has become a social movement, growing to over 25,000 members in 150 groups, in 4 countries. Our local groups form gift economies that are complementary and parallel to local cash economies; whether people join because they’d like to quickly get rid of things that are cluttering their lives, or simply to save money by getting things for free, they quickly discover that our groups are not just another free recycling platform. A gift economy’s real wealth is the people involved and the web of connections that forms to support them. Time and again, members of our groups find themselves spending more and more time interacting in our groups, finding new ways to give back to the community that has brought humor, entertainment, and yes, free stuff into their lives. The Buy Nothing Project is about setting the scarcity model of our cash economy aside in favor of creatively and collaboratively sharing the abundance around us.

The gift of flowers. © Liesl Clark

How does the Buy Nothing Project work? Using the free platform provided by Facebook Groups, Buy Nothing Project members can easily participate with their local group. Our rules are simple: “Post anything you’d like to give away, lend, or share amongst neighbors. Ask for anything you’d like to receive for free or borrow. Keep it legal. Keep it civil. No buying or selling, no trades or bartering, we’re strictly a gift economy.” The transparency of Facebook groups’ design allows our members to see mutual friends they share with relative strangers, and to build trust based on real-life connections visible through personal profile information. This trust allows groups to grow quickly and encourages people to both give freely and ask for what they need; everything from toilet paper roll springs to rides home from the doctor; burial sites for beloved pets to freshly-baked bread and casseroles have been given freely; our members share things mundane and meaningful in equal measure, and throughout it all connect with each other by means of the shared personal stories and chatting encouraged by the platform. We rely on our co-founders’ daily guidance and direction for the development of our nascent culture, assisted by a team of volunteer local administrators who have on-the-ground knowledge of their communities.

The Buy Nothing Project Connects Us With Our Neighbors. © Liesl Clark

Why the Buy Nothing Project? The Buy Nothing Project is brought to you by the creators of Trash Backwards (www.trashbackwards.com,) an app that helps you with the last of the 3 Rs, “Reusing” and “Recycling” the everyday things in your life. The Buy Nothing Project addresses the first of the 3 R’s, “Reduce” as well as the lesser-known Rs “Refuse” and “Rethink.” Participating in a local Buy Nothing Project group allows individuals and communities to reduce their own dependence on single-use and virgin materials by extending the life of existing items through gifting and sharing between group members. Rethinking consumption and refusing to buy new in favor of asking for an item from a neighbor may make an impact on the amount of goods manufactured in the first place, which in turn may put a dent in the overproduction of unnecessary goods that end up in our landfills, watersheds, and our seas. It most certainly creates connections between people who see each other in real life, not just online, leading to more robust communities that are better prepared to tackle both hard times and good by giving freely. The Trash Backwards app, blog articles, and Buy Nothing Project groups are diverting more materials from our landfills and oceans than we can possibly quantify as hundreds of items are rehomed each day.

The Buy Nothing Project Strengthens Communities.

Our Statistics:

With over 25,000 members and growing every day, we have a captive audience in each of our groups. Most members visit the group pages several times a day and many literally spend hours there, commenting, reading posts, while posting their own gifts and wants.

Our Trash Backwards blog, app, and the Buy Nothing Project website garner over 50,000 unique visitors per month. With 7,000 followers on Pinterest and 3,775 “likes” on our Facebook Pages, we have enough sway to bring significant traffic to our sites whenever we upload news or new blog posts.

Funding:

With funding to staff our core project, PR, legal help, design, and developers, the Buy Nothing movement will grow quickly, spreading the joys of gift economy giving and receiving. The world is ready for this experimental model of sharing our possessions and talents to help others, but the endeavor needs its basic operational costs covered to foster the movement even further.

Isn’t that a fabulous idea!

I’m determined to start a local group here in Merlin, Oregon.

My final item of good news, that I’m sure many others read about, was:

A declaration announced as part of a UN summit on climate change being held in New York also pledges to halve the rate of deforestation by the end of this decade and to restore hundreds of millions of acres of degraded land.

The Guardian newspaper released the news, as follows:

UN climate summit pledges to halt the loss of natural forests by 2030

New York declaration on forests could cut carbon emissions equivalent of taking all the world’s cars off the road

PEKANBARU, SUMATRA, INDONESIA – JULY 11: A forest activist inspects land clearing and drainage of peat natural forest located on the concession of PT RAPP (Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper), a subsidiary of APRIL group which is being developed for a pulp and paper plantation at Pulau Padang, Kepulauan Meranti district on July 11, 2014 in Riau province, Sumatra, Indonesia. The Nature Climate Change journal has reported that Indonesia lost 840,000 hectares of natural forest in 2012 compared to 460,000 hectares in Brazil despite their forest being a quarter of the size of the Amazon rainforest. According to Greenpeace, the destruction of forests is driven by the expansion of palm oil and pulp & paper has increased the greenhouse gas emissions, pushing animals such as sumatran tigers to the brink of extinction, and local communities to lose their source of life. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

Governments, multinational companies and campaigners are pledging to halt the loss of the world’s natural forests by 2030.

A declaration announced as part of a UN summit on climate change being held in New York also pledges to halve the rate of deforestation by the end of this decade and to restore hundreds of millions of acres of degraded land.

Backers of the New York declaration on forests claim their efforts could save between 4.5bn and 8.8bn tonnes of carbon emissions per year by 2030 – the equivalent of taking all the world’s cars off the road.

The UK, Germany and Norway have pledged to enter into up to 20 programmes over the next couple of years to pay countries for reducing their deforestation, which could be worth more than £700m.

Companies such as Kellogg’s, Marks & Spencer, Barclays, Nestle, the palm oil giant Cargill, Asia Pulp and Paper and charities including the RSPB, WWF and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) have signed the declaration.

The declaration’s supporters say ending the loss of the world’s natural forests will be an important part of limiting global temperature rises to 2C, beyond which the worst impacts of climate change are expected to be felt.

It comes after analysis suggests that land use change such as deforestation accounts for around 8% of the world’s carbon emissions, with carbon dioxide released when trees are felled and burned to free up land for agriculture or development.

“Forests represent one of the largest, most cost-effective climate solutions available today,” the declaration says.

“Action to conserve, sustainably manage and restore forests can contribute to economic growth, poverty alleviation, rule of law, food security, climate resilience and biodiversity conservation.”

Signatories to the declaration are committing to a number of steps to halt forest loss, including backing a private sector goal of eliminating deforestation from producing agricultural products such as palm oil, soy, paper and beef by no later than 2020.

They are also seeking to support alternatives to deforestation which is caused by subsistence farming and the need for wood fuel for energy and reward countries that reduce forest emissions.

Read the full article here.

I first picked up on this news courtesy of the Grist blog:

Cargill promises to stop chopping down rainforests. This is huge.

By Nathanael Johnson

Everything I’ve been reading about the U.N. Climate Summit had been making me pretty gloomy, until I read about the New York Declaration on Forests.

The first notice was a press release from the Rainforest Action Network informing me that Cargill, the agribusiness giant, had pledged “to protect forests in all of Cargill’s agricultural supply chains and to endorse the New York Declaration on Forests.” Cargill has a big handprint — they have soy silos in Brazil and palm oil plants in Malaysia. So as of now, if you want to carve a farm out of the jungle, you’re going to get the cold shoulder from a company that is a prime connector to world markets.

And this isn’t limited to hot-button crops like soy and oil palm. Here’s what Cargill’s CEO Dave MacLennan said at the U.N.: “We understand that this sort of commitment cannot be limited to just select commodities or supply chains,” said MacLennan. “That’s why Cargill will take practical measures to protect forests across our agricultural supply chains around the world.”

It’s not just Cargill. Kellogg’s, Unilever, Nestle, Asia Pulp and Paper, General Mills, Danone, Walmart, McDonalds, and many other corporations have committed to the New York Declaration on Forests. But, here’s why Cargill is interesting: It’s making a concrete pledge, while the actual declaration is pretty mushy at this point. The declaration calls for ending forest loss by 2030. And, to quote a U.N. brief: “It also calls for restoring forests and croplands of an area larger than India. Meeting these goals would cut between 4.5 and 8.8 billion tons of carbon pollution every year — about as much as the current emissions of the United States.” Or about as much as taking all the cars in the world off the roads — that’s another comparison I’ve seen. The details are supposed to be hammered out in time for the 2015 convention in Paris.

Again, read the rest of the article here.

So as much as you, I and hundreds of thousands of others get battered with ‘gloom and doom’ stories every single day, we do need to balance that out from time-to-time with the good things around us. Also every single day.

Now where’s a dog to hug!

Happy lives!

Happiness.

I guess that it would be difficult to find a greater change in topic than going from America’s relationship with war to the secret of happiness! But that’s what’s on offer today!

All as a result of reading a recent article on the Grist blogsite written by one of the Grist staff writers, David Roberts.

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The secret to a happy life: revealed!

By David Roberts
10 Sep 2014

I don’t want to brag, but while I was on sabbatical I discovered the secret to happiness.

The crazy thing is, it was lying right there in the open. It’s been revealed dozens, hundreds of times over the course of human history. It’s revealed every day in ordinary human affairs, if you’re paying attention.

What is it? Let’s ask George Vaillant.

Vaillant is a Harvard psychologist who has been working for over 40 years on the Grant Study, one of the longest-running longitudinal studies in scientific history. It began tracking a set of 268 (white, physically and mentally healthy) men when they were sophomores at Harvard in 1939 and has been tracking them ever since, for 75 years, with exhaustive regular physical and psychological tests. It has followed them as they’ve grown, gone to war, married, divorced, worked, been fired, gotten sick, found God, and so on. (The ups and downs of the study’s history are recounted in this classic Atlantic piece, one of my favorite magazine stories ever.)

Vaillant has spent most of his adult life analyzing the data from the study, attempting to determine which factors most reliably correlate with well-being. He’s probably studied happiness longer, and in greater depth, than any other single human being. So what is it, George Vaillant? What’s the secret to a happy life?

“That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

Wow. That’s pretty straightforward. But can you boil it down just a little more?

“Happiness is love. Full stop.”

All right then! There you have it. The secret to happiness, revealed. It’s love.

If you want to break it down a little more, there’s plenty of social science research on it. We live longer, healthier, happier lives when we are at the center of overlapping social networks, when we have a devoted life partner, close family and friends (and pets), extensive “weak ties” with acquaintances and colleagues, peer and professional networks that value our skills, and a sense of autonomy balanced with a sense of involvement in something larger than ourselves. We are happiest when we have a place in the world, when we love and are loved, when we make the most of our gifts.

This is all obvious, of course, and has been said a million times. But that’s the point. People want there to be a what of happiness, a secret, an epiphany that once you learn it changes you forever. But the what of happiness is banal. It’s been confirmed by research. It’s in a kajillion self-help books. It’s cliché.

The what of happiness is not the hard part. The how is the hard part. As a million deathbed testimonials have taught us, when we look back on our lives, we won’t wish we’d worked harder, maintained Inbox Zero, finished those reports on deadline, gotten more promotions, owned a nicer car. We’ll wish we’d spent more time appreciating the ones we love and who love us, that we’d done more meaningful work, that we’d traveled more and had more memorable experiences.

We all know this. But it is no easy matter to translate that knowledge into action. Why? Vaillant is insightful about that, too, as The Atlantic explains:

Vaillant [says] positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.

Gratitude and joy are emotions we can muster when we don’t feel threatened, when our lizard brain calms and our prefrontal cortex takes over. But it’s very difficult when our egos feel under siege. Relationships are more meaningful the more we open and extend ourselves (and are reciprocated), but our degree of openness is also our degree of vulnerability. Often we close off, deciding, consciously or not, that it’s not worth the risk of getting hurt; our lizard-brain fear overpowers us.

We cannot control this dynamic entirely. As the Atlantic piece explains, researchers believe that about 50 percent of our happiness is determined by our internal “set point,” which is shaped by genetics and early childhood and mostly fixed in place. About 10 percent is determined by circumstances. But that other 40 percent comes from how we react to circumstances, and over that we do have some control.

We can learn to detach from fear and anger, to let them go, to take deep breaths, return our focus to the present, and choose positive emotions. That, as I wrote yesterday, is what mindfulness is all about. It’s what the entire discipline of positive psychology (which counts Vaillant as a founding father) is about: strengthening the prefrontal cortex so that it’s more able to override instinctual fear and anger. The more inclement the circumstances we face, the more we need it. That’s why mindfulness training is catching on in low-income communities, the military, and elderly care.

So when people ask, as they have many times in the last week, “What did you learn over your break?” … the honest answer is, nothing. I already knew the what of happiness, just as you already know it. The break was about more consciously practicing the how, and on that score I’m afraid I have no grand epiphanies, only a few baby steps down a road I’ll be walking all my life.

ooOOoo

The original Grist article was headed with a picture of a group of happy dogs and it seemed almost an automatic response from me to close today’s post with a picture of happy dogs here in Oregon. But rather obvious, don’t you think!

Instead, I’m going to use a photograph of me being ‘loved’ by Ben so soon after he came to us in April; Ben being one of the two horses (Ben and Ranger) to come here that were rescued by Darla Clark, as explained here.

Now going to offer my own reflection on happiness.

Animals that are comfortable being around us readily display unconditional affection to humans. All that these dogs, cats, horses, and others, require is trust in us. The knowledge that we are there to care for them, to comfort them, to cuddle them, to love them for the majority of the interactions between the person and the creature. That doesn’t rule out chastisement, far from it, just that it comes from a heartfelt desire to care for the animal.

I now have a life surrounded by loving animals. It has been that way since I started living with Jean back in 2008. Yes, I had had Pharaoh in my life since 2003. Still have him; the precious animal. But the one-on-one bond that existed between Pharaoh and me hadn’t previously opened my heart in the way that all 14 dogs and 5 cats did that were living with Jean when I joined her.

The unconditional love shown by those animals in my life for the last six years has profoundly affected me. We are now ‘down’ to 9 dogs and 4 cats plus we have the 4 horses (2 rescue quarter-horses and 2 miniature horses). Still there are very few moments in the whole of my day, either day or night, where I am not in the company of, or in contact with, an animal that offers me unconditional love.

Recall earlier in the David Roberts article: “We are happiest when we have a place in the world, when we love and are loved, when we make the most of our gifts.“

Of course, I have ‘off’ days!

But down to my core, I know that being loved by Jean and all the animals and returning that love provides me with a deep happiness unimaginable prior to 2008.

“It is better to have a heart that makes love than a mind that makes sense.” Robert Keck

Unanticipated consequences!

Who would have believed it!

Way back in July 2012, I posted the following item.

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Dear Readers of Learning from Dogs.

Today, Jeannie and I are off on a trip to Oregon.

We expect to be away for about the next 10 or 11 days.

While there are a number of new posts that will come out during this period, rather than have quiet days with nothing being posted, some days I will be republishing posts from the last three years; hopefully most of them new to your eyes.

Inevitably, responding promptly to comments will be tough.

Which is why I am so grateful to Martin Lack of Lack of Environment who graciously agreed to keep an eye on things while we are away.

Punch-Bowl-Falls_-Columbia-River_-Oregon — The Punch Bowl Falls, Columbia River, Oregon

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That was twenty-six months ago.

Yesterday morning, Jean and I took Reggie and Chris down to our creek area to feed some wild deer that have been congregating in recent days.

After Jean had sprinkled some cracked corn on the ground, one of the seven deer around us started feeding and when it looked up at me, I took the following picture.

Can’t ever imagine living anywhere else now.

Funny how life runs!

A welcome and understandable distraction.

We have family guests with us for the next seven days.

Jean’s brother, Reg, and his lady are arriving today so for a while blogging will be less of a priority than usual.

Although I have spoken to Reg over the telephone on numerous occasions, this will be the first time we have met and I am looking forward to better knowing him.

Thus, as in previous times when we have had friends and family staying with us, I will be reposting popular items from previous times on Learning from Dogs, or republishing things that have caught my eye in recent days.

As with today’s post.

Reg, shares the same birth year as me: 1944!

Thus we are staring over the edge of our eightieth decade!

So this short talk by Isabel Allende seems like a worthwhile topic for today!

Published on Sep 3, 2014
Author Isabel Allende is 71. Yes, she has a few wrinkles—but she has incredible perspective too. In this candid talk, meant for viewers of all ages, she talks about her fears as she gets older and shares how she plans to keep on living passionately.

Want to know more about Isabel Allende? Her website is here.

Yet another thing we can learn from dogs! Living passionately right up to the last days.

Pharaoh, age 88 years in human equivalent, passing on his wisdom to Oliver, age 3 in human terms. — Pharaoh, age 88 in human equivalent years, passing on his wisdom to Oliver, age 3 in human terms. Makes being 70 look a doddle!

Facebook: You can do better than this!

I’m voting with my feet and cancelling my Facebook account; here’s why.

Like tens of thousands of other people, I use social media: Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter. In my own case primarily for promoting my blog writings.

It was another blogger who drew my attention to something so terrible, so despicable, that it pains me to even think about it, let alone write about it.

Let me explain.

I subscribe to The Liberated Way published by Alex Jones.

Last Sunday, Alex published a post called Caring about animal welfare. Here’s a short extract:

For six months I have been experimenting with a Facebook account in order to stay in contact with the creative industry in my town of Colchester. This experiment came to an end today when I closed my Facebook account due to Facebook allowing content associated with the torture of animals.

The word torture, highlighted by me, included a link to an article in the UK Daily Mail newspaper. The link to that Daily Mail article is here. BUT PLEASE do not click on that link if you are not prepared to be hurt, shocked and made to feel VERY ANGRY! To reinforce my warning, the headline of that article reads thus:

Facebook refuses to remove video of kitten being doused in petrol and set on fire ‘because it doesn’t breach any rules’

I can’t even bring myself to include the two photographs of the poor, tortured kitten who was killed by the bastards concerned. However, I will reproduce one image carried by the Daily Mail:

FB standards — Response: After reporting the video, which was not thought to have uploaded by either of the men in the video, and carries a warning message, Mr Dunwel was told the video would not be removed.

Facebook’s Community Standards may be read here.

But frankly any standards that regard the burning to death of a kitten as not being ‘graphic violence’ are incorrect standards.

So this coming Friday, I shall be cancelling my Facebook account. Why not immediately? Because my blog posts are themselves promoted on Facebook and I hope other Facebook subscribers who read today’s post are motivated to do the same over the intervening three days.

If you are still uncertain of the merits of my action, and you have a very tough stomach, then the link to the video in question is here.

I have not watched the video for the simple reason that the details of the video were more than enough for me. These are those details:

Published on Sep 9, 2014
Cruel man douses kitten in full

Facebook has refused to take down a video of a kitten being covered in petrol and set on fire.

The web giant reportedly said the shocking footage does not breach any of its rules.

The footage shows two men pushing the animal into a bucket and pouring liquid on it.

The kitten is then set alight.

It can then be seen escaping from the bucket and running away still on fire.

The kitten rolls around in obvious distress but one of the men pours on more fuel as it burns.

When the flames are extinguished a plastic bag can be seen being placed over the animal.

The clip has caused disgust online, with thousands of Facebook commenting on it – but the social networking site has refused to take it down.

PLEASE, PLEASE if you are a Facebook user consider cancelling your account.

Our animals deserve our support.

I will close by asking Facebook to reconsider: Facebook you truly can do better than this.

And thank you Alex.