Category: Communication

How NOT to sell beer!

Adding to the chorus of voices criticising Budweiser.

I’m going to republish in full what arrived in my ‘in-box’ yesterday from Howling For Justice.

But before I do that, let’s consider the ancient history of the wolf and the connection with our dogs of today. I shall do that by offering a small extract from something that I will be presenting at a meeting in Grants Pass on February, 10th.

Dogs are part of the Canidae species, a family including wolves, coyotes and foxes, thought to have evolved some sixty million years ago. There is no hard evidence as to when dogs and man came together but dogs were certainly around when man developed speech and set out from Africa; about fifty thousand years ago.

What is clear is that the dog represents man’s longest domesticated animal companion; by far. Some scientists believe that we have had the benefits of dogs in our lives for thirty thousand years. Indeed, some have proposed that the benefits of having tame wolves around us humans helped man be so successful a hunter and gatherer that it was instrumental, a mere ten thousand years ago, in humans first discovering how to cultivate crops and domesticate animals. Becoming the most significant single development in human history.

Because reflect that for a previous three million years Stone Age man, the hunter-gatherer, had engaged in activities as natural as the swoop of a hawk or the grazing of a horse.

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OK, on to that Budweiser advertisement.

Budweiser Takes Low Road – Demonizes Wolves To Sell Suds

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February 1, 2015

We all know about the Budweiser ad, a little lost puppy being threatened by a wolf. I won’t show the ad because it’s BS and I don’t want to give it any publicity but Budweiser should be ashamed. Are they that desperate to sell beer?

Get a grip Budweiser, very poorly played. Beer drinkers around the country should boycott Bud if the ad is not pulled. It’s a low blow to wolves, one of the most persecuted animals on the planet.

Please click the link below and sign the petition to tell Budweiser what you think of their blatant demonizing of wolves.

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Tell Budweiser: Don’t Demonize Wolves to Sell Beer

872023-1422494607-wide

author: Center for Biological Diversity

target: Anheuser-Busch CEO, Thomas W. Sante

Purposefully demonizing an animal that is part of America’s natural heritage is no way to sell beer.

But that hasn’t stopped Budweiser from crafting a commercial for this year’s Superbowl that intentionally drums up anti-wolf sentiment to try and capitalize on our culture’s outsized fear of wolf attacks.

The ad pits a cute puppy against a snarling, evil-looking wolf. In the ad the puppy is saved from the vicious wolf by the arrival of a team of Clydesdale horses.

Here’s a reality check: 1.2 million dogs are euthanized in shelters in the United States each year while another 1.2 million dogs are hit and killed by cars on America’s roads.

By comparison, wolves are a virtually non-existent threat to our furry canine friends, only in very rare instances attacking dogs if they feel threatened or perceive them as competitors. The real threat to both dogs and wolves, as these numbers show and as Budweiser’s cynical attempt to boost sales indicates, is people.

Take action — tell Budweiser to pull its wolf-hating ad, demonizing an endangered species is no way to sell beer.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/872/023/837/

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Please feel free to share this post to spread the word that animal and nature lovers are not amused by this!

Dogs rule!

Humorous, but oh so true!

One of the blog sites that I subscribe to is Exposing the Big Game.  The blog does a fabulous job in exposing the terrible ‘game’ of people hunting animals for sport! Many of the topics that author Jim Robertson exposes are incredibly painful to read but, please, do drop across there and support his efforts.

All of which is a preamble to a short item that was posted last Sunday and is republished here today.

 

dog rules

 

Nothing more to add to those rules than offer this photograph taken at home early one day last December, 2013.

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You all have a peaceful weekend.

Please save this beautiful dog!

GSD rescue

Dearest Suzann, who invited me out to San Carlos, Mexico, for the Christmas of 2007, leading to Jean and me meeting, is heavily involved in rescuing the many feral dogs found in that part of the world.

She recently sent me the following:

Shepherd Boy will be euthanized in a few days at the CA state kennel he is at and Jeannie Wade is trying to help save his life….do you guys know of anyone? Let me know asap.

He is located in the Central Coast area of California and goes by the name ‘Shepherd Boy’ and is one year old.

He is in a high kill shelter and has days to live.

Shepherd Boy is shy and sweet tempered and the volunteers at the shelter feel he will make a very good companion/pet for a nice family or couple.

Paul, If I were up there, I would take him in a heartbeat!

Suzann

Please, please share this as far and wide as possible – urgently.

Shepherd Boy may be found at the Central Coast SPCA, Orcutt, California 93457

Suzann has given me the name of Jeannine Wade and she may be emailed at: centralcoastspca@yahoo.com

 

Loving our dogs

A reposting of a blog from Dog Leader Mysteries about a dog food recall.

Quickly stepping over the observation that today’s post is about as far removed, topic wise, from yesterday’s post as one could possibly imagine, nonetheless this is important and needs to be widely shared.

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Raw food recall: J J Fuds Frozen Pet Food

J. J. Fuds Raw dog food recall expands

Dear Fellow Dog Lover,

Because you signed up on my website and asked to be notified, I’m sending you this special recall alert.

On January 27, 2015, J. J. Fuds of Valparaiso, Indiana, announced it is expanding its recall of select lots of J. J. Fuds Raw Frozen Pet Food to include 2 other products due to unspecified contamination.

To learn more, please visit the following link: J J Fuds Raw Frozen Pet Food Recall Expands

Please be sure to share the news of this important safety alert with other pet owners.

Mike Sagman, Editor
The Dog Food Advisor
P.S. Not already on our dog food recall notification list? Sign up to get critical dog food recall alerts sent to you by email. There’s no cost for this service.

I copied this email notice from The Dog Food Advisor. I highly recommend you sign up for this list.

Please share to save dogs’ lives

We don’t feed Sydney raw meat. We do feed organic raw vegetables in limited quantities. We care about pets and want our readers to share this important news. Also we want you to know that we receive the Dog Food Advisor’s updates. Mike Sagman never stuffs our email box, but sends out notices as fast as he receives them. We asked our local pet stores if they receive notices before opening each day. You can do that. Ask when and how pet foods get pulled from their shelves, your pet’s life depends on this.

For the love of dogs and the people who love them

This blog continues to evolve yet our purpose never changes…to save dogs’ lives and dog lovers’ sanity.

____________

Thanks for reading and sharing, Deborah Taylor-French

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Please get the message circulated to as many dog lovers as possible.

Thank you!

JG16

Oil, money, banks, guns and blood.

The history of power, control, those who wield it, and where it has taken us all.

There is a real pain in me as I start into today’s post. A pain that comes from agonising over whether or not to write in this vein. A pain that has its roots in me being forced to accept that global politics, money and power-plays are much worse than I ever wanted to believe.

What, you must be asking, has got me plunging so far into this dark place? When just twenty-four hours ago I was writing of peace, calm and deep meditation?

Simply a film!

A film that was uploaded by the BBC a few days ago exclusively on to their BBC iPlayer platform.

The film is called Bitter Lake and here’s the trailer.

The full film is 2 hours, 20 minutes long. (But note that the film is age-restricted for obvious reasons.)

I can’t encourage you to watch it. For if you do, the world may never seem the same to you.

But Jeannie and I did watch it and think it should be shared widely. And, yes, it has changed the world for us.

Here’s how it is described by Adam Curtis and the BBC.

Published on Jan 26, 2015
Shown exclusively on the BBC iPlayer service in the UK
This upload is for those outside of the UK

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis

Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events.

But now there are no big stories and politicians react randomly to every new crisis – leaving us bewildered and disorientated.

And journalism – that used to tell a grand, unfurling narrative – now also just relays disjointed and often wildly contradictory fragments of information.

Events come and go like waves of a fever. We – and the journalists – live in a state of continual delirium, constantly waiting for the next news event to loom out of the fog – and then disappear again, unexplained.

And the formats – in news and documentaries – have become so rigid and repetitive that the audiences never really look at them.

In the face of this people retreat from journalism and politics. They turn away into their own worlds, and the stories they and their friends tell each other.

I think this is wrong, sad, and bad for democracy – because it means the politicians become more and more unaccountable.

I have made a film that tries to respond to this in two ways.

It tells a big story about why the stories we are told today have stopped making sense.

But it is also an experiment in a new way of reporting the world. To do this I’ve used techniques that you wouldn’t normally associate with TV journalism. My aim is to make something more emotional and involving – so it reconnects and feels more real.

BBC iPlayer has given me the opportunity to do this – because it isn’t restrained by the rigid formats and schedules of network television. It’s a place you can go to experiment and try out new ideas.

It is also liberating – both because things can be any length, and also because it allows the audience to watch the films in different ways.

The film is called Bitter Lake. It is a bit of an epic – it’s two hours twenty minutes long.

It tells a big historical narrative that interweaves America, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia. It shows how politicians in the west lost confidence – and began to simplify the stories they told. It explains why this happened – because they increasingly gave their power away to other forces, above all global finance.

But there is one other country at the center of the film.

Afghanistan.

This is because Afghanistan is the place that has repeatedly confronted politicians, as their power declines, with the terrible truth – that they cannot understand what is going on any longer. Let alone control it.

The film shows in detail how all the foreigners who went to Afghanistan created an almost totally fictional version of the country in their minds.

They couldn’t see the complex reality that was in front of them – because the stories they had been told about the world had become so simplified that they lacked the perceptual apparatus to see reality any longer.

And this blindness led to a terrible disaster – support for a blatantly undemocratic government, wholesale financial corruption and thousands of needless deaths.

A horrific scandal that we, in our disconnected bubble here in Britain, seem hardly aware of. And even if we are – it is dismissed as being just too complex to understand.

But it is important to try and understand what happened. And the way to do that is to try and tell a new kind of story. One that doesn’t deny the complexity and reduce it to a meaningless fable of good battling evil – but instead really tries to makes sense of it.

I have got hold of the unedited rushes of almost everything the BBC has ever shot in Afghanistan. It is thousands of hours – some of it is very dull, but large parts of it are extraordinary. Shots that record amazing moments, but also others that are touching, funny and sometimes very odd.

These complicated, fragmentary and emotional images evoke the chaos of real experience. And out of them I have tried to build a different and more emotional way of depicting what really happened in Afghanistan.

A counterpoint to the thin, narrow and increasingly destructive stories told by those in power today.

And I must include this comment from the relevant page on BBC Blogs:

Quite simply one of the best films I’ve ever watched. The theme and content made so many connections linking events of the last 40 years. It’s perhaps time to reflect on power ,control and those who wield it . The official narrative is not our narrative , we have a choice to decide what we believe . Time to reflect and make that choice.
Thanks for such an informing film.

Here is the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM8W87UcO2U

Our thoughts make us human

Serendipity strikes again!

Recently I read a post from Val Boyco over on her delightful blog Find Your Middle Ground.  Her topic was about breathing. Here’s a flavour of her post:

I’ve written before about how our breath is connected with our wellbeing and emotional state. Noticing how we are breathing is a tool that we can use to monitor how we are doing.

There is another pause that comes with our breath which is also revealing. The pause at the end of the exhale before we take in more air. When we are distracted, stressed or in an anxious state, there is no pause. We don’t trust we have enough air and we don’t allow ourself to relax and let go.

Just take a moment to tune into how you are breathing right now. Just notice without judgment.

Pausing at the end of an exhale can only happen when we are relaxed and in tune with our mind and body. When our body and mind are aligned in the present moment.

I then left a reply in the comments section:

Excellent advice. For the last few weeks I have been using a biofeedback unit that through guiding one to breathe in harmony with a musical phrase allows one to slow the whole body down. Down to about 4.8 breaths per minute. It really underlines how slow one’s breathing rate can be and, supporting your post, the glorious pauses after each inhale and exhale.

And offered to write a post about the unit and my experiences. (Coming out tomorrow.)

However, what I wanted to do as a ‘lead-in’ to that post was to discover if there was any research into the benefits, as in scientific benefits, of slowing one’s body down in this fashion. What is surely nothing more than a form of meditation. Where to start looking? Needn’t have worried; there were many items on YouTube that covered the benefits of meditation.

There was a video from the AsapSCIENCE guys Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown, but I found it too jazzy and irritating, rather ironically! Then there was one from physicist John Hagelin that seemed much more appropriate to my tastes (and that is featured tomorrow as well).

By now it was coming up to 4:30pm and I had a dozen other things to do, plus try and fit in a biofeedback session – I could feel the stress rising within me.

Then I dipped into Terry Hershey’s latest Sabbath Moment and, guess what! Here’s what I read:

Learning to let go

January 26, 2015

Hershey2

Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go. Herman Hesse

Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security. John Allen Paulos

When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have. Lynne Twist

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Today I am sitting in a café (and bar) in Vaison-la-Romaine, in the Provence region of France, nursing my espresso.

No, wait… that was last week.

It just sounds sexier than saying, “Today I’m looking out my window at a gloomy winter sky, here in the Pacific Northwest, with a Thesaurus in hand hoping for a gushing synonym for gray.”

Welcome home. Home for me is always awaited and valued, but still elicits a bout of scotoma (selective vision), where we end up comparing the life we have, for the “life we deserve” (the actual wording for a recent advertised e-course).

My favorite part of my recent France trip was visiting family run wineries, spending time with the owner / wine-maker, with the permission to linger, sensing a comfort grounded in story and connection. Said one (when we asked him about being a small winery–in a world where big is everything), “I am glad. I am not alone. I work with family.” (Referring to his son and three daughters.)
And it makes me wonder about this mental sleight of hand we use, thinking about the life we are destined for, as somehow different (or better) from the life we now we live.

There is a Tibetan story about an earnest young man seeking enlightenment. (Earnest people must think this quite unfair–since they play a central role in most parables and stories about enlightenment.)

A famous sage passes through the man’s village. The man asks the sage to teach him the art of meditation. The sage agrees. He tells the man, “Withdraw from the world. Mediate every day in the specific way I will teach you. Do not waver and you will attain enlightenment.”

The earnest man follows the sage’s instructions to the letter. Time passes — and no enlightenment. Two years, five, ten, twenty pass.

It happens that the sage once again passes through the man’s village. The man seeks him out, grumbling that despite his best intentions and devotion and diligent efforts, he does not achieve enlightenment. “Why?”
The sage asks, “What type of meditation did I teach you?”
The man tells him.
The sage says, “Oh, what a terrible mistake I made! That is not the right meditation for you. You should have done another kind altogether. Too bad, for now it is too late.”

Disconsolate, the man returns to his cave. Staking his life on the sage’s instructions, and now believing he is without hope, the man abandons all his wishes and efforts and need to control his road to enlightenment. He does not know what to do. So, he does what he knows best: he begins meditating. And in a short while, much to his astonishment, his confusion begins to dissolve, and his inner world comes to life. A weight falls away and he feels lighter, and regenerated. When he walks out of the cave, the sky is bluer, the snow capped mountains whiter, and the world around him more vivid.

There is no doubt that all too often, our efforts–to succeed or achieve or attain–get in the way of our living. It brings to mind my favorite Robert Capon quote, “We live life like ill-taught piano students. So inculcated with the flub that will get us in dutch, we don’t hear the music, we only play the right notes.”

I understand. I was weaned on a spirituality that predicated itself on artifice. In other words, the importance is placed upon appearance, rather that just being. (It was vital to “look spiritual.” Which begs the question, “What do spiritual people look like?” As a boy, I always thought the “spiritual people” looked as if some part of their clothing was a size too small.)

What is it we are holding on to–so rigid, so firm, white-knuckled in our determination?
At some point, we’ve got to breathe.
Just breathe.
Without realizing it (and after the sage’s disheartening news), the man in the story “let go.”

He let go of the need to see life as a problem to be solved.
He let go of the need to have the correct answers (or experiences) for his “enlightenment.”
He let go of the need to see his spiritual life in terms of a formula.
He let go of the restraints that come from public opinion.

Abandon your masterpiece, sink into the real masterpiece. Leonard Cohen

Without realizing it, he took Leonard Cohen’s advice. He abandoned his “masterpiece”–the perception of what he needed to accomplish, or how he needed to appear, or what he needed to feel–in order to allow himself to sink down into this life, this moment, even with all of its uncertainty and insecurity.

For the first many years, meditation or prayer was a requirement or compulsion. In his emptiness, meditation and prayer was an offering of thanks, freely given, and without constraint. True spiritual enlightenment, it seems, happens when you are not trying to impress anyone, or score any points with heavenly bookkeepers.
It sounds easy doesn’t it?
But here’s the deal: My best intentions to play the right notes can fabricate an armor that keeps me from the vividness of life–whether it be to pray or meditate or notice or give or mourn or dance or play or grieve or laugh or celebrate or love… or just to walk.

I never did find a good enough synonym for the gray (although I’ll keep looking). Gladly, the sun has broken through. And there is enough warmth to persuade us that spring may arrive tomorrow. Daffodil shoots everywhere–up through the leaves and debris–help the ruse. So it’s garden time this afternoon, turning manure into the vegetable garden beds, beginning to cut back and clean some of the perennial beds. Enough work for the back to call a time out and request reprieve. I’m headed to the swing under the maple, when I look up to see the sun illuminating the red-twig dogwood shrubs, 10 foot canes glowing, a bright cranberry red. It catches my breath. And I am glad to be alive.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive… of the rapture of being alive. Joseph Campbell

Such power in those words. Then how moments later what I had read from Terry made so much sense to me. So perfectly connected with yesterday’s post Animals make us human. So relevant that quotation yesterday about animal happiness. This one:

Neuroscience key to animal happiness

“…research in neuroscience has been showing that emotions drive behavior, and my thirty-five years of experience working with animals have shown me that this is true. Emotions come first. You have to go back to the brain to understand animal welfare.”

Animals Make Us Human : Creating the best life for Animals

by Temple Grandin & Catherine Johnson

Such a close parallel with that well-known saying about us humans: ‘we are what we think‘. How our own happiness, just as it is with our animals, has its roots in our emotions.

How letting go, how staying in the present, is so good for us. How dogs do that so perfectly.

How we humans have so much to learn from our dogs.

Pure, deep peace radiating out from Hazel's loving eyes.
Pure, deep peace radiating out from Hazel’s loving eyes.

 

Animals make us human.

Animal and human happiness.

As I have mentioned in the past and undoubtedly will do so again in the future, one of the most wonderful aspects of this world of blogging is the way that connections are made. Just a few weeks ago, a connection was made between Learning from Dogs and Dog Leader Mysteries. DLM’s byline is: Saving dogs’ lives and dog lovers’ sanity. Dog Leader Mysteries is written by author Deborah Taylor-French.

Anyway, out of the exchanges that have taken place between Deborah and myself, came a reference to a post about animal happiness that was published on Deborah’s blog in October, 2013.  It is very interesting and I am delighted to be given permission to share it with you.

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Neuroscience key to animal happiness

“…research in neuroscience has been showing that emotions drive behavior, and my thirty-five years of experience working with animals have shown me that this is true. Emotions come first. You have to go back to the brain to understand animal welfare.”

Animals Make Us Human : Creating the best life for Animals

by Temple Grandin & Catherine Johnson

Water dogs having a blast in Spring Lake Park.
Water dogs having a blast in Spring Lake Park.

By Deborah Taylor-French

Those of us who live and/or work with animals know…

animals have emotions.

Temple Grandin has made the understanding, care and handling of farm animals her life’s work. I refer to her book Animals Make Us Human because not only has she studied farm animals, but she also loves and lives with pets. In her books, especial this one, she insists that we must understand how animals brains work, how they see, hear and smell every sensory detail in their surroundings.

Animals emotions drive their behavior.

To make a better life for our pets, for domestic and wild animals we must understand the main emotions that drive behavior. This will help us to turn on their positive emotions and avoid turning on FEAR, RAGE and GRIEF.

Example: Rabbits and horses are prey animals.

  • Never chase either rabbits or horses.
  • Teach your pet rabbit or horse to come to you.
  • Always reward them for recognizing their name and coming when called.
  • When you chase a prey animal, you make him or her fearful of you!

Emotions are the gifts of our ancestors. We have them and so do other animals. We must never forget this. When it comes to animal welfare we can always do better. Most of the time “good welfare” is not “good enough.”

The Emotional Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff.

Dogs Depend on us for freedom from fear and safety

  • Never tie up your dog unless it is in your company in a human training session.
  • A dog needs to feel he can flee to safety.
  • Be sensitive to your dog’s fear signals and show him you will protect and calm him.
  • Increase your dogs positive emotions by interesting, but not overstimulating activities.
  • Always stop training before your dog gets tired.

Dogs are the only animals that live with us inside of their flight zone.

Dogs depend on us for positive and playful lives

When you help increase an animal’s curiosity, you turn on his or her positive emotions of SEEKING and PLAY.

Example: Dogs love to play.

  • Find a time and place when both you and your dog seem relaxed.
  • Invite your dog to play by doing a play bow or picking up his favorite toy.
  • Use an excited and happy tone of voice to call your dog.
  • Run away.
  • When your dog chases you, stop.
  • Wait for your dog to run then chase.
  • Always stop before your dog seems fearful or overexcited.

Dogs love this game, which dog lovers know dogs play every chance they get.

Temple Grandin Website and Book Orders

Thank you for reading.

blogthechange

Please share for the sake of all animals, because as

Temple Grandin says,

“Animals make us human.”

Please visit and share Blog for the Change for Animals

Animals defy our tendency to define their lives and their limits.

For further information on brain research, emotions in animals and the primary-process emotional-affective networks of mammalian brains read US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health on the work of Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D. Affective neuroscience of the emotional BrainMind: evolutionary perspectives and implications for understanding depression.

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Follow that, as they say!

Out of this world!

Literally!

I noticed the other day a series of photographs of the moon and Venus that were included in an item on EarthSky News. All I am going to do is to republish a selection of the photographs so if you would like to read the full item, including all the photographs, then here is the link.

Mohamed Laaïfat Photographies in Normandy, France caught the little planet Mercury, too, along with the moon and Venus, on January 21.
Mohamed Laaïfat Photographies in Normandy, France caught the little planet Mercury, too, along with the moon and Venus, on January 21.

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João Pedro Marques caught bright Venus and the waxing moon on the evening of January 22, 2015, from Portugal. The reddish “star” above and to the left of the moon is Mars.
João Pedro Marques caught bright Venus and the waxing moon on the evening of January 22, 2015, from Portugal. The reddish “star” above and to the left of the moon is Mars.

In the above image, Mars may only be seen by viewing a bigger image here.

One Horse Media in Lolo, Montana wrote: “What a cool moon and view of Venus this evening! I was happy to have just enough time to take a few photos as soon as I got home!”
One Horse Media in Lolo, Montana wrote: “What a cool moon and view of Venus this evening! I was happy to have just enough time to take a few photos as soon as I got home!”

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Hecktor Barrios in Hermosillo, Mexico wrote: “Venus, Moon and Mercury, the latter barely visible."
Hecktor Barrios in Hermosillo, Mexico wrote: “Venus, Moon and Mercury, the latter barely visible.”

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Planet Venus and young moon on January 21, 2015, as captured by Cathy Emmett Palmer in Panama City Beach, Florida.
Planet Venus and young moon on January 21, 2015, as captured by Cathy Emmett Palmer in Panama City Beach, Florida.

Won’t add any more thoughts from me because each and every one of you will have your own feelings and responses to these photographs. Don’t want my ideas to get in the way of your own thoughts.

Just all of you have a wonderful and peaceful weekend.

Making sense of who we are?

The psychology of self.

One of the huge differences between humans and our beloved dogs is that dogs live entirely in the present and do not engage in abstract thinking. Indeed, one of the most glorious aspects of owning a dog is being able to lose oneself in those moments of intimacy between yourself and your dog. Here’s a wonderful example of that when Bridget from Oregon Wild visited us recently and enjoyed a moment of bliss with Hazel.

P1150348

So with that in mind, I am now going to be very un-dog-like and very human by offering an essay that is most abstract in manner.  Not my essay, I should hasten to add, but a recent essay from George Monbiot, republished here with his kind permission. Then tomorrow, I want to stay with the abstract theme and include a recent essay from Terry Hershey.

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A Small and Shuffling Life

Why, in this age of freedom, are we so confined? And what can we do to reclaim our lives?

By George Monbiot, published in the New York Times, 19th January 2015

Live free or die: this is the maxim of our age. But the freedoms we celebrate are particular and limited. We fetishise the freedom of business from state control; the freedom not to pay taxes; the freedom to carry guns and speak our minds and worship whom we will. But despite – in some cases because of – this respect for particular freedoms, every day the scope of our lives appears to contract.

Half a century ago, we were promised that rising wealth would mean less work, longer vacations and more choice. But our working hours rise in line with economic growth, and they are now governed by a corporate culture of snooping and quantification, of infantilizing dictats and impossible demands, which smothers autonomy and creativity. Technologies that promised to save time and free us from drudgery (such as email and smartphones) fill our heads with a clatter so persistent it stifles the ability to think.

Public spaces in our cities are reduced to pasteurised piazzas, in which loitering without intent to shop is treated as suspicious. Protest is muted by dozens of constraining laws. Young people, who have no place in this dead-eyed, sanitised landscape, scarcely venture from their bedrooms. Political freedom now means choosing between alternative versions of market fundamentalism.

Even the freedoms we do possess we tend not to exercise. We spend hours every day watching other people doing what we might otherwise be doing: dancing, singing, playing sport, even cooking. We venture outdoors to seek marginally different varieties of stuff we already possess. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers / Little we see in Nature that is ours,” wrote William Wordsworth (1), and it is truer today than it was then.

We entertain the illusion that we have chosen our lives. Why, if this is the case, do our apparent choices differ so little from those of other people? Why do we live and work and travel and eat and dress and entertain ourselves in almost identical fashion? It’s no wonder, when we possess and use it so little, that we make a fetish out of freedom.

Perhaps we have forgotten the bitter complaint made by Benjamin Franklin in 1753. “When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return.”(2) But when European Americans “have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life … and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.” In 1785 Hector de Crèvecoeur asked two European refuseniks why they would not come home. “The reasons they gave me would greatly surprise you: the most perfect freedom, the ease of living, the absence of those cares and corroding solicitudes which so often prevail with us.”(3)

We arose in a thrilling, terrible world. The African savannahs on which the first hominims evolved were dominated by sabretooth and false sabretooth cats, giant hyaenas and bear dogs. When human beings arrived in the Americas, 14,000 years ago, they found ground sloths the weight of elephants; a beaver eight feet from nose to tail; armadillos like small cars; giant lions and sabretooths; short-faced bears whose shocking armoury of teeth and claws suggests they drove giant lions and sabretooths off their prey. A bird in Argentina had a wingspan of 26 feet. Fanged salmon nine feet long migrated inland from the Pacific coast.

We carry with us the psychological equipment, rich in instinct and emotion, required to navigate that world. But our survival in the modern economy requires the use of few of the mental and physical capacities we possess. Sometimes it feels like a small and shuffling life. Our humdrum, humiliating lives leave us, I believe, ecologically bored.

At times this sensation has overwhelmed me. It happened in a newly-discovered bone cave in southern England. The walls and floor were encrusted with calcite crystals, that glittered in the torchlight. One of the archaeologists with whom I was exploring it handed me the atlas vertebra of a Bronze Age cow. Then he picked up another bone, this time with both hands: another atlas vertebra, but monstrous. “It’s the same species as the first one. But this is the wild version. The aurochs.” As I turned it over in my hands, feeling its great weight, I experienced what seemed like an electric jolt of recognition. It felt raw, feral, pungent, thrilling. The colour seemed to drain from modern life.

I felt it again when stalking up a tidal channel with a trident, trying to spear flounders. After two hours scanning the sand intently for signs of the fish, I was suddenly transported by the fierce conviction that I had done it a thousand times before. I felt it most keenly when I stumbled across the fresh corpse of a deer in a wood. I hoisted it onto my shoulders. As soon as I felt its warmth on my back, my skin flushed, my hair stood on end and I wanted to roar. Civilisation slid off like a bathrobe. I believe that in these cases I accidentally unlocked a lumber room in the mind, in which vestigial faculties shaped by our evolutionary past are stored. These experiences ignited in me a smouldering longing for a richer and rawer life than the one I lead.

Unless we are prepared to reject civilization altogether and live in the woods, there is no complete answer to this predicament. But I think there is a partial one. Across many rich nations, especially the United States, global competition is causing the abandonment of farming on less fertile land. Rather than trying to tame and hold back the encroaching wilds, I believe we should help to accelerate the process of reclamation, removing redundant roads and fences, helping to re-establish missing species, such as wolves and cougars and bears, building bridges between recovering habitats to create continental-scale wildlife corridors, such as those promoted by the Rewilding Institute(4).

This rewilding of the land permits, if we choose, a partial rewilding of our own lives. It allows us to step into a world that is not ordered and controlled and regulated, to imagine ourselves back into the rawer life from which we came, to discover, perhaps, the ecstasy I experienced when I picked up that deer. We don’t have to give up our washing machines and computers and spectacles and longevity to shed our ecological boredom and recover some measure of the freedom that has been denied to us. Perhaps we do need to remember who we are.

George Monbiot’s book Feral: rewilding the land, the sea and human life is published this month by the University of Chicago Press.

References:

1. http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww317.html

2. Benjamin Franklin, 9th May 1753. The Support of the Poor. Letter to Peter Collinson.

http://www.historycarper.com/1753/05/09/the-support-of-the-poor/

3. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, 1785. Letters from an American Farmer and Other Essays. Letter 12. Edited by Dennis D. Moore. Harvard University Press.

4. http://rewilding.org/rewildit/

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So tomorrow, the second part with Terry Hershey and a short talk by Professor Dan Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Havard University.

A wonderful insight into dogs.

The republication of a wonderful post about a dog that rides a bus!

I’m in the middle of reading Jean Donaldson’s book The Culture Clash.  Here’s a summary of what the book is about from the Dogwise website.

Donaldson

Summary: The book that has shaped modern thinking about canine behavior and the relationship between dogs and humans has been revised. Dogs are not humans. Dogs are clever and complex creatures that humans need to take the time to understand in order to live together successfully. You must read this book… because your dog sure can’t!

Here’s an extract from page 13 of the first chapter: Getting the dog’s perspective.

We crave anecdotes about genius dogs and these abound. Everyone knows a story that illustrates how smart dogs are. But a fundamental question has never been answered by proponents of reasoning in dogs: if dogs are capable of these feats of brain power at all, why are they not performing them all the time? Why never in controlled conditions? What is the most upsetting about these claims is the lack of rigour in evaluating them.

You get the picture of where Jean Donaldson is coming from!  (And I’m still only just into the book myself.)

So with those words echoing around your mind, just hold your breath while you read this article from author Deborah Taylor-French‘s blog: Dog Leader Mysteries.

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Bus riding dog: Photo Friday

JANUARY 16, 2015 ~ DOGLEADERMYSTERIES

Can your dog do this?

Have you read about this dog? A friend shared a news clipping on this dog’s unusual behavior in Seattle, Washington. Eclipse, as an independent city dog, seems to know to walk only on the sidewalk, get on the bus, take a seat and look out the window, all without assistance from his person. Eclipse even knows, which bus stop to get off at for the dog park. “Bus riders report she hops onto seats next to strangers, and watches out the window for her stop. Says commuter Tiona Rainwater, “All the bus drivers know her … she makes everybody happy.”

A Metro Transit spokesman said the agency loves that a dog appreciates public transit. The City of Seattle representative suggested that it would be safer for Eclipse to wear a leash and be with her human when she rides the bus, but with a dog this smart, is it a problem? I don’t know the answer. Black lab rides bus alone to dog park USA Today Network Associated Press 1:01 p.m. EST January 14, 2015.

What do you think, can dogs take the bus without their human families?

No dogs off leash.
No dogs off leash.

We know that big dogs differ in temperament and dog to dog communication from little lap dogs. But what makes a dog mature and experienced enough to take on full independence in the confusion and untranslated rules of human life? Yes, free-roaming dogs ride trains in organized and peaceful groups in Russia. Yes, often those who live with dogs, like we do, find they understand far more of our human lives than we think possible. After watching dozens of dogs off leash on city streets of Baja California Sur, Mexico. No dog seemed homeless and all but one stayed on the sidewalk.

Do dogs ever become 100% street-smart?

Street smarts or leash required?
Street smarts or leash required?

What do dogs know? What do dogs remember? We know dogs learn. We know some dogs show exceptional learning abilities, much greater than other dogs. Somewhere I read that the average dog has the intelligence of a human toddler. Now, none of us would let a toddler walk city streets, get on and off a bus alone. But what of special cases? History shows exceptions to rules and to the “average.” Clearly, Eclipse breaks the rule, the average and reshapes our expectations of what dogs can and should be able to do.

“The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Mahatma Gandhi

Have you read Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog by Ted Kerasote? Of book talks, life and books by Kerasote can be found on his Website his 2014 Pukka’s Promise: The Quest for Longer-Lived Dogs, in paperback, looks to be interesting to those of us who want our dogs to live the longest, healthiest lives possible. Find more about this top creative nonfiction author on his Website Kerasote.com.

True dog story (tearjerker ahead)

A Marin County ethical keeshond breeder shared this true story of their longtime and favorite dog. For years and years, the behavior of their family dog and top champion male looked totally stable. His nature showed pure calm and obedience. They all got into a pattern of allowing this canine patriarch time to lay on the front lawn in their neighborhood circle street. He always remained serene, watching, never chasing, barking or moving.

On afternoon as the kinglike keeshond patriarch lay on his grassy lawn – the unthinkable happened – he ran in front of car. Now fortunately, this big keeshond did not die. But he suffered, ever after with epileptic fits. Makes me wonder if we fool ourselves in imagining that dogs can navigate city streets safely.

Please share, comment and sign up for my blog updates. Thanks, Deborah Taylor-French

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So leave it up to you to assess the brain power of dogs, especially that bus-riding black Labrador dog. To help you make your mind up, take a look at the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPdJXNKRaUU

Published on Jan 14, 2015

Seattle’s public transit system has had a ruff go of things lately, and that has riders smiling.

You see, of the 120 million riders who used the system last year, one of them is actually a dog. Seattle’s KOMO-TV reports the 2-year-old black Labrador mix, named Eclipse, has become a regular fixture on the city’s D-Line after she figured out how to ride the bus alone to the dog park.

“All the bus drivers know her. She sits here just like a person does,” fellow rider Tiona Rainwater told KOMO. “She makes everybody happy. How could you not love this thing?”

The dog’s owner, Jeff Young, lives next to the stop. He said Eclipse sometimes hops on board without him if he’s not yet finished smoking his cigarette when the bus arrives. The pup has become a regular on the route, riding three or four stops before exiting at her destination of choice. “I catch up with her at the dog park,” Young explained.
Miles Montgomery, a Seattle radio host and D-Line commuter, was taken by surprise when Eclipse hopped into the seat next to him on a ride last Friday, looked out the window, then got off at her stop. Montgomery snapped a bemused selfie with the commuting canine, adding the caption, “Bus is full this morning:”

A Metro Transit spokesperson told the AP they’re happy a dog can appreciate public transit, though Eclipse should really be on a leash. King County says dogs are allowed to ride buses at the discretion of the driver, provided the animal isn’t a hazard and doesn’t create a disturbance.

Seattle isn’t alone in having a streetwise dog. Stray dogs in Moscow, Russia, have learned to commute in and out of the city from the suburbs by riding the subway, even watching out for other dogs to make sure they exit at the correct stop.

Get along, little doggies.

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Golly, I have just seen how long I have spent getting this post written.  Poor old Shelby must be wondering if I really did want to play with him; should have made my next move simply ages ago!

dog-playing-chess-graphic

Mind you, I so rarely win against him!