Category: Dogs

The book! Part Five: How humans view dogs.

The remaining chapters in Part Five are the essence of my story. That our dogs offer us a wonderful vision of how mankind needs to change, element by element, to stand a reasonable chance of surviving as a viable species into the distant future.

The writing of this book has been fuelled and motivated by an enormous amount of research, as has been mentioned previously. In general, what I have read has supported my overall hypothesis that I expressed in the opening paragraph above.

Then I read Jean Donaldson’s book The Culture Clash [1] almost when I had completed the first draft of this book. Whoops! This is what came at me in the first chapter [page 10] of her book:

“One reason for our astonishingly poor understanding of dogs might be extremely slow trickle down from experts: trainers educating one owner or one class at a time rather that something on the scale of public service announcements or spots on Oprah.

But there’s a second reason for the slow acceptance of realistic interpretations of dog behavior: simple reluctance to let go of anthropomorphism.”

Reinforced on the following page by these two sentences, “Our bond with dogs is obviously strong. But they are not human and so now we are stuck explaining the bond.”

The book was a very interesting read and I can highly recommend it to anyone seeking a greater clarity about dogs, especially about dog training. As the back cover announces: “The most thought-provoking book ever written on dog behavior and training.”

The reason I reacted earlier with a ‘whoops’ was that the vision of what we need to learn from dogs, explored in detail in the following chapters, does, without question, leave me guilty of a “simple reluctance to let go of anthropomorphism.”

It doesn’t in any way, well to my mind it doesn’t, however reduce the central proposition of the book. That whether one sees dogs anthropomorphically or not, they represent wonderful and inspiring creatures, creatures that have proved their ability to live in harmony on the planet and that’s a track record that man can only dream of at present.

[1] Published by James & Kenneth, CA. USA. 2nd Ed. 2005

Faithful dog Masha.

Another wonderful dog story, courtesy of Chris Snuggs.

Over four years ago, I published a post under the title of Faithful dog Hachikō. It was the heart-wrenching story of a Japanese Akita dog called Hachi, Hachikō in Japanese, that continued to wait for his master’s return, Hidesaburō Ueno, for years after the professor’s death. Here’s an extract from that post:

In 1924, Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo took in Hachikō as a pet. During his owner’s life Hachikō saw him out from the front door and greeted him at the end of the day at the nearby Shibuya Station. The pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno did not return on the usual train one evening. The professor had suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage at the university that day. He died and never returned to the train station where his friend was waiting. Hachikō was loyal and every day for the next nine years he waited sitting there amongst the town’s folk.

Hachikō was given away after his master’s death, but he routinely escaped, showing up again and again at his old home. Eventually, Hachikō apparently realized that Professor Ueno no longer lived at the house. So he went to look for his master at the train station where he had accompanied him so many times before. Each day, Hachikō waited for Professor Ueno to return. And each day he did not see his friend among the commuters at the station.

The permanent fixture at the train station that was Hachikō attracted the attention of other commuters. Many of the people who frequented the Shibuya train station had seen Hachikō and Professor Ueno together each day. They brought Hachikō treats and food to nourish him during his wait.

This continued for nine years with Hachikō appearing precisely when the train was due at the station

A few days ago, Chris sent me details of a faithful dog story that appeared in the English Daily Telegraph newspaper on the 26th November. The story was headed: Loyal dog waits for owner who will never return at hospital for two years. It opened, thus:

A loyal dog has shown up every day for two years at a hospital where her master passed away.

Masha appears at the Siberian hospital’s reception area every morning, the Siberian Times reports.

Her owner was admitted to the hospital in Novosibirsk region, south western Siberia, two years ago after falling ill.

Masha is well cared for by staff who make sure she has a warm bed and food every night. The faithful canine was the elderly man’s only visitor, staff say, and used to run home every night to stand guard before returning the next morning.

If we then go across to that Siberian Times story, we see that the wonderful Masha is linked to Hachikō.

Heartbroken little dog becomes Siberia’s own ‘Hachiko’

By Kate Baklitskaya and Derek Lambie – 24 November 2014

For past year devoted Masha has been waiting in a hospital for the beloved owner who will never return.

'One day, and we very much want this day to come soon, our Masha will trust somebody.' Picture: Svyatoslav Odarenko — ‘One day, and we very much want this day to come soon, our Masha will trust somebody.’ Picture: Svyatoslav Odarenko

A little dog that waits in vain at a Siberian hospital for the owner who has already died has been dubbed Russia’s own Hachiko. Heartbroken Masha has been turning up looking for her beloved master every day since he passed away at the facility in Novosibirsk last year.

It is a tale mirroring that of the famously loyal Akita dog Hachiko in Japan, who arrived at a train station every evening for 10 years to greet its owner even though he had died.

Masha has become a well-known, and much loved, figure at the Novosibirsk District Hospital Number One, where patients and workers ensure she has a warm bed and food to eat.

But, aware of her obvious sadness at being unable to find her owner, staff are hoping an animal lover will come forward to adopt her and give her a new home.

Chief doctor Vladimir Bespalov told Novosibirsk Vesti TV: ‘You see her eyes, how sad they are – it’s not the usual shiny eyes for when a dog is happy. You can see this in animals in the same way as with people.

‘There is nothing medicine can do for her here, but we are still hoping that Masha will be able to find another owner. One day, and we very much want this day to come soon, our Masha will trust somebody.’

Masha, who looks like a dachshund with short legs, has been coming into the reception at the hospital in Koltsovo every day for the past two years since her owner was admitted. The man, a pensioner from the village of Dvurechie several kilometres away, had fallen ill and had turned up with his pet.

There are three heart-rending photographs of Masha that you really must look at. The article then concludes:

Whilst he was staying on the ward, Masha was his only visitor and she even trotted off home to guard the house before returning to the hospital in the morning.

Sadly he died a year ago but the loyal dog has continued to turn up every day, perhaps because she has nowhere to live, or because she believes her master is still there.

Nurse Alla Vorontsova said: ‘She is waiting for him, for her owner. Just recently a family tried to adopt her, but Masha ran away and returned to the hospital. She was taken on Friday evening, and at 3am on Saturday she was back here.’

Masha’s story is similar to that of the famous Japanese dog Hachiko, who used to greet his master on his return from work at the Shibuya train station in Tokyo.

When his owner, agricultural science professor Hidesaburo Ueno, died in 1925 he continued to visit the station every night for 10 years still expecting to meet him off his 4pm train.

In 1935 the dog’s body was found in a Tokyo street and his remains were stuffed, mounted and put on display in Japan’s National Science Museum, while a bronze statue was erected outside Shibuya. A Hollywood movie of the sad story, starring Richard Gere, was released in cinemas in 2010.

There are also similarities to Greyfriars Bobby, a little Scottish terrier who was unwilling to leave his dead master’s grave in Edinburgh, Scotland, for 14 years in the 19th century.

What wonderful, loyal, loving friends dogs are to us humans.

The book! Part Four: What do we mean by integrity?

Integrity.

Just another of those words, like hope, that we use so often yet so rarely stop and reflect on the fullest meaning of the word; its deepest meaning. In the strictest sense, as in the definition of the word, it has much to do with moral and ethical principles. Sound ones, I hasten to add! (I am, of course, not including the meaning of integrity as one of physical soundness; as in the soundness of a ship’s hull.)

Yet, and I hesitate to write this, terms such as moral and ethical principles don’t slap me around the face with any force. One person’s ethical principles may not necessarily match another person’s ethical principles.

So more digging around the web, looking for some personal clarity of the meaning of the word. I came across this view of integrity: Integrity starts with the soul. Now that did engage me immediately and felt like that metaphorical slap on the face. Then a few moments later, my web search turned up a Zen Buddhist quote: “Be master of mind rather than mastered by mind.”

That stirred some ancient part of the old memory cells and I turned to a notebook that I have long used to jot down things that warranted being remembered. Yes, there it was: “Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.”

Thus drawing together these separate strands leads me to see integrity as a key foundation of change. Not exclusively, but equally vital a foundation of change as hope and goodness. Perhaps, foundation of change isn’t the most apt mental image. Foundation is too static an idea. Better, perhaps, is Professor Kaufman’s use of the term, and image, of vehicles. As in my previous chapter on The importance of hope: “Important psychological studies show that ability is important, but it’s the vehicles that actually get people where they want to go.”

In other words, our change in thoughts, our own internal deliberations to be the change that we need to be, sit on hope, goodness and integrity. We all remember that old saying about not being able to give away what one doesn’t own!

Now is this some cosy, self-indulgent line of introspection? No! Emphatically no!

I say this from a belief that the lifting of the importance of integrity is key to our survival. I am going to open up that bold statement by turning to my blog, that carries the same name as this book: Learning from Dogs. The blog was started on July 15th, 2009.

When I started Learning from Dogs I was initially rather vague about the purpose of the blog yet knew that the blog should reflect the growing need for greater integrity and mindfulness in our planetary civilisation. Some of my early musings indicate where I was coming from: “Show that integrity delivers better results … integrity doesn’t require force … the networking power of a group … demonstrate the power of intention … cut through the power of propaganda and media distortion …”

Then further reflections on the purpose of the blog: “Promulgate the idea that integrity is the glue that holds a just society together … urgent need as society under huge pressures …. want a decent world for my grandchildren … for all our grandchildren …. feels like the 11th hour….”

Because, while it may sound a tad grandiose and pompous, if society doesn’t eschew the games, the half-truths and selfish attitudes of the last, say, 30 years or more, then civilisation, as we know it, could be under threat.

Or, possibly, it’s more accurate to say that our civilisation is under threat and the time left to change our ways, to embrace those qualities of integrity, truth and consciousness for the very planet we all live on, is fast running out.

That’s why the concept of integrity is so critically vital. So vital that there is a return to integrity.

I going to enlarge this chapter, from the strict investigation into what we mean by the word integrity and its relevance to this present time, to a more philosophical view, and I am going to do so by returning to my blog.

For in September, 2013 I published a post under the title of Our broken ways. I wrote about climate change, the way our forests across the world were being fragmented and the impact on wild life in terms of increasing rates of the extinction of mammals; concluding with my criticism of money and power.
There was a comment left by Alex Jones, himself an active blogger with a blog called The Liberated Way. His words in his comment cannot be bettered by me and, consequently, here they are in full:

Hi Paul, what you highlight are examples of disconnection between humanity and nature and with each other. I have on my own blog highlighted a concept of Ubuntu – “I am because we are” – which is only possible when the self realises that they are part of an inter-connected network of life. Your example of islands of fragmented forest where disconnected wildlife are dying out is how it is with disconnected humanity, we are doomed to destruction because we are cut off from the life-giving connection to nature.

All the problems you highlight are symptoms of the disease of disconnection, and until there is reconnection to nature none of these symptoms can be successfully addressed.

War is an integral part of nature, when people seek to dismiss this then they add to the disconnection from nature. I was stung in the face by a drunken wasp a few days ago, this is how it is with nature; it is beautiful but also brutal. Peace and balance are illusions; one might say that life is in a becoming because of unbalance and strife. I advocate harmony, like a downhill skier we do not seek to control our surroundings, but instead act in harmony by moving around the obstacles such as the rocks and trees.

Disconnection can be as large as destroying whole forests by ignorant energy policies to those idiots who kicked a puffball to pieces before I could harvest it, or the new owners of my former home who have taken a chainsaw to all the trees and bushes in the garden. People who are disconnected do not consider how their actions impact nature or impact people, contrary to the philosophy of Ubuntu.

The only way for species man to survive on this planet is for every element of man’s existence on this planet to be rethought of in terms of the natural order. The integrity of the natural order.

“I am because we are!” Each and every one of us is where we are today, for good or ill, because of what we are: part of Nature. It’s so incredibly obvious – we are a natural species – yet who reading this wouldn’t admit at times to behaving “as though we are a species utterly divorced from Nature.”

Millions of us have pets that we love. Yet we still miss the key truth of our relationship with our pets. That we, just as much as our pets, are a part of Nature and subject to Natural order. We have so much to learn from our animals.

A close friend, John, wrote in a recent email to me that, “We are spiritual bankrupt. We spend too much of our time thinking about ourselves and what we want and too little of our time thinking about other people and what we all need.” Continuing in that email to add, “this spiritually bankruptcy had preceded our moral and economical bankruptcy.”

John closed his email by emphasising that the solution to our moral and financial problems, as well as our salvation as individuals, and as a species, is spiritual. “We simply need to love the Nature of God, the earth and each other regardless of what we may believe God to be.”

Now whether you are a religious soul, or a heathen, or somewhere in the middle, it matters not. For if we continue to defy Nature and the natural laws of this planet we are going to be dust before the end of this century.

We have been blessed by an evolution that has allowed mankind to achieve remarkable things. Even to the point of leaving the confines of our planet and setting foot on the Moon, sending probes from out of our Solar System, and even landing on a comet. There’s a sense, a distinctly tangible sense, that man has conquered all; that we have broken the link from being part of Nature; from being of Nature.

And now Mother Earth is reminding all of her species, every single one of them including species man, that everything is bound by her Natural Laws.

Thus rests my argument for not only what do we mean by integrity per se but how it is intimately and irrevocably a function of our relationship with Nature.

Indeed, understanding the power that comes from leading truthful lives and how an individual’s power and level of consciousness can be enhanced through greater integrity, understanding, and compassion could be the most remarkable discovery that any one person could ever make.

“There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyse the causes of happenings.” Dorothy Thompson.

Speaking dog!

An interesting article that appeared in the New Scientist.

Well I managed to write the 50,000 words required of me to be a ‘winner’ of NaNoWriMo14. I was validated in at 53,221 words, albeit the book is not yet completed. Together with my writings from 2013, I am within 10,000 words, give or take, of finishing the draft. Then the fun starts: the big edit!

Anyway, moving on!

The UK’s New Scientist magazine emailed me recently an article that they fathomed would be of interest. Presumably, hoping I would immediately sign up to be a subscriber. Well if that was there presumption, I will be disappointing them. But the article was certainly of interest and, as it was sent to me without my invitation, I don’t feel too bad about republishing it in full.

ooOOoo

Dog head-turning shows they do understand what you say

YOU’RE just so right-side. The left hemisphere of our brains seems to tune into the phonemes in speech that combine to form words, and the right hemisphere focuses on the rhythm and intonation of words, which can carry emotional information. Animals may do the same when processing sounds of their own species, and perhaps even when hearing humans speak.

To test whether domestic dogs have learned to process human speech as we do, Victoria Ratcliffe and David Reby at the University of Sussex in Falmer, UK, placed 25 dogs between two speakers. They played them snippets of speech, such as the command “come on then” (Current Biology article link). The assumption, based on previous research, was that an animal primarily using the left hemisphere to process a sound will turn its head to the right, and vice versa.

When a command was delivered in a flat emotionless tone, 80 per cent of the dogs turned their heads to the right, suggesting they were concentrating on the words, not the emotion. If the commands were said in an emotional tone but some consonants were removed to make the words unintelligible, most of the dogs turned to the left. This suggests that dogs, like us, process different components of human speech in different parts of the brain.

Ratcliffe and Reby’s work suggests that dogs have learned to recognise a handful of human words that carry meaning. So a dog really does listen to its master’s voice.

“It would be extremely exciting to see the neural background of these orienting asymmetries,” says Attila Andics of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, who is running functional MRI brain experiments in dogs to probe this further.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Dogs really do understand what you say”

ooOOoo

Don’t know about dogs recognising, “a handful of human words”, the dogs here in Oregon seem to know far more than ‘a handful’; way far more!

In fact, Jean and I have developed a sign language to communicate those intentions that our dogs need know verbal prompting for! Years ago, the dogs got so excited at the mention of the word ‘walk’ that we changed to spelling it out: w-a-l-k. That worked for a couple of weeks; at most! Then we tried, “Shall we take the dogs for a wa?” No better!

So now it is a subtle sign between Jean and me, such sign hidden from the eyes of the dogs!

Picture parade seventy-two.

The final set of parenting pictures.

Just wish I had many more to share with you as they have been so well received over the previous two Sundays. My thanks to Jim and Janet for sending them to me so that they could be shared. If you missed the first two sets, then you will find links after the last picture.

oooo

The first of photographs was published on the 16th and the second on the 23rd.

Obedience, or not!

Sent to me by Dan Gomez.

It’s a classic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhc8Hl1Lb_o

Published on Nov 21, 2014
This adorably clueless golden retriever from Finland clearly has his priorities in the right order.

You can really see his thought process. “Okay, get ready, don’t f*** this up, she’ll tell you to go and you’ll go…come on, you trained for this..ALRIGHT GO..”
“..OH BALL, OH FOOD, TOY, FOOD, THIS IS A MAGICAL ROAD OF GOODIES.”

The book! Part Four: Faith in goodness.

“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” So said the Dalai Lama.

In the previous chapter, Compassion for self, I quoted Professor Neff saying that in her view self-compassion consisted of three elements: self-kindness, recognition of our common humanity and mindfulness.

That second element, the recognition of our common humanity, provides a wonderful link from that chapter across to this one. For one very simple reason: The reason being that people are generally good. Now I’m not going to throw statistics around, even if I had them to hand, to support my proposition; that there are more good people in the world than not. For the very straightforward reason that I have enjoyed a wide range of wonderful experiences from many; friends and strangers alike. Backed up from my experience of having been around for a while (I’m way the wrong side of 50!), from having travelled extensively in the last forty years, from having lived in four countries over those same forty years, and from having very, very few letdowns from others over that time.

But there’s more. From those many friends and acquaintances over those forty years, again in many parts of the world, I have found it extremely rare to hear of someone speak of knowing another person who they believed was intrinsically nasty.

So, reflecting that this chapter is called faith in goodness, that my experiences support and affirm a faith in the widespread goodness of people, that us human beings are fundamentally loving and good, and will help and care for each other when given the chance, it is easy to see this faith under the banner of another word: trust. Trust in human beings being fundamentally good! (And to make it clear as to where I am coming from, I use the word faith not with any religious or spiritual connotations.)

Now it is time to be firm with myself and remember that this is a chapter in a section of the book about change: change in thoughts and deeds. It is not a chapter about goodness in and of itself, however commendable such a chapter might be.

What is the link, therefore, between goodness and change? Put better, what is the power of goodness in bringing about change?

I guess one way of answering that question is to remind ourselves that whatever we believe about the local circumstances, our local world in which we live, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we trust that those around us are fundamentally good and we offer goodness out to those around us then we all create a local zone of peace.

Ergo, by extension, if we really want to create a global world of peace, and who would eschew that dream, we truly have to believe that it is possible. Not only possible, we have to believe in the certainty that simply by impacting another person’s life in a positive way, thence, just one person at a time, that one other person becomes a stone of change spreading ripples of peace across the waters of the world.

Margaret Wheatley, the author of a number of books on the human condition, offers in an essay Relying on Human Goodness, this pertinent view: “Noticing our beliefs about human goodness is not a philosophical inquiry. Our beliefs are critical influences for what we do in the world. They lead us either to action or retreat.”

In other words, what we believe, how we see ourselves, holds real power of change. Those critical influences in Margaret Wheatley’s words. Such is the importance of our faith in goodness as being an agent of change.

The other fundamental message that comes out from Margaret Wheatley’s essay is that, “Oppression never occurs between equals. Tyranny always arises from the belief that some people are more human than others. There is no other way to justify inhumane treatment, except to assume that the pain inflicted on the oppressed is not the same as ours.”

The old saying of only treating others as you would wish yourself to be treated sums it up: perfectly!

So why oh why does the reality of the human condition, almost as far back as one can look, seem so ghastly at times? Maybe, just maybe, because we only get to hear of all the things that are wrong and that this has been a weakness of mankind since time immemorial.

For one core reason, one ancient truth, one very significant challenge to seeing goodness in all directions. I am referring to the fact that bad news sells! As in spreads like wildfire!

It’s common knowledge that since the days of early man, our survival has depended on great sensitivity to danger. We instinctively pick up on danger, on any danger, on anything that we interpret, often half-consciously, as threatening to us and our loved ones. And these are times when we seem to be faced with a plethora of ‘threats’ to us and our loved ones and our immediate community.

The news media; TV, newspapers, radio and, now the internet, offer us on an almost hourly basis torrents of evidence of the harm, the great harm, that some people seem so easily to do to other people. So many examples of anger, distrust, deceit, greed, ethnic hatred, frequent genocide, terrorism and violence, apparently committed daily in the world. Of the 196 independent countries (The figure varies depending on the reference source being used, but the number is within the range of 189 to 196) or so in the world, sixty-four are at war. Nearly a third of all the countries on this planet are at war (and don’t even start to think of the hundreds of militias, guerrillas and separatist groups involved in fighting!).

Thus it would be so easy to despair, to turn inwards and metaphorically hug oneself in a dark corner, to allow oneself to become more withdrawn and distrustful than ever, to let our worst natures prevail, but a strong, resolute faith in goodness prevents that. Indeed, the more we see examples, primarily from the world’s media, of the worst in mankind, the more essential it is to believe, to have trust, to have faith, in the goodness of people.

To hold in one’s heart, like a glowing beacon of hope, all those wonderful aspects of our fellow humans. The creativity, the caring, the generosity, the open-heartedness and the love; yes the love. Behaviours that are exhibited on a daily basis. Just look around at your friends and neighbours, notice the people you come across in your daily lives, often complete strangers, and you will see so many who, just like you, are offering goodness, being friendly, trying to be useful to others; metaphorically, leaving a clean wake.

So spread the word. For your faith in goodness will bring about the change all of humanity needs.

Smart dogs!

A video courtesy of Dognition.

In my research travels across the internet, yesterday I came across this piece that had been aired on CBS back on October 5th.

I came to the video clip after visiting the home page of Dognition, a company that offers a way of learning how your dog sees the world through your dog’s eyes.

Despite the clip only being eight minutes long, it offers incredible evidence of the benefits, to man and dog, of the shared evolution of both species over thousands of years.

Not going to say any more because I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of what is presented.

So, here’s the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhseg979EQk

Published on Oct 7, 2014
Anderson Cooper meets Chaser, a dog who can identify over a thousand toys, and the scientists who are studying the brain of man’s best friend.

Love to get any comments from you.