Category: Dogs

Racing in the Rain

A dog story for a man.

Thanks to Steve D. from the congregation here in Payson for mentioning this book.  Certainly one for my next Amazon order.

There’s a trailer on YouTube concerning the book, which is summarised as follows,

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life . . . as only a dog could tell it.

So who is Garth Stein?  Well, of course, he has his own website, from which may be read,

Garth Stein is the author of the New York Times best selling literary novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain (Harper, 2008). Now published in 23 languages, The Art of Racing in the Rainwas the #1 BookSense selection for June, 2008, the Starbucks spring/summer 2008 book selection, and has been on the IndieBound™ bestseller list since its publication. Stein’s previous novel, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets (Soho Press, 2005) won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and was a BookSense Pick in both hardcover and paperback. Raven Stole the Moon (Harper, 2010) was Stein’s first novel. He has also written a full-length play, Brother Jones, and produced a number of award-winning documentaries.

With an M.F.A. in film from Columbia University (1990), Garth worked as a documentary film maker for several years, and directed, produced, or co-produced several award winning films.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in Seattle, Garth’s ancestry is diverse: his mother, a native of Alaska, is of Tlingit Indian and Irish descent; his father, a Brooklyn native, is the child of Jewish emigrants from Austria. After spending his childhood in Seattle and then living in New York City for 18 years, Garth returned to Seattle, where he currently lives with his wife, three sons, and their dog, Comet.

There is also an adaptation for young persons,

Have you ever wondered what your dog is thinking?

Meet one funny dog—-Enzo, the lovable mutt who tells this story. Enzo knows he is different from other dogs. Every dog loves to chase cars, but Enzo longs to race them. He learns by watching TV and by listening to his best friend, Denny, an up-and-coming race-car driver, and his daughter, Zoe, his constant companion. Enzo finds that life just like being on the racetrack. For he sees that life, like racing, isn’t simply about going fast. And, by learning the tricks of racing against all odds, he takes on his family’s challenges and emerges a hero. Enzo holds in his heart the dream that Denny will go on to be a racing champion with his daughter right by his side. For theirs is an extraordinary friendship—one that reminds us all to celebrate the triumph of the human (and canine) spirit.

“The race is long. It is better to drive within oneself and finish the race behind the other than it is to drive too hard and crash.”

That’s the wisdom of Enzo, a dog with a lot to say about cars and life. When THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN — Garth Stein’s novel about Enzo and his owners — was published in 2008, readers immediately fell in love with Enzo, and the book has been a New York Times bestseller ever since. That’s because, once people finish reading the novel, they want to tell everybody about it.

Here’s a video of about 3 minutes where Garth Stein explains how he came to write the book.

Plus if you want a longer version, then the following is an  interview of Garth with Stacey Cochran on “The Artist’s Craft” on Raleigh Television Network Channel 10.

Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home

What an amazing book this is.

Amazing!

I have written about Dr Rupert Sheldrake a few times on Learning from Dogs for pretty obvious reasons!  You can do a search on the Blog under ‘sheldrake’ but here are a couple of links.  Serious Learning from Dogs on January 10th, 2011 and Time for a rethink on the 14th April, 2011.

Anyway, I am now well towards the end of Sheldrake’s revised book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and it is more than fascinating.  Bit short of time just now so please forgive me if I do no more than show this video which sets out some of the background to the book.  Sheldrake’s website is here, by the way.

Still on the theme of this Blog

More on why this Blog gets written.

Last Wednesday, I set out to explain why the blog is called Learning from Dogs.  If you missed that then it is here.  The focus was on the very special relationship between man and dog that goes back thousands of years.  It has been a critically important relationship for both species.

But there is another aspect to this Blog, as follows: The relationship between dogs and man goes back thousands of years. The theory is that dogs were domesticated between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago although DNA evidence suggests dogs split away from the grey wolf around 100,000 years ago.  Certainly, the dog was the first animal to be domesticated by man. In fact, some archaeologists speculate that man could not have been a successful ‘hunter-gatherer’ without his relationship with the dog and thus been able to progress to farming the earth for food.

The relationship between Planet Earth and man, as in H. sapiens, goes back around 200,000 years. There is little doubt that most people, even with a minimum of awareness about the world that we live in, are deeply worried. On so many fronts there are forbidding and scary views. It feels as though all the certainty of past times has gone; as if all the trusted models of society are now broken. Whether we are talking politics, economics, employment or the environment, nothing seems to be working.

Why is this? What’s the cause?

It would be easy to condemn man’s drive for progress and an insatiable self-centredness as root causes. But it’s not the case.

The root cause is clear. It is this. How mankind has developed is the result of mankind’s behaviours. All of us behave in many ways that are hugely damaging to the survival of our species. It is likely that these behaviours are little unchanged over thousands of years.

But 2000 years ago, the global population of man was just 300 million.

Twelve-hundred years later, in 1800, it was 1 billion. In 1927, just 127 years later, the two-billionth baby was born. In 1960, only 33 years on, the three-billionth baby. (Remember the moon landing in 1969?  Well, of course you do!  There were about three and a half billion people on the planet!)

Just 16 years on, in 1974, the four-billionth baby was born. In 1987, 13 years later, five billion. Around October 1999, the sixth-billionth baby was born!

It’s trending to a billion every decade. 100 million population growth every year, or about 270,000 every single day!

Combine man’s behaviours with this growth of population and we have the present situation. A totally unsustainable situation disconnected from the planet that supports us.

The only viable solution is to amend our behaviours. To tap into the powers of integrity, self-awareness and mindfulness and change our game.

We all have to work with the fundamental, primary relationships we have with each other and with the planet upon which we all depend. We need a level of consciousness with each other and with the living, breathing planet that will empower change. We need spiritual enlightenment on a grand scale.

That’s why we have so much to learn from dogs. They are man’s best friend. They are man’s oldest friend. They have a relationship with us that is very special; almost certainly telepathic. They can show us how we need to live our lives.

Man's oldest, and wisest, friend.

That’s the real reason why this Blog gets written.  Phew! Glad that’s off my chest!

So much to learn from dogs

Beautiful images that will make appreciate the majesty of wild animals.

First a big thank you to Mary and Ed G. for passing me an email that contained fabulous photographs of the polar bear playing with a  husky dog.  From that email it was the matter of a few moments to find more on the Internet.

Let’s start with a YouTube video of a short talk by Stuart Brown called Animals at Play.

Then another YouTube video that is from FirstScience TV, which appears to be a defunct website.

Here’s Norbert Rosing’s website and here’s the website for the charity, Polar Bears International.

Enjoy your week-end.

These charming pictures were taken by renowned nature photographer Norbert Rosing, whose work has appeared inNational Geographic and other magazines, as well as several books including The World of the Polar Bear (Firefly Books, 1996), in which Rosing recounts the story of how these particular photographs came to be taken.

The location was a kennel outside Churchill, Manitoba owned by dog breeder Brian Ladoon, who kept some 40 Canadian Eskimo sled dogs there when Rosing visited in 1992. A large polar bear showed up one day and took an unexpected interest in one of Ladoon’s tethered dogs. The other dogs went crazy as the bear approached, Rosing says, but this one, named Hudson, “calmly stood his ground and began wagging his tail.” To Rosing and Ladoon’s surprise, the two “put aside their ancestral animus,” gently touching noses and apparently trying to make friends.

Just beautiful!

If you want to watch the whole sequence of photographs including background notes to each picture, click here.

Week-end pause continues

As was mentioned yesterday, taking things really easy this week-end.

Here’s a poem for today.

A wet trotter!

FOUR FEET

I have done mostly what men do,
And pushed it out of my mind;
But I can’t forget, if I wanted to,
Four-Feet trotting behind.

Day after day, the whole day through–
Wherever my road inclined–
Four-Feet said, ‘I am coming with you!’
And trotted along behind.

Now I must go by some other round–
Which I shall never find–
Some where that does not carry the sound
Of Four-Feet trotting behind.

— Rudyard Kipling —

Week-end pause

Please forgive me but this week-end I am taking things easy.  Jean and I want to savour the beautiful weather here in Payson and just enjoy the special life  up here at 5,000 feet in Arizona.

Here’s something to reflect upon; another one tomorrow.  Normal service returns on Monday 😉

“A Native American Elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, ‘the one I feed the most.'” –  —  George Bernard Shaw

Keep feeding your good Dog!

Time for a rethink!

Things do not change; we change. Henry David Thoreau

To a great extent, my thoughts in this article will make less sense if one hasn’t watched the Rupert Sheldrake video included in the Post on the 10th January, 2011.  It’s 1 hour 20 minutes long but every minute will captivate you, trust me.

But if, for whatever reason, you don’t watch that video then the following YouTube videos are offered where Sheldrake speaks of the evidence supporting telepathy between cats and dogs and humans.  The demonstration of a dog knowing when their owner is coming home is enthralling.

The science behind this link between, for example, the dog and its owner, is what Dr. Sheldrake calls an example of Morphic Fields.

I must confess that if someone had said to me, say 10 or even 5 years ago, that some form of energy field links the brains of dogs and their owners, or of cats and their owners, I would have been at least confused, at best very skeptical.  Then comes the evidence, statistically valid, that being rung on the ‘phone by someone close to you can be anticipated frequently before the phone is picked up creates even more uncertainty.

Settle down and listen to these videos (they are sound recordings only but nonetheless fascinating),

The Extended Mind, Part One

The Extended Mind, Part Two

The Extended Mind, Part Three, final part.

Travel well.

“It is better to travel well than to arrive.” Buddhist quote.

Those of you who are regular readers of Learning from Dogs, and I am flattered at how many there are now, will recall that on March 8th I posted an announcement of the Rev. Terry Hershey coming to Payson to give a couple of seminars based around his best-selling book, Soul Gardening.  Jean and I had the honour of having Terry stay with us for a couple of nights.

Anyway, on Monday morning, the day Terry was to give his talks, four of us took a couple of hours off in the morning to take a walk around the majestic granite boulders, a couple of miles on from our house.  These great boulders give rise to the name of the road that we live on; Granite Dells Rd.  Most afternoons, Jean and I take Pharaoh and his little pack of dogs for this three-mile walk so today was no different other than the walk being in the morning.

John H and Terry admiring the granite dells.

However, one of the benefits of having Terry with us on the walk was that he pointed out something really obvious that, so far, Jean and I had just taken for granted, i.e. missed!

It’s this. That dogs, when out for a walk off-leash, never travel the same journey, however many times they go on the same walk.  All dog-owners will be aware of this.

Dogs are all over the place, scurrying here and there, following sweet scents, totally absorbed in the intimacy of their relationship with their immediate experience.  There’s no ‘purpose’ to their behaviour, there’s no ‘clock’ running in their head as to what time it is and when they have to be somewhere else.  It is the epitome of travelling well, as from the quote at the start of this article.

The metaphor of how dogs journey as a comparison to how so many of us humans travel with eyes closed, never stopping to smell the roses, was mentioned by Terry when we stopped for group photo towards the end of the walk.  Terry also touched on the importance of living in the present, as dogs do so very, very well, many times during his later talks.

As soon as we make our happiness conditional on ‘getting’ somewhere in the future, our journey rather becomes pointless.

 

John, Jean, Terry, Paul - being happy in the moment.

What a wonderful day this Monday was.

 

Remembering Lance Corporal Liam Tasker and Theo

The body of a soldier who died along with his dog in Afghanistan last week has returned home to the UK.

Most days when I’m sitting in front of my PC I tend to drop in on the BBC New website.  Today (last Thursday) was no exception.  However I did not expect to be so moved by a story of the death of a British soldier in Afghanistan together with his sniffer dog.  Here’s how the BBC reported it.

Liam and Theo, RIP

The body of a soldier who died along with his record breaking sniffer dog in Afghanistan last week has returned home to the UK.

Lance Corporal Liam Tasker, from Kirkcaldy in Fife, was shot dead while on patrol in Helmand province.

The ashes of the 26-year-old’s dog Theo were flown home on the same plane.

L/Cpl Tasker, who was called a “rising star” by Army chiefs, was shot by Taliban snipers and Theo died of a seizure shortly after his master.

The soldier and his 22-month-old dog had made 14 finds in five months while on the frontline.

The pair’s successes at uncovering so many explosions and weapons had resulted in their tour of Afghanistan being extended by a month.

Just three weeks ago, springer spaniel Theo was praised as a record breaking Army sniffer dog.

The body of L/Cpl Tasker and the ashes of Theo were flown to RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire at lunchtime, before a cortege passed through Wootton Bassett, the Wiltshire town which has built up a tradition of welcoming back fallen heroes.

But what the BBC report doesn’t make clear is that Theo, L/Cpl Tasker’s dog, did not die in the action that killed Liam but of a seizure just three hours later.  Here’s how the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported the sad event.

Hundreds of mourners lined the main street through the Wiltshire town to honour Lance Corporal Liam Tasker, of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, who was shot while on patrol in Helmand province, Afghanistan on March 1.

The crowds were swelled by family pets and a dozen police and Prison Service dogs at the repatriation ceremony for the 26-year-old soldier, whose dog Theo died from a seizure three hours after his master was killed.

L/Cpl Tasker’s family said they believe the dog died from a broken heart.

The body of L/Cpl Tasker, from Kirkcaldy, Fife, and the ashes of Theo had earlier been flown back to RAF Lyneham in the same aircraft.

L/Cpl Tasker was the subject of the repatriation ceremony but Theo’s ashes will be presented in private to his family.

So a silent prayer this Sunday for Liam and Theo and for all those who knew them both.  Finally, if anyone wants to share a thought on the UK Forces in Afghanistan Blog then here’s the link to the Post that mentions the death of these two brave soldiers.