Today has been one of those days where the best laid plans, etc. just conspired to steal away the time for writing tomorrows Post for Learning from Dogs (today at the time you are reading this!). So I was incredibly grateful to John H. for sending me an email with a series of remarkable photographs of a very rare albino Hummingbird.
A quick web search revealed that this has already been widely reported, for example in the edition of Huffington Post published on the 31st January last. Here’s what they wrote,
Stunning photographs of an extremely rare albino ruby-throated hummingbird have been captured in a backyard in Staunton, Va.
The astonishing images showcase the delicate bird’s features like white feathers, a pink bill, pink legs and red eyes.
and later in that article,
Located just 30 miles from the Shank family home, they first heard about the bird on an email list-serve for the bird community, Shank explained. After they got permission, they drove over to the residence where the bird was first spotted and began shooting photos.
Of the 330 hummingbird species found around the globe,the ruby-throated hummingbird is one of the most common in North America.
But experts say the fair-feathered variety are more easily visible to predators and susceptible to disease thanks to the genetic mutation. These weaknesses help make the albino bird all the more rare.
The still shots were taken by Kevin Shank and four of his sons who publish Nature Friend magazine. Here are some of those remarkable pictures.
Last Friday I started re-publishing the wonderful comments that had appeared on Climate Sight in response to a question that I had raised, namely,
“While in every way that I can think of, I support the premise of mankind affecting global climate, I would love to hear from someone who could reconcile the Post above with these recent items:” and then included the links to the WSJ and Daily Mail items.
If you are not familiar with those WSJ and Daily Mail items, then you will need to go back to Friday’s Post.
So moving on.
The third response was from chrisd3, here’s what he wrote,
Paul, here is the Met Office’s response, which begins, “[The Daily Mail] article includes numerous errors in the reporting of published peer reviewed science undertaken by the Met Office Hadley Centre and for Mr. Rose to suggest that the latest global temperatures available show no warming in the last 15 years is entirely misleading.”
Here is Deltoid taking David Rose apart on some earlier pieces:
And NASA never said anything about the Thames freezing over. Rose just made that bit up.
From this, it is pretty clear why Rose chooses 15 years as his starting point: 1997-1998 was the time of the largest El Nino ever recorded, resulting in a huge temperature spike. Using that as the starting point for a temperature comparison is absolutely classic cherry-picking.
And in any event, you can’t say anything about trends in noisy data by simply comparing two arbitrary points. That is not a valid way to analyze the data (especially if you pick an obvious outlier as your starting point!). It is like trying to say whether the tide is coming in or going out by looking at the height of two waves. It just doesn’t work that way. You have to look at the long-term trend to remove the noise.
Let me take you to that Met Office response (and I’m republishing it in full).
Met Office in the Media: 29 January 2012
Today the Mail on Sunday published a story written by David Rose entitled “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about”.
This article includes numerous errors in the reporting of published peer reviewed science undertaken by the Met Office Hadley Centre and for Mr. Rose to suggest that the latest global temperatures available show no warming in the last 15 years is entirely misleading.
Despite the Met Office having spoken to David Rose ahead of the publication of the story, he has chosen to not fully include the answers we gave him to questions around decadal projections produced by the Met Office or his belief that we have seen no warming since 1997.
For clarity I have included our full response to David Rose below:A spokesman for the Met Office said: “The ten year projection remains groundbreaking science. The complete period for the original projection is not over yet and these projections are regularly updated to take account of the most recent data.
“The projections are probabilistic in nature, and no individual forecast should be taken in isolation. Instead, several decades of data will be needed to assess the robustness of the projections.
“However, what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850. Depending on which temperature records you use, 2010 was the warmest year on record for NOAA NCDC and NASA GISS, and the second warmest on record in HadCRUT3.”
Global average temperatures from 1850 to 2011 from the three individual global temperature datasets (Met Office/UEA HadCRUT3, NASA GISS and NOAA NCDC)
Furthermore despite criticism of a paper published by the Met Office he chose not to ask us to respond to his misconceptions. The study in question, supported by many others, provides an insight into the sensitivity of our climate to changes in the output of the sun.
It confirmed that although solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years this will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases. The study found that the expected decrease in solar activity would only most likely cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08 °C. This compares to an expected warming of about 2.5 °C over the same period due to greenhouse gases (according to the IPCC’s B2 scenario for greenhouse gas emissions that does not involve efforts to mitigate emissions). In addition the study also showed that if solar output reduced below that seen in the Maunder Minimum – a period between 1645 and 1715 when solar activity was at its lowest observed level – the global temperature reduction would be 0.13C.
Back to that response from chrisd3. He offered this, “Finally, here is a chart of global temps from HadCRU.” Here is that chart, remember we are looking at Global temperatures.
Global temperature trend
OK, between this Post and my Post last Friday, you probably get the message! There were many other contributions and I could go on and on quoting the great responses I got, all of them uniformly saying there IS global warming unprecedented in recent years. The message is crystal clear and those who wish to deny the evidence … well, I can’t come up with a polite term, so will just leave it at that!
My final contribution is from Martin Lack, author of the Blog Lack of Environment, and a good friend of Learning from Dogs. Here is what he wrote in a recent email,
When I eventually saw your earlier comment, I was surprised and disappointed in equal measure because I almost feel that I have failed in some way. Let me explain: Unlike ClimateSight and SkepticalScience, which both do an excellent job of focusing on the science of climate change, my blog is deliberately focused on the politics underlying the denial of all environmental our problems; including 2 key aspects to my MA dissertation, namely the political misuse of scepticism; and the psychology of denial. See my How to be a Climate Change ‘Sceptic’ for more detail.
Therefore, although not specifically categorised as such, just about everything I have posted is traceable back to Paul and Anne Ehrlich’sBetrayal of Science and Reason (1996) and/or Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s Merchants of Doubt (2010). For someone who does not currently go to any Church, I am remarkably fond of quoting Scripture so, if necessary, please forgive me but, as the Good Book says: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
Therefore, I do not think you should be surprised by the amount of misinformation and misrepresentation contained in the original WSJ Sixteen’s article; and/or the fact that denialist arguments are repeated no matter how many times they have been shown to be false. Furthermore, I would warn against trying to summarise it all on Learning from Dogs. This is definitely Book territory and, in addition to the two mentioned above, the market is already saturated by the likes of Climate Change Cover-up by James Hoggan and Climate Change Denial by Haydn Washington and John Cook.
With very best wishes for a fog-free future,
What to say to close these two Posts off? Frankly, it’s difficult to know how to pitch it. The science seems clear beyond reasonable doubt. But if you are reading this and disagree, then PLEASE offer the science to refute the conclusions presented here. I promise you that I will present it on Learning from Dogs.
So let me end with a simple photograph.
Earthrise
This is the photograph that wilderness photographer Galen Rowell called, “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”
The now world-famous photograph was taken by Astronaut William Anders from Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the Moon, a little over 43 years ago on December 24th, 1968.
As the Earth rose above the horizon of the moon, NASA astronaut Frank Borman uttered the words, “Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty.” Bill Anders then took the ‘unscheduled’ photograph.
Now project forward 43 years to the year 2055 and play with the idea of what ‘pretty‘ planet Earth will be like for mankind and so many other species, including our longest companion, the dog, if we don’t get our act together pretty soon!
It ought to be straightforward, but the reality is different!
Those of you, dear readers, that have been following these ramblings and musings over the last 30 months, now amounting to more than 1,200 Posts, will hopefully have sensed that Learning from Dogs is much more than a blogsite about dogs! It is, as I say here, about truth, integrity, honesty and trust using dogs as a powerful metaphor for these essential qualities of a civilised society.
But perhaps there is no topic more challenging for people to determine the truth than the topic of man’s impact on the earth’s climate. I’m sure that millions intuitively sense that we are over-consuming ourselves to oblivion. That is where I come from. I am not a scientist, just a humble writer, and rely on quality sources of information and instinct to form my conclusions in this area. I am also deeply suspicious of the largely out-of-sight relationships between large corporations, big money and politics!
I have no doubt that there are other millions of people who do believe that mankind is changing our planet’s climate.
So when I saw this article in the Wall Street Journal, I was dumbstruck. Here’s the headline and opening paragraph,
No Need to Panic About Global Warming
There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.
Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.
The long article closes with this paragraph just ahead of the ‘signatures’ of the scientists.
Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
I subscribe both to Climate Sight and Lack of Environment, although wish I spent more time thoroughly reading these fabulous sources of information. However, I did spot an article on Climate Sight that came out on the 31st January with the heading of How much is most? It opened thus,
A growing body of research is showing that humans are likely causing more than 100% of global warming: without our influences on the climate, the planet would actually be cooling slightly.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its fourth assessment report, internationally regarded as the most credible summary of climate science to date. It concluded that “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”.
A clear question remains: How much is “most”? 51%? 75%? 99%? At the time that the IPCC report was written, the answer was unclear. However, a new frontier of climate research has emerged since, and scientists are working hard to quantify the answer to this question.
The timing was impeccable, so far as I was concerned. I posted a comment, “While in every way that I can think of, I support the premise of mankind affecting global climate, I would love to hear from someone who could reconcile the Post above with these recent items:” and then included the links to the WSJ and Daily Mail items.
Little did I realise what a response I would get. Just wonderful! I will offer some of them to you in this piece, but please do read all the comments offered on that Climate Sight post.
First up was Dana Nuccitelli. Dana is an environmental scientist at a private environmental consulting firm in the Sacramento, California area. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in astrophysics from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Master’s Degree in physics from the University of California at Davis. (Taken from here.) This is what he wrote,
How to reconcile the two? The folks who wrote those two articles you linked are misinformed and/or misinformers. I covered the first here (and) SkS will shortly have a post on the second as well, but I covered the solar cycle issue recently here.
Dana’s article in Skeptical Science, that first link, included this:
Nearly half of the list (at least 7 of 16) have received fossil fuel industry funding, and the list also includes an economist, a physician, a chemist, an aerospace engineer, and an astronaut/politician. These are apparently the best and brightest the climate denialists can come up with these days?
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris
J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting;
Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University;
Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society;
Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences;
William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton;
Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.;
William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology;
Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT;
James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University;
Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences;
Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne;
Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator;
Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem;
Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service;
Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
RED – No climate science publications, member of at least one climate denialist group – GWPF (advisory board), George C. Marshall Institute (board of directors or roundtable speakers), Australian Climate Science Coalition (advisory panel), Heartland Institute (board of directors), and/or ExxonMobil
BLUE – Published climate science research
Orange – both a member of a climate denialist group and has published climate science research
Black – no climate science publications or climate denialist group membership
A lot of folks have asked me to debunk the recent anti-truthful Wall Street Journal article with the counterfactual headline, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” I’ll combine my debunking with the rapidly growing list of debunkings from scientists and others. And I’ll update this as new debunkings come in.
But the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journalin this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter, from more than 15 times as many top scientists. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because some so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation.
A tad more surprising is that 16 admittedly non-leading scientists would choose to soil their reputations by stringing together a collection of long-debunked falsehoods. What is surprising is that these falsehoods are more easily debunked than the typical disinformer clap-trap because they are so out-of-date!
This is a long, detailed and powerful response to that WSJ article. Do try and read it in full.
But that doesn’t stop serial disinformer David Rose of the UK’s Daily Mail from misleading the public — even after being slammed by top scientists in 2010 for falsely asserting “no global warming since 1995″ — see “Error-riddled articles and false statements destroy Daily Mail’s credibility.“ Rose has another willfully misleading piece, “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again): Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years.”
OK, I think this is going to end up too long for one Post.
First, an apology for presenting something that isn’t from my own pen, so to speak. But for much of yesterday I was immersed in other writings and when I turned to ‘today’s’ Post for Learning from Dogs, around 5pm my time, my creative juices had well and truly dried up! So a very big ‘thank you’ to Diane M., from here in Payson, for recently sending me this wonderful dog story! It’s been widely circulated, not that I had seen it before, but I’m told that not necessarily with the full story, as this version includes.
ALittle Something Just For You!
Meet George the Great Dane
The first time we saw George, our beloved Great Dane, he was no more than a tiny, cowering ball of fuzzy fur. As my wife Christie opened the door of the crate he’d travelled in, he teetered to a standing position and looked out at us, moving his head slowly from side to side, taking in the wonder of it all. Finally, as if weighing us up and deciding we were acceptable, he tentatively pushed his little nose forward and gave Christie her first lick.
Puppy love: A young George with Dave's wife Christie. Even as a pup he had comically large paws.
He came into our lives in January 2006, just a few months after we had married and set up home in Arizona . We both had busy jobs, Christie selling medical equipment while I was a property developer, but she had always planned that, once she had a house of her own, she would also have a dog.
She wanted a Great Dane as they make great family pets, so we tracked down a litter of 13, born 1,000 miles away in Oregon. Their owner emailed us a photo showing a chaotic jumble of paws, snouts and tails.Twelve were entangled with one another, but our eyes were drawn to one pup standing apart from the rest. He was clearly the runt, endearing him to Christie immediately.
Though it didn’t really register, George’s paws were comically large even then. But all we saw was this cute puppy. We certainly never dreamed he would one day become the biggest dog in the world, standing nearly 4ft high at the shoulder, 7ft long and weighing nearly 250 pounds. Right now, he just looked bewildered.
George made the long journey from Oregon to Phoenix by plane and we picked him up from the freight area, tired but unshaken. As soon as George settled into our home, we discovered our plans to be fair but firm parents were wishful thinking. All the things that make Great Danes wonderful pets — their lack of aggression and their attachment to humans — make them more emotionally sensitive than other dogs.They need to be with their ‘pack’ at all times and at night the cute pup with intensely blue eyes turned into a caterwauling banshee whenever we tried to leave him alone in the kitchen.
No matter how much we reminded ourselves that he had every home comfort (warm dog bed, warm blanket, warm kitchen, squeaky bone), each whimper created a picture in our heads of a tragic, abandoned pup, desperate for his mother. Eventually, we gave in and shunted George’s dog bed into our bedroom.
George measures more than 7 ft from nose to tail and weighs 250 pounds and is the world's biggest dog, but he's terrified of Chihuahuas...
In the coming months, Christie really threw herself into being a mum to George. As well as a photo album, he had a growth chart — we were soon reading it in awe.At five months he still acted like a puppy, chasing his tail and playing games of fetch and tug-of-war with his favorite bit of rope. But he was already the size of a fully-grown Labrador .He was putting on more than a pound a day and he bounded around like Bambi, skittering on our wooden floors and hurling himself at everything he fancied, including us humans. His displays of affection could leave you pinned temporarily against a wall or a piece of furniture.
His size did not go unnoticed in the outside world. Our local park had a section for puppies but we were bullied out of it by other owners, who were scared George would hurt their pups — but the opposite was true.
The smaller dogs ran around and under him, and he’d be constantly sidestepping them, obviously anxious and jittery. Slowly we realized that our enormous puppy was a big softie. Besides his terror of being left alone, he had a fear of water. He’d growl anxiously at the side of our swimming pool, alarmed that his ‘pack’ members would so willingly place themselves in danger of drowning.
If the pool was his most-hated place, his favorite was our bedroom. Eventually he outgrew the single mattress we placed there for him and preferred instead the comfort of our king-sized bed — sprawling between us like some over-indulged prince while we spent half the night clinging onto the edges.
Paws for thought: George's giant feet dwarf Dave's hand.
In the summer of 2006, we solved this problem by buying him his own queen-sized mattress, which he still sleeps on today at the bottom of our bed. But soon we encountered another challenge as George reached doggie puberty. Once he had grabbed life by the lapels, now he was grabbing onto legs — table legs, chair legs, human legs, he wasn’t picky — and doing what all male dogs do with the vigor of a canine giant.
He calmed down in the furniture department after we had him neutered, but then he took up a new hobby, eating as if it were an Olympic sport.A sausage on the barbecue was like a siren to a passing sailor. You couldn’t turn your back for a minute. And he was so tall that he actually had to bend down to pinch food off kitchen counters.
He could reach the high shelves as well, so we had to hide everything away in cupboards. Soon, he was getting through around 100lb of dry dog food every month.
As he approached his first birthday in November 2006, weighing about 196 pounds, it was getting physically impossible to make him go anywhere he didn’t want to — including the vet’s surgery. He had not forgotten the time he went there in possession of his manhood — and came out less than whole. As soon as he recognized the entrance, he refused to move. So I had to take him around to the less familiar back door instead.
For all these troubles, George gave us plenty in return, not least the following year when Christie lost the baby she was carrying. Evidently tuned in to her grief, George was a constant presence at her side. When she sat, he sat too. When she stood, he stood and padded alongside her to wherever she was going.
His personality grew more delightful the bigger he got. A male Great Dane typically weighs from nine to 11 stone, but by Christmas 2007 George weighed 210 pounds — bigger than most men. At this point, he loved being chauffeured around in my golf cart and would sit in it, his haunches on the seat and front legs on the floor. By Christmas 2008, our canine colossus weighed 252 pounds. A friend suggested he might be a contender for the Guinness Book of Records, but we had other things to think about: Christie had discovered that she was pregnant again.
With size comes problems: George the giant barely fits in the back of his owner's SUV
The trouble was, when our daughter Annabel arrived that September George made it clear he wanted nothing to do with this interloper. He was used to spending nights in delightful oblivion at the foot of our bed. Annabel’s high-decibel presence simply wasn’t on. When she cried, he’d wake, harrumph and then turn over in annoyance. Once it was clear the racket was going to continue, he’d exhale heavily again, till one of us finished that mysterious feeding thing we did with the noisy intruder.
But while he might not have cared much for Annabel, George loved her dolls, especially a stuffed green one that played a nursery rhyme when squeezed. Whenever he could, he placed it between his paws and pressed it so he could hear the tune. It was like a security blanket. It was a period of such big adjustment for him that if it made him happy, then it was fine by us and our patience was rewarded.
Slowly, George understood that Annabel was our pack’s youngest member and in need of his affection and protection. And on Christmas morning, he ended his three-month sulk, acknowledging her presence with a lick of her hand. It was the best present we could have had — although the beginning of 2010 brought more good news.
A doggone miracle: George the Great Dane with the Nasser's daughter Annabel at home in Arizona.
Over the previous weeks, while Annabel slept, Christie had applied to the Guinness World Records people on George’s behalf. That February, one of their adjudicators came to watch George being measured in the presence of a vet. He was officially declared not just the world’s tallest living dog (43 inches from paw to shoulder) but the tallest dog ever.
The following week we flew to Chicago to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show and were put up in one of the city’s most luxurious hotels. We had a huge sitting room, dining area and even a bar — but there was just one problem. There was nowhere for George to sleep.
As we enjoyed a gourmet meal and a bottle of red wine that night, he struggled to settle on two roll-out divans provided for him. Infuriatingly, they wouldn’t stay together. So he had his head on one and back end on the other, but his stomach was sagging onto the carpet.
‘You know what we need to do,’ I joked. ‘Give George our bed to sleep on and have the divans in this room ourselves.’
Christie looked at me with a telltale gleam in her eye and I knew immediately my joke had been a fatal error. An hour later, our boy was sprawled in splendor in our huge, fluffy king-size bed.
‘Well,’ whispered Christie, ‘George is the star here, after all.’ She was right, of course, and since his appearance on TV, Giant George has built a following around the world, with his own fan club, website and 70,000 fans on Facebook.
None of this, of course, means anything to George. He still spends his days doing what he has always liked best: eating, playing and sleeping. Our cherished pet may have become a global celebrity — but really, he’s just one of the family.
Man's biggest friend: Devoted owner Dave Nasser with George.
Some recent published research shows just how far back goes man’s relationship with the domesticated dog!
First, a big thank you to Merci O. who originally sent me the link to the item that I will refer to later on. But first, a recap as to the origins of this Blog Learning from Dogs.
Dr David Hawkins of Veritas Publishing, Sedona, Arizona.
Way back in 2007 I was working with a good friend of mine who lives in SW England who, professionally, makes good use of the philosophies of Dr. David Hawkins. David Hawkins has written a number of books including Truth vs Falsehood: How to Tell the Difference which I read a few years ago and found very convincing. Here’s how Amazon describes the book,
The exploration into the truth of man’s activities is unique, intriguing, and provocative. From a new perspective, one quickly grasps the levels of truth expressed by the media, the arts, writers, painters, architecture, movies, TV, politics, and war, as well as academia and the greatest thinkers and philosophies through the ages and up to present-day science and advanced theories of the nature of the universe. Most importantly, the ego and its structure are revealed to facilitate the understanding of religious and spiritual truths expressed by the mystics and enlightened sages over the centuries. It becomes apparent why the human mind, unaided, has been intrinsically incapable of discerning truth from falsehood. A simple test is described that, in seconds, can solve riddles that have been irresolvable by mankind for centuries. This book delivers far more than it promises.
Reveals a breakthrough in documenting a new era of human knowledge. Only in the last decade has a science of Truth emerged that, for the first time in human history, enables the discernment of truth from falsehood. Presented are discoveries of an enormous amount of crucial and significant information of great importance to mankind, along with calibrations of historical events, cultures, spiritual leaders, media, and more.
A science of consciousness developed which revealed that degrees of truth reflect concordant calibratable levels of consciousness on a scale of 1 to 1,000. When this verifiable test of truth was applied to multiple aspects of society (movies, art, politics, music, sociology, religion, scientific theories, spirituality, philosophy, everyday Americana, and all the countries of the world), the results were startling.
Trust me, I am (slowly) getting to the point!
Dr. Hawkins created a ‘map’ of those calibrated levels of consciousness, see details of that map here. Also, it wasn’t too difficult to find a plain B&W version on the Web, reproduced below.
As you can see when you study the map, the boundary between ‘truth’ and ‘falsehood’ is the calibrated level of 200, the blue line in the above described as ‘The beginning of integrity’.
Anyway, back to my psychotherapy friend, Jon, in SW England. When I used to visit him, I always had Pharaoh with me and he would settle down behind my chair and let the human talk just flow over him, happy at some dog level to be included.
One day Jon was talking about the different levels on consciousness and looked over at Pharaoh asleep on the floor and said, “Do you that dogs are integrous!” I responded that I didn’t know that, please tell me more.
Jon continued, “Yes, dogs have been calibrated as having a level of consciousness in the zone of 205 to 210.”
Wow! What a revelation, that in a way didn’t strike me as foolish. After 4 years of having Pharaoh as my companion, qualities such as unconditional love towards me, trust, courage, integrity and forgiveness were an obvious part of his character. See where those levels and emotions appear on the map above.
Later back home, I was idly browsing domain names and saw that ‘learningfromdogs’ was available! Little did I realise then that in September 2008, Pharaoh and I would move out to live with Jeannie and her 12 other dogs in San Carlos, Mexico and subsequently in February, 2010, all of us move to Payson, Arizona. I started writing the Blog Learning from Dogs on July 15th, 2009 when still down in Mexico.
Still awake out there? 🙂
As part of my research into the domesticated dog in the early days of putting the Blog together, I explored the science behind the separation, or perhaps better described as the evolution, of the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) from the wolf (Canis lupus). That the domesticated dog was originally a form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora.
It was clear that scientists were divided on when this happened. Some argue it occurred 100,000 years ago, others that it was a far more recent development, closer to 15,000 years ago. I wrote here under the heading of Dogs and Integrity,
Dogs are part of the Canidae, a family including wolves, coyotes and foxes, thought to have evolved 60 million years ago. There is no hard evidence about when dogs and man came together but dogs were certainly around when man developed speech and set out from Africa, about 50,000 years ago. See an interesting article by Dr. George Johnson.
On the Home Page, I say,
Yet they have been part of man’s world for an unimaginable time, at least 30,000 years. That makes the domesticated dog the longest animal companion to man, by far!
As man’s companion, protector and helper, history suggests that dogs were critically important in man achieving success as a hunter-gatherer. Dogs ‘teaching’ man to be so successful a hunter enabled evolution, some 20,000 years later, to farming, thence the long journey to modern man.
Those words were more of an instinctive assessment than based on hard science. Now we have the science!
by Anne Ryman – Jan. 24, 2012 11:33 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Dogs have been “man’s best friend” longer than any other animal. And, as it turns out, longer than previously thought.
A pair of research papers published in the past few years, one most recently by a team that includes the University of Arizona, significantly pushes back the timeline for domestication of dogs from about 14,000 years ago to more than 30,000 years ago.
Researchers at UA and universities in England and the Netherlands used radiocarbon dating to determine that the skull of a Siberian dog was about 33,000 years old. Slightly older dog remains were identified in Belgium a few years ago by a separate research team.
The two findings indicate the process of domestication was occurring in separate regions at a time when early humans, including Neanderthals, in Europe and Siberia were small-group hunter-gatherers. About 14,000 years ago, Neanderthals were gone and humans were more mobile, living and hunting in larger groups.
The latest study’s co-author, UA professor Gregory Hodgins, said the finding broadens the timeline of humans interacting with the natural world. While humans have depended on animals since the dawn of the human species, domestication of animals indicates a symbiotic relationship between the two.
“It suggests living in close quarters and some sort of emotional bond,” he said.
Then just a couple of paragraphs later, came confirmation of my speculative position,
Before the most recent discoveries in Siberia and Belgium, the first signs of dog domestication appeared about 14,000 years ago. At some point, humans began relying on dogs for things like protection, hunting and companionship.
Dogs allowed humans to become a different, more effective predator, said Michael Barton, an Arizona State University anthropology professor who was not a co-author of either recent study. A dog’s keen sense of smell allowed humans to track animals better.
“They give us an edge,” he said.
The article closes,
The UA research on dogs was published recently in Public Library of Science One, a peer-reviewed journal. The team included scientists in Russia, Canada, England and the Netherlands. Research on the Belgian dog was published in 2008 in the Journal of Archeological Science.
It really is worth reading in full and a brilliant find by Merci. It may be entirely the case that without dogs man could not have evolved beyond hunter-gatherers to farmers.
Yesterday, around 10am something got into my main desktop computer and practically brought it to a halt. Of course, it had been months since I had done a backup and there were dozens and dozens of documents at risk, including a fair chunk of a novel that I have under-way! An hour later, I had managed to backup my documents yet the PC was still pretty crippled. Felt like an utter waste of a day!
Luckily the old laptop that we use to watch movies was fine, and that is what I am using to prepare this Post.
So, by way of making me and hopefully many of you as well, feel so grateful for the way that dogs just let it all flow by, here are a few wonderful dog pictures, sent to me courtesy of Rich and Katie S.
Holding a rose for all humanity!
and what about this this fine dog!
The epitome of loyalty and unconditional love!
Try avoiding this pair of eyes!
Not many would disagree with W.W.
Don’t know about you, but I’m already feeling better!
Some of man's best listeners!
The unavoidable truth!
Oh, how so true!
OK, plenty more where these came from, to be held in reserve for other challenging days! Thank you Rich and Katie.
But aren’t we so lucky to have these animals in our lives! God bless them!
On the 18th January, I re-published an article written by Satish Kumar that had recently appeared in Resurgence Magazine. It was called Money and morality and attracted 1,300 readings plus an above-average number of comments.
After the article, I wrote,
Satish Kumar is an extraordinary person as a dip into his biographical details here will underline. Please do read about Satish; you will be amazed by his background! It includes this fact,
During this time, he has been the guiding spirit behind a number of now internationally-respected ecological and educational ventures including Schumacher College in South Devon where he is still a Visiting Fellow.
Schumacher College was well-know to me, 2006 and before, as I lived in the small village of Harberton, just outside Totnes in South Devon, England and Schumacher College at Dartington was less than 5 miles away. The College description includes,
People from all over the world, of all ages and backgrounds, have been informed, inspired and encouraged to act, by our 20 years of transformative courses for sustainable living.
Then later, this,
It is precisely at this time of global upheaval that we want you to come to the College to share with us the ways in which you are moved to live and act differently.
and concluded that I would be presenting some videos of Satish Kumar in subsequent posts.
So today, I want to start with a video that despite its shortness is not short of wisdom. There will be more from Satish soon.
Institutionalized insanity versus intelligent thinking – a reflection.
This appeared on Patrice’s Blogsite on January 11th and is republished with his very kind permission. You may want to bookmark Patrice’s blogsite, which is here. The sub-heading of his blog is ‘Intelligence at the core of humanism‘ and, trust me, that is not an overstatement of the wisdom that is contained within his blog, as the following nobly illustrates.
Thinking Man (portion of), by Rodin
Aphorism January 2012
***
Species Shifting North, Intelligence Left Behind:
Nothing like raw numbers. In the last twenty years, Europe warmed up by one degree Celsius (about 2 degrees in the primitive, less meaningful Fahrenheit system). That’s equivalent to a thermal shift of 249 kilometers north.
Insects responded by an average shift north of 114 kilometers, and birds by only 33 kilometers. This is creating imbalances (fully obvious in Alaska, and high altitude North America, where the insects move faster than their predators, killing entire forests, which then burn).
This differential adaptation also illustrates an important point the stupid partisans of the “market” always neglect: being more intelligent can make you slower. Birds are more intelligent than insects, so they find harder to leave their families, friends, habits, and landscapes they are familiar with behind. (No, I will not say that insects are more like Americans, driven by the market, and birds more like Europeans, driven also by broader values. I shall resist, lest I move too fast, like an insect, and outrage part of my brainy readership…)
Thus, as the market dominates, so does the stupid.
Adaptation is not always a manifestation of intelligence, and inadaptation often a sign of intelligence. A well known experience is to put a fly, or a bee, inside an open bottle, with a light source opposed to the opening. The bee will search intelligently the bottom of the bottle, where the exit ought to be. The less intelligent fly will buzz around stupidly, and exit first.
It’s no wonder that the partisan of the markets, who are richer and thus more influential, are for something stupid, as they are faster, precisely because they are more stupid, with fewer values, besides the colossal greed which dominates their psyche. So there is a non linear vicious loop, the more the market dominates.
Thus, next year the candidate historically financed by Wall Street will confront the extremely wealthy businessman cum politician, son of his father, also a governor cum businessman. Market against market: the market should not lose. The birds will be left behind by the fast moving insects, once again. Change you can’t believe in.
***
Where is everybody?
“Lord” (!) Martin Rees, “Astronomer Royal”, Nobel laureate, etc., complete with pretty pictures and beautifully spooky music, speculates it’s teeming with aliens out there.
But as Enrico Fermi quipped:”Where is everybody?“
The situation is not helped by us understanding very little about what the universe is made of. In the latest numbers I saw the universe was made 4% conventional matter, and the rest was… Dark. Mostly Dark Energy, with some Dark Matter. Who said the Dark Side was not important?
There are no dominant theories of what the Darkness is made of.
CERN should be able to find stuff below its energy reach. So far, nothing.
We have detected more than 150 planets. It seems one star out of ten, at least, has planets. Some have been detected in the habitable zone, where liquid water is found. But the water has to be continuously present for billions of years. Continuously (which did not happen on Mars and Venus).
400 billion stars in our galaxy. The big question is how many planets can harbor advanced (=oxygen breathing) life. No inkling of that. There are plenty of planets out there, indeed, but most hostile to life. So far. How Much Intelligent Life Out There? On Earth, it took 1.5 billion years to go from advanced life to intelligent, civilized life. A lot of things can go wrong in 1.5 billion years.
That advanced life did not develop on Mars or Venus is not an accident: although on the outskirts of the habitable zone, either planet did not have what it took. Mars was too small, and, just like Venus was not protected by a powerful plate tectonic, with accompanying magnetic field, among other problems (so the solar wind blowing the top of the atmosphere stole the hydrogen, hence water, etc.)
My hunch is that most planets in the hospitable zone, when found, will be bereft of advanced life, although primitive life may be quite frequent. Reason? Too many miracles at work for billions of years in the solar system. Especially in light of what we find out there (We see plenty of Jupiter size planets in close orbits around their suns, presumably after sweeping their entire system clean; OK, that’s partly a result of the method used to find planets presently, but the fact is, we find such situations aplenty! The presence of Jupiter out there, as our guardian protecting Earth from comets looks quite miraculous…)
***
If You Want To Save the Biosphere, Push Tech:
Some people in the Netherlands have suggested building an artificial mountain. It’s feasible, and would be smart to do, not just there, but say in a place such as Saudi Arabia (technical variations on the theme could collect water, as in cloud, or fog forests found in California or Peru).
Another point is that artificial mountains could help protect biological diversity from the greenhouse heating. Cynics would point out that it would take an enormous amount of energy to build them. True, with present tech, and the energy would be dirty too, presently. But that would be another motivation to go green. Green and big.
***
Wind Fall-Out:
Most wind-driven energy system in Europe? Denmark. Most CO2 polluting country in Europe? Denmark. Coal power plants pick up the slack when the wind falters. Another case where nuclear offers its smiling face. Future nuclear that is. Not your great grandfather’s nuclear. Past nuclear tech should be terminated, just like coal. However, there are 100 unexploited, un-researched nuclear energies out there, and only those with insignificant waste will be acceptable. (Nobody would accept a fossil fuel system where only 2% of the fuel would be burned, and the rest allowed to pollute all over!)
Reminder: as the greenhouse heating proceeds, winds will falter because the heat differential between poles and equator will sink, thus shutting down that thermal engine known as the atmosphere (yes, hurricanes will be rarer, but fiercer).
***
Institutionalized insanity Versus Thinking Right:
In Switzerland a nuclear plant was built one kilometerdownstream from a dam, along the same river. None of those two could resist the sort of very strong quake happening occasionally in the Alps. A flood cum nuclear explosion is entirely imaginable. This sort of insanity has nothing to do with nuclear power, it has everything to do with lack of intelligence.
This is all the more strange since some Swiss cantons such as Valais get 20% of their GDP from research. By the way themedical drug sector part of GDP is twice the banking sector in Switzerland. For those who wonder why Switzerland is so rich (the same holds for Sweden and other Nordic company). It’s not (just) about the banks.
***
(More) Direct Democratic Keeps Bankers At Bay:
The weight of direct democracy has forced Swiss banks into reserve requirements twice those of the future Basel III regulations. (In other words, banks are many times tamer in Switzerland than in the USA, if one uses reserve requirements enforced as a measuring device; Basel III does not cover most of the enormous derivative trading, though.)
The scandal of the central banker heading the Swiss Central Bank buying dollars days before taking the decision of making the dollar explode up against the Swiss franc keeps unfolding. Yes, he knew about the trades, and yes, he had days to stop them afterwards.
It is dawning over Swiss society that those with privileged information should not be legally allowed to exploit them. The whole planet has to follow down that line. But, although it has been obvious for years that American and European politicians and central bankers are rich from insider trading, nothing has been done. Yet.
***
The Plutocrats Cash Out And Shame Does Not Count:
What looked to me as the immensely stupid and arrogant wife of the Swiss Bank President, explained herself from Singapore, where she owns an art gallery. If she really wanted to make real money out of her husband’s job, she knew how to do it, she asserted confidently. And there she was going through a list (a), b), c), d), etc… of things she would have done if she wanted to make more than the measly $75,000 she made. And how to make them secretly, she insisted.
Her name is “Kashya”, appropriately pronounced “Cashia”. In this case, Cashia said, in her native American English, they were in a rush, because they just had some cash from selling a chalet to store, so that is why she hid nothing. That brings a few questions, such as whether she is used to exploit the mechanisms of further cheating she explicated so adroitly on TV. The central banker, the plutocrat Hildebrand, having resigned, will get a million dollar salary in the next year, from the People, while his fellow plutocrats will rush to propose him a much more protitable conspiracy to join. I propose to put him in jail, instead.
***
Another Claim Of Mental Decline. And The Agenda Behind It: There Is No Good Wisdom, Except Dead Wisdom, Say Plutocrats:
Supposedly some new test showed a decline in “cognitive capabilities” starting at age 45. Apparently people were asked to remember lists of words starting with some particular letters. It does not seem to have come to the mind of the experimenters that maybe older brains do not like to remember such stupid stuff.
Thinking means motivating. Without the right motivation, there is not the right thinking.
In the case of “IQ”, a decline is observed at 24, some say… Military officers would concur that it is better to send 18 year olds to die, because they are bright enough to execute orders well, but not so bright that they would know that they might die for no good reason.
A related point: no doubt a two-year old training to go potty remembers very well each time she goes. Whereas an adult tends to lose this facility of neurological retention for this sort of event. One generally observes. But it is not because adults have suffered mental decline that they do not remember every poop. Simply, they have seen lots of poop passing by.
Actually the argument can be made that consciousness and conscious memorization are needed to deploy automatisms, but once those are in place, they are not needed anymore, and so consciousness, and conscious recall should not be present.
When I was a young driver, I remembered everything I did when driving a car, but now I do it automatically, remembering very few of my gestures. When driving, my consciousness is mostly watching for the unforeseen.
Is there a political interpretation explaining such mental declines claims? Indeed, there is. As people get older, they elaborate higher wisdom. Thus, although the soldiers of revolution are typically very young people, because they have their aggression hormones less tempered by wisdom, the leaders of revolution are typically much older.
Let me explain this carefully: fascist and plutocratic leaders typically claim that they are “conservatives“. It means that they justify their mean rule by a refusal to adapt to changed circumstances.
As the French revolution stirred, the most esteemed leaders were senior citizens such as Voltaire or Benjamin Franklin, and everybody looked up to them, from Louis XVI to Turgot; on the Dark Side, many of the leaders, such as the Comte d’ Artois, were barely teenagers.
Closer to us, in WWII, the SS seduced many a 16 year old. In the last few weeks of the war, many of the most enraged Nazis fighting to the bitter end with the allies in the mountainous heart of Germany were school children with heavy weapons. In more than one case, disgusted American GIs, reluctant to blow up some more enraged children to bits, sent their school mistresses to negotiate with them!
If the (plutocratic) establishment can claim that revolutionary wisdom is actually the fruit of mental decline, presto, no revolution. It will be “conservatism” all the way.
***
Why Do We Want To Always Support Winners?
Supporting the home team is easy to understand: this is the tribal instinct. Human beings are social, they have to love the group, thus dislike what hinders the group, namely, other groups.
One has to love the leader(s) of the group, the alpha(s). In general, to abate social tensions, an instinct has got to exist, which makes the oppressed love the oppressor, or let’s say, the inferior love the superior. or even love the winning group, to be motivated to join it. Something more plausible to females. Hence Beatlemania.
***
If One Wants Happiness, One Should Prepare For The Worst:
Pe Romaneste: So happiness must be an accident.
Alexi Helligar: There seems to be greater power in the accidental than we imagine.
Patrice Ayme: Indeed, to a great extent, everything is accidental. Realizing this means that those who complain that something happened accidentally, and, thus, was not expected, have not understood the first thing about causality. Accidents is how the world happens. Wisdom consists in anticipating their occurrence, and having a plan B, should they occur.
***
Brutality Is Friendly To Plutocracy, Long Life Friendly To Wisdom:
Only wisdom can allow long life. Really very long life, lasting centuries, for individuals or civilization. Short lives are brutish, and this has the consequence in many a perpetrator, to spurn whatever life is offered. Indeed a good way to spurn something is by devaluing it. The brutality of the human condition is self reinforcing…
This why human life extension is a necessity, a preliminary, for the extension of wisdom. Because as long as lives are short and brutish, the short and brutish way of life is all too optimal, for all too many people (although those with children, or grandchildren they love will disagree, but they are not necessarily a majority).
This is something that life spurning plutocrats such as Mr. Jobs have been busy not understanding, as brutality is their friend.
***
Plutocrats Love Death Indeed:
Steve Jobs, despite leaving Reed College after six months, was asked to give the 2005 commencement speech at Stanford. Why? Did Jobs invent anything important? (Disclosure: My Mom offered me an ultra light Mac Air, and I love it.) No, he was just an artistic technology integrator, but not necessarily as mechanically oriented as a car mechanic (his partner Wozniak was the programmer, but even this one finished his college studies in computer science, 20 years later, at Berkeley, and found them hard!)
In his Stanford address, delivered after Mr. Jobs was told he had cancer, but before it was clear that it would ultimately claim his life, Mr. Jobs told his mesmerized audience of naive sheep that “death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.”
In this light, the invasion of Iraq by Bush and his fanatical followers made sense: by visiting more than one million deaths upon Iraq, the USA brought the single best inventionof life. Everybody, or more exactly 83%, including a majority of Stanford students, agreed, at the time.
Is this love of death why Jobs refused conventional medical treatment initially, until it was too late? Jobs insisted that the benefit of death, is you know not to waste life living someone else’s choices. I guess that extended to the medical.
Verily, death came first, and was denied by life. Life is the denial of death. Life did not have to invent death.
***
Hormuz Crisis Versus Suez Crisis: Spot The Difference!
Why did the USA not get upset when Nasser seized the Suez canal, in 1956? And actually why did the USA instead use the occasion to threaten Israel, Britain and France? Not just that, butpresident Eisenhower aligned himself with the Egyptian, and Soviet dictators. The Soviets, while invading Hungary, killing at least 40,000 Hungarians, threatened to atom bomb London and Paris. With the loud acquiescence of the USA… Which got France and Britain, not the mass murderous USSR, condemned at the United Nations’ general Assembly. What a crazy week it was.
And now, 55 years later, lo and behold, the USA is getting all upset as Iran wants to stop what’s going on below its nose in the strait of Hormuz? Just asking. Inquiring minds want to know.
Is it that in 1956, France and Britain were viewed as preys of the USA? And now that the USA has grabbed everything from France and Britain, they want to be friends again? Because the rich need servants, maybe? In any case, the Suez Crisis was an incongruous reminder that, in 1939, the USA was allied with the USSR and Nazi Germany, against France and Britain (oopss, something one should never say!)
And my advice would be to be very careful with Hormuz. If one wants long life, one does not want long wars. And one does not want fossil fuels. The sooner we get rid of fossil fuels, the better, and if Hormuz helps that way, so be it. The messy Iranian theocracy will not win a waiting game.
***
No Change, No Life!
What the USA needs to do is to do what all serious countries do, and have always done: change its constitution, since the changed circumstances require it.
***
Cool Is Not Cool:
“Cool”. Why is “cool” such a popular word? Is it supposed to correspond to an attitude? Is it a mark of, and a tool for, our subjugation?
So Obama is confronted to the greatest financial thievery in the history of civilization, and that leaves him “cool“? Having rebooted the perpetrators with public money he goes to them to ask for a billion to campaign for re-election? Cool? I mean: we are not supposed to blow our tops when we contemplate such injustice in the name of change we can’t believe?
In Europe, pretty amazingly intricate financial and semantic engineering is presently deployed to save the banks and the sovereign states entangled with them. There again the bottom line is that the resources of the countries are deployed for the exclusive enjoyment of the few, who happen to be the greatest swindlers ever. Although they are presented as too big to flay.
Actually the same technique as in the USA, Quantitative Easing, is being deployed, and on a similar scale. But, as the head of the European Central Bank, an ex Goldman Sachs partner, pointed out sardonically, a scornful smile on the corner of his mouth, Europeans use a different semantic: they don’t call it Quantitative Easing.Therein the difference. Is not that cool too?
Is the greenhouse effect already that bad that cool is the ultimate state one ought to strive for with all of one’s being? Or are we supposed to reject our mammalian inheritance? Mammals, by being warmer, could do more. So, when climate change happened 65 million years ago, they survived (so did the very warm birds, who evolved from bird-like dinosaurs). Are we supposed to do less now, and not survive? Or then survive like crocs, deep in the mud, super cool, eating carrion?
Is “cool” imposed on us so that people know no higher emotional state than iguanas? Become cool like barnacles, as we cling to the existence the plutocrats condescend to leave us to enjoy? Being so cool we would not be like the American and French hot heads who came forth with new constitutions in 1789?
So is the celebration of “cool” what forces us to not be outraged, as plutocrats steal and burn the entire planet to forget about their megalomaniac angst? To forget they are just crazy critters in need of some restraint? Is “cool” the state slaves are supposed to be in to optimize the enjoyment of their masters? Is it only cool to be cool like corpses?
***
France anti-genocide law denounced by Turkey:
Now this is hilarious. France passed a law punishing convicted holocaust deniers by up to one year in jail and 45,000 euros fine.
Fine, indeed. Who would turn into a partisan, a defender of holocausts? Is not holocaust denial a form of hate speech? Holocausts remain a problem, because when one has killed most of a human group, there is nearly nobody to complain on their behalf: other people move on, as herbivores do, once one of them has been seized and devoured.
France’s national Assembly passed the anti-genocidal law, with bipartisan support. And what do you think happened?
Erdogan, the three time elected Prime Minister of Turkey, had a fit: how does France dare make holocaust denial a crime? He forbade French fighter jets to land in Turkey (so I guess the no fly zone over Syria will be delayed), recalled the Turkish ambassador to France, and stopped all talks with France.
And the questions are: why does the present government in Turkey love holocausts so much? Are holocaust such an endangered species that Turkey has to protect them with all its might?
Why does Turkey consider that a general attack against holocausts is an attack against Turkey? Is it because holocausts are intrinsic to the Turkish character? Or is it because holocausts are mentioned positively in the Bible and the Qur’an, and the present Turkish government is obsessed with the religion of the child molester Abraham? Is this why Erdogan is angry?
***
We Are Truth Machines.
That monkeys now build cities has not changed that truth. No hallucination added in the last 6,000 years has changed that truth either. Science is what we do, and what stands in the way of that fundamental truth, faces extermination.
Except to thank Tom M. for sending me the details, which I reproduce as Tom sent them.
Every once in a while an opportunity comes by to do a “really good thing for little effort or cost. What I call “click for critters” is one of those rare opportunities you should take advantage of.
For the effort involved to perform “two mouse clicks on your computer”, you can be responsible for providing critters in shelters 6/10 of a bowl of food daily. That is over 200 bowls of food to critters in need per year! And get this … the sponsors will even send you an automatic reminder e-mail every day with a link to click. Couldn’t be any easier and you’ll feel so good helping those in need.
Once you click that button, you will be taken to a sponsor’s page. (That is, click the button on the Animal Rescue website, not on this Blog page!) The sponsor’s on that next page will donate 6/10 of a bowl of food just because you clicked your mouse! Actually visit a sponsor page and more will be given!
But there’s still more you can do for our animals in need!
Simply click on “Free Ways to Help” located on the left hand side of the page!
Have a wonderful 2012, enjoy feeling good with click for critters, spread the word and please remember the wise words of Mahatma Gandhi – “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
This is Hazel. She is one of three dogs that ‘belong’ to Pharaoh.
Last Tuesday, we took Pharaoh and his mini-pack of 3 dogs out for our usual afternoon walk at the very end of Granite Dells Rd, out where the forest road ends and soon becomes the relative wilderness of the Tonto National Forest.
Pharaoh, and Hazel, Dhalia and little Sweeny.
However, on this occasion Hazel decided to leave us and link up with a stranger who was hiking the forest. That was the last we saw of Hazel for many hours. Miracle of miracles, the stranger, Joanie, was a dog-lover so when Hazel had followed Joanie and her dog all the way to Joanie’s car, the next stop for her, Hazel that is, was our local Payson Humane Center. Hazel’s tag very quickly linked her to Jean (a great reminder of the importance of tagging your dogs!) who is well-known as a volunteer assistant at the Humane Society Thrift store and the scare was over.
But during the hours of tramping those miles along challenging forest tracks, calling out Hazel’s name, both Jeannie and I had plenty of time to hurt. Here’s a small insight, that millions of pet owners will resonate with, that demonstrates the way that dogs offer us so much love which, in turn, opens our human hearts to the purity of unconditional love. (And I know it’s not just dogs but many animals in our lives that offer us such love!)
Pharaoh and his ‘team’ sleep in our bedroom. During the Winter months Hazel will often lay stretched out on the bed-cover alongside the back of my legs. If I need a trip to the bathroom during the night, not unknown at my age, I can almost guarantee that Hazel will shift her cuddly body up to the warm sheets just below my pillow.
Thus it was this last Tuesday morning when I returned from my bathroom run about 3am; Hazel asleep with her head on my pillow! I didn’t have the heart to push her off the bed, so just slipped in beside her and moments later back asleep, my head nestled against Hazel’s warm head. Sleeping so close to a dog is more than just nice, it seems to stir very ancient memories deep in the subconscious, perhaps back all those thousands of years to when domesticated dogs were an integral part of early man’s security.
So you can imagine the anguish that, in our own separate minds, Jeannie and I were experiencing. I just couldn’t go to the place where never again would I feel the warmth of Hazel’s body against mine. Jean was desperately hoping this wasn’t a tragic repeat of losing Poppy. Thus when I went round to the Humane Center just as they were closing up and Hazel came out to me, I dissolved in sobs of relief.
That’s the heart-felt closeness of dogs and humans.
Learning from Dogs 