Category: People

Saving a bald eagle.

This has nothing to do with dogs but it’s a beautiful story none the less!

I follow the Daily Dodo as it most frequently relays lovely stories about dogs.

But not always.

On the 28th May Lily Feinn wrote about the way that dozens of motorists avoided a bald eagle on the freeway and one in a particular, Dandon Miller, a motorcyclist, did much more than that. He saved her!

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Guy Sees A Bald Eagle Caught In Traffic — And Saves Her Life

“It was just amazing to hold that bird and for her to be calm like that.”
BY
PUBLISHED ON 05/28/2019

Dandon Miller’s favorite piece of clothing is a red and black flannel. He’s had the shirt for eight years and wears it all the time — but he never thought it would one day come in handy when saving a life.

On Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, Miller was on his way home from Philadelphia when traffic slowed in front of him. Miller pulled his motorcycle off to the side of the two-way highway and was shocked when he realized what was causing the traffic jam.

“I looked down to see why everyone was stopping and there was a bald eagle in the middle of the road,” Miller told The Dodo. “Another person was there and they kind of nudged her a little bit to see if she would walk off the road or fly away. She spread her wings open and was not going to go anywhere.”

Dandon Miller

An avid animal lover, Miller knew he had to help the injured bird get out of harm’s way.

The large animal was too hurt to fly, but her powerful talons were reason enough for Miller to take off his favorite flannel and throw it over her. To Miller’s surprise, the eagle remained sedate as he wrapped her in the shirt.

“I picked her up and she was very calm,” Miller said. “She got a little worked up when people started wanting to take pictures, but we were able to get that under control.”

Dandon Miller

Once Miller moved the eagle out of the road, he called 911 and eventually got in touch with Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research, a local rehabilitation center for wild birds. Miller held the 15-pound bird for about 45 minutes while waiting for rescue staffers to arrive. But the time seemed to pass quickly.

Dandon Miller

“I wasn’t really thinking about it when I was holding her,” Miller said. “I was just trying to keep her calm and make sure she knows she’s secure, and I wasn’t going to drop her or anything.”

“It was just amazing to hold that bird and for her to be calm like that,” Miller added. “Just amazing.”

Dandon Miller

After a few days of treatment, the rescue is confident that the bald eagle will eventually be able to be released into the wild.

“She had a mild injury to one eye and soft tissue injuries, but no broken bones,” Rebecca Stansell with Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research told The Dodo. “Her wounds were treated by our wildlife veterinarian while the eagle was under anesthesia. The unexpected can always happen, but we are optimistic that she will make a full recovery.”

As for Miller’s favorite flannel, it has certainly seen better days.

The shirt now has a few large talon holes in it, but Miller knows it was for the best cause — and he will definitely be wearing it again.

To help the bald eagle get the care she needs, you can make a donation to Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research.

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I can’t really imagine what it felt like to hold that eagle in your arms for 45 minutes. Especially with all the traffic rushing past. But for sure it felt more than amazing. A beautiful wild eagle!

One can’t have too many opportunities to meld with the natural world.

Wonderful story!

America’s lost dogs

A fascinating story.

A wild dog.

I am a member of AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and pulled a story from their Science journal and to my amazement found that I did this nearly a year ago.

The article, by Linda Goodman and Elinor K. Karlsson, is unavailable for complete republishing owing to copyright.

But on the AAAS website there is a summary, as follows:

Summary

Few traces remain of the domesticated dogs that populated the Americas before the arrival of Europeans in the 15th century. On page 81 of this issue, Ní Leathlobhair et al. (1) shed light on the origins of the elusive precontact dog population through genetic analysis of ancient and modern dogs. Building on earlier work, they show that American dogs alive today have almost no ancestry from precontact dogs, a monophyletic lineage descended from Arctic dogs that accompanied human migrations from Asia. Instead, the authors found that their closest remaining relative is a global transmissible cancer carrying the DNA of a long-deceased dog. It remains unclear why precontact dogs survived and thrived for thousands of years in the Americas only to swiftly and almost completely disappear with the arrival of Europeans.

From the article I would add:

It is unclear why there is so little evidence today of this thriving precontact dog population. Early European colonists may have discouraged the sale and breeding of native dogs, or even actively persecuted them (10). Yet, cultural preferences alone seem insufficient to explain their rapid decline. Most dogs worldwide are free-breeding scavengers, with minimal human control and high reproductive rates (11); native American dogs were likely similar.

There is a chart in the same article that shows the first human sites in the Americas were about 15,000 years ago with the oldest dog remains, also in America, being about 10,000 years ago.

Fascinating stuff!

Breathing problems in certain dogs

This is of interest to many but especially lovers of bulldogs and similar.

There was an article on May 17th in The Smithsonian that caught my eye. So much so that I wanted to republish it for you.

Here it is.

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Breathing Problems in Pugs and Bulldogs Might Have a Genetic Component

It might not be their smushed-up snouts after all

They’re all good dogs. ( Frank Gaglione / Getty)

By Jason Daley

smithsonian.com
May 17, 2019
Smushed-up faces are what make certain dog breeds, like French and English bulldogs or pugs, so ugly-cute. But those good looks come with a cost. Many dogs in these breeds suffer from a disease called Brachycephalic Obstructive Airway Syndrome (BOAS). The compact architecture of their skull results in deformation, which make their nostrils or soft palate too small, obstructing airflow and leaving the pups gasping for breath. Researchers long thought that the main cause was their shortened faces. But genes found in another breed suggest that the shortness of breath might be in their DNA, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS Genetics.

Ed Cara at Gizmodo reports that veterinarians began to notice that another small breed of dog, the Norwich terrier, was increasingly coming down with similar respiratory symptoms, a disease called upper airway obstructive syndrome. Unlike flat-faced pugs and bulldogs, however, the Norwich—bred for chasing rodents—has a nice, proportional skull. That got study author Jeffrey Schoenebeck, a veterinary scientist at the University of Edinburgh, wondering if the breathing problems in all the small dogs were genetic.

“That made us wonder if there was something similar shared across these different breeds, or if we were seeing two different diseases that just looked very similar,” he says.

Schoenebeck and his team decided to dig into the terrier’s DNA to find out. The team assessed 401 Norwich terriers for signs of the airway syndrome and also examined their genomes. Cassie Martin at Science News reports the researchers discovered one gene mutation in particular, ADAMTS3, was associated with the breathing disorder. Dogs with two copies of the mutation showed signs of fluid retention and swelling around the lungs. They had worse breathing scores than dogs with just one copy of the mutation or the normal gene.

When the team examined the genome of bulldogs and pugs, they also found that ADAMTS3 was common, meaning their funky faces might not be the only cause of BOAS.

“BOAS is a complex disease. Although skull shape remains an important risk factor, our study suggests that the status of ADAMTS3 should be considered as well,” Schoenebeck says in a press release. “More studies are needed to dissect the complex nature of this devastating disease.”

Cara reports that Norwich terrier breeders are already inadvertently combating the mutation. In Switzerland, Schoenebeck’s team has been working with breeders to give dogs breathing tests, identifying pups likely to develop the disease. As a result, the younger generation of terriers is less like to develop the disease than older dogs.

“In the 90s, something like 80 percent of the Norwich terriers that came into their clinic had poor breathing and this mutation,” Schoenebeck tells Cara. “But it’s decreasing further and further over time. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were actually selecting against this thing that we think is causing this disease.”

The genetic finding means that researchers can now screen directly for the mutation, and perhaps rid the terrier population of the disease.

The problem in flat-faced breeds may not be quite as simple to deal with. Wonky skull shape still makes the risk of developing BOAS higher, and the gene mutation adds to that risk. The team needs to do a similar study with bulldogs to figure out how much of their breathing problems come from their genes and how much comes from their cute little smushed-up skulls.

Smushed-up faces are what make certain dog breeds, like French and English bulldogs and pugs, so ugly-cute. But those good looks come with a cost. Many dogs in these breeds suffer from a disease called Brachycephalic Obstructive Airway Syndrome (BOAS). The compact architecture of their skull results in deformation, that make the nostrils or soft palate too small, obstructing airflow and leaving the pups gasping for breath. Researcher long thought that the main cause was their shortened faces. But genes found in another breed suggest that the shortness of breath might be in their DNA.

Ed Cara at Gizmodo reports that veterinarians began to notice that another small breed of dog, the Norwich Terrier, was increasingly coming down with similar respiratory symptoms, a disease called Upper Airway Syndrome. Unlike flat-faced pugs and bulldogs, however, the Norwich, bred for chasing rodents, has a nice, proportional skull. That got Jeffrey Schoenebeck of the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburghand and lead author of the study in the journal PLOS Genetics wondering if the breathing problems in all the small dogs were genetic.

“That made us wonder if there was something similar shared across these different breeds, or if we were seeing two different diseases that just looked very similar,” he says.

Schoenebeck and his team decided to dig into the terrier’s DNA to find out. The team assessed 401 Norwich Terriers for signs of the airway syndrome and also examined their genomes. Cassie Martin at Science News reports the researchers discovered one gene mutation in particular, ADAMTS3, was associated with the breathing disorder. Dogs with two copies of the mutation showed signs of fluid retention and swelling around the lungs. They had worse breathing scores than dogs with just one copy of the mutation or the normal gene.

When the team examined the genome of bulldogs and pugs, they also found that ADAMTS3 was common, meaning their funky faces might not be the only cause of BOAS.

“BOAS is a complex disease. Although skull shape remains an important risk factor, our study suggests that the status of ADAMTS3 should be considered as well,” study leader Jeffrey Schoenebeck says in a press release. “More studies are needed to dissect the complex nature of this devastating disease.”

Cara reports that Norwich Terrier breeders are already inadvertently combating the mutation. In Switzerland, Schoenebeck’s co-authors have been working with breeders to give dogs breathing tests, identifying doggos likely to develop the disease. As a result, the younger generation of terriers is less like to develop the disease than older dogs.

“In the 90s, something like 80 percent of the Norwich Terriers that came into their clinic had poor breathing and this mutation,” Schoenebeck tells Cara. “But it’s decreasing further and further over time. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were actually selecting against this thing that we think is causing this disease.”

The genetic finding means that researchers can now screen directly for the mutation, and perhaps rid the terrier population of the disease.

The problem in flat-faced breeds may not be quite as simple to deal with. Wonky skull shape still makes the risk of developing BOAS higher, and the gene mutation adds to that risk. The team needs to do a similar study with bulldogs to figure out how much of their breathing problems come from their genes and how much comes from their cute little smushed-up skulls.

Jason Daley is a Madison, Wisconsin-based writer specializing in natural history, science, travel, and the environment. His work has appeared in Discover, Popular Science, Outside, Men’s Journal, and other magazines.

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How great it would be if the problem facing these flat-faced breeds was slowly done away with.

It’s the dogs that are our connectors!

An unusual finding from a recent survey.

As Yves says: “Yves here. Wow, this is a finding I would never have expected. Shows what I know about dogs, or more accurately, dog owners.”

She was commenting on a recent post published on Naked Capitalism.

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How Dogs Help Keep Multiracial Neighborhoods Socially Segregated

Posted on May 24, 2019
By Yves Smith
By Sarah Mayorga-Gallo, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston. Originally published at The Conversation

Cities in the United States are getting less segregated and, according to a recent national survey, most Americans value the country’s racial diversity.

But the demographic integration of a neighborhood doesn’t necessarily mean that neighbors of different races are socializing together.

Diverse urban areas remain socially segregated in part because white gentrifiers and long-time residents have differing economic interests. And the racial hierarchies of the United States are simply not erased when black and white people share the same space.

White residents of multicultural areas tend to overlook inequality in their neighborhoods, studies show. That further reinforces racial barriers.

My sociological research in one such multicultural neighborhood identifies a more surprising vehicle of racial segregation: dogs.

‘A Very Doggie Neighborhood’

I spent 18 months studying Creekridge Park, a diverse and mixed-income area of Durham, North Carolina, to understand how black, white and Latino residents interacted with each other. Between 2009 and 2011, I interviewed 63 residents, attended neighborhood events and conducted a household survey.

I learned that white, black and Latino residents led rather separate social lives in Creekridge Park. Eighty-six percent of white people said their closest friends were white, and 70% of black residents surveyed reported that their best friends were black.

One black resident lamented that neighbors weren’t as “friendly as I had hoped and thought that they would be – or at least, this image I had in my head of what ‘friendly’ would be like.”

White, black and Latino people in Creekridge Park even had different experiences with something as seemingly innocuous as pet ownership.

Many white residents described friendships growing as a result of walking their dogs around the neighborhood, with chance encounters on the sidewalk turning into baseball games, dinners and even vacations together.

“It’s the dogs that are our connectors,” said Tammy, a white homeowner in her fifties. “That’s how a lot of us have gotten to know each other.”

Such positive interactions did not necessarily happen across racial boundaries. More often, I found, dogs reinforced boundaries.

When Jerry, a black homeowner in his sixties, stopped to chat with some dog-owning customers, who were white, in the outdoor seating area of a neighborhood bakery, the staff asked him to leave.

“I owned some dogs like that at one particular time. And I was just speaking to them. All of a sudden, I’m a panhandler,” Jerry said, incredulous and hurt.

Jerry is a black disabled veteran who was wearing his old army uniform that day. He figures they thought he was begging for money.

The dogs didn’t create the interracial boundaries at the bakery, which caters to a primarily white, middle-class clientele. In fact, the dogs presented an avenue to connect black and white neighbors. But they gave bakery staff a reason to intervene, to maintain interracial boundaries.

Neighborhood Watch

The treatment of dogs in Creekridge Park also divided neighbors of different races.

Tammy, the same resident who said dogs served as “connectors” in the neighborhood, disliked that her Latino neighbors wouldn’t let their dog into the house, leaving her tied up in the backyard.

Tethering dogs is a common practice in Durham, NC.

One day, when she heard her neighbor’s dog barking, she decided to monitor their backyard with binoculars, to make sure the dog was OK. When the father spotted her doing her surveillance, Tammy lied. She said she was looking at a different dog.

Tammy was not, however, embarrassed when recounting this story. She felt she was justified in considering the dog’s well-being. She offered the family a bigger dog house and began to take the dog on hour-long walks twice a day. Eventually, she adopted the dog as her own.

Tammy said that she always intervened whenever she saw dogs mistreated in the neighborhood. However, the only examples she shared during our interview involved Latino families.

Latino families are not the only Creekridge Park residents who tied up their dogs. The practice is common enough across Durham that a local group was formed in 2007 to build free dog fences.

Police Come ‘Almost Immediately’

Several white residents of Creekridge Park have even reported their neighbors to the police for suspected animal abuse.

Emma, a white homeowner in her thirties, called the police when she thought her neighbors were involved in dog fighting.

They “came almost immediately,” she said.

Generally, Emma told me, if she knows her neighbors, she will confront them directly about problems she perceives. Otherwise, she prefers to call the police.

Given how segregated friendship networks are in Creekridge Park, this seemingly non-racial distinction between “known” and “unknown” neighbors means that in practice Emma involved police in conflicts only with black and Latino neighbors.

Dogs can connect neighbors – but they can also divide them. Shutterstock

How White People Enforce Their Rules

This white willingness to report non-white neighbors for “unruly” behavior recalls numerous recent incidents nationwide in which white people have called the police on black people for perfectly legal activities.

In July 2018 a white woman in San Francisco threatened an 8-year-old black girl for “illegally selling water without a permit.” A few months before, a white woman dubbed by internet users as “BBQ Becky” called the cops on a black family barbecuing in an Oakland park for using an “unauthorized” charcoal grill.

Other examples of white people using police to enforce their unspoken social norms have occurred at Starbucks, a Yale University dorm and a Texas swimming pool.

In U.S. neighborhoods, middle- and upper-class white residents enjoy a privileged social position by virtue of their race and class. They understand that police, local businesses and government agencies exist to serve them – the same social institutions that often underserve or even target racial minorities.

By drawing arbitrary lines between right and wrong, insider and outsider – even good pet owner and bad – white people like Tammy and BBQ Becky use that power to try to shape diverse neighborhoods into their preferred mold.

As a result of white residents’ focus on their own comfort in diverse places, racial inequality can pervade everyday life – even, my research shows, when walking the dog.

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I have to say that it’s not entirely clear if dog ownership leads to social cohesion or the opposite.

I need to read the article again but what do readers offer.

G3PUK!

The story of me gaining my radio amateur licence.

As I spoke about yesterday in my introduction, when my mother remarried my sister and I had a new man about the house, so to speak. He was Richard Mills.

I was 13 or thereabouts and already struggling with my school work (the result of my father’s sudden death). And ‘Dad’ as we called him was finding his feet in the strange world of going from having no children to instantly having two step children!

Anyway, Dad found a theme with me that I enjoyed: building a shortwave radio receiver. It was full of learning for me and over the years I became hooked on listening to radio stations both near and far transmitting in morse code. I also joined the Harrow Radio Society and went across to their weekly meetings by tube and bus. (Despite the Society no longer being at the Harrow address it is amazing that they are still going strong.)

It was also a time when there was a great deal of ‘radio surplus’ equipment going for next to nothing and I ‘upgraded’ to an R-1152 receiver.

War surplus R-1152 receiver.

In time I became sufficiently old to take driving lessons and pass my driving licence. I then got a secondhand car. It helped because then I could drive up to Bushey and spend Sunday mornings at the house of Ron Ray. Ron was a keen amateur. On Sunday mornings Ron had a small group of people who wanted to pass the morse code test and apply for a licence.

I was already a member of the RSGB, the Radio Society of Great Britain, and that surely encouraged me further to study for my amateur licence.

In time, I sat the exam and much to my amazement passed!

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So that is the story of me and amateur radio.

Well, almost the full story.

In 1963 I volunteered for the Royal Naval Reserve, London Division. In time I was accepted and chose the join the radio branch, my G3PUK status coming in useful, because I reckoned that when we went to sea, on flat-bottomed minesweepers, it was better to be sick into a bucket between the knees than be sick on deck!

So there you are – G3PUK!

The Morse Code is 175 years old!

Two days of nostalgia follow! (You have been warned!)

As many of you already know, my father died fairly suddenly on December 20th, 1956. I had turned 12 some six weeks previously.

After about a year my mother remarried. His name was Richard Mills. Richard came to live at the house in Toley Avenue and had the unenviable task of taking on a new ‘son’ and ‘daughter’. (My sister, Elizabeth, some four years younger than I.)

Richard was a technical author in the newly-arrived electronics industry and one day he asked me if I would like to build a short-wave receiver. He coached me in the strange art of soldering wires and radio valves and other components and in the end I had a working receiver. That led, in turn, to me studying for an amateur radio licence. More of that tomorrow.

But the point of the introduction is to relay that The Morse Code is 175 years old on the 24th May.

Read more:

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Simply elegant, Morse code marks 175 years and counting

The elegantly simple code works whether flashing a spotlight or blinking your eyes—or even tapping on a smartphone touchscreen

There’s still plenty of reason to know how to use this Morse telegraph key. (Jason Salmon/Shutterstock.com)

By
Ph.D. Student in Electrical Engineering, University of South Carolina

May 21st, 2019

The first message sent by Morse code’s dots and dashes across a long distance traveled from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore on Friday, May 24, 1844 – 175 years ago. It signaled the first time in human history that complex thoughts could be communicated at long distances almost instantaneously. Until then, people had to have face-to-face conversations; send coded messages through drums, smoke signals and semaphore systems; or read printed words.

Thanks to Samuel F.B. Morse, communication changed rapidly, and has been changing ever faster since. He invented the electric telegraph in 1832. It took six more years for him to standardize a code for communicating over telegraph wires. In 1843, Congress gave him US$30,000 to string wires between the nation’s capital and nearby Baltimore. When the line was completed, he conducted a public demonstration of long-distance communication.

Morse wasn’t the only one working to develop a means of communicating over the telegraph, but his is the one that has survived. The wires, magnets and keys used in the initial demonstration have given way to smartphones’ on-screen keyboards, but Morse code has remained fundamentally the same, and is still – perhaps surprisingly – relevant in the 21st century. Although I have learned, and relearned, it many times as a Boy Scout, an amateur radio operator and a pilot, I continue to admire it and strive to master it.

Samuel F.B. Morse’s own handwritten record of the first Morse code message ever sent, on May 24, 1844. Library of Congress

Easy sending

Morse’s key insight in constructing the code was considering how frequently each letter is used in English. The most commonly used letters have shorter symbols: “E,” which appears most often, is signified by a single “dot.” By contrast, “Z,” the least used letter in English, was signified by the much longer and more complex “dot-dot-dot (pause) dot.”

In 1865, the International Telecommunications Union changed the code to account for different character frequencies in other languages. There have been other tweaks since, but “E” is still “dot,” though “Z” is now “dash-dash-dot-dot.”

The reference to letter frequency makes for extremely efficient communications: Simple words with common letters can be transmitted very quickly. Longer words can still be sent, but they take more time.

Going wireless

The communications system that Morse code was designed for – analogue connections over metal wires that carried a lot of interference and needed a clear on-off type signal to be heard – has evolved significantly.

The first big change came just a few decades after Morse’s demonstration. In the late 19th century, Guglielmo Marconi invented radio-telegraph equipment, which could send Morse code over radio waves, rather than wires.

The shipping industry loved this new way to communicate with ships at sea, either from ship to ship or to shore-based stations. By 1910, U.S. law required many passenger ships in U.S. waters to carry wireless sets for sending and receiving messages.

After the Titanic sank in 1912, an international agreement required some ships to assign a person to listen for radio distress signals at all times. That same agreement designated “SOS” – “dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dot-dot-dot” – as the international distress signal, not as an abbreviation for anything but because it was a simple pattern that was easy to remember and transmit. The Coast Guard discontinued monitoring in 1995. The requirement that ships monitor for distress signals was removed in 1999, though the U.S. Navy still teaches at least some sailors to read, send and receive Morse code.

The arrow points at the chart label indicating the Morse code equivalent to the ‘BAL’ signal for a radio beacon near Baltimore. Edited screenshot of an FAA map, CC BY-ND

Aviators also use Morse code to identify automated navigational aids. These are radio beacons that help pilots follow routes, traveling from one transmitter to the next on aeronautical charts. They transmit their identifiers – such as “BAL” for Baltimore – in Morse code. Pilots often learn to recognize familiar-sounding patterns of beacons in areas they fly frequently.

There is a thriving community of amateur radio operators who treasure Morse code, too. Among amateur radio operators, Morse code is a cherished tradition tracing back to the earliest days of radio. Some of them may have begun in the Boy Scouts, which has made learning Morse variably optional or required over the years. The Federal Communications Commission used to require all licensed amateur radio operators to demonstrate proficiency in Morse code, but that ended in 2007. The FCC does still issue commercial licenses that require Morse proficiency, but no jobs require it anymore.

Blinking Morse

Because its signals are so simple – on or off, long or short – Morse code can also be used by flashing lights. Many navies around the world use blinker lights to communicate from ship to ship when they don’t want to use radios or when radio equipment breaks down. The U.S. Navy is actually testing a system that would let a user type words and convert it to blinker light. A receiver would read the flashes and convert it back to text.

Skills learned in the military helped an injured man communicate with his wife across a rocky beach using only his flashlight in 2017.

Other Morse messages

Perhaps the most notable modern use of Morse code was by Navy pilot Jeremiah Denton, while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In 1966, about one year into a nearly eight-year imprisonment, Denton was forced by his North Vietnamese captors to participate in a video interview about his treatment. While the camera focused on his face, he blinked the Morse code symbols for “torture,” confirming for the first time U.S. fears about the treatment of service members held captive in North Vietnam.

Navy pilot Jeremiah Denton, a prisoner of war, blinks Morse code spelling out ‘torture’ during a forced interview with his captors.

Blinking Morse code is slow, but has also helped people with medical conditions that prevent them from speaking or communicating in other ways. A number of devices – including iPhones and Android smartphones – can be set up to accept Morse code input from people with limited motor skills.

There are still many ways people can learn Morse code, and practice using it, even online. In emergency situations, it can be the only mode of communications that will get through. Beyond that, there is an art to Morse code, a rhythmic, musical fluidity to the sound. Sending and receiving it can have a soothing or meditative feeling, too, as the person focuses on the flow of individual characters, words and sentences. Overall, sometimes the simplest tool is all that’s needed to accomplish the task.

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I do hope you read this article in full because it contains much interesting information. Many people will not have a clue about The Morse Code and, as you can see above, it is still relevant.

Finally, I can still remember the The Morse Code after all these years!

Mixed feelings!

The dog does a wonderful act of discovery!

There was an item on BBC News recently that shows the devotion of dogs towards humans. Yet the story also shows how cruel a young mother can be towards her own baby.

Here it is:

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Dog rescues baby buried alive in field in Thailand

17 May 2019
KHAOSOD -The dog helped raise the alarm after discovering the baby.

A dog in northern Thailand has rescued a newborn baby after it was buried alive, allegedly by its teenage mother.

The baby boy is said to have been abandoned by his mother, 15, to hide her pregnancy from her parents.

Ping Pong the dog was barking and digging in a field in Ban Nong Kham village. Its owner says he then noticed a baby’s leg sticking out of the earth.

Locals rushed the baby to hospital where doctors cleaned him up and declared he was healthy.

Ping Pong’s owner, Usa Nisaikha, says it lost the use of one of its legs after being hit by a car.

He told Khaosod Newspaper: “I kept him because he’s so loyal and obedient, and always helps me out when I go to the fields to tend to my cattle. He’s loved by the entire village. It’s amazing.”

KHAOSOD – Ping Pong is disabled since being hit by a car.

The newborn’s mother has been charged with child abandonment and attempted murder.

Panuwat Puttakam, an officer at Chum Phuang police station, told the Bangkok Post she was now in the care of her parents and a psychologist.

He said that she regrets her actions.

The girl’s parents have decided to raise the baby.

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There’s no pardoning a woman who buries alive her baby. I don’t care what age she was; the mother that is. If she is old enough to become pregnant she is old enough to know better.

In stark contrast is Ping Pong, the dog, who despite having only three legs worked furiously to unearth the baby and did so without harming the infant.

 

Saturday smile!

A delightful story of one man’s bravery for another – dog!

This was published on The Daily Dodo a week ago and really does need retelling.

It shows how much we love our dogs.

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Man Jumps Into An NYC River To Save A Drowning Dog

Photo Credit: Erin O’Donnell

Ever since she was adopted from North Shore Animal League in March 2017, Harper has been absolutely head over heels for her mom, Erin O’Donnell, but is definitely a little nervous in new situations and can take some time to warm up to new people.

“She is a sweetheart but very anxious outside and around strangers,” O’Donnell told The Dodo.

On Saturday, O’Donnell was performing with the Brooklyn Irish Dance Company in Manhattan and left Harper in Brooklyn with friends and a trusted dog walker. Harper and her dog walker were out taking a stroll when a cab recklessly ran a stop sign and hit both the dog walker and Harper.

Both were OK and only sustained minor injuries, but poor Harper was so scared and shaken up that she ran and ran and ran — until she reached the East River, and jumped right in.

Still in a panic, Harper swam with determination and ferocity, and while at first onlookers thought she was just a dog with an owner nearby going for a swim, they soon realized that wasn’t the case at all.

“I was at the Brooklyn Barge celebrating my B’day when we saw a dog ‘going for a swim,’” Gabe Castellanos wrote in a post on Instagram. “The day grew hot and we all figured a nice swim could do us all a service. We assumed the owner was on shore keeping a watchful eye until a patron ran up to the north side of the Barge with a panicked voice saying that the dog, Harper, had run away.”

Photo Credit: Lorenzo Fonda

It was around that time that everyone began to notice Harper losing speed. The river was incredibly cold, and with the amount of energy Harper was exerting in her panicked state, it was likely that she wouldn’t be able to keep herself afloat for very much longer. This fact settled in for Castellanos, and he immediately knew he had to do something about it.

Castellanos happens to be a graduate of SUNY Maritime College and has extensive water survival skills knowledge — and so he decided he was going in.

“Since there was no sign of her making an attempt to swim back to shore, I knew something had to be done,” Castellanos told The Dodo. “I looked on the barge for any type of floating device to use if I were to jump from the end, but then I noticed there was a life vest, so I grabbed it.”

At this point, a crowd of about 300 people had gathered, invested in Harper and her well-being, and as soon as everyone realized what Castellanos was about to do, they all broke out into cheers of encouragement. Lorenzo Fonda, a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and artist, was hanging out at the Brooklyn Barge when he suddenly realized what was happening, and quickly began recording the entire ordeal.

Photo Credit: Lorenzo Fonda

Knowing the water was going to be cold and the conditions less than ideal, Castellanos strategized quickly with those around him as he prepared to jump into the water. He stripped down to his underwear, climbed over the rails, and then lowered himself as close to the water as he possibly could before letting go and diving in.

“There was a grand cheer when I entered the water,” Castellanos said. “After that, I was no longer focused on the crowds and my surroundings but focused on my breathing and swimming over to Harper. The crowds went mute during my swim. I’m sure they were still cheering, but I could not hear anything other than the water.”

Harper was still swimming at a steady pace, and Castellanos had to work hard to catch up with her. As soon as she realized someone was swimming towards her, she became even more panicked and tried as hard as she could to swim away from him.

Castellanos was persistent, though, and even though Harper struggled and lashed out a bit out of fear when he finally reached her, he stayed calm and determined and was finally able to secure her.

Cheers erupted from all over when Castellanos finally had Harper safely in his arms, and the pair quickly returned to shore. Both were exhausted and needed medical attention to make sure everything was OK, but luckily they were both completely fine, and are now recovering at their respective homes.

Photo Credit: Lorenzo Fonda

O’Donnell was in the middle of a performance when all of this occurred, and didn’t find out until later about Harper’s river adventure and the man who saved her life.

“Her paws are in rough shape, so she will need some trendy boots for a few weeks, but otherwise she’s in great spirits,” O’Donnell said. “It is definitely so refreshing to see the positive responses from people at the Brooklyn Barge and on social media expressing their sympathy for Harper and praising Gabe, who definitely saved the day.”

As an innocent onlooker that day, Castellanos didn’t have to do anything to help. He could have just sat by and watched and let someone else handle it, but instead he took a leap of faith and ended up saving Harper’s life, making him a true hero.

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I take my hat off to Gabe Castellanos. It’s something that 99.9% of us wouldn’t do yet Gabe didn’t think twice. OK, he had specific training but still there was a degree of risk. But he took it!

So well done, Mr. Gabe Castellanos!

It’s time to change our habits.

Funny how things evolve!

A week ago I was casually reading a copy of our local newspaper, the Grants Pass Daily Courier, and inside was a piece by Kathleen Parker, a syndicated columnist, entitled It’s the end of everything – or not.

I found it particularly interesting especially a quotation in her piece by Robert Watson, a British chemist who served as the chair of the panel of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The IPBES had recently published the results of the three-year study by 145 authors from 50 countries.

So I wrote to Kathleen Parker asking if I might have permission to quote that excerpt and, in turn, received her permission to so do.

Here it is:

Robert Watson wrote in a statement that:

“the health of ecosystems on which we and all species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundation of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

But, Watson also said, it’s not too late to repair and sustain nature – if we act now in transformative ways.

It is time to change our habits both at an individual level and the level of countries working together.

Moreover we haven’t got decades. We have got to do it now!

Back to Coyotes!

Hunting, and not for food!

We hate hunting. Period.

It’s sort of alright when the person needs to hunt to stay alive. But in the Western world the incidence of that is pretty remote.

So when author Jim wrote about coyotes and hunting I had to share it with you (and, for the record, both Jean and I are atheists).  Published with Jim’s permission.

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The Incredible Coyote and Western Morality

How killing for fun is not only a Christian Right, but a value

By Jim, August 5th 2018.

Christian vulgarity has reigned it’s bullets down on the North American coyote for over 100 years. The longest standing extermination order in history has killed millions of coyotes and continues its bounty program in most states. Competitive hunts sponsored throughout the nation each year with cash prizes and trophies instill to our kids the right obligation to kill for fun.

“One morning in the late 1930s, the biologist Adolph Murie stood near a game trail in Yellowstone National Park and watched a passing coyote joyously toss a sprig of sagebrush in the air with its mouth, adroitly catch it, and repeat the act every few yards. At the time, Mr. Murie was conducting a federal study intended to prove, definitively, that the coyote was “the archpredator of our time.” But Mr. Murie, whose work ultimately exonerated the animals, was more impressed by that sprig-tossing — proof, he believed, of the joy a wild coyote took in being alive in the world” (1)

The majority of politicians have failed to address this with any passion, and being the good, high moral standard western value Christians that they are, continue the killing spree. A useless torture that drives the coyote without mercy and without effect. “Under persecution, the biologists argued, evolved colonizing mechanisms kicked in for coyotes. They have larger litters. If alpha females die, beta females breed. Pressured, they engage an adaptation called fission-fusion, with packs breaking up and pairs and individuals scattering to the winds and colonizing new areas. In full colonization mode, the scientists found, coyotes could withstand as much as a 70 percent yearly kill rate without suffering any decline in their total population”.

Hunters have their ultimate victim to hunt—one that can outbreed the continued onslaught. How fun is it? While the coyote is hunted for sport, they die in earnest. Leave them to experience their joy, and populations will mitigate in their own necessary way.

Christian values and morals once again are superior delayed in common decency and way off the mark—unless your talking killing for sport.

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I want to add a couple of comments that were left on the post:

Not many christians are bothered by this. Why should they, when you hear them quote from their holy book, that god commanded them to subdue the earth.

It is for this very reason that many christians are nonchalant when we talk about climate change

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The price paid for pointlessly killing predators is a dear one. Moreover, all needless killing of animals is wrong, says the immoral, convinced atheist.

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(to which Jim replied)

Part of the doctrine is to subdue and have dominion. To hell with inferior, soulless life. The ripple effect of what was once naturally flowing is tragic and painful.

Enough said!