A republication of a post from November of last year.
Our dear Lilly offers her special thoughts.
Preface: Lilly is reaching an amazing age for a dog; trully amazing. Lilly was featured back in February this year when we did a series of posts under the generic heading of Meet the dogs.
Yesterday, Jean thought it would be wonderful to hear it from Lilly; so to speak.
So these are Lilly’s words; as whispered to Jeannie!
oooo
The World According to Lilly
Surveying her domain.
I am sixteen years old! That’s one hundred and twelve people years!
So no-one is going to tell me what to do; especially those bratty young dogs I live with.
I refuse to eat canned dog food and expect Mum to cook fresh meat on a daily basis or I will stop eating and give her the moon eyes. (No real issue as Mum does understand my demands! đ ) The only dry food that passes my lips is ‘Canidae’. It’s not cheap but, hey, I’m worth it!
No dog is allowed to snag my food or I will bite their nose; and well the others know that! OK, maybe young Oliver can sneak a nibble or two off my bowl; he is rather cute!
I will only take a pill if it is camouflaged in the fresh marrow of a bone – Mum, bless her, thinks I don’t know it’s there! Ha!
When it’s raining, I refuse to go out. Period! To make Mum happy, sometimes I let her use this sheepskin-lined sling thing to help me tackle the deck steps but many times I can manage on my own – hey! I’m only sixteen! But I know that it makes Mum’s day if she sees herself being useful!
It’s been a good life. OK, I’m rather creaky now but determined to make seventeen. Who knows maybe even eighteen!
Give Dad a run for his money any day! Â Golly, he has only just turned seventy in people years and to hear him natter on you would think he feels old!
Now where’s my bed …..
Not a bad life for an old dog! (I’m speaking of Dad!)
Another fabulous lesson we can learn from our dogs.
Stillness. It is a very simple, single word yet, somehow, it sounds as though it belongs to a different age. As though stillness is a very long way from the modern society that millions and millions of us subscribe to.
The dog is the master of being still. Being still, either from just laying quietly watching the world go by, or being still from being fast asleep. The ease at which they can find a space on a settee, a carpeted corner of a room, the covers of a made-up bed, and stretch out and be still, simply beggars belief. Dogs offer us humans the most wonderful quality of stillness that we should all practice. Dogs reveal their wonderful relationship with stillness.
Now watch this entrancing talk from Pico Iyer.
Published on Nov 26, 2014
The place that travel writer Pico Iyer would most like to go? Nowhere. In a counterintuitive and lyrical meditation, Iyer takes a look at the incredible insight that comes with taking time for stillness. In our world of constant movement and distraction, he teases out strategies we all can use to take back a few minutes out of every day, or a few days out of every season. Itâs the talk for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the demands for our world.
Why you should listen.
Acclaimed travel writer Pico Iyer began his career documenting a neglected aspect of travel — the sometimes surreal disconnect between local tradition and imported global pop culture. Since then, he has written ten books, exploring also the cultural consequences of isolation, whether writing about the exiled spiritual leaders of Tibet or the embargoed society of Cuba.
Iyerâs latest focus is on yet another overlooked aspect of travel: how can it help us regain our sense of stillness and focus in a world where our devices and digital networks increasing distract us? As he says: “Almost everybody I know has this sense of overdosing on information and getting dizzy living at post-human speeds. Nearly everybody I know does something to try to remove herself to clear her head and to have enough time and space to think. … All of us instinctively feel that something inside us is crying out for more spaciousness and stillness to offset the exhilarations of this movement and the fun and diversion of the modern world.”
What others say
â[Iyer] writes the kind of lyrical, flowing prose that could make Des Moines sound beguiling.â â Los Angeles Times
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”
That sub-heading is a quotation from W. H. Auden and while directed at man it applies to all animal life including our beloved dogs.
The drought that California is experiencing is world-wide news but, possibly, the fact that this drought extends to much of the Pacific West Coast on the United States is not as widely known.
Here in Merlin, Southern Oregon, our own ‘all-year’ creek, Bummer Creek, that flows through our property has been dry for about two weeks. Our grass fields are parched brown and many of the trees are signalling a shortage of water. Â And let’s not even think about the underground aquifer that supplies our drinking water.
All of which makes a sombre introduction to a recent essay over on TomDispatch, republished here with the very kind permission of Tom Engelhardt. (But see my note at the end of the essay.)
ooOOoo
Tomgram: William deBuys, Entering the Mega-Drought Era in America
Posted by William deBuys at 4:17pm, August 16, 2015.
The other day here in New England it was chilly, rainy, and stormy and I complained. Where was the sun? The warmth? The summer? I happened to be with someone I know from California and he shook his head and said, âItâs fine with me. I like it rainy. I havenât seen much rain in a while.â It was a little reminder of how insular we can be. California, after all, is in the fourth year of a fearsome drought that has turned much of the North American West, from Alaska and Canada to the Mexican border, into a tinderbox. Reservoirs are low, rivers quite literally drying up, and the West is burning. In rural northern California, where the fires seem to be least under control, the Rocky Fire has already burned 109 square miles and destroyed 43 homes, while the Jerusalem Fire, which recently broke out nearby, quickly ate up almost 19 square miles while doubling in size and sent local residents fleeing, some for the second time in recent weeks.
Fires have doubled in these drought years in California. The fire season, once mainly an autumnal affair, now seems to be just about any day of the year. (This isnât, by the way, just a California phenomenon. The latest study indicates that fire season is extending globally, with a growth spurt of 18.7% in the last few decades.) In fact, fire stats for the U.S. generally and the West in particular are worsening in the twenty-first century, and this year looks to be quite a blazing affair, with six million acres already burned across the region and part of the summer still to go. And hereâs the thing: though “Iâm not a scientist,” itâs pretty hard at this point not to notice — though most Republican candidates for president seem unfazed — that this planet is heating up, that today’s droughts, bad as they are, will be put in the shade by the predicted mega-droughts of tomorrow, and that the problem of water in the American West is only going to deepen — or do I mean grow shallower? TomDispatch regular William deBuys, an expert on water in that region and author of A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, has already written dramatically of a future âexodus from Phoenix.â For clues to what we will all experience sooner or later, he now turns to California, that bellwether state in which, as he writes, the future always seems to play itself out first. Tom
California First
As Both Climate Victim and Responder, the National Style-Setter Leads the Way
By William deBuys
Long ago, I lived in a cheap flat in San Francisco and worked as the lone straight man in a gay construction company. Strangely enough, the drought now strangling California brings back memories of those days. It was the 1970s. Our company specialized in restoring the Victorian âgingerbreadâ to the facades of the cityâs townhouses, and I got pretty good at installing cornices, gable brackets, and window hoods, working high above the street.
What I remember most, though, is the way my co-workers delighted in scandalizing me on Monday mornings with accounts of their weekend exploits.
We were all so innocent back then. We had no idea of the suffering that lay ahead or of the grievous epidemic already latent in the bodies of legions of gay men like my friends, an epidemic that would afflict so many outside the gay community but was especially terrible within it.
Itâs unlikely that many of those guys are alive today. HIV was already in the population, although AIDS had yet to be detected or named, and no one had heard of âsafe sex,â let alone practiced it. When the epidemic broke out, it was nowhere worse than in trendsetting San Francisco.
By then I had returned to New Mexico, having traded my hammer for a typewriter. When I announced my intention to leave California, the guys all said the same thing. âDonât go back there,â they protested. âYouâll just have to go through all of this again!â
All of this required no translation. It meant the particular newness of life in that state, which was always sure to spread eastward, as Californian styles, attitudes, problems, tastes, and fads had been spreading to the rest of the country almost since the days of the Gold Rush.
Hippies, flower power, bikers, and cults. The movies we see and the music we listen to. The slang we pick up (I mean like, what a bummer, dude). Wine bars and fern bars, hot tubs and tanning booths, liposuction and boob jobs. The theft of rivers (Forget it, Jake. Itâs Chinatown) and the theft of baseball teams (Brooklyn still mourns). Gay rights, car culture, and the Reagan Revolution. Scientology, mega-churches, Buddhist chic, and exercise videos. If they didnât actually start in California, they got big and came to national attention there. Without the innovations of Silicon Valley, would you recognize your mobile phone or computer? Would you recognize yourself?
Itâs the same with climate change. California in the Great Drought is once again Exhibit A, a living diorama of how the future is going to look for a lot of us.
And the present moment — right now in 2015 — reminds me of San Francisco as the AIDS epidemic broke out. Back then we had no idea how bad things were going to get, and that is likely to be true now, as well. As usual, California is giving us a preview of our world to come.
The Arrival of the Bone-Dry New Normal
On the U.S. Drought Monitorâs current map, a large purple bruise spreads across the core of California, covering almost half the state. Purple indicates âexceptional drought,â the direst category, the one that tops both âsevereâ and âextreme.â If you combine all three, 95% of the state is covered. In other words, California is hurting.
Admittedly, conditions are better than at this time last year when 100% of the state was at least âsevere.â Recent summer rains have somewhat dulled the edge of the drought, now in its fourth year. Full recovery, however, would require about a foot of rain statewide between now and January, a veritable deluge for places like Fresno, which in good times only get that much rain in a full year.
To be clear, the current drought may not have been caused by climate change. After all, California has a long history of periodic fierce droughts that arise from entirely natural causes, some of them lasting a decade or more. Even so, at a minimum climate change remains a potent factor in the present disaster. The fundamental difference between Californiaâs current desiccation and its historical antecedents is that present conditions are hotter thanks to climate change, and hotter means drier since evaporation increases with temperature. Moreover, the relationship between the two is non-linear: as temperature creeps up, evaporation gallops. Bottom line: the droughts of the future will be much more brutal — and destructive — than those of the past.
California is already on average about 1.7° Fahrenheit hotter than a century ago, and its rate of warming is expected to triple in the century ahead. The evaporative response to this increase will powerfully amplify future droughts in unprecedented ways, no matter their causes.
Throughout the state, draconian cutbacks in water use remain in force. Some agricultural districts are receiving 0% of the federally controlled irrigation water they received in past years, while state water deliveries are running at about 15% of normal.
Meanwhile, a staggering 5,200 wildfires have burned in the stateâs forests and chaparral country this year, although timely rains everywhere but in the northern parts of California and the rapid responses of a beefed-up army of firefighters limited the burning to less acreage than last year — at least until recently. The blow-up of the Rocky Fire, north of San Francisco, in the early days of August — it burned through 20,000 acres in just a few hours — may change that mildly promising statistic. And the fire season still has months to go.
So how is this a trendsetter, a harbinger for lands to the east? Californiaâs drought is deep and long — we donât yet know how long — and the very long-term forecast for an immense portion of western North America, stretching from California to Texas and north to South Dakota, is for a future of the same, only worse. Here is the unvarnished version of that future (on which an impressive number of climate models appear to agree) as expressed in a paper that appeared in Science Advances last February: âThe mean state of drought in the late 21st century over the Central Plains and Southwest will likely exceed even the most severe mega-drought periods of the Medieval era in both high and moderate emissions scenarios, representing an unprecedented fundamental shift with respect to the last millennium.â
Letâs unpack that a little bit: principal author Benjamin Cook of NASA and his colleagues from Columbia and Cornell universities are saying that climate change will bring to the continent a ânew normalâ more brutally dry than even the multiple-decades-long droughts that caused the Native American societies of Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde to collapse. This, they add, is now expected to happen even if greenhouse gas emissions are significantly lowered in the decades to come. The impact of such droughts, they conclude, will exceed the bounds of anything known in the history of the continent or in its scientifically reconstructed pre-history.
In other words, the California drought of recent years offers only a foretaste of what is to come. Incidentally, Cook, et al. are by no means outliers in the literature of climate prediction. Other important studies with similar forecasts support a steadily broadening consensus on the subject.
And North American droughts will have to compete for attention with countless other climate change impacts, especially the hundreds of millions of refugees worldwide who will be put into motion by rising sea levels and other forces that will render their present homes unlivable.
A Userâs Guide to Climate Change
If California points the way to dry times ahead, it also gives us an early glimpse of how a responsible society will try to live with and adjust to a warmer future. The state has imposed stringent new limits on water use and is actively enforcing them, and in general, individual consumers have responded positively to the new requirements, in some cases even exceeding mandated conservation goals.
In a similar spirit, the state has augmented its wildland fire-fighting capacity to good effect, even as the fire danger has approached levels never before seen.
Perhaps most impressively the state has adopted its own pioneering cap-and-trade program aimed at rolling back total greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels. Under cap-and-trade, carbon polluters have to obtain permits to continue their emissions, and only a finite number of such permits are made available. A coal-burning power plant or a refinery has to buy its permit from the state or from another company that already has one. This way, a ceiling is established for total greenhouse gases emitted by the most energy-intensive sectors of the economy.
Although the jury may still be out on how well the program meets its goals, there is no debating its positive impact on the state treasury. In the fiscal year just begun, the auction of permits under Californiaâs cap-and-trade program will net approximately $2.2 billion, a windfall that will be spent on mass transit, affordable housing, and a range of climate-adaptation programs. And by the way, the warnings of nay-sayers and climate deniers that cap-and-trade would prove a drag on the economy have proved groundless.
In a manner similar to the U.N.âs prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, California now publishes an assessment every three years of both its vulnerability to climate change and the steps it plans to take to mitigate or adapt to its effects. The report is a model of its kind and draws on copious California-specific scientific research, some of which is funded by the state.
You might think Californiaâs neighbors would follow suit, and eventually, as with most things Californian, they undoubtedly will. If President Obamaâs just-announced âClean Power Planâ withstands the expected court challenges, it will prove a powerful spur in that direction as it mandates state-by-state reductions in power plant carbon emissions that will, in the end, drive them 32% below 2005 levels. Many states will undoubtedly have to adopt cap-and-trade systems in order to comply. As they set about devising their own programs, where do you think they will look for a workable example? You guessed it: California.
An âIslandâ Again, or Nearly So
In the seventeenth century, Spanish cartographers thought California was an island separated from the rest of North America by the legendary Straits of Anian. In some ways, nothing has changed. In late July, while California Governor Jerry Brown was at the Vatican joining Pope Francis in calling for urgent global action to combat climate change, his opposite numbers across the putative straits continued to assume the posture of startled ostriches.
Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, admits that the climate may indeed be changing but doubts that humans play a causal role in it. Susana Martinez of New Mexico, also a Republican, continues to insist that climate science is inconclusive, while former governor of Texas and current presidential candidate Rick Perry adamantly remains ânot a scientist,â although he knew enough to inform us in his 2012 campaign screed Fed Up that climate change science is âa contrived phony mess.â
In general, when it comes to climate change, the leadership of statehouses across the country remains as troglodytic as the House of Representatives. Only in Hawaii, Oregon and Washington on the West Coast, Minnesota in the Midwest, and a handful of Northeastern states will governors even acknowledge the importance of acting to curb climate change as well as adapt to it.
This year, the deniers may get a boost from an unlikely source. Warm surface waters seem to be brewing something special in the Pacific Ocean. Says one researcher, âThe El Niño event currently ongoing in the eastern and central Pacific is strengthening. The only question is whether it will be just a significant event, or a huge one.â
El Niño draws the winter Pacific storm track southward, bringing precipitation to southern California, Arizona, and points eastward. If the southern tier of states has a wet winter, the Republican rain-dancers will feel confirmed in their official doubt and denialism, much as a broken clock is right at least twice a day.
Occasional El Niños, however, will not avert the long-term new normal for California and much of the West. As that state is showing, adaptation will soften some of the blows, and possibly, if we act soon enough and strongly enough, we may manage to cap the overall changes at some still livable level. The jury will be out on that for quite some time.
Meanwhile, as in pre-AIDS San Francisco, we are all still in a state of at least semi-innocence. Maybe we can imagine in an intellectual way what it might be like to lose the forests across half of the continent, but can any of us conjure the feeling of how that would be?
After many missteps and halting starts, the medical and public health establishments finally came to the assistance of the victims of AIDS. As difficult as that was, it was easy compared to the remedies climate change will demand. And for much of the damage there will be no remedy. Get ready.
William deBuys, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of eight books, the most recent of which is The Last Unicorn: A Search for One of Earthâs Rarest Creatures. He has written extensively on water, drought, and climate in the West, including A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turseâs Tomorrowâs Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt’s latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2015 William deBuys
ooOOoo
Again, there are far too many links for me to bring across to this republication but I do recommend that if you have an extra special interest in William deBuys essay that you check through all the links in the original version to be read here.
This is an article that I saw on Mother Nature Network in the middle of June and thought at the time it would interest readers of this place.
ooOOoo
2,500-year-old tree witnessed Magna Carta signing
The Ankerwycke Yew in Berkshire, England, has been an important meeting spot for hundreds of years.
By: Michael d’Estries
June 15, 2015,
The Ankerwycke yew is estimated to be between 2,000-2,500 years old. (Photo: Wiki Creative Commons)
As the world celebrates the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, [Ed. That was on June 15th, 2015] a document that laid the foundation for modern liberties and law, it’s worth remembering that one silent witness to that historical event remains alive and well.
According to some historians, King John signed the Magna Carta beneath the Ankerwycke yew, a 30-foot-wide behemoth, which in June 1215 was already a well-known ancient landmark. Estimates of its age today range from 2,000-2,500 years â making it one of oldest trees in the United Kingdom and the world.
The famous yew is located along the banks of the River Thames on grounds previously occupied by a 12th-century nunnery called St. Mary’s Priory. Historians point to a 19th-century reference to the nunnery, now in ruins, that hints at its importance in the signing of the Magna Carta.
Here the confederate Barons met King John, and having forced him to yield to the demands of his subjects they, under the pretext of securing the person of the King from the fury of the multitude, conveyed him to a small island belonging to the nuns of Ankerwyke [the island], where he signed the Magna Carta, wrote J.J. Sheahen in 1822.
History credits the yew as playing host to several other important meetings, from a place of council for Saxon kings to secret meetings between Henry VIII and a young Anne Boleyn. Earlier this year, saplings grown from the cuttings of famous yews from all over the U.K., including the Ankerwycke, were planted in a hedge in Edinburghâs Botanic Gardens.
âWe are losing ancient yews all the time, to climate change, development and vandalism,” said Martin Gardner, who is leading the preservation initiative. “These are the most iconic trees in the world. We have to conserve every single one.”
Published on Apr 9, 2013
A short film about a remarkable ancient tree in England. It is the oldest known tree on National Trust land and is believed to be the location where the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. Surrounded by myth and legend, this tree is also believed to be the place where King Henry VIII began his first liaisons with his future (ill-fated) wife, Anne Boleyn in the 1530’s.
ooOOoo
I will close the post with this much-circulated picture reinforcing the fact that trees have been an important meeting spot for hundreds of years.
One of the most important lessons we can learn from our dogs: coping with death.
In writing about the lesson of death that we can learn from our dogs I am, of course, speaking of our own death, of the inevitability of our death. That largely unspoken truth that Sharon Salzberg described in her book Faith: âWhat does it mean to be born in a human body, vulnerable and helpless, then to grow old, get sick and die, whether we like it or not?â [page 34.]
Anyone who has loved a dog has most likely been intimately involved in the end of that dogâs life. It is, to my mind, the ultimate lesson that dogs offer us: how to be at peace when we die and how to leave that peace blowing like a gentle breeze through the hearts of all the people who loved us.
Our beloved dogs have much shorter life spans than us, thus almost everyone who has loved a dog will have had to say goodbye to that gorgeous friend at some point in their lives. Very sadly, perhaps, saying goodbye to more than one loved dog.
All of which is my introduction to a recent essay published on The Conversation blogsite. The essay is written by Bernard Rollin, Professor of Philosophy, Animal Sciences and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University. The essay is called: When is it ethical to euthanise your pet?
ooOOoo
When is it ethical to euthanize your pet?
August 12, 2015 6.18am EDT
In the 1960s, I knew people who, before going on vacation, would take their dogs to a shelter to be euthanized. They reasoned that it was cheaper to have a dog euthanized â and buy a new one upon returning â than pay a kennel fee.
Two decades later, I was working at Colorado Stateâs veterinary hospital when a group of distraught bikers on Harley-Davidsons pulled up carrying a sick chihuahua. The dog was intractably ill, and required euthanasia to prevent further suffering. Afterwards, the hospitalâs counselors felt compelled to find the bikers a motel room: their level of grief was so profound that the staff didnât think it was safe for them to be riding their motorcycles.
These two stories illustrate the drastic change in how animals have been perceived. For thousands of years, humans have kept animals as pets. But only during the past 40 years have they come to be viewed as family.
While itâs certainly a positive development that animals are being treated humanely, one of the downsides to better treatment mirrors some of the problems the (human) health care system faces with end-of-life care.
As with humans, in many cases the lives of pets are needlessly prolonged, which can cause undue suffering for the animals and an increased financial burden for families.
The growth of veterinary medicine and ethics
In 1979, I began teaching veterinary medical ethics at Colorado State Universityâs veterinary school, the first such course ever taught anywhere in the world.
A year later, the veterinary school hired an oncologist to head up a new program on animal oncology. Soon, our clinic was applying human therapeutic modalities to animal cancer. The visionary head of the veterinary program also hired a number of counselors to help pet owners manage their grief â another first in veterinary circles.
Iâd been under the impression that people would be reluctant to spend much money on animal treatments, so I was genuinely shocked when the following April, the Wall Street Journal reported individuals spending upwards of six figures on cancer treatments for their pets.
As a strong advocate for strengthening concern for animal welfare in society, I was delighted with this unprecedented turn of events. I soon learned that concern for treating the diseases of pets besides cancer had also spiked precipitously, evidenced by a significant increase in veterinary specialty practices.
One of the family
So whatâs behind the shift in how pets are perceived and treated?
For one, surveys conducted over the last two decades indicate an increasing number of pet owners who profess to view their animals as âmembers of the family.â In some surveys, the number is as high as 95% of respondents, but in nearly all surveys the number is higher than 80%.
In addition, the breakdown of nuclear families and the uptick of divorce rates have contributed to singles forming tighter bonds with companion animals.
Such attitudes and trends are likely to engender profound changes in societal views of euthanasia. Whereas before, many owners didnât think twice about putting down a pet, now many are hesitant to euthanize, often going to great lengths to keep sick animals alive.
Vets caught in the middle
However, veterinarians continue to experience extensive stress as they experience two opposite â but equally trying â dilemmas: ending an animalâs life too soon, or waiting too long.
In a paper that I published entitled Euthanasia and Moral Stress, I described the significant stress experienced by veterinarians, veterinary technicians and humane society workers. Many chose their profession out of a desire to improve the lot of animals; instead, they invariably ended up euthanizing large numbers of them, often for unethical reasons.
These ranged from âI got the dog to jog with me, and now itâs too old to run,â to âIf I die, I want you to euthanize the animal because I know it canât bear to live without me.â
In other cases, the animal is experiencing considerable suffering, but the owner is unwilling to let the animal go. With owners increasingly viewing pets as family members, this has become increasingly common, and many owners fear the guilt associated with killing an animal too soon.
Ironically this, too, can cause veterinarians undue trauma: they know the animal is suffering, but thereâs nothing they can do about it unless the owner gives them permission.
The consequences are manifest. One recent study showed that one in six veterinarians has considered suicide. Another found an elevated risk of suicide in the field of veterinary medicine. Being asked to kill healthy animals for owner convenience doubtless is a major contribution.
How to manage the decision to euthanize
Here is my suggestion to anyone who is thinking about getting a pet: when you first acquire it, create a list of everything you can find that makes the animal happy (eating a treat, chasing a ball, etc). Put the list away until the animal is undergoing treatment for a terminal disease, such as cancer. At that point, return to the list: is the animal able to chase a ball? Does the animal get excited about receiving a treat?
If the animal has lost the ability to have positive experiences, itâs often easier to let go.
This strategy can be augmented by pointing out the differences between human and animal consciousness. As philosopher Martin Heidegger has pointed out, for humans much of lifeâs meaning is derived from balancing past experiences with future aspirations, such as wishing to see oneâs children graduate or hoping to see Ireland again.
Animals, on the other hand, lack the linguistic tools to allow them to anticipate the future or create an internal narrative of the past. Instead, they live overwhelmingly in the present. So if a pet owner is reluctant to euthanize, Iâll often point out that the animal no longer experiences pleasant ânows.â
In the end, managing euthanasia represents a major complication of the augmented status of pets in society. Ideally, companion animal owners should maintain a good relationship with their general veterinary practitioner, who has often known the animal all of its life, and can serve as a partner in dialogue during the trying times when euthanasia emerges as a possible alternative to suffering.
ooOOoo
So much to learn from these beautiful creatures and so many ways to return the unlimited love we receive from them.
Another example of the fabulous ways in which blogging connects people.
In the last twenty-four hours, Learning from Dogs has attracted a new follower. As always, I went across to this person’s blogsite and left a ‘thank you’ note. I loved what I saw because the blogsite was called Wolves of Douglas County Wisconsin authored by Rachel Tilseth. Better than that, there were a number of posts that I know LfD readers would enjoy very much.
Let me offer you an example of what you will find over on Rachel’s blog: Compassionate Conservation. Republished here with Rachel’s kind permission (but see my note at the very end of the post).
ooOOoo
Compassionate Conservation
When I think of compassionate conservation several well known conservationists, scientists, and psychologists come to mind. On a scale one to ten Dr. Jane Goodall, Joy Adamson, Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, and Marc Bekoff Ph.D all rate in the top ten for their compassionate ideals and work regarding wild animals. I believe that it is wrong for humankind to kill off one species to save another because it is not acting in the best interests of wild animals and the ecosystems they support.
In a recent Facebook post on Todd Wilkinsonâs timeline I was alerted to a column by Dr. Marc Bekoff on the subject of âcompassionate conservationâ and decided to post Beckoffâs thought provoking article on my blog.
The broad and interdisciplinary field of conservation biology(link is external) has received a good deal of attention in the past two weeks that has stimulated researchers and others to weigh in on what sorts of human-animal interactions are permissible as we try to save nonhuman animals (animals) and their homes. For example, some of the challenging questions that arise are: Should we kill in the name of conservation? Is it okay to trade off the lives of animals of one species for the good of their own or other species? Is seeking the âmost humaneâ way of killing animals the only way to move forward? Is it possible to stop the killing of other animals and factor compassion that centers on the lives of individuals into our decisions? Should we try a âhands offâ policy to see if it works where itâs clear our interference, despite our best intentions, has not solved the problems at hand? How do we factor in the interests of other animals and humans as we deal with the numerous â and growing â challenging and frustrating conflicts at hand? The field of anthrozoology (link is external) focuses on these and other questions.
Clearly, there are going to be differences among the people who are trying to save other animals and their homes and also take into account the interests of humans. And, this is what makes the field of conservation biology so exciting, for we are the only animals who are able to do what needs to be done to reverse the rather dismal and depressing situations in which humans and other animals find themselves in conflict. It goes without saying that the major problem is that there are too many humans and if we donât stop making more of us itâs going to be a long and hard battle to right the wrongs for which we are responsible. And, given all of the information that is currently available, I like to call attention to a quote from William Wilberforce sent to me by Sadie Parr of Wolf Awareness(link is external), âYou may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know. (link is external)â
Compassionate conservation comes of age
A recent meeting that centered on the rapidly growing international field called compassionate conservation (link is external) brought people together from all over the world, all of whom are trying to reduce or eliminate human-animal conflict. The conference was sponsored and coordinated by the Born Free Foundation (link is external) and the Centre for Compassionate Conservation(link is external) at the University of Technology, Sydney and hosted by the Animal Welfare Program(link is external) at the University of British Columbia (for more on compassionate conservation please click here, here (link is external), and here (link is external)). A most exciting part of the meetings was the presence of numerous students and young researchers. And, also very stimulating, were the obvious differences of opinion â the expected shades of gray â in what is possible and what methods are permissible as we try to deal with rampant and growing global human-animal conflicts. Some people argued that in the âreal worldâ the âmost humaneâ ways of killing are the only ways forward, whereas others argued that compassionate conservation is not about the âmost humaneâ way of killing, but rather centers on stopping the killing because it is unethical and in many instances it really hasnât worked. For them, individual animals are the focus of concern and the guide for compassionate conservation and âFirst do no harm (link is external)â means not harming or killing other animals âin the name of conservation.â
There also was very valuable discussion of the words people use to refer to the killing of otherwise healthy animals âin the name of conservation,â with the recognition that it is not euthanasia, or mercy-killing, but rather âzoothanasiaâ when itâs done in zoos or slaughter when done in other situations (please see âAnimal âEuthanasiaâ Is Often Slaughter: Consider Kangaroosâ). Also of interest was the use of the word âpestsâ to refer to animals who are causing problems. Many agreed that itâs humans who are the pests, but because we can dominate and control other animals, they pay the price for just doing what comes naturally for them but is bothersome for us.
Clearly, there were many valuable discussions, and the abstracts of the broad array of papers that were presented can be seen here (link is external). They are a goldmine of information on the broad topics that were covered, the numerous different species discussed, and anthrozoologists should them to be indispensable for future studies of human-animal relationships. We learned that many wild animals really arenât free (Yolanda Pretorius of the Centre for Wildlife Management at the University of Pretoria told us that elephants in South Africa are fenced and canât migrate) and that âmethods to assess the well-being of elephants are not included as a requirement for developing an elephant management plan.â Moles are ruthlessly killed in the UK because they destroy gardens and in many locations geese are killed because they poop on golf courses. We take away the geeseâs habitats and then we kill them because they have nowhere else to go.
We also learned in a paper by MarĂa FĂ bregas and G. M. Koehler of Save Chinaâs Tigers(link is external) that in order to reintroduce critically endangered captive South China tigers back to restored protected areas within their historic range in China, they are allowed to practice killing ungulates. Many people were rather concerned with this practice, and it reminded me of breeding golden hamsters to allow endangered black-footed ferrets to practice killing them before being released into wild habitat. For many, these sorts of trade-offs are unacceptable.
In another project that was the focus of discussion, almost 900 wolves and other non-target animals were killed in Alberta, Canada (please also see and and), to try to save woodland caribou (it didnât work) and not only were families broken up but there also are trans-generational effects. Simply put, far too many other animals are harmed or killed because we move into their homes and they have nowhere else to go and thus, they, innocent victims, become the âproblems.â Itâs a no-win situation for millions of other animals and we need to do much better so the killing stops.
Compassionate conservation meets Cecil the slain lion
It was also rather timely, and of course incredibly sad, that news about the thoroughly unnecessary killing of Cecil the lion(link is external) by Walter Palmer (please also see the numerous articles listed here (link is external) and Jennifer Jacquetâs âThe Shaming of Walter Palmer (link is external)â) was making world-wide headlines as the meeting got under way. A few of us received requests for interviews the first morning of the meeting and Cecil was the topic of conversation at a number of talks and also at the coffee breaks, as was Marius, the young giraffe who was mercilessly killed at the Copenhagen Zoo in February 2014, because he didnât fit into the zooâs breeding program. Marius us a classic case of an animal who was zoothanized, not euthanized, as claimed by zoo administrators.
Many people are interested in the status and fate of African lions and as I was writing this essay I came across a review of a book called Lions in the Balance: Man-Eaters, Manes, and Men with Guns(link is external) by world renowned lion researcher Dr. Craig Packer(link is external) (the Kindle edition can be found here(link is external)). In the review by Iris Barber(link is external) called âLions in the Balance: Can hunting save the kings of the jungle?â we learn that Dr. Packer argues, ââLions need trophy-hunting just as much as trophy-hunting needs lions.â His plan: kill only male lions over the age of 6, so cubs arenât killed by a lion mating with their mother who seeks to safeguard his own progeny. This is a fresh approach to conservation, where hunting is essential to survival.â
While numerous compassionate conservationists would argue against killing lions, when experts like Dr. Packer speaks, itâs highly worthwhile to listen carefully because it makes clear just how complex the issues are. As the bookâs description notes, âPacker is sure to infuriate millionaires, politicians, aid agencies, and conservationists alike as he minces no words about the problems he encounters. But with a narrative stretching from far flung parts of Africa to the corridors of power in Washington, DC, and marked by Packerâs signature humor and incredible candor, Lions in the Balance is a tale of courage against impossible odds, a masterly blend of science, adventure, and storytelling, and an urgent call to action that will captivate a new generation of readers.â
Putting an end to dancing bears: All stakeholders count
Another tenet of compassionate conservation is that all stakeholders count, human and nonhuman. Of course, this is very challenging because various animals kill or harm humans or kill or harm animals on whom the livelihoods of humans and their communities depend. In an earlier essay I wrote about two projects in India that stress peaceful coexistence between humans and nonhumans who harm and kill the humans and destroy their businesses. Another excellent example of a project that took into account the interests of humans and nonhumans centered on putting an end to the use of dancing bears, discussed by Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani of the organization Wildlife SOS, India (link is external). The abstract for their talk reads as follows:
âWildlife SOS spearheaded a conservation success story in India by resolving the barbaric dancing bear practice in which sloth bear cubs were poached from the wild, brutally trained in inhumane ways and spent their short tragic lives at the end of a four foot rope dragged through towns and villages to earn for the indigent, nomadic community called the Kalandars. Wildlife SOSâs initiative was to both rehabilitate the sloth bears held in captivity and the Kalandars themselves in alternative livelihoods. This in turn made a huge difference to the sloth bear population in the wild helping in its conservation.
âCompassionate Conservation and sustainability of wildlife and forests was the focus of the program which is still ongoing. Wildlife SOS also works with human-animal conflict situations similarly aiming for compassionate conservation and rehabilitation measures which educate the stakeholders, such as the villagers or dwellers around a forested area, in avoidance behavior.
âThe education awareness programs are run in Maharashtra where the conflict species is the leopard and in Kashmir where the conflict species is the black bear and in Delhi and Agra the program deals with the rhesus macaque which seems to be the species humans have declared war on. Attempts at resolution involve creating safe spaces for the animals (rehabilitation centres) teaching people behaviours which do not lead to confrontation with the animals in question (awareness and education) but most importantly to inculcate a feeling for the animals in question emphasizing adjustment and acceptance of the existence of wildlife close to our human habitations. Our work with captive elephants is yet another conservation attempt at bringing down an ancient Indian traditional bastion that emphasizes training elephants using pain, fear and physical abuse by replacing it with compassion.
âOur training school â the kindness school provide straining to elephant keepers on modern and humane elephant management systems, compassionate handling, replacing negative management with positive reinforcement. However conservation also demands use of the law so the Wildlife SOS Anti-Poaching enforcement unit works to gatherintelligence on wildlife traffickers and smugglers and enforces the law working in partnership with the Indian Government.
âCompassionate conservation is the key to the future ahead of us.â
Another wonderful project in which human and nonhuman interests were taken into account and satisfied was concerned with how to deal non-lethally with âproblemâ raccoons at a fast food restaurant in Vancouver. Dr. Sara Dubois, who works with theBritish Columbia SPCA (link is external), outlined various strategies for coming to terms with urban âpests.â She noted, âThe overall goal of developing humane standards for nuisance wildlife control is to create an educational and enforcement tool, setting a higher bar for control measures, whether they are done for conservation or nuisance purposes.â
The coming of age of compassionate conservation: Itâs a âsad badâ if killing is the only viable option for âpeacefulâ coexistence
The field of compassionate conservation is slowly coming of age and itâs essential that all opinions come to the table to be discussed. Ethicist Bill Lynn, who supported the experimental humane killing of a few thousand barred owls to try to save endangered snowy owls, called this practice a âsad good.â While it may be a âsad goodâ for the snowy owls, itâs surely not for the slaughtered barred owls. I would call it a âsad badâ for the barred owls and many other animals if killing remains the only option. A âsad goodâ is a very slippery slope that sets a lamentable precedent for opening the door for the more widespread âexperimental killingâ of barred owls and other species just to see if it works.
Compassionate conservation requires a large change in heart and practices, and like any other revolutionary paradigm shift it will take time. Many hope that this most needed paradigm shift in conservation biology that entails stopping the killing âin the name of conservationâ will endure its growing pains as more and more researchers and others realize that killing is not the answer. I hope those who see the âreal worldâ as mandating killing will change their minds and hearts. Future and young researchers are critical to the development and implementation of compassionate conservation, as are those careerconservation officers, zoo administrators, and researchers who come to realize that using âthe most humane killingâ is not what compassionate conservation is all about. I like to imagine a world where killing is no longer part of the conservationistâs toolkit. The welfarist calculus patronizes other animals and when push comes to shove, or often when itâs merely convenient, the nonhumans suffer and are killed when itâs determined that the benefits to humans outweigh the costs to the animals.
Itâs time to put away the guns, the traps, the snares, the poisons, and other âweapons of mass destructionâ (as a few attendees called them) and figure out how to live in peaceful coexistence with the fascinating animals with whom weâre supposed to share our most magnificent planet. There does not have to be blood. I dedicated my talk to Cecil the lion and also to Bryce Casavant, a most courageous conservation officer who refused to kill two black bear cubs (link is external) near Port Hardy on northern Vancouver Island and was suspended because he said âno.â More people simply have to say ânoâ to killing other animals. We need to stop the violence and recognize that âThe world becomes what we teach (link is external).â Compassion begets compassion and violence begets violence. By rewilding our hearts (link is external) and by becoming re-enchanted and reconnecting with nature I like to think that the killing will come to an end, slow as it may be.
If some people argue the killing cannot stop, it will not stop. It saddens me to think that weâve gotten to the point where for some, killing is the only viable option for peaceful coexistence. Shame on us. As Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani concluded, âCompassionate conservation is the key to the future ahead of us.â I couldnât agree more. We need to leave our comfort zones and think and act âoutside of the box.â
The next meeting that will focus on compassionate conservation is slated for 2017 in Sydney, Australia. I often say that compassionate conservation is a wonderful meeting place for people who would otherwise not, but should, meet. This was so in Vancouver and I anticipate this will be the case in Sydney. Please stay tuned for more information on this future gathering and the exciting, challenging, and forward-looking field of compassionate conservation in general.
Note: I just learned of an essay titled âMutant Animals Bred to be Brutally Killed by Hunters(link is external)â in which the person offering up these freaks outlandishly claims, âConservation is a by-product of what I do.â
Marc Bekoffâs latest books are Jasperâs story: Saving moon bears (with Jill Robinson), Ignoring nature no more: The case for compassionate conservation, Why dogs hump and bees get depressed, and Rewilding our hearts: Building pathways of compassion and coexistence. The Jane effect: Celebrating Jane Goodall (edited with Dale Peterson) has recently been published. (marcbekoff.com; @MarcBekoff)
As Rachel points out in an earlier paragraph, the bulk of this essay was published by Marc Bekoff and I included the links in the third paragraph back to Marc’s essay.
However, Marc’s essay, via Rachel’s post, had a very great number of links including the many ‘link is external’ references and, sadly, far too many for me to enter in this reposting. So if you are curious about any aspect of Rachel/Marc’s essay then please re-read it here where all the links will be available to you.
Yes Paul, I too recognise the value in understanding the neural substrates involved, regardless of what may in any case be reliably inferred and readily apparent in behavioural evidence. The social intelligence of the dog seems remarkably advanced of course, and so naturally provides a rich source for such research. Having said that, I am struck by the amount of academic funding that goes into confirming what is already self-evident, and wonder if the apportioning of funds is done quite as effectively as it could be. Much is determined by commercial interests of course.
“Much is determined by commercial interests …”
I have been a resident of the United States since April 2011. There has been much to take in and embrace at so many levels. However, one of the things that has seemed very foreign to my eyes was the extent of the obesity seen almost everywhere that one is out and about. At first it seemed more of an American issue, but over the last few years watching news items from the UK and seeing other general items on the internet from ‘the old country’ I came to realise that countries both ‘sides of the pond’ are grappling with what could be fairly described as an epidemic.
Yesterday, George Monbiot published an essay called Slim Chance. As with so many of Mr. Monbiot’s essays this one highlights issues that I am sure are not widely appreciated. It is republished here with Mr. Monbiot’s kind permission.
ooOOoo
Slim Chance
11th August 2015
New evidence suggests that obesity might be incurable. So why does the government propose to punish sufferers?
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 12th August 2015
Is overeating more addictive than crack cocaine? Itâs hard to compare addiction rates, or to produce a clear definition that holds true across all substances and behaviours. But consider this crude contrast. Between 10 and 20% of people who use crack cocaine become addicted to it. Across a 9-year study of 176,000 obese people, 98.3% of the men and 97.8% of the women failed to return to a healthy weight. Once extreme overeating begins, it appears to be almost impossible to stop.
A paper published in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews proposed that âfood addictionâ is a less accurate description of this condition than âeating addictionâ. There is little evidence that people who are driven to overeat become dependent on a single ingredient; instead they tend to seek out a range of highly palatable, energy-dense foods, of the kind with which we are now surrounded.
The activation of reward systems in the brain and the loss of impulse control are similar to those involved in dependency on drugs. But eating addiction appears to be more powerful. As the same paper notes, in laboratory experiments âa majority of rats will prefer a sweet reward over a cocaine reward.â
Once you become obese, an article published in the Lancet this year explains, biological changes lock you in. Fat cells proliferate. The brain becomes habituated to dopamine signalling (the reward pathway), driving you to compensate by increasing your consumption. If you try to lose weight, the body perceives that it is being starved, and powerful adaptations (such as an increase in metabolic efficiency) try to bounce you back to your previous state. People who manage, against great odds, to return to a normal weight must consume 300 fewer calories per day than those who have never been obese, if they are not to put the weight back on. âOnce obesity is established, ⊠bodyweight seems to become biologically stamped inâ. The more weight you lose, the stronger the biological pressure to get back to your former, excessive size.
The researchers find that âthese biological adaptations often persist indefinitelyâ: in other words, if you have once been obese, staying slim means sticking to a strict diet for life. The best you can hope for is not a dietary cure, but âobesity in remissionâ. The only effective, long-term treatment for obesity currently available, the same paper says, is bariatric surgery. This can cause a number of grim complications.
I know this statement will be unwelcome. I too hate the idea that people cannot change their circumstances. But the terrible truth is that, except through surgery, for the great majority of sufferers, obesity is an incurable disease. In one respect it resembles cancer: the changes in lifestyle that might have prevented it are unlikely to be of use in curing it.
Fat-shaming is worse than useless. Another paper found that the more weight-conscious people are, the more likely they are to overeat: the stress it induces is a trigger for comfort eating. As Sarah Boseley points out in her book The Shape Weâre In, âthe diet industry ⊠is one of the biggest frauds of our timeâ. For the obese, temporary reductions in weight will almost inevitably be reversed.
People who are merely overweight, rather than obese (in other words who have a BMI of between 25 and 30) appear not to suffer from the same biochemical adaptations: their size is not âstamped inâ. For them, changes of diet and exercise are likely to be effective. But urging obese people to buck up produces nothing but misery.
The crucial task is to reach children before they succumb to this addiction. As well as help and advice for parents, this surely requires a major change in what scientists call âthe obesogenic environmentâ (high energy foods and drinks and the advertising and packaging that reinforces their attraction). Unless children are steered away from overeating from the beginning, they are likely to be trapped for life.
You might have expected this knowledge to lead to acceptance, empathy and an end to stigmatisation. Fat chance. A fortnight ago, just after the figures I mentioned at the top of this article were published, David Cameron announced a review that could lead to obese people being deprived of social security payments if they fail to accept âtreatmentâ for their condition.
This review, conducted by Dame Carol Black, has already pre-empted its conclusions: eight times it describes obesity as âtreatableâ. Really? How? It will consider the case âfor linking benefit entitlements to take up of appropriate treatmentâ. Are Cameron and Black proposing that benefit claimants will be forced to undergo surgery? Or will they be pressed into a useless and punitive dietary regime? These proposals look to me like a transfer of blame for the disease away from food manufacturers and advertisers and onto those afflicted.
Why do we have an obesity epidemic? Has the composition of the human species changed? Have we suffered a general collapse in willpower? No. The evidence points to high-fat, high-sugar foods that overwhelm the impulse control of children and young adults, packaged and promoted to create the impression that they are fun, cool and life-enhancing. Many are placed in the shops where children are bound to encounter them: around the tills, at grasping height.
The disease will keep ravaging the population (and slowly overwhelm the health service) until these circumstances change. But the governmentâs sole contribution has been to tear down mandatory controls, replacing them with a voluntary â and therefore useless â âresponsibility dealâ with manufacturers and retailers. It allows them to choose whether or not to use the traffic light system, which is the most effective way of informing people about the likely impact of what they eat. And many corporations, unsurprisingly, choose not to. As far as nutritional content is concerned, food manufacturing is effectively unregulated.
Industry and government will resist the obvious solutions until they can be resisted no longer. Eventually, the change will have to happen: similar restrictions on advertising, sponsorship, display and accessibility to those imposed on the tobacco pedlars. One day, though not before many thousands have needlessly died, it will become illegal to advertise any food or drink that merits a red traffic light warning. They will be sold only in plain packaging, with health warnings, on high shelves.
Does this seem draconian to you? If so, remember that obesity afflicts a quarter of the adult population, and is rising rapidly. It causes a range of hideous conditions, just one of which â diabetes â accounts for one sixth of NHS admissions and 10% of its budget. If smoking demands fierce intervention, why not overeating?
This is the choice we face. To recognise that the only humane and effective means of addressing the obesity epidemic is to prevent more people from being hooked, by restricting the pushers. Or to continue a programme of fat-shaming, bullying and compulsory treatment, whose only likely outcome is unhappiness. Now ask yourself again: which of these two options is draconian?
Let me close with an image. The image that George Monbiot believes will be seen very widely and representing the same common-sense in eating that we have been used to with regard to No Smoking signs.
When I first started writing this blog, more than six years ago now, I had no idea whatsoever that the community of friends who read and follow Learning from Dogs would develop to the point where the volume of ideas and suggestions sent in are, are by far, the biggest source of creative posts.
Take today’s for example. The link to the article was sent to me by Chris Gomez a little over a week ago and yesterday was the first time that I read the article in full.
It’s a fascinating and incredibly interesting piece.
Unlike a certain companion animal that will go unnamed, dogs lose their minds when reunited with their owners. But itâs not immediately obvious why our canine companions should grant us such an over-the-top greetingâespecially considering the power imbalance that exists between the two species. We spoke to the experts to find out why.
Call of the Wild
In order to gain an appreciation for dog behavior, itâs important to understand that dogs are descended from wolves (or at least a common wolf-like ancestor). Clearly, the two species, separated by about 10,000 to 15,000 years, share a lot in common.
Like dogs, wolves greet each other with vigorous face licking (Credit: Sander van der Wel CC A-SA 2.0)
But thereâs only so much we can extrapolate from wolves; dogs are categorically different by virtue of the fact that their ancestors actively sought out the company of humans. Making matters even more complicated is the realization that Paleolithic era wolves are not the same as the ones around today. Consequently, any inferences we make about dog behavior and how it relates to wolves is pure speculation.
Neuroscientist Gregory Berns, author of How Dogs Love Us, says thereâs a fundamental difference between modern wolves and those that lived long ago.
âThe most social of those ancestral dogs who were hanging around humans had to have been the most social of those wolves,â he told io9. âThey joined humans and eventually evolved to become dogs. The remainder of the wolf population were among the most antisocial of those animals, and did not want to have anything to do with humans.â
That said, however, Berns says we can clearly see behaviors in wolves that are similar to those expressed by dogs. For instance, wolves greet each other by licking each othersâ faces. For these pack animals, this licking behavior serves as an important social greeting, but also as a way to check out and determine what the other wolves have brought home in terms of food.
Wolves, says University of Trento neuroscientist Giorgio Vallortigara, greet each other in different ways depending on the type of individual relationships theyâve forged. Feral dogs, he says, behave in similar ways. But the big change in terms of adaptive sociality has been the ability of domesticated dogs to interact with humans using our own communicative signals, such as gazes and gestures.
Dog expert Jessica Hekman, who blogs at DogZombie, has witnessed greeting behaviors among wolves first hand.
âWhen Iâm at Wolf Park in Battle Ground, Indiana, I am always struck by how much some of the specific wolf behaviors resemble behaviors I see in dogsâbut so much more ritualized, and sort of writ large,â she told io9. âI witnessed one behavioral study there in which wolves who knew each other well had been separated for a few days and were put back together. The greeting rituals were fascinating, with lots of crouching and chin-licking from the subordinate wolves. You do see these behaviors in dogs, but more sporadically, without such intensity.â
At the same time, dogs exhibit behaviors that are markedly different from wolves. As Hekman explained to me, one of the most dramatic differences between dogs and wolves is the ability of dogs to accept novelty. Simply put, dogs are less fearful than wolves.
âIt may sound a little odd to say that a wolf, who can easily kill you, is afraid of you, but that is precisely why they can be dangerous: because they may choose to take proactive measures to protect themselves, using their teeth,â says Hekman. âDogs are a lot less likely to do this.â
Indeed, given their wolf ancestry, itâs remarkable that dogs get along with humans so well. But as Berns pointed out to me, sociability has turned out to be a rather powerful adaptation, one that has worked a lot better for dogs than it has wolves.
âI mean, look around the world and see how many dogs there are,â he says. âWith dogs, itâs proven to be a highly effective evolutionary strategy. There are in the order of tens of millions of dogs in the world, so in many ways, dogs have out-evolved wolves.â
Berns says that whatever the sociality that dogs have evolved, one of the defining traits of a dog is the degree to which they will interact with humans as well as other animals.
How Dogs See Humans
A key aspect of Bernsâ brain imaging research is to study how dogs perceive us. We humans know that dogs are a separate species, but are dogs cognizant of this as well? Or do they see us as members of their pack, or as some kind of weird dog?
Callie gets outfitted with ear protection prior to entering the noisy fMRI machine. The research team includes, from left, Andrew Brooks, Gregory Berns and Mark Spivak. (Credit: Bryan Meltz, Emory University)
According to Bernsâ research, dogs that are presented with certain smells in scanners can clearly tell the difference between dogs and humans, and also discern and recognize familiar and strange odors. In particular, the scent of a familiar human evokes a reward response in the brain.
âNo other scent did that, not even that of a familiar dog,â Berns told io9. âItâs not the case that they see us as âpart of their pack as dogs,â they know that weâre something differentâ thereâs a special place in the brain just for us.â
Berns stresses that dogs are social with us not just because of their scavenging tendencies.
âWhat weâre finding with the imaging work is that dogs love their humansâand not just for food,â he says. âThey love the company of humans simply for its own sake.â
Hekman says itâs hard to know what dogs are thinking, but she suspects they understand that weâre not quite like them. As evidence, she points to aggressiveness in dogs as itâs directed to other dogs and humansâdifferences that arenât correlated. She says itâs quite common for a dog to have a problem with one and not the other. In other words, dogs appear to perceive other dogs as one group, and humans as a separate group. Whatâs more, dogs will seek the help of humans and not other dogsâa possible sign that dogs understand that humans have resources that dogs do not, and are thus a different kind of social entity.
But do dogs see us as part of the pack?
âItâs important to note that a pack of wolves is a familyâliterally, usually mom, dad, puppies, and some young offspring from previous years who havenât gone off on their own yet,â says Hekman. âDo dogs see us as part of their family? I think they do.â
So Happy to See Us
Virtually all experts agree that the happiness dogs feel is comparable to what humans experience, and that itâs similar to how humans feel towards each other.
One happy dog (Credit: Lars Curfs/CC-A-SA 3.0)
âAll the things that weâve done with the brain imagingâwhere we present certain things to the dogs and map their reward responsesâwe see analogous brain responses in humans,â says Berns. âSeeing a person thatâs a friend or someone you like, these feelings are exactly analogous to what a dog experiences.â
Berns says that dogs donât have the same language capacities as humans, and that theyâre not capable of representing things in their memory like we can. Because dogs donât have labels or names for people, he suspects that they have an even purer emotional response; their minds arenât filled with all sorts of abstract concepts.
Itâs also important to consider the dog-human bond and the degree of attachment each feels toward each other. When used with dogs, the âStrange Situation Testâ devised by developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, suggests that during absence and then at the rejoining with the owners, a dogâs behavior is very similar to that observed in children and mothers in similar situations. As Vallortigara pointed out to me, itâs appropriate and correct to speak of the dyad dog/owner in terms of âattachment.â
A dogâs particular greeting, however, is dependent on several factors, such as the dogâs temperament, the personality of the owner, the nature of their relationship, the level of stress and anxiety, and the dogâs tendency/capacity for self-control.
Itâs important to note, however, that stress manifests differently in dogs than it does in humans.
âThe separation from the owner for the dog is not voluntary,â says Vallortigara. âIt is always unnatural for a dog to detach and abandon the pack.â
Dogs will sometimes go solo on a temporary basis if theyâre sufficiently motivated to do so, but they do it knowing that social contact can be resumed at virtually any time.
âThe exaggerated level of greeting that can be observed in some dogs is likely due to the fact that they have not yet learned to accept the possibility of non-voluntary detachment,â says Vallortigara.
When trying to appreciate a dogâs over-the-top greeting, Hekman says we need to imagine what it was like for a dog to be alone all day while we were gone.
So bored. (Credit: Pixabay/Pinger/10 images/CC0 Public Domain)
âThis dog probably had a pretty boring day without much enrichment, and moreover may have been alone all day, which is unpleasant for a social animal,â she told io9. âSo in addition to being glad to see us, they are probably feeling some relief that they will get to do something interesting, like go for a walk, and have someone else around. Some people are able to have a dog walker come in or send their dogs to daycareâthis is a great solution to what can otherwise be a difficult lifestyle for a dog.â
And as Berns points out, the greeting ritual is a social bonding mechanismâbut itâs also a function of curiosity.
âWhen they jump up, theyâre trying to lick you in the face,â says Berns. âPart of that is a social greeting, but theyâre also trying to taste and smell you to figure out where youâve been and what youâve done during the day. So some of it is curiosity. If Iâve been with other dogs, for instance, my dogs know it, and they resort to sniffing intensely.â
How to Greet Your Dog Back
Itâs obviously important to respond to your dog when you get home, but according to Marcello Siniscalchi, a veterinary physician from the University of Bari, how you should react will depend on the context of the situation and the needs of the dog itself.
âThe greeting ritual will vary from dog to dog because any individual dog perceives and reacts to detachment from the owner in a very personal way,â he told io9. âSome dogs need to be greeted, in others it is better to avoid any escalation in the level of excitation, others need to learn strategies for coping with the stress associated with detachment.â
Hekman says thereâs definitely a tension between our buttoned-down greeting rituals (âHi, honey, Iâm home!â) and theirs (âI want to lick you on the face repeatedly!â).
âMy dog Jenny is a very enthusiastic greeter, and I hate having her jump all over me in her efforts to get at my face,â she says. âSo I have taught her to get on a couch when I come home. I generally have to remind her to âget on your couch,â but now she does with great enthusiasm, and waits for me to come over. The couch puts her more on my level, so she doesnât have to jump, and I can bend forward and let her lick my cheek, which is a very important part of the ritual for her.â
Hekman stresses that, for any dog, itâs important for us not to tell them what not to do (e.g. âdonât jump on me!â), but to tell them what to do.
âMany is the retriever owner who has taught their dog to get a toy when they come home to channel their excitement,â she added.
The main point, she says, is that itâs important for dogs to have the greeting ritual, but it can be redirected in ways to make it easier on the owners such that everyone enjoys it.
ooOOoo
So a huge thank you to all of you that send in remarkable items for Learning from Dogs.
A few weeks ago, I read a book entitled The Republican Brain written by Chris Mooney and to quote WikiPedia:
The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science â and Reality is a book by the journalist Chris Mooney that is about the psychological basis for many Republicans’ rejection of mainstream scientific theories, as well as theories of economics and history.
On page 83, Chris Mooney writes (my emphasis):
Here also arises a chief liberal weakness, in Lakoff’s view (*), and one that is probably amplified by academic training. Call it the Condorcet handicap, or the Enlightenment syndrome. Either way, it will sound very familiar: Constantly trying to use factual and reasoned arguments to make the world better and being amazed to find even though these arguments are sound, well-researched, and supported, they are disregarded, or even actively attacked by conservatives.
When glimpsed from a bird’s eye view, all the morality research that we’re surveying is broadly consistent. It once again reinforces the idea that there are deep differences between liberals and conservatives – differences that are operating, in many cases, beneath the level of conscious awareness, and that ultimately must be rooted in the brain.
(*) George Lakoff, Berkeley Cognitive Linguist and author of the book Moral Politics.
What Chris Mooney is proposing is that the difference between liberals and conservatives could be genetically rooted, at least in part.
That underlines in my mind how each of us, before even considering our gender differences, is truly a complex mix of ‘nature and nurture’ with countless numbers of permutations resulting.
That there are deep differences, apart from the obvious ones, between man and woman goes without saying. In earlier times, these differences were essential in us humans achieving so much and leading to, in the words of Yuval Noah Harari from yesterday’s post., ” … few would disagree that humans dominate planet Earth; weâve spread to every continent, and our actions determine the fate of other animals (and possibly Earth itself).”
Speaking of earlier times, let me turn to dogs, for it is pertinent to my post, and I would like to quote an extract from what Doctor of Veterinarian Medicine, Jim Goodbrod, writes in the foreword of my forthcoming book:
But what exactly is this human-dog bond and why do we feel such an affinity for this species above all others? My feeling is that it may be associated with our deep but subconscious longing for that age of simple innocence and innate human goodness that we supposedly possessed before we became truly âhumanâ: that child-like innocence or what Rousseau referred to as the ânoble savageâ, before being corrupted by civilization, before we were booted out of the Garden of Eden. We humans, for better or worse, somewhere along that evolutionary road acquired consciousness or so-called human nature and with it we lost that innocence. What we gained were those marvelous qualities that make us uniquely human: a sense of self-awareness, an innate moral and ethical code, the ability to contemplate our own existence and mortality, and our place in the universe. We gained the ability to think abstract thoughts and the intellectual power to unravel many of the mysteries of the universe. Because of that acquired consciousness and humansâ creative and imaginative mind we have produced the likes of Shakespeare, Mozart, and Einstein. We have peered deep into outer space, deciphered the genetic code, eradicated deadly diseases, probed the bizarre inner world of the atom, and accomplished thousands of other intellectual feats that hitherto would not have been possible without the evolution of our incredible brain and the consciousness with which it is equipped.
No other living species on this planet before or since has developed this massive intellectual power. But this consciousness was attained at what cost? Despite all the amazing accomplishments of the human race, we are the only species that repeatedly commits genocide and wages war against ourselves over political ideology, geographic boundaries, or religious superstition. We are capable of justifying the suffering and death of fellow human beings over rights to a shiny gold metal or a black oily liquid that powers our cars. We are the only species that has the capability to destroy our own planet, our only home in this vast universe, by either nuclear warfare, or more insidiously by environmental contamination on a global scale. Was it worth it? No matter what your or my opinion may be, Pandoraâs Box has been opened and we cannot put the lid back on.
What can we do now to reverse this trend and help improve the quality of life for humanity and ensure the well-being of our planet? I think, if we recognize the problem and look very critically at ourselves as a unique species with awesome powers to do both good and bad, and put our collective minds to the task, it may be possible to retrieve some of the qualities of that innocence lost, without losing all that we have gained.
Dogs represent to me that innocence lost. Their emotions are pure. They live in the present. They do not suffer existential angst over who or what they are. They do not covet material wealth. They offer us unconditional love and devotion. Although they certainly have not reached the great heights of intellectual achievement of us humans (I know for a fact that this is true after having lived with a Labrador retriever for several years), at the same time they have not sunk to the depths of depravity to which we are susceptible. It could be argued that I am being overly anthropomorphic, or that dogs are simply mentally incapable of these thoughts. But nevertheless, metaphorically or otherwise, I believe that dogs demonstrate a simple and uncorrupted approach to life from which we all could benefit. I think the crux of Paulâs thesis is that, within the confines and limitations of our human consciousness, we can (and should) metaphorically view the integrity of the dog as a template for human behavior.
“Dogs demonstrate a simple and uncorrupted approach to life …”
I closed yesterday’s post with these words, “It is my contention that humankindâs evolution, our ability to âcooperate flexibly in large numbersâ, is rooted in the gender differences between man and woman.”
The premise behind that proposition is that until, say one hundred years ago, give or take, that co-operation between large numbers of humans was critically important in so many areas: health; science; medicine; physics; exploration; outer space and more. (And whether one likes it or not: wars.) Â My proposition is that it is predominantly men who have been the ‘shakers and movers’ in these areas. Of course not exclusively, far from it, just saying that so many advances in society are more likely to have been led by men.
But (and you sensed a ‘but’ coming up, perhaps) these present times call for a different type of man. A man who is less the rational thinker, wanting to set the pace, and more a man capable of expressing his fears, exploring his feelings, defining his fear of failure, and more. I don’t know about you but when I read RaĂșl Ilargi Meijer words from yesterday, “And if and when we resort to only rational terms to define ourselves, as well as our world and the societies we create in that world, we can only fail.”, it was the male of our species that was in my mind. As in, “And if and when we [males] resort to only rational terms to define ourselves …”.
Staying with RaĂșl Meijer’s words from yesterday (my emphasis), “And those should never be defined by economists or lawyers or politicians, but by the people themselves. A social contract needs to be set up by everyone involved, and with everyoneâs consent.”
Dogs demonstrate a simple and uncorrupted approach to life but that doesn’t extend to them making social contracts. Women do understand social contracts, they are predominantly caring, social humans. Less so for men. But for that social contract to be successfully set up by everyone it must, of course, include men. And that requires men, speaking generally you realise, to find safe ways to get in touch with their feelings, to tap into their emotional intelligence, using positive psychology to listen to their feelings and know the truth of what they and their loved ones need to guarantee a better future. What they need in terms of emotional and behavioural change. And, if I may say, sensing when they might need the support of subject experts to embed and sustain those behavioural changes.
It was the fickle finger of fate that led me to the arms, metaphorically speaking, of a core process psychotherapist back in Devon in the first half of 2007. That counselling relationship that revealed a deeply hidden aspect of my consciousness: a fear of rejection that I had had since December, 1956. That finger of fate that took me to Mexico for Christmas 2007 and me meeting Jean and all her dogs. That finger of fate that pointed me to the happiest years of my life and a love between Jeannie and me that I could hitherto never ever have imagined.
However, as much as I love and trust Jean, wholeheartedly, it comes back to dogs.
For when I curl up and wrap myself around a dog and sense that pure unconditional love coming back to me, I have access to my inner feelings, my inner joys and fears, in a way unmatched by anything else.
Where learning from dogs is a gateway to learning from me.
I did warn you, my dear reader, at the end of yesterday’s post that my introspective mood continues!
Over today and tomorrow, I want to explore why we humans can be so incredibly clever, especially in a group sense, yet the males of our species find it so difficult to express themselves, and what that means for the future of humanity (at the risk of sounding a tad pompous).
More or less at random, a dip into yesterday’s selection of blogs brought to light some deeply disturbing items.
Professor William Even, Professor of Economics at the Farmer School of Business at Miami University was reported in The Conversation saying that:
As of 2014, there were approximately 39 million people aged 16-24 in the US, and 5.4 million of them were neither employed nor in school. Thatâs almost 14% of the age cohort, or more than two-and-a-half times the national rate of unemployment.
In that same bulletin from The Conversation, John Shepherd, a Professorial Research Fellow in Earth System Science at the University of Southampton in England, in writing about the challenges of directly removing CO2 from the atmosphere, stated (my emphasis):
A new paper in Nature Communications shows just how big the required rates of removal actually are. Even under the IPCCâs most optimistic scenario of future CO2 emission levels (RCP2.6), in order to keep temperature rises below 2â we would have to remove from the atmosphere at least a few billion tons of carbon per year and maybe ten billion or more â depending on how well conventional mitigation goes.
We currently emit around eight billion tonnes of carbon per year, so the scale of the enterprise is massive: itâs comparable to the present global scale of mining and burning fossil fuels.
Time to tackle a topic thatâs very hard to get right, and that will get me quite a few pairs of rolling eyes. I want to argue that societies need a social fabric, a social contract, and that without those they must and will fail, descend into chaos.
Then after referring to the European Union, he goes on to write (my emphasis):
Though it may look out of far left field for those of us -and there are many- who think in economic and political terms only, we cannot do without a conscious definition of a social contract. We need to address the role of compassion, morals, even love, in our societies. If Jesus meant anything, it was that.
There have been times through history when this subject would have been much easier to breach, but we today almost seem to think they are irrelevant, that we can do without them. We canât. But in the US, people get killed at traffic stops every day, and in Europe, they die of sheer negligence. Developments like these will lead to âcenters that cannot holdâ.
In that part of the media whirlwind that we at the Automatic Earth expose ourselves to, virtually all discussions about our modern world, and what goes wrong with it, which is obviously a whole lot, are conducted in rational terms, in financial and political terminology.
But thatâs exactly what we should not be doing. Because itâs never going to get us anywhere. In the end, let alone in the beginning too, we are not rational creatures. And if and when we resort to only rational terms to define ourselves, as well as our world and the societies we create in that world, we can only fail.
For a society to succeed, before and beyond any economic and political features are defined, it must be based solidly on moral values, a moral compass, compassion, humanity and simple decency among its members. And those should never be defined by economists or lawyers or politicians, but by the people themselves. A social contract needs to be set up by everyone involved, and with everyoneâs consent. Or it wonât last.
How and why that most basic principle got lost should tell us a lot about where we are today, and about how we got here. Morals seem to have become optional. The 40-hour death struggle of Cecil the lion exemplifies that pretty well. And no, his is not some rare case. The lack of morals involved in killing Cecil is our new normal.
Let me now set the stage for what I want to write about tomorrow. And I’m going to do that by referring to a TED Talk that was recorded by historian and author Yuval Noah Harari. Here’s how that TED Talk was introduced:
Seventy thousand years ago, our human ancestors were insignificant animals, just minding their own business in a corner of Africa with all the other animals. But now, few would disagree that humans dominate planet Earth; we’ve spread to every continent, and our actions determine the fate of other animals (and possibly Earth itself). How did we get from there to here? Historian Yuval Noah Harari suggests a surprising reason for the rise of humanity.
Yuval Harari’s talk is based firmly on his thesis presented in his book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. (There’s a review of his book in The Guardian newspaper.) Namely:
The book surveys the history of humankind from the evolution of archaic human species in the Stone Age up to the twenty-first century. Its main argument is that Homo sapiens dominates the world because it is the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers. The book further argues that Homo sapiens can cooperate flexibly in large numbers, because it has a unique ability to believe in things existing purely in its own imagination, such as gods, nations, money and human rights. The author claims that all large scale human cooperation systems – including religions, political structures, trade networks and legal institutions – are ultimately based on fiction.
Other salient arguments of the book are that money is a system of mutual trust; that capitalism is a religion rather than only an economic theory; that empire has been the most successful political system of the last 2000 years; that the treatment of domesticated animals is among the worst crimes in history; that people today are not significantly happier than in past eras; and that humans are currently in the process of upgrading themselves into gods.
It is my contention that humankind’s evolution, our ability to “cooperate flexibly in large numbers”, is rooted in the gender differences between man and woman. A contention that I expand upon tomorrow.
Learning from Dogs 