Three Simple Ways to Prioritize Your Dog’s Mental Health
Dogs provide unconditional love, companionship, and so much more. They can even improve your physical and mental well-being with their presence alone. For many people, dogs are more than just pets – they’re members of the family.
There’s actually more truth to that thought than you may realize. According to contemporary science, dogs go through similar chemical and hormonal changes as humans when they’re experiencing emotions. Simply put, dogs have feelings just like we do.
Dogs can experience stress, anxiety, depression, grief, and more. Because they depend on us for care, it’s important to make sure you’re prioritizing their mental well-being as well as their physical health. Your dog can’t ask you for help when they’re feeling stressed or depressed. It’s up to you to recognize some of the common signs and understand what you can do to help.
So, how can you prioritize your dog’s mental well-being? Let’s cover a few tips that can make a difference for your four-legged friend.
1. Recognize Signs of Distress
If someone in your family is feeling anxious or depressed, they can talk to you about it. They can reach out for help when it’s needed. You might even have an easier time picking up on some of the common signs, including a sense of hopelessness or social isolation.
While your dog can’t ask for help when they’re feeling stressed or depressed, there are still signs you should look out for. According to the American Kennel Club, some of the most common symptoms of depression in dogs include
Clingy behavior
Loss of interest in things they typically love
Withdrawing from people
You know your dog better than anyone. If it seems like their demeanor has changed and they look sadder or seem lethargic, don’t ignore it. Depression can be brought on by everything from grief to chronic pain. Rule out any medical issues that could be causing those changes by working with your dog’s vet. If they’re otherwise healthy, it’s fairly safe to assume their mental health is suffering and they need help.
2. Keep Them Active
Like humans, dogs need regular exercise. It benefits their physical health, but it also promotes mental wellness. Different breeds need different amounts of physical activity. However, a good rule of thumb is anywhere from 30-45 minutes each day.
A sedentary lifestyle isn’t just harmful to your dog’s physical health. It can fuel symptoms of depression. How would you feel if you had to lay around all day with no mental or physical stimulation? It might be fine for a while, but it would be easy to fall into a “funk” without something to look forward to.
Taking your dog for a walk each day, going to the local park to let them run around, or even hiking with your four-legged friend can improve their mental health as well as yours. Exercising together will also strengthen your bond and provide your dog with the mental stimulation they need to reduce stress and feel calmer.
You’ve probably heard the saying that a tired dog is a well-behaved dog. However, a dog that’s tired from an hour or so of exercise is also likely to be a happier dog!
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Right on! Dogs sleep a great deal more than we humans but they still need their exercise. Just as we humans need it, exercise is key. Key to their physical fitness but also key to their mental fitness as well. This is a great post from Indiana and I shall conclude with this video:
Dogs and cats, but especially dogs, are the perfect animals for giving us emotional support.
The topic of dogs came up in Jean’s regular review yesterday at the Department of Neurology, Asante. But more on that next Tuesday, which is my next non-doggie day.
Today I want to republish an article presented by the American Kennel Club from February, 2021. The article was a very good one on the emotional support given to us by our dogs.
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Everything You Need to Know About Emotional Support Animals
Emotional support dogs (ESAs) are pets and not service dogs.
Mental health professionals prescribe emotional support animals under the law.
Airlines are no longer required to accommodate emotional support animals.
A chihuahua puppy in the hands of a girl.
Every dog owner knows there are many benefits to having a dog, from getting themselves out for exercise to receiving loyal companionship. However, for some people with mental or emotional conditions, the presence of a dog is critical to their ability to function normally on a daily basis. The pet provides emotional support and comfort that helps them deal with challenges that might otherwise compromise their quality of life. These pets are known as emotional support animals (ESAs).
What Is an Emotional Support Dog?
Although all dogs offer an emotional connection with their owner, to legally be considered an emotional support dog, also called an emotional support animal (ESA), the pet needs to be prescribed by a licensed mental health professional to a person with a disabling mental illness. A therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist must determine that the presence of the animal is needed for the mental health of the patient. For example, owning a pet might ease a person’s anxiety or give them a focus in life. The dogs can be of any age and any breed.
Emotional Support Dog vs. Service Dogs
ESAs provide support through companionship and can help ease anxiety, depression, and certain phobias. However, they are not service dogs, and ESA users do not receive the same accommodations as service dog users.
A service dog, such as a guide dog or psychiatric service dog, is generally allowed anywhere the public is allowed; ESAs are not. For example, ESAs generally cannot accompany their owners into restaurants or shopping malls.
The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) defines service animals as “dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities.” The act clearly states that animals that simply provide emotional comfort do not qualify as service animals. Some state and local laws have a broader definition, so be sure to check with local government agencies to learn if ESAs qualify for public access in your area.
The key difference between a service dog and an emotional support dog is whether the animal has been trained to perform a specific task or job directly related to the person’s disability. For example, service dogs are trained to alert a hearing-impaired person to an alarm or guide a visually impaired person around an obstacle or provide pressure on someone with PTSD who is suffering from a panic attack.
Behaviors such as cuddling on cue, although comforting, do not qualify. The tasks need to be specifically trained to mitigate a particular disability, not something instinctive the dog would do anyway.
Emotional Support Dogs Are Not Psychiatric Service Dogs
There are service dogs, known as psychiatric service dogs that require extensive training to work specifically with people whose disability is due to mental illness. These dogs detect the beginning of psychiatric episodes and help ease their effects. Although this sounds similar to the role of an ESA, the difference between a psychiatric service dog and an ESA is again in the tasks performed by the dog and the training received to perform these tasks.
Psychiatric service dogs (recognized by the ADA as service dogs) have been trained to do certain jobs that help the handler cope with a mental illness. For example, the dog might remind a person to take prescribed medications, keep a disoriented person in a dissociative episode from wandering into a hazardous situation such as traffic or perform room searches for a person with post-traumatic stress disorder. If it is simply the dog’s presence that helps the person cope, then the dog does not qualify as a psychiatric service dog.
Housing Accommodations for Individuals Who Use Emotional Support Dogs
Individuals who use ESAs are provided certain accommodations under federal law in the areas of housing and air travel. The Fair Housing Act includes ESAs in its definition of assistance animals. Under the act, people cannot be discriminated against due to a disability when obtaining housing. Rules such as pet bans or restrictions are waived for people who have a prescription for an ESA, and they cannot be charged a pet deposit for having their ESA live with them.
Are Emotional Support Dogs Allowed on Flights?
In December 2020, the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) announced final revisions to its Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA). The final rule, effective in January 2021, defines a service animal as a dog, regardless of breed or type, that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a qualified individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability. This change in the DOT’s definition of “service animal” aligns closely with the definition that the Department of Justice uses under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
The changes also clarify that emotional support animals (ESAs), comfort animals, companionship animals, animals being trained to be service animals, and species other than dogs are not considered to be “service animals” under the new DOT definition. Instead, airlines may recognize and accommodate emotional support animals as pets. For most airlines, the new no-fly policy for ESAs started on January 11. Some airlines now require passengers with service dogs to complete a DOT-authorized form prior to travel that confirms their training, health, and certification.
In the past, the AKC has expressed concern for safety with the previous recognition of ESAs as service animals, including the growing number of people misrepresenting their pets as service animals.
Emotional support dogs can perform an important role in the life of a person with mental or emotional conditions. When people who do not have a disability abuse the system by misrepresenting a pet as an ESA to obtain special accommodation, they undermine important accommodations for individuals with a legitimate need for this assistance.
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We continued to be overwhelmed by the capacity of the gorgeous dog to undertake specialist tasks for us humans that they wouldn’t normally do.
I notice the AKC have a free booklet on the subject and one hopes it is still available. Go to the original document and just after the end of the article that I republished one will find the link.
Last Sunday week, the 22nd May, seems both a long time ago and yet seems as though it was yesterday. Having my son here was fabulous and he was able to take plenty of mountain bike rides and photographs of birds, in particular hummingbirds at our hummingbird feeder.
But that picture does not make a post. What does is an article written by Cara Achterberg about very special mothers and their work in rescuing dogs. It was published on the website Who Will Let the Dogs Out.
Polk County, Florida is ranked first in Florida and fourth in the nation for the number of dogs ‘euthanized’ each year. The Polk County shelter killed 5000 dogs in 2020. Which is even more remarkable considering 2020 was the year so many shelters were emptied (momentarily).
The only way a dog labeled a bully breed can leave the Polk County Shelter alive is if a rescue pulls it. They are not allowed to adopt out any bully breeds. In 2020, the county took in 16,000 dogs; they killed nearly a third of them.
This is the harsh reality that Shannon and Angie, of the Polk County Bully Project stepped into. Like so many others, they never set out to create a rescue. They met through their children, and their relationship should have revolved around play dates and pool parties, but when they learned the plight of bully breeds in Polk County, they instead bonded over saving lives.
Initially, they volunteered with the Polk County SPCA to secure rescues and transport dogs out of Polk County a handful at a time. That simply wasn’t enough for these smart, driven, passionate women and they realized that with their own rescue they could save more than a handful of dogs. The Polk County Bully Project was born. PCBP saves about 600 dogs a year – almost all bully breeds, but also dogs with medical needs and lots of heartworm positive dogs—the dogs that would otherwise be killed at the shelter.
I asked how they were able to save so many of the breed of dog that others struggle to rescue or find placement for and Shannon shrugged, “We hustle,” she said.
But it’s also that they don’t know any different. They’ve never tried to rescue any other kind of dog. They don’t know there are easier dogs to rescue. To my mind, they jumped right in the deep end of rescue with very little swimming experience. And the remarkable thing is they are succeeding in every measure.
When we visited the rescue a few months ago, the dogs we met were sweet and happy and obviously well-cared for. The shelter is small, a remodeled brick rancher in a nondescript neighborhood. The dogs are divided into separate rooms with maybe four dogs in a room. We arrived at naptime when everyone was contentedly in their kennels, listening to soft music or watching TV. The staff had already had everyone out for walks and playtime, something that happens several times a day.
PCBP is big on enrichment—something critical to these smart, active dogs who need to be challenged. At Christmas they had 25 days of enrichment and every day brought the dogs special treats (anchovies, cheeseburgers, special individual cakes baked by a volunteer) and special activities (like a bubble machine and dog art, which they’ll be auctioning off).
On rainy days, the staff keeps the dogs busy with puzzles and their doggy treadmill. In their play area, where they also have regular play groups (all the staff has been trained to run playgroups), there is AstroTurf, lots of toys, even an agility teeter.
PCBP is a 501c3 run on 100% donations. Many of their adopters become their supporters, but they work hard with fundraising and events to pay for not just the staff (although Angie and Shannon do not take a salary and both work the rescue fulltime and more), but for their medical bills. Last year their bill was 115K! (If you’d like to donate directly towards their vet bills, give Lakeland Vet a call 863-648-4886.)
Beyond treating so many heartworm positive dogs, the rescue takes on lots of medical cases who would otherwise not make it out of the shelter. We met Aspen, a sweet little pitmix whose scarred face, protruding teeth, and wiggly butt combine to make him adorable. He was removed from a home where he’d had a leash wrapped so tightly and permanently around his nose that it was embedded in his skin. He’s had eight reconstruction surgeries to repair his face. But now he’s ready for an adopter.
Other dogs have had amputations, orthopedic surgeries, and Agatha, a sweet senior bulldog mix, has had vaginal reconstruction and eye surgery. We watched as Pippi, one of the staff brought her out to meet us off-leash. She’s 102 pounds of sweetness. When it was time to go back inside, Pippi pointed the way and Agatha ran/ambled back inside to her kennel on her own. Agatha is 11-12 years old, but the rescue would love to find an adopter, or even a foster for her because every dog deserves to live out their lives in a home not a shelter, even one as nice as this.
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Polk County is a tough county for dogs, but even tougher for pit bulls. There are no animal laws, no spay/neuter vouchers available for community animals, and backyard breeders abound. At the time of our visit (January), the rescue had 64 puppies.
Beyond that, it’s simple prejudice (my words, not theirs). The leadership in Polk County judges these dogs not adoptable and condemns them based on their appearance. The rescue hopes that with education and advocacy, they can influence the commissioners in the county to enact anti-tethering laws, require dog licenses and breeder permits, and prioritize spay/neuter resources. Any of those would help to turn the tide.
To reach the next generation (these are two moms after all), they created an Ambassador program to get kids ages 8 and up involved at the rescue. They make toys, treats, and paint rocks in honor of the dogs at the shelter, but more than that they learn about the situation and how important it is we do better for our animals.
Rescues that focus on pit bulls are few and far between, but rescues who do it so well in such numbers are even harder to find. The Polk County Bully Project is saving the dogs who are the hardest to save. As their van says, “We fight for them, so they don’t have to.”
Shannon and Angie are positive people who operate on a currency of hope—that they can change the narrative here in Polk County.
They save the dogs that need them the most through sheer determination with the resourcefulness and creativity of moms, counting on their dog-loving community to come through for them. And they have.
Spending just an hour or so with them, it was clear that these two women are game-changers, rescue warriors, and then some. I believe they will do it, but they will need even more support to fight this battle.
If you’d like to help, you can donate through the secure link on their website, or by calling Lakeland Vet and donating to their vet bills directly (863-648-4886).
We are getting ready to head out on another shelter tour in two weeks. If you’d like to support our tour or sponsor one of the shelters, find out more here.
Until each one has a home,
Cara
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The mission of Who Will Let the Dogs Out (we call it Waldo for short) is to raise awareness and resources for homeless dogs and the heroes who fight for them.
You can learn more about what is happening in our southern shelters and rescues in the book, One Hundred Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues (Pegasus Books, 2020). It’s the story of a challenging foster dog who inspired me to travel south to find out where all the dogs were coming from. It tells the story of how Who Will Let the Dogs Out began. Find it anywhere books are sold. A portion of the proceeds of every book sold go to help unwanted animals in the south.
Amber’s Halfway Homeis our short documentary film produced in partnership with Farnival Films. It follows the work of a remarkable woman and one day of rescue in western Tennessee. Selected for sixteen film festivals (to date), it’s won eight awards (including Best Short Doc, Best Soundtrack, Best of Fest, and Audience Choice), and was nominated for an Emmy! It is a beautiful, heartbreaking, inspiring story we hope will compel viewers to work for change. Please watch it and share it far and wide.
I was searching my files for something light-hearted to post for today and came across this article.
For some reason I hadn’t really noticed that our dogs are bothered by their farts and, thanks to a broken nose years and years ago, I have a very poor sense of smell.
Anyway, I wanted to share the article with you.
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Why Do Dogs Get Scared Of Their Own Farts? 3 Reasons Passing Gas Spooks Them
Have you ever noticed that when your dog farts, he’ll jump up and just stare at his butt totally confused — and even a little spooked — by the gas that just came out?
It seems hard to believe that your pup can actually be caught off-guard by a totally normal bodily function that happens to him on the regular, but here we are. Another day, another fart that’s totally bamboozled your dog.
We spoke with Dr. Sara Ochoa, a small- and exotic-animal veterinarian in Texas and a veterinary consultant for doglab.com, to find out why dogs get scared of their own farts.
And there are a few reasons why your pup’s own flatulence might spook him.
Your dog didn’t know he farted
This might be hard for you to imagine, but there’s a decent chance that your dog just has no idea what a fart even is.
“Most dogs do not know what their farts are,” Dr. Ochoa told The Dodo. “They do not have the mental capacity to process that they just farted.”
Not only does your dog not understand the scientific concept of passing gas, but he also doesn’t expect this gas to be expelled from his body, even if it happens often.
“I think some dogs are surprised to know that some air just came out of them,” Dr. Ochoa said. “The air leaving them is a surprise to them and sometimes a smelly surprise for us.”
Your dog’s farts are loud
An unexpected loud noise can startle anyone, so if your dog rips a particularly noisy fart, he’s probably going to be a little confused and scared.
“Just like with people, some farts are louder and some farts are smellier,” Dr. Ochoa said.
And if you’re wondering why sometimes your dog’s farts are super loud, while others are the silent-but-deadly type, that simply has to do with how much air is coming out of him and how intensely it’s being expelled.
“The sound intensity of the fart is due to the amount of air and force behind the farts,” Dr. Ochoa said.
It happened at the same time as another bodily function
Have you ever sneezed and happened to fart at exactly the same time? (This is a safe space, no one’s judging you.) Well, it probably surprised you when you realized you broke a little wind while you sneezed, because you were only expecting one bodily function.
The same can happen to your dog, too.
“My little dog will commonly cough and fart at the same time, which scares her,” Dr. Ochoa said. “I don’t think she is expecting the fart. When she is coughing, everything just lets loose and she farts, scaring herself.”
Why does my dog fart so much?
It’s actually pretty natural for dogs to fart a bunch.
“Some dogs will fart every day, [and] other dogs will never fart,” Dr. Ochoa said. “I find dogs who snore also fart a lot.”
But if you noticed your pup’s farting a little too frequently, it’s probably related to what he ate. If he’s eaten something nasty or you recently changed his diet, his gastrointestinal (GI) system may need to adjust by releasing a bunch of gas.
Why do my dog’s farts smell so bad?
According to Dr. Ochoa, the reason your dog’s farts smell so bad is because he’s not exactly eating great-smelling food.
“Dog food does not smell like flowers, so the farts are also not going to smell good,” Dr. Ochoa said.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s a great sign if he’s regularly passing some putrid gas. In fact, if your dog’s farts are particularly rancid all the time, you should call your vet just to make sure everything’s OK with his GI system.
So even though passing gas is a common occurrence for your pup, dogs still get scared of their farts because they don’t quite realize what’s going on. But at least you’ll always know exactly when it’s accurate to blame it on the dog.
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I hope you learnt something from this post; I certainly did.
Well I am preparing this post on Saturday, the 14th. The operation for the hernia on the 10th went smoothly enough but I did not reckon on the discomfort that would follow. Indeed, I was talking to a good friend on Thursday and he said that the pain would more or less last for two weeks. My son gave me the good advice to take regular doses of an over-the-shelf painkiller rather than the stronger tablets the hospital gave me because those prohibited driving! I returned to a small amount of driving last Friday.
Now on with the show!
Penny Martin first wrote a guest post for me in February, Fostering or adopting a dog, and I am delighted to present her second post. Over to her!
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Why Now Is a Great Time for a Pet Business and How to Start Your Own
By Penny Martin.
If you are an animal lover who wants to spend your days scrolling through cute dog pictures and surrounded by furry clients, now is a great time to consider starting your own pet business. Here, you can learn more about which relevant business areas experiencing growth and tips to get started on the right foot.
Reasons Why It’s a Great Time for Pet Businesses
A growing number of families include animals. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association data, more than half of American households have a pet. That number appears to be growing, too, representing an increased need for care services.
Pets are not just more abundant; they are also becoming full-fledged family members. As a result, spending on them is also increasing. Despite rapid growth in many care service areas, there are not enough providers to meet this increased demand.
Animal-Related Businesses That Are Thriving
If you are curious about what type of business to start, look no further than pet care providers. There are several types of jobs you can get involved in:
Training and behavioral services: Training isn’t just for puppies. Dogs of all ages can benefit from learning household rules and appropriate behaviors when they are out and about.
Dog walking and pet sitting: This is usually based out of the client’s home, where you pick them up for a walk or provide companionship for short periods.
Boarding: This is an excellent option for individuals who would rather welcome dogs and cats to their own home or care facility. Many boarding companies also provide daycare services.
Grooming: You will need to learn how to groom different types of pets to master the skills for a successful grooming career. However, if you enjoy helping dogs look their best, this is an excellent high-demand field.
Business Strategies to Help You Succeed
Economic conditions are excellent for small pet-focused companies to thrive. However, as an entrepreneur, you need to follow some basic business principles to succeed.
Start by choosing an appropriate legal structure. Research the most popular setup for businesses like yours to find one that fits your needs. Then, file with the appropriate offices to make it official. Next, take time to develop a comprehensive business plan. This document will do more than get you up and running; it will also serve as a reference as you continue to grow. Be sure to conduct market research to identify your target customers.
Implement a structured invoicing process to set clear payment terms for clients and ensure you get paid on time, especially if you send invoices immediately after performing a service. Accepting several forms of payment is also helpful for clients. Use an invoice maker, free online usually, to streamline the process. Simply add your logo and business information, and you are ready to go.
Use bookkeeping software to track your income and expenses and gain insight into your cash flow. This is a great way to organize and store receipts, ensuring compliance with regulatory agencies. It also makes tax filing easier at the end of the year and helps you find the most deductions.
A growing number of households with pets and increased spending make now a great time to start an animal-related business. Care and service providers are excellent fields to consider, with high demand for groomers, trainers, and dog walkers. However, no matter what type of company you start, sound business strategies can keep it running smoothly.
Image via Pixels
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Excellent!
As an ex-entrepreneur, who fundamentally was a salesman, I can also add the following to that post.
It starts and ends with the customer. A business plan is vital and so too is market research. But unless you have a clear vision of how you are to sell your services and what’s the difference that makes the difference you must not proceed. Selling is all about: Need; Feature; Benefit.
Open-ended questions to establish the need. (Those are questions that cannot be answered with a yes or a no.)
Keep on asking, and establishing a relationship, until you and the potential customer are clear that there is a need.
Then speak about the features of what you are selling that matches the need/s. Do not progress until the prospective customer understands and agrees.
For every agreed feature be clear what the benefit is for the customer; of that particular feature.
Try closing the deal. If there is hesitation then understand why. Resolve it. Try closing the deal again.
The very best of luck to those that want to run with this.
Getting old is a fact of life. It applies to all living things. But the life expectancy is increasing, I’m pleased to say. There are some interesting facts on the Our World in Data website. But that is for humans. I don’t know if it applies also to dogs but I suspect that it does.
Bully is such a dog and his story was recently written up on The Dodo site. I have pleasure in sharing that with you.
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Oldest Dog At Rescue Is So Surprised To Get A 23rd Birthday Party
Since his birth in 1999, Bully has lived through five presidencies, the launch of the first iPhone, the rise of social media and many more historical events — but the Chihuahua probably can’t tell you about any of them.
But when the little dog recently turned 23 years old, his owners celebrated the milestone by throwing a party he’ll remember for years to come.
Bully spent the first 21 years of his life with a loving family, enjoying the companionship of his humans, playing outside and going for runs in the local park. When his elderly owner could no longer care for him, the super senior found his way to The Mr. Mo Project, a senior dog rescue run by Chris Hughes and his wife.
His former owner described Bully as a “big dog in a little dog’s body,” and Hughes quickly found that despite Bully’s advanced age, he hadn’t changed one bit.
“Bully is feisty, naughty, sweet, independent, gentle, calm and he has an old man bark,” Hughes told The Dodo. “Even at his age, he likes to try to push around another one of our Chihuahuas.”
Now that Bully is older, he needs more rest than the average pup. “Bully loves to sleep and he has earned that right,” Hughes said. “He will fall asleep absolutely anywhere, sometimes on the middle of the floor in the kitchen, on a potty pad or on the biggest, most comfortable bed in the corner.”
For Bully’s birthday party, the Hughes family decorated their house in honor of the little dog and gave him the two things he loves most in the world — treats and a nap. “He doesn’t have too many teeth, so we got a soft biscuit and crumbled it up for him to enjoy,” Hughes said. “He really enjoys sleeping, so that’s the best gift to give him.”
Hughes makes sure all the senior dogs in their care feel special by throwing parties to commemorate every possible event with them.
“We try to celebrate all the great things that happen in our home because so often there are not-so-great things that happen,” Hughes said. “We celebrate when dogs finish chemo treatments, birthdays, adoptions and have been known to have Christmas in July if we think someone won’t make it until Christmas.”
Thanks to the Hughes family, Bully will have many more celebrations to look forward to. And at the age of 23, he’s earned it.
Not only do dogs come in a myriad of sizes and shapes, witness our own Brandy and Pedi, but they are also conscious creatures, as in they remember and grieve; albeit in a dog fashion.
The Dodo presented this story back on the 4th March about just a dog. Read it and be swept away in the world of dogs.
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Woman At The Beach Meets A Dog Who Won’t Stop Staring Out To Sea
The other day, Jolie Mejía and her family decided to visit Punta Negra, a small seaside community near their home in Peru.
It was there, along a rocky shore overlooking the sea, that they came to learn a story of love in its purest form.
After Mejía and her family settled down along the shore, they were approached by a random dog who appeared to be all by himself.
“He didn’t seem abandoned. He wore a ribbon around his neck and his fur was clean,” Mejía told The Dodo. “I pet him, waiting for his owner, but minutes passed and no one came.”
The dog enjoyed Mejía’s pets, but all the while his gaze remained fixed upon the ocean.
And Mejía soon came to learn the touching reason why.
Mejía and her family considered adopting the dog themselves, assuming he had indeed been abandoned. So, when a man local to the area walked by, Mejía asked him if he knew the dog’s status.
“He explained that practically everyone in the area knows the dog and is very fond of him,” Mejía said. “He told us that the dog’s owner was a fisherman who passed away some time ago, and that the dog comes to the beach every day and stares out to sea.”
The dog, it seems, has been holding vigil — awaiting the return of his friend who will never come home.
“We were very moved,” said Mejía.
Mejía believes the dog’s owner died at sea about a year ago, and that the dog has been watching out for him daily ever since.
But though the dog’s owner may never return, the dog isn’t without friends who care for him.
The dog’s sad story is evidently well-known by people in the community, who feed him, shelter him and provide him with health care when he needs it.
A local veterinarian in Punta Negra confirmed to The Dodo that the dog’s name is Vaguito, and that he’s currently in the care of a woman who lives nearby.
By day’s end, Mejía and her family eventually parted ways with Vaguito, his eyes still cast out to sea. But his bittersweet story — one of loyalty to a love he lost, and the loyalty and love he found in the community — is one she won’t soon forget.
“I have a dog at home,” Mejía said. “I love dogs in general. His story really touched my heart.”
(Photos by Jolie Mejía)
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This is the perfect story. But it is more! It is the perfect story of how special a dog is. For this particular dog, Vaguito, clearly was loved by his fisherman and even after a year Vaguito still holds a vigil for him. It is a very lovely article, but that is the unconditional love shown by dogs to humans who care and love them back.
Who knows whether it was a smell, or a sound, or what…
This is a story from England. From a town called Tow Law, a few miles to the south-west of Newcastle. As wikipedia explains: Tow Law is a town and civil parish in County Durham, England. It is situated a few miles to the south of Consett and 5 miles to the north west of Crook.
Anyway, the story was published by The Dodo and is reproduced below.
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Dog Out On A Walk Finds Someone Very Stuck In A Stone Wall
A guy and his dog were out on a walk one day through a field in Tow Law, England, when the dog suddenly became very interested in a nearby stone wall. After looking a little closer, the pair found a cat — who had somehow gotten himself completely stuck in the wall.
The RSPCA was called and Inspector Ruth Thomas-Coxon drove over to try and help. She was hoping that it would be as easy as just gently pulling the cat, later named Freddy, out of the wall, but she quickly discovered that he was much more stuck than that.
“Initially it looked as though he’d chosen to tuck himself inside the gap, but he didn’t try to run away when we got closer,” Thomas-Coxon said in a press release.
Thomas-Coxon weighed all her options and decided the best way to free Freddy would be to take apart the stone wall.
“The owner of the paddocks and wall came out and, between us, we removed some of the stones to dismantle the top part of the wall and free the cat,” Thomas-Coxon said. “He made a dash for it and jumped into another part of the wall, where we were able to catch him.”
Even though Freddy was definitely stuck and needed help, he was also not super pleased about being rescued by strangers. Once he realized he was safe, though, he calmed down, and Thomas-Coxon took him to the vet to get him checked out.
“Vets found he was in fairly good health, although he had some mats in his coat, which they removed,” Thomas-Coxon said. “He was a sweet, friendly cat, so I wondered if he was a missing pet, but he was not microchipped. I made some inquiries nearby, put up a poster where we rescued him and also put his profile on PetsLocated, but, unfortunately, he’s not yet been claimed.”
Freddy is settling into the shelter well, and if no one comes forward to claim him, he’ll be put up for adoption. From being stuck in a stone wall to a potential forever home — Freddy’s come a long way.
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It’s a strange story in the sense that the cat was not claimed so who knows where he had come from. But his future is much better, thanks to the RSPCA, and if he is adopted it will be to a good, caring home.
A more positive view as to how the future will pan out.
I tend to be rather pessimistic about the future. Maybe it is my age, I don’t know. But a week ago I posted an article by Ophelia Benson called Cruising over the Edge.
For this week I am republishing another climate change article but one that has a positive outlook on where we are going.
Have a read and let me know your thoughts.
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Climate change will transform how we live, but these tech and policy experts see reason for optimism
Authors
Robert Lempert Professor of Policy Analysis, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Elisabeth Gilmore Associate Professor of Climate Change, Technology and Policy, Carleton University
The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change discuss changes ahead, but they also describe how existing solutions can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help people adjust to impacts of climate change that can’t be avoided.
The problem is that these solutions aren’t being deployed fast enough. In addition to push-back from industries, people’s fear of change has helped maintain the status quo.
To slow climate change and adapt to the damage already underway, the world will have to shift how it generates and uses energy, transports people and goods, designs buildings and grows food. That starts with embracing innovation and change.
Fear of change can lead to worsening change
From the industrial revolution to the rise of social media, societies have undergone fundamental changes in how people live and understand their place in the world.
Other transformations have had both good and bad effects. The industrial revolution vastly raised standards of living for many people, but it spawned inequality, social disruption and environmental destruction.
People often resist transformation because their fear of losing what they have is more powerful than knowing they might gain something better. Wanting to retain things as they are – known as status quo bias – explains all sorts of individual decisions, from sticking with incumbent politicians to not enrolling in retirement or health plans even when the alternatives may be rationally better.
This effect may be even more pronounced for larger changes. In the past, delaying inevitable change has led to transformations that are unnecessarily harsh, such as the collapse of some 13th-century civilizations in what is now the U.S. Southwest. As more people experience the harms of climate change firsthand, they may begin to realize that transformation is inevitable and embrace new solutions.
A mix of good and bad
The IPCC reports make clear that the future inevitably involves more and larger climate-related transformations. The question is what the mix of good and bad will be in those transformations.
If countries allow greenhouse gas emissions to continue at a high rate and communities adapt only incrementally to the resulting climate change, the transformations will be mostly forced and mostly bad.
For example, a riverside town might raise its levees as spring flooding worsens. At some point, as the scale of flooding increases, such adaptation hits its limits. The levees necessary to hold back the water may become too expensive or so intrusive that they undermine any benefit of living near the river. The community may wither away.
Riverside communities often scramble to raise levees during floods, like this one in Louisiana. Scott Olson/Getty Images
The riverside community could also take a more deliberate and anticipatory approach to transformation. It might shift to higher ground, turn its riverfront into parkland while developing affordable housing for people who are displaced by the project, and collaborate with upstream communities to expand landscapes that capture floodwaters. Simultaneously, the community can shift to renewable energy and electrified transportation to help slow global warming.
Optimism resides in deliberate action
The IPCC reports include numerous examples that can help steer such positive transformation.
For example, renewable energy is now generally less expensive than fossil fuels, so a shift to clean energy can often save money. Communities can also be redesigned to better survive natural hazards through steps such as maintaining natural wildfire breaks and building homes to be less susceptible to burning.
Costs are falling for key forms of renewable energy and electric vehicle batteries. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
No one group can enact these changes alone. Everyone must be involved, including governments that can mandate and incentivize changes, businesses that often control decisions about greenhouse gas emissions, and citizens who can turn up the pressure on both.
Doing more to disrupt the status quo with proven solutions can help smooth these transformations and create a better future in the process.
Disclosure statement
Robert Lempert receives funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Transportation and Culver City Forward. He was coordinating lead author of the IPCC WGII Sixth Assessment Report, Chapter 1, and is affiliated with RAND Corp.; Harvard; SCoPEx (Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment) Independent Advisory Committee; National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Decision Science and Analysis Technical Advisory Committee (TAC); Council on Foreign Relations; Evolving Logic; and the City of Santa Monica Commission on Environmental, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice.
Elisabeth Gilmore receives funding from Minerva Research Initiative administered by the Office of Basic Research and the Office of Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation. She is affiliated with Carleton University, Rutgers University, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and was a lead author on the IPCC WGII Sixth Assessment Report.
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The article makes the proposition that fear gets in the way of change. I think this is true because I tend to be a person that goes around saying ‘what can be done’ or ‘it is down to governments to set the changes required’ but not taking action personally.
So this is wakeup call for me and many others to be more positive and to support those changes that are beneficial, and to undertake them ourselves if at all possible.
I am very grateful to the Free Inquiry for permission to republish this article!
I am a subscriber to the print edition of Free Inquiry. Have been for quite a while. In the last issue, the April/May magazine, there was an article by Ophelia Benson that just seemed to ‘speak’ to me. I was sure that I was not alone. It was an OP-ED.
I emailed Julia Lavarnway, the Permissions Editor, to enquire what the chances were of me being granted permission to share the story. Frankly, I was not hopeful!
So imagine my surprise when Julia wrote back to say that she had contacted the author, Ophelia, and she had said ‘Yes’.
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Cruising over the Edge
By Ophelia Benson
The trouble with humans is that we never know when to stop. We know how to invent things, but we seem to be completely unable to figure out how to uninvent them—or even just stop using them once we’ve invented them. We can commission like crazy but we can’t decommission.
Like, for instance, cruise ships the size of condo towers. They’re feats of engineering and ship building no doubt, but as examples of sustainable tourism, a small carbon footprint, a sensible approach to global warning, not so much. How many gallons of fuel do you suppose they burn while cruising? Eighty thousand a day, for one ship.
We can’t uninvent, we can’t let go, we can’t stop. We can as individuals, but that’s useless when most people are doing the opposite. It’s useless when cruise ships keep cruising, SUVs keep getting bigger, container ships are so massive they get stuck in canals, more people move to Phoenix as the Colorado River dries up, more people build houses in the Sierras just in time for more wildfires, air travel is almost back to “normal,” and Christmas lights stay up until spring.
So heads of state go to meetings on climate change and sign agreements and pretend they’ve achieved something, but how can they have? Have any of them promised to shut down nonessential enterprises such as the cruise industry? Will they ever? The CEOs and lobbyists and legislatures would eat their lunch if they did. They can’t mess with profitable industries like that unless they’re autocrats like Putin or Xi … and of course Putin and Xi and other autocrats have zero inclination to act in the interests of the planet.
Janos Pasztor wrote in Foreign Policy after COP26, the UN climate change conference in Glasgow this past November:
Even if all Glasgow pledges are fulfilled, we are still facing a temperature overshoot of approximately 2 degrees Celsius. In the more likely scenario of not all pledges being fulfilled, warming will be more: perhaps 3 degrees Celsius. This would be catastrophic in nearly every sense for large parts of humanity, especially the poorest and most vulnerable who are suffering first and worst from escalating climate impacts.
Ironically, the technologies we can’t uninvent aren’t just the material luxuries such as huge cars, they’re also intangibles like democracy and freedom and individual rights. It may be our very best inventions along these lines that are the biggest obstacles to doing anything about the destruction we’ve wrought. We believe in democracy, and a downside of democracy is that governments that do unpopular things, no matter how necessary, are seldom governments for long. Biden and Macron and Trudeau and Johnson probably can’t do anything really serious about global warming and still stay in office to carry the work through.
Pasztor went on to ask a pressing question:
So how do we avoid temperature overshoot? The most urgent and important task is to slash emissions, including in the hard-to-abate sectors (such as air transport, agriculture, and industry), which will require substantial lifestyle changes.
Yes, those substantial lifestyle changes—the ones we show absolutely no sign of making. Maybe the biggest luxury we have, and the one we can least afford to sustain, is democracy.
Democracy at this point is thoroughly entangled with consumerism or, to put it less harshly, with standards of living. We’re used to what we’re used to, and anybody who tries to take it away from us would be stripped of power before the signature dried.
This is why beach condos in Florida aren’t the only kind of luxury we have to give up; we also have to give up the “consent” part of the “consent of the governed” idea when it comes to this issue. Not that I have the faintest idea how that would happen, but it seems all too obvious that democratic governance as we know it can’t do what needs to be done to avoid catastrophe.
We don’t usually think of democracy as a luxury alongside skiing in Gstaad or quick trips into space, but it is. It relies on enough peace and prosperity to be able to afford a few mistakes.
We take it for granted because we’ve always had it, at least notionally (some of us were excluded from it until recently), but it’s not universal in either time or place. To some it’s far more intuitive and natural to have “the best” people in charge, because they are the best. It’s a luxury of time and location to have grown up in a moment when non-aristocrats got a say.
The British experience in the Second World War is an interesting exception to the “take people’s pleasures away and lose the next election” pattern. Hitler’s blockade on shipping created a very real threat of starvation, and the Churchill government had to take almost all remaining pleasures away in pursuit of defeating the Nazis. Rationing, the blackouts, conscription, censorship, evacuation, commandeering of houses and extra bedrooms were all commonplace. Much of the dismal impoverished atmosphere of George Orwell’s 1984 is a picture not of Stalin’s Russia but of Churchill’s Britain. Life was grim and difficult, but Hitler was worse, so people drank their weak tea without sugar and planted root vegetables where the roses had been.
It’s disastrous but not surprising that it doesn’t work that way with a threat that’s unfolding swiftly but not so swiftly that everyone can see how bad it’s going to get. We can see what’s in front of us but not what’s too far down the road, especially if our contemporary pleasures depend on our failure to see. We’re default optimists until we’re forced to be otherwise, Micawbers assuring ourselves that “something will turn up”—until the wildfires or crop failures or mass migrations appear over our horizons.
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I do not know what the answer is? But I do know that we have to change our ways and change in the relatively near future; say, ten years maximum.
Because as Janos wrote, quoted in part above: “This would be catastrophic in nearly every sense for large parts of humanity…”
We are in a war. Not a military one but a war with the reality of where we are, all of us, heading. We have to stop ducking and weaving and come out fighting. Fighting for the very survival of our species. Do I think it will happen? I am afraid I do not. Not soon enough anyway: not without the backing of every government in the free world.
Learning from Dogs 