They are such wonderful, amazing creatures – man’s longest and best friend, the dog.
A couple of events caused me to be reminded about the preciousness of our relationship with the dog. The first was coming across this article in The Boston Globe. It is entitled, A friendly paw to a veteran and is all about how therapy dogs bring relief and joy to veterans. Incidentally, the story was written by good friend to Learning from Dogs, Daniela Caride who has her own blog, The Daily Tail. Here’s how that article opens,
NORTHAMPTON — Carter the Chesapeake Bay retriever, Sassy the Pomeranian, and Spyder the German shepherd spend most of their time playing, begging for treats, and getting belly rubs just like other pet dogs. But their unconditional love gains a purpose every time their owners take them to the hospital to visit veterans.
They are therapy dogs — canines trained to give affection to strangers — and they are becoming more popular in veteran facilities. An increasing number of dog owners are willing to volunteer at VA homes and hospices, where 6 million veterans get treated for acute and chronic health conditions. The service they provide is invaluable, health care specialists say.
The second event was coming across something that I wrote nearly three years ago. Here it is in full.
The knowing eyes of your best friend
Pharaoh
(Based on an article sent to me, unfortunately from an unknown author, and modified to reflect the special relationship that I have with my 4 year old German Shepherd, Pharaoh. Paul Handover, 14 September, 2007.)
I am your dog and have something I would love to whisper in your ear. I know that you humans lead very busy lives. Some have to work, some have children to raise, some have to do this alone. It always seems like you are running here and there, often too fast, never noticing the truly grand things in life.
Look down at me now. While you sit at your computer. See the way my dark, brown eyes look at yours.
You smile at me. I see love in your eyes. What do you see in mine? Do you see a spirit? A soul inside who loves you as no other could in the world? A spirit that would forgive all trespasses of prior wrong doing for just a single moment of your time? That is all I ask. To slow down, if even for a few minutes, to be with me.
So many times you are saddened by others of my kind passing on. Sometimes we die young and oh so quickly, so suddenly that it wrenches your heart out of your throat. Sometimes, we age slowly before your eyes that you may not even seem to know until the very end, when we look at you with grizzled muzzles and cataract-clouded eyes. Still the love is always there even when we must take that last, long sleep dreaming of running free in a distant, open land.
I may not be here tomorrow. I may not be here next week. Someday you will shed the water from your eyes, that humans have when grief fills their souls, and you will mourn the loss of just ‘one more day’ with me. Because I love you so, this future sorrow even now touches my spirit and grieves me. I read you in so many ways that you cannot even start to contemplate.
We have now together. So come and sit next to me here on the floor and look deep into my eyes. What do you see? Do you see how if you look deeply at me we can talk, you and I, heart to heart. Come not to me as my owner but as a living soul. Stroke my fur and let us look deep into the other’s eyes and talk with our hearts.
I may tell you something about the fun of working the scents in the woods where you and I go. Or I may tell you something profound about myself or how we dogs see life in general. I know you decided to have me in your life because you wanted a soul to share things with. I know how much you have cared for me and always stood up for me even when others have been against me. I know how hard you have worked to help me be the teacher that I was born to be. That gift from you has been very precious to me. I know too that you have been through troubled times and I have been there to guard you, to protect you and to be there always for you. I am very different to you but here I am. I am a dog but just as alive as you.
I feel emotion. I feel physical senses. I can revel in the differences of our spirits and souls. I do not think of you as a dog on two feet; I know what you are. You are human, in all your quirkiness, and I love you still.
So, come and sit with me. Enter my world and let time slow down if only for a few minutes. Look deep into my eyes and whisper in my ears. Speak with your heart and I will know your true self. We may not have tomorrow but we do have now.
There is no question that one of the important aspects of life that we can surely learn from dogs is the ability to stay in the present as much as we can. Easier to write than accomplish, of course. But letting go of the past (because it’s gone) and making the best of today as opposed to worrying about the future (because that interferes in the joy of today) is still a powerful reminder of that we would do well to keep close to our heart.
It struck me recently that many of you readers that come to Learning from Dogs on a regular basis, say, over the last 18 months, may not be clear as to why it’s called what it is, and the deeper issues behind the name.
First, the name. Quite a few years ago I was sitting chatting with Jon Lavin, the co-founder of the Blog, in his home in South-West England. My German Shepherd, Pharaoh (that’s him on the home page) was sleeping on the floor while Jon and I were nattering about the works of Dr David Hawkins of Veritas Publishing. Jon mentioned that David Hawkins had measured the consciousness of dogs and that they came out about 205. In other words they were integrous creatures and firmly on the truthful side of the boundary between truth and falsehood.
I was fascinated by that idea. Later, back at my home, less than an hour away from Jon’s house, I was idly looking at domain names that were available, and imagine my glee when I discovered that learningfromdogs (dot) com was free. It was rapidly grabbed.
A rather chaotic period of my life descended upon me but the notion that we have much to learn from dogs stayed with me. Much later, when I was happily settled with Jean, the vision and purpose of the Blog got me under way. The first post was published on 15th July, 2009.
The ideas behind the theme that dogs have an extraordinary relationship with man is contained in a very early piece written for the Blog back in July 19th, 2009. That article is called Dogs and integrity. But nothings stays still. In that piece, I wrote,
Because of this closeness between dogs and man, we (as in man!) have the ability to observe the way they live. Now I’m sure that scientists would cringe with the idea that the way that a dog lives his life sets an example for us humans, well cringe in the scientific sense.
However, on Sunday evening we watched a video from PBS that showed that scientists are now taking a very close interest in dogs and why they have such a special relationship with man, perhaps even a critical part in enabling man to prosper as hunter-gatherers. Here’s a preview of that video programme.
Unfortunately, the video is not freely available from PBS. However, it was based on the BBC Horizon programme, The Secret Life of the Dog, which I wrote about back in the 25th January, 2011. (The YouTube link on that post appears to have been curtailed.)
Luckily there are a couple of options to watch this fascinating and very revealing documentary. You can either watch it in sections from YouTube, the first 10 minutes is below, or you can watch it in full, if you don’t mind some Chinese translations here. Your choice.
That’s enough for today, I shall return to this theme next week.
On Friday afternoon, Jeannie and I were out on our usual walk along a trail through the Granite Dells. This is spectacular scenery with magnificent granite boulders, escarpments and mountains all around. The trail that we use is a Payson Area Trails System/United States Forestry Service designated walk.
As it happens it’s just over a mile from where we live and it has been a regular place to walk Pharaoh’s ‘pack’ most days.
Pharaoh’s little group of dogs includes Dhalia, Hazle and Poppy. Poppy is a small terrier/poodle mix and like Dhalia and Hazle is a rescue dog. Indeed Jean rescued Poppy many years ago from a Mexican rubble site practically hairless and surviving, just, off food scraps she could beg, steal or find. Poppy, at 15 lbs, was also the closest buddy of Pharaoh, at 90 lbs! Pharaoh is our German Shepherd dog whose face is the subject of the home page of this Blog.
We walk all four of them most days along the trail described above; Friday was no exception. The only difference was that when we were almost back to the car we stopped and chatted to a neighbour, Bud, who was in his truck with a couple of his dogs.
Bud then drove off and we immediately noticed Poppy wasn’t with us.
One minute she was with us, the next Poppy had simply disappeared!
And that really is it. I could go on about the hours spent going over and over the area, re-walking the trail, staying there until nightfall on Friday, going back at 06.30 am on Saturday morning, then again twice more on Saturday and again on Sunday with an inch of snow on the ground and with heavy sleet pelting down. Not a sign, not a whimper, not a clue.
Thus she remains lost in weather that for the last 48 hours has been brutal; it is unrealistic to imagine that she survived despite us praying for a miracle. Jeannie is devastated; I the same. What hurts so much is not knowing what happened.
So dear little Poppy we hope you are at peace and we thank you for the great love you have given Jean and then later on me and Pharaoh.
“There is one best place to bury a dog.
“If you bury him in this spot, he will
come to you when you call – come to you
over the grim, dim frontier of death,
and down the well-remembered path,
and to your side again.
“And though you call a dozen living
dogs to heel, they shall not growl at
him, nor resent his coming,
for he belongs there.
“People may scoff at you, who see
no lightest blade of grass bent by his
footfall, who hear no whimper, people
who may never really have had a dog.
Smile at them, for you shall know
something that is hidden from them,
and which is well worth the knowing.
“The one best place to bury a good
dog is in the heart of his master.”
Ben Hur Lampman —
from the Portland Oregonian Sept. 11, 1925
Poppy is beautifully placed in the heart of Jeannie, me and all her doggie friends.
Humans understand, if we stop and think about it, that the most powerful force in the world is …. love!
As the American psychiatrist, David Viscott put it, “To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.”
That’s one reason why dogs are so special to humans. Dogs naturally and easily demonstrate unconditional love which is the highest form of love. Even dogs that have been terribly treated in previous times, if given sufficient space and patience, will let their instinct to love come to the fore.
We have 13 dogs here at home and one of them, Loopy, is a great example of that. Loopy was a Mexican rescue dog that took weeks and weeks before she would even allow one of us to touch her. Food had to be left at a distance. It took nearly a year before I could cuddle her and even longer before we trusted each other sufficient for me to put my face up against the side of her jaw.
Compare that to my German Shepherd, Pharaoh, whom I bought out from England in 2008, who has been loved by me since he was 6 weeks old. He and I trust each other so deeply that we can get up to all sorts of fun things.
For example, a few years ago I was at the private airstrip where I used to keep my Piper Super Cub. It’s a large grass airstrip and while I was pottering around the aircraft, Pharaoh was enjoying the wide open spaces and all the great smells. The plan was to go off for a short flight on this wonderful spring day.
I walked back to the hangar to fetch something just prior to putting Pharaoh in the car for 30 minutes while I did my flight.
Pharaoh, as is his way, must have worked out that he was due to be shut in the car because as I came out of the hangar, Pharaoh was running towards the open cockpit and with one bound had jumped up into the rear passenger seat. Miraculously, as he leapt up, he had placed his feet on the hard wooden edge to the fuselage and not punched a hole through the fabric!
I turned back and grabbed his body harness from the car, walked up to the Super Cub and proceeded to strap him tightly into the rear seat.
There was no way that it would have been safe to fly with him but I was interested to see how he would react to me taxiing around the grass airfield. That’s when his trust towards me paid off.
I started the engine – no reaction at all. Even to the powerful draft coming off the propeller through the open door.
Then I taxied slowly – again no reaction at all. Unless one can count what looked suspiciously like a grin on a dog’s face!
Smiles from ear to ear!
Then I taxied quickly – same result.
Then I lined up at the start of the runway, closed the door, put on full power and let the aircraft accelerate until we just lifted clear of the grass. Almost immediately I closed the throttle, we touched down and slowed to a walking pace and we returned to the hangar. There was no question of us flying even though it looked like it would have been a non-event!
That was one of the many highlights of being Pharaoh’s friend, companion and protector – just as he is towards me. That sort of closeness would have been impossible without huge trust from Pharaoh that I would never do anything to hurt him.
So the moral of this message? That is, that when we love everyone and everything around us, it is reflected back to us – every moment of the day. This allows us to live in a world of mutual trust and reap the rewards of closeness.
Learning from Dogs 