The BBC recently screened one of the most fascinating programmes in ages (OK, subjective comment!). It was about the relationship between dogs and humans. The hour-long programme demonstrated just how important that relationship between dog and man really is.
Indeed, within the first few minutes of the programme, one of the contributors says that without that early domestication of dogs, civilisation of man might not have taken place!
Luckily someone has uploaded this programme onto YouTube. This Post contains the link to the first of 6 parts with the following 5 parts being presented on this Blog each day.
Please, please take time to watch these videos – they will amaze you, and very possibly bring tears to your eyes.
So if you are a dog owner, prepare to see your dog friend in a totally new way.
The Los Angeles Times update on this wonderful story.
The Los Angeles Fire Department firefighter who rescued a panicked dog from the brown, rushing waters of the Los Angeles River this afternoon said that unless firefighters acted, someone else was likely to have ventured into the concrete wash and wound up a casualty.
Joe St. Georges, 50, the firefighter who captivated much of Los Angeles as he was lowered by a tether into the churning waters to rescue the hound, told reporters late Friday that he suffered a bite to his thumb but was otherwise OK.
“I didn’t have time to establish a rapport with the dog,” St. Georges said, in a classic understatement, as he held his heavily bandaged hand in the air. “He did what dogs do.”
Joe St. Georges and 'Vernon' the dog!
The dog was taken by [human] ambulance to a Downey shelter run by the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority, which serves 14 cities, including Vernon.
Animal Control Officer Justin Guzman said the 6-year-old German shepherd mix was cold and wet, but otherwise unhurt. He showed no further aggression, and shelter staff named him Vernon.
“He’s really lovable,” Guzman said. “He’s appreciating all the attention he’s getting here.“
Guzman said there were a “million” ways and reasons Vernon could have gotten into the river channel.
“Whether he got scared by the thunderstorm and jumped the fence, we don’t know,” he said.
The dog was never really swept away, but managed for the most part to maintain his footing on a slender ledge in the middle of the river, the officer said.
The dog will be quarantined and watched for signs of rabies.
Marcia Mayeda, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control, said the disease is extremely rare in domestic animals. Untagged and loose, the dog was technically in violation of city codes, but the owners will face no repercussions if they step forward and take him home, Guzman said.
If they don’t, the shelter by early evening already had a list of 20 people who want to adopt Vernon.
Mayeda said she was very impressed by St. Georges’ actions.
This Blog came about because of a conversation with fellow Blog founder, Jon Lavin. Jon was talking about integrity and how it applies to us in the sense of Truth and Falsehood: that leading truthful and integrous lives is much more than the rather warm and patronising way that the phrase might come over.
Pharaoh
Indeed, understanding the power that comes from leading truthful lives and how an individual’s power and level of consciousness can be enhanced through greater integrity, understanding, and compassion could be the most remarkable discovery that any one person could make. Dr David Hawkins, who has written extensively on this subject, has said;
A science of consciousness developed which revealed that degrees of truth reflect concordant calibratable levels of consciousness on a scale of 1 to 1,000. When this verifiable test of truth was applied to multiple aspects of society (movies, art, politics, music, sociology, religion, scientific theories, spirituality, philosophy, everyday Americana, and all the countries of the world), the results were startling.
Returning to that conversation with Jon, it was pointed out that dogs have been calibrated as having a level of consciousness of 210. As a score of 200 is the boundary between truth and falsehood, according to Hawkins, this made dogs integrous, hence the inspiration for starting this Blog. My German Shepherd, Pharaoh, sleeping on the floor close to Jon and me, made the point. Despite being a difficult dog at times, he had always demonstrated a consistency of integrity that was impressive.
Anyway, to the point of this Post – a dog called Faith.
As I visit some of my clients, I am becoming aware of an unusual phenomenon – I think some people are actually becoming less selfish. We are used to hearing stories of institutions reaching heights of greed and selfishness during this recession but not many that are about the other way round.
I don’t go to supermarkets very often because I’m usually out working when my wife goes but by a fluke, I kept her company recently. We have been trying to support the local farmer’s markets in the area but this is proving difficult as it’s much quicker to do a one-stop visit to a supermarket than lots of small visits since we both run our own businesses.
It is of course cheaper at the supermarket as they have systematically forced food prices down to a level that prohibits most small food producers from supplying them.
Anyway, I digress. In our local supermarket works an ex colleague and friend of mine. He was made redundant just over a year ago for the second time and decided that he would go for the stress-free, safe option. He used to organise procurement for a large, global communications company so he has his head screwed on around organising things. I guess the supermarket job means that he can just switch off away from work, something he could never do before.
I saw him with a large trolley, checking shelves and we stopped for a chat. He was fine and generally enjoying his work. He asked about mine and I mentioned that things were a bit tight at the moment. We got talking about how training is carried out at his work and how they work with developing employee’s interpersonal and communications skills. He mentioned that there was a new HR manager at the branch, or is it “in branch?”, and would I like an introduction as they were always recruiting new people and they needed training?
I was flabbergasted as we weren’t necessarily that good friends and he didn’t need to say or do anything but went out of his way to be helpful.
I have also noticed this phenomena in other companies from time to time, in the form of clients arranging meetings and spending time, something previously they really didn’t have time for. Maybe we get more of what we notice and by focusing on the positive, we attract more of the positive into our lives?
Is it because when the going gets really tough, for example, in times of national crisis or great hardship, that we remember that we are all interconnected?
A summary of the different collections is listed here, many of them wartime photographs that bring a multitude of emotions to the surface: incredible bravery of the pilots; photographic standards of 70 years ago, man’s inhumanity to man; and so on.
I pondered a bit about writing this Post because, well ….. well…, see what you make of it!
Author's Mum
Being born in England in the early part of November, 1944, World War 2 still resonates within me.
Early home in an industrial part of West London meant that my mother and father had a ring-side view of the German V1 and V2 rockets that were being visited on London at that time.
My mother, 90, still recounts her enormous sense of relief when VE Day was announced (May 8th, 1945) because she then thought that her son’s future life was more or less assured.
So back to these aerial photographs held in those collections.
Here’s a picture of the visitation of war on the beautiful French town of Caen.
Linger a while and look at the damage, mostly to private homes. The photograph was taken just slightly more than a month before I was born.
We were invited to our friend’s 25th Wedding Anniversary on Saturday, 21st November.
English pub
It was in a local pub and they had invited many friends, some of whom we had not seen for many years.
One friend had started his own architect business, built it up over the last 10 years and, although he had lost a large amount of work because of the recession, things seemed to be picking up.
I mentioned that my work had dropped off dramatically since the summer. He said:
Well, Jon. You can make your own mind up what you do. You can either decide you’re going to go bankrupt or you can decide that you’re going to succeed – in spite of everything.
For some reason, that short conversation had a huge impact on me and I realised that it really is mind over matter and once we make our mind up about something, good or bad, it tends to happen.
As part of my job I often spend time in the UAE. Many different nationals coming here on the promise of work so that they can send some of the hard-earned money back to their families, often the only means of family survival.
Thus I was touched this morning by a lovely welcome from a Filipino woman who works in a Lebanese café which I often frequent. I asked after her young daughter …
Yes, she said, she is now 7 years old, and she will see her daughter again in 8 months time, because she is leaving the job when her visa expires, which will enable her to get her passport back, and then her return airfare will be paid so that she can return home.
“My daughter was 2 and a half when I last saw her.”
There are thousands of people like her in the same situation, and they still carry on with a smile knowing that others depend on them for life!
company recently. We have been trying to support the local farmer’s markets in the area but this is proving difficult as it’s much quicker to do a one-stop visit to a supermarket than lots of small visits since we both run our own businesses.
As part of my job I often spend time in the UAE. Many different nationals coming here on the promise of work so that they can send some of the hard-earned money back to their families, often the only means of family survival.
Learning from Dogs 