Making Progress

Since he arrived from Collie Rescue on 3 April 2011, Claude has been a challenge. Issues over doorways, issues over food, issues over being brushed, issues over the car, and above all, common to them all, willingness to use his teeth. On top of that he's been to the vet for surgery twice, once because of gum disease which meant 10 teeth had to be removed, and once because he had foreign bodies in his ear, and, as it proved, embedded in his gum too. He was thin to start with and lost weight at an alarming rate. While he seemed to enjoy the opportunity to go into the great outdoors he was incredibly timid with other dogs and very wary of people too. We had a major falling out when he grabbed hold of my wrist with his (remaining) teeth, and hung on, shaking my arm as though it was something he needed to kill.

Bit by bit we've come to understand The Little Man, and to set boundaries and routines that seem to help him. I'll never forget the time he decided not to come when called in the park, and headed off the other way. I will never know what was going on in his head, but I do know that when I finally caught up with him he expected to be hit, and flinched. The brush may well remind him of being groomed, possibly for the first time, in rescue, when, as his coat was so matted, it had to be shaved off almost to the skin. I can imagine that he fought, and he had scars where the clippers had cut him and must have hurt.

Living with him day by day it is easy to be overwhelmed by the effort sometimes needed. His feeding routine, which has certainly taken the anxiety out of meal times for all parties, canine and human, is time consuming and laborious. But he is undoubtedly making progress, and we are enjoying seeing him take strides forward into becoming a more confident, less neurotic dog. Sometimes he seems to take a big step forward almost out of nowhere, like the time, after being lifted into the car 4 times a day, he suddenly leaped in from a standing start and left me open-mouthed. Or the time, after running back to the car whenever he saw a group of two or more dogs approaching ever since we'd had him, he mingled with a group of 7 dogs, exchanging rear-end sniffs, as though he'd been doing it all his life.

This morning was just one of many occasions when we met someone who saw Claude earlier, and has not seem him since, and who expressed their surprise at how much he had come on. Well, he has. After a month of weight loss he stopped losing it, then started gaining. I am expecting him to be heavier still when he is next weighed, so his exercise quota can be increased. He is probably just passing a birthday as he is moulting (male Rough Collies moult once a year) and his coat no longer feels like an out-of-condition horse and is actually soft and smoother. Maybe it will get glossy in time. And he is actually going up to dogs he doesn't know and greeting them, if a bit gingerly at first. This morning he was milling about with 3 Labs, a Spaniel, 2 Great Danes and a Mastiff. You have to remember his flight for the car the first time he met any one of these dogs to appreciate what this means.

So I thought I'd post some pictures, gathering together a few from my Facebook and Picasa albums, to show the road he has travelled and down which we hope he will proceed far in the months and years ahead.

First, Claude as he was when we first met him at the Kennel where he lodged after Collie Rescue got him. This is my first sight of The Little Man, and his of me. I must admit I wondered what we were taking on. His eyes were sad and lifeless; he had no interest in being stroked, rather the reverse. He plainly was not sociable.

Claude was very reluctant to go indoors - if only we'd realised then what was going on - and when he was finally taken inside, he lay on the mat and tried to ignore everything happening around him. It is easy to see now that the poor little fellow had no experience of the good things of life.

We tried to make him welcome in his new home, but looking back, he must have found this a very stressful experience. Here he was, able to wander round the garden and come and go at will, and the people were trying to handle him - all of this was probably new to him. We were told he was 7 - and that may not be far out, but when the vet saw him the next day he thought he was at least 10, he was in such poor condition.

A couple of weeks later, having been introduced to Twywell Hills and Dales and having met some friendly other dogs, and now that we felt confident of his recall, he was taken on a longer walk with another human, someone he'd only just met, and her dog. So off we set, Jill and Ozzie the Black Lab, and Bonnie and I with Claude. He had not been in the company of another dog for more than a few minutes before, so this was a major challenge. But I knew Ozzie from before and if there was any dog Claude would not have a problem with, I was sure it was he. So off we set.

And here we are, heading for the woods, everyone getting on fine. I hoped Claude was picking up on my confidence that all would be well.

My next idea for helping Claude socialise was to invite two dogs he knew from the park into his territory. We had a head start here as he really likes their owner, Sarah. He was soon happy enough with Lucy & Lillie, but when Sarah lay on the grass and tried to encourage him to play, he just didn't know what to do.

Now here is Claude a few weeks later, in mid June. Note not only the new hair around his face, but the confident air with which he surveys the picnic area at Hills & Dales, watching the other dogs, most of which he now knows quite well, several of which he has been on walks with.







Compare this shot on the left with Claude after his walk with Ozzie and Jill, below. Can it be the same dog?

Bit by bit, sometimes in small increments, sometimes with great leaps forward, Claude has been growing out of his old timid self into his new life as a confident, if rather arthritic, gent in late-ish middle age. He does still have his foibles, and he does like to test the limits from time to time, but he is definitely both fitter and happier.

 Here is Claude today, at the end of July, after all but 4 months with us. He'd not met Misty before, but he went up to her (he always approaches girls these days) they got on, and she made every effort to come along on his walk. He must have something she liked.

Claude does know how to have fun now. He runs playfully from one to the other of us, chases the girls he thinks he has a chance with, bounds around forgetting his painful joints when he is feeling exuberant, and so on. He can't keep up the running all that long, but he can trot for quite a while. He looks forward to going out, gets excited when I put on my dog-walk clothes, and generally gives the impression that life is pretty good on the whole. He has entertained more visitors at home (two long-haired dachshund girls that he knows quite well) and is generally becoming sociable.

Up to now he has usually resisted any grooming or deseeding (long hair + country walk = seeds in coat). But today for the first time he took no noticed of the comb in his coat, and didn't even resist when we took seeds out of his rear paws, up to now something he hated. He even stepped into the foot bath when we got home.- that is a real first.

Here he is at Twywell Hills & Dales picnic area, posing for his photo, with his family. Is this the same dog as the one pictured at the top of the page? Yes, but also no: he is a different dog in that he has acquired a raft of new characteristics which we are proud and pleased to see. We hope he will be with us, and that his personality will continue to grow, for a long while yet.

Violence Against Women

I am aware that I only caught a short part of a discussion on Radio 4 when I was in the car this morning, but as far as I can gather a woman was arguing that porn (all the way from the soft porn of Playboy bunnies to hard porn on the Internet) is the main cause of rape and violence against women.

This is ignorant nonsense. I forget the exact biblical reference, and I don't want to look it up just now, but there is a passage in the OT that runs "If your son disobeys you, remonstrate with him, beat him if necessary, and if he still disobeys you take him to the elders and if he disobeys them, stone him to death". There is no similar sanction of violence against disobedient women. The reason for that is that violence against women was the norm, and in many parts of the world it still is.

For example Islamic teachers have argued recently that it is good for your wife if you beat her and women & girls are ritually murdered in India on a regular basis. The references are easy to find on the web. It is only in the parts of the world that have benefitted from the Enlightenment, where there is freedom of expression, an equal franchise, and so on, that women have equal rights with men to protection under the law.

Those are the same societies that allow porn to some extent under freedom of expression. But protection, for everyone, women included, against violence comes first. To equate porn with the cause of violence against women is simply ignorant of what is happening in much if not most of the world, and against which we should all be protesting as strongly as possible. The guy the woman was arguing with called her "nuts". It's a pity he didn't call her "ignorant" and bring the facts of the matter to her attention.

Missed Opportunity

My mother was a poetry expert. Actually she earned her living as a Speech Therapist and Elocution Teacher, but what she most enjoyed was working with her senior pupils to get them through the LAMDA and Poetry Society exams. Some of those who came to her went on to be distinguished in various aspects of the dramatic arts. She knew her Shakespeare inside out, and was very fond of Keats and Shelley among others.

Most of this passed me by. A steady drip of poetry, both good and less so, has a similar effect on a child as inoculation. I did learn to appreciate some poets and their work, but not as widely as I might have. And I never took the opportunity to discuss with her the basis of her interpretations. When she advised that a line be rendered this way rather than that, what exactly did she have in mind? Was it the sound, the dramatic effect, the poet's meaning? And if the latter, what did she know of the background against which he was writing?

I know a little about Shakespeare's place in history, not much, and nothing at all about Keats. But I do know quite a bit about Shelley. He married the daughter of one of my heroes, William Godwin, who went on herself to write Frankenstein. Shelley was deeply influenced by Godwin's 1793 book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and in some respects was more Godwinian in his views than Godwin had been when he wrote it. Shelley certainly disapproved of adjustments that Godwin made to his theory in later editions of the book in the light of experience. Shelley's poetry is intimately related to Godwin's original philosophy.

And so was his behaviour. Shelley's cavalier attitude towards other people's feelings and opinions, which sprung from his enthusiasm for Godwin's ideas, led indirectly to the suicide of Mary Wollstonecraft's first daughter, Fanny, and directly to the suicide of his first wife, Harriet, who he abandoned for Mary Godwin, and to his subsequent total disinterest in his children from that marriage.

Which is why I would like to have discussed my mother's interpretation of his poetry with her. How much of this did she know? How much of it, if she knew it, did she take into account when teaching his poetry? Did she think that the relationship between the poetic expression of ideas and the behaviour to which those ideas led was important, or even relevant?

I shall never know. Does it matter? Godwin's ideas also form the basis of his daughter Mary Shelley's brilliantly original novel, Frankenstein, and many of the conflicts and questions that arise from his teaching are worked out between the characters of the story. Indeed, it was to popularise her father's insights that Mary wrote the book. But who cares about that now? It's just a darn good story, isn't it?

Claude...

Claude has a phobia about doorways. He has yet to leave the living room and enter the hall. Getting him out for a walk has been really difficult. We didn't want to force him and make his fear worse. Despite his not liking being picked up, that's what I resorted to. Once over the threshold he was fine. The odd thing was that it was the threshold out of the living room into the conservatory that stopped him on the way out, and the one from the garden into the conservatory on the way back in. In either direction he crossed the second one without a thought.

So last night Claude had a visit from Canine Behaviourist Sue Kinchin. Because he has problems with his teeth he has also not taken treats. But Sue had some that were tasty enough to attract him and small enough to swallow without chewing. We spent a long time gaining his confidence, rewarding steps towards the door and relieving the stress that built up when he got too near.

However this morning we got the first fruits. I wanted, if it was at all possible, Claude to decide to cross the threshold and go out. He loves his walk, and with his lead on he is highly motivated. He came to the doorway, put a foot across, and then backed off. Then he tried again, but at the threshold he lifted one front leg in the way he does when wanting his chest rubbed. So I did that, and he obviously felt better and put a foot over the doorway again. I rewarded his progress, he backed off. But the next approach he managed two feet through. The point is that he wants to go out, but for some reason he can't. So I rewarded him for his effort - all I had was kind words and my hands - and he backed off but came straight back and tried again. After 45 minutes of to and fro he finally stepped through with all four feet. I made a big fuss of him and he trotted off to the car, through the remaining doorway, no problem.

He also has a issue with getting into the boot. Where we walk in the morning I reverse up to a grassy bank, so he has no trouble getting in and out. After a vigorous walk when he is limbered up he can walk up to the car and leap in. But when his arthritic hip joints are cold he bangs his back legs as he can't get enough height into his jump. I've been trying to teach him the Laddie method - put his front two feet into the car and wait for me to hoick the back end up and in. So he came up to the car, but not near enough. I got him to walk in a circle and this time he stopped closer to the car. But he sat down, clearly recognising that he was going to have a problem leaping in. Then, of his own volition, he put one paw into the car. I praised him and lifted the other paw up and praised him some more. But he was still sitting down and I needed him to be standing up to lift him. So I put my hands under his rear and raised him into the standing position, but before I could get my arm under to lift, he leapt. He didn't have any momentum and banged his legs again, but at least he was a step further towards the right method, so we had a big praising and comfort session before setting off.

After a vigorous walk and many friends to sniff - he as so gained in confidence in the week he's been here - we had to face the reverse issue of getting him to decide to go back into the house. It was exactly the same as it had been in the other direction, just a different doorway. But he was highly motivated - his breakfast was waiting inside, as he well knew. It isn't that he doesn't want to go in. He wants to very much, but some interior mechanism is preventing him, and he can't. So we started the one foot / two feet routine again, with much backing off and walking round. I did my bit, supplying praise and stress-relief. It took him half an hour to make the decision, but he did eventually put all four feet inside and we had a major "well done, take your time and feel better" session. Then he happily trotted across the other threshold that had stopped him on the way out, tucked in to his food, licked his bowl clean, flopped onto the floor and fell asleep.

The Little Man had a demanding start to the day.

Seneca was right

Lucius Annaeus Seneca is one of my favourite philosophers. I like the Stoic writers as a whole, and he was one of the greatest. The main competition for the Stoice school was the school of Epicurus. One of Seneca's virtues was that he recognised the greatness of Epicurean thought and quotes from it liberally.

One of Seneca's important creations is a set of 124 letters to Lucilius Junior, which I have been reading while on a visit to an old friend in Israel. At the end of letter 8 Seneca is borrowing from Epicurus, and justifying it by quoting Epicurus in support - the truth belongs to everyone. Then in the next letter he supports Epicurus in his denial of the idea that the wise man is content with himself and needs no friends. Seneca goes on that the Stoic wise man is indeed self-sufficient, but none the less he desires friends. He makes an interesting comparison - a man that has lost a hand learns to do without it, but he'd still prefer to have both hands. In the same way the wise man, being self-sufficient, is able to do without friends, but it is better to have them. In the same letter he says "Great Pleasure is to be found not only in keeping up an old and established friendship but also in beginning and building a new one." And once again he generously quotes Epicurus, who said that he didn't want friends for their support when he was in trouble, but on the contrary, to have someone to support in their troubles. Seneca is talking about real friends, the person one can talk to about anything, or similarly sit with in silence. He distinguishes real friends from the fair weather kind who clamour about successful people. Seneca goes on that friendship is something to be sought out for its own sake, and the self-contented wise man is entitled to persue it.

My visit to Jerusalem has been a great refreshment for me. I've had the opportunity to do new things and to revisit old ones; to enjoy things past once again and to decide to let some things go and move into the future. I've read some new books and revisited some old ones too. All this has been made possible by the generousity of one old friend, and also that of a new one, his wife. I first met Brian at school, rather more than 50 years ago, and we both were members of the same adult chess club. It was there that I realised what an unusual, generously open-minded, person he is.

Chess players are rather apt to be dismissive of people who beat them in a game: "Oh you were just lucky, if I had done this or that you would have been lost". Grandmaster Bent Larsen once said that he had never beaten an opponent who was fully healthy, and very chess player knows what he means. Back in the chess club at Palmers Green I had a game with Brian that I won with an unusual manouvre that the books would say was a bad idea. Maybe it usually is, but not this time. Brian did not resort to the familiar "Oh, I was feeling unwell and had something else on my mind" response. Instead he was eager to go back to the critical position and understand why a move he would not have considered was correct on this occasion. Not at all defensive, he wanted to understand. Typically, Brian has forgotten the incident. I remain impressed, and he hasn't changed.

Being with my old friend (as we are both over 60 I think that's the right term) has been the greatest treasure of my visit. Meeting Maggie and finding her to be of like temperament, and similarly a pleasure to be with, has doubled the benefit. I'd like to think it has been similar for them. I've been made so welcome and felt so at home.

After my heart surgery I resolved to put more time and effort into the things that really matter, the people in my life, and less into other things. Brian and Maggie have helped me recover that resolve, and I shall always be grateful. I have also had the pleasure of taking part in a relaxed and good humoured style of living that I shall try to emulate.

Seneca, and Epicurus, were right. Real friends are a tremendous asset, an extension to life, an enrichment, a treasure to be enjoyed and valued.

Dogology

Dogology

Laddie was an exceptionally laid back and very friendly dog. But he did have his favourite people. He was always very pleased to see Tony. I think it may have been connected to Tony's touch, which he seemed to really enjoy, or it may have been the scent on him of his bitch Daisy, or it might have had something to do with the ready supply of biscuits, or perhaps all three, or something else.

It was different with Jill - he'd greet her so warmly, often with his singing tone, and for a year or so as her dog Ozzie grew to maturity he'd try to displace Ozzie's ownership of her. When he became ill for the last time he stopped that, but he still showed Jill loads of affection. I never worked out why, but he was rather possessive of her. Did he pick up my affection for her?

He was similarly pleased to see Sarah and her dogs. He liked the dogs. They were friendly to him and greeted him without jumping all over him. He hated that more and more as he got older and his joints became more painful. But he was fond of Sarah too, and would come when she called him when he was busy ignoring me. I think it was something to do with the way she greeted him, although once again he may have been picking up my affection.

But best of all, his very top favourite, was Helen. He stayed with her when we were away, and really enjoyed it. I'd drive him round, open the car, and he'd spot where he was, walk to the front door, and wait to be let in. He greeted Helen almost as he greeted me. He let her wash his feet, even posing while she did it. One of the few things he protested about when I did it was foot washing in water. But with Helen, it was alright. Helen was the first person to allow him on her sofa. He wasn't allowed at home. Helen let him break the rule on his first visit, and he was settled there when I went to collect him. I took him home, he walked into the living room, looked me in the eye, and got on the sofa, gazing at me and wagging furiously. What could we do? Bonnie made a sofa cover for him. I'm glad we did that as it gave him somewhere soft to rest when his joints hurt but also in the heart of his family. He never liked being left if we had to go out, but when I took him to Helen he'd greet her, get on the sofa, and not even look up when I went home without him. He adored her. Something must have been going on after I left! Thanks to Helen he never had to go into a kennel and was never distressed by our holiday breaks.

When Laddie came to us he was a bit anxious. He was disturbed in the car on the long journey back from Manchester. But he settled in quite fast, appointing himself Sentry on the first day, a job he took very seriously for the rest of his life. He always gave the window cleaners a tough time. Once we came back from a walk to find that they had let themselves in the back gate and were cleaning at the rear of the house. He'd not had a very active walk, and was plainly feeling stiff, but he saw them as I reversed in and started barking. I opened the back and he leaped out and charged, chasing them both up their ladders and showing his teeth, growling fiercely. Good boy! Whoever Laddie's successor is will need to learn that role, but it's going to be a hard act to follow.

Laddie's initial anxiety soon passed as he found he was loved, rewarded, fed, walked, and generally made welcome. He showed his love for us in return in many ways, and was always at the door when one of us came home. Well, almost. He was once asleep on the sofa when I opened the door, and I heard the crash as he came running. He'd gaze into our eyes, wagging like mad, sometimes singing too. If we were all sitting together he'd suddenly look up, fix one of us with a meaningful stare, and wag firmly, beating the carpet or sofa in emphasis. I took to working downstairs with him, and if I got distressed at the computer he'd detect it, and come to me from where ever he was, sit by me, and look up, staring into my eyes as if to reassure me that everything was okay while he was here to defend me. He was so loyal.

We adored him with his laid back, affectionate, gentle manner, and he plainly showed his adoration for both of us. And now he's gone. The thing I miss most is the sound of his tail on the floor when he detected that I was out of bed in the morning. Another day was beginning, we'd do things together, and whatever they were he was ready to go for it. Even in his last days he was eager to go out and meet his friends, canine and human. We will always miss him.

Sir Patrick

According to The Week, the nation's favourite stereotype of a scientist, dear old Patrick Moore, is in a bad way. His health is failing and he sees himself as being near the end of life. I'm sad about that. I treasure a photograph of him standing next to me chatting in a friendly way, taken at an Astronomy event we both attended 7 or 8 years ago. He is, of course, an unbeliever as far as religion is concerned, so I was surprised to read that he expects death to lead to another life. And not merely that, but a life which can influence events in this one. According to the report I read he has left instructions for a gathering after his death at which he will blow out a candle!

Somehow I am almost more sad about this than his approaching demise. But it is not atypical. When my dog, dear old Laddie, died, dog-walking friends tried to comfort me by saying that he was probably playing in an otherworldly field with their deceased dog. People I meet who have zero religious beliefs expect to be reunited with deceased spouses and parents. Of course I never challenge beliefs like that. I might, in a formal debate for example, but people are entitled to what comforts they can find in the face of death. The idea of non-existence is terrifying to some, and incomprehensible to many. I am lucky in that not existing after this life frightens me no more than not existing before I was born does. That luck does not give me the right to trample on the compensations for death and loss that others entertain.

But here, no-one has to read on who doesn't want to, and no-one who doesn't want to read what I really think need read another word. Please take that as fair warning about what is to come.

Sir Patrick is a highly educated man, and I doubt he is unaware of all the work in neuroscience and related disciplines that demonstrates how totally dependent we are on our brain chemistry and physiology. A minute change in the chemical reactions in our brain can render us so different a person that we would not recognise ourselves. An injury to the brain can cause dramatic changes in both personality and physical capacity. There is experimental evidence that seems to show that the actions we think we undertake as the result of a decision are in fact initiated deep in the brain long before we become consciously involved.

None of this proves anything, and it certainly does not prove that there is no life after death. But it does lend credence to the idea that who we are is dependent on our brains, both physically and chemically, and that therefore we ourselves are so dependent, and that when our brains stop, we stop.  Sir Patrick must be aware of that, even though it is not his specialised area of scientific work. But the existence of this line of empirical work does nothing to change his belief and his expectation of an afterlife. In that he has a lot in common with most people. I think it is sad that someone of his knowledge and critical judgement doesn't give it more weight. But the fact is that our emotions are more important than our rationality in determining what we believe.

There is nothing in either neuroscience or medicine that gives any reason to think anything other than that we are totally dependent on these frail human bodies for our existence, and in particular dependent on our brains. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it does look very suspicious. It seems to me to be like the general anaesthetic I had when I underwent heart surgery. The drugs they gave me stopped certain parts of my brain from working and I was completely unaware even of being unconscious. Everything that was me stopped until the effect of the drugs was reversed and I regained consciousness, with no idea how much time had passed and so on. Effectively the real me ceased to exist although my body lived on. The wonder of modern anaesthesia is that it is reversible, and once the brain chemistry began to flow again, my self returned. When I die all that brain chemistry will stop and the physical circuitry will become unusable very quickly. I fail to see how I can in any sense exist when this has happened.

If Sir Patrick can show me any reason at all to think that this line of thought might be wrong, I will be delighted to examine it, test it, and take it seriously. Sadly the prospect is remote since no such reason has ever been shown to exist. I prefer to go to my death aware of the realities and with no expectation of their being overturned.  If that's wrong I hope the surprise will be pleasant, but I am reasonably confident that any such non-physical existence in another world will be totally unable to blow out any existent physical candles in this one. All that influences matter is material in origin, including the four great forces of nature, the weakest of which is gravity.